Volcanic eruption fatalities prompt investigations

Forty seven visitors were on White Island, also known as Whakaari, off the coast of New Zealand when the island’s volcano erupted. Six people have died as a result of the eruption and several more are severely injured and burned. This sudden tragedy has led many to question why the Island, which is home to New Zealand’s most active Volcano, was open for visitors. GeoNet, an agency which assesses volcanic risk activity levels in New Zealand increased its monitoring of the volcano’s activity from level zero to two in the weeks leading up to the eruption.

Using Shodan as a tool to find vulnerable devices | GRI Blog

In the last blog post, we looked at the case study of the Kemrui Water company as outlined by the Verizon Data Breach Report which underscored potential consequences of having industrial control systems connected to the public internet. This post will go a little bit deeper and look at the ease in which a device similar to those that were probably in use at the water company and connected to the public internet can be found and potentially exploited. For this process I used the tool ‘Shodan’. Shodan is essentially a search engine for internet connected devices. It ‘crawls’ the internet, sending out connection requests and recording the public results, which include banner information, open ports, and running services. There have been numerous articles and blogs that highlight how Shodan has been used to find internet of things devices such as webcameras, license plate readers, programmable logic controllers (PLC), even ships using satellite antennas and botnet command and control servers.

US "digital divide": how internet access disparities affect resilience

The benefits of home internet access are countless. Having an internet connection allows families and individuals to engage in the economy, gain access to information which can improve quality of life, stay informed of news and connect with others. While mainstream internet use has come to influence almost every facet of life in the United States and across the globe, not all communities have been exposed to its resources at the same rates. 

Urban and rural environments pose challenges to climate-change resilience

As the effects of climate change lead to severe weather patterns around the globe, urban and rural areas have ongoing, interconnected challenges to confront. Many leaders are beginning to look to resilience solutions to combat these challenges, which must be tailored to the divergent problems faced by different regions. The effects of climate change have been especially severe around the equator. A report produced by James Cook University in Australia estimated that half of the world’s population will live in tropical climates by 2050, as populations and economies around the equator grow rapidly, and the tropics expand.

U.S. Department of Defense reviewing policies after security concerns arise over fitness tracking feature

The growth of wearable technology, as well as the ubiquity of cell phones, has become a prime example of the tradeoff between security and convenience. The most recent vulnerability came to light on January 27, when an Australian security student was looking at the public heat map of the location of Fitbit and other fitness app users, published by GPS tracking company Strava. The map shows anonymized data, amassed from 2015 to September 2017, of the location and routes of people who track their workouts, an increasingly common and popular feature. However, the growth of these apps, as well as a Pentagon fitness initiative in 2013 which distributed Fitbits, means many American soldiers around the world may use them to track their fitness – and daily steps. This constant use results in the heat maps showing not just the locations of what may be secret military installations, but the habitual movements of those stationed there – a clear security risk.