Get this: US cybersecurity experts say they have solid evidence that a former employee helped hack Sony Pictures Entertainment’s computer system — and that it was not masterminded by North Korean cyberterrorists. Doink.
One leading cybersecurity firm, Norse Corp., said Monday it has narrowed its list of suspects to a group of six people — including at least one Sony veteran with the necessary technical background to carry out the attack, according to reports.
This does not bode well for the FBI who said they quickly traced the hackers to North Korea. The key word is quickly. Seems they jumped the gun, so to speak. The cybersecurity experts say leads they did turn up that had a Korean connection turned out to be dead ends. Stay tuned to this one. It could get much bigger and uglier for Sony.
They finally found that plane. Well, not exactly. What they found were bodies floating and a door of the plane. Gruesome. The bigger issue is why all of these incidents are coming out of southeast Asia.
To start with, a lengthy delay in declaring an emergency after air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane, slowed the search and rescue efforts. It seems they waited an hour and a half to initiate the search. To put this into real time, air traffic controllers stopped receiving signals from the plane at 6:17 am. They did not report an issue until 7:55 am. That’s a very long time to sit on something that is obviously a traumatic event.
Contrast this with American or Canadian standards where within 10 minutes at the most an alert would have been issued.
In 2007, the safety standards there were so bad that the European Union prohibited all of Indonesia’s airlines from flying into any of its member countries. That ban was lifted in August 2009; however, Indonesia’s main airline — quickly growing Lion Air — is still banned by the EU. Given all of this, there are 250 million people who live in the region and this is the fastest mode of transportation. Doesn’t bode well for them.
NY’s finest – the police department has basically stopped working since two of its officers were executed about 10 days ago. Arrests were down 66% in the week following the deaths. Wait, this gets even better.
The Daily News reports that the 84th Precinct, where officers Ramos and Liu worked, and the 79th Precinct, where they were killed, issued only one summons combined last week, compared to 626 the week before. So why are they basically not working? They are mad at the mayor de Blasio. In fact, they are having a collective temper tantrum.
Seems the NYPD is very upset at one word hizzoner used: allegedly. A couple of weeks ago there was an incident on the Brooklyn bridge where protesters got out of hand and some police were injured. Here’s the quote verbatim: However, an incident today on the Brooklyn Bridge, in which a small group of protestors allegedly assaulted some members of the NYPD, marks an ugly and unacceptable departure from the demonstrations thus far.
We’re pretty sure there’s more to this than meets the eye, including the fact that de Blasio was not that happy that a policeman was acquitted of all charges in the death of a black teen (his son is a black teen) and said so. Given all of the above, everyone here are adults. We have said this before when there was an impasse: put everyone into a room, lock the door and let them talk it out until they reach an agreement. Works every time.
Not that we want to make you nervous, but. At a cybersecurity convention last week, the “Chaos Computer Club” demonstrated how it can mimic a fingerprint just by analyzing photographs.
In the past, fingerprints have been recreated from smudges on windows and other smooth surfaces. In the past, forgers have used tape, a scanner, some plastic material and glue to build a gummy fingerprint that can fool scanners. This little club upped the ante. They were able to recreate fingerprints from photos. Gulp. Remember Mark Trestman, our Montreal Alouettes most winning coach? Well last year he went to be the coach for the Chicago Bears. Today he was fired. He’s a really good guy and a great coach. Ya think he’ll come back here?
Blanche is not doing the top 10 stories of the past year. It would mean dredging up very painful memories – Eyal, Naftali and Gilad, the Har Nof murders, the war in Israel, the Charter of Values, the intense Quebec election. What we will do is pray for peace in Israel and the entire world. That’s about all that’s left for us to do anyway. We wish you a happy New Year.
We’ll talk…
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