Washington Post

Tens of millions of IP addresses were used to take down popular websites like Twitter and Netflix as part of a massive cyberattack on Oct 21.

Dyn, an Internet middleman company, was the target of the distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack that hit in three waves. Dyn directs traffic when people type a URL into a browser. So the attack on the company caused temporary outages at many of the internet's most widely-trafficked sites. Dyn revealed that a "sophisticated" attack involved "10s of millions of IP addresses." The outages were caused, at least in part, by malware sent by hackers to devices connected to the internet.

Dyn said that the cyberattack is under investigation, and that the company is looking out for other digital assaults. The attack, which Dyn said had been resolved, was notable because the firm says the attackers used an emerging form of malware called "Mirai" to hijack everyday items such as security cameras and DVRs that were connected to the Internet. The attack also highlighted how targeting just one company could create havoc across the Web. "The nature and source of the attack is under investigation, but it was a sophisticated attack across multiple attack vectors and Internet locations," said Kyle York, Dyn’s chief strategy officer. Dyn says it is monitoring for signs of additional attacks. It is still unknown who was behind the attack. The US government is also investigating the incident.

On Oct 20, Bloomberg reported that AT&T is in “informal” talks to buy the media and entertainment giant Time Warner. Now the timeline appears to be accelerating: The two companies are apparently in “advanced” talks that could lead to a deal being hammered out over the weekend. A merger between AT&T and Time Warner would be a historic deal.

For starters, it could suddenly give AT&T control over a massive number of the world's most valuable media brands. It would complete the transformation by the wireless carrier — already the nation's second-largest — into a fully-fledged entertainment powerhouse, launching an entirely new chapter in the history of the telecommunications giant. And it would be no less monumental for the rest of the communications industry, a rapidly consolidating area of business in which Internet providers are increasingly playing a central role in how consumers work and play. The tie-up could see AT&T gain ownership over a dizzying array of household names. Time Warner — not to be confused with Time Warner Cable, which sold to Charter Communications earlier this year — owns HBO, meaning that AT&T could soon have the rights to “Game of Thrones,” “Westworld,” and “True Detective." It would control some of the most successful TV content in history, such as "The Sopranos" and "The Wire." It could also benefit from all the subscription revenue from HBO, the most profitable subscription business in history, whose 130 million subscribers on cable and on HBO's online streaming app pay about $15 a month.

In a letter to the Pentagon Oct 21, Rep Duncan Hunter (R-CA) said he was concerned a contract to provide Internet service to deployed soldiers could allow the use of Russian satellites, jeopardizing troops’ privacy and security.

Previous service at bases’ Internet cafes had “stringent security measures,” Rep Hunter wrote to Army Lt. Gen. Alan Lynn, the head of the Defense Information Systems Agency. But he said he was worried the “contracting arrangement creates unnecessary security risks, given that our deployed warfighters could be exposed to transmitting their personal information over unprotected networks that are controlled by foreign and potentially hostile entities.” In an interview, Rep Hunter, who served three tours as Marine, said, “this is one of the dumbest things we could do. Why give the Russians the ability to basically spy on American military personnel when there are so many other options?” A DISA spokesperson said the agency could not discuss the provisions of the contract or which companies may have submitted offers.

[Commentary] We analyzed data from the Youth Participatory Politics (YPP) Survey, which we collected in partnership with political scientist Cathy Cohen and her team at the University of Chicago. Here's what we found:

When young people are involved in nonpolitical online communities, they become more likely to participate in politics.
Young people involved in nonpolitical online communities become more likely to take part in political discussions online and to be encouraged to vote.
Young people with large online social network are more likely to be exposed to politics.

In summary, online communities aren’t the problem. In fact, they might be part of the solution. Online communities appear to provide pathways into political engagement. Of course, online social activity isn’t enough to guarantee a robust and healthy civic life. Youth turnout in the 2014 elections was a record low, with fewer than 20 percent of 18 to 24 year-olds voting. This figure should concern everyone interested in the political engagement of American youth. But online communities might be a good place to start for those who want to activate young voters in 2016 and beyond.

[Benjamin Bowyer is a lecturer in political science at Santa Clara University. Joseph Kahne is the Ted and Jo Dutton Presidential Professor of Educational Policy and Politics at the University of California at Riverside.]

Someone attacked a key part of the Internet's infrastructure the morning of Oct 21, causing some major services such as Twitter, Spotify and Airbnb to be inaccessible for some users. The attack targeted Dyn, a company that helps people connect to websites, with a huge amount of traffic in an attempt to knock the service offline, according to Dyn's director of Internet analysis, Doug Madory. The digital assault appears to have started around 7:30 am Eastern, and Dyn said it was resolved at roughly 9:20 am.

dThe service Dyn provides is called the Domain Name System. It works sort of like a phone book for the Internet — it translates URLs into the numerical IP addresses for the servers that actually host sites so your browser can connect to them. This type of attack is commonly known as a distributed denial of service, or DDoS attack. The effects of the attack were intermittent, and many of the details remain scarce, although it appears to have primarily affected users on the East Coast, according to Dyn.

Federal prosecutors in Baltimore (MD) said they will charge a former National Security Agency contractor with violating the Espionage Act, alleging that he made off with “an astonishing quantity” of classified digital and other data in what is thought to be the largest theft of classified government material ever. In a 12-page memo, US Attorney Rod Rosenstein and two other prosecutors laid out a much more far-reaching case against Harold T. Martin III than was previously outlined.

They said he took at least 50 terabytes of data and “six full banker’s boxes worth of documents,” with many lying open in his home office or kept on his car’s back seat and in the trunk. Other material was stored in a shed on his property. One terabyte is the equivalent of 500 hours worth of movies. The prosecutors also said Martin had an “arsenal” of weapons in his home and car, including an assault-rifle-style tactical weapon and a pistol-grip shotgun with a flash suppressor. Martin, who will appear at a detention hearing in US District Court in Baltimore on Oct 21, also took personal information about government employees as well dozens of computers, thumb drives and other digital storage devices over two decades, the government alleged. In a complaint unsealed earlier in Oct, the government charged him with felony theft of government property and the unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials, a misdemeanor. Conviction under the Espionage Act could send Martin to prison for up to 10 years on each count and is considered the most serious of the three charges.

Men were seen and heard about twice as much as women in the 200 highest-grossing films of 2015. The figures come from a new machine-learning technology developed by researchers at Google and the University of Southern California to analyze the role of women in film.

The software, created with backing from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media and Google’s philanthropic division, is the first to automatically measure how screen and speaking time in film and TV break down by gender. In the past, researchers fulfilled this task with time-intensive, manual hand-coding. The data shows that, when the film had a male lead, male characters appeared on screen and spoke about three times more often than female characters in 2015. In films with both male and female co-leads, men still had far more speaking and screen time. And even in films with female leads — about 17 percent of the top-grossing films in 2015 — men had a roughly equal amount of screen and speaking time as women.

The Justice Department has kept classified at least 74 opinions, memos and letters on national security issues, including interrogation, detention and surveillance, the Brennan Center for Justice. Also still classified are between 25 and 30 significant opinions issued between 2003 and 2013 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the secretive federal court that interprets the law governing foreign intelligence-gathering inside the United States. And at the State Department, 807 international agreements signed between 2004 and 2014 have not been published.

The opinions and memos by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) were written between 2002 and 2009, said the report’s author, Elizabeth Goitein, who obtained several data sets through Freedom of Information Act requests. “This is an extensive body of secret law, which is fundamentally incompatible with democratic self-governance,” said Goitein, the co-director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program. “When the government makes law out of the public eye, the results are more likely to be tainted by bias or groupthink, and are frankly more liable to violate statutes or to be unconstitutional.” But senior national security officials said the government has in fact been particularly transparent in recent years.

Once upon a time, a newspaper endorsement for a political candidate was about as good as it got. In the era before the internet, newspaper editorial boards (not to be confused with the reporting arms) evaluated the pros and cons of the candidates and eventually offered down an endorsement that could make or break a candidacy. Big, important newspapers could shift the fortunes of people seeking the presidency. Nowadays, that's ... less of the case.

The 2016 election has been an aberration in a lot of ways, including in the world of editorial endorsements. We've noted before how many newspapers are breaking with long-standing tradition to come out in opposition to Donald Trump or, for the first time in decades, to support a Democratic candidate for the presidency. The overwhelming majority of newspapers, particularly in larger cities, have weighed in to oppose Donald Trump's candidacy. It fits neatly into Trump's overall campaign message: The establishment system wants to see him lose, and few things better encapsulate the stodgy establishment than newspaper editorial boards.

But it's not 1950. The Washington Post is an important institution that is worthy of your subscription, but I think we can accept that the endorsement of our editorial board doesn't carry the weight that it once may have. This, too, captures the moment well: Trump came along at a moment when traditional power systems were shifting or hobbled. Newspaper editorial boards aren't the most powerful example of that, but they're a good one. Like the stalwart graybeards of the Republican Party, it's not clear that their warnings and advice make any difference to the voters powering Trump's support.

About 14 years ago, Leonard Downie Jr. and Robert Kaiser — then of The Post — warned about the corporatization of journalism in “The News About the News: American Journalism in Peril.” Profit motive, they argued, runs counter to the sorts of values needed to cover government and communities. “Profits do matter at the Washington Post — they pay for the increasing costs of producing good journalism — but it is news that matters most. This attitude is shared at some other newspapers, but too few,” wrote Downie and Kaiser. In the intervening years, newspapers have shrunk to the puny extremes of a national crisis. It’s a trend that words struggle to express.

Now comes a study from the University of North Carolina School of Media and Journalism highlighting the impact of chainification on local news. According to “The Rise of a New Media Baron and the Emerging Threat of News Deserts,” the last 12 years have seen a steady march of newspaper ownership among investment companies across the country. As of 2004, the report notes, the “three largest investment companies owned 352 newspapers in 27 states.” Now? The “seven largest investment companies owned [sic] 1,031 newspapers in 42 states.”