Last week the FCC gave us normal folks a tasty win. Some of you may remember that in late 2017, Former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai voted to repeal net neutrality in the United States. Fortunately, common sense prevailed and the net neutrality rules were later put back in place in 2018.
The FCC has recently ruled that they will not block California's more rigorous implementation of net-neutrality rules, arguing that state enforcement is more likely to force ISP compliance. Feels like it would probably work better if stricter guidelines were coming from Mr President himself, but I'm no expert on public policy 🤷🏻
This new ruling gives states the agency to "experiment" with their net-neutrality policies. While this is a good thing for places like California that generally go above and beyond the (American) norm to protect its constituents, the same cannot be said for every other state. The result will likely be a convoluted mess of 2 extremes, with one side opting for GDPR-style regulations while others will probably go for the bare minimum at best.
Yossi Sariel, the alleged leader of Israel's Unit 8200, a hyper-secretive unit of military hackers, has had his identity de-anonymized after he published a book under the super anonymous pen name of "Brigadier General YS." Electronic copies of his book included an anonymous email which was quickly and easily traced to Sariel and his personal accounts. Talk about excellent tradecraft...
Hackers are using a new technique to distribute their malware. This scheme involves Facebook ads and hijacked pages (or near-exact replicas). Users who are suckered in by these ads will become members of a fraudulent community, where the hackers will post AI-generated images to keep up with the ruse. Once your guard is down, they offer limited-time access to up-and-coming AI services and slip you a malicious file while you are too excited to even notice. One such fake service was able to get 1.2 million followers and was active on Facebook for almost a year.
Picture this: You're a Sicilian mob boss who's been on the run for over 20 years. You've made a new life for yourself in Spain where you run a small grocery store and restaurant. All of a sudden, the cops are onto you and it's all over just like that. You're so dumbfounded you even ask them how the heck they managed to figure out your genius alter ego. The answer: It all starts with this picture from Google Street View in 2018.
From this picture, authorities were made aware of the alter-ego of Gioacchino Gammino, who'd been posing as a chef at his restaurant "Cocina de Manu." Allegedly he hadn't called back to Sicily in over a decade and was completely dumbfounded that he'd been caught.
