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Submission + - Did weak wi-fi password lead the police to our door? (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by esm88
esm88 writes: After a year of lockdowns, home schooling and a bout of Covid, Kate and Matthew (not their real names) were hoping for better times as 2021 dawned.

Instead, one January morning, there came a knock on the door from the police who were investigating a very serious crime, involving images of child abuse being posted online.

The couple insisted they had nothing to do with it.

But the next few months were "utter hell" as they attempted to clear their names.

And it was only when the case was dropped in March, with no further action, that they realised the most likely explanation for the false accusation was their wi-fi router — and its factory-set password.

Back in January, there was confusion and shock when three police officers and three detectives banged on the door of their London flat with a search warrant.

"They took everything: our desktop computer, both our laptops, our mobile phones, a laptop I had borrowed, even old mobile phones that were lying around in drawers," said Kate.

Submission + - Russian Hackers Targeted California, Indiana Democratic Parties (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The group of Russian hackers accused of meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election earlier this year targeted the email accounts of Democratic state parties in California and Indiana, and influential think tanks in Washington and New York, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The attempted intrusions, many of which were internally flagged by Microsoft Corp over the summer, were carried out by a group often nicknamed “Fancy Bear.” The hackers’ activity provides insight into how Russian intelligence is targeting the United States in the run-up to the Nov. 3 election. The targets identified by Reuters, which include the Center for American Progress, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said they had not seen any evidence of successful hacking attempts.

Fancy Bear is controlled by Russia’s military intelligence agency and was responsible for hacking the email accounts of Hillary Clinton’s staff in the run-up to the 2016 election, according to a Department of Justice indictment filed in 2018. News of the Russian hacking activity follows last month's announcement here by Microsoft that Fancy Bear had attempted to hack more than 200 organizations, many of which the software company said were tied to the 2020 election. Microsoft was able to link this year's cyber espionage campaign to the Russian hackers through an apparent programming error that allowed the company to identify a pattern of attack unique to Fancy Bear, according to a Microsoft assessment reviewed by Reuters. The thrust of espionage operations could not be determined by Reuters. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in August here that Russian operations were attempting to undermine the campaign of presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Submission + - Waymo Pulls Back the Curtain On 6.1 Million Miles of Self-Driving Car Data (theverge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In its first report on its autonomous vehicle operations in Phoenix, Arizona, Waymo said that it was involved in 18 crashes and 29 near-miss collisions during 2019 and the first nine months of 2020. These crashes included rear-enders, vehicle swipes, and even one incident when a Waymo vehicle was T-boned at an intersection by another car at nearly 40 mph. The company said that no one was seriously injured and “nearly all” of the collisions were the fault of the other driver. The report is the deepest dive yet into the real-life operations of the world’s leading autonomous vehicle company, which recently began offering rides in its fully driverless vehicles to the general public. Autonomous vehicle (AV) companies can be a black box, with most firms keeping a tight lid on measurable metrics and only demonstrating their technology to the public under the most controlled settings. Indeed, Waymo, which was spun out of Google in 2016, mostly communicates about its self-driving program through glossy press releases or blog posts that reveal scant data about the actual nuts and bolts of autonomous driving. But in this paper, and another also published today, the company is showing its work. Waymo says its intention is to build public trust in automated vehicle technology, but these papers also serve as a challenge to other AV competitors.

The two papers take different approaches. The first outlines a multilayered approach that maps out Waymo’s approach to safety. It includes three layers: Hardware, including the vehicle itself, the sensor suite, the steering and braking system, and the computing platform; The automated driving system behavioral layer, such as avoiding collisions with other cars, successfully completing fully autonomous rides, and adhering to the rules of the road; Operations, like fleet operations, risk management, and a field safety program to resolve potential safety issues.

The second paper is meatier, with detailed information on the company’s self-driving operations in Phoenix, including the number of miles driven and the number of “contact events” Waymo’s vehicles have had with other road users. This is the first time that Waymo has ever publicly disclosed mileage and crash data from its autonomous vehicle testing operation in Phoenix. Between January and December 2019, Waymo’s vehicles with trained safety drivers drove 6.1 million miles. In addition, from January 2019 through September 2020, its fully driverless vehicles drove 65,000 miles. Taken together, the company says this represents “over 500 years of driving for the average licensed US driver,” citing a 2017 survey of travel trends by the Federal Highway Administration.

Submission + - Therapy patients blackmailed for cash after clinic data breach (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by esm88
esm88 writes: An attacker who gained access to the servers of Vastaamo, a large psychotherapy clinic in Finland has contacted patients demanding a ransom. Failure to pay the ransom would result in notes from their private therapy sessions being published. "About 300 records have already been published on the dark web" according to the Associated Press news agency. The attacker has claimed that "Vastaamo had refused to pay 40 bitcoin (£403,000)" ransom, so they are instead blackmailing individual patients. One patient said "Those notes contain things I'm not ready to share with the world. And having someone threaten me with said notes certainly makes me extremely uncomfortable".

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