Day: December 19, 2016

Nigerian Man Charged in Hacking of Los Angeles County Emails

A ‘mere’ 10.8% phishing success rate has forced Los Angeles County to notify approximately 756, 000 individuals that their personal information may have been compromised. The attack occurred on May 13, 2016 when 1, 000 County employees received phishing emails. 108 employees were successfully phished. A Nigerian national has been charged in connection with the hack. From a report on The Guardian: Many large organizations would welcome a 10% success rate in their internal anti-phishing training sessions, with 30% and above being common. The 2016 Verizon DBIR suggests that 30% of all phishing emails are opened. The high number of individuals affected from a relatively low number of successes in LA County demonstrates how dangerous phishing attacks can be. The nature of the potentially compromised information is also concerning. “That information may have included first and last names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, driver’s license or state identification numbers, payment card information, bank account information, home addresses, phone numbers, and/or medical information, such as Medi-Cal or insurance carrier identification numbers, diagnosis, treatment history, or medical record numbers, ” said the County of Los Angeles Chief Executive Office in a statement. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Nigerian Man Charged in Hacking of Los Angeles County Emails

China Chokes On Smog So Bad That Planes Can’t Land

Major cities across northern China choked Monday under a blanket of smog so thick that industries were ordered shut down and air and ground traffic was disrupted. From a report: At least 23 cities issued red alerts for a swath of pollution that has hovered over much of the nation since Friday, China’s Xinhua news agency reported. Alerts are expected to remain in effect through Wednesday. Hospitals set emergency procedures in motion to deal with an influx of breathing-related illnesses. Large hospitals in the port city of Tianjin, less than 100 miles southeast of Beijing, saw a surge in asthma and other respiratory issues, China’s People’s Daily reported. The pollution forced the city to close the highways and caused delays and cancellations for dozens of flights, Xinhua said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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China Chokes On Smog So Bad That Planes Can’t Land

Physicists learn how to measure antimatter

As you might guess, measuring antimatter is rather tricky: it’s destroyed the moment it comes into contact with regular matter, so conventional approaches just aren’t going to cut it. Give credit to CERN, then, as its Alpha group just measured antimatter for the first time. The team stuffed positrons (positively charged electrons) and antiprotons (protons with a negative charge) into a vacuum tube to create antihydrogen, with a “magnetic trap” keeping a small number of the anti-atoms in existence for long enough to measure them. The team then blasted the antimatter with a laser to study its positrons as they shifted energy levels, producing a spectral line. The results aren’t shocking — surprise, antihydrogen behaves much like regular hydrogen (just with reversed charges). If it didn’t, scientists would have to rethink their understanding of physics. The very act of measuring is important, though. In addition to shedding light on the nature of antimatter, it also tells scientists something about the nature of the universe. In theory, matter and antimatter should have destroyed each other almost immediately. The new findings don’t explain why that didn’t happen, but they suggest that it isn’t due to the inherent nature of those substances. Via: NPR , Popular Mechanics Source: CERN , Nature

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Physicists learn how to measure antimatter