BlueCross BlueShield hack may have exposed data for 10 million customers

Another week, another major institution falls victim to hackers. This time, it’s New York-based heathcare provider Excellus BlueCross BlueShield : the company says that more than 10 million personal records of its customers were exposed to hackers in an attack it discovered this past August. The company discovered the attack early in the month, but after doing more investigation it turned out that it actually took place way back in December of 2013. The investigation showed that the hackers could have accessed personal information including “name, date of birth, Social Security number, mailing address, telephone number, member identification number, financial account information and [insurance] claims information.” While all of this information could have been exposed to hackers, the company isn’t sure exactly what may have been revealed. The investigation thus far hasn’t shown any evidence of what data was stolen and whether it was used in any nefarious way, but Excellus is still offering its customers the now-commonplace two years of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection. Unfortunately, hacks against healthcare providers are hardly a rarity at this point. An attack on Premera , another arm of BlueCross, was revealed in March of this year, putting the data of 11 million customers at risk. And just a month earlier, Anthem was hacked — the database accessed in that breach contained the info of a whopping 80 million customers, though only a portion of those were believed to have been accessed. [Image credit: Shutterstock] Comments Source: Excellus BlueCross BlueShield , Democrat & Chronicle Tags: BlueCrossBlueShield, hack, healthcare

Read More:
BlueCross BlueShield hack may have exposed data for 10 million customers

Get Windows Media Center Running on Windows 10 in a Few Easy Steps

Microsoft has officially killed off Windows Media Center , but there’s still hope for you if alternatives like Kodi just don’t seem to fill the void. Here’s how you can get Windows Media Center running on Windows 10. Read more…

Continue reading here:
Get Windows Media Center Running on Windows 10 in a Few Easy Steps

Office 2016 confirmed for September 22 release, February for business

Microsoft today confirmed a previous leak that Office 2016 would be released on September 22nd. But the release of Office 365 ProPlus—the version of the desktop suite that comes with some Office 365 subscriptions—is a little more complex. Office 365 ProPlus, unlike the perpetually licensed, non-Office 365 version of Office, currently receives a steady trickle of monthly feature updates in addition to the security updates that all desktop Office products receive. This will continue with Office 2016—but only for one branch, the “Current Branch.” A new second branch is being created, the “Current Branch for Business” (CBB). The CBB won’t receive these monthly feature updates. Instead, those will happen three times a year—February, June, and October—and these features will lag the Current Branch by four months. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Continue reading here:
Office 2016 confirmed for September 22 release, February for business

GM Performs Stealth Update To Fix Security Bug In OnStar

An anonymous reader writes: Back in 2010, long before the Jeep Cherokee thing, some university researchers demonstrated remote car takeover via cellular (old story here). A new Wired article reveals that this was actually a complete exploit of the OnStar system (and was the same one used in that 60 Minutes car hacking episode last year). Moreover, these cars stayed vulnerable for years — until 2014, when GM created a remote update capability and secretly started pushing updates to all the affected cars. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read the original post:
GM Performs Stealth Update To Fix Security Bug In OnStar

Library offers Tor nodes; DHS tells them to stop

John writes, “After a library created a Tor node on its network, the DHS and local police contacted them to ask them to stop. For now they have; their Board of Trustees will vote soon on whether to renew the service.” Read the rest

Visit site:
Library offers Tor nodes; DHS tells them to stop

Apple’s OS X El Capitan launches on September 30th

Apple’s latest desktop OS upgrade, dubbed ” El Capitan , ” is scheduled to launch on September 30th, Apple announced today. El Capitan is like an update within an update: It’s named after a landmark inside of Yosemite (the name of the previous OS version) and it features a series of minor, yet useful, tweaks. El Capitan offers a new split-screen view, changes to email and app management, drag-and-drop options for Notes, and updates to Safari and Maps, among other improvements. We got our hands on the developer build back in June and concluded it was a nice upgrade, if not revolutionary: “There simply is no killer feature this time around. But as minor as some of them may seem, they’re all at the very least nice to have, and in many cases genuinely useful.” Apple teased the El Capitan release date yesterday with a sneaky little screenshot during its iPad Pro event : Filed under: Misc , Software , Apple Comments Source: Apple Tags: apple, ElCapitan, iphone2015, OSX, osxelcapitan

Visit site:
Apple’s OS X El Capitan launches on September 30th

Office 2016 starts rolling out on September 22

Microsoft’s next major Office update is now only a few weeks away: the software giant just announced that it will start rolling out Office 2016 starting on September 22. While it’s not nearly as exciting as new hardware, it’s still a significant release for Microsoft. It’ll be the first version of Office built specifically for Windows 10, and it also brings in some long-awaited features like real-time co-authoring and the addition of OneDrive attachments in Outlook. It also comes a few months after we saw the release of Office 2016 for Macs . You can still get a taste for Office 2016 on PCs today with the Public Preview , and it looks like you’ll be able to easily upgrade to the final versions of those apps once they’re available. Filed under: Software , Microsoft Comments Tags: microsoft, Office2016

Read More:
Office 2016 starts rolling out on September 22

Vietnam’s Tech Boom: a Look Inside Southeast Asia’s Silicon Valley

rjmarvin writes: Vietnam is in the midst of a tech boom. The country’s education system is graduating thousands of well-educated software engineers and IT professionals each year, recruited by international tech companies like Cisco, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Intel, LG, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba and others setting up shop in the southern tech hub of Ho Chi Minh City and the central coastal city of Da Nang. Young Vietnamese coders and entrepreneurs are also launching more and more startups, encouraged by government economic policies encouraging small businesses and a growing culture around innovation in the country. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Link:
Vietnam’s Tech Boom: a Look Inside Southeast Asia’s Silicon Valley

Sperm Whale Clans Speak Different Dialects

We humans pride ourselves on our cultural diversity, but we’re not the only creatures that form unique societies. Turns out, two clans of sperm whales living near the Galápagos Islands speak different dialects — offering yet more evidence that animals have culture, too. Read more…

Original post:
Sperm Whale Clans Speak Different Dialects

iOS 9 will be available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch September 16th

An official announcement of new iPhones usually means a release date for the latest version of Cupertino’s mobile operating system as well. Today was no different as Apple announced that iOS 9 would be available as a free download September 16th. When it arrives next week, you’ll be privy to new features like a new and improved Siri , system-level security settings and split-screen multitasking on the iPad (hello, iPad Pro ). Native apps like Maps (now with transit info), Notes and others have also been refreshed, so if you haven’t been adventurous enough to test drive the public beta , there will be a load of new stuff for you to try. And there’s that brand new News app too, serving up personalized content to your devices for reading on the go. To help store all of those newfangled Live Photos , iCloud pricing has been revised to 50GB for 99 cents a month, 200GB for $3/month and 1TB for a $10 monthly fee. If you’re looking to make the switch from Android, Apple’s new “Move to iOS” app will arrive alongside iOS 9 as well to lend a hand moving your stuff over to a new phone/tablet. In terms of compatible devices, the new OS will play nice with iPhone 4s and later, 5th-gen iPod touch and later, iPad 2 and later and iPad mini and later when it arrives in just a few days. Filed under: Software , Mobile , Apple Comments Source: Apple Tags: apple, ios, ios9, iphone, iphone2015, mobilepostcross, software, update

More:
iOS 9 will be available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch September 16th