Archival Records

An important sign of an effective records management program is the preservation of archival records and the promotion of their appropriate use by the public. Most records lose all value when the purpose for which they were created has been realized. However, a small percentage hold value beyond their original purpose—for historical or genealogical research, exhibits, publications, teaching aids, long-term legal documentation, or other activities. These archival records can be useful to the public, other governments or agencies, teachers, writers, and other people or groups that require documentation in their work or avocations. Some indications that this component of records management is in place include:

Public outreach programs exist.
Records reference use areas are available for the public.
Policies and procedures are in place for use of records by the public.
Information sharing with other governments or organizations is done to develop and distribute finding aids so access to archival records is improved.
Records are used for exhibits and education.
The Internet is made available for public access to and actual use of records.
Marketing strategies are in place to encourage public access to and use of records.
Since 1982, the Town Clerk’s Office of the Town of Hempstead has provided support for the management of the town’s historical records. This work has included the preservation and restoration of historical volumes, documents, and maps. It has also included the development of finding aids, allowing for easy access to more than 200 cubic feet of archival material held by the town. To further improve access, the guide to the town’s archival collections has been posted on the town’s website, and the archives are open to the public Monday through Friday.

How To Access Fortune 500 Company Servers For $4 And Other Cyber Secrets

A Russian company called “dedicated express” is selling access to private company servers for as little as $4, according to a recent report.
Security investigative journalist Brian Krebs said in a post on his website krebsonsecurity.com Oct. 22, “The service I examined for this post currently is renting access to nearly 17,000 computers worldwide, although almost 300,000 compromised systems have passed through this service since its inception in early 2010.”
Krebs says the problem stems from corporations use of ‘remote access’ networks, which allow workers to access their corporate desktops from home. The service is called Remote Desktop Protocol, and it’s built into Microsoft Windows “to give users graphical access to the host’s PC desktop.”
Experts in the research community as well as in cyber security fields have raised increasingly dire warnings about U.S. cyber security. Two particularly thin skinned areas they mentioned most were infrastructure, as well as outdated networks open to employees for remote access.
Jarno Limnell, a cyber security expert, recently told Business Insider, “”Cyberwarfare is like Wild West right now, there’s a huge lack of norms and rules.”

via dedicatedexpress.com
This lack of norms couldn’t be exemplified any better than by this Russian website, which gleefully markets illegal access to American servers and even promises customer support if any problems occur.
They are not the only guilty party though, the U.S. is anything but a hard target. It only took getting to the letter C on an alphabetical list before Krebs found a Fortune 500 website on the “dedicated express” site. It was Cisco. Their username? “Cisco”. Password? You guessed it: “Cisco.”
“A contact at Cisco’s security team confirmed that the hacked RDP server was inside of Cisco’s network; the source said that it was a “bad lab machine,” but declined to offer more details,” wrote Krebs.
The company can hardly blame “hackers” for stumbling on to such an obvious username and password scheme. A more complete guide for protecting usernames and passwords can be found here.
The service, according to the report, doesn’t sell any hacks to Russian companies “probably because its proprietors are from that country and do not wish to antagonize Russian law enforcement officials.”

America Is Basically Helpless Against The Chinese Hackers

Chinese army hackers have systematically stolen secrets from U.S. corporations for at least seven years, according to an extensive report from cybersecurity firm Mandiant.
This aggressive action warrants a strong U.S. response. Unfortunately, America appears to have only one viable option, which could take years to pay off: diplomacy.
On Wednesday the Obama administration said as much when it announced its Strategy on Mitigating the Theft of U.S. Trade Secrets. The plan seems to be lacking teeth as it states only that the Justice Department “will continue to make the investigation and prosecution of trade secret theft by foreign competitors and foreign governments a top priority” while talking a lot about beefing up security against incoming attacks.
Nevertheless, here are America’s other options, and why they won’t work.
Fines will be ineffective as long as China can deny accountability, which they have already done, calling Mandiant’s report deeply flawed. China could also claim that it doesn’t have control over the hackers.
“The Chinese can say we’re victims too, and they probably are,” Brookings Fellow Dr. Jonathan D. Pollack told BI.
The next step would be to appeal to the U.N.
International law expert Dr. Wolff Heintschel von Heinegg told BI that the evidence that China violated America’s intellectual property rights and sovereignty “is quite impressive.” This could be sufficient to demand an international investigation.
“We could say, ‘what we really want is access to that building in Shanghai,'” said Pollack. If U.N. inspectors were denied access the facilities, then the denial could be taken as prima facie evidence of wrongdoing.
That’s when room would be cleared for more aggressive diplomatic actions, like economic sanctions. Still, with the U.S. so entangled with China economically, that course of action is clearly not a good one.
Pollack pointed out that Coca Cola was a victim of alleged Chinese hacks, but at the same time, Coke is spending billions on access and marketing to Chinese consumers.
“Do we really want a trade war with China?” Asks Dr. Martin Libicki, a senior management scientist and cyber security specialist at the Rand Corporation (who also holds a Ph.D. in economics).
“Deep down it’s our economy that’s under attack here,” Dave Aitel, CEO of security firm Immunity, told BI. “That’s the hardest part of the game.”
Furthermore, America first needs to find out how much damage Chinese hackers have done before any meaningful economic action is likely to pass through Congress.
“We really haven’t figured out how much this is hurting the American public,” said Libicki. “Is this a one billion dollar problem, or is this a one trillion dollar problem? If it’s a trillion dollar problem, we do different things then.”

Mandiant
A Chinese military profile for one of the hackers tracked by Mandiant.
Meanwhile, physical force is not a reasonable option.
Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last year that the U.S. could respond with physical force to a cyberattack that causes “physical destruction and loss of life,” but China has contained itself to stealing corporate secrets.
Though China might have illegally gathered information on critical infrastructure, it has not tampered with or attempted to destroy it.
“That type of cyber event would constitute an act of war,” says David B. Lacquement, a former Army general in charge of operations for U.S. Cyber Command, and currently an expert in cyber security with Science Applications International Corporation, a firm that works closely with the government, as well as private entities, on cyber security.
Libicki said initial attempts at reaching to China’s military leaders will likely be “brushed aside,” and China is unlikely to stop the hackers on its own.
“We’ve really done nothing to address the issue with China, other than speak sternly to them,” Libicki. “There’s a feeling that if we actually did something, they’d take us more seriously.”
“What is there left on the table to do to the Chinese? And that’s probably the question that the Americans are asking themselves now,” Aitel said. “They have something to point to, now what do they do with that. Hopefully they knew that they want to do, and had the report come out.”
For now, corporations may have to take defense into their own hands.
Private companies and their defenses are “woefully behind the power curve” compared to state-sponsored actors, he said.
Lacquement and colleague Charles E. Beard, Jr., Chief Information Officer for SAIC, said while these companies wait for international legal action to develop, they can be boosting their own defenses.
“Clearly corporations aren’t going to do offensive operations,” said Beard. “If we were to take an offensive operation against state-sponsored actors, you’re clearly outgunned and outmanned.”
The answer, the two said, falls in line with the administration’s recent executive order on information exchanges between government and private entities.
The country needs a “mechanism that allows government and commercial sharing at a very rapid rate,” Beard said. “Automatic blocking and neutering of the most virile threat actors out there.”

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/america-cant-stop-chinese-hackers-2013-2#ixzz2Lx6dfX2L

New ‘Google For Spies’ Mines Social Media, Builds Profiles, Predicts Future Locations

Defense company Raytheon is now boasting about new software that mines social media in order to profile, and predict the movements of potential suspect.
The program, called Rapid Information Overlay Technology, or RIOT, enables intelligence officers to “gain a snapshot of a person’s life” in as little as a few clicks, reports Ryan Gallagher of The Guardian.
From the Guardian:
The sophisticated technology demonstrates how the same social networks that helped propel the Arab Spring revolutions can be transformed into a “Google for spies” and tapped as a means of monitoring and control.
The centralized, national security system could analyze “trillions of entities” over FourSquare, Facebook, and Twitter to build a digital dossier of potential suspects, predict future movements, and quell potential … riots.
Intelligence agencies have been all over young social media execs, like Mark Zuckerberg, since the inception of social media, looking to establish backdoors into these systems. In fact, Zuckerberg’s philosophy, that people will only want to share more information as time goes on, plays right into the hands of government entities tasked with profiling potential “terrorists.”
This isn’t the first foray into social media for defense and intelligence agencies — two years ago defense agencies released a software which enabled officers to ‘pretend’ to be up to 50 different social media personalities, called sock puppets, online simultaneously. Again, their reasons for the software were quite spooky — they wanted to be able to influence social opinion, as well as monitor and gather intelligence on potential threats.
Prediction of an individual’s future movements is nothing new, and government agencies have been seeking these sorts of programs for some time. Last year, we covered how Nokia had developed a software capable of predicting your location within a 24-hour window, to within 10 feet.
They did so by including information from the ten closest “friends” or acquaintances of the target. In that way, social media is perfect for intelligence gatherers. By monitoring the movements, posts, and “likes” of a group of people, finding an individual within that group becomes exponentially easier.
Think about that the next time you “check in” or are “checked in” with a group of friends.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-for-spies-mines-social-media-2013-2#ixzz2KopZkuFT

Revealed: How the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy

New documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent.
It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.

The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations’ knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).

As Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, put it, the documents show that from the start, the FBI – though it acknowledges Occupy movement as being, in fact, a peaceful organization – nonetheless designated OWS repeatedly as a “terrorist threat”:

“FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) … reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country.”

Verheyden-Hilliard points out the close partnering of banks, the New York Stock Exchange and at least one local Federal Reserve with the FBI and DHS, and calls it “police-statism”:

“This production [of documents], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement … These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

The documents show stunning range: in Denver, Colorado, that branch of the FBI and a “Bank Fraud Working Group” met in November 2011 – during the Occupy protests – to surveil the group. The Federal Reserve of Richmond, Virginia had its own private security surveilling Occupy Tampa and Tampa Veterans for Peace and passing privately-collected information on activists back to the Richmond FBI, which, in turn, categorized OWS activities under its “domestic terrorism” unit. The Anchorage, Alaska “terrorism task force” was watching Occupy Anchorage. The Jackson, Mississippi “joint terrorism task force” was issuing a “counterterrorism preparedness alert” about the ill-organized grandmas and college sophomores in Occupy there. Also in Jackson, Mississippi, the FBI and the “Bank Security Group” – multiple private banks – met to discuss the reaction to “National Bad Bank Sit-in Day” (the response was violent, as you may recall). The Virginia FBI sent that state’s Occupy members’ details to the Virginia terrorism fusion center. The Memphis FBI tracked OWS under its “joint terrorism task force” aegis, too. And so on, for over 100 pages.

Jason Leopold, at Truthout.org, who has sought similar documents for more than a year, reported that the FBI falsely asserted in response to his own FOIA requests that no documents related to its infiltration of Occupy Wall Street existed at all. But the release may be strategic: if you are an Occupy activist and see how your information is being sent to terrorism task forces and fusion centers, not to mention the “longterm plans” of some redacted group to shoot you, this document is quite the deterrent.

There is a new twist: the merger of the private sector, DHS and the FBI means that any of us can become WikiLeaks, a point that Julian Assange was trying to make in explaining the argument behind his recent book. The fusion of the tracking of money and the suppression of dissent means that a huge area of vulnerability in civil society – people’s income streams and financial records – is now firmly in the hands of the banks, which are, in turn, now in the business of tracking your dissent.

Remember that only 10% of the money donated to WikiLeaks can be processed – because of financial sector and DHS-sponsored targeting of PayPal data. With this merger, that crushing of one’s personal or business financial freedom can happen to any of us. How messy, criminalizing and prosecuting dissent. How simple, by contrast, just to label an entity a “terrorist organization” and choke off, disrupt or indict its sources of financing.

Why the huge push for counterterrorism “fusion centers”, the DHS militarizing of police departments, and so on? It was never really about “the terrorists”. It was not even about civil unrest. It was always about this moment, when vast crimes might be uncovered by citizens – it was always, that is to say, meant to be about you.

• This article originally referred to a joint terrorism task force in Jackson, Michigan. This was amended to Jackson, Mississippi at 4pm ET on 2 January 2012

Out Of State Medical Records Found In Dumpsters!

FLORENCE, Ala. (WHNT) – A good Samaritan in the Shoals found medical records from a doctor’s office out of state.
The man called WHNT News 19 to find out what to do because the files revealed the patient’s identity.
The Florence man was collecting wooden pallets as part of his job when he noticed something else that caught his eye: inside some dumpsters around town, thousands of medical files from a doctor’s office in Virginia.
After browsing through one of the records, one sheet clearly says “confidential” but somehow they ended up in Florence.
The man who found the records didn’t want to go on camera, but he did want answers. WHNT News 19 went straight to the Florence Police Department with the pile.
“It’s concerning because there are phone numbers, birth dates, addresses, social security numbers in these files,” said Detective Jerry Pearson. “Anyone can use them to become that person and get credit cards, buy cars, get houses in that person`s name.”
According to investigators, identity theft can mess up a person’s credit score and do damage to the person’s credibility for years.
“It’s nice to know an honest person saw them and turned them over,” said Pearson.
However detectives say what that honest person found in a dumpster is like a gold mine to a criminal.
The unsuspecting patients from the clinic in Virginia, have no idea someone could have all their personal information states away.
Detectives say the information in these files can be very valuable to a person with a malicious motive in mind.
WHNT News 19 tried to contact the doctor listed on the records, but have been unsuccessful in tracking him down.

Why Your Medical Records Are No Longer Safe

How many times have your medical records been illegally accessed?
It’s a scary thought, but one that many of us will have to get used to unless big changes are made in the healthcare industry. While we tend to worry about web companies like Google, Facebook, and, more recently, Instagram, sharing or tracking our private lives, the real threat to our privacy and identity comes from the shadowy world of electronic medical record storage.
A new study by the Ponemon Institute found that a whopping 94 percent of polled healthcare organizations have suffered ‘data breaches’ that exposed patient records. That’s a 65 percent increase since 2010-2011. Even worse, 45 percent of organizations reported they had more than five significant data breaches in the past two years. Less than half of these hospitals and clinics are confident they can prevent future data breaches or even know they took place.
Backing up this study is a 2012 report from the U.S. Department of Health’s Office of Civil Rights, which found that in just three years, nearly 21 million patients became the victims of medical record data breaches.
If that doesn’t scare you, it should. Electronic medical records contain such sensitive, personal information as medical diagnoses, treatments, insurance, payment information, Social Security Number and more. Losing a patient’s medical record puts that person at risk of identity theft, medical identity theft and other crimes. And yet, in many cases, these records are probably less secure than a personal email account.
Why are so many patient records getting stolen? Here are eight reasons why your personal health records are at risk:
• Hackers – Cyber attacks are on the rise everywhere, but especially when it comes to electronic medical records. Attacks on the computer servers of hospitals, universities, private clinics and health departments are increasing – they now make up 33 percent of all medical record theft, up from 20 percent just two years ago. Unfortunately, healthcare organizations often don’t have the best security when it comes to their computer networks – which makes it relatively easy for hackers. Here are just a few of the medical record hack attacks from last year: 780,000 patient records stolen from Utah Department of Health; 315,000 records from Emory Healthcare; 228,000 records from South Carolina Department of Heath; 116,000 records from Alere Home Monitoring, Inc.; 102,000 records from Memorial Healthcare System Florida; 66,000 records from Howard University Hospital – and the list goes on and on.
• Lost or Stolen – Most of the time, however, it doesn’t take a high-tech criminal to get patients’ medical records – in 46 percent of data breach cases, an employee laptop is simply lost or stolen. It’s embarrassing to think that this happens at all, let alone comprises a high percentage of data breach cases. The problem is two-fold: medical records should not be locally stored on a laptop, smartphone, tablet or thumbdrive in the first place; and, secondly, when they are, they should be encrypted to prevent an unauthorized person from accessing them. Healthcare organizations often fail on both accounts.
• Failure to Delete – Believe it or not, old equipment once used by hospitals, doctors’ offices and other healthcare facilities is often discarded without fully deleting the sensitive medical records they contain. When devices like PCs, laptops, thumbdrives, copiers, even ultrasound machines, are thrown out or donated, they pose a huge risk for identity theft. The only way to protect patient information is to physically remove and destroy the memory device (e.g., hard drive) – but that advice is not always followed.
• Third-Party Snafus – Many health care organizations outsource medical record storage and management to third-party vendors. The problem is, these vendors may not always be qualified to secure this type of information. In one recent example, Kaiser Permanente isnow being investigated for allegedly letting a ‘mom and pop’ document storage company to keep 300,000 personal medical records in a shared warehouse and on their home PCs!
• Open WiFi – Health care providers often use WiFi networks to enable their medical staff to work efficiently and accurately as they go from patient to patient. But these WiFi networks are not always as secure as they should be – making it possible for intruders within a certain radius of the facility to break into sensitive files.
• Social Engineering – The oldest trick in the criminal handbook is the con, often referred to these days as ‘social engineering.’ As with any organization, criminals can trick healthcare employees into giving them access to sensitive information – often by pretending to be from the IT department, an authorized third-party vendor, supervisor or fellow employee.
• Insider Access – Rogue employees are another legitimate threat to a person’s medical records. In most cases, healthcare employees that are responsible for a data breach are doing so to ‘get even’ with their employer or co-workers. Employee mistakes, like allowing an unauthorized outsider to view a medical record or leaving a file open on their computer, also jeopardize patient privacy.
• The Cloud – One of the future threats to patient records is likely to be found in the cloud. According to the Ponemon study, 62 percent of healthcare organizations are moving their patient health records to the cloud – but only 30 percent are confident they can adequately protect that information from thieves.
The most frustrating aspect of medical record theft is that patients feel powerless to stop it. While it is hard for the average person to protect their electronic records, there are a few helpful steps you can take: first, ask your insurer for a copy of your medical records and patient activities (EOB statements) in the last year; make sure your healthcare provider has implement the FTC’s red flags rule; review all medical bills closely; and get a free annual credit report. You can also monitor large healthcare data breaches by visiting the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ breach notification site.

White House Confirms Security Breach By Chinese Hackers

Sunday morning brought with it a scathing report out of the Free Beacon which said the White House cyber security had been breached in the same section of Obama’s “Nuclear Football”—The White House Military Office (WHMO).
From Bill Gertz of the Beacon:
Hackers linked to China’s government broke into one of the U.S. government’s most sensitive computer networks, breaching a system used by the White House Military Office for nuclear commands, according to defense and intelligence officials familiar with the incident.
Obama’s “Nuclear Football” is the suitcase in which the president carries the codes for nuclear launch.
Following The Beacon report, came a report from Politico, in which an official, unsolicited by reporters, offered a statement. The official “confirmed there was an attempted spear phishing hack but said that it affected an unclassified network, was “isolated” and that there was no evidence that any data had been stolen.”
There’s two things that should be mentioned in both reports, but are conspicuously absent.
Number one: A spear phishing hack isn’t really a hack, nor is it that sophisticated. It’s when a user opens an email that looks official, which then asks for verification of certain private details, like passwords or detailed user information.
These hacks most often take the form of a private company that’s been hacked, let’s say Paypal, which then asks for “verification” of the users account. They can also seem to come from inside the network or company, from a higher up or colleague—with a PDF attached that, once opened, injects a trojan into the system. These emails are nearly indistinguishable from the real ones a user would get from the actual company or individual.
The officials who spoke with both The Beacon and Politico made great pains to convey that ‘no classified information’ had been breached,
Number two: An unclassified network is the government’s way of saying “basic internet.” In the military, or in government, there are two networks: there’s the unclassified, or the “low side,” and there’s the encrypted classified, or the “high side.”
Any potentially harmful or Top Secret information travels along, or is saved within, the “high side,” which is highly encrypted, and whose encryption changes automatically in undisclosed periods of time.
So, these phishing emails penetrated the email of a employee on the “low side” network, which shares very little difference with any private company’s user network.
In short, it’s probably not as bad as it sounds, even it casts further doubt on White House intelligence security.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/white-house-confirms-security-breach-by-chinese-hackers-2012-10#ixzz2INbARKnv

Micro-Drones Combined With DNA Hacking Could Create A Very Scary Future

Micro-Drones Combined With DNA Hacking Could Create A Very Scary Future

Sightings of insect-sized micro drones have been occurring for years, but combined with the direction of genome sequencing outlined in this Atlantic piece — the pair make for a futuristic and potentially deadly mix.
Even back in 2007, when Vanessa Alarcon was a college student attending an anti-war protest in Washington, D.C. she heard someone shout, “Oh my God, look at those.”
“I look up and I’m like, ‘What the hell is that?'” she told The Washington Post. “They looked like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects,” she continued.
A lawyer there at the time confirmed they looked like dragonflies, but that they “definitely weren’t insects”.
And he’s probably right. In 2006 Flight International reported that the CIA had been developing micro UAVs as far back as the 1970s and had a mock-up in its Langley headquarters since 2003.
While we can go on listing roachbots, swarming nano drones, and synchronized MIT robots — private trader and former software engineer Alan Lovejoy points out that the future of nano drones could become even more unsettling.

Wikipedia Commons
Lovejoy says “Such a device could be controlled from a great distance and is equipped with a camera, microphone. It could land on you and then use its needle to take a DNA sample.”
Assuming all that to be possible, the Atlantic paints a complimentary scenario.
Authors Andrew Hessel, Marc Goodman, and Steven Kotler outline futuristic human genome work that evolves from the very real GE $100 million breast cancer challenge.
In the group’s scenario a bunch of brilliant freelancers receive bids to design personalized virus’ offering customized cures for the sick.
Say you get pancreatic cancer, instead of chemo’ — the first step in treatment will be decoding your genome — which costs about $1,000 right now and takes a couple of days.
An eternity when you’re rife with cancer, no doubt, but a far cry from the two years and $300 million it required less than a decade-and-a-half ago.
But imagine, the three writers ask: it’s 2015, and with information about the disease and your exclusive genome sequence, tomorrow’s virologists will have only a simple design problem on their hands.
The problem will be freelanced out for bids, like a brochure design on Elance, and the winning design will be a formula that’ll rid your body of the cancer.
All of this is pretty plausible, if not a bit short on the timeline, but imagine the request for proposal of your pancreatic cancer cure was something else.

Wikipedia Commons
Imagine it was the genome of a particular African leader recruiting children to fight his wars, and that his DNA had been high-jacked in 2009 at the UN by order of Hillary Clinton.
Same scenario applies. The request for a drug tailored to that particular genome is accepted. It’s paid for and forwarded to an online bio-marketplace, which sends it to a synthesis start-up that turns “the 5,984 base-pair blueprint into actual genetic material.”
Here the future of drones and virology could intersect.
A few days later tablets are delivered to a group that dissolves them and injects the liquid into a handful of micro-drones. The team releases the drones and infects the people in the African leader’s circle of advisors or family.
The infected come down with flu like symptoms, coughs and sneezes that release billions of harmless virus particles — but when they bring their symptoms in the vicinity of the African leader — the particles change.
Once the virus particles are exposed to that very specific DNA sequence, a secondary function within their design unlocks. In the Atlantic piece the target is the U.S. president via sneezing Harvard students, but the effect would be the same. In that case it was a “fast-acting neuro-destructive disease that produced memory loss and, eventually, death.”
Same for the African leader, though the symptoms could be tailored an infinite number of ways. Designed to reflect a uniquely local affliction like Dengue Fever, or to appear like symptoms of a genetic condition.
The drone and bio-technologies are approaching the point where something like this is theoretically possible, even if for now, it’s only imagination.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/government-collected-dna-and-future-micro-drones-are-downright-scary-2012-10#ixzz2IFBJTMCm

Millions of South Carolinians’ social security numbers stolen from state agency

Millions of South Carolinians’ social security numbers stolen from state agency

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) –

A state agency’s website has been hacked and millions of social security numbers and credit and debit card numbers belonging to approximately 77 percent of South Carolina residents have been compromised.

Governor Nikki Haley, SLED chief Mark Keel, and others gathered at SLED headquarter Friday afternoon to talk about the breach and how residents can take immediate steps to protect themselves against identity-theft.

“This is not a good day for South Carolina,” said Governor Nikki Haley. “South Carolina has come under attack by an international hacker.”

State officials revealed Friday that someone in a foreign country gained access to the South Carolina Department of Revenue’s website and a server was breached for the first time in late August.

387,000 credit and debit card numbers and 3.6 million social security numbers, all unencrypted, have been exposed.

Of the credit cards, the vast majority are protected by strong encryption deemed sufficient under the demanding credit card industry standards to protect the data and cardholders, DOR officials said. However, approximately 16,000 were unencrypted and exposed.

Officials found out about the breach on October 10. On October 16, investigators uncovered two attempts to probe the system in early September, and later learned that a previous attempt was made on August 27.

In mid-September, two other intrusions occurred, and to the best of the department’s knowledge, the hacker obtained data for the first time. No other intrusions have been uncovered.

On October 20, the vulnerability in the system was closed and, to the best of the department’s knowledge, secured.

“On October 10, the S.C. Division of Information Technology informed the S.C. Department of Revenue of a potential cyber attack involving the personal information of taxpayers,” said DOR Director James Etter. “We worked with them throughout that day to determine what may have happened and what steps to take to address the situation. We also immediately began consultations with state and federal law enforcement agencies and briefed the governor’s office.”

“When this breach occurred and it was discovered,” said Keel. “it took a while for experts to determine how much data had actually been compromised.

“It was important that we had the time to work through our investigation so that we would have enough evidence to prosecute this person,” said Keel.

Haley said she knows where the attack came from, but would not reveal the location of the hacker so the investigation would not be put in jeopardy. “I want this person slammed against the wall,” said Haley. “I want that man just brutalized.”

Keel said no state funds were touched during this data breach.

“We are going to have a very strong approach to make sure that every South Carolina taxpayer is protected,” said Haley. “No taxpayer should be a victim to this. We will take care of them.”

If you have paid taxes in the state of South Carolina since 1998, you are urged call 1-866-578-5422 to get an activation code to use here:http://www.protectmyid.com/scdor to see if your information has been compromised. If so, the state will provide a year of identity-theft protection and credit monitoring free of charge.

The phone line is open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday and 11 a.m. through 8 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

“Whatever it takes to do this, we are going to do,” said Haley on potential costs for protecting residents. “This is not going to be inexpensive.”

A state agency’s website has been hacked and millions of social securitynumbers and credit and debit card numbers belonging to approximately 77 percent of South Carolina residents have been compromised.

Governor Nikki Haley, SLED chief Mark Keel, and others gathered at SLED headquarter Friday afternoon to talk about the breach and how residents can take immediate steps to protect themselves against identity-theft.

If credit card information is compromised, the best protection is to have the bank reissue the card. Anyone who has used a credit card in a transaction with the Department of Revenue should check bank accounts regularly to see if any unauthorized charges have occurred. If so, the cardholder should contact the credit card issuer immediately by calling the toll-free number located on the back of the card or on a monthly statement, tell them what you have seen, and ask them to cancel and reissue the card. 

Consumers should also change any credit card web account passwords immediately when unauthorized charges are detected.

In addition to the Experian service, state officials urged individuals to consider additional steps to protect their identity and financial information, including:

• Regularly review credit reports;
• Place fraud alerts with the three credit bureaus;
• Place a security freeze on financial and credit information with the three credit bureaus.

http://www.wbtv.com/story/19926154/social-security-breach-nikki-haley-south-carolina-credit-cards-hacker?page=2&N=L