Google Suffered a Brief Outage on Monday Which Pushed Some of Its Traffic Through Russia, China and Nigeria; Company Says It Will Do an Investigation
technology - Posted On:2018-11-13 10:29:57 Source: slashdot
Google suffered a brief outage and slowdown Monday, with some of its traffic getting rerouted through networks in Russia, China and Nigeria. From a report: Incorrect routing instructions sent some of the search giant's traffic to Russian network operator TransTelekom, China Telecom (which, as you may recall, has been found of misdirecting internet traffic in recent months) and Nigerian provider MainOne between 1:00 p.m. and 2:23 p.m. PT, according to internet research group ThousandEyes. "This incident at a minimum caused a massive denial of service to G Suite and Google Search," wrote Ameet Naik, ThousandEyes' technical marketing manager, in a blog post. "However, this also put valuable Google traffic in the hands of ISPs in countries with a long history of Internet surveillance. Applications like Gmail and Google Drive don't appear to have been affected, but YouTube users experienced some slowdown. Google noted that the issue was resolved and said it would conduct an internal investigation. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Corporate America's Blockchain and Bitcoin Fever is Over
technology - Posted On:2018-11-13 09:44:56 Source: slashdot
S&P 500 executives are dropping blockchain buzzwords less on earnings calls and during presentations to analysts and investors. Analysts are also asking about it less. From a report: The hype was just that. The odds of a company turning blockchain "headlines into reality" are slim, as Forrester Research predicts. The prospect of incorporating blockchain technology or cryptocurrency into businesses excited investors and drove up share prices temporarily -- just look at Kodak, beverage company Long Blockchain, or Hooters franchisee Chanticleer Holdings -- so it's no wonder executives wanted shareholders to know that they too might get in on the new technologies. At the peak earlier this year, "blockchain" was mentioned 173 times, according to an analysis of company transcripts by Axios. The number has since fallen as much as 80%. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A 100,000-Router Botnet Is Feeding On a 5-Year-Old UPnP Bug In Broadcom Chips
it - Posted On:2018-11-13 08:14:57 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A recently discovered botnet has taken control of an eye-popping 100,000 home and small-office routers made from a range of manufacturers, mainly by exploiting a critical vulnerability that has remained unaddressed on infected devices more than five years after it came to light. Researchers from Netlab 360, who reported the mass infection late last week, have dubbed the botnet BCMUPnP_Hunter. The name is a reference to a buggy implementation of the Universal Plug and Play protocol built into Broadcom chipsets used in vulnerable devices. An advisory released in January 2013 warned that the critical flaw affected routers from a raft of manufacturers, including Broadcom, Asus, Cisco, TP-Link, Zyxel, D-Link, Netgear, and US Robotics. The finding from Netlab 360 suggests that many vulnerable devices were allowed to run without ever being patched or locked down through other means. Last week's report documents 116 different types of devices that make up the botnet from a diverse group of manufacturers. Once under the attackers' control, the routers connect to a variety of well-known email services. This is a strong indication that the infected devices are being used to send spam or other types of malicious mail. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Next Version of HTTP Won't Be Using TCP
technology - Posted On:2018-11-12 19:59:59 Source: slashdot
"The HTTP-over-QUIC experimental protocol will be renamed to HTTP/3 and is expected to become the third official version of the HTTP protocol, officials at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) have revealed," writes Catalin Cimpanu via ZDNet. "This will become the second Google-developed experimental technology to become an official HTTP protocol upgrade after Google's SPDY technology became the base of HTTP/2." From the report: HTTP-over-QUIC is a rewrite of the HTTP protocol that uses Google's QUIC instead of TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) as its base technology. QUIC stands for "Quick UDP Internet Connections" and is, itself, Google's attempt at rewriting the TCP protocol as an improved technology that combines HTTP/2, TCP, UDP, and TLS (for encryption), among many other things. Google wants QUIC to slowly replace both TCP and UDP as the new protocol of choice for moving binary data across the Internet, and for good reasons, as test have proven that QUIC is both faster and more secure because of its encrypted-by-default implementation (current HTTP-over-QUIC protocol draft uses the newly released TLS 1.3 protocol). In a mailing list discussion last month, Mark Nottingham, Chair of the IETF HTTP and QUIC Working Group, made the official request to rename HTTP-over-QUIC as HTTP/3, and pass it's development from the QUIC Working Group to the HTTP Working Group. In the subsequent discussions that followed and stretched over several days, Nottingham's proposal was accepted by fellow IETF members, who gave their official seal of approval that HTTP-over-QUIC become HTTP/3, the next major iteration of the HTTP protocol, the technology that underpins today's World Wide Web. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
US Chip Cards Are Being Compromised In the Millions
it - Posted On:2018-11-12 17:44:59 Source: slashdot
According to a study from Gemini Advisory, some 60 million U.S. cards were compromised in the past 12 months. "Of those, 93 percent were EMV chip-enabled," reports Threatpost. "Also, crucially, 75 percent, or 45.8 million, were records stolen from in-person transactions." From the report: These were likely compromised through card-skimming malware and point-of-sale (POS) breaches at establishments like retailers, hotels and restaurants, the likes of which continue to make headlines. Further results show that the U.S. leads the rest of the world in the total amount of compromised EMV payment cards by a massive 37.3 million records. In the past 12 months, about 15.9 million compromised non-U.S. payment cards were posted for sale on the underground, split between 11.3 million card-not-present (online transaction) records and 4.6 million card-present records, of which 4.3 million were EMV enabled. This means that the theft level of EMV-enabled card data in the U.S. is 868 percent higher than the rest of the world combined. The reason for this state of affairs, according to Gemini, is the lack of U.S. merchant compliance -- too many of them still use the mag-stripe function at PoS terminals. Gemini also said that card-present data "is also collected via a more manual method by skimmer groups, who are utilizing custom made hardware known as 'shimmers' to record and exfiltrate data from ATMs and POS systems. The firm also found that while most large U.S. merchants have fully transitioned to EMV, gas pump terminals and small/medium size businesses are emerging as the main targets for cybercriminals going forward. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
More Than 50 Nations Launch 'Paris Call' To Fix Hate Speech and Cyberattacks; China and Russia Not Among Signatories, Trump Administration Reluctant To Sign
it - Posted On:2018-11-12 16:30:00 Source: slashdot
French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday launched a push to regulate the internet. France and U.S. technology giants, including Microsoft, are pushing for governments and companies worldwide to sign up for a new initiative aimed at establishing regulations for the internet, to fight such online threats as cyber attacks, hate speech and online censorship. A report adds: With the launch of a declaration entitled the 'Paris call for trust and security in cyberspace,' French President Emmanuel Macron is hoping to revive efforts to regulate cyberspace after the last round of United Nations negotiations failed in 2017. In the document, which is supported by many European countries but, crucially, not China or Russia, the signatories urge governments to beef up protections against cyber meddling in elections and prevent the theft of trade secrets. The Paris call was initially pushed for by tech companies but was redrafted by French officials to include work done by U.N. experts in recent years. [...] In another sign of the Trump administration's reluctance to join international initiatives it sees as a bid to encroach on U.S. sovereignty, French officials said Washington might not become a signatory, though talks are continuing. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Researchers Say Social Media Can Cause Depression
technology - Posted On:2018-11-12 12:45:00 Source: slashdot
Spending too much time on "social media" sites like Facebook is making people more than just miserable. It may also be making them depressed. From a report: A new study conducted by psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania has shown -- for the first time -- a causal link between time spent on social media and depression and loneliness, the researchers said. It concluded that those who drastically cut back their use of sites like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat often saw a marked improvement in their mood and in how they felt about their lives. "It was striking," says Melissa Hunt, psychology professor at University of Pennsylvania, who led the study. "What we found over the course of three weeks was that rates of depression and loneliness went down significantly for people who limited their (social media) use." Many of those who began the study with moderate clinical depression finished just a few weeks later with very mild symptoms, she says. The study, "No More FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression," was conducted by Melissa Hunt, Rachel Marx, Courtney Lipson and Jordyn Young, is being published by the peer-reviewed Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. For the study, Hunt and her team studied 143 undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania over a number of weeks. They tested their mood and sense of well-being using seven different established scales. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Voice Tech Like Alexa and Siri Hasn't Found Its True Calling Yet
technology - Posted On:2018-11-12 12:00:00 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader shares a report: As the holiday shopping season approaches, voice-powered smart speakers are again expected to be big sellers, adding to the approximately one-quarter to one-third of the U.S. population that already owns a smart speaker and uses a voice assistant at least once a month. Voice interfaces have been adopted faster than nearly any other technology in history. While some of this will likely come to pass, the hype might be disguising where we really are with voice technology: Earlier than we think. About a third of smart speaker owners end up using them less after the first month, according to an NPR and Edison Research report earlier this year. Just a little more than half said they wouldn't want to go back to life without a smart speaker. While people are certainly enthusiastic about the new technology, it's not exactly life-changing yet. Today, voice assistants and smart speakers have proven to be popular ways to turn on the radio or dim the lights or get weather information. But to be revolutionary, they will need to find a greater calling -- a new, breakout application. Smart speakers, like training wheels, are getting people more used to talking to their devices. However, the future of voice probably won't be on speakers at all. The major speaker makers have all added screens to their assistants. Samsung, smartly, is putting its voice assistant Bixby on its TVs, which have the potential to become the smart assistant hub of choice. The key element is the voice assistant, regardless of what device it resides in. Smart assistants will creep into every aspect of our lives and will be available at home and away. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Says Follower Count is Meaningless
technology - Posted On:2018-11-12 03:29:57 Source: slashdot
In a fireside chat in New Delhi, India, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said Monday the "follower count" metric on the social platform is meaningless. Talking in front of a live audience, the Twitter co-founder said it was probably unwise to include and emphasize on the follower count on his social network, a move he said the company did not realize while implementing it back in the day. "Back then, we were not really thinking about all the dynamics that could ensue afterwards," he said. "One of the things we did was we had people follow each other -- so you can be a follower of someone," Dorsey said, explaining the thinking that went into carving some of the core features of Twitter. The company listed the number of people you had, and "made the font size a little bit bigger than everything else on the page. We did not really think much about it and moved on to the next problem to solve. What that has done is we put all the emphasis, not intending to, on that number of how many people follow me. So if that number is big and bold, what do people want to do with it? They want to make it go up." "So when you open Twitter and you see that number is five. It is actually incentivizing you to increase that number. That may have been right 12 years ago, but I don't think it is right today. I don't think that's the number you should be focused on. I think what is more important is the number of meaningful conversations you're having on the platform. How many times do you receive a reply?" Dorsey's remarks comes as he has publicly acknowledged that the company is rethinking about some of the core features of Twitter. Earlier this month, it was reported that Twitter was also thinking about discontinuing the "likes" feature -- a report Twitter neither confirmed or denied. On Monday, Dorsey reaffirmed that focusing on number of likes and retweets is not healthy. Last week, Ev Williams, one of the co-founders of Twitter, expressed a similar sentiment about follower counts. "I think showing follower counts was probably ultimately detrimental. It really put in your face that the game was popularity," he said at a conference. [Reporting by Manish Singh.] Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Cyclists Are Faster Than Cars And Motorbikes in Cities and Towns, Study Says
technology - Posted On:2018-11-11 11:15:00 Source: slashdot
Smartphone data from riders and drivers schlepping meals for restaurant-to-home courier service Deliveroo shows that bicycles are faster than cars and motorized two-wheelers. From a news writeup, which sources its data from Deliveroo, a UK-headquartered food delivery company with more than 30,000 riders and drivers in 13 countries: That bicyclists are faster in cities will come as no surprise to bicycle advocates who have staged so-called "commuter races" for many years. However, these races -- organized to highlight the swiftness of urban cycling -- are usually staged in locations and at hours skewed towards bicycle riders. The Deliveroo stats are significant because they have been extracted from millions of actual journeys. And it's all thanks to Frank. Frank is the name Deliveroo gives its routing algorithm (the name was chosen for the Danny DeVito character in the TV series "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.") Delivering millions of simultaneous orders from thousands of restaurants to hungry consumers within 30 minutes using roving self-employed couriers equipped with smartphones is a complex vehicle routing problem: consumers want piping hot food; restaurants want meals picked up when cooked; riders -- paid per drop -- want multiple deliveries per hour, and Deliveroo needs to make money. The algorithm team employs data scientists with PhDs in computer vision, computer science, operations research, cognitive neuroscience, econometrics, machine learning, and physics. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Credit Card Chips Have Failed to Halt Fraud (So Far)
it - Posted On:2018-11-11 03:44:57 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes Fortune: New chip-enabled credit cards, which were rolled out to U.S. consumers starting in 2015, were supposed to put an end to rampant credit card fraud. So much for that. A new report from the research firm Gemini Advisory has found that, of more than 60 million cases of credit card theft in the last 12 months, a whopping 93% of the stolen cards had the new chip technology... In theory, EMV should reduce fraud because every card transaction requires an encrypted connection between the chip card and the merchant's point-of-sale terminal... But while the EMV standard is supposed to ensure the card data cannot be captured, many merchants are failing to properly configure their systems, according to a Gemini Advisory executive who spoke with Fortune... The upshot is that criminals have been able to insert themselves into the transaction data steam, either by hacking into merchant networks or installing skimmer devices in order to capture card information... The report concludes by noting that big merchants have begun to tighten up their implementation of the EMV system, which will make them less of a target. Instead, criminals are likely to begin focusing on smaller businesses. The report estimates that in just the last twelve months, 41.6 million records have been stolen from chip-enabled cards. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A 'Clippy'-Style Chatbot -- and Other Creepy Online Dating Innovations
technology - Posted On:2018-11-11 00:44:58 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes Yahoo Finance: The dating site eharmony is hoping to launch a chatbot to stop people from ghosting, or cutting off communication with potential matches, CEO Grant Langston exclusively tells Yahoo Finance. The would-be feature, which eharmony has yet to start development on, would pop up in the user interface after an online conversation with another user drops off after several days or weeks. The dating bot could analyze information on both users' dating profiles and recommend they reinitiate contact by prompting them to "Say something" or suggesting something more helpful... . "It's astounding really how many people need help. We think we can do that in an automated way..." Langston acknowledges the business has a lot to troubleshoot with the feature before it eventually rolls it out, including addressing possible user concerns around user privacy. While having a feature like the date bot could hypothetically increase the odds of a user scoring that first date, it could also unnerve some other users wondering how their prospective suitor knew to ask about their favorite musician, movie or music to begin with. Such concerns could theoretically call for privacy options regulating what kind of profile information the bot can grab and serve up as an icebreaker. The dating site could also decide to generally reign in what the dating bot suggests based on user testing. "Just because you can doesn't necessarily mean you should do," adds Langston. Meanwhile, a Michigan-based startup has launched what one alternative newsweekly describes as a "Yelp for humans" -- a new browser extension that syncs with a user's pre-existing dating profile on sites like Match.com, OkCupid, PlentyOf Fish, eHarmony, Zoosk or Badoo. "Once installed, a user can leave anonymous comments regarding someone's profile based on dates or interactions gone wrong and those comments can be viewed by other DateAha! users to better inform whether or not the person is a total creep." And of course, Facebook is testing a new dating app in two more countries, People reports. In order to use the new online dating service, Facebook users will be tasked with creating a new profile that will exist separately from the one that all of your friends and family can see... The dating service will send you suggested matches based "on your preferences, interests, and things you do on Facebook," but the app won't try to make a love connection with any of your Facebook friends (or anybody you have blocked), Facebook promises... You will also have the ability to block or hide anybody -- including specific friends of friends -- from your suggested matches. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
VW Plans A $ 22K Electric Car To Compete With Tesla, Transition From Combustion Engines
technology - Posted On:2018-11-10 18:44:59 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes Reuters: Volkswagen intends to sell electric cars for less than 20,000 euros ($22,836) and protect German jobs by converting three factories to make Tesla rivals, a source familiar with the plans said... Plans for VW's electric car, known as "MEB entry" and with a production volume of 200,000 vehicles, are due to be discussed at a supervisory board meeting on Nov. 16, the source said... The November 16 strategy meeting will discuss Volkswagen's transformation plan to shift from being Europe's largest maker of combustion engine vehicles into a mass producer of electric cars, another source familiar with the deliberations said. VW's strategy shift comes as cities start to ban diesel engine vehicles, forcing carmakers to think of new ways to safeguard 600,000 German industrial jobs, of which 436,000 are at car companies and their suppliers.... The shift from combustion engines to electric cars would also cost 14,000 jobs at VW by 2020 as it takes less time to build an electric car than a conventional one and because jobs will shift overseas to battery manufacturers. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Only 22% of Americans Now Trust Facebook's Handling of Personal Info
technology - Posted On:2018-11-10 17:44:59 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes Fortune: Facebook is the least trustworthy of all major tech companies when it comes to safeguarding user data, according to a new national poll conducted for Fortune, highlighting the major challenges the company faces following a series of recent privacy blunders. Only 22% of Americans said that they trust Facebook with their personal information, far less than Amazon (49%), Google (41%), Microsoft (40%), and Apple (39%).... In question after question, respondents ranked the company last in terms of leadership, ethics, trust, and image... Public mistrust extended to Zuckerberg, Facebook's public face during its privacy crisis and who once said that Facebook has "a responsibility to protect your information, If we can't, we don't deserve it." The company subsequently fell victim to a hack but continued operating as usual, including debuting a video-conferencing device intended to be used in people's living rooms or kitchens and that further extends Facebook's reach into more areas outside of personal computers and smartphones. Only 59% of respondents said they were "at least somewhat confident" in Zuckerberg's leadership in the ethical use of data and privacy information, ranking him last among four other tech CEOS... As for Facebook, the social networking giant may have a difficult time regaining public trust because of its repeated problems. Consumers are more likely to forgive a company if they believe a problem was an aberration rather than a systemic failure by its leadership, Harris Poll CEO John Gerzema said. The article concludes that "For now, the public isn't in a forgiving mood when it comes to Facebook and Zuckerberg." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
US Military Publicly Dumps Russian Government Malware Online
technology - Posted On:2018-11-10 08:14:57 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: This week, U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM), a part of the military tasked with hacking and cybersecurity focused missions, started publicly releasing unclassified samples of adversaries' malware it has discovered. CYBERCOM says the move is to improve information sharing among the cybersecurity community, but in some ways it could be seen as a signal to those who hack U.S. systems: we may release your tools to the wider world. On Friday, CYBERCOM uploaded multiple files to VirusTotal, a Google-owned search engine and repository for malware. Once uploaded, VirusTotal users can download the malware, see which anti-virus or cybersecurity products likely detect it, and see links to other pieces of malicious code. One of the two samples CYBERCOM distributed on Friday is marked as coming from APT28, a Russian government-linked hacking group, by several different cybersecurity firms, according to VirusTotal. Those include Kaspersky Lab, Symantec, and Crowdstrike, among others. APT28 is also known as Sofacy and Fancy Bear. The malware itself does not appear to still be active. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Amazon's Consumer Business Has Turned Off Its Oracle Data Warehouse
technology - Posted On:2018-11-09 22:44:59 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Amazon.com Inc. has taken another step toward eliminating software from Oracle Corp. that has long helped the e-commerce giant run its retail business. An executive with Amazon's cloud-computing unit hit back at Oracle Executive Chairman Larry Ellison, who ridiculed the internet giant as recently as last month for relying on Oracle databases to track transactions and store information, even though Amazon sells competing software, including Redshift, Aurora and DynamoDB. Amazon's effort to end its use of Oracle's products has made new progress, Andy Jassy, the chief executive officer of Amazon Web Services, tweeted Friday. "In latest episode of 'uh huh, keep talkin' Larry,' Amazon's Consumer business turned off its Oracle data warehouse Nov. 1 and moved to Redshift," Jassy wrote. By the end of 2018, Amazon will stop using 88 percent of its Oracle databases, including 97 percent of its mission-critical databases, he added. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Researchers Defeat Perceptual Ad Blockers, Declare 'New Arms Race'
technology - Posted On:2018-11-09 20:44:58 Source: slashdot
dmoberhaus writes: Perceptual ad blockers were supposed to be the "superweapon" that put an end to the arms race between advertisers and users. According to new research, however, perceptual ad blockers will come out on the losing side in the war against internet advertisers and expose users to a host of new attack vectors in the process. Researchers at Stanford tricked six different visual classifiers used in perceptual ad blockers with adversarial ads designed to trick the ad blockers by making nearly imperceptible changes to the ads. "The researchers tried several different adversarial attacks on the perceptual ad blockers' visual classifiers," Motherboard reports. "One attack, for example, slightly altered the AdChoices logo that is commonly used to disclose advertisements to fool the perceptual ad blocker. In another attack, the researchers demonstrated how website publishers could overlay a transparent mask over a website that would allow ads to evade perceptual ad blockers." "The aim of our work is not to downplay the merits of ad-blocking, nor discredit the perceptual ad blocking philosophy, which is sound when instantiated with a robust visual ad detector," the researchers concluded. "Rather, our overarching goal is to highlight and raise awareness on the vulnerabilities that arise in building ad blockers with current computer vision systems." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Facebook Follows Google To End Mandatory Arbitration For Sexual-Harassment Claims
technology - Posted On:2018-11-09 19:29:59 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Facebook on Friday became the latest tech company to end a policy of requiring employees to settle claims of sexual harassment through private arbitration, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. It will now allow employees to take these types of claims to court. Tech companies have long used arbitration as a method for handling instances of sexual harassment to prevent employees from suing them in court, but that's starting to change. Facebook's move comes shortly after a similar move this week by Google, which came after thousands of its employees walked out in protest last week over its handling of sexual harassment complaints. Additionally, Facebook changed its policy on office dating and will now require employees who are director level or higher to disclose if they are dating a colleague, the report said. Previously, the company only required disclosure if an employee was dating someone they supervised, according to the report. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google Is Using AI To Digitize 5 Million Historical Photos
technology - Posted On:2018-11-09 18:44:59 Source: slashdot
Google is working with The New York Times to digitize its huge collection of about 7 million historic images. The pictures are apparently kept in the newspaper's "morgue," which contains pictures going back to the 19th century, many of which exist nowhere else in the world. The Verge reports: That's why the company has hired Google, which will use its machine vision smarts to not only scan the hand- and type-written notes attached to each image, but categorize the semantic information they contain (linking data like locations and dates). Google says the Times will also be able to use its object recognition tools to extract even more information from the photos, making them easier to catalog and resurface for future use. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Hackers Stole Income, Immigration and Tax Data In Healthcare.gov Breach, Government Confirms
it - Posted On:2018-11-09 18:14:59 Source: slashdot
Late last month, HealthCare.gov suffered a data breach exposing 75,000 customers. Details were sparse at the time of the breach, but have now learned that hackers obtained "inappropriate access" to a number of broker and agent accounts, which "engaged in excessive searching" of the government's healthcare marketplace systems. TechCrunch reports: [The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)] didn't say how the attackers gained access to the accounts, but said it shut off the affected accounts "immediately." In a letter sent to affected customers this week (and buried on the Healthcare.gov website), CMS disclosed that sensitive personal data -- including partial Social Security numbers, immigration status and some tax information -- may have been taken. According to the letter, the data included name, date of birth, address, sex, and the last four digits of the Social Security number (SSN), if SSN was provided on the application. Other information could include expected income, tax filing status, family relationships, whether the applicant is a citizen or an immigrant, immigration document types and numbers, employer name, pregnancy status, health insurance status, and more. The government did say that no bank account information was stolen. Read more of this story at Slashdot.