Friday, May 24, 2019


Reality. What a concept!
US Officials Say Foreign Election Hacking Is Inevitable
The hacking of U.S. election systems, including by foreign adversaries, is inevitable, and the real challenge is ensuring the country is resilient enough to withstand catastrophic problems from cyber breaches, government officials said Wednesday.


(Related) You hack, we nuke?
NATO Warns Russia of 'Full Range' of Responses to Cyberattack
The head of NATO told Russia and other potential foes Thursday that the Western military alliance was ready to use all means at its disposal to respond to cyber attacks.
Jens Stoltenberg's warning came with the bloc's members on alert for interference in European Parliament elections that kicked off in Britain and the Netherlands on Thursday.
"For deterrence to have full effect, potential attackers must know we are not limited to respond in cyber space when we are attacked in cyber space," Stoltenberg said during a joint press appearance in London with UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt.




Plan to notify your providers or expect them to take actions you might not like.
Google disables Baltimore's Gmail accounts used during ransomware recovery
Gmail accounts used by Baltimore officials as a workaround while the city recovers from the ransomware attack were disabled because the creation of a large number of new accounts triggered Google’s automated security system, a spokesman for the company said.
Lester Davis, a spokesman for Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young, said city employees began realizing there was a problem Thursday morning and were able to talk to senior executives at Google later in the day to resolve the issue.
A Google system detects when a large number of accounts is being created in one place and steps in because they might be used to send spam or commit fraud.
Google provides both a free Gmail service and a paid system for businesses and other organizations. The reason for the misunderstanding over the cause of the suspensions was not clear, but the creation of a large number of new addresses on a business account would not have been treated as suspicious by Google’s system.




Data that proves identity could provide a defense as well.
Online identification is getting more and more intrusive
“…LexisNexis Risk Solutions, an American analytics firm, has catalogued more than 4 billion phones, tablets and other computers in this way for banks and other clients. Roughly 7% of them have been used for shenanigans of some sort. But device fingerprinting is becoming less useful. Apple, Google and other makers of equipment and operating systems have been steadily restricting the range of attributes that can be observed remotely. That is why a new approach, behavioral biometrics, is gaining ground. It relies on the wealth of measurements made by today’s devices. These include data from accelerometers and gyroscopic sensors, that reveal how people hold their phones when using them, how they carry them and even the way they walk. Touchscreens, keyboards and mice can be monitored to show the distinctive ways in which someone’s fingers and hands move. Sensors can detect whether a phone has been set down on a hard surface such as a table or dropped lightly on a soft one such as a bed. If the hour is appropriate, this action could be used to assume when a user has retired for the night. These traits can then be used to determine whether someone attempting to make a transaction is likely to be the device’s habitual user…”




I’m sure there are legitimate reasons to create such videos. Right?
Samsung deepfake AI could fabricate a video clip of you from a single photo
Imagine someone creating a deepfake video of you simply by stealing your Facebook profile pic. Luckily, the bad guys don't have their hands on that tech yet.
But Samsung has figured out how to make it happen.
Software for creating deepfakes – fabricated clips that make people appear to do or say things they never did – usually requires big data sets of images in order to create a realistic forgery. Now Samsung has developed a new artificial intelligence system that can generate a fake clip by feeding it a little as one photo.




My students have been concerned about the “curb to door” gap. Here’s Ford’s solution.
Watch Ford’s Delivery Robot That Walks On Two Legs Like A Human
Ford partnered with Agility Robotics to create Digit, a two-legged robot that could deliver your packages straight to your door in the future. Ford claims this robot can carry packages up to 40 pounds, navigate stairs, and go around unexpected obstacles.



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