Author: esimantiras

True story of a CIA plane crash in Death Valley

Posted on by esimantiras

The incredible true story of a CIA plane crash in Death Valley National Park

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

 

The plane was part of a ‘super-secret operation’

On a cold, dark night in January 1952, a distress call went out over Death Valley.

“Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. This is Air Force 001 bailing out north of Barstow, California,” an official crash report would later read. Seconds later, six men jumped out of a 16-ton, two-engine, SA-16 Albatross plane into total darkness. The plane — with its backdoor hanging open — continued unmanned for a few moments, eventually crashing into a nearby desert mountain.

More than 70 years later, the metallic carcass is still there. Continue reading “True story of a CIA plane crash in Death Valley” →

Chinese tech firm founded by Huawei veterans in the FBI’s crosshairs

Posted on by esimantiras

Chinese tech firm founded by Huawei veterans in the FBI’s crosshairs

source: reuters.com (contributed by Steve Page)  |  image: fbi.gov

 

WASHINGTON, Jan 16 (Reuters) – The U.S. Commerce Department and FBI are both investigating a little-known telecoms hardware firm founded by senior Huawei veterans in China over possible security risks, sources and documents show.
Founded in 2014, Baicells Technologies opened a North American business the next year in Wisconsin and has since provided telecoms equipment for 700 commercial mobile networks across every U.S. state, according to its website.
The Commerce Department is investigating Baicells on national security grounds and has sent subpoenas to the company, four people said. The U.S. telecoms regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), is advising it on its review, two of the people said.
The FBI’s interest in its equipment and Chinese origins dates back to at least 2019.

Continue reading “Chinese tech firm founded by Huawei veterans in the FBI’s crosshairs” →

Chinese AI gets better — and cheaper

Posted on by esimantiras

Chinese AI gets better — and cheaper

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

 

Chinese AI makers have learned to build powerful models that perform almost as well as the best ones in the U.S. — for less money and with much less demand for energy, Axios’ Scott Rosenberg and Alison Snyder report.

  • V3, an open-source model developed by Chinese firm DeepSeek, performs about as well on various benchmark tests as OpenAI and Anthropic’s most advanced models.
  • DeepSeek says it cost just $5.6 million to train V3 — compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars American companies have spent to build and train their models.

🤖 Between the lines: The Biden administration has done a lot to advance AI in the U.S. and keep those advancements out of the Chinese government’s hands.

  • It has invested heavily in domestic manufacturing for powerful chips and new energy sources. And it has imposed tight export controls to prevent those chips from reaching China, including through third countries.
  • That seems to have worked in the short term, while spurring China to compete just as aggressively to develop its own tools.

Chinese hackers infiltrated US Treasury Secretary’s PC — attackers had access to over 400 PCs

Posted on by esimantiras

Chinese hackers infiltrated US Treasury Secretary’s PC — attackers had access to over 400 PCs

source: tomshardware.com (contributed by Steve Page)  |  image: pexels.com 

 

As reported last week, Chinese hackers infiltrated the U.S. Department of Treasury and gained access to several users’ workstations. However, according to Bloomberg, the infiltration was more severe than initially reported, as hackers managed to access systems belonging to Secretary Janet Yellen and other top officials.

A chilling, “catastrophic” warning

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A chilling, “catastrophic” warning

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

 

Jake Sullivan — with three days left as White House national security adviser, with wide access to the world’s secrets — called us to deliver a chilling, “catastrophic” warning for America and the incoming administration:

  • The next few years will determine whether artificial intelligence leads to catastrophe — and whether China or America prevails in the AI arms race.

Why it matters: Sullivan said in our phone interview that unlike previous dramatic technology advancements (atomic weapons, space, the internet), AI development sits outside of government and security clearances, and in the hands of private companies with the power of nation-states, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a “Behind the Curtain” column.

  • Underscoring the gravity of his message, Sullivan spoke with an urgency and directness that were rarely heard during his decade-plus in public life.

Continue reading “A chilling, “catastrophic” warning” →

NASA’s X-59 used recycled parts

Posted on by esimantiras

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. 

Continue reading “NASA’s X-59 used recycled parts” →

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

Posted on by esimantiras

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…

Posted on by esimantiras

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.

Continue reading “FBI Warns Smartphone Users…” →