Apple is reported to have released an urgent software update on Wednesday, days after Turkish developer Lemi Ergin publicly reported a simple but serious bug in its Mac Operating System.

MacOS High Sierra Affected

The bug was discovered in the most recent version of MacOS High Sierra. It has been reported that, by entering the username “root”, and leaving the password field blank, and hitting the enter key several times, a user is granted unrestricted access to powerful administrator rights on the computer.

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A researcher has suggested that the GDPR fine structure could lead to cyber-criminals being given price points to set their ransoms at because now they know how much money they should be asking.

GDPR

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force 25th May 2017. As part of the enforcement mechanism, a fine structure has been published to encourage compliance with the Regulation. The fine structure for GDPR is actually tiered depending upon the scope of the violation, but it has been published and widely publicised that lesser violations will attract fines of 2% of global turnover, and more serious violations will attract fines of up to €20 million, or 4% of their global turnover (whichever is greater).

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The crypto-currency Bitcoin has now reached a record high of $10,000 (£7,462) after only trading at $1,000 at the start of the year, with some experts saying it’s got further to climb.

What Is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a digital web-based currency that operates without the need for central banks and uses highly secure encryption (a crypto-currency) to regulate the currency units and to verify transfers of funds. Bitcoin, which was first produced in 2009, uses the ‘Blockchain’ technology. Blockchain is an open and programmable technology that can be used to record transactions for virtually anything of value that can be converted to code and is often referred to as a kind of ‘incorruptible ledger’.

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A report by the educational charity and think tank ‘Reform’ has suggested that Blockchain technology could be used by the UK government as a more effective, efficient, and modern way to provide verification of the identities of citizens.

What Is Blockchain?

Blockchain is an incorruptible peer-to-peer network (a kind of ledger) that allows multiple parties to transfer value in a secure and transparent way. Blockchain’s Co-Founder Nic Carey describes Blockchain as being like “a big spreadsheet in the cloud that anyone can use, but no one can erase or modify”.

Blockchain technology operates using the IBM cloud and is powered by Hyperledger Fabric 1.0 of Linux Foundation. The developers of the Blockchain system say that the trust between participants is not necessary because trust is embedded in the system itself, and that access to all relevant information is available to participants.

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The government has announced that its new £40m Geospatial Commission will start its strategy of releasing more of the location data held by public bodies to help businesses and boost economic growth, by giving small businesses free access to OS MasterMap® data.

The Commission

It has been announced that the new £40m Geospatial Commission, sitting under the authority of the Cabinet Office, will release Ordnance Survey location data first to help boost business for small companies.

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German Telecoms regulator the Federal Network Agency has banned the sale of smartwatches to children and asked parents to destroy any that they already have.

Danger To Children – Spying and Tracking

The reason why the regulator has taken the step is over concerns that children wearing the watches could be, in theory, spied upon and tracked. These risks have been identified because the watches are internet-connected and are thought to be poorly secured e.g. no encryption of any transmitted data. This could mean that they could be hacked and taken over, and also the GPS tracking in the watches could be used by unauthorised persons to track the child.

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A new study from Princeton University has suggested that your keystrokes, mouse movements, scrolling behaviour, and the entire contents of the pages you visit may be tracked and recorded by hundreds of companies.

What??

The study revealed that no fewer than 480 websites of the world’s top 50,000 sites are known to have used a technique known as ‘session replay’, which, although designed to allow companies to gain an understanding of how customers use websites, also records an alarming amount of potentially dangerous information.

The researchers found that companies are now tracking users individually, sometimes by name.

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It has been reported that Uber concealed a massive data breach from a hack involving the data of 57 million customers and drivers, and then paid the hackers $100,000 to delete the data and to keep quiet about it.

More Than Two Years Ago?

Reportedly, the hacking of ride-hailing service Uber’s stored data took place more than two years ago. Instead of reporting the breach to regulators and going public with the news, Uber are now accused of concealing the breach.

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The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has said that it backs the idea that anyone accessing personal data without a valid reason or without their employer’s knowledge is guilty of a criminal offence, should be prosecuted, and prison sentences should be an option.

Recent Case

A recent case involving a nursing auxiliary at Newport’s Royal Gwent Hospital has re-ignited the ICO’s calls to get tough on personal data snoops. In the case of 61-year-old Marian Waddell of Newport, she was found to have accessed the records of a patient who was known to her, on six different occasions between July 2015 and February 2016, without having a valid business reason to do so and without the knowledge of the data controller (at the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board). The data controller is the person who (alone or jointly or in common with other persons) who determines the purposes for which and the manner in which any personal data is to be processed.

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