The Actuator - August 7th

Heading to Las Vegas this week for Black Hat. In preparation, I'm bringing a burner phone, wrapping it and my laptop in foil, and then burning them both when I head to the airport to leave.

As always, here are some links I hope you find interesting. Enjoy!

Woman arrested after Capital One hack spills personal info on 106 million credit card applicants

Secure your S3 buckets, y'all. This is a known attack vector, highlighted here as a "configuration vulnerability."

What We Can Learn from the Capital One Hack

Good summary of details regarding the "configuration vulnerabilities" existing within the open source code deployed by Capital One.

GitHub sued for aiding hacking in Capital One breach

This seems to be a stretch, but it's interesting to note. I'm not certain how GitHub is supposed to recognize leaked data is being stored (it could be fake data), or how they should verify code is secure.

Computer Science Curriculums Must Emphasize Privacy Over Capability

I like the idea, but don't think it's enough. Because most of the folks working in IT aren't CS majors, maybe we should have all fields of study include basic privacy and security information, too.

Google’s File on You is 10 Times Bigger Than Facebook’s — Here’s How to View It

In case you were wondering about the data Google is tracking as you surf the web.

All the best engineering advice I stole from non-technical people

A bit long, but worth your time.

NASA has created food out of thin air and it could be the solution to global hunger

Seems promising, but you'll have my full attention when you create bacon from thin air.

Got tired of mowing grass between the newly planted shrubs, so we built a new border path. At this rate, we won't have any grass to mow by 2021.