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Password psychology
If you thought that passwords were a way to protect people's data, a key made up of letters, numbers and other symbols that enabled everything from making a purchase online to updating a Facebook acco…
Section 252
After a lot of excitement and visions of Tom Cruise abseiling in to Treasury to steal the NOC list, I mean Budget 2019 documents, it seems instead that someone was trying out search terms in the websi…
Deliberately and systematically hacked
Treasury is claiming that the National Party's leaked Budget documents are the result of a deliberate and "systematic" attack on its systems. The police have been called and the National Cyber Securit…
Five Eyes meet at UK conference for first time
The Five Eyes intelligence gathering/sharing group have spoken publicly for the first time following a conference in Scotland.
Brislen on Tech
It looks like it's the end of the line for Pond, the government's resource sharing service for teachers.
Part of Network for Learning (N4L), Pond was supposed to be a leading-edge social network wh…
NZ and France seek to end use of social media for acts of terrorism
New Zealand and France are to lead international efforts to figure out how to manage the promotion of terrorism and extremism via social media channels.
The meeting is to be held in May as part of …
Huawei's woes continue
Huawei's woes continue despite offering to build a network and then not run it.
The Chinese telco equipment maker is red faced following a report from the oversight board of the UK's Huawei Cyber S…
Brislen on Tech
There's a rhythm to decision making inside corporates whenever there's a crisis on that I've been privy to on a few occasions.
If it's a genuine external unexpected crisis, generally you're all cau…
Facebook forced to explain itself some more
Facebook faces more pressure after court documents revealed it knew about Cambridge Analytica's scraping of data months before news broke.
CERT warns of Christchurch-related scams and attacks
CERT NZ has issued a warning that the tragic event in Christchurch last week is being used by scammers and attackers to perform targeted online cyberattacks against New Zealanders.
After Christchurch, what now?
Where to now for New Zealand and how do we learn from what has happend so we can build that New Zealand we thought we all lived in.
Brislen on Tech
Privacy. It's one of those things that you may not realise is important until you've lost it. Once it's gone, there's no getting it back. Once your mother's maiden name or your first pet's name is out…
Scams and fraud up in Q4 says CERT
Kiwis are falling for online scams to the tune of $14 million last year, up from the year before, according to the government Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT).
N4L reaches halfway mark in security rollout
Network for Learning (N4L), the Crown company that provides internet services to 99% of New Zealand schools and Kura, is halfway through the rollout of new cybersecurity technology from Fortinet.
N…
Brislen on Tech
I made my eldest daughter cry this morning. I told her about the robot on Mars, Opportunity, and how it was finally out of juice.
Only I made the mistake of telling her as I heard it - via Jacob Ma…
When is a hack not a hack?
The South Canterbury Property Investors' Association collection of the private details of renters is one thing, sharing them with members is something else but exposing them to the internet for all th…
Australian parliament hack attack
Australian politicians are being forced to change their passwords following an attempt to hack the Australian federal parliament's IT system.
Brislen on Tech
It's tough at the top, as Apple CEO Tim Cook is finding out. And another day, another Facebook travesty - this time, conning teenagers into install a VPN on their phones so they could scoop up all the…
Apple FaceTime security flaw exposed
Apple has temporarily disabled the group calling capability in its FaceTime application after discovering unscrupulous users could listen in on other users even if they didn't answer the call.
Brislen on Tech
The next phase for Huawei in New Zealand is going to be difficult.
The company, which has been told it can't build the core network assets for Spark's new 5G network (and presumably would get simil…
