AT&T’s Identity Giveaway! | Tech Talk Today 71

AT&T’s Identity Giveaway! | Tech Talk Today 71

An AT&T insider steals customer info, Samsung’s sales could be slipping by as much as 60% and Yahoo gets bit by Shellshock.

Plus our Kickstarter of the week & much more!

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AT&T Hit By Insider Breach | Threatpost | The first stop for security news

AT&T is warning consumers about a data breach involving an insider who illegally accessed the personal information of an unspecified number of users. The compromised data includes Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers.


In a letter sent to the Vermont attorney general, AT&T officials said that the breach occurred in August and that the employee in question also was able to access account information for AT&T customers.


“We recently determined that one of our employees violated our strict privacy and security guidelines by accessing your account without authorization in August 2014, and while doing so, would have been able to view and may have obtained your account information including your social security number and driver’s license number. Additionally, while accessing your account, the employee would have been able to view your Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI), without proper authorization,” said Michael A. Chiarmonte, director of finance billing operations at AT&T, in a letter to the Vermont AG.


The CPNI he referred to in the letter includes data that’s related to the services that consumers buy from the company. Chiarmonte said that the letter that the employee responsible for the breach no longer works for AT&T. It’s not clear from AT&T’s disclosure how many consumers have been affected by the breach or which other states may have citizens who are affected.


As a result of the breach, AT&T is offering affected customers a year of free credit monitoring, as has become customary in these incidents.

Samsung Warns Weak Q3 Earnings – Business Insider

Samsung warned Monday night that its third-quarter earnings will be weaker than expected.


The company said it would report an operating profit of $3.8 billion for the quarter ending in September — a decline of nearly 60 percent from the same time a year earlier. Sales fell to $44 billion, off 20 percent from a year ago. […]


The South Korean electronics giant said that while smartphone shipments increased, its operating margins fell because of higher marketing costs, fewer shipments of high-end phones and a lower average selling price for the devices.


The company said it is responding with a new smartphone lineup that will include new mid-range and low-end devices, which would make Samsung’s products more competitive in markets such as China.

Hackers Compromised Yahoo’s Servers Using Shellshock

The exploits were first discovered by security researcher, Jonathan Hall. Hall pointed to two Yahoo Games servers that had been exploited. After Yahoo was contacted by Security Week it issued the following statement:


A security flaw, called Shellshock, that could expose vulnerabilities in many web servers was identified on September 24. As soon as we became aware of the issue, we began patching our systems and have been closely monitoring our network. Last night, we isolated a handful of our impacted servers and at this time we have no evidence of a compromise to user data. We’re focused on providing the most secure experience possible for our users worldwide and are continuously working to protect our users’ data.

Plex Launches On Xbox One

The Plex app for Xbox One is a new approach to Plex overall, with a landscape interface that Plex co-founder and Chief Product Officer Scott Olechowski says is admittedly due partly to design requirements set out by the Xbox team, but that also will make its way back to the wider suite of Plex software on other platforms, too.


“[Xbox] certainly kind of encouraged this landscape type scrolling, but the more we used this the more we realized how well it works,” he said. “You’ll see this approach taken in other places. The more we used it, the more we realized it’s more natural. We kind of fell in love with aspects of it, [and] over time we want to have a more consistent experience.”

The Xbox One, the first official video game console to launch in China in 14 years, has started its console life in the middle kingdom with a bang! According to Chinese news sources, the Xbox One sold over 100,000 units within the first week of sales.

KICK STATER OF THE WEEK: Granola Strolla – Portable Solar USB charger by Granola Strolla Inc. — Kickstarter

GranolaStrolla is a portable, affordable and easy to use solar charged batterypack able to charge USB devices as fast as a wall charger

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