Author: esimantiras

China and Russia, two sides of a vise

Posted on by esimantiras

 

 

China and Russia, two sides of a vise

   

source: axios.com (contributed by FAN, Bill Amshey)  |  images: pixabay.com & pexels.com

 

The complementary scheming of Russia and China dominated discussions among some of the world’s highest-ranking military and political officials at the Aspen Security Forum.

Why it matters: To hear the national security brain trust tell it in Colorado, Western primacy is in a vise, with Moscow and Beijing together applying the pressure.

Here are a few examples, laid bare at last week’s conference, where the U.S. and its allies are being challenged:

  • In space, China aims to “displace the United States as the global leader” and exploit it “in a way that is to our detriment,” said Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, the Defense Intelligence Agency director.
  • When China blew up a satellite in 2007, “they put us on notice,” and “we have only seen their development of counter-space weapons just rapidly, breathtakingly, increase,” said U.S. Space Command boss Gen. Stephen Whiting.
  • Online, Russia peddles disinformation that influences elections. China absconds with sensitive information that springboards its weapons development and broader economy.
  • “If Xi Jinping were sitting on this stage, he would say, ‘Thank you very much for allowing us to cherry-pick, to pick your pocket, of leading technologies and IP,'” said Jon Huntsman Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to China and Russia.
  • On the ground and at sea, Russia and China use their troops to muddle borders. Those nearby document the belligerence, but denunciations have done little to stop them.
  • “If we allow it to become the norm, that a larger state can change its smaller neighbors’ borders with force, then which border remains secure?” said Jonatan Vseviov, the secretary general of Estonia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Continue reading “China and Russia, two sides of a vise” →

The new defense disruptors

Posted on by esimantiras

The new defense disruptors

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

 

A global technology race, supercharged by a combative China and daily innovation on the Ukrainian front line, is fostering a fresh crop of companies capable of reshaping the U.S. military-industrial complex.

Why it matters: A flood of investment is fueling these artificial intelligence, autonomy, cyber and space specialists at a time when weapons-buying orthodoxy is being questioned.

  • The entrants are feeding a pool of Defense Department suppliers that has for decades consolidated, posing “serious consequences for national security,” according to a 2022 review of industrial base competition.
  • Some of the standouts are dubbed dual-use, serving both commercial and defense markets.

Continue reading “The new defense disruptors” →

The biggest data breaches in 2024: 1 billion stolen records and rising

Posted on by esimantiras

The biggest data breaches in 2024: 1 billion stolen records… and rising

source: techcrunch.com (contributed by FAN, Steve Page)  |  image: pixabay.com

 

We’re over halfway through 2024, and already this year we have seen some of the biggest, most damaging data breaches in recent history. And just when you think that some of these hacks can’t get any worse, they do.

From huge stores of customers’ personal information getting scraped, stolen and posted online, to reams of medical data covering most people in the United States getting stolen, the worst data breaches of 2024 to date have already surpassed at least 1 billion stolen records and rising. These breaches not only affect the individuals whose data was irretrievably exposed, but also embolden the criminals who profit from their malicious cyberattacks.

Travel with us to the not-so-distant past to look at how some of the biggest security incidents of 2024 went down, their impact, and in some cases, how they could have been stopped. 

Mystery AT&T data leak exposed 73 million customer accounts

Some three years after a hacker teased a published sample of allegedly stolen AT&T customer data, a data breach broker in March dumped the full cache of 73 million customer records online to a known cybercrime forum for anyone to see. The published data included customers’ personal information, including names, phone numbers and postal addresses, with some customers confirming their data was accurate. 

But it wasn’t until a security researcher discovered that the exposed data contained encrypted passcodes used for accessing a customer’s AT&T account that the telecoms giant took action. The security researcher told TechCrunch at the time that the encrypted passcodes could be easily unscrambled, putting some 7.6 million existing AT&T customer accounts at risk of hijacks. AT&T force-reset its customers’ account passcodes after TechCrunch alerted the company to the researcher’s findings. 

One big mystery remains: AT&T still doesn’t know how the data leaked or where it came from. Continue reading “The biggest data breaches in 2024: 1 billion stolen records and rising” →

They Are Using Lab-Grown Human Brains Called “Organoids” To Run Computers

Posted on by esimantiras

They Are Using Lab-Grown Human Brains Called “Organoids” To Run Computers

source: zerohedge.com (contributed by FAN, Robert Keach)  |  image: pixabay.com

 

When I first started researching this, I could hardly believe that it was true. A company in Switzerland known as “Final Spark” has constructed a bizarre hybrid biocomputer that combines lab-grown miniature human brains with conventional electronic circuits.  This approach saves an extraordinary amount of energy compared to normal computers, but there is a big problem.  The lab-grown miniature human brains keep wearing out and dying, and so scientists have to keep growing new ones to replace them. 

Stem cells that are derived from human skin tissue are used to create the 16 spherical brain “organoids” that the system depends upon.  I realize that this sounds like something straight out of a really bad science fiction movie, but it is actually happening.

Continue reading “They Are Using Lab-Grown Human Brains Called “Organoids” To Run Computers” →

Listening is so last year — Meta’s new tech wants to feel your voice

Posted on by esimantiras

Listening is so last year — Meta’s new tech wants to feel your voice

source: media.hubspot.com (contributed by Artemus founder, Bob Wallace)  |  image: pixabay.com

 

Great news for the vocal fry community: Your vocal cord vibrations could soon be put to good use protecting your data.

Seriously. Meta filed a patent application for user authentication using a “combination of vocalization and skin vibration,” per Patent Drop.

That title is a mouthful, so let’s break it down:
  • Meta wants to replace the need for passwords or fingerprint scanning with voice authentication for accessing systems like its AR headset or smart glasses.
  • But AI has made impersonating someone’s voice really easy, with convincing voice cloning and deep fakes already swirling.
  • So Meta is taking voice authentication one step further by scanning the “vibration of tissue” during speech in addition to one’s voice.
  • When a user says a wake word, a “vibration measurement assembly” picks up the vibrations of their skin and the acoustic waves of their voice to authenticate them.

The combined dataset would create a unique audio fingerprint and, when built into headsets and glasses, would let users access their systems with a single word.

And while no one likes their password getting hacked, the stakes are getting a hell of a lot higher, with new tech poised to start harvesting data directly from our brains.

Sounds interesting

This patent is just the latest of Meta’s voice authentication tech. A separate “user identification with voice prints” patent application would see voice prints integrated into the two-factor authentication process for the company’s social media apps.

And Meta is far from the only company thinking about voice biometrics — the market is projected to hit 11.1B by 2032.

It will only become more important as AI companies crank out new voice generation tools, like OpenAI’s Voice Engine, which can clone someone’s voice using only a 15-second clip of them speaking, or ElevenLabs’ Reader App, which can clone celebrity voices.

 

 

Diving Drones

Posted on by esimantiras

Diving Drones

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

 

An animal-like uncrewed underwater vehicle dubbed Manta Ray can be seen maneuvering off the Southern California coast in new footage captured during testing, Axios’ Colin Demarest reports.

  • Why it matters: Sea drones are reshaping naval combat — especially in Eastern Europe, where Ukrainian forces are sinking prized Russian ships using far smaller and cheaper tech.

The Manta Ray’s almond-shaped body, rounded nose, horizontal fins and vertical tail can be spotted in the 360-degree video shared by maker Northrop Grumman.

  • While its dimensions aren’t publicly discussed, the UUV (uncrewed underwater vehicle) looks gigantic next to people and boats.
  • The vessel glides through the water, dips below the waves and resurfaces in the clip. Little wake is seen.

The big picture: The U.S. Navy is banking on uncrewed systems to reduce logistical demands, boost surveillance and augment firepower for sailors and Marines.

VIDEO:  Take a dive with Manta Ray.  Click here to watch the video

Space: The Final Frontier for Cyberattacks

Posted on by esimantiras

Space: The Final Frontier for Cyberattacks

 

source: darkreading.com  |  image: pixabay.com

 

A failure to imagine — and prepare for — threats to outer-space related assets could be a huge mistake at a time when nation-states and private companies are rushing to deploy devices in a frantic new space race.

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack this week disabled electronic door locks across a major lunar settlement, trapping dozens of people indoors and locking out many more in lethal cold. The threat actor behind the attack is believed responsible for also commandeering a swarm of decades-old CubeSats last year and attempting to use them to trigger a chain reaction of potentially devastating satellite crashes.

Neither “incident” has happened, of course. Yet. But they well could, sometime in the not-too-distant future, and now is the time to start thinking about and planning for them. Continue reading “Space: The Final Frontier for Cyberattacks” →

Swimming microrobots deliver cancer-fighting drugs…

Posted on by esimantiras

Swimming microrobots deliver cancer-fighting drugs to metastatic lung tumors in mice

 

source: sciencedaily.com  |  image: pixabay.com

 

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed microscopic robots, known as microrobots, capable of swimming through the lungs to deliver cancer-fighting medication directly to metastatic tumors. This approach has shown promise in mice, where it inhibited the growth and spread of tumors that had metastasized to the lungs, thereby boosting survival rates compared to control treatments.

The findings are detailed in a paper published on June 12 in Science Advances.The microrobots are an ingenious combination of biology and nanotechnology. They are a joint effort between the labs of Joseph Wang and Liangfang Zhang, both professors in the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

To create the microrobots, researchers chemically attached drug-filled nanoparticles to the surface of green algae cells. The algae, which provide the microrobots with their movement, enable the nanoparticles to efficiently swim around in the lungs and deliver their therapeutic payload to tumors. Continue reading “Swimming microrobots deliver cancer-fighting drugs…” →

Have we hit peak Apple?

Posted on by esimantiras

Have we hit peak Apple?

source: fastcompany.com  |  image: pixabay.com

 

Apple used a recent keynote at the annual WWDC event to unveil a roster of new software developments, product upgrades, and most importantly—their long-awaited AI play. Fast Company’s own Yasmin Gagne discusses Apple’s new high-stakes partnership with OpenAI, implications for app-based businesses, and investors’ reactions to the week’s news. Gagne also reads the tea leaves on Tim Cook’s future successor, explores whether we’ve reached “peak Apple,” and more. 

t was not short. I’m gonna be honest. I got a little bored, and then we hit the AI stuff, and I was fully back in.

A lot of the buzz coming in was about how Apple would enter the AI craze, which it’s been slow to do. And in classic Apple style, they rebranded AI itself, calling their offerings, “Apple Intelligence.” Continue reading “Have we hit peak Apple?” →

FBI Kicks Hackers In The Teeth…

Posted on by esimantiras

FBI Kicks Hackers In The Teeth With Free 7,000 Ransomware Key Giveaway

source: Forbes.com (contributed by FAN, Steve Page  |  image: fbi.gov

 

The FBI is encouraging anyone who has been a victim of the LockBit ransomware group and its many affiliates to contact them for a free decryption key that could help restore their data. Bryan Vorndran, FBI Cyber Division assistant director, has urged potential victims to contact the Bureau after confirming that it is in possession of more than 7,000 decryption keys from the ransomware hackers.

Speaking at the Boston Conference on Cyber Security on June 5, Vorndran revealed that as part of the ongoing disruption of LockBit, it has amassed a vast collection of ransomware decryption keys. “We are reaching out to known LockBit victims and encouraging anyone who suspects they were a victim to visit our Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov,” Vorndran said.

FBI Continues To Disrupt The World’s Most Prolific Ransomware Gang

LockBit has long been one of the most prolific ransomware groups, responsible for at least 1,800 successful attacks in the U.S. alone, according to the FBI. A joint law enforcement operation in February 2024 saw the FBI, along with the U.K. National Crime Agency and Europol, take control of LockBit infrastructure as part of an ongoing plan to disrupt its activity. Operation Cronos even saw law enforcement trolling the cybercrime group by replacing website information with a $10 million bounty on the group’s leader.

A Kick In The Teeth For LockBit

Raj Samani, chief scientist at cybersecurity specialist Rapid7, said the collection and release of the decryption keys was “another kick in the teeth for the ransomware group and a great win for law enforcement.”

LockBit is not going down without a fight, however, and has been heavily engaged in a public relations damage control exercise since the February takedown as a show of strength in order to try and maintain the confidence of the affiliates it relies upon to hack into networks and deploy the ransomware malware. “Such announcements by the FBI damages this confidence,” Samani said, “and hopefully we’ll soon see the end of the LockBit ransomware group.”