Weekend Reads 3/4/17

Will 2017 be the Final Year of the Password?

For the user, a forgotten password represents frustration. However, IT views password recovery as a mundane and time consuming task, which can be construed as the leading cause of high turnover in technical support positions.

The industry as a whole has tried to alleviate the password conundrum with technologies such as two factor authentication, biometrics and other alternatives that can strengthen passwords, while also easing access. The only problem is that those technologies add management complexity to already complex networks, and often require re-engineering of IT solutions to be truly effective.

Creepy IoT teddy bear leaks >2 million parents’ and kids’ voice messages

The account data was left in a publicly available database that wasn't protected by a password or placed behind a firewall, according to a blog post published Monday by Troy Hunt, maintainter of the Have I Been Pwned?, breach-notification website. He said searches using the Shodan computer search engine and other evidence indicated that, since December 25 and January 8, the customer data was accessed multiple times by multiple parties, including criminals who ultimately held the data for ransom. The recordings were available on an Amazon-hosted service that required no authorization to access.

Mars Needs Lawyers

For instance, under the Outer Space Treaty, you can’t just go around claiming Martian land for Spain. But a habitation pod built by Spain is Spanish territory, Gabrynowicz said. And in a place where humans have no choice but to live in a pod or die, planting your habitat on a patch of ground might be a way to claim that land in practical terms, even if you can’t do so legally. Meanwhile, crew members retain their Earth citizenships and remain subject to the laws of their home nations, von der Dunk said.

Just who are these 300 'scientists' telling Trump to burn the climate?

First of all, hardly anyone on the list was a climate scientist; many were not even natural scientists. It is almost as though anyone with a college degree (and there are about 21 million enrolled in higher education programs just in the USA) was qualified to sign that letter.