An anonymous reader quotes Bloomberg:
The websites of Ohio Governor John Kasich and other state government agencies were hacked on Sunday with a posting professing love for the jihadist group Islamic State. Ten state websites and two servers were affected, and they’ve been taken off line for an investigation with law enforcement into how the hackers were able to deface them, said Tom Hoyt, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Administrative Services… The same pro-Islamic State message, accompanied by music, were also shown on Sunday on the website of Brookhaven, a town on New York’s Long Island about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Manhattan, the New York Post reported… Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2018, posted on Facebook that the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction website had been hacked and said, “Wake up freedom-loving Americans. Radical Islam infiltrating the heartland.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Ohio Government Websites Hacked With Pro-Islamic State Messages

Long-time Slashdot reader nri tipped us off to a developing story in Victoria, Australia. Yahoo News reports:
Victoria Police officials announced on Saturday, June 24, they were withdrawing all speed camera infringement notices issued statewide from June 6 after a virus in the cameras turned out to be more widespread than first thought. “That does not mean they [the infringement notices] won’t not be re-issued,” Assistant Commissioner Doug Fryer told reporters, explaining that he wants to be sure the red light and speed cameras were working correctly. Acting Deputy Commissioner Ross Guenther told reporters on Friday that 55 cameras had been exposed to the ransomware virus, but they’ve now determined 280 cameras had been exposed. The cameras are not connected to the internet, but a maintenance worker unwittingly connected a USB stick with the virus on it to the camera system on June 6.
Fryer said that about 1643 tickets would be withdrawn — up from the 590 that police had announced on Friday — and another five and a half thousand tickets pending in the system would be embargoed. Fryer said he was optimistic the 7500 to 8000 tickets affected could be re-issued, but for now police would not issue new tickets until police had reviewed the cameras to ensure they were functioning properly… The “WannaCry” malware caused the cameras to continually reboot, Fryer said. Fryer said there was no indication the malware had caused inaccurate radar readings, but police were being “over cautious” to maintain public faith in the system.

Last week Victoria’s Police Minister was “openly furious” with the private camera operator, saying the group hadn’t notified the relevant authorities about the infection.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Roadside Cameras Infected with WannaCry Virus Invalidate 8,000 Traffic Tickets

An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica:
Two top Australian government officials said Sunday that they will push for “thwarting the encryption of terrorist messaging” during an upcoming meeting next week of the so-called “Five Eyes” group of English-speaking nations that routinely share intelligence… According to a statement released by Attorney General George Brandis, and Peter Dutton, the country’s top immigration official, Australia will press for new laws, pressure private companies, and urge for a new international data sharing agreement amongst the quintet of countries… “Within a short number of years, effectively, 100 per cent of communications are going to use encryption,” Brandis told Australian newspaper The Age recently. “This problem is going to degrade if not destroy our capacity to gather and act upon intelligence unless it’s addressed”… Many experts say, however, that any method that would allow the government access even during certain situations would weaken overall security for everyone.
America’s former American director of national intelligence recently urged Silicon Valley to “apply that same creativity, innovation to figuring out a way that both the interests of privacy as well as security can be guaranteed.” Though he also added, “I don’t know what the answer is. I’m not an IT geek, but I just don’t think we’re in a very good place right now.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Australian Officials Want Encryption Laws To Fight ‘Terrorist Messaging’

Long-time Slashdot reader tsu doh nimh writes:
Brian Krebs has an interesting piece this week on one reason that so many talented hackers (malicious and benign) seem to come from Russia and the former Soviet States: It’s the education, stupid. Krebs’s report doesn’t look at the socioeconomic reasons, but instead compares how the U.S. and Russia educate students from K-12 in subjects which lend themselves to a mastery in coding and computers — most notably computer science. The story shows that the Russians have for the past 30 years been teaching kids about computer science and then testing them on it starting in elementary school and through high school. The piece also looks at how kids in the U.S. vs. Russia are tested on what they are supposed to have learned.

Fossbytes also reports that Russia claimed the top spot in this year’s Computer Programming Olympics — their fourth win in six years — adding that “the top 9 positions out of 14 were occupied by Russian or Chinese schools.” The only two U.S. schools in the top 20 were the University of Central Florida (#13) and MIT (#20).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Why So Many Top Hackers Come From Russia

MojoKid writes: A new flaw has been discovered that impacts Intel 6th and 7th Generation Skylake and Kaby Lake-based processors that support HyperThreading. The issue affects all OS types and is detailed by Intel errata documentation and points out that under complex micro-architectural conditions, short loops of less than 64 instructions that use AH, BH, CH or DH registers, as well as their corresponding wider register (e.g. RAX, EAX or AX for AH), may cause unpredictable system behavior, including crashes and potential data loss. The OCaml toolchain community first began investigating processors with these malfunctions back in January and found reports stemming back to at least the first half of 2016. The OCaml team was able pinpoint the issue to Skylake’s HyperThreading implementation and notified Intel. While Intel reportedly did not respond directly, it has issued some microcode fixes since then. That’s not the end of the story, however, as the microcode fixes need to be implemented into BIOS/UEFI updates as well and it is not clear at this time if all major vendors have included these changes in their latest revisions.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – New HyperThreading Flaw Affects Intel 6th And 7th Generation Skylake and Kaby Lake-Based Processors

An anonymous reader quotes CNET:
Anthem, the largest health insurance company in the U.S., has agreed to settle a class action lawsuit over a 2015 data breach for a record $115 million, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs. The settlement still has to be approved by US District Court Judge Lucy Koh, who is scheduled to hear the case on August 17 in San Jose, California. And Anthem, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for confirmation and comment, isn’t admitting any admitting any wrongdoing, according to a statement it made to CyberScoop acknowledging the settlement.

But if approved, it would be the largest data breach settlement in history, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyers, who announced the agreement Friday. The funds would be used to provide victims of the data breach at least two years of credit monitoring and to reimburse customers for breach-related expenses. The settlement would also guarantee a certain level of funding for “information security to implement or maintain numerous specific changes to its data security systems, including encryption of certain information and archiving sensitive data with strict access controls,” the plaintiff attorneys said.

The breach compromised data for 80 million people, including their social security numbers, birthdays, street addresses (and email addresses) as well as income data. The $115 million settlement averages out to $1.43 for every person who was affected.

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Source: Slashdot – Anthem To Pay 5 Million In The Largest Data Breach Settlement Ever