NSA Say – Yahoo Do

NSA Say – Yahoo Do
Number	2874
Broadcast Date	OCTOBER 7, 2016
Episode Length	42:58
Hosts	Tom Merritt
Guests	Shannon Morse, Len Peralta

Should the government step in on Internet of Things security? And Shanon Morse and Tom Merritt make sense of what do and don’t know about Yahoo’s government surveillance program.

Guest

• Shannon Morse
  • TekThing
    • Hak5
• Len Peralta
  • All DTNS drawings
  • This episode's drawing

Top Stories

• The FBI Wants To Crack Another Dead Terrorist’s Locked iPhone

The FBI announced Friday that it is seeking access to a locked iPhone in a terrorist case in Minnesota. More to come on this on. Now here are some more top stories.

• Facebook launches standalone “Events” discovery and calendar app

Facebook has launched another standalone app to access one of its features called Facebook Events. The main screen shows you your events for that day plus recommended events Facebook thinks you'd be interested in. You can also browse for things happening nearby. It can pull in your calendar so you can tell if your free to attend. You can even view events on a map. Facebook Events launches is available in the US on iOS. It's coming soon to Android.

• Microsoft Windows 10 event

Microsoft has sent a message that asks attendees to join them at 10 AM Eastern time October 26th for “what’s next for Windows 10,” and a large, backwards tagline says “Imagine what you’ll do.”

• Comcast gets closer to nationwide data caps with expansion in 18 states

Starting November 1st Comcast is implementing data caps in its service areas in 18 US states. That doubles the number of markets where it previously imposed data caps. The caps are set at 1 TB with overage charges of $10 per 50GB. Customers can pay $50 a month to get unlimited service. Comcast will let customers exceed the caps without charge in two courtesy months each year. Comcast says that the caps are implemented on the principle of fairness that those that use more should pay more. Data is not a scarce commodity and using more does not deprive others nor raise costs in most cases. Caps are a business policy as a Comcast engineering vice president acknowledged last year.

• Samsung's Q3 profits grow despite Galaxy Note 7 calamity

Samsung announced it will beat profit estimates for Q3 despite the Galaxy Note 7 recall. Samsung expects an operating profit of 7.8 trillion won (around US$7 billion) an increase of just over 4 billion over last year. Sales were down from expectations but still project a year over year increase. Samsung's semiconductor business picked up the slack as prices rose in that market.

• Source Code for IoT Botnet ‘Mirai’ Released

Brian Krebs notes that the source code for Mirai malware used to run the DDoS against him has been released online for anyone to use. Mirai spreads by scanning for devices that use factory default usernames and passwords. In addition Bruce Schneier has a column on Motherboard calling for the regulation of the Internet of Things. He refers to the DDoS against Krebs that used CCTV cameras, home routers and other such devices to amplify the attack. He points out that these kinds of devices sometimes cannot be updated and often are not replaced for decades. And the owners don't care because it doesn't affect their use, so there's no market pressure.

• Duolingo’s chatbots help you learn a new language

Duolingo has added a chatbot to its iOS language learning app. You can now chat in Spanish, French and German. The bots are in the conversation tab and ask you questions about different topics like driving, food and so on.

Discussion

• Yahoo’s Government Email Scanner Was Actually a Secret Hacking Tool
• Exclusive: Yahoo secretly scanned customer emails for U.S. intelligence - sources
• Yahoo Said to Have Aided U.S. Email Surveillance by Adapting Spam Filter
• Yahoo May Have Exposed Rogers Customer Emails to US Spies
• Twitter, Microsoft, Google and others say they haven’t scanned messages like Yahoo

Messages

I spent the last week at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference and I think I know why Salesforce might still be interested in buying Twitter.

The recurring theme of Dreamforce was their new AI platform, called Einstein, where it got really interesting was during the Einstein keynote yesterday (https://youtu.be/qjBu-DaQ42I). Fanatics.com ran a contest asking people to post a selfie. Einstein then analyzed all of the submitted images to add information about people's hair styles to their demographic information for more recommendations. They also showed demos of very accurate sentiment analysis of text … and very good machine vision.

It made me realize what Salesforce could do with full access to the Twitter fire hose.

Sent by Drew

I wanted to note reports of iOS devices being randomly activation locked with random iCloud accounts. I and friend of mine were both bit by it, and we both bought our phones brand new. I got mine from Best Buy and my friend straight from Apple. Apple seems to be helping as long as you can show proof of purchase, which, luckily I still had my receipt a year later.

Sent by David V

• Users Report Some iPhone 7 and 6s Models Activation Locked With Wrong Apple IDs

Links

• This episode on dailytechnewsshow.com
• Support DTNS on Patreon
• DTNS subreddit

Preceded by: "Zipping down the freeways of your arteries"

NSA Say – Yahoo Do

Followed by: "Machine Learning Doggies"