Hacking the national treasury. Is it all North Korea?
https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/swift-fraud-on-the-rise-according-to-eastnets-survey-report/
SWIFT Fraud On the Rise According to EastNets Survey Report
According to a new report (“How Banks Are Combating the Rise in SWIFT Cyber Fraud”) from EastNets, the problem of SWIFT fraud may be more widespread and dangerous than originally thought. In the aftermath of the epic $81 million SWIFT fraud attack on Bangladesh Bank in 2016, the SWIFT interbank messaging platform immediately put new safeguards in place in order to neutralize risk. However, EastNets surveyed 200 banks worldwide and found that 4 in 5 of these banks had experienced at least one SWIFT fraud attempt since 2016, and the problem appears to be growing on an annual basis.






Hacking a “home security” device?
https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/12/12/cryptocurrency-extortionists-bitcoin-ring-doorbell-cameras-ransom/
Amazon Ring owners foil $400K Bitcoin extortion plot by removing batteries
Tania Amador, a 28-year-old who lives in Grand Prarie just outside Dallas, gave a video to local news which reportedly showed that her Ring security system had been hacked by cryptocurrency hungry scammers who demanded 50 Bitcoin ($400,000).
… “I was asleep and our Ring alarm was going off like an intruder had entered our home,” Amador told WFAA. “Then we heard a voice coming from our camera.”
The voice reportedly said “Ring support! Ring Support! We would like to notify you that your account has been terminated by a hacker.”
The unscrupulous scammers then demanded a 50 Bitcoin ($400,000) payment, and threatened Amador by saying that she will be terminated herself if she doesn’t oblige.
“Pay this 50 Bitcoin ransom or you will get terminated yourself,” they said.
If this wasn’t scary enough, the hackers also managed to gain control of her Ring doorbell to make it appear that they were outside her home.
… Ring has been facing a slew of privacy concerns after numerous reports that their products have been hacker by bad actors.
A quick Google demonstrates this isn’t an isolated issue. A recent Motherboard report found that there is software available specifically designed to hack Ring cameras which sells for as little as $6.
The home security company told WFAA and Amador that the hacks were a result of a third-party data breach in which Ring account details were exposed. This was not a result of Ring’s security being breached or compromised, it said.






New roles and responsibilities.
https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/12/11/how-congress-wants-to-help-sync-military-cyber/
How Congress wants to help sync military cyber
The government’s annual defense policy bill, if signed into law by President Donald Trump, will create several new cyber positions within the military.
The fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act outlines the roles the Department of Defense must fill — at the Pentagon and within the services.
The first position is a senior military advisory for cyber policy — who will also serve as the deputy principal cyber adviser and be at least a two-star general — within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.






Conclusions are obvious? Maybe the FBI should not get backdoors?
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3489718/government-encryption-busting-powers-should-be-curbed-study-says.html
Government encryption-busting powers should be curbed, study says
A new study funded by the University of Waikato and the New Zealand Law Foundation’s Information Law and Policy Project (ILAPP) has called for additional safeguards to curb the powers of government to order users and companies to decrypt encrypted data and devices.
According to principal investigator Dr Michael Dizon, the problem with these powers is that there are no express standards and guidelines with respect to how they are carried out, especially in relation to human rights.
“Forcing suspects to disclose their passwords may infringe their right against self-incrimination. Requiring a company to create backdoors or vulnerabilities in encryption to allow the police access to a suspect’s data may jeopardise the privacy and security of all its other clients,” he said.
… “While providers have a responsibility to assist the police in search or surveillance operations if it is within their existing technical capabilities, such assistance should not involve any act that would undermine the information security of their products and services or compromise the privacy of their clients as a whole.”
The report is entitled A matter of security, privacy and trust: A study of the principles and values of encryption in New Zealand.



(Related)
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pkeeay/apple-dmca-take-down-tweet-containing-an-iphone-encryption-key
Apple Used the DMCA to Take Down a Tweet Containing an iPhone Encryption Key
Security researchers are accusing Apple of abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to take down a viral tweet and several Reddit posts that discuss techniques and tools to hack iPhones.
On Sunday, a security researcher who focuses on iOS and goes by the name Siguza posted a tweet containing what appears to be an encryption key that could be used to reverse engineer the Secure Enclave Processor, the part of the iPhone that handles data encryption and stores other sensitive data.
Two days later, a law firm that has worked for Apple in the past sent a DMCA Takedown Notice to Twitter, asking for the tweet to be removed. The company complied, and the tweet became unavailable until today, when it reappeared. In a tweet, Siguza said that the DMCA claim was “retracted.”
… iPhone security researchers and jailbreakers see these actions as Apple trying to clamp down on the jailbreaking community. Some in the community have questioned whether an encryption key, or posts linking to jailbreaking tools, are subject to copyright at all.






Because not every user understands.
https://www.bespacific.com/why-every-website-wants-you-to-accept-its-cookies/
Why every website wants you to accept its cookies
Vox/Recode: “…cookies are pieces of information saved about you when you’re online, and they track you as you browse. So say you go to a weather website and put in your zip code to look up what’s happening in your area; the next time you visit the same site, it will remember your zip code because of cookies. There are first-party cookies that are placed by the site you visit, and then there are third-party cookies, such as those placed by advertisers to see what you’re interested in and in turn serve you ads — even when you leave the original site you visited. (This is how ads follow you around the internet.) The rise of alerts about cookies is the result of a confluence of events, mainly out of the EU. But in the bigger picture, these alerts underscore an ongoing debate over digital privacy, including whether asking users to opt in or opt out of data collection is better, and the question of who should own data and be responsible for protecting it…”






Push back on surveillance.
New Hampshire Bill Would Limit Warrantless Drone Surveillance
Mike Maharrey writes:

A bill prefiled in the New Hampshire House would restrict the warrantless and weaponized use of drones by law enforcement. The legislation would not only establish important privacy protections at the state level; it would also help thwart the federal surveillance state.

A coalition of four Republicans filed House Bill 1580 (HB1580 ) for introduction in the 2020 legislative session. The legislation would generally prohibit government use of drones for surveillance.

Read more on Tenth Amendment Center.






An article on AI Architecture.
https://thenextweb.com/syndication/2019/12/10/10-predictions-for-data-science-and-ai-in-2020/
This is what the AI industry will look like in 2020
As we come to the end of 2019, we reflect on a year whose start already saw 100 machine learning papers published a day and its end looks to see a record-breaking funding year for AI.
To paraphrase Eric Beinhocker from the Institute for New Economic Thinking, there are physical technologies that evolve at the pace of science, and social technologies that evolve at the pace at which humans can change — much slower.
… Executive understanding of data science and AI becomes more important
The realization is dawning that the bottleneck to data science value may not be the technical aspects of data science or AI (gasp!), but the maturity of the actual consumers of data science.
While some technology companies and large corporations have a head start, there is a growing awareness that in-house training programs are often the best way to develop internal maturity.



(Related)
https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/12/21010671/ai-index-report-2019-machine-learning-artificial-intelligence-data-progress
AI R&D is booming, but general intelligence is still out of reach
Trying to get a handle on the progress of artificial intelligence is a daunting task, even for those enmeshed in the AI community. But the latest edition of the AI Index report — an annual rundown of machine learning data points now in its third year — does a good job confirming what you probably already suspected: the AI world is booming in a range of metrics covering research, education, and technical achievements.
The AI Index covers a lot of ground — so much so that its creators, which include institutions like Harvard, Stanford, and OpenAI, have also released two new tools just to sift through the information they sourced from. One tool is for searching AI research papers and the other is for investigating country-level data on research and investment.






An interesting question.
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/companies-need-an-ethicist-armed-with-a-moral-compass-to-build-trust-in-ai/
Companies need an ethicist armed with a moral compass to build trust in AI
At this point in the artificial intelligence transformation, it's easier to spot the mistakes than the successes.
When Apple and Goldman Sachs rolled out the Apple credit card, one high-profile tech founder and applicant described how the team clearly failed on the "explainability" requirement for AI efforts.
Co-founder & CTO of Basecamp David Heinemeier Hansson complained about the card's application process after he and his wife both applied for the card. Her credit limit was much lower than his, even though her credit score was better. When Heinemeier Hansson tried to find out why, the first customer service agent literally had no answer:

"The first person was like "I don't know why, but I swear we're not discriminating, it's just the algorithm."

The second customer service agent highlighted the explainability fail:

"Second rep went on about how she couldn't actually access the real reasoning (again IT'S JUST THE ALGORITHM is implied)."

How can Apple and Goldman Sachs prove the credit review process is fair if no one has any clue how it works?






Written just for me.
https://www.business2community.com/marketing/the-dummies-guide-to-artificial-intelligence-for-marketing-02265922
The Dummies’ Guide to Artificial Intelligence for Marketing
… Fact: AI is transforming business operations and increasingly becoming our interface with technology. At the same time, we’re a long way from it taking over our lives. As IBM software engineer Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. wrote, “There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order of magnitude improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity.”
What we are seeing, however, is a new generation of technology that is bringing greater insight and productivity to marketing and sales and a heightened experience for customers.
If you’re sitting on the fence, consider that Salesforce’s State of Marketing reports that marketers—your competition—are embracing AI-based applications and technologies.
Gartner confirms this, projecting that 30% of companies around the world will be using at least one AI-based sales application by 2020. And if you need more inspiration to act, Forrester Research estimates that data-driven insights will enable businesses to attract $1.2 trillion AWAY from companies not yet using AI.
… Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics: It’s one thing to have lots of data; it’s another to be able to process it and know what it’s telling you. While companies have had tools that help the decipher what people did, they’re only beginning to use that same data to predict what customers will do. And now, with AI-based analytics, they have the potential to act on the predictions and find the best course of action to achieve the desired outcome.