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Daily Archives: April 12, 2014

Financial Institutions Directed to Respond to Hearbleed Attacks

Via American Banker: “The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council said Thursday that it expects “financial institutions to incorporate patches on systems and services, applications, and appliances using OpenSSL and upgrade systems as soon as possible to address the vulnerability.” OpenSSL is open-source software that lets web sites encrypt communications with visitors. A vulnerability has been found in OpenSSL that could allow an attacker to decrypt, spoof or perform attacks on network communications that would otherwise be protected by encryption. The bug, nicknamed Heartbleed, has been around since 2012 and was announced by researchers on Monday. It has opened up a window to let attackers steal information such as user names and passwords and the private keys sites use to encrypt and decrypt sensitive data.”

Pew – The Growth in Digital Reporting

What it Means for Journalism and News Consumers by Mark Jurkowitz: “At a time when print newsrooms continue to shed jobs, thousands of journalists are now working in the growing world of native digital news—at small non-profits like Charlottesville Tomorrow, big commercial sites like The Huffington Post and other content outlets, like BuzzFeed, that have moved… Continue Reading

Guardian – CIA and White House under pressure after Senate torture report leaks

The Guardian – A leak of the major findings of a landmark Senate inquiry into the CIA’s post-9/11 torture of terrorism detainees led, on Friday, to intensified pressure on the White House and the CIA to release the inquiry speedily and with a minimum of redactions. The classified study, prepared by the Senate select committee on intelligence, concluded that the… Continue Reading

Crude oil reserves at start of 2013 reach highest level since 1976

“U.S. crude oil proved reserves rose for the fourth consecutive year in 2012, increasing by 15% to 33 billion barrels, according to the U.S. Crude Oil and Natural Gas Proved Reserves (2012) report released April 10 by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. U.S. crude oil and lease condensate proved reserves were the highest since 1976, and the… Continue Reading

GAO Report – Ballistic Missile Defense

BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE: Actions Needed to Address Implementation Issues and Estimate Long-Term Costs for European Capabilities, GAO-14-314: Published: Apr 11, 2014. Publicly Released: Apr 11, 2014. “The Department of Defense (DOD) met the presidentially announced time frame to deploy initial ballistic missile defense (BMD) capabilities in Europe under the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) but did not fully identify and… Continue Reading

FTC- Heartbleed May Cause You Some Heartache

News release: “If you’re thinking “Heartbleed” sounds serious, you’re right. But it’s not a health condition. It’s a critical flaw in OpenSSL, a popular software program that’s used to secure websites and other services (like VPN and email). If your company relies on OpenSSL to encrypt data, take steps to fix the problem and limit… Continue Reading