Friday, January 24, 2020


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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