Sounds like the FBI had a mole in
Intel’s chip design shop.
… Security
researchers with Positive Technologies sounded the alarm about the
vulnerability in a
blog post Thursday,
describing it as a doomsday-level threat in no uncertain terms.
… essentially
this flaw allows bad actors to hack your computer’s encryption
process, which opens the door to all kinds of industrial espionage
and sensitive information leaks. If that weren’t bad enough, the
process is completely undetectable since it works at the hardware
level, which allows any malicious code to fly under the radar of most
traditional security measures. Worse still, virtually all Intel
chipsets from the last five years carry this vulnerability, Positive
Technologies reported.
Something
for my Architecture students to debate? How long should support
last?
Over
one billion Android devices at risk as they no longer receive
security updates
More
than one billion Android devices are at risk of being hacked or
infected by malware, because they are no longer supported by security
updates and built-in protection.
That’s
the conclusion of an investigation
by Which?,
which found that at-risk smartphones are still being sold by
third-parties via sites like Amazon, despite the range of malware and
other threats to which they are vulnerable.
The
report cites data that Google collected
itself in May 2019,
which discovered that 42.1% of active Android users worldwide were
running version 6.0 (known as Marshmallow) of the operating system or
earlier.
To
recognize or not to recognize, that’s a good question…
Dave
Gershgorn reports:
Wolfcom, a company that makes technology for police, is pitching body cameras with live facial recognition to law enforcement groups across the United States, OneZero has learned. It’s a move that pushes against industry norms: Axon, the largest manufacturer of body cameras in the United States, declared last year that it would not put the invasive technology in its hardware, citing “serious ethical concerns.” NEC, which sells live facial recognition elsewhere in the world, has also not sold it to U.S. law enforcement.
Read
more on Medium.
The
data is there. Expect someone will use it.
Power
Through apps, not warrants, ‘Locate X’ allows federal law
enforcement to track phones
protocol:
“U.S. law enforcement agencies signed millions of dollars worth of
contracts with a Virginia company after it rolled out a powerful tool
that uses
data from popular mobile apps to track the movement of people’s
cell phones,
according to federal contracting records and six people familiar with
the software. The product, called Locate X and sold by Babel
Street,
allows investigators to draw a digital fence around an address or
area, pinpoint mobile devices that were within that area, and see
where else those devices have traveled, going back months, the
sources told Protocol. They said the tool tracks the location of
devices anonymously, using data that popular cell phone apps collect
to enable features like mapping or targeted ads, or simply to sell it
on to data brokers…”
What
should you do with this information? (See next article?)
Privacy-focused
DuckDuckGo launches new effort to block online tracking
DuckDuckGo,
the maker of search engine and browser technology that doesn't track
you online, is sharing data it's collected about online trackers with
other companies so they can also protect your privacy.
The
company said Thursday it's started
sharing a data set called
Tracker
Radar that
details 5,326 internet domains used by 1,727 companies and
organizations that track you online. The data is available to
anyone, and browser maker Vivaldi said on Tuesday it has
begun doing so.
Some
applications of technology are inevitable.
Robo
lawyer will sue organizations that will not delete your personal info
Fortune:
“In January, a new law gave consumers the power to stop companies
collecting their personal information. The law, known as the
California Consumer Privacy Act (or the
CCPA ),
can be a powerful tool for privacy, but it comes with a catch:
Consumers who want to exercise their CCPA rights must contact every
data broker individually, and there are more than a hundred of them.
But now they have an easier option. On Thursday March 5, 2020, a
startup called DoNotPay
unveiled
a service it calls Digital Health that automates the data-deletion
process. Priced at $3 a month, the service will contact more than
100 data brokers on your behalf and demand they delete your and your
family’s personal information. It will also show you the types of
data the brokers have collected—such as phone number or location
info—and
even initiate legal proceedings if the firms fail to comply.
The monthly fee also gives subscribers access to DoNotPay’s other
automated avenging services, like appealing parking tickets in any
city, claiming compensation for poor in-flight Wi-Fi, and Robo
Revenge, which sues robocallers... ”
...because
I’m cheap.
Book
price comparison search engine
booksprice.com:
“BooksPrice is a free-of-charge website that enables users to
search for the best deals as related to prices of books, CDs, DVDs
and other products offered by thousands of stores across the Web.
BooksPrice specializes in conducting comparisons of multiple books,
CDs and DVDs as part of one single search. BooksPrice is an
independent website that is not owned or controlled to any extent by
any other business entities. Therefore, all search results are
completely objective…”
An
interesting tool?
A
Flashy New AI Tool Could Be a Producer’s Dream and a Copyright
Nightmare
Imagine
being able to hear exactly what’s under the hood of any piece of
recorded music. You upload a file and a few minutes later, a song
like “Born to Run” splits apart to reveal its secrets. Each
player’s mastery is laid bare: There’s Bruce Springsteen’s
isolated vocal take, every murmur and cry heard clearly; Garry
Tallent’s propulsive bassline; Clarence Clemons’ fired-up
saxophone solo; and that memorable sprinkling of glockenspiel,
courtesy of Danny Federici.
Such
is the promise of Spleeter,
a free,
open-source AI tool
that was developed and released by the streaming service Deezer late
last year.
Using a process called source separation, Spleeter splits the audio
file of any given song into four new audio “stems,” which isolate
particular instruments or groups of instruments: vocals, bass, drums,
and so on. Some songs and instruments yield better results than
others. Bass and drum stems tend to sound muddy or distorted on
their own, but vocals fare better, especially if the surrounding
music is relatively sparse.
… (It
requires some coding knowledge to operate, but its open-source nature
means third parties are free to create their own, more user-friendly
versions.)
But
it may also be an intellectual property minefield, giving mashup DJs
and producers the power to repurpose bits of copyrighted material
with far more precision and flexibility than old-fashioned sampling
offers, and in ways that elude easy identification. (Would you be
able to recognize the “Born to Run” bassline if it were ripped
from its context, chopped up, and placed in a country song?)
Dilbert’s
social media warning: The evil that men do lives after them; the good
is oft interred with their bones.
No comments:
Post a Comment