Wednesday Morning: Whac-A-Mole

Can’t bop them on the head fast enough. There are just too many issues popping up. See which ones you can nail.

And GO!

Video popularity in Facebook’s ‘walled garden’ means change for news outlets
This is not good. This is AOL’s model come full circle. Increasingly Facebook is shutting down access from outside, forcing news outlets to move inside, and to produce video instead of text content in order to fight for attention. Numerous outlets are affected by this trend, including the former AOL (now Huffington Post). The capper is Facebook’s persistent tracking of any users, including those who click on Facebook links. What will this do to general election coverage? Facebook really needs effective competition — stat.

Weather and bad flu season raised French deaths above WWII’s rate
Wow. I knew the flu was bad last year, but this bad? Ditto for Europe’s weather, though the heat wave last summer was really ugly. Combined, both killed more French in one year than any year since the end of World War II, while reducing overall life expectancy.

FDA issues guidelines on ‘Postmarket Management of Cybersecurity in Medical Devices’ for comment
Sure hope infosec professionals jump all over this opportunity to shape policy and regulation. Imagine pacemakers being hacked like a Chrysler 300, or reprogrammed without customer knowledge like a VW diesel, or surveilling user like a Samsung smart TV…

UK’s Cameron says one thing, UK’s arms dealers another with sales of £1Bn arms to Saudi Arabia
Can’t. Even. *mumbles something about pig porker*

“The day after the prime minister [David Cameron] claimed to be ‘trying to encourage a political process in Yemen’ and declared ‘there is no military solution in Yemen’, official figures reveal that in just the three months July to September, the government approved the sale of over £1bn worth of bombs for the use of the Royal Saudi Air Force. …

[Source: The Guardian]

Lack of transparency problematic in fatal French drug trial
Like talking to a brick wall to get answers about the drug involved in one death and five hospitalizations after 94 subjects were given an experimental drug. On the face of it, simultaneous rather than staggered administration may have led to multiple simultaneous reactions.

Canadian immigrant helped two Chinese soldiers attempt theft of U.S. military aircraft plans
You want to know how ‘chaining’ works? Here’s a simple real world example allegedly used to spy on U.S. military aircraft: Identify a key node in a network; identify the node’s key relationships; sniff those connections for content and more key nodes. A Chinese immigrant in aircraft biz, located in Vancouver, shares email addresses of key individuals in the industry with Chinese officers. They, in turn, attempt to hack accounts to mine for plans, which their contact in Vancouver vets.

Now ask yourself whether these key individuals are in or related to anyone in the Office of Personnel Management database.

Ugh. Keep whacking those moles.