Thursday, February 23, 2023

If this is a demonstration of capability, I wonder what percentage of food distribution it is possible to shut down at one time?

https://www.databreaches.net/cyberattack-on-food-giant-dole-temporarily-shuts-down-north-america-production-company-memo-says/

Cyberattack on food giant Dole temporarily shuts down North America production, company memo says

Sean Lyngaas reports:

A cyberattack earlier this month forced produce giant Dole to temporarily shut down production plants in North America and halt food shipments to grocery stores, according to a company memo about the incident obtained by CNN.

The previously unreported hack — which a source familiar with the incident said was ransomware — led some grocery shoppers to complain on Facebook in recent days that store shelves were missing Dole-made salad kits.

Read more at CNN.





Sounds like an attempt to establish precedent?

https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/23/covington_sec_amicus/

Lawyers join forces to fight common enemy: The SEC and its probes into cyber-victims

More than 80 law firms say they are "deeply troubled" by the US Securities and Exchange Commission's demand that Covington & Burling hand over names of its clients whose information was stolen by Chinese state-sponsored hackers.

In an amicus brief filed this week, 83 firms with a total of more than 50,000 attorneys employed backed their fellow lawyers in Covington's ongoing battle with America's financial watchdog.

The government agency has put Covington in an impossible situation, asking the law firm to breach attorney-client privilege by identifying customers involved in the cyberattack, and doesn't even have a good reason outside of "mere curiosity" for doing so, the attorneys argued in the friends of the court filing.

"Not only would the SEC breach well-established principles of confidentiality in the service of this fishing expedition, it would turn attorneys into witnesses against their own clients, while offering no guarantees that it will not disseminate the information to other parts of the government, the press, and the public," the court documents [PDF ] say.





I’m sure Congress should be watching…

https://thenextweb.com/news/predictive-policing-project-shows-even-eu-lawmakers-can-be-targets

Predictive policing project shows even EU lawmakers can be targets

Predictive policing has exposed a new group of future criminals: MEPs.

A new testing systems has spotlighted five EU politicians as “at risk” of committing future crimes. Luckily for them, it’s not a tool that’s used by law enforcement, but one designed to highlight the dangers of such systems.

The project is the brainchild of Fair Trials, a criminal justice watchdog. The NGO is campaigning for a ban on predicting policing, which uses data analytics to forecast when and where crimes are likely to happen — and who may commit them.





Again, the answer is in the question.

https://www.axios.com/2023/02/22/chatgpt-prompt-engineers-ai-job

AI's rise generates new job title: Prompt engineer

… “Writing a really great prompt for a chatbot persona is an amazingly high-leverage skill and an early example of programming in a little bit of natural language,” Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT creator OpenAI, said on Twitter Monday.

When prompted to define “prompt engineering,” ChatGPT itself told Axios that “effective prompt engineering is critical for generating high-quality outputs from generative AI models, as it can help ensure that the model generates content that is relevant, coherent, and consistent with the desired output.”





We need to be ready.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/02/cyberwar-lessons-from-the-war-in-ukraine.html

Cyberwar Lessons from the War in Ukraine

The Aspen Institute has published a good analysis of the successes, failures, and absences of cyberattacks as part of the current war in Ukraine: “The Cyber Defense Assistance Imperative ­ Lessons from Ukraine.

Its conclusion:

Cyber defense assistance in Ukraine is working. The Ukrainian government and Ukrainian critical infrastructure organizations have better defended themselves and achieved higher levels of resiliency due to the efforts of CDAC and many others. But this is not the end of the road—the ability to provide cyber defense assistance will be important in the future. As a result, it is timely to assess how to provide organized, effective cyber defense assistance to safeguard the post-war order from potential aggressors.
The conflict in Ukraine is resetting the table across the globe for geopolitics and international security. The US and its allies have an imperative to strengthen the capabilities necessary to deter and respond to aggression that is ever more present in cyberspace. Lessons learned from the ad hoc conduct of cyber defense assistance in Ukraine can be institutionalized and scaled to provide new approaches and tools for preventing and managing cyber conflicts going forward.

I am often asked why where weren’t more successful cyberattacks by Russia against Ukraine. I generally give four reasons: (1) Cyberattacks are more effective in the “grey zone” between peace and war, and there are better alternatives once the shooting and bombing starts. (2) Setting these attacks up takes time, and Putin was secretive about his plans. (3) Putin was concerned about attacks spilling outside the war zone, and affecting other countries. (4) Ukrainian defenses were good, aided by other countries and companies. This paper gives a fifth reasons: they were technically successful, but keeping them out of the news made them operationally unsuccessful.





Perspective.

https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-explore-ai-written-text-journals-hammer-policies

As scientists explore AI-written text, journals hammer out policies

Many ask authors to disclose use of ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence





I must admit to being Wally-esque.

https://dilbert.com/strip/2023-02-23



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