Gambling, Social Media, and 10 Years of Streaming the ‘Big Game’

Thanks to the unique perspectives we have via the Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform, we’re able to observe massive amounts of web traffic and data that provide insights across the various industries Akamai serves. In the wake of Super Bowl LV, we’re sharing some observations on gambling traffic and social media activity, two categories that are complementary to the game. We’ll also look at how online viewing has increased over the past 10 years of live streaming the "big game." Continue reading Gambling, Social Media, and 10 Years of Streaming the ‘Big Game’

Using Disinformation to Cause a Blackout

Interesting paper: "How weaponizing disinformation can bring down a city’s power grid": Abstract: Social media has made it possible to manipulate the masses via disinformation and fake news at an unprecedented scale. This is particularly alarming from a security perspective, as humans have proven to be one of the weakest links when protecting critical infrastructure in general, and the power… Continue reading Using Disinformation to Cause a Blackout

Twitter Hacker Arrested

A 17-year-old Florida boy was arrested and charged with last week’s Twitter hack. News articles. Boing Boing post. Florida state attorney press release. This is a developing story. Post any additional news in the comments. EDITED TO ADD (8/1): Two others have been charged as well. EDITED TO ADD (8/11): The online bail hearing was hacked…. Continue reading Twitter Hacker Arrested

Fawkes: Digital Image Cloaking

Fawkes is a system for manipulating digital images so that they aren’t recognized by facial recognition systems. At a high level, Fawkes takes your personal images, and makes tiny, pixel-level changes to them that are invisible to the human eye, in a process we call image cloaking. You can then use these "cloaked" photos as you normally would, sharing them… Continue reading Fawkes: Digital Image Cloaking

On the Twitter Hack

Twitter was hacked this week. Not a few people’s Twitter accounts, but all of Twitter. Someone compromised the entire Twitter network, probably by stealing the log-in credentials of one of Twitter’s system administrators. Those are the people trusted to ensure that Twitter functions smoothly. The hacker used that access to send tweets from a variety of popular and trusted accounts,… Continue reading On the Twitter Hack

Twitter Hackers May Have Bribed an Insider

Motherboard is reporting that this week’s Twitter hack involved a bribed insider. Twitter has denied it. I have been taking press calls all day about this. And while I know everyone wants to speculate about the details of the hack, we just don’t know — and probably won’t for a couple of weeks…. Continue reading Twitter Hackers May Have Bribed an Insider