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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; min-height: 17px;">In this issue:</div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">1. Laptop Tagging and Registration on 2/5/14</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">2. Data Privacy Month: Is Online Privacy Possible?</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">3. Yahoo! User Data Compromised</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">4. Beware Your Chrome Extensions</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">5. For Fun: Cookie Problem</div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">1. Laptop Tagging and Registration on 2/5/14</div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">This Wednesday, there is an opportunity to register and tag your laptop:</div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">Where: <b>Stata Student Street (Bldg. 32, Ground level)</b></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">When: <b>Wed., February 5, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm</b></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">Cost: $10 cash (no cards) or MIT Cash Object</div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">Just as you might register a bike with the police, you can also register your laptop. Information Systems & Technology partners with MIT Police to provide STOP tags for laptops. The tag is affixed to the device,
has a unique number, and is registered with a world-wide database.</div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">Sgt. Cheryl Vossmer of the MIT Police says that although a STOP tag is not software that can track a device via GPS or other means, it has been very effective at providing a way for lost or stolen laptops to
be returned to their rightful owners.</div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(71, 135, 255);"><span style="color: #000000">Read
<a href="https://www.stoptheft.com/">laptop recovery stories here</a>.</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(71, 135, 255);"><span style="text-decoration: underline"><a href="http://kb.mit.edu/confluence/display/istcontrib/MIT+Police+Laptop+Tagging+and+Registration">Learn more about laptop registration at
MIT</a></span><span style="color: #000000">.</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">2. Data Privacy Month: Is Online Privacy Possible?</div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">Data Privacy Month kicked off on January 28th, a day that is historically celebrated as Data Privacy Day. To get a sense what data privacy means to regular citizens, I interviewed Jeff Schiller, a long-time
security technologist at MIT. </div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">The information Jeff shared was somewhat sobering: privacy only goes as far as the level of protection you require. In other words, it really comes down to how much you care about your privacy and the risks
you’re willing or unwilling to live with. But the situation isn’t hopeless. We reviewed some steps users can take right now to protect their privacy online. </div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;"><a href="http://ist.mit.edu/news/online_privacy">Read the article online at IS&T News</a>.</div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">MIT has policies around protecting personal privacy.
<a href="http://web.mit.edu/policies/11/11.1.html">Review them here.</a></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">3. Yahoo! User Data Compromised</div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">Last week <a href="http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/75083532312/important-security-update-for-yahoo-mail-users">
Yahoo announced</a> that usernames and passwords were stolen, belonging to about 450,000 of its email customers. As a result, Yahoo believes attackers have been able to gather personal information on its email customer’s contacts. </div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">Users who were affected will get a prompt to change their passwords when they log in, and Yahoo also sent out email and SMS notifications. It is probably not a bad idea for all Yahoo email customers to reset
their passwords.</div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">Yahoo believes, based on their findings, that the usernames and passwords were accessed from a third-party database compromise and have no evidence that they were obtained from Yahoo’s systems. That third-party
has not been identified, but experts note that attackers are finding ways to breach their targets by cracking systems that belong to the target’s business partners.</div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;"><a href="http://www.darkreading.com/privacy/yahoo-reports-breach-of-customer-databas/240165877">Read the full story online</a>.</div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">4. Beware Your Chrome Extensions</div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">Ad vendors can buy Chrome extensions (the plug-ins that enhance the browser’s capability) to send adware and malware-filled updates,
<a href="http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/01/malware-vendors-buy-chrome-extensions-to-send-adware-filled-updates/">
according to Ars Technica</a>. Ownership of a Chrome extension can be transferred to another party and users are never informed when an ownership change happens. Malware and adware vendors caught wind of this, and have started showing up at the doors of extension
authors, looking to buy their extensions. Once the deal is done, the new owners can issue an ad-filled update over Chrome’s update service, which sends the adware out to every user of that extension.</div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">To remove the adware, the user must disable the extension:</div>
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<li style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">In Chrome on a Mac, select <b>Window</b> >
<b>Extensions</b>, then uncheck the box next to “<b>Enabled</b>.” </li><li style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">In Chrome on Windows, select <b>
Settings</b> > <b>Extensions</b>, then uncheck the box next to “<b>Enabled</b>.” </li></ul>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;"><a href="http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/01/malware-vendors-buy-chrome-extensions-to-send-adware-filled-updates/">Read the full story online</a>.</div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">5. For Fun: <a href="http://www.cagle.com/2012/09/cookie-problem/">
Cookie problem</a></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">=======================================================================================</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">Read all archived Security FYI Newsletter articles and submit comments online at
<a href="http://securityfyi.wordpress.com/"><span style="color: rgb(4, 46, 238);">http://securityfyi.wordpress.com/</span></a>.</div>
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; min-height: 17px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Monique Buchanan</span><br style="font-family: Avenir;">
<span style="font-family: Avenir;">IT Security Communications Consultant</span><br style="font-family: Avenir;">
<span style="font-family: Avenir;">Information Systems & Technology (IS&T)</span><br style="font-family: Avenir;">
<span style="font-family: Avenir;">Massachusetts Institute of Technology</span><br style="font-family: Avenir;">
<span style="font-family: Avenir;"><a href="http://ist.mit.edu/secure">http://ist.mit.edu/secure</a></span><br style="font-family: Avenir;">
<span style="font-family: Avenir;">tel: 617.253.2715</span><br style="font-family: Avenir;">
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;">"Distrust and caution are the parents of security" - Benjamin Franklin</div>
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