Security News

Thursday, April 25, 2024

• From shrimp Jesus to fake self-portraits, AI-generated images have become the latest form of social media spam
  If you've spent time on Facebook over the past six months, you may have noticed photorealistic images that are too good to be true: children holding paintings that look like the work of professional artists, or majestic log cabin interiors that are the stuff of Airbnb dreams.
  

Wednesday, April 24, 2024

• On the trail of deepfakes, researchers identify 'fingerprints' of AI-generated video
  In February, OpenAI released videos created by its generative artificial intelligence program Sora. The strikingly realistic content, produced via simple text prompts, is the latest breakthrough for companies demonstrating the capabilities of AI technology. It also raised concerns about generative AI's potential to enable the creation of misleading and deceiving content on a massive scale.
  
• Australia's top spy urges big tech to unravel encrypted chats
  Australia's top spy on Wednesday urged greater cooperation from the big tech companies, asking them to break a long-held industry taboo by providing access to encrypted messages.
  

Tuesday, April 23, 2024

• UnitedHealth says wide swath of patient files may have been taken in Change cyberattack
  UnitedHealth says files with personal information that could cover a "substantial portion of people in America" may have been taken in the cyberattack earlier this year on its Change Healthcare business.
  
• Cyberattacks are on the rise, and that includes small businesses. Here's what to know
  Cyberattacks on businesses are rising, including small businesses. It's a troubling trend because a breach can be very costly and time consuming if owners don't have a plan to deal with one.
  
• Researchers develop tiny chip that can safeguard user data while enabling efficient computing on a smartphone
  Health-monitoring apps can help people manage chronic diseases or stay on track with fitness goals, using nothing more than a smartphone. However, these apps can be slow and energy-inefficient because the vast machine-learning models that power them must be shuttled between a smartphone and a central memory server.
  

Monday, April 22, 2024

• DeFake tool protects voice recordings from cybercriminals
  In what has become a familiar refrain when discussing artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled technologies, voice cloning makes possible beneficial advances in accessibility and creativity while also enabling increasingly sophisticated scams and deepfakes. To combat the potential negative impacts of voice cloning technology, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) challenged researchers and technology experts to develop breakthrough ideas on preventing, monitoring and evaluating malicious voice cloning.
  

Friday, April 19, 2024

• Linkable and traceable anonymous authentication with fine-grained access control
  Anonymous authentication plays a crucial role in privacy-focused applications, and it is used for authenticating a user's identity in a privacy-preserving way. If enough privacy is provided, malicious users may misuse privacy. Accountability is necessary to avoid abusing anonymity. Previous anonymous authentication schemes can not hold the basic requirements of public linking and tracing while further ensuring access control simultaneously.
  

Thursday, April 18, 2024

• UK police say they disrupted cyber fraud network that stole personal data from thousands
  A website that allowed international cyber fraudsters to trick up to 70,000 British victims into revealing personal information such as bank account details and passwords has been infiltrated and disrupted, London police said Thursday.
  
• Russian 'cyber sabotage' a global threat: Security firm
  A cyber group with links to Russian military intelligence is set to become a significant global threat after playing an increasing critical role in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, a leading cybersecurity firm warned Wednesday.
  
• Colorado law protects brain data captured by gadgets
  Colorado on Wednesday expanded its privacy law to include brain data gathered by the booming array of gadgets people use for feedback about sleep, fitness, sports, and lifestyle.
  

Wednesday, April 17, 2024

• Websites deceive users by deliberately hiding the extent of data collection and sharing
  Websites sometimes hide how widely they share our personal information, and can go to great lengths to pull the wool over our eyes. This deception is intended to prevent full disclosure to consumers, thus preventing informed choice and affecting privacy rights.
  
• AI is making smart devices easier to hack—here's how to stay safe
  From asking our smart speakers for the weather to receiving personalized advice from smartwatches, devices powered by artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly streamlining our routines and decision making. The technology is seeping into our lives in subtle ways.
  

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

• Atrium Health shared patient data with Facebook, class-action lawsuit alleges
  A class-action lawsuit filed in North Carolina accuses Atrium Health of allowing Facebook and Google to access patient information online to use in targeted ads.
  
• Paris faces cyber battle to keep Games running and real
  The Paris Olympics are bracing themselves to fight off an unprecedented level of cyber attacks, for the first time augmented by artificial intelligence.
  

Monday, April 15, 2024

• Safeguarding the future of online security with AI and metasurfaces
  Researchers at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) have advanced online security by integrating an AI-based metasurface with oblique helicoidal cholesteric liquid crystals.
  
• Microsoft, beset by hacks, grapples with problem years in the making
  The world's largest seller of cybersecurity products has a problem with its own cybersecurity.
  
• Israel using AI to identify human targets raising fears that innocents are being caught in the net
  A report by Jerusalem-based investigative journalists published in +972 magazine finds that AI targeting systems have played a key role in identifying—and potentially misidentifying—tens of thousands of targets in Gaza. This suggests that autonomous warfare is no longer a future scenario. It is already here and the consequences are horrifying.
  
• Security vulnerability in browser interface allows computer access via graphics card
  Modern websites place ever greater demands on the computing power of computers. For this reason, web browsers have also had access to the computing capacities of the graphics card (Graphics Processing Unit or GPU) in addition to the CPU of a computer for a number of years.
  

Saturday, April 13, 2024

• US House okays renewal of controversial surveillance program
  The US House of Representatives voted Friday to reauthorize an electronic surveillance program targeting foreigners, a practice officials say is critical to national security but criticized by opponents over concerns for American citizens' privacy.
  

Thursday, April 11, 2024

• Will AI be listening in on your future job interview? On law, technology and privacy
  The law and Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications need to be better aligned to ensure our personal data and privacy are protected. Ph.D. candidate Andreas Häuselmann can see opportunities with AI, but dangers if this does not happen.
  

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

• World-first 'Cybercrime Index' ranks countries by cybercrime threat level
  Following three years of intensive research, an international team of researchers have compiled the first ever "World Cybercrime Index," which identifies the globe's key cybercrime hotspots by ranking the most significant sources of cybercrime at a national level.
  
• The real battle for data privacy begins when you die
  In 2012 a 15-year-old girl died in Berlin after being hit by a subway train. Her bereaved parents asked Facebook to turn over her private messages in hopes of understanding whether her death was a suicide or an accident.
  
• Researchers find a faster, better way to prevent an AI chatbot from giving toxic responses
  A user could ask ChatGPT to write a computer program or summarize an article, and the AI chatbot would likely be able to generate useful code or write a cogent synopsis. However, someone could also ask for instructions to build a bomb, and the chatbot might be able to provide those, too.
  

Monday, April 8, 2024

• 'Is this a deepfake?' Why we're asking the wrong question
  Over the past year, the prevalence and potential dangers of deepfakes have raised concerns related to personal privacy, business ethics and even election interference.
  
• Protecting art and passwords with biochemistry
  Security experts fear Q-Day, the day when quantum computers become so powerful that they can crack today's passwords. Some experts estimate that this day will come within the next ten years. Password checks are based on cryptographic one-way functions, which calculate an output value from an input value. This makes it possible to check the validity of a password without transmitting the password itself: the one-way function converts the password into an output value that can then be used to check its validity in, say, online banking.
  

Friday, April 5, 2024

• Sanction the use of cyberweapons, not the weapons themselves, concludes expert review
  A recent analysis by Helene Pleil, research associate at the Digital Society Institute (DSI) at ESMT Berlin, alongside colleagues from Technical University Darmstadt, outlines that rapid technological progress, a lack of political will and uniform definitions, as well as the dual use of cyber tools, are the main challenges facing effective cyber arms control which is vital for foreign and security policy. As cyberspace is increasingly used in conflicts, cyber arms control needs to be addressed as well.
  

Thursday, April 4, 2024

• Computer scientists discover gap in the latest security mechanisms used by some chips
  Over the past few years, hardware manufacturers have developed technologies that ought to make it possible for companies and governmental organizations to process sensitive data securely using shared cloud computing resources. Known as confidential computing, this approach protects sensitive data while it is being processed by isolating it in an area that is impenetrable to other users and even to the cloud provider. But computer scientists at ETH Zurich have now proven that it is possible for hackers to gain access to these systems and to the data stored in them.
  
• An anonymous coder nearly hacked a big chunk of the internet. How worried should we be?
  Outside the world of open-source software, it's likely few people would have heard about XZ Utils, a small but widely used tool for data compression in Linux systems. But late last week, security experts uncovered a serious and deliberate flaw that could leave networked Linux computers susceptible to malicious attacks.
  
• New privacy-preserving robotic cameras obscure images beyond human recognition
  From robotic vacuum cleaners and smart fridges to baby monitors and delivery drones, the smart devices being increasingly welcomed into our homes and workplaces use vision to take in their surroundings, taking videos and images of our lives in the process.
  

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