L&g Cyber Discussion Threads

[grupo] 16/2/2018 09:51

Siemens AG (SIE.XE) and eight other companies have signed a joint charter on cybersecurity that sets out 10 principles aimed at mitigating risks from malicious attacks, the German industrial conglomerate said Friday.

The charter, which Siemens said is the first of its kind, calls for businesses, regulators and government to designate specific departments within their organizations to take responsibility for cybersecurity.

Other signatories to the charter include Airbus SE (AIR.FR) Allianz SE (ALV.XE) International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and Daimler AG (DAI.XE), Siemens said in a statement.

"Confidence that the security of data and networked systems is guaranteed is a key element of the digital transformation," Siemens Chief Executive Joe Kaeser said.

The document calls for companies to establish mandatory, independent certification for software and hardware that will be used in critical infrastructure, particularly in situations when humans interact directly with machines.



Write to Nathan Allen at [e-mail]



(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 16, 2018 04:07 ET (09:07 GMT)

[grupo] 16/2/2018 09:49

Siemens AG (SIE.XE) and eight other companies have signed a joint charter on cybersecurity that sets out 10 principles aimed at mitigating risks from malicious attacks, the German industrial conglomerate said Friday.

The charter, which Siemens said is the first of its kind, calls for businesses, regulators and government to designate specific departments within their organizations to take responsibility for cybersecurity.

Other signatories to the charter include Airbus SE (AIR.FR) Allianz SE (ALV.XE) International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and Daimler AG (DAI.XE), Siemens said in a statement.

"Confidence that the security of data and networked systems is guaranteed is a key element of the digital transformation," Siemens Chief Executive Joe Kaeser said.

The document calls for companies to establish mandatory, independent certification for software and hardware that will be used in critical infrastructure, particularly in situations when humans interact directly with machines.



Write to Nathan Allen at [e-mail]



(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 16, 2018 04:07 ET (09:07 GMT)

[suetballs] 08/10/2017 07:10

Now in profit - I can see this scaling the heights of IH2O where I have now almost doubled my money.
Suet

[suetballs] 27/9/2017 08:50

Not much share price movement since my first purchase but took a few more this am.
Suet

[suetballs] 15/5/2017 13:11

The growth has started now I think.
Suet

[suetballs] 26/2/2017 14:12

I'm in recently.
I think this will be a big growth area in the years to come.
Suet

[ifthecapfits] 18/1/2017 09:10

Not taken a position yet but sorely tempted.

[la forge] 07/1/2017 09:29

Taxman unleashes its 'snooper computer': what information does its have on you?

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Reminder letter from HMRC for filing of self-assessment tax return
The deadline for 2015/16 self assessment tax returns is looming, at the end of January Credit: DWImages /Alamy
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Laura Suter

7 January 2017 • 7:37am

HM Revenue & Customs has spent years and £100m or more on a super-computer designed to identify those who may have paid too little tax. And now – with the deadline for filing 2015-16 tax returns just weeks away – the system is being fully deployed for the first time.

Instead of relying solely on information provided by taxpayers via their returns, HMRC’s powerful “Connect”; system now draws on information from myriad government and corporate sources to create a profile of each taxpayer’s total income. Where this varies from the information provided by the taxpayer, the account is flagged and could be subject to further investigation.

For the first time, HMRC is also using these powers to warn individuals to check that they have not underpaid.

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"We all leave a massive electronic footprint of where we are, when we are away, what we do and what we spend"George Bull, RSM

Last month it sent letters to 10,000 individuals who had submitted their 2014-15 tax return without a complete declaration of savings interest received.

HMRC said it had used information gathered from banks, peer-to-peer lenders such as Zopa and other financial institutions and then checked it against individuals’ tax returns. It sent letters to those with discrepancies.

A spokesman said: “We have written to customers who appear to have under-declared untaxed interest.”
Screen shot provided by Airbnb from their website shows a typical search for listings of rooms to rent
Home-sharing website Airbnb is used by many to rent out rooms or their whole property, and earn additional income Credit: AP

The Connect system’s data-hoarding does not stop at the income people have received from work and investment.

“Connect broadly deals with information spontaneously available in government departments or as part of the digital footprint that people leave when they use the internet,” said George Bull, senior tax partner at RSM, the auditing and consulting firm.

“We all leave a massive electronic footprint of where we are, when we are away, what we do and what we spend.”

The Connect system crunches data from Airbnb, the rental platform, for instance, or eBay. It can also access Land Registry records to see houses purchased and ensure the correct tax has been paid. From there, further sources enable it to determine if properties are being rented out and whether that income has been declared.

It can also determine if someone is likely to be able to afford such properties, or whether they are suspected of having used previously undeclared income or savings.

HMRC gains anonymised information on all Visa and Mastercard transactions, enabling it to identify areas of likely underpayments which it can then target further, seeking details of individuals’ transactions where necessary.

As of September last year, HMRC can now get information from banks and financial organisations in British overseas territories, such as the Channel Islands, while from this year it can gather this information from 60 more countries.

“This is the tipping of the scales,” said Richard Morley of accountant BDO. “Five years ago those making minor tax errors would feel fairly safe. But HMRC now has more information and more access to information.”

HMRC will also be one of the government bodies to gain access to information under new laws known commonly as the “snoopers̵7; charter”. The legislation means telecom providers store customers’ web browsing and email records for at least a year; it can then be accessed by the Government.

[waldron] 13/9/2009 15:51

Snooper's handbook for council tax hikes
Glen Owen, Mail on Sunday
13 September 2009
If you have just proudly added an en suite bathroom to your house or laid a tiled floor in your conservatory, then beware.




Hikes: Re-evaluations are predicted to lead to sharp rises in council tax for many

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As part of secret plans for a council tax hike on the middle classes, inspectors have been armed with a new 'snoopers handbook' to ensure that no home improvement - however discreet --escapes their scrutiny.
The Big Brother manual trains valuation experts how to follow up leads from 'informants' by undertaking 'detective work', including photographing properties, plundering estate agents' details and room-by-room inspections.

- How to challenge your council tax


In July, The Mail on Sunday revealed that the Valuation Office Agency is compiling a database that will give all 23million homes in England one of 100 'dwelling house codes', which are expected to form the basis of a council tax revaluation if Labour wins the next Election.

Middle-income families are likely to bear the brunt of any tax increases as the Government struggles to fill the black hole on its balance sheet caused by the recession.

The handbook, complete with audio commentary, sets out how inspectors can catch homeowners who have socalled 'value significant' features. One exercise reads: 'Your office has been informed the roofspace has been converted into a fourth bedroom. Your task is to establish whether existing details [for the house] require amendment.'

Another states that 'information has been obtained' about a house that has been 'extended to include another living room and two new bedrooms with en suites. It also emerges that the house has a partial view of the mountains'. The trainee inspectors then have to change their valuation to place the home in a higher bracket.

A further exercise trains inspectors to look out for 'a garage large enough for two cars and a drive large enough for three', a 'hardwood conservatory with single glazing and tiled floor', a 'full sea view' and recent modernisation.

The language in the manual will strike homeowners who have carried out improvements as positively Orwellian. Alongside pictures of homes and their value-adding features - including in some cases a Sherlock Holmes-style magnifying glass on the pictures for inspecting building features --inspectors are urged to 'use detective work'.

They are told: 'The guide is effectively a glossary of the different types of dwellings within the country. You could even say that it's a kind of illustrated social history.' They are even wished 'good luck' on their missions.


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« click to reveal more » Last night, Conservative Local Government spokeswoman Caroline Spelman said: 'Labour Ministers have been caught red-handed training a cadre of State snoopers for a council tax revaluation. These new tools blow out of the water any claims that the revaluation has been postponed and proves more tax hikes are on the cards if Gordon Brown clings to power.

'Families face being taxed for their sash windows and en suite bathrooms. There is nothing that Gordon Brown won't tax. These inspectors have alarming powers to enter people's homes --and there is clear evidence that they now intend to exercise them.'

A VOA spokesman denied the manual was a sinister training tool. He said: 'The VOA is completely open about how it values properties for council tax and there is a wealth of information on its website. Any suggestion our staff are trained to snoop around homes in order to increase their bandings is wrong.'

[ariane] 13/7/2009 14:59

Snooping through the power socket
Power sockets can be used to eavesdrop on what people type on a computer.

Security researchers found that poor shielding on some keyboard cables means useful data can be leaked about each character typed.

By analysing the information leaking onto power circuits, the researchers could see what a target was typing.

The attack has been demonstrated to work at a distance of up to 15m, but refinement may mean it could work over much longer distances.

Hotel attack

"Our goal is to show that information leaks in the most unexpected ways and can be retrieved," wrote Andrea Barisani and Daniele Bianco, of security firm Inverse Path, in a paper describing their work.

The research focussed on the cables used to connect PS/2 keyboards to desktop PCs.

Usefully, said the pair, the six wires inside a PS/2 cable are typically "close to each other and poorly shielded". This means that information travelling along the data wire, when a key is pressed, leaks onto the ground wire in the same cable.

The ground wire, via the PC's power unit, ultimately connects to the plug in the power socket, and from there leaks out onto the circuit supplying electricity to a room.

Even better, said the researchers, data travels along PS/2 cables one bit at a time and uses a clock speed far lower than any other PC component. Both these qualities make it easy to pick out voltage changes caused by key presses.

A digital oscilloscope was used to gather data about voltage changes on a power line and filters were used to remove those caused by anything other than the keyboard.

"The PS/2 signal square wave is preserved with good quality... and can be decoded back to the original keystroke information," wrote the pair in a paper describing their work.

They demonstrated it working over distances of 1, 5, 10 and 15m from a target, far enough to suggest it could work in a hotel or office.

"The test performed in the laboratory represent a worst case scenario for this type of measurement, which along with acceptable results emphasizes the feasibility of the attack on normal conditions," they added.

The pair said their research was "work in progress" and expect the equipment to get more sensitive as it is refined.

The attack is due to be demonstrated at the Black Hat conference that takes place in Las Vegas from 25-30 July.

Story from BBC NEWS:


Published: 2009/07/13 13:21:27 GMT

[waldron] 11/7/2009 19:04

Call for limits on web snooping
Governments and companies should limit the snooping they do on web users.

So said Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, who said that growing oversight of browsing could have a pernicious effect.

A greater part of the value of the web lay in the lack of constraints on what people could do with it.

He also warned that attempts to censor what people could say or what they could do online were ultimately doomed to failure.

Open triumph

"When you use the internet it is important that the medium should not be set up with constraints," he said.

The internet, said Sir Tim, should be like a blank piece of paper. Just as governments and companies cannot police what people write or draw on that sheet of paper so they should not be restricted from putting the web to their own uses.

"The canvas should be blank," he said

While governments do need some powers to police unacceptable uses of the web; limits should be placed on these powers, he said.

" It's a wonderful experiment and I hope it will have consequences for the way TV is produced in the future "
Russell Barnes, Digital Revolution producer

If people know that where they go online and the terms they look for are under scrutiny it could have all kinds of pernicious effects, he warned.

Repressive regimes, such as China and Iran, that work hard to limit what people can do online would struggle to maintain that control over time, he said.

"The trend over the years is that the internet in the end goes around censorship and openness eventually triumphs," he said. "But it is by no means an easy road."

Sir Tim made his comments during a speech at an event that helped to launch the BBC Two series Digital Revolution.

The four-part series aims to explore the history of the World Wide Web and generate debate about how it is changing the way people live their lives. It aims to debate how the web is changing the nation state, how it affects identity, freedom and anonymity.

Over the next eight months as the programme is being produced, viewers will be encouraged to get involved by sending in questions for interview subjects and being able to produce their own clips using the rushes generated during filming.

Social media researcher and broadcaster Aleks Krotoski will present the series of programmes.

Story from BBC NEWS:


Published: 2009/07/10 17:21:05 GMT

[waldron] 01/6/2009 05:25

War on fakes goes under microscope
Andrew Leach, Financial Mail
31 May 2009, 10:22am
Microscopic edible identity tags are to be launched as the latest weapon for luxury goods manufacturers and food and drug makers in a £600bn-a-year battle against counterfeiters.




Tagged: The IntelliMark could be used to track fresh produce

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Smiths Group, which makes everything from airport luggage scanners to medical devices, has developed the revolutionary security markers that are smaller than the diameter of a human hair.
They are the first edible and intelligent tags and will help companies protect their brands and the integrity of their supply chain.

The tags, in the shape of bar codes, logos or even pictures, such as fish, can be made of edible starch and marked on foods, such as tomatoes, to ensure they are sourced from where the buyer expects. They can also be used on pills to expose counterfeit medicines.

They may also be made of plastic and used as minuscule labels on luxury goods brands that are often targeted by counterfeiters, such as Rolex watches and Gucci handbags.

The product, called IntelliMark, is already being tested by some drugs companies and has been launched by Smiths Detection in partnership with US company Armark.

As well as developing the identity tags, applied during the production process, Smiths pro-ducethe scanning equipment that enables products to be verified.

Last year, the global trade in counterfeit goods, which encompasses everything from medicines to DVDs and cigarettes, was estimated to have been worth about £500bn a year. And with the recession fuelling demand for cheaper goods, there are estimates that the trade could hit £600bn this year - 50% higher than the world's illegal drugs trade.

While luxury manufacturers want to protect the exclusivity and quality of their products, the consequences of fake drugs can be a matter of life or death.

Smiths' system allows for several levels of hidden security, as well as the ability to verify contents, monitor environmental conditions and identify the origin of the product.

It means a food company could put a mark on a particular product to verify where it came from and add another layer that could be read to determine whether the food exceeded a set temperature while in transit.

Stephen Phipson, president of Smiths Detection, said: 'The need to protect intellectual property and other brand-owner rights is a critical concern of businesses in today's global economy.

'Counterfeits continually flood the marketplace and IntelliMark will help industries to protect their products and business to help maintain legitimate revenue channels.'

IntelliMark has been developed by Smiths Detection's Product Inspection Division, which has annual turnover of about £25m and sales in more than 150 countries.

[waldron] 23/3/2009 10:34

source: the connexion

CCTV cameras to be tripled
March 23, 2009
INTERIOR Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie has promised to triple the number of CCTV cameras on public streets by the end of the year.

The number is expected to increase from 20,000 to 60,000. Ms Alliot-Marie says that towns that have cameras are often able to double the rate of detection of street crimes.

Towns with CCTV also typically see a drop in crime.

"Over the last five years, in the context of a general tendency to lower crime rates, the amount of crime has dropped nearly twice as fast in areas protected by cameras," said Ms Alliot-Marie.

In Orléans installing cameras has seen street crime drop by 58%. The councillor in charge of security, Florent Montillot, said their €1.9 million network would even save money as it allows them to pay less insurance on public buildings, which are no longer vandalised, and phone costs, as public services use the cameras fibreoptic network to make calls.

In Hauts-de-Seine the council says cameras have even helped uncover fraud cases – where a person has taken money out of their own account then claimed it as stolen, or burned their own car to claim insurance.

Across France, 300 communes have cameras installed (about 1%), though this is expected to rapidly rise to 500.

Out of these, 120 have monitoring centres to which images from around the commune are relayed, linked up to the police and gendarmerie. The state is helping fund installations like these.