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Daily Archives: June 7, 2018

National Exposure Index Inferring internet security posture by country through port scanning

“In 2016, Rapid7 Labs launched the National Exposure Index in order to better understand the nature of internet exposure—services that either do not offer modern cryptographic protection, or are otherwise unsuitable to offer on the increasingly hostile internet—and how those exposure levels look around the globe. Read the 2018 National Exposure Index. Executive Summary – Now in our third year, we continue this ongoing investigation into the risk of passive eavesdropping and active attack on the internet, and offer insight into the continuing changes involving these exposed services. We’ve added a third dimension for exposure, “amplification potential,” in the wake of the disastrous memcached exposure uncovered in 2018. We’ve also modified our ranking algorithm in this edition. First, we’re measuring and scoring amplification abuse potential. Second, we’ve added more studies targeting exposed databases, and weighted groups of protocols as “more risky” than others, such as SMB, memcached, and database ports. In addition, we’re treating the especially responsive 2% of IPv4 nodes (0.08% of routable IPv4 addresses) as mere noise absorbers/generators in their networks and have removed those nodes from scoring entirely. To learn about the key findings and analysis, as well as what steps can be taken to improve security posture worldwide, read the National Exposure Index in its entirety, register for our webcast to hear directly from the researchers, and explore country statistics via the interactive map and select country-specific executive summaries below…”

Google’s Search-Ranking Manipulation Is Affecting Elections

GOOD: “As the 2018 midterm elections approach in the U.S., Google’s power to influence undecided voters remains overshadowed by Facebook’s personal data crisis. Facebook has “taken it on the chin” for its role in the 2016 presidential election, and organizations like the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica and the Russian troll farm known as the… Continue Reading

Amazon Sellers Say The Tech Giant Is Crushing Them With Competitive Pricing

BuzzFeed: “Amazon’s third-party marketplace and its millions of sellers across the world have grown into a billion-dollar sales stream for the company since the marketplace first launched in 2000. But as Amazon sells competing products at significantly lower prices and expands its private-label brands, some of the site’s third-party sellers say the retail giant is… Continue Reading

Taking Note: Poetry Reading Is Up—Federal Survey Results

National Endowment for the Arts – Sunil Iyengar, NEA Director of Research and Analysis: “In recent months, I’ve come across various news articles and at least one press release declaring that social media has contributed greatly to poetry’s readership. Some of these sources even attribute to the technology a bump in 2017 poetry book sales.… Continue Reading

Every area of the globe has warmed since instrument records began in 1880

“Every area of the globe has warmed since instrument records began in 1880, NASA data shows, Axios science editor Andrew Freedman reports: The planet isn’t warming equally, however — the fastest temperature increases are taking place at the poles. That Arctic, for example, is warming at more than twice the rate of the rest of… Continue Reading

Paper – Scholarly Twitter metrics

Scholarly Twitter metrics, Stefanie Haustein (Submitted on 6 Jun 2018) – to be published in W. Gl\”anzel, H.F. Moed, U. Schmoch, & M. Thelwall (Eds.), Handbook of Quantitative Science and Technology Research, Springer. 40 pages, 5 figures, 7 tables. Cite as: arXiv:1806.02201 [cs.SI] (or arXiv:1806.02201v1 [cs.SI] for this version) “Twitter has arguably been the most… Continue Reading

Can VPNs Really Be Trusted?

Tripwire: “With hacking attacks, government surveillance and censorship constantly in the headlines, more and more people are looking for ways to increase their privacy online. One of the simplest and most popular solutions is to use a virtual private network. With a VPN, all your internet traffic is encrypted and tunneled through a third-party server,… Continue Reading