Myspace, LinkedIn Hacks Could Compromise Workplace Security

Don Omar Ft Wisin & Yandel - Myspace

By Aliah D. Wright 6/2/2016

The recent sale of online user data stolen from Myspace and LinkedIn highlights the need for human resource information technology professionals to make certain that employees arent using the same passwords for work and social media.

Time Inc., which owns Myspace, confirmed May 31 that the social networking site was hacked and that passwords, e-mail addresses and user names are now for sale online.

More than half a billion passwords have been stolen from Myspace, and 165 million LinkedIn accounts were compromised in May. Experts say the Myspace data was apparently stolen and sold by the same individual who hacked LinkedIn.

While many people may feel Myspace isnt as popular as Facebook, Twitter, etc., the bigger problem is password reuse, said Dodi Glenn, vice president of cyber security at PC Pitstop, a security software company based in Sioux City, Iowa.

With username and password reuse, an individual may use the same e-mail address or username and password on site A that they would use on sites B and C, he said. When site A gets compromised, the hacker uses an underground tool to check other various sites to see if this account login and password combination exists elsewhere.

Company leaders have to make sure employees know not to use the same passwords at work that they use to access other systems, experts say.

According to a survey by password management app Password Boss, 59 percent of consumers use the same passwords to access multiple accounts because its too hard to remember a different password for each account. The average professional memorizes 19 passwords between personal and work accounts, according to another study.

As SHRM Online reported last year, 54 percent of those surveyed by Software Advice said that their employers require them to use complex passwords; 51 percent are required to change their passwords regularly; 41 percent said they are locked out of their computer after too many failed attempts at entry; 39 percent are forbidden from reusing passwords; and just 29 percent are prohibited from using the default passwords that come with a system.

Said Lesley Fair, a senior attorney at the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces corporate data security, If you have personal information stored on your network, [then] strong authentication procedures, including sensible password hygiene, can help ensure that only authorized individuals can access the data.

Added Glenn: The use of weak passwords and unencrypted database passwords still presents a serious security problem to individuals and companies alike, and its one of the top causes of data breaches.

Details of the Myspace Hack

Shortly before the Memorial Day weekend, the Myspace technical security team became aware that stolen Myspace user login data was being made available in an online hacker forum, according to a news release from Time Inc. The compromised data is limited to a portion of Myspace usernames, passwords and e-mail addresses from the old Myspace platform prior to June 11, 2013when the site was relaunched with significant steps to strengthen account security.

The hacked Myspace information is currently for sale at the price of six bitcoin (worth about $2,800), online news site Vice reported.

Link to the LinkedIn Hack

According to PC Pitstop, the hacker responsible for the Myspace breach is the same one who sold the data of more than 165 million LinkedIn users in early May. Known as Peace, this hacker now claims to have more than 400 million e-mail addresses and passwords of Myspace usersmaking it possibly the largest leaked password breach ever, PC Pitstop stated in a news release.

Before Time confirmed the Myspace hack, the breach was initially announced in a blog post by the new search engine for leaked data, LeakedSource, on May 27. LeakedSource scours the Internet for data and accumulates hundreds of databases, allowing users the ability to search and find whether their data is available online or not, according to its website.

The Myspace breach does not affect any of Time Inc.s systems, subscriber information or other media properties and does not appear to include financial data of any kind, Time stated in its news release.

Myspace says it is notifying all affected users and working proactively with law enforcement authorities to resolve this issue. Myspace has also invalidated the passwords of all known affected users and is monitoring for suspicious activity that might occur on Myspace accounts.

HR Implications

Because LinkedIn, the largest resume database in the world, is used by tens of thousands of recruiters worldwide, this breach should be especially concerning to HR professionals. When that hack was revealed, LinkedIn reportedly invalidated the compromised account passwords and alerted its 400 million users about the importance of choosing strong passwords.

On May 17, 2016, we became aware that data stolen from LinkedIn in 2012 was being made available online. This was not a new security breach or hack. We took immediate steps to invalidate the passwords of all LinkedIn accounts that we believed might be at risk, LinkedIn stated in a news release.

Aliah D. Wright is an online editor/manager for SHRM.

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Addiction expert questions recently approved anti-opioid implant

Virtual Opioid (V.3) | Create Feelings of Euphoria | Binaural/Monaural Fusion | Meditation Audio

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first-ever implant to fight opioid abuse last week, offering hope amid an epidemic that killed nearly half a million Americans between 2000 and 2015. But some addiction experts are arguing that making the implant commercially available is premature, as questions remain over whether it would do more harm than good.

The matchstick-size implant, Probuphine, was developed by Braeburn Pharmaceuticals and Titan Pharmaceuticals, and is designed to release buprenorphine over a period of six months.

Buprenorphine is used to treat opioid dependence including narcotic painkillers and heroin. It"s part of a class of medications called opioid partial agonist-antagonists and works to prevent withdrawal symptoms when someone stops taking opiod drugs by producing similar effects to these drugs.

Probuphine developers say the rod-like device is designed to make the drug less susceptible to abuse or illicit resale, which is a common issue with oral drugs currently on the market. However, Probuphines four rods must be surgically implanted into a patients arm, and thats just one area where Dr. Indra Cidambi, an addiction expert and detox specialist, sees problems arising.

Doctors of osteotherapy, internists and psychiatrists are three-fourths of the prescribers, Cidambi told FoxNews.com. That means these are the offices which dont have a setup to perform a minor surgical procedure.

This barrier brings a divided-care component into play, raising questions over which doctor will be responsible for overseeing the patients care, she said.

It should be that the prescriber and implanter are in the same office, but its difficult to get two doctors in the office in the same time frame, Cidambi said.

Another concern is whether patients will continue with psychiatric care and lifestyle changes after receiving the implant, Cidambi said. Patients prescribed oral buprenorphine may be prone to mixing the drug with another opioid obtained illegally to achieve a high, but therapy can help dissuade patients from taking part in such behavior.

When you mix buprenorphine with opioids, there is an increased risk of respiratory depression. Thats what you see when a parent goes into a childs room and theyre not audible, Cidambi said. When someone is on these four rods, theyre not following therapy theyre easily combining the drugs, and that can lead to death.

Patients may also forget the drug is helping them achieve their sobriety, leaving them under the false impression that they dont need to attend therapy or adjust their lifestyle changes. In turn, rather than addressing the problem, the device could lead to co-abuse and eventually relapse after the six-month period of Probuphine ends, Cidambi said.

According to the Centers for Human and Health Services, fewer than half of the estimated 2.2 million Americans who need treatment for opioid abuse are receiving help. Those who are receiving care are typically prescribed either methadone, which is available only in government-endorsed clinics, or buprenorphine, which is available as a pill or a strip of film. Probuphine works to release 8 milligrams of buprenorphine, which means potential candidates would need to require a low dose.

Its really for those doing well on buprenorphine and dont need a high dose, Dr. Adam Gordon, a professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and member of the advisory panel who voted in favor of approving Probuphine, told NPR in January. Will they need to be on it six more months, maybe many times over their entire life? When is a good time to stop treatment? These are unanswered questions.

Cidambi also questioned the removal process. She cited a clinical trial in which, despite following proper procedure, only seven of 15 participating surgeons successfully removed all four rods.

Im not saying that they shouldnt come up with a new medication to address the problem, but we need to be more practical, Cidambi said. Every medication has its pros and cons. Im questioning, why complicate it more than what it is right now?

Despite concerns from experts like Cidambi, Braeburn Chief Executive Behshad Sheldon told Reuters ahead of the devices FDA approval that the company has high hopes for the implant.

I intend to make this the most successful implant thats ever been marketed and I think its absolutely possible given the unmet need, Sheldon said.

The company is aiming to implant a patient with Probuphine by June 21.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/06/02/addiction-expert-questions-recently-approved-anti-opioid-implant.html

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Florida drug database and "Pill Mills" curbed state"s top opioid prescribers

America"s Epidemic of Opioid Abuse

In the first year that two Florida laws aimed at curbing opioid prescriptions were in effect, the state"s top opioid prescribers wrote significantly fewer prescriptions of this type of pain medication, a new analysis led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health finds.

At the same time, the law did not effect the extreme concentration of opioid prescribing among a small group of providers -- approximately four percent of prescribers accounted for 40 percent of the prescriptions for opioid painkillers that made up two-thirds of all such pills prescribed in Florida. Primary care physicians made up more than half of the top prescribers. These findings suggests both the potential impact of policies at curtailing prescriptions among high-volume prescribers and the limits of the new policies, since many physicians still prescribed at high rates.

The new analysis followed patients and prescribers from July 2010 through November 2012; the two policies were implemented in late 2011. The first policy created the state"s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP), a database that tracks individual prescriptions, including patient names, dates and amounts prescribed, so physicians can be on the lookout for people with multiple prescriptions from multiple doctors, something associated with addiction and illicit use. The second law addressed so-called "pill mills," loosely regulated pain clinics that often see disproportionately high levels of opioid prescriptions. Florida"s "pill mill" measure requires clinics to register with the state and to be owned by a physician.

During the one-year period after the law went into effect, the researchers estimate that opioid prescriptions by Florida"s top opioid prescribers fell 6.2 percent and the total volume prescribed by this group dropped 13.5 percent (compared to a scenario in which the laws were not implemented). In this group, the number of patients also dropped, by 5.1 percent. (The top four percent included 1,526 providers out of a total of 38,465 in the state.) Among the remaining 96 percent of prescribers, prescriptions slipped a mere 0.7 percent.

The findings will appear online June 2 in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

Opioid misuse and abuse has reached epidemic proportions in the U.S., with an average of 44 people dying from opioids each day. To address the epidemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued new guidelines for prescribers initiating opioids for non-cancer pain in primary care. The guidelines recommend that prescribers use opioids only after other treatments have failed and that they use them at lower doses and shorter durations than in the past. In addition, every state in the country except for Missouri now has a Prescription Drug Monitoring Program in place.

"Our findings indicate how state policies such as PDMPs may reduce opioid use among the highest prescribers," says Hsien-Yen Chang, PhD, an assistant scientist in the Bloomberg School"s Department of Health Policy and Management and the study"s lead author. "But our report also shows that programs like PDMPs must be complemented by many other measures to combat the epidemic of addiction and non-medical opioid use."

For the analysis, the researchers compared prescription data from IMS Health"s LRx for both Florida and Georgia, which at the time did not have either a prescription database or a "pill mill" policy in place. The research team compared opioid prescriptions between July 2010 and June 2011 -- before the laws went into effect -- with those made between October 2011 and November 2012. (The three-month interval, July 2011 through September 2011, allowed for Florida"s two new laws to take effect.) The researchers identified the top, or "high risk," providers who prescribed the most opioid painkillers for four consecutive quarters. (By "high risk" prescribers, the authors mean those most likely to prescribe opioids. They note that it is a quantitative rather than a qualitative descriptor.)

Chang notes that the researchers did not have information about patients" diagnoses, and could therefore not assess the degree to which the prescriptions were clinically appropriate, either before or after the policies went into effect.

"When we looked at the prescription numbers in the year before the two laws went into effect, we were very surprised at how concentrated the prescriptions were among a subset of prescribers," says the study"s senior author G. Caleb Alexander, MD, MS, an associate professor in the Bloomberg School"s Department of Epidemiology. "At the same time, these aren"t the only prescribers that we should worry about. There is an unmistakable correlation between the volume of opioids on the market and injuries and deaths from these drugs, and health care providers have a shared responsibility for the extent that these products are prescribed."

The authors note that it is difficult to fully separate the impact of the PDMP and the pill-mill law. But they argue that doctors should get in the habit of checking the database before they write a prescription.

"At some point, checking the prescription database before prescribing an opioid should be just as routine as doing a kidney test before starting a new blood pressure treatment," Dr. Alexander says. "I think we"ll get to that point; we"ll see prescription databases used like these other tools and have an even greater impact."

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Hack Brief: Your Old Myspace Account Just Came Back to Haunt You

Greatest Moments in Hacking History: Samy Kamkar Takes Down Myspace

You may have left Myspace and its indie bands behind years ago, but Myspace hasnt forgotten you. Or rather, it hasnt forgotten your password, which is unfortunate, because it just revealed that a hacker stole username and password infomation from what could be more than 360 million accounts.

The Hack

Late last week, Myspace discovered that user login data (those usernames and passwords, and, in some cases, secondary passwords as well) were up for sale in an online hacker forum. Myspace says it believes the hacker responsible goes by the name of Peace, and that hes also responsible for therecent hacks of Tumblr and LinkedIn.

Importantly, according to the hack-tracking site LeakedSource, the intrusion itself took place in June of 2013, before MySpace transitioned from failed social network to failed music marketing platform. That means that even if you havent used MySpace in years, you still could be vulnerable.

Whos Affected

More people than you might think!

Email addresses, Myspace usernames, and Myspace passwords for the affected Myspace accounts created prior to June 11, 2013 on the old Myspace platform are at risk, writes Myspace in a blog announcing the hack. It may be hard to remember now, but Myspace was once hugely popular, as evidenced by LeakedSources findings that 360,213,024 user records are in the data set111,341,258 of which have an associated username.

As for current users, Myspace says it has increased its security significantly since 2013, specifically by using double salted hashes, which makes it much harder to crack passwords even if theyve been breached. If you joined Myspace after its 2013 relaunch, you should be clear, and also whats it like over there? Let us know in the comments.

How Serious Is This?

Its pretty serious. Its unlikely that anyone will break into your zombie Myspace page; the company has invalidated user passwords for all affected accounts, and didnt store credit card or other financial info anyway. The bigger worry, though, is that MySpace didnt protect passwords with much rigor prior to 2013, meaning that if you use the same username and password combo on any other sites today as you did for social networking in 2007, youre at risk.

Its also concerning just for the sheer volume of the hack; if LeakedSource is correct, this would be one of the largest breaches ever. That it comprises mostly old Myspace accounts also presents another problem: Who remembers the password they were using several years ago on a long-ignored platform? Its hard to change a compromised password if you dont even know what it is, which means that to feel truly safe, you should probably change any password youve been using for a long time across multiple services. Also, stop using the same password across multiple services. Seriously, stop.

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Calvin Harris Is the One Who Broke Things Off With Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift - Out Of The Woods

It was Calvin Harris who ended things with Taylor Swift, a source tells Us Weekly. As previously confirmed by Us, the How Deep Is Your Love producer and the Shake It Off songstress recently called it quits on their relationship after 15 months of dating.

Taylor Swift (left) and DJ Calvin Harris attend the 2015 Billboard Music Awards at MGM Grand Garden Arena on May 17 in Las Vegas. Jeff Kravitz/BMA2015/FilmMagic PHOTOS: Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris Romance Timeline

Taylor is doing OK now, but she was upset, the insider adds, explaining that the duos relationship just simply ran its course.

It just wasnt working anymore, another source previously told Us.

PHOTOS: Celebrity Splits of 2016

According to the first insider, the pair were having issues before Harris May 20th accident, but Swift, 26, was there for him.

Taylor Swift, Calvin Harris Split: Love Is Dead! and More Reactions Taylor Swift, Calvin Harris Split Calvin Harris Breaks Silence After Scary Car Crash

She was worried, an insider told Us of the Grammy winner, who rushed to the 32-year-old DJs side after he was involved in a car accident in Las Vegas.

The pair first stepped out together in April 2015 after hitting it off at the 2015 Brit Awards. They recently celebrated their one-year anniversary with a tropical getaway, where they shared rare PDA photos of their sunset kisses via social media.

PHOTOS: Taylor Swift"s Red Carpet Style Evolution

Im in a magical relationship right now, Swift had gushed in Vogues April 2016 issue.

Sign up now for the Us Weekly newsletter to get breaking celebrity news, hot pics, and more delivered straight to your inbox!

Source: http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/calvin-harris-ended-things-with-taylor-swift-details-w208540

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Health Ministry preparing for microcephaly cases

Our son Nicholas has microcephaly

The Ministry of Health has begun to prepare for the possibility of babies being born with microcephaly arising from mothers being infected with the Zika virus (ZIKV) during pregnancy.

Microcephaly is a birth defect in which a baby is born with a small head.

These babes can also develop mental conditions that can impair their development.

Director of Emergency, Disaster Management and Special Services in the Ministry, Dr Melody Ennis, says the health ministry, as part of its response to ZIKV, is turning its attention to looking at measures to treat children with microcephaly in the event the country records such a cases.

Ennis says the response programme would also look at providing psycho-social support to families with a baby affected by the condition.

Director, Emergency, Disaster Management and Special Services in the Health Ministry, Dr Melody Ennis

She was speaking today at a press conference and prayer breakfast for the launch of Disaster Preparedness Month 2016.

There have been reports of a suspected case of a pregnant woman being diagnosed with the Zika virus, but the health ministry has declined to comment on the matter.

The ministry has since called a press conference for tomorrow on ZIKV to update the country.

Health Minister, Dr Christopher Tufton, told our news centre that the number of ZIKV cases has increased to 15.

Source: http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20160601/health-ministry-preparing-microcephaly-cases

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Kovacevich: I still believe in Theranos and its technology

Elizabeth Holmes defends Theranos amid media scrutiny at Fortune"s Global Forum

Theranos reached a $9 billion valuation based on its proprietary Edison technology, which it claims can conduct a range of tests from just a few drops of blood.

On Wednesday, Forbes revised its estimate of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes" net worth to zero from $4.5 billion, based on the assessment of a dozen venture capitalists, analysts and industry experts that her company"s valuation is now closer to $800 million.

In a statement to CNBC, Theranos said, "As a privately held company, we declined to share confidential information with Forbes. As a result, the article was based exclusively on speculation and press reports."

Source: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/02/kovacevich-i-still-believe-in-theranos-and-its-technology.html

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