Curious. I wonder if a new Marvel superhero is behind this?
Someone is
uninstalling the Phorpiex malware from infected PCs and telling users
to install an antivirus
Malware analysts
believe someone has hijacked the Phorpiex botnet from its creator and
is sabotaging its operations by alerting users they've been infected.
A
mysterious entity appears to have hijacked the backend infrastructure
of the Phorpiex (Trik) botnet and is uninstalling the spam-bot
malware from infected hosts, while also showing a popup telling users
to install an antivirus and update their computers, ZDNet has
learned.
The
popups have started appearing on users' screens today, early morning,
US Eastern time, and have been spotted
by the research team at antivirus vendor Check Point.
Initially,
ZDNet and others thought this was a prank coded inside the malware by
the Phorpiex team for the purpose of trolling security researchers
analyzing the malware.
However,
as the hours passed, it became clear that this was actually taking
place on customer systems, in the real world, and was not just a
popup that was appearing in virtual machines used as malware analysis
sandboxes.
… Balmas listed several theories as what could
have happened -- such as the malware operators deciding to quit and
shut down the botnet on their own terms, a law enforcement action, a
vigilante security researcher taking matters into his own hands, or a
rival malware gang sabotaging the Phorpiex crew by destroying their
botnet.
I haven’t found any suggestion of why
they were down. Does this suggest that everything goes through a
‘single point of failure?’
Comcast
experienced a nationwide internet outage on Thursday
Philadelphia-based
cable and internet giant Comcast has resolved a nationwide internet
outage that disrupted service on Thursday afternoon.
Customer
reports of the outage surfaced around 2 p.m. and skyrocketed shortly
afterward, according to downdetector.com.
By
3:15 p.m., there was a significant drop in reports of ongoing issues.
A
Comcast spokeswoman said all residential services were back online as
of 4 p.m.
GDPR evolving because of AI?
EU
Parliament Calls For More Consumer Protection In AI, Automation
Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer
Protection Committee issued a
resolution Thursday
(Jan. 23) that will put rules into place to address the challenges of
fast-developing artificial intelligence and automated decision-making
technology.
The committee said citizens should always be
adequately informed about both kinds of technology, including how to
reach a human with decision-making powers and about how the tech’s
decisions can be questioned or corrected.
Under the new rules, any system utilizing AI or
ADM technology should use only the highest-quality, unbiased sets of
data and there should be review systems set up so that any mistakes
can be corrected. The committee said it should also be possible at
all times to speak with human representatives to review the decisions
made by AI or ADM.
The committee said that humans must “ultimately
be responsible” for the processes of AI and ADM processes,
particularly in fields such as medical, legal and accounting.
The committee also warned that AI and ADM
technology would evolve over time and so the regulations may have to
be updated.
Implications for both Computer Security and
Architecture.
Disruption
2.0: How IoT And AI Are Breaking Up The Business World
… IoT solves the problem of digitizing
the physical world and turning physical attributes into digital bits
and bytes. AI solves the problem of making sense of large
amounts of data and turning this data into actions.
… At
their core, IoT devices are physical assets with sensors. These
sensors capture data, and this data needs to convert to business
value. The term IoT, as I detailed in my previous
posts,
doesn't quite describe this process. A
name that better describes this process is “Data
Capturing Assets”.
… The
data enabling AioT, Intelligent Automation, and Disruption 2.0 is
within the core of companies. The more of their data companies
utilize, and the more insights they gain, the more influential the
outcomes of Intelligent Automation will be.
This
ability to do things better via better Intelligent Automation,
utilization, optimization, and personalization will force businesses
to redefine how they operate. Companies
who will not seize this opportunity will cease to exist.
They will become uncompetitive.
Any chance
this could be more than a collection of guesses?
Report
predicts 69% of managers' routine work will be completely automated
by 2024
… "Currently,
managers spend time filling in forms, updating information and
approving workflows. By using
AI to automate these
tasks, they can spend less time managing transactions and can invest
more time on learning, performance management and goal setting."
AI
will influence the office,
but the level at which it does, will be based on new tech advances,
organizational readiness to exploit, and worker attitudes, the
report, "Predicts 2020: AI and the Future of Work," found.
Because managers are invariably privy to planned tech changes, where
and when the company stands in adopting the tech, and the in-office
environment, their presence in a supervisorial capacity is essential.
An
AI resource?
Discovering
millions of datasets on the web
Google
Blog:
“Across the web, there are millions of datasets about nearly any
subject that interests you. If you’re looking to buy a puppy, you
could find
datasets compiling
complaints of puppy buyers or studies on puppy cognition. Or if you
like skiing, you could find
data on
revenue of ski resorts or injury rates and participation numbers.
Dataset
Search has
indexed almost 25 million of these datasets, giving you a single
place to search for datasets and find links to where the data is.
Over the past year, people have tried it out and provided feedback,
and now Dataset Search is officially out of beta…”
Collecting
handouts for my students.
Book
Creator Adds New Accessibility Features
Book
Creator is
a tool that I have been using and recommending for years for making
multimedia ebooks. You can use it as an iPad app or in your web
browser. This week Book
Creator announced that
it now works in Microsoft Edge as well as Chrome and Safari. That's
not the only product enhancement Book Creator released this week.
Some
of the other
Book Creator enhancements made this week include
support for dictation in 120 languages, auto-generating captions on
videos, and auto transcription of audio recordings. Automatic
captioning of videos can be activated for videos that are recorded
directly through the Book Creator app as well as videos that are
uploaded to Book Creator pages. Likewise, automatic transcription of
audio can be activated for files recorded directly in Book Creator as
well as files that are added from external sources. Captions and
transcripts are available in 120 languages.
For
my students.
How to
Customize Your LinkedIn Feed
I stand corrected.
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