June 14, 2017

Tracking Dots, Movement and People

23 minutes

Long before websites, apps and IoT devices, one primary way of learning and sharing information is with a printed document. They’re still not extinct yet. In fact, we’ve given them an upgrade to such that nearly all modern color printers include some form of tracking information that associates documents with the printer's serial number. This type of metadata is called tracking dots. We learned about them when prosecutors alleged 25-year-old federal contractor Reality Leah Winner printed a top-secret NSA document detailing the ongoing investigation into Russian election hacking last November and mailed it to The Intercept. Rest assured the Inside Out Security Show panelists all had a response to this form of printed metadata.

Another type of metadata that will be discussed in the Supreme Court is whether the government needs a warrant to access a person’s cell phone location history. “Because cell phone location records can reveal countless private details of our lives, police should only be able to access them by getting a warrant based on probable cause,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, a staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

Other articles discussed:

Malware Installed On a Router Can Take Control Over a Device’s LEDs and Use Them To Transmit Data

Twitter product, Studio has vulnerability that allowed tweeting from any account

Commenting secret code on Britney Spears’ Instagram account

Inside Out Security Show panelists: Cindy Ng, Mike Buckbee, Kilian Englert, Forrest Temple

Want to join us live? Save a seat here: https://www.varonis.com/state-of-cybercrime