Category: Artemus Spotlights

NASA’s X-59 used recycled parts

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How NASA’s X-59 recycled decades-old plane parts to make silent supersonic flight possible

source: fastcompany.com  |  image: nasa.gov

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The new supersonic plane breaks the mold with a radical new shape and digital cockpit, but it relies on ancient parts to make it all happen.

NASA’s X-59 Quesst experimental aircraft has taken a major leap forward, firing up its engine for the first time. This marks a crucial and final milestone as the team prepares the first runway and flight tests that will lead to a long series of trials that aim to prove what computational simulations have already proven: that supersonic flight can happen without the deafening sonic boom that marred and eventually grounded aircrafts like the Concorde.

The X-59’s goal—to transform that sonic explosion into a gentle thump—is an engineering challenge that its makers are addressing through a design that mixes a couple of radically new technologies with a lot of decades-old, battle-proven aircraft parts ingeniously repurposed to make it all work. 

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Malicious Ads in Search Results Are Driving New Generations of Scams

Posted on by esimantiras
Malicious Ads in Search Results Are Driving New Generations of Scams
source: wired.com  |  image: pixabay.com
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The scourge of “malvertising” is nothing new, but the tactic is still so effective that it’s contributing to the rise of investment scams and the spread of new strains of malware.

Malicious digital advertisements and “SEO poisoning” that gets those ads to prime spots in search results have been mainstays of the digital scamming ecosystem for years. But as online crime evolves and malicious trends like “pig butchering” investment scams and infostealing malware proliferate, researchers say that so-called “malvertising” is still a key technique for scammers—and still a growing problem.

Instances of malvertising in the US were up 42 percent month-over-month in fall 2023 and increased another 41 percent from July to September of this year, according to data from the security firm Malwarebytes. The company says that scammers typically cycle through the advertising accounts used for malvertising quickly, and 77 percent of the accounts are only used once. The bulk of the activity, though, traces back to South Asia and Southeast Asia, Malwarebytes says, with 90 percent of the ad fraud coming from Pakistan and Vietnam, according to the researchers’ telemetry. But as with many components of the digital crime ecosystem, malvertising is often offered as a service where cybercriminals from around the world can purchase ads that distribute their malware or lead potential victims to a malicious website of their choosing. Continue reading “Malicious Ads in Search Results Are Driving New Generations of Scams” →

US government says companies are no longer allowed to send bulk data to these nations

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US government says companies are no longer allowed to send bulk data to these nations

source: techradar.com (contributed by Steve Page)  |  image: pixabay.com

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US data is off the table for China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and more

The US Department of Justice has issued a final rule on Executive Order 14117, which President Joe Biden signed in February 2024, preventing the movement of US citizens’ data to a number of “countries of concern”.

The list of countries consists of China (including Hong Kong and Macau), Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela, all of which the DoJ says have “engaged in a long-term pattern or serious instances of conduct significantly adverse to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of U.S. persons.” Continue reading “US government says companies are no longer allowed to send bulk data to these nations” →

The Great Upheaval

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The Great Upheaval

source: axios.com (contributed by Bill Amshey)  |  image: pixabay.com

 

Governance, media, business and global geopolitics are all being reordered at breakneck speed — all simultaneously.

  • It’s the Great Upheaval, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a “Behind the Curtain” column.

Why it matters: We’re witnessing more change … across more parts of life … at more speed … than ever before.

This means opportunity — and new threats or surprising shifts — pop up faster and faster. Anticipating change is tougher than ever, CEOs tell us.

  • There are several causes: a global populist surge, an AI arms race, shifting political alliances globally and domestically, and radical changes in how people worldwide get and share information. Continue reading “The Great Upheaval” →

FBI Warns Smartphone Users…

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FBI Warns Smartphone Users—Hang Up And Create A Secret Word Now

source: forbes.com (contributed by Artemus founder, Bob Wallace)  |  image: fbi.gov

 

Update, Dec. 07, 2024: This story, originally published Dec. 05, now includes details of innovative technological solutions for smartphone users looking to protect themselves from the kinds of AI-generated scams the FBI has warned about. An update on Dec. 06 added details on reporting smartphone crime to the FBI along with additional input from security experts.

The use of AI in smartphone cyber attacks is increasing as recent reports have revealed; from tech support scams targeting Gmail users to fraudulent gambling apps and sophisticated biometric protection-busting banking fraud to name but a few. Now the Federal Bureau of Investigations has issued a public service announcement warning of how generative AI is being used to facilitate such fraud and advising smartphone users to hang up and create a secret word to help mitigate these cyber attacks. Here’s what the FBI warned you must do.

FBI Warns Of Generative AI Attacks Against Smartphone Users

In public service alert number I-120324-PSA, the FBI has warned of cyber attackers increasingly looking to generative AI to commit fraud on a large scale and increase the believability of their schemes. “These tools assist with content creation and can correct for human errors that might otherwise serve as warning signs of fraud,” the FBI said. Given that, as the FBI admits, it can be difficult to tell what is real and what is AI-generated today, the public service announcement serves as a warning for everyone when it comes to what to look out for and how to respond to mitigate the risk. Although not all the advice is aimed directly at smartphone users, given that this remains a primary delivery mechanism for many AI deepfake attacks, especially those using both facial and vocal cloning, it is this advice that I am focusing on.

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The Promise of Artificial General Intelligence is Evaporating

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The Promise of Artificial General Intelligence is Evaporating

source: mindmatters.ai (contributed by Artemus founder, Bob Wallace)  |  image: pexels.com

 

Revenue from corporate adoption of AI continues to disappoint and, so far, pales in comparison to the revenue that sustained the dot-com bubble — until it didn’t

hink back to when you took a science class in high school or college. Introductory physics, for example. There was one textbook and, if you learned the material in the book, you got a high grade in the class. If you were super serious, you might read a second textbook that reinforced what was in the first book and might even have added a few new concepts. A third book wouldn’t have added much, if anything. Reading a 10th, 20th, or 100th textbook would surely have been a waste of time.

Large language models (LLMs or chatbots) are like that when it comes to absorbing factual information. They don’t need to be told 10, 20, or 100 times that Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, Paris is the capital of France, or that the formula for Newton’s law of universal gravitation is

Continue reading “The Promise of Artificial General Intelligence is Evaporating” →

Phone Scanner That Detects Spyware

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A New Phone Scanner That Detects Spyware Has Already Found 7 Pegasus Infections

source: wired.com (contributed by FAN, Steve Page)  |  image: unsplash.com

 

The mobile device security firm iVerify has been offering a tool since May that makes spyware scanning accessible to anyone—and it’s already turning up victims.

IN RECENT YEARS, commercial spyware has been deployed by more actors against a wider range of victims, but the prevailing narrative has still been that the malware is used in targeted attacks against an extremely small number of people. At the same time, though, it has been difficult to check devices for infection, leading individuals to navigate an ad hoc array of academic institutions and NGOs that have been on the front lines of developing forensic techniques to detect mobile spyware. On Tuesday, the mobile device security firm iVerify is publishing findings from a spyware detection feature it launched in May. Of 2,500 device scans that the company’s customers elected to submit for inspection, seven revealed infections by the notorious NSO Group malware known as Pegasus. Continue reading “Phone Scanner That Detects Spyware” →

FBI Warns iPhone And Android Users—Stop Sending Texts

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FBI Warns iPhone And Android Users—Stop Sending Texts

source: forbes.com (contributed by FAN, Steve Page  |  image: pexels.com

 

Republished on December 6 as new cybersecurity regulations are proposed, and with further warnings following the FBI’s encrypted communications push.

Timing is everything. Just as Apple’s adoption of RCS had seemed to signal a return to text messaging versus the unstoppable growth of WhatsApp, then along comes a surprising new hurdle to stop that in its tracks. While messaging Android to Android or iPhone to iPhone is secure, messaging from one to the other is not.

The network cyberattacks, attributed to Salt Typhoon, a group associated with China’s Ministry of Public Security, has generated heightened concern as to the vulnerabilities within critical U.S. communication networks. The reality is different. Without fully end-to-end encrypted messaging and calls, there has always been a potential for content to be intercepted. That’s the entire reason Apple, Google and Meta advise its use, highlighting the fact that even they can’t see content. Continue reading “FBI Warns iPhone And Android Users—Stop Sending Texts” →

In This Polish Village, All 5,600 Residents Live on the Same Street

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In This Polish Village, All 5,600 Residents Live on the Same Street

source: nicenews.com  |  image: pexels.com

 

take a look at this street!

 

When a drone captured a bird’s-eye view photo of a sleepy Polish town, one feature stood out, taking the village from a relatively unknown dot on a map to a social media phenomenon. 

That wow-worthy feature? Everyone in Suloszowa — with a population of 5,672 in 2023 — lives on one single street. What impresses in the aerial picture is not only the 5.6-mile road with homes dotted on either side of it, but the billowing ribbons of yellow, green, and gold fields stretching out from behind them, forming living art in the surrounding countryside. 

“Until I saw the pictures from above, I didn’t really appreciate how nice it is here,” Marian Gęgotek, a resident and tractor driver, told the Daily Mail. Local shopkeeper Edyta was similarly struck by the photo of her town making the rounds on social media, adding: “I saw the aerial picture on the internet and I know that people are talking about us, and I am not that surprised, it is a lovely view.”  Continue reading “In This Polish Village, All 5,600 Residents Live on the Same Street” →

Rising Threat of China’s Volt Typhoon

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Rising Threat of China’s Volt Typhoon

image - china tech

source: axios.com (contributed by FAN, Bill Amshey)  |  Image: pexels.com

 

Notorious China-linked hackers known for burrowing deep into U.S. infrastructure are back, according to a report out today.

Why it matters: The resurgence shows that the Chinese government isn’t backing down from its quest to infiltrate American utilities in preparation for a potential destructive cyberattack.

Zoom in: The research team at SecurityScorecard, a cyber risk assessment company, says it has noticed Volt Typhoon moving traffic through a set of compromised routers in New Caledonia, an island nation off the coast of Australia, as recently as September.

  • Global law enforcement disrupted a significant portion of Volt Typhoon’s botnet in January, but the group quickly set up new servers.
  • However, actual movement across these servers hadn’t been seen until September, according to the report.
  • Routing through New Caledonia gives the hackers a “silent bridge” to hide traffic moving between the Asia-Pacific region and the Americas, the report says. Continue reading “Rising Threat of China’s Volt Typhoon” →