Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Submission Summary: 0 pending, 10 declined, 3 accepted (13 total, 23.08% accepted)

Submission + - SPAM: We don't want your Bitcoins

Submitted by Mosquito Bites
Mosquito Bites writes: White hat hackers, it seems, are being stripped of their accounts on Coinbase

Less than a year ago, Vinny Troia, CEO and principal security consultant of Night Lion Security and a certified white hat hacker, was sent a compliance form by US bitcoin exchange Coinbase, where he had an account

Coinbase wanted to know how Troia was using bitcoin and his account

"I told them I run a security firm. I pay for ransoms and buy documents on the dark web when clients request it"

The ransoms Troia helps his clients pay are those stemming from ransomware attacks, which have surged in number over the past few years. Many, like the well-publicized WannaCry attack, are asking for bitcoin. And the documents?

"We do breach investigations a lot of times. If a fraudster is saying they're selling my client's stolen documents, the only way to make sure they have what they say they have is to buy those documents"

According to Troia, Coinbase "did not like that at all"

Coinbase then asked the IT expert whether he had a letter from the Department of Justice giving him permission to do those things. No, Troia said. Upon further research, Troia has not found that any such permission exists

But, "I have my clients authorizing me to do this," he said

Coinbase sent Troia back an email explaining that those actions were against the exchange's rules and shut down his account. Troia then tried setting up an account with his wife's information, but that too was shut down. Then he tried his brother. Shut down. Then his mother. Shut down

"My entire family is blocked from Coinbase," he said
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: Data extracted from cellphones of dozens of Inauguration Day arrestees

Submitted by Mosquito Bites
Mosquito Bites writes: Cellphones seized from more than 100 individuals arrested during President Trump’s inauguration are being scoured for criminal evidence, prosecutors said Wednesday

Police arrested approximately 230 protesters in downtown D.C. during Mr. Trump’s inauguration on January 20, and a grand jury has since returned an indictment charging 214 of them with felony rioting

“On the day of the arrests, the government recovered cell phones from more than 100 indicted defendants and other un-indicted arrested in connection with this matter,” U.S. Attorney Channing Phillips wrote in Wednesday’s filing. “The government is in the process of extracting data from the Rioter Cell Phones pursuant to lawfully issued search warrants, and expects to be in a position to produce all of the data from the searchers Rioter Cell Phones in the next several weeks”
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: Rule of Law threaten by secret algorithm

Submitted by Mosquito Bites
Mosquito Bites writes: An ambitious program of predicting recidivism among convicts is bringing algorithmic risk assessments to American courthouses

These assessments are an extension of a trend toward actuarial prediction instruments for recidivism

They may seem scientific, an injection of computational rationality into a criminal justice system riddled with discrimination and inefficiency. However, they are troubling for several reasons: many are secretly computed; they deny due process and intelligible explanations to defendants; and they promote a crabbed and inhumane vision of the role of punishment in society

Even the SCOTUS was alarmed in the case of the firm Northpointe’s COMPAS risk score. In Loomis v. Wisconsin, a judge rejected a plea deal and sentenced a defendant (Loomis) to a harsher punishment in part because a COMPAS risk score deemed him of higher than average risk of recidivating. Loomis appealed the sentence, arguing that neither he nor the judge could examine the formula for the risk assessment—it was a trade secret

Due process is an open-ended concept which is extremely critical to legitimate legal systems. This basic constitutional principle gives defendants a right to understand what they are charged with, and what the evidence against them is. A secret risk assessment algorithm that offers a damning score is analogous to evidence offered by an anonymous expert, whom one cannot cross-examine
Link to Original Source

Slashdot Top Deals

The sum of the Universe is zero.

Close