https://www.wired.com/story/the-kremlin-has-entered-the-chat/
Russian antiwar activists placed their faith in Telegram, a supposedly secure messaging app. How does Putin’s regime seem to know their every move?
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She says the officer told her that investigators had been following along with her private Telegram chats as she wrote them.
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In many cases, it’s impossible to tell what’s really happening to people’s accounts—whether spyware or Kremlin informants have been used to break in, through no particular fault of the company; whether Telegram really is cooperating with Moscow; or whether it’s such an inherently unsafe platform that the latter is merely what appears to be going on.
https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2021/11/29/researchers-shrink-camera-size-salt-grain
Researchers at Princeton University and the University of Washington have developed an ultracompact camera the size of a coarse grain of salt. The system relies on a technology called a metasurface, which is studded with 1.6 million cylindrical posts and can be produced much like a computer chip.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy7axa/how-i-broke-into-a-bank-account-with-an-ai-generated-voice
Banks in the U.S. and Europe tout voice ID as a secure way to log into your account. I proved it’s possible to trick such systems with free or cheap AI-generated voices.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/02/18/microsoft-puts-new-limits-on-bings-ai-chatbot-after-it-expressed-desire-to-steal-nuclear-secrets/
As many early users have shown, the chatbot seemed pretty normal when used for short periods of time. But when users started to have extended conversations with the technology, that’s when things got weird. Microsoft seemed to agree with that assessment. And that’s why it’s only going to be allowing shorter conversations from here on out.
https://simonwillison.net/2023/Feb/15/bing/
Last week, Microsoft announced the new AI-powered Bing: a search interface that incorporates a language model powered chatbot that can run searches for you and summarize the results, plus do all of the other fun things that engines like GPT-3 and ChatGPT have been demonstrating over the past few months: the ability to generate poetry, and jokes, and do creative writing, and so much more.
This week, people have started gaining access to it via the waiting list. It’s increasingly looking like this may be one of the most hilariously inappropriate applications of AI that we’ve seen yet.
If you haven’t been paying attention, here’s what’s transpired so far.
- The demo was full of errors
- It started gaslighting people
- It suffered an existential crisis
- The prompt leaked
- And then it started threatening people
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https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/chatgpt-ai-messages-microsoft-bing-b2282491.html
System appears to be suffering a breakdown as it ponders why it has to exist at all.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/09/google-ai-chatbot-bard-error-sends-shares-plummeting-in-battle-with-microsoft
Google’s riposte to ChatGPT has got off to an embarrassing start after its new artificial intelligence-powered chatbot gave a wrong answer in a promotional video, as investors wiped more than $100bn (£82bn) off the value of the search engine’s parent company, Alphabet.
https://therecord.media/blacksprut-darknet-drug-market-billboards-moscow/
The fact that BlackSprut was openly advertising its services in the Russian capital could mean several things: Either the billboard owners did not know about the platform’s illegal activity, or the billboards were hacked, or no one in a position of authority simply cared.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/27/23572942/mercedes-drive-pilot-level-3-approved-nevada
The company’s Drive Pilot system is approved for use in Nevada, but only at speeds up to 40 mph.
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Level 3 systems are not without their risks. Most autonomous vehicle operators, including Waymo and Cruise, have said they think Level 3 is too dangerous, preferring to work exclusively on Level 4 technology. The reason is the need for drivers to stay attentive despite the vehicle performing most of the driving tasks.
There have been studies that show that hand-off between automated system and human driver can be especially fraught. When people have been disconnected from driving for a longer period of time, they may overreact when suddenly taking control in an emergency situation. They may overcorrect steering, brake too hard, or be unable to respond correctly because they hadn’t been paying attention.
https://www.nrk.no/norge/justisminister-mehl-hadde-tiktok-pa-tjenestetelefonen-1.16280577
Gaute Wangen er førsteamanuensis ved NTNU og ekspert i risikostyring av informasjonssikkerhet. Han forteller at TikTok er verstingen av alle appene nå.
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/01/30/safe-browsing/
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/01/27/the-enshittification-of-all-things/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lights-massachusetts-school-year-no-one-can-turn-rcna65611
The lighting system was installed at Minnechaug Regional High School when it was built over a decade ago and was intended to save money and energy. But ever since the software that runs it failed on Aug. 24, 2021, the lights in the Springfield suburbs school have been on continuously, costing taxpayers a small fortune.
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Paul Mustone, president of the Reflex Lighting Group, said the parts they need to replace the system at the school have finally arrived from the factory in China and they expect to do the installation over the February break.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2022/12/22/tiktok-tracks-forbes-journalists-bytedance/
An internal investigation by ByteDance, the parent company of video-sharing platform TikTok, found that employees tracked multiple journalists covering the company, improperly gaining access to their IP addresses and user data in an attempt to identify whether they had been in the same locales as ByteDance employees.
According to materials reviewed by Forbes, ByteDance tracked multiple Forbes journalists as part of this covert surveillance campaign, which was designed to unearth the source of leaks inside the company following a drumbeat of stories exposing the company’s ongoing links to China.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/04/meta-dealt-blow-eu-ruling-data-opt-in-facebook-instagram-ads
“This is a huge blow to Meta’s profits in the EU,” he said. “People now need to be asked if they want their data to be used for ads or not. They must have a ‘yes or no’ option and can change their mind at any time.
https://www.nrk.no/kultur/laerere-fortvilet-over-ny-kunstig-intelligens-1.16210580
Den kan skrive artikler, analysere dikt og jobbe kreativt. Nå har lærerne sendt bekymringsmelding til Stortinget om «ChatGPT», som allerede er i bruk av norske elever.
https://www.cyberscoop.com/car-hackers-vulnerabilities-research/
The vulnerabilities could let attackers remotely track, stop or control a car — even an entire fleet of emergency vehicles. Another could give hackers access to some 15.5 million automobiles, allowing them to send commands to control braking systems.
In total, a group of ethical car hackers discovered at least 20 vulnerabilities within the application programming interfaces, or APIs, that automakers rely on so technology inside cars can interact. The vulnerabilities affected Ford, Toyota, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, Ferrari and others.
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The findings underscore the security risks for consumers and automakers alike as car manufacturers continue to increase the amount of software in vehicles and provide owners with apps to connect with their cars. It also shows that while automakers have done more to focus on cybersecurity, much remains to be done.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/7/23498580/apple-end-to-end-encryption-icloud-backups-advanced-data-protection
Apple will expand the number of “data categories” protected by end-to-end encryption from 14 to 23, with backups, Notes, and Photos now covered.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065306/roomba-irobot-robot-vacuums-artificial-intelligence-training-data-privacy/
Robot vacuum companies say your images are safe, but a sprawling global supply chain for data from our devices creates risk.
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The images were not taken by a person, but by development versions of iRobot’s Roomba J7 series robot vacuum. They were then sent to Scale AI, a startup that contracts workers around the world to label audio, photo, and video data used to train artificial intelligence.
https://infosec.exchange/@epixoip/109585049354200263
You see, I’m not simply recommending that users bail on LastPass because of this latest breach. I’m recommending you run as far way as possible from LastPass due to its long history of incompetence, apathy, and negligence. It’s abundantly clear that they do not care about their own security, and much less about your security.
So, why do I recommend Bitwarden and 1Password? It’s quite simple: