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As the new school year gets underway, many students will be returning to the classroom in-person, while others will opt to continue hybrid or remote learning indefinitely. Unfortunately, for families choosing the latter, remote learning could come at the expense of their online privacy.
According to the RAND Corporation’s 2020 research report, one in five U.S. school districts plan to offer online learning even after the pandemic ends. Many school districts are waiting to review the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) latest recommendations. Either way, there’s no better time for a data privacy refresh.
Protecting your child’s privacy while remote learning requires a three-part investment of parents, students, and schools. One of the first steps in that direction is to understand your district’s privacy practices. To do that, ask to take a closer look at its approach to data consent, secondary data use, as well as its data collection and retention practices.
According to The Center for Democracy and Technology, there are five areas where schools may put a child’s privacy at risk.
Using student data to assess needs and launch connectivity and device programs can pose a privacy risk.
Ask: To assess overall digital access, the school collected my child’s data. How will that data be used?
Sharing student data with third parties, such as broadband and device providers, is a common practice that can pose a privacy risk.
Ask: To connect my remote learner, the school shared my child’s data with the provider. Can the school ensure that data will be used by the third-party responsibly? May I view the data use policy?
Schools now have apps that allow teachers to monitor student progress.
Ask: With more teacher access to student devices and desktops, how can the school ensure that my child’s other data is secure?
Ongoing security and device management requirements should be established to avoid viruses and malicious activity.
Ask: What security measures are in place on school-owned devices to protect my child’s content or personal information? Will my child’s activity be tracked?
A lack of digital literacy and security knowledge on the part of students, families and even schools can put a child’s privacy at risk.
Ask: What digital literacy resources or training do you offer teachers, staff, students and families?
One sign your child’s privacy is in good hands is if your school has a solid Data Governance Policy (DGP) that staff, teachers, and students follow. A DGP establishes schools processes and structures for overseeing the school’s approach to management, usability, availability, quality and security of data and technology.
Going a step further, a privacy-aware school will engage students, families, teachers, and administrators (and even third-party providers) about the importance of data use and closing privacy gaps.
Rather than make assumptions, discuss what privacy is with your child. For example, with more time online, consider parental controls to filter risky content. Likewise, talk to your child about how to identify phishing scams and consider investing in security software that scans for malware and untrusted sites.
If your child uses video apps such as Zoom to connect remotely, be sure that personal information—such as birthdate, address, photographs, or a nickname—isn’t accidently visible in the background.
Whether your child uses Zoom, a chat app, website or another EdTech platform for learning, set privacy settings to provide maximum protection. Following the directions under “settings” of any new app are fast and easy.
Under FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, schools must notify you of your right to opt out of Directory Information at the start of the school year. Don’t opt-out? Schools can share Directory Information about their child with third parties without parental or student consent.
If we could point to a positive consequence of the pandemic, it would be that with the sudden spike in connectivity during quarantine, data privacy concerns became more prevalent than ever—that shift deserves an A+. Moving forward, it’s critical for parents and schools to work together to create practices that protect online privacy for all students—on-site or remote.
To stay updated on all things McAfee and on top of the latest consumer and mobile security threats, follow @McAfee_Home on Twitter, subscribe to our newsletter, listen to our podcast Hackable?, and ‘Like’ us on Facebook.
The post Back-to-School: Privacy Worries in a Remote Learning World appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
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Communications giant T-Mobile said today it is investigating the extent of a breach that hackers claim has exposed sensitive personal data on 100 million T-Mobile USA customers, in many cases including the name, Social Security number, address, date of birth, phone number, security PINs and details that uniquely identify each customer’s mobile device.
On Sunday, Vice.com broke the news that someone was selling data on 100 million people, and that the data came from T-Mobile. In a statement published on its website today, the company confirmed it had suffered an intrusion involving “some T-Mobile data,” but said it was too soon in its investigation to know what was stolen and how many customers might be affected.
A sales thread tied to the allegedly stolen T-Mobile customer data.
“We have determined that unauthorized access to some T-Mobile data occurred, however we have not yet determined that there is any personal customer data involved,” T-Mobile wrote.
“We are confident that the entry point used to gain access has been closed, and we are continuing our deep technical review of the situation across our systems to identify the nature of any data that was illegally accessed,” the statement continued. “This investigation will take some time but we are working with the highest degree of urgency. Until we have completed this assessment we cannot confirm the reported number of records affected or the validity of statements made by others.”
The intrusion came to light on Twitter when the account @und0xxed started tweeting the details. Reached via direct message, Und0xxed said they were not involved in stealing the databases but was instead in charge of finding buyers for the stolen T-Mobile customer data.
Und0xxed said the hackers found an opening in T-Mobile’s wireless data network that allowed access to two of T-Mobile’s customer data centers. From there, the intruders were able to dump a number of customer databases totaling more than 100 gigabytes.
They claim one of those databases holds the name, date of birth, SSN, drivers license information, plaintext security PIN, address and phone number of 36 million T-Mobile customers in the United States — all going back to the mid-1990s.
The hacker(s) claim the purloined data also includes IMSI and IMEI data for 36 million customers. These are unique numbers embedded in customer mobile devices that identify the device and the SIM card that ties that customer’s device to a telephone number.
“If you want to verify that I have access to the data/the data is real, just give me a T-Mobile number and I’ll run a lookup for you and return the IMEI and IMSI of the phone currently attached to the number and any other details,” @und0xxed said. “All T-Mobile USA prepaid and postpaid customers are affected; Sprint and the other telecoms that T-Mobile owns are unaffected.”
Other databases allegedly accessed by the intruders included one for prepaid accounts, which had far fewer details about customers.
“Prepaid customers usually are just phone number and IMEI and IMSI,” Und0xxed said. “Also, the collection of databases includes historical entries, and many phone numbers have 10 or 20 IMEIs attached to them over the years, and the service dates are provided. There’s also a database that includes credit card numbers with six digits of the cards obfuscated.”
T-Mobile declined to comment beyond what the company said in its blog post today.
In 2015, a computer breach at big three credit bureau Experian exposed the Social Security numbers and other data on 15 million people who applied for financing from T-Mobile.
Like other mobile providers, T-Mobile is locked in a constant battle with scammers who target its own employees in SIM swapping attacks and other techniques to wrest control over employee accounts that can provide backdoor access to customer data. In at least one case, retail store employees were complicit in the account takeovers.
The Twitter profile for the account @Und0xxed includes a shout out to @IntelSecrets, the Twitter account of a fairly elusive hacker who also has gone by the handles IRDev and V0rtex. Asked if @IntelSecrets was involved in the T-Mobile intrusion, @und0xxed confirmed that it was.
The IntelSecrets nicknames correspond to an individual who has claimed responsibility for modifying the source code for the Mirai “Internet of Things” botnet to create a variant known as “Satori,” and supplying it to others who used it for criminal gain and were later caught and prosecuted. Like Kenny “NexusZeta” Schuchmann, who pleaded guilty in 2019 to operating the Satori botnet. Two other young men have been charged in connection with Satori — but not IntelSecrets.
How do we know all this about IntelSecrets/IRDev/V0rtex? That identity has acknowledged as much in a series of bizarre lawsuits filed by a person who claims their real name is John Erin Binns. The same Binns identity operates the website intelsecrets[.]su.
On that site, Binns claims he fled to Germany and Turkey to evade prosecution in the Satori case, only to be kidnapped in Turkey and subjected to various forms of psychological and physical torture. According to Binns, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) falsely told their counterparts in Turkey that he was a supporter or member of the Islamic State (ISIS), a claim he says led to his alleged capture and torture by the Turks.
Since then, Binns has filed a flood of lawsuits naming various federal agencies — including the FBI, the CIA, and the U.S. Special Operations Command (PDF), demanding that the government turn over information collected about him and seeking restitution for his alleged kidnapping at the hands of the CIA.
Speaking to the researcher Alon Gal (@underthebreach), the hackers responsible for the T-Mobile intrusion said they did it to “retaliate against the US for the kidnapping and torture of John Erin Binns in Germany by the CIA and Turkish intelligence agents in 2019. We did it to harm US infrastructure.”
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The White House has ordered federal agencies to identify all the critical software in their systems and secure it.
The order was issued to the heads of executive departments and agencies on August 10 in a memo from the Office of Management and Budget’s acting director, Shalanda Young. Recipients were given 60 calendar days from the date of the memo’s publication to pinpoint the critical software.
According to the memo, much of the software that the federal government relies on to perform its critical functions is “commercially developed through an often-opaque process that may lack sufficient controls to prevent the creation and exploitation of significant application security vulnerabilities.”
Young writes that this situation has resulted in “a pressing need to implement more rigorous and predictable mechanisms for ensuring that products function securely in the manner intended.”
In the memo, Young references guidance released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on what constitutes critical software.
An executive order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity, issued by President Joe Biden on May 12, 2021, directed NIST to publish a definition of the term critical software.
The resulting definition of critical software published by NIST in June described it as “any software that has, or has direct software dependencies upon, one or more components with at least one of these attributes:
• is designed to run with elevated privilege or manage privileges;
• has direct or privileged access to networking or computing resources;
• is designed to control access to data or operational technology;
• performs a function critical to trust; or,
• operates outside of normal trust boundaries with privileged access.”
After identifying their critical software, agencies have one year to implement critical software guidance security measures decided upon by NIST.
“The United States faces increasingly sophisticated malicious cyber campaigns that threaten the public sector, the private sector, and, ultimately, the American people’s security and privacy,” the memo states.
“The federal government must improve its efforts to detect, identify, deter, protect against, and respond to these campaigns and their perpetrators.”
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American tech-driven beauty brand IL MAKIAGE has acquired Israeli deep-tech AI-based computational imaging startup Voyage81 for $40m.
IL MAKIAGE, which is based in New York City’s Soho area, was relaunched in 2018 by brother and sister duo Oran Holtzman and Shiran Holtzman-Erel. Two years later, the company became the fastest-growing online beauty brand in the United States.
Voyage81 developed the only patented software in the world that gives smartphones hyperspectral imaging capabilities. Where a normal smartphone photo detects three wavelengths of color, Voyage81’s software can detect 31.
The acquisition of Voyage81 was the result of a long-running search for specific technology, according to IL MAKIAGE CEO Oran Holtzman.
“For the past two years, we have been searching for computational imaging solutions that can work in beauty and wellness to further advance our existing AI capabilities,” said Holtzman.
“I have met dozens of computer vision startups but could not find a technology that can fit our industry and was strong enough to fulfill our goals. Bringing on Voyage81’s patented technology and exceptional team to our tech and data science departments is a HUGE win for our company’s future, our users, and the industry at-large.”
The software developed by Voyage81 can analyze skin and hair features from a photograph taken with a smartphone and use that data to create maps of blood flow and melanin. This information can in turn be used to create personalized skincare.
Voyage81’s founder and CEO Niv Price is the former head of R&D at Unit 81, described by the Jerusalem Post as “the most elite technological unit in the Israeli Defense Forces.”
Price said that when he met with IL MAKIAGE, he had no intention of selling the company he founded in 2019.
“But after meeting Oran and learning about the company’s long-term vision, we realized that under the IL MAKIAGE platform, Voyage81 technology will serve and benefit hundreds of millions of consumers, fulfilling our founding goal,” said Price.
Voyage81 isn’t the only tech company to be snapped up by IL MAKIAGE. In 2019, the beauty brand acquired NeoWize, a Y Combinator-backed data science startup that develops advanced active machine learning algorithms.
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The UK Government has launched a new program to “spark a wave of growth” in the UK’s cyber sector.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) announced the initiative, known as “Cyber Runway,” today. It will be delivered by Plexal, CyLon, Deloitte and The Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT).
Cyber Runway will help entrepreneurs and businesses from across the UK—England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland—have access to business masterclasses, mentoring, product development support, networking events and backing to trade internationally and secure investment. DCMS said it is aiming to support at least 160 organizations across the course of six months.
In the last financial year, the cybersecurity sector’s revenue grew by 7%. The number of companies in the sector grew by 21%, with the sector now worth £8.9bn (approximately $12.3m).
According to the DCMS, companies that have participated in the government’s cyber growth initiatives in the past have, on average, more than tripled their revenues year-on-year.
“The UK’s cyber sector is booming and we’re working tirelessly to ensure the benefits are felt by businesses and individuals right across the country,” commented Matt Warman, Minister for Digital Infrastructure. “Our new Cyber Runway program will help tackle barriers to growth, increase investment and give firms vital support to take their businesses to the next level.”
The program is looking to focus on Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, the North East, North West and the South West of England to support the UK government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda. It will also support founders and innovators from a “diverse range of backgrounds,” in a bid to grow underrepresented groups in the UK’s cyber sector such as women and people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds.
Saj Huq, director of innovation, Plexal, said: “COVID-19 has catalyzed the need for effective cybersecurity across industries, and a record level of capital is being invested into the sector. But there is still a need for support for businesses at the earliest stages of their development and innovators and entrepreneurs from underrepresented communities still face barriers when entering the ecosystem.
“These are challenges we look forward to addressing with Cyber Runway by supporting the best innovators, regardless of their background or geography, to thrive and grow.”
Cyber Runway follows a number of other DCMS-funded cyber programs which have now completed. These include HutZero, Cyber 101 and Tech Nation’s cyber accelerator for scaleups.
Earlier this week, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) unveiled the first five cyber firms to take part in another government-backed cyber startup program, which is designed to support innovative cybersecurity firms to develop products that will help protect critical areas of the UK’s economy and society from online harms.
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A large cache of criminal case data belonging to the Dallas Police Department (DPD) is thought to have been lost forever.
About 22 terabytes of data went missing from the DPD computer database when data was migrated from an online, cloud-based archive to a server at the city’s data center in April.
The data that disappeared included images, video, audio, case notes and other information gathered by police officers and detectives in relation to cases from before July 28, 2020.
Dallas PD attribute the data’s permanent departure to the actions of a single city IT employee who it says “failed to follow proper, established procedures” while performing the data migration.
Authorities softened the announcement of the loss earlier this week with news that approximately 14 terabytes of data have since been recovered. The DPD believes the remaining eight terabytes of information are gone forever.
The quantity of information lost is considerable, since one terabyte can store as many as six million documents and 250,000 images.
District attorney John Creuzot said in a memo that it was “too soon to estimate how many cases will be affected and what the impact will be on those individual cases,” but he was hopeful that duplicates of some of the data may have been stored elsewhere.
“It is possible that much of the missing evidence had already been uploaded to this office’s data portal prior to April 5,” said Creuzot.
The absence of the case data was first noticed by city information technology officials on April 5. However, the Charlotte Observer reports that the district attorney’s office was not notified of the loss until August 6.
This notification reportedly followed complaints from prosecutors who suddenly found themselves unable to locate computer files on pending cases.
“It is concerning that it took four months for the Dallas Police Department to inform the district attorney of the loss of the data,” said Dallas defense attorney Amanda Branan, the president of the Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association.
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson is calling for the Dallas City Council to launch an investigation into the data loss.
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