Imagine what might happen if President Biden makes Putin angry…
Airlines, Banks And Other Companies Across The World Hit In The Latest Web Outage
Several major companies, financial institutions and airlines from the U.S. to Australia and Hong Kong suffered brief online outages Thursday due to a third-party IT provider.
The outage appeared to affect each company's website and mobile applications. Internet monitoring websites including ThousandEyes and Downdetector.com showed disruptions across the world.
In Australia, major banks and airlines were hit by the outage, affecting business in the middle of the day.
This all comes a week after a similar major outage at the cloud service company Fastly.
… Major airlines in the U.S., including Delta, American, Southwest and United, experienced outages at around 1 a.m. ET. Financial institutions, Discover and Navy Federal Credit Union also suffered tech issues.
Hong Kong's stock exchange, one of the largest in the world, also had technical problems in the middle of the day.
(Related) Notice that the stories don’t exactly match.
Southwest Airlines dealing with 3rd day of flights canceled, delayed
… A Southwest spokesman says the technology problems have been fixed, but the airline is still working to resume normal operations.
On Monday night, problems with a third-party weather data provider caused Southwest to delay about 1,500 flights. Delta Air Lines and Alaska Airlines reported separate technical problems that affected customers trying to book flights.
… Then on Tuesday, the airline said it had to deal "intermittent performance issues with our network connectivity."
A security resource.
Paul van Oorschot’s Computer Security and the Internet
Paul van Oorschot’s webpage contains a complete copy of his book: Computer Security and the Internet: Tools and Jewels. It’s worth reading.
Disruption at many levels…
Ransomware claims are roiling an entire segment of the insurance industry
Washington Post: “The recent surge of ransomware attacks is upending the cyber insurance industry, pushing up the requirements and cost of coverage just as more companies need it. Ransomware attacks — in which cybercriminals take over an organization’s computer network and demand a payment to hand back control — have increased in frequency and severity over the past two years. According to blockchain research firm Chainalysis, ransom payments from companies increased 341 percent to a total of $412 million during 2020. “This is a tipping point this year,” said John Kerns, an executive managing director at insurance brokerage Beecher Carlson, a division of Brown & Brown, which sells cyber insurance. “I’ve been in business for 32 years and haven’t seen a market quite like this.” That’s pushing insurance carriers to reevaluate how much coverage they can afford to offer and how much they have to charge clients to do so. Underwriters are demanding to see detailed proof of clients’ cybersecurity measures in ways they never have before. For example, not using multifactor authentication, which requires a user to verify themselves in multiple ways, might result in a rejection…”
(Related)
https://threatpost.com/ransomware-victims-dont-pay-up/166989/
Exclusive Ransomware Poll: 80% of Victims Don’t Pay Up
Meanwhile, in a separate survey, 80 percent of organizations that paid the ransom said they were hit by a second attack.
This article is based on a much more in-depth piece, available in the free Threatpost Insider eBook, entitled “2021: The Evolution of Ransomware.” Download it today for much more on ransomware trends and the underground economy!
Can you force a government agency to do its job?
https://www.pogowasright.org/epic-report-what-the-ftc-could-be-doing-but-isnt-to-protect-privacy/
EPIC Report: What the FTC Could Be Doing (But Isn’t) To Protect Privacy
From EPIC.org:
EPIC has released a report highlighting numerous statutory authorities that the Federal Trade Commission has failed to use to safeguard privacy. The report, What the FTC Could Be Doing (But Isn’t) to Protect Privacy, identifies untapped or underused powers in the FTC’s toolbox and explains how the FTC should deploy them to protect the public from abusive data practices. EPIC’s report also criticizes the FTC’s lack of effective privacy enforcement over the past two decades. “A common refrain from the Commission during this period is that it lacks the authority to address these mounting threats to individual privacy,” the report explains. “But the FTC has not made full use of the authorities that it already has.” The report comes a day after Lina Khan was confirmed to the FTC and named chairwoman of the Commission. EPIC has frequently challenged the FTC over its failure to address consumer privacy harms and has long advocated for the creation of a U.S. Data Protection Agency. EPIC also supports legislation that would restore the FTC’s 13(b) authority to obtain restitution for individuals harmed by companies’ unlawful trade practices, which the Supreme Court recently curtailed in AMG Capital Management v. Federal Trade Commission.
This technology (when further developed) will likely become a mandatory test for all digital evidence.
Facebook's latest AI doesn't just detect deep fakes, it knows where they came from
… While the possibilities for entertainment using this tech are boundless, deep fake videos have the potential to severely disrupt the public’s trust in government and our elected officials — even the ability to believe our own eyes. On Wednesday, Facebook and Michigan State University debuted a novel method of not just detecting deep fakes but discovering which generative model produced it by reverse engineering the image itself.
… Problem is, if the image was created by a generative model that the detector system wasn’t trained on then the system won’t have the previous experience to be able to spot the fake.
Will my lack of a smartphone mean I don’t exist?
Apple Says It's Time to Digitize Your ID, Ready or Not
IF YOU'VE EVER scanned a digital boarding pass directly from your phone at airport security, you can imagine how doing the same with your driver's license would make life a little easier. Beginning in iOS 15 this fall, Apple will enable just that, letting you store your state ID alongside your credit cards, loyalty programs, transit passes, and even door and car keys in Apple Wallet. By doing so, the company won't just introduce convenience; it may well be the tipping point that forces more states, the US government, and even Android to make digital driver's licenses the norm.
So how should we address un-ethical AI?
Experts Doubt Ethical AI Design Will Be Broadly Adopted as the Norm Within the Next Decade
… a number of experts and advocates around the world have become worried about the long-term impact and implications of AI applications. They have concerns about how advances in AI will affect what it means to be human, to be productive and to exercise free will. Dozens of convenings and study groups have issued papers proposing what the tenets of ethical AI design should be, and government working teams have tried to address these issues. In light of this, Pew Research Center and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center asked experts where they thought efforts aimed at creating ethical artificial intelligence would stand in the year 2030. Some 602 technology innovators, developers, business and policy leaders, researchers and activists responded to this specific question:
By 2030, will most of the AI systems being used by organizations of all sorts employ ethical principles focused primarily on the public good?
In response, 68% chose the option declaring that ethical principles focused primarily on the public good will not be employed in most AI systems by 2030; 32% chose the option positing that ethical principles focused primarily on the public good will be employed in most AI systems by 2030.
A direction I did not anticipate.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03453-y
The rise of intelligent matter
Artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating the development of unconventional computing paradigms inspired by the abilities and energy efficiency of the brain. The human brain excels especially in computationally intensive cognitive tasks, such as pattern recognition and classification. A long-term goal is de-centralized neuromorphic computing, relying on a network of distributed cores to mimic the massive parallelism of the brain, thus rigorously following a nature-inspired approach for information processing. Through the gradual transformation of interconnected computing blocks into continuous computing tissue, the development of advanced forms of matter exhibiting basic features of intelligence can be envisioned, able to learn and process information in a delocalized manner. Such intelligent matter would interact with the environment by receiving and responding to external stimuli, while internally adapting its structure to enable the distribution and storage (as memory) of information. We review progress towards implementations of intelligent matter using molecular systems, soft materials or solid-state materials, with respect to applications in soft robotics, the development of adaptive artificial skins and distributed neuromorphic computing.
Facial recognition. Don’t you hate people who are cheerful in the morning? Would these cameras accept my snarl as a smile?
https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/17/22538160/ai-camera-smile-recognition-office-workers-china-canon
Canon put AI cameras in its Chinese offices that only let smiling workers inside
The latest example of dystopian workplace surveillance
No comments:
Post a Comment