The co-founder of Elon Musk's company Neuralink tweeted on Saturday that the startup has the technological advances and savvy to create its own "Jurassic Park." The Hill reports: "We could probably build Jurassic Park if we wanted to," Max Hodak tweeted Saturday. "Wouldn't be genetically authentic dinosaurs but [shrugging emoji]. maybe 15 years of breeding + engineering to get super exotic novel species." Hodak didn't further explain what technology Neuralink could use to engineer the long-extinct dinosaurs. It's worth noting that the tweet makes no mention of Neuralink, although one could presume Hodak is referring to the neurotechnology company because of his use of the word "we."

In response to the statement, which has been picked up by a variety of publications Wednesday, CNET's Jackson Ryan says we shouldn't expect a "real Jurassic Park" anytime soon -- or ever: [I]t's pretty much impossible to resurrect a dinosaur. The science of bringing dinosaurs back from the dead isn't really as sound as Hodak makes it seem though. Even humanity would have a tough time building a Jurassic Park in the next 15 years. First, we'd need some DNA from the prehistoric tyrants and unlike in the film Jurassic Park, where the DNA is retrieved from mosquitoes in amber and fused with frog DNA, that information has completely degraded.

However, more recently extinct animals, like the woolly mammoth, may be a good target for "de-extinction." We can still extract DNA from these creatures and could theoretically build and implant a mammoth embryo in a modern-day elephant. The question is: should we? Jurassic Park offers a pretty good reason not to, but mammoths aren't quite as bloodthirsty as Tyrannosaurus rex.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos on Tuesday announced he's soon opening the first location of a network of tuition-free "Montessori-inspired" preschools for underserved children. In an Instagram post, Bezos said the first Bezos Academy will open in Des Moines, Wash., on Oct. 19. The network of schools will offer year-round programming, five days a week, for children between the ages of 3 and 5. Admissions will prioritize low-income families, according to the Bezos Day One Fund website.

"This classroom is just the beginning," Bezos wrote in a post featuring a photo of a preschool classroom. "The @bezosacademy opens its doors on Oct. 19th. This one in Des Moines, WA, is the first of many free preschools that we'll be opening for underserved children." The nonprofit organization says it wants to run the schools using the same set of principles that have driven e-commerce giant Amazon. "Most important among those will be genuine, intense customer obsession. The child will be the customer," the organization said on its website.

A fire ripped through a building at Iran's main nuclear-fuel production site early Thursday, causing extensive damage to what appeared to be a factory where the country has boasted of producing a new generation of centrifuges. The United States has repeatedly warned that such machinery could speed Tehran's path to building nuclear weapons. schwit1 shares a report: The Atomic Energy Agency of Iran acknowledged an "incident" at the desert site, but did not term it sabotage. It released a photograph showing what seemed to be destruction from a major explosion that ripped doors from their hinges and caused the roof to collapse. Parts of the building, which was recently inaugurated, were blackened by fire. But it was not clear how much damage was done underground, where video released by the Iranian government last year suggested most of the assembly work is conducted on next-generation centrifuges -- the machines that purify uranium. A Middle Eastern intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss closely held information, said the blast was caused by an explosive device planted inside the facility. The explosion, he said, destroyed much of the aboveground parts of the facility where new centrifuges -- delicate devices that spin at supersonic speeds -- are balanced before they are put into operation.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: [Cryptographer and coder known as Moxie Marlinspike] has always talked about making encrypted communications easy enough for anyone to use. The difference, today, is that Signal is finally reaching that mass audience it was always been intended for -- not just the privacy diehards, activists, and cybersecurity nerds that formed its core user base for years -- thanks in part to a concerted effort to make the app more accessible and appealing to the mainstream. That new phase in Signal's evolution began two years ago this month. That's when WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton, a few months removed from leaving the app he built amid post-acquisition clashes with Facebook management, injected $50 million into Marlinspike's end-to-end encrypted messaging project. Acton also joined the newly created Signal Foundation as executive chairman. The pairing up made sense; WhatsApp had used Signal's open source protocol to encrypt all WhatsApp communications end-to-end by default, and Acton had grown disaffected with what he saw as Facebook's attempts to erode WhatsApp's privacy.

Since then, Marlinspike's nonprofit has put Acton's millions -- and his experience building an app with billions of users -- to work. After years of scraping by with just three overworked full-time staffers, the Signal Foundation now has 20 employees. For years a bare-bones texting and calling app, Signal has increasingly become a fully featured, mainstream communications platform. With its new coding muscle, it has rolled out features at a breakneck speed: In just the last three months, Signal has added support for iPad, ephemeral images and video designed to disappear after a single viewing, downloadable customizable "stickers," and emoji reactions. More significantly, it announced plans to roll out a new system for group messaging, and an experimental method for storing encrypted contacts in the cloud. Many of those features might sound trivial. They certainly aren't the sort that appealed to Signal's earliest core users. Instead, they're what Acton calls "enrichment features." They're designed to attract normal people who want a messaging app as multifunctional as WhatsApp, iMessage, or Facebook Messenger but still value Signal's widely trusted security and the fact that it collects virtually no user data. Wired explains how adding simple-sounding enhancements can require significant feats of security engineering to fit within Signal's privacy constraints. Adding downloadable customizable stickers, for example, "required designing a system where every sticker 'pack' is encrypted with a 'pack key,'" reports Wired. "That key is itself encrypted and shared from one user to another when someone wants to install new stickers on their phone, so that Signal's server can never see decrypted stickers or even identify the Signal user who created or sent them."

For Signal's new group messaging, Signal partnered with Microsoft Research to invent a novel form of "anonymous credentials" that let a server gatekeep who belongs in a group, but without ever learning the members' identities.

Alabama resident John Orange has filed a class-action lawsuit accusing Amazon and Ring of failing to do enough to secure their security systems against hacks, including Orange's. Engadget reports: He alleged that a stranger compromised his Ring outdoor camera and spooked his kids as a "direct and proximate" result of the company's inability to protect its devices "against cyber-attack." He pointed to other incidents to support the argument for a class action, including a highly publicized event in December where a remote intruder harassed a Mississippi girl.

Orange also claimed that Ring's response was evidence of the company blaming customers. It told Orange that there was "no evidence" someone had hacked the firm's infrastructure, and that his incident may be the result of a breach at a "non-Ring service" where the perpetrators reused info to sign into Ring accounts. In other words, Ring couldn't help it if people reused passwords with sites and services it can't control. The suit formally levels accusations of breach of contract, invasion of privacy, negligence, unjust enrichment and violating California's Unfair Competition Law (through misleading representations of security). If it achieves class action status, it would ask Amazon and Ring to compensate victims and implement "improved security procedures and measures."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A landmark legal case has been launched against the world's largest tech companies by Congolese families who say their children were killed or maimed while mining for cobalt used to power smartphones, laptops and electric cars, the Guardian can reveal. Apple, Google, Dell, Microsoft and Tesla have been named as defendants in a lawsuit filed in Washington DC by human rights firm International Rights Advocates on behalf of 14 parents and children from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The lawsuit accuses the companies of aiding and abetting in the death and serious injury of children who they claim were working in cobalt mines in their supply chain. The families and injured children are seeking damages for forced labour and further compensation for unjust enrichment, negligent supervision and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Since cobalt is used in the rechargeable lithium batteries used in millions of products sold by these tech companies, the lawsuit argues that they all aided and abetted the mining companies that profited from the labor of children who were forced to work in dangerous conditions -- conditions that ultimately led to death and serious injury.

"The court papers claim that Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Google and Tesla all have the authority and resources to supervise and regulate their cobalt supply chains and that their inability to do so contributed to the deaths and injuries suffered by their clients," reports The Guardian. The lawsuit says children were working illegally at a mine owned by UK mining company Glencore, which sold cobalt to Umicore, a Brussels-based metal and mining trader, which then sold battery-grade cobalt to several of the tech companies. Several other mines mentioned in the lawsuit are owned by Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, a major Chinese cobalt firm, which also supplies several tech companies.

For years, an enduring mystery has surrounded the Stuxnet virus attack that targeted Iran's nuclear program: How did the U.S. and Israel get their malware onto computer systems at the highly secured uranium-enrichment plant? From a report: The first-of-its-kind virus, designed to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, effectively launched the era of digital warfare and was unleashed some time in 2007, after Iran began installing its first batch of centrifuges at a controversial enrichment plant near the village of Natanz. The courier behind that intrusion, whose existence and role has not been previously reported, was an inside mole recruited by Dutch intelligence agents at the behest of the CIA and the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad, according to sources who spoke with Yahoo News.

An Iranian engineer recruited by the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD provided critical data that helped the U.S. developers target their code to the systems at Natanz, according to four intelligence sources. That mole then provided much-needed inside access when it came time to slip Stuxnet onto those systems using a USB flash drive. The Dutch were asked in 2004 to help the CIA and Mossad get access to the plant, but it wasn't until three years later that the mole, who posed as a mechanic working for a front company doing work at Natanz, delivered the digital weapon to the targeted systems. "[T]he Dutch mole was the most important way of getting the virus into Natanz," one of the sources told Yahoo.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Attorneys in San Francisco representing an Alphabet shareholder are suing the board of directors for allegedly covering up sexual misconduct claims against top executives. The suit comes months after an explosive New York Times report detailed how Google shielded executives accused of sexual misconduct, either by keeping them on staff or allowing them amicable departures. For example, Google reportedly paid Android leader Andy Rubin a $90 million exit package, despite asking for his resignation after finding sexual misconduct claims against him credible.

The new lawsuit, filed in California's San Mateo County, asserts claims for breach of fiduciary duty, abuse of control, unjust enrichment, and waste of corporate assets. The attorneys say the lawsuit is the result of "an extensive original investigation into non-public evidence" and produced copies of internal Google minutes from board of directors meetings. "The Directors' wrongful conduct allowed the illegal conduct to proliferate and continue," the suit reads. "As such, members of Alphabet's Board were knowing and direct enablers of the sexual harassment and discrimination."

TTL0 shares a report from The Times of Israel: Iranian infrastructure and strategic networks have come under attack in the last few days by a computer virus similar to Stuxnet but "more violent, more advanced and more sophisticated," and Israeli officials are refusing to discuss what role, if any, they may have had in the operation, an Israeli TV report said Wednesday. "Remember Stuxnet, the virus that penetrated the computers of the Iranian nuclear industry?" the report on Israel's Hadashot news asked. Iran "has admitted in the past few days that it is again facing a similar attack, from a more violent, more advanced and more sophisticated virus than before, that has hit infrastructure and strategic networks." The Iranians, the TV report went on, are "not admitting, of course, how much damage has been caused." On Sunday, Gholamreza Jalali, the head of Iran's civil defense agency, said Tehran had neutralized a new version of Stuxnet, Reuters reported. Stuxnet penetrated Iran's nuclear program, "taking control and sabotaging parts of its enrichment processes by speeding up its centrifuges," the report notes. We'll update this story when more details become available.

Tesla's model 3 is now one of the five top-selling sedans in America (while sales of the Mercedes-Benz C-Class are down 28 percent through September), Bloomberg reports. Elon Musk tweeted out a link to their article on Thursday -- but it was his other tweet, a satirical criticism of the SEC, that made headlines. MarketWatch reports: Tesla shares ended 7% lower on Friday as Wall Street reacted to Musk's tweet seemingly out of nowhere late Thursday about the "Shortseller Enrichment Commission." Musk also tweeted that day that short sellers were "value destroyers" and should be illegal. Friday's losses for Tesla "produced more than half a billion in paper profit for the shorts," S3 Partners LLC, which tracks real-time short interest data, said in a note. Since news of the Musk's settlement with the SEC, shorts are up $941 million, S3 Partners said. "Clearly short positions are building in the wake of strong selling by longs, as Musk demonstrates a refusal to keep away from controversy," the note said.
The article notes that last Saturday the SEC settled charges that Musk misled investors with a tweet about taking Tesla private. "Terms of the settlement included requiring Tesla to rein in Musk's social-media communications, but it was unclear when Tesla intends to implement that.... The settlement has yet to be court-approved."

On Friday Musk was back on point, tweeting out the news that Tesla owners "can refer someone to buy a Tesla & get any image they want laser etched in glass & sent to deep space for millions of years."

Last week, a lawyer for Uber said Waymo was seeking about $2.6 billion from the company for the alleged theft of one of several trade secrets in a lawsuit over self-driving cars. Over the weekend, Waymo filed a document with the court noting that the correct figure was actually $1.859 billion. TechCrunch reports: It's not clear why this seemingly important detail was left uncorrected for nearly a week. The filing also includes some additional clarification around the way in which the damages figure was calculated. Though Waymo is arguing that nine trade secrets were put in jeopardy by Anthony Levandowski, it is seeking a maximum of $1.8 billion in damages. That figure is the value that Waymo is attributing to a single trade secret -- trade secret 25. The other eight secrets are being individually valued at less than $1.8 billion. Consequently, Waymo is capping the damages at the value of its most valuable compromised trade secret. Waymo's attorneys note that the $1.8 billion figure was calculated based on an estimate of "Uber's unjust enrichment from Uber's trade secret misappropriation." Waymo continues that the damages are based on Uber's own profitability forecasts of deploying autonomous vehicles into its ridesharing business.

Customers who paid $99.99 to watch the Conor McGregor-Floyd Mayweather fight are suing Showtime due to the quality of their stream and buffering issues. From a report via Hollywood Reporter: Portland, Ore., boxing fan Zack Bartel paid to stream the fight in high-definition through the Showtime app but says all he saw was "grainy video, error screens, buffer events, and stalls." Bartel is suing Showtime for unlawful trade practices and unjust enrichment, alleging the network rushed its pay-per-view streaming service to the market without securing the bandwidth necessary to support the scores of cable-cutting fans. The complaint, which is largely composed of screenshots and tweets, is seeking for each member of the class actual damages or $200 in statutory damages, whichever is greater. The proposed class includes Oregon consumers who viewed Showtime's app advertisement on iTunes and paid $99.99 to stream the fight, but were unable to view the fight live on the app "in HD at 1080p resolution and at 60 frames per second, and who experienced ongoing grainy video, error screens, buffer events, and stalls instead." Showtime senior vp sports communications director, Chris DeBlasio, says: "We have received a very limited number of complaints and will issue a full refund for any customer who purchased the event directly from Showtime and were unable to receive the telecast." DeBlasio recommends users contact their cable or satellite provider if they experienced any issues.

Games company ZeniMax successfully sued Facebook-owned Oculus for $500 million earlier this year, and now it has a new target in sight: Samsung. The company has filed a new lawsuit over Samsung's Gear VR headset, claiming that "Samsung knowingly profited from Oculus technology that was first developed at ZeniMax, then misappropriated by Oculus executive John Carmack," reports The Verge. From the report: Carmack, whose company id Software was acquired by ZeniMax in 2009, was one of the driving forces behind the Gear VR. While the headset was released by Samsung, it's described as "powered by Oculus," with heavy software optimizations developed by Carmack. But the lawsuit alleges that Carmack owed much of his success at Oculus to software he developed as part of a team at ZeniMax. Among other things, the Texas court filing claims that Carmack secretly brought Oculus (and former ZeniMax) employee Matt Hooper into id Software's offices to develop an "attack plan" for mobile VR, which Oculus would later take to Samsung. The Samsung Gear VR was also built on some of the same code as the Oculus Rift, which was the subject of ZeniMax's earlier lawsuit. ZeniMax's basic argument is that Samsung would have been aware of the lawsuit against Oculus, which was filed during the initial development of the Gear VR. But "Samsung continued to develop the Gear VR with full knowledge of ZeniMax's allegations and without obtaining any right or permission from ZeniMax to use any of its copyrights or other confidential information." The new lawsuit officially accuses Samsung of copyright infringement for using ZeniMax VR code in the Gear VR, as well as trade secret misappropriation, unfair competition, and unjust enrichment.

An anonymous reader writes: According to a recent article on Fast Company, tech companies are looking to hire people without degrees. From the report: "For years, the tech pipeline has been fed mostly from the same elite universities. This has created a feedback loop of talent and a largely homogenous workplace. As a result, tech continues to stumble when it comes to diversity. The technology industry is now trying to figure out a way to attack its cultural and demographic homogeneity issues. One simple initiative is to begin to recruit talent from people outside of its preferred networks. One way is to extend their recruiting efforts to people who don't have four-year degrees. The technology industry is now trying to figure out a way to attack its cultural and demographic homogeneity issues. One simple initiative is to begin to recruit talent from people outside of its preferred networks. One way is to extend their recruiting efforts to people who don't have four-year degrees. IBM's head of talent organization, Sam Ladah, calls this sort of initiative a focus on 'new-collar jobs.' The idea, he says, is to look toward different applicant pools to find new talent. 'We consider them based on their skills,' he says, and don't take into account their educational background. This includes applicants who didn't get a four-year degree but have proven their technical knowledge in other ways. Some have technical certifications, and others have enrolled in other skills programs. 'We've been very successful in hiring from [coding] bootcamps,' says Ladah. Intel has also been looking to find talent from other educational avenues. One program gave people either enrolled in or recently graduated from community colleges internships with the company. Similarly, the company has been trying to get a foothold in high schools by funding initiatives to boost computer science curricula for both the Oakland Unified School District and an Arizona-based high-school oriented program called Next Generation of Native American Coders. Intel, for example, invests in the program CODE 2040, which aims to build pathways for underrepresented minority youth to enter the technology space. Likewise, GitHub has partnered with coding-focused enrichment programs like Operation Code, Hackbright, and Code Tenderloin."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from DSLReports: Back in 2013 Comcast began charging customers what it called the "Broadcast TV Fee." The fee, which began at $1.25 per month, has jumped to $6.50 (depending on your market) in just three years. As consumers began to complain about yet another glorified rate hike, the company in 2014 issued a statement proclaiming it was simply being "transparent," and passing on the cost of soaring programmer retransmission fees on to consumers. There's several problems with Comcast's explanation. One, however pricey broadcaster retransmission fees have become (and keep in mind Comcast is a broadcaster), programming costs are simply the cost of doing business for a cable company, and should be included in the overall price. Comcast doesn't include this fee in the overall price because sticking it below the line let's the company falsely advertise a lower rate. Inspired by the banking sector, this misleading practice has now become commonplace in the broadband and cable industry. Whether it's CenturyLink's $2 per month "Internet Cost Recovery Fee" or Fairpoint's $3 per month "Broadband Cost Recovery Fee," these fees are utterly nonsensical, and inarguably false advertising. And while the FCC can't be bothered to take aim at such misleading business practices, Federal class action lawsuit filed this week in California is trying to hold Comcast accountable for the practice. Plaintiffs from seven states -- including New Jersey, Illinois, California, Washington, Colorado, Florida and Ohio -- have sued Comcast alleging consumer fraud, unfair competition, unjust enrichment and breach of contract. What's more, the fee has consistently skyrocketed, notes the lawsuit. Comcast initially charged $1.50 when the fee first appeared back in 2013, but now charges upwards of $6.50 more per month in many markets -- a 333% increase in just three years.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via MIT Technology Review: Spencer Wheatley and Didier Sornette at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Benjamin Sovacool at Aarhus University in Denmark have compiled the most comprehensive list of nuclear accidents ever created and used it to calculate the chances of future accidents. They say there is a 50:50 chance that a major nuclear disaster will occur somewhere in the world before 2050. "There is a 50 percent chance that a Chernobyl event (or larger) occurs in the next 27 years," they conclude. Since the International Atomic Energy Agency doesn't publish a historical database of the nuclear accidents it rates using the International Nuclear Event Scale, others, like Wheatley and co, have to compile their own list of accidents. They define an accident as "an unintentional incident or event at a nuclear energy facility that led to either one death (or more) or at least $50,000 in property damage." Each accident must have occurred during the generation, transmission, or distribution of nuclear energy, which includes accidents at mines, during transportation, or at enrichment facility, and so on. Fukushima was by far the most expensive accident in history at a cost of $166 billion, which is 60 percent of the total cost of all other nuclear accidents added together. Wheatley and co say their data suggests that the nuclear industry remains vulnerable to dragon king events, which are large unexpected events that are difficult to analyze because they follow a different statistical distribution, have unforeseen causes, and are few in number. "There is a 50% chance that a Fukushima event (or larger) occurs in the next 50 years," they say.

Chloe Melas, reporting for CNN: Taylor Swift, U2, Kings of Leon and Paul McCartney are some of the 180 recording artists and labels petitioning Congress to reform the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (D.M.C.A.) In an open letter to Congress, they write that the current online copyright law has allowed YouTube and other sites to "generate huge profits by creating ease of use for consumers to carry almost every recorded song in history in their pocket via a smartphone, while songwriters' and artists' earnings continue to diminish." The letter, which is being published in The Hill and Politico this week, goes on to call for "sensible reform." "We ask you to enact sensible reform that balances the interests of creators with the interests of the companies who exploit music for their financial enrichment. It's only then that consumers will truly benefit." YouTube's parent company, Google, declined to comment Tuesday, but in a statement in April said, "Any claim that the DMCA safe harbors are responsible for a 'value gap' for music on YouTube is simply false." This comes days after musician Trent Reznor said YouTube is built on the back of stolen content.

An anonymous reader writes: Citigroup has a trademark on "THANKYOU" and is currently using it to sue ATT for using "Thanks." Ars Technica reports: "Who knew? Banking giant Citigroup has trademarked 'THANKYOU' and is now suing technology giant ATT for how it says thanks to its own loyal customers. This is 'unlawful conduct' amounting to wanton trademark infringement, Citigroup claims in its federal lawsuit." Citigroup doesn't appear to be gracious in its branding: Despite actual knowledge of Citigroup's substantial use of and exclusive rights in the THANKYOU Marks, Citigroup's use of the marks in connection with ATT co-branded credit cards, and Citigroup's concerns regarding ATT's proposed trademarks, ATT launched a customer loyalty program under the trademarks "thanks" and "ATT thanks" on or about June 2, 2016. ATT's use of the "thanks" and "ATT thanks" trademarks is likely to cause consumer confusion and constitutes trademark infringement, false designation of origin, and unfair competition in violation of Citigroup's rights. Citigroup therefore seeks to enjoin ATT's infringing conduct and to recover damages based on the injury ATT's conduct has caused to Citigroup as well as ATT's unjust enrichment. In April, ATT applied to trademark "ATT THANKS." Citigroup wants that trademark to be rejected because it thinks that proposed trademark is "confusingly similar to Citigroup's "THANKYOU Marks," according to its lawsuit.

AthanasiusKircher writes: The Atlantic has an >extended article on the recent surge in advanced math education at the primary and secondary levels in the U.S., arguing that last year's victory for the U.S. in the Math Olympiad was not a random anomaly. Participation in math camps, after-school or weekend math "academies," and math competitions has surged in recent years, with many programs having long wait lists. Inessa Rifkin, co-founder of one of these math academies, argues that the problems with math education begin in the 2nd and 3rd grades: ""The youngest ones, very naturally, their minds see math differently.... It is common that they can ask simple questions and then, in the next minute, a very complicated one. But if the teacher doesn't know enough mathematics, she will answer the simple question and shut down the other, more difficult one." These alternative math programs put a greater focus on problem-solving: "Unlike most math classes, where teachers struggle to impart knowledge to students—who must passively absorb it and then regurgitate it on a test—problem-solving classes demand that the pupils execute the cognitive bench press: investigating, conjecturing, predicting, analyzing, and finally verifying their own mathematical strategy. The point is not to accurately execute algorithms, although there is, of course, a right answer... Truly thinking the problem through—creatively applying what you know about math and puzzling out possible solutions—is more important."

The article concludes by noting that programs like No Child Left Behind have focused on minimal standards, rather than enrichment activities for advanced students. The result is a disparity in economic backgrounds for students in pricey math activities; many middle-class Americans investigate summer camps or sports programs for younger kids, but they don't realize how important a math program could be for a curious child. As Daniel Zaharopol, founder of a related non-profit initiative, noted in his searches to recruit low-income students: "Actually doing math should bring them joy."

chicksdaddy writes: The world's governments are on notice that their critical infrastructure is vulnerable after an apparent cyberattack darkened 80,000 households in three regions of Ukraine last month. But on the question of safeguarding utilities, operators of power plants, water treatment facilities, and other industrial operations might do well to worry more about Instagram than hackers, according to a report by Christian Science Monitor Passcode. Speaking at a gathering of industrial control systems experts last week, Sean McBride of the firm iSight Partners said that social media oversharing is a wellspring of information that could be useful to attackers interested in compromising critical infrastructure. Among the valuable information he's found online: workplace selfies on Instagram and Facebook that reveal details of supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA, systems.

"No SCADA selfies!" said Mr. McBride at the S4 Conference in Miami Thursday. "Don't make an adversary's job easier." iSight has found examples of SCADA selfies at sensitive facilities and warns that such photos may unwittingly reveal critical information that operators would prefer to keep secret. The firm's researchers have also discovered panoramic pictures of control rooms and video walk-throughs of facilities. Corporate websites can divulge valuable information to adversaries like organization charts or lists of employees — valuable sources of information for would-be attackers, says McBride. That kind of slip-up have aided critical infrastructure attacks in the past. Photographs published in 2008 by former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's press office provided western nuclear analysts with detailed views of the insides of the Natanz facility and Iran's uranium enrichment operation – what an expert once described as "intel to die for."