Sicherheitsforscher der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen haben aufgedeckt, wie unsicher viele Online-Banking-Apps sind. Konkret soll in insgesamt 31 Anwendungen eine Sicherheitslücke zu finden sein, die Angreifer ausnützen können, um die Kontrolle über die Software zu übernehmen.

Der Pharmakonzern Bayer Austria hat derzeit in zwei österreichischen Apotheken Gesichtsscanner im Einsatz. Entdeckt hatte dies der ORF-Journalist Patrick Gruska. Einer der Apotheken befindet sich in Linz. Wie die Futurezone berichtet, werden die Gesichtsscans dafür genutzt, das ungefähre Alter und Geschlecht zu identifizieren und dann zielgruppengerechte Werbung einzublenden.

Kunden, die keinen intelligenten Stromzähler wollen, können diesen bisher laut der aktuellen Gesetzeslage schon ablehnen. Doch sie bekommen von den Netzbetreibern dann in Folge einen elektronischen Zähler installiert, bei dem bestimmte Funktionen per Software deaktiviert werden. Dazu zählten bisher die Speicherung von Tages- und Viertelstundenwerten des Stromverbrauchs. Durch die Änderung der Verordnung wird das bisherige Vorgehen der Netzbetreiber, trotz Opt-Outs auf elektronische Zähler zu wechseln, nun gesetzlich legitimiert.

Die gute Nachricht für Konsumenten ist aber, dass eine weitere, wesentliche Funktion, die bisher von der Deaktivierung ausgenommen war, nun inkludiert ist: die Fernabschaltfunktion. Über diese ist es dem Netzbetreiber möglich, Stromzähler an- und abzudrehen und damit schneller als bisher Kunden den Strom abzudrehen, wenn sie etwa mit der Zahlung im Rückstand sind.

Facebook regularly keeps making changes to its interface and features. It often tests out these changes quietly so unless they’re spotted by users, sometimes the changes can fly under the radar. The latest change hasn’t, though. Many users have discovered that Facebook no longer allows users to delete their own posts if they’re using the social network’s desktop web version.

When we talk about Digital Health, technology geeks is probably the first thought that comes to our mind. But what about healthcare professionals? Is real innovation in Healthcare organisations designed and developed with them?

inDemand is about Healthcare professionals identifying their unmet needs and solving them within a digital solution co-creation process with IT companies and the economical support from public funding bodies. It’s weird but true: Healthcare professionals will be having a direct participation and say during all the process. inDemand gives a leading role to Healthcare professionals.

Participants who have signed up for a three-month trial can also use the digital licence as proof of identity and age in pubs and clubs. Over 1,000 Dubbo residents have already signed up for the trial, which the NSW government plans to follow up with a full statewide rollout.

"The trial is the first of its kind in Australia and we've employed cutting-edge technology that will allow Dubbo motorists to use their digital driver licence in everyday scenarios with police and selected licensed establishments," Finance Minister Victor Dominello said in a statement.

The NSW government said it wants to roll out digital licences across NSW by the second half of 2018, which will give "additional levels of identity security and increased protection against online identity fraud," Minister for Roads, Maritime and Freight Melinda Pavey previously said when announcing the trial back in August.

Allerdings sind rubicon IT und Innenministerium mittlerweile auch auf anderer Art eng verzahnt. Gesellschafter der rubicon sindüber Stiftungen Johannes Strohmayer und Robert Schächter, deren zwei Stiftungen neunzig Prozent an der Oesterreichischen Staatsdruckerei halten. Diese hat wiederum ein Monopol auf Sicherheitsdrucksorten der Republik Österreich, also eine enge Geschäftsbeziehung zum Innenministerium.

Phones running Android have been gathering data about a user's location and sending it back to Google when connected to the internet, with Quartz first revealing the practice has been occurring since January 2017.

According to the report, Android phones and tablets have been collecting the addresses of nearby cellular towers and sending the encrypted data back, even when the location tracking function is disabled by the user.

A Google spokesperson told ZDNet that modern Android phones use a network sync system that requires the use of mobile country codes and mobile network codes, to ensure messages and notifications are received quickly.

The Brazilian government is rolling out digital driving licenses across the country after the initiative received the green light in July.

Aimed at reducing document fraud, the digital driving licenses will feature digital signature certificates and will be as legally valid as the physical document, which will continue to exist.

John N. Stewart, Senior Vice President and Chief Security and Trust Officer at Cisco, shared, “... We are pleased to collaborate with INTERPOL to exchange threat intelligence and find other knowledge-sharing opportunities to fight cybercrime globally.”

The First Amendment is too often overlooked in discussions of the National Security Agency’s vast surveillance authorities. But as Congress considers whether to reauthorize Section 702 of FISA this winter, we must remember that it’s not just our Fourth Amendment rights to privacy that are in the crosshairs, but also our First Amendment rights. These rights to anonymously speak, associate, access information, and engage in political activism are the bedrock of our democracy, and they’re endangered by the NSA’s pervasive surveillance.

The NSA uses Section 702 to justify ongoing programs to siphon off copies of vast amounts of our communications directly from the Internet backbone as well as require system-wide searches across the information collected by major Internet companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple.

Last week the European Parliament passed a new Consumer Protection Regulation that allows national consumer authorities to order ISPs, web hosts and domain registries to block or delete websites... all without a court order. The websites targeted are those that allegedly infringe European consumer law.

The risks of unelected public authorities being given the power to block websites was powerfully demonstrated in 2014, when the Australian company regulator ASIC accidentally blocked 250,000 websites in an attempt to block just a handful of sites alleged to be defrauding Australian consumers.

Google has recently announced that they’ll be running a pilot program in which it will utilize voice recognition technology to help transcribe doctor and patient visits. They have built automatic speech recognition models that are capable of handling multiple speaker conversations, meaning that it can separate the voices of the doctor and the patient.

The Department of Social Services has written to 8,500 current and former employees warning them their personal data held by a contractor has been breached.

In letters sent in early November the department alerted the employees to “a data compromise relating to staff profiles within the department’s credit card management system prior to 2016”.

The Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation is described (PDF) as "a world-first advisory body to enable and ensure safe, ethical innovation in artificial intelligence and data-driven technologies".

Its budget is to come from the £75m earmarked for artificial intelligence, but the Ministry of Fun* has offered precious little else about where the body will sit in the landscape, who will run it and whether it will have any real powers.

The world has never been so dependent on computers, networks and software so ensuring the security and availability of those systems is critical.

Despite this, major security events resulting in loss of data, services, or financial loss are becoming increasingly commonplace.

Brian Honan, founder and head of Ireland's first CSIRT and special adviser on internet security to Europol, argued that failures in cybersecurity should be viewed as an opportunity to learn lessons and prevent them happening again.

Here’s the good news. While their microphones are always on, Google Home and Alexa don’t actually do anything with your voice until you say their “wake word,” which is usually just ‘OK Google’ or ‘Alexa’. Despite the occasional viral story that suggests otherwise, Amazon and Google truly aren't keeping track of every single thing you say.

The massive Uber data breach will be discussed by the European Union's data protection authorities next week.

The group, known as the Article 29 Working Party, is meeting on November 28-29 and has put the hack, which affected 57 million users, high on its agenda.

Trevor Paglen describes himself as a landscape artist, but he is no John Constable. The landscapes Paglen frames extend to the bottom of the ocean and beyond the blurred edges of the Earth’s atmosphere. For the last two decades, the artist, a cheerful and fervent man of 43, has been on a mission to photograph the unseen political geography of our times. His art tries to capture places that are not on any map – the secret air bases and offshore prisons from which the war on terror has been fought – as well as the networks of data collection and surveillance that now shape our democracies, the cables, spy satellites and artificial intelligences of the digital world.

The federal government is considering allowing private companies to use its national facial recognition database for a fee, documents released under Freedom of Information laws reveal.

The partially redacted documents show that the Attorney General’s Department is in discussions with major telecommunications companies about pilot programs for private sector use of the Facial Verification Service in 2018. The documents also indicate strong interest from financial institutions in using the database.