Katrina Manson reports: A common explanation for why the Soviet Union never used nuclear weapons during the Cold War was the expectation that any attack would likely prompt a devastating nuclear response. The fear of mutually assured destruction was enough to keep both the USSR and the U.S. from launching a nuclear attack, even as…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
This Israeli Helped One of the World’s Biggest Jewish Organizations – Now He’s in Trouble
Ran Bar-Zik reports what sounds like a situation where a cybersecurity student who engaged in responsible disclosure after finding a leak at the scholarship application website of the American Joint Distribution Committee (“the Joint”) felt pressured and anxious by the Joint trying to get him to sign a statement afterwards. And so far, he hasn’t…
Mozilla finds mental health apps fail ‘spectacularly’ at user security, data policies
Charlie Osborne reports: An investigation into mental health and prayer apps has revealed a disturbing lack of concern surrounding user security and privacy. On Monday, Mozilla released the findings of a new study into these types of apps, which often deal with sensitive topics including depression, mental health awareness, anxiety, domestic violence, PTSD, and more,…
Hacking Russia was off-limits. The Ukraine war made it a free-for-all.
Joseph Menn reports: ….. the third month of war finds Russia, not the United States, struggling under an unprecedented hacking wave that entwines government activity, political voluntarism and criminal action. Digital assailants have plundered the country’s personal financial data, defaced websites and handed decades of government emails to anti-secrecy activists abroad. One recent survey showed…
Fourth Circuit Holds Statements About Importance of Data Security Not Actionable
Amy Heath and Eric Bosset of Covington and Burling write: The Fourth Circuit’s opinion last week in In re Marriott International, Inc., — F.4th —-, No. 21-1802 (4th Cir. Apr. 21, 2022), could prove useful to companies facing data breach class actions. Following a data breach of the Starwood guest reservation system, Marriott investors brought securities…
Court Rejects Demand for “Corrective” Notice in Blackbaud Data Breach MDL
Brianna Soltys and Kristin L. Bryan of Squire Patton Boggs write that the the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, which had consolidated all federal lawsuits against Blackbaud in the District of South Carolina, has rejected plaintiffs’ motion to require Blackbaud to issue a corrective notice. As a brief reminder: Blackbaud provides third-party services for entities…