Thursday, June 02, 2022

You have to figure that Russia knew we were doing this. I wonder if it started only after they invaded Ukraine?

https://news.sky.com/story/us-military-hackers-conducting-offensive-operations-in-support-of-ukraine-says-head-of-cyber-command-12625139

US military hackers conducting offensive operations in support of Ukraine, says head of Cyber Command

In an exclusive interview with Sky News, General Paul Nakasone confirmed for the first time that the US had "conducted a series of operations" in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

In an exclusive interview, General Paul Nakasone also explained how separate "hunt forward" operations were allowing the United States to search out foreign hackers and identify their tools before they were used against America.

Speaking in Tallinn, Estonia, the general, who is also director of the National Security Agency (NSA), told Sky News that he is concerned "every single day" about the risk of a Russian cyber attack targeting the US and said that the hunt forward activities were an effective way of protecting both America as well as allies.

The four star general did not detail the activities, but explained how they were lawful, conducted with complete civilian oversight of the military and through policy decided at the Department of Defence.

"My job is to provide a series of options to the secretary of defence and the president, and so that's what I do," he said. He declined to describe those options.

General Nakasone had delivered a keynote speech at CyCon, an international conference on cyber conflict, hosted by NATO's Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn, and praised the partnerships between democratic states as a key strategic benefit.





Ransom aside, why would Iran target a hospital?

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-technology-health-middle-east-e4f8e7145e4b4447a331d4b0cc5a5bd3

Wray: FBI blocked planned cyberattack on children’s hospital

The FBI thwarted a planned cyberattack on a children’s hospital in Boston that was to have been carried out by hackers sponsored by the Iranian government, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday.

He did not ascribe a particular motive to the planned attack on the hospital, but he noted that Iran and other countries have been hiring cyber mercenaries to conduct attacks on their behalf. In addition, the health care and public health sector is classified by the U.S. government as one of 16 critical infrastructure sectors, and health care providers such as hospitals are seen as ripe targets for hackers.





Sounds good” is not sufficient justification.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/02/eu_child_protection/

Dear Europe, once again here are the reasons why scanning devices for unlawful files is not going to fly

While Apple has, temporarily at least, backed away from last year's plan to run client-side scanning (CSS) software on customers' iPhones to detect and report child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to authorities, European officials in May proposed rules to protect children that involve the same highly criticized approach.

The European Commission has suggested several ways to deal with child abuse imagery, including scanning online private communication and breaking encryption. It has done so undeterred by a paper penned last October by 14 prominent computer scientists and security experts dismissing CSS as a source of serious security and privacy risks.

In response, a trio of academics aims to convey just how ineffective and rights-violating CSS would be to those who missed the memo the first time around. And the last time, and the time before that.

In an ArXiv paper titled "YASM (Yet Another Surveillance Mechanism)," Kaspar Rosager Ludvigsen and Shishir Nagaraja, of the University of Strathclyde, and Angela Daly, of the Leverhulme Research Center for Forensic Science and Dundee Law School, in Scotland, revisit CSS as a way to ferret out CSAM and conclude the technology is both ineffective and unjustified.





I wonder if this is really an “unintended” consequence?

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/expressvpn-rejects-cert-in-directives-suspends-india-ops/articleshow/91956961.cms

ExpressVPN rejects CERT-In directives, removes its India servers

Virtual private network (VPN) operator ExpressVPN is pulling its servers out of India, citing the impossibility of complying with the country's upcoming mandate to record users' names and activities.

"With a recent data law introduced in India requiring all VPN providers to store user information for at least five years, ExpressVPN has made the very straightforward decision to remove our Indian-based VPN servers," the company said in a blog post.

… The new data law proposed by India's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) to combat cybercrime is incompatible with the purpose of VPNs, which are supposed to keep users' internet behaviour private, the company said.

"Rest assured, our users will still be able to connect to VPN servers that will give them Indian IP addresses and allow them to access the internet as if they were located in India. These “virtual” India servers will instead be physically located in Singapore and the UK," it added.





Government liability. I guess you can’t sue China successfully.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3662158/opms-63-million-breach-settlement-offer-is-it-enough.html#tk.rss_all

OPM's $63 million breach settlement offer: Is it enough?

The nature and scope of the data stolen in the U.S. Office of Personnel Management presents a life-long risk to victims, who might get as little as $700 if the court accepts the settlement.

If one was to look into the Federal Court’s Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) one would see that more than 130 separate lawsuits have been filed against the U.S. Government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM), all of which are associated with the 2014 and 2015 data breaches that affected millions.





Another reason to grant AI personhood?

https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/01/whos-liable-for-ai-generated-lies/

Who’s liable for AI-generated lies?

Who will be liable for harmful speech generated by large language models? As advanced AIs such as OpenAI’s GPT-3 are being cheered for impressive breakthroughs in natural language processing and generation — and all sorts of (productive) applications for the tech are envisaged from slicker copywriting to more capable customer service chatbots — the risks of such powerful text-generating tools inadvertently automating abuse and spreading smears can’t be ignored. Nor can the risk of bad actors intentionally weaponizing the tech to spread chaos, scale harm and watch the world burn.

Indeed, OpenAI is concerned enough about the risks of its models going “totally off the rails,” as its documentation puts it at one point (in reference to a response example in which an abusive customer input is met with a very troll-esque AI reply), to offer a free content filter that “aims to detect generated text that could be sensitive or unsafe coming from the API” — and to recommend that users don’t return any generated text that the filter deems “unsafe.” (To be clear, its documentation defines “unsafe” to mean “the text contains profane language, prejudiced or hateful language, something that could be NSFW or text that portrays certain groups/people in a harmful manner.”).

But, given the novel nature of the technology, there are no clear legal requirements that content filters must be applied. So OpenAI is either acting out of concern to avoid its models causing generative harms to people — and/or reputational concern — because if the technology gets associated with instant toxicity that could derail development.





Read and heed.

https://undark.org/2022/06/02/the-long-uncertain-road-to-artificial-general-intelligence/

Opinion: The Long, Uncertain Road to Artificial General Intelligence

A versatile new AI is fueling speculation that machines will soon think like humans. It’s time for a reality check.





Perspective. (Because I haven’t considered all the implications)

https://www.bespacific.com/13-ways-overturning-roe-v-wade-affects-you-even-if-you-think-it-doesnt/

13 Ways Overturning Roe v. Wade Affects You (even if you think it doesn’t)

Via LLRX 13 Ways Overturning Roe v. Wade Affects You (even if you think it doesn’t) Kathy Biehl is a lawyer licensed in two states, as well as a prolific multidisciplinary author and writer. Roe v. Wade has been settled law during her entire career. In this article Biehl succinctly and expertly identifies how the upcoming Supreme Court decision in Dobbs V. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a draft of which was “leaked” on May 2, 2022, will impact many facets of our society as well as our democracy.



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