Ken Garen, CPA, Co-Founder and President, UBCC

In Modern Cyber War, the Spies Can Become Targets, Too Former intelligence officials fear hackers are taking a new tack: exposing the identities of the NSA computer-hacking team By Robert McMillan and  Shane Harris May 24, 2017 5:30 a.m. ET The mysterious hacking group that supplied a critical component of the WannaCry “ransomware” software attack that spread across the globe in mid-May has been releasing alleged National Security Agency secrets for the past eight months. Former intelligence officials now fear that the hackers, who go by the name Shadow Brokers, are taking a new tack: exposing the identities of the NSA’s computer-hacking team. That potentially could subject these government experts to charges when traveling abroad. The Shadow Brokers on April 14 posted on a Russian computer file-sharing site what they said were NSA files containing previously unknown attack tools and details of an alleged NSA hack affecting Middle Eastern and Panamanian financi...

Robo-Advisers Battle Wall Street for Rich Investors Betterment wants to stake a claim on the wealthy before big banks do. by Julie Verhage May 24, 2017, 5:30 AM PDT May 24, 2017, 5:32 AM PDT Citigroup Inc. doesn’t think its richer customers will drop their high-priced money managers in favor of automated investing, but Betterment LLC is betting it can prove the big bank wrong. The robo-adviser—the largest among independent digital advice startups that popped up after the 2008 financial collapse—has overhauled its entire brand. The shift in marketing and advertising strategy is aimed at attracting more affluent customers just now becoming aware of the option. It’s also not a coincidence that Betterment’s pivot comes as more traditional players such as Vanguard Group Inc., Charles Schwab Corp., and even JPMorgan Chase & Co. are starting to use more technology when offering investment advice. In other words, the robo-adviser pie is about to expand, and Betterment ...

How Facebook flouts Holocaust denial laws except where it fears being sued Leaked guidelines for moderators also reveal refugees are not protected by hate speech rules because they are a ‘hot topic’ Facebook says it ‘does not welcome local law that stands as an obstacle to an open and connected world’. Composite: Getty Images By Nick Hopkins Wednesday 24 May 2017 01.00 EDT Last modified on Wednesday 24 May 2017 06.20 EDT Facebook’s policies on Holocaust denial will come under fresh scrutiny following the leak of documents that show moderators are being told not to remove this content in most of the countries where it is illegal. The files explain that moderators should take down Holocaust denial material in only four of the 14 countries where it is outlawed, if reported. One document says the company “does not welcome local law that stands as an obstacle to an open and connected world” and will only consider blocking or hiding Holocaust denial messages and phot...

Comcast accused of trying to censor anti-Comcast site The cable giant accuses pro-net neutrality site Comcastroturf of trademark infringement. Internet by Steven Musil May 23, 2017 7:02 PM PDT A digital rights advocacy group says it was threatened by Comcast lawyers after launching a website that is organizing an investigation into allegedly fake anti-net neutrality comments submitted to the FCC. Fight for the Future, which operates Comcastroturf.com, accused the cable giant of censorship on Tuesday after receiving a cease and desist letter that said the group was infringing on its trademark. The letter, sent by LookingGlass Cyber Security Center, demanded the Comcastroturf domain name be reassigned to Comcast because it violates the law by using a domain name that is "identical or confusingly similar to someone else's trademark. "Our client, however, is prepared to resolve this matter amicably and without pursuing its claims for damages, but only i...

Obama intel agency secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years by John Solomon and Sara Carter May 23, 2017 The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall, according to once top-secret documents that chronicle some of the most serious constitutional abuses to date by the U.S. intelligence community. More than 5 percent, or one out of every 20 searches seeking upstream Internet data on Americans inside the NSA’s so-called Section 702 database violated the safeguards Obama and his intelligence chiefs vowed to follow in 2011, according to one classified internal report reviewed by Circa. The Obama administration self-disclosed the problems at a closed-door hearing Oct. 26 before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that se...

Hackers Unlock Samsung Galaxy S8 With Fake Iris Using a camera, a printer, and a contact lens, hackers managed to bypass the S8's iris scanner. By JOSEPH COX May 23 2017, 5:13am Biometric locks for phones are just getting more and more elaborate. Not content with fingerprints, some devices now offer facial recognition tech for accessing a device, and in the Samsung Galaxy S8's case, an iris scanner too. Despite Samsung stating that a user's irises are pretty much impossible to copy, a team of hackers has done just that. Using a bare-bones selection of equipment, researchers from the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) show in a video how they managed to bypass the scanner's protections and unlock the device. "We've had iris scanners that could be bypassed using a simple print-out," Linus Neumann, one of the hackers who appears in the video, told Motherboard in a Twitter direct message. The process itself was apparently pretty simple. The hac...

Google AI beats Chinese master in ancient game of Go Chinese Go player Ke Jie puts a stone against Google's artificial intelligence program AlphaGo during their first match at the Future of Go Summit in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, China May 23, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer By Cate Cadell | BEIJING Tue May 23, 2017 | 5:35am EDT A Google artificial intelligence program defeated a Chinese grand master at the ancient board game Go on Tuesday, a major feather in the cap for the firm's AI ambitions as it looks to woo Beijing to gain re-entry into the country. In the first of three planned games in the eastern water town of Wuzhen, the AlphaGo program held off China's world number one Ke Jie in front of Chinese officials and Google parent Alphabet's chief executive Eric Schmidt. The victory over the world's top player - which many thought would take decades to achieve - underlines the potential of artificial intelligence to take on humans at complex tasks. ...