Ars Technica: Google has access to detailed health records on tens of millions of Americans. “The endeavor, code-named ‘Project Nightingale,’ has enabled at least 150 Google employees to see patient health information, which includes diagnoses, laboratory test results, hospitalization records, and other data, according to internal documents and the newspaper’s sources. In all, the data amounts to complete medical records, WSJ notes, and contains patient names and birth dates.”
security
Wall Street Journal: Census Overhaul Seeks to Avoid Outing Individual Respondent Data
Wall Street Journal: Census Overhaul Seeks to Avoid Outing Individual Respondent Data. “The Census Bureau is overhauling its systems after it found anyone with sophisticated data tools could use published results to identify millions of individual census respondents, according to agency officials. The new system would prevent anyone—whether policy makers, marketers or data thieves—from using published data to target people based on what they disclose on the census.”
New York Times: Building a World Where Data Privacy Exists Online
New York Times: Building a World Where Data Privacy Exists Online. “Dawn Song, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the world’s foremost experts in computer security and trustworthy artificial intelligence, envisions a new paradigm in which people control their data and are compensated for its use by corporations. While there have been many proposals for such a system, Professor Song is one actually building the platform to make it a reality.”
Study: Ransomware, Data Breaches at Hospitals tied to Uptick in Fatal Heart Attacks (Krebs on Security)
Krebs on Security: Study: Ransomware, Data Breaches at Hospitals tied to Uptick in Fatal Heart Attacks. “Hospitals that have been hit by a data breach or ransomware attack can expect to see an increase in the death rate among heart patients in the following months or years because of cybersecurity remediation efforts, a new study posits. Health industry experts say the findings should prompt a larger review of how security — or the lack thereof — may be impacting patient outcomes.”
Make Tech Easier: Stalkers Are Increasingly Using Phone Apps to Follow Their Victims
Make Tech Easier: Stalkers Are Increasingly Using Phone Apps to Follow Their Victims. “Stalking is something that is as old as time. As long as there have been people and relationships, there has been obsession and a desire to soak up every bit of information about a person, but not in a good way. Today’s technology is making it easier for stalkers to continue on with their mission to control, and they are increasingly doing it with the aid of phone apps.”
Bleeping Computer: Specially Crafted ZIP Files Used to Bypass Secure Email Gateways
Bleeping Computer: Specially Crafted ZIP Files Used to Bypass Secure Email Gateways. “Attackers are always looking for new tricks to distribute malware without them being detected by antivirus scanners and secure email gateways. This was illustrated in a new phishing campaign that utilized a specially crafted ZIP file that was designed to bypass secure email gateways to distribute the NanoCore RAT.”
Motherboard: ‘Chronicle Is Dead and Google Killed It’
Motherboard: ‘Chronicle Is Dead and Google Killed It’. “Employees have left because of a combination of Chronicle losing its original vision, a distant CEO, a lack of clarity about Chronicle’s future, and disappointment that the startup has been swallowed into Google, according to interviews with five current and former employees who were present across different stages of Chronicle’s growth. Motherboard granted them anonymity to speak candidly about internal company events.”
