Stephen Wolfram, renowned mathematician and computer scientist, is calling for philosophers to engage with critical questions surrounding AI as the technology's advancement raises complex ethical and societal issues. Wolfram, creator of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha, argues that the tech industry's approach to AI development often lacks philosophical rigor. "Sometimes in the tech industry, when people talk about how we should set up this or that thing with AI, some may say, 'Well, let's just get AI to do the right thing.' And that leads to, 'Well, what is the right thing?'" He sees parallels between current AI challenges and foundational questions in philosophy, citing discussions on AI guardrails and the potential for AI to significantly impact society as examples where philosophical inquiry is crucial. The scientist, who earned his doctorate at 20, suggests that philosophers may be better equipped than scientists to tackle the paradigm shifts AI presents. Wolfram's call comes as AI's growing influence raises ethical concerns across industries, urging an interdisciplinary approach to address these emerging challenges.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft has retracted or clarified its statement regarding the deprecation of Windows Control Panel, according to changes made to a support document. The original text, which stated that the Control Panel was "in the process of being deprecated in favor of the Settings app," has been revised. The new version now indicates that "many of the settings in Control Panel are in the process of being migrated to the Settings app." This modification came after widespread media coverage of the initial announcement. It remains unclear whether this change reflects a shift in Microsoft's plans or a correction of an erroneous statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Register's Iain Thomson reports: The FBI has made serious slip-ups in how it processes and destroys electronic storage media seized as part of investigations, according to an audit by the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General. Drives containing national security data, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act information and documents classified as Secret were routinely unlabeled, opening the potential for it to be either lost or stolen, the report [PDF] addressed to FBI Director Christopher Wray states. Ironically, this lack of identification might be considered a benefit, given the lax security at the FBI's facility used to destroy such media after they have been finished with. The OIG report notes that it found boxes of hard drives and removable storage sitting open and unattended for "days or even weeks" because they were only sealed once the boxes were full. This potentially allows any of the 395 staff and contractors with access to the facility to have a rummage around. To deal with this, the FBI is installing wire cages to lock away storage media. In December, the bureau said it would install a video surveillance system at the evidence destruction storage facility to tighten security. As of June this year, it was still processing the paperwork to do so. The OIG also found that FBI agents aren't tracking hard drives and removable storage sent into the central office and the destruction facility. Typically, seized computers are tagged for tracking, but as a cost-saving measure, agents are advised to send in media storage devices containing national security information without the chassis. While there is a requirement to tag removable storage, there isn't the same requirement for internal hard drives. [...] The FBI has assured the regulator that it has the problem in hand and has drafted a Physical Control and Destruction of Classified and Sensitive Electronic Devices and Material Policy Directive, which will require data to be marked up and destroyed safely. The agency says this policy is in the final editing stage and will be issued as soon as possible.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday Canada will impose punitive tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles -- copying a similar initiative that the U.S. is already pursuing to stop a flood of what's been described as unfairly state-subsidized cars. Trudeau made the announcement at the federal cabinet retreat in Halifax where ministers are meeting to craft a strategy for the year ahead -- the last year before an expected federal election in October 2025. Amid industry pressure to copy the U.S. program, Trudeau said a 100 percent surtax will be levied on all Chinese-made EVs, effective Oct. 1. The tariff would effectively double the price of imported vehicles, as it is expected most of the tax would be passed on to consumers. Ottawa is following through now, Trudeau said, to "level the playing field for Canadian workers" and allow Canada's nascent EV industry to compete at home, in North America and globally. The tariff will apply to electric and certain hybrid passenger automobiles, trucks, buses and delivery vans. Chinese brands like BYD are not a major player in Canada's EV market right now but imports from China have exploded in recent years as Tesla switched from U.S. factories for its Canadian sales to its manufacturing plant in Shanghai. The new tariff will apply to those Shanghai-made Teslas that are sold in Canada -- a development that is expected to force the U.S. automaker to supply the Canadian market with vehicles made at one if its other plants in the U.S. or Europe instead. "Unfortunately, Canada made a decision today that will result in fewer affordable electric vehicles for Canadians, less competition and more climate pollution," said Joanna Kyriazis, director of public affairs at Clean Energy Canada. "Not only could today's announcement have a chilling effect on future EV sales, it could drive up EV prices and slow adoption in the near-term as well," Kyriazis said. Flavio Volpe, the president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association who lobbied Ottawa to follow through with matching the U.S. tariffs, responded: "Sure, what the Chinese are doing is selling us green products that help fulfill some of our EV mandates, but they do it in a regulatory environment where they forgo any stewardship of the environment," he said. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland added that the Chinese industry is "built on abysmal labour standards and it is built on abysmal environmental standards."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
OpenAI said in a letter that it supports California bill AB 3211, which requires tech companies to label AI-generated content. Reuters reports: San Francisco-based OpenAI believes that for AI-generated content, transparency and requirements around provenance such as watermarking are important, especially in an election year, according to a letter sent to California State Assembly member Buffy Wicks, who authored the bill. "New technology and standards can help people understand the origin of content they find online, and avoid confusion between human-generated and photorealistic AI-generated content," OpenAI Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon wrote in the letter, which was reviewed by Reuters. AB 3211 has already passed the state Assembly by a 62-0 vote. Earlier this month it passed the senate appropriations committee, setting it up for a vote by the full state Senate. If it passes by the end of the legislative session on Aug. 31, it would advance to Governor Gavin Newsom to sign or veto by Sept. 30.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple is expected to launch the iPhone 16 lineup on September 9th, 2024, at 1PM ET / 10AM PT. The tech giant sent out invitations to the event today with the tagline: "It's Glowtime" -- a reference to the redesigned Siri with Apple Intelligence. The Verge reports: The big change to the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus is expected to be a switch to a vertically aligned camera system on the back. (If the final phones look like what we've seen on iPhone 16 dummy units, I'm already a big fan of this change.) The iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max phones might get bigger screens but are rumored to keep Apple's familiar three-camera layout. Those phones could also come in a new bronze color. All four iPhone 16 models are expected to have the Action Button, which was exclusive to the Pro line with the iPhone 15. Apple's new iPhones may also have a new button dedicated to capturing photos and videos, but it's unclear if that will be a Pro-exclusive feature or will be available on the regular iPhone 16 models as well. AI and the company's Apple Intelligence features will likely be a big part of Apple's event, too.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times: Ikea is taking on the likes of eBay, Craigslist, and Gumtree with a peer-to-peer marketplace for customers to sell secondhand furniture to each other. Ikea Preowned will be tested in Madrid and Oslo until the end of the year with the aim of rolling out the buying and selling platform globally, according to Jesper Brodin, chief executive of Ingka, the main operator of Ikea stores. [...] Ikea has had a small offering under which it buys used furniture from customers and resells it in store. But the new platform is more ambitious, aiming to tackle the secondhand market for customers selling directly to each other -- an area where Brodin estimates Ikea has a higher market share than in new furniture sales. Customers enter their product, their own pictures, and a selling price, while Ikea's own artificial intelligence-enabled database brings in its own promotional images and measurements. The buyer collects the furniture directly from the seller, who has the option of receiving money or a voucher from Ikea with a 15 percent bonus. "Very often there is a monopoly or oligopoly on platforms that operate," said Brodin, talking about eBay or digital classified ad services such as Gumtree in the UK and Finn in Norway. Finn has 8,700 items from Ikea listed in Oslo alone. Early offerings on Ikea Preowned include large items such as sofas for up to $670 (600 euros) and wardrobes for $500 (450 euros) as well as smaller items such as a toilet roll holder for $4.50 (4 euros). Listings are free, but Brodin said Ikea could eventually charge "a symbolic fee, a humble fee." He added: "We're going to verify the full scope including the economics. If a lot of people use the offer to get a discount with Ikea -- it's a good way to reconnect with customers. I am very curious. I think it makes business sense." Ikea has previously tested selling its new furniture on third-party platforms such as Alibaba's Tmall in China, but the Preowned platform marks its first foray into secondhand marketplaces. It also dovetails with the retailer's wish to become "circular and climate positive" by 2030.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI lacks advanced security and customer support. It's just a research company, not an established cloud provider. The ChatGPT-maker is not focused enough on corporate customers. These are just some of the talking points Amazon Web Services' salespeople are told to follow when dealing with customers using, or close to buying, OpenAI's products, according to internal sales guidelines obtained by Business Insider. Other talking points from the documents include OpenAI's lack of access to third-party AI models and weak enterprise-level contracts. AWS salespeople should dispel the hype around AI chatbots like ChatGPT, and steer the conversation toward AWS's strength of running the cloud infrastructure behind popular AI services, the guidelines added. [...] The effort to criticize OpenAI is also unusual for Amazon, which often says it's so customer-obsessed that it pays little attention to competitors. This is the latest sign that suggests Amazon knows it has work to do to catch up in the AI race. OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google have taken an early lead and could become the main platforms where developers build new AI products and tools. Though Amazon created a new AGI team last year, the company's existing AI models are considered less powerful than those made by its biggest competitors. Instead, Amazon has prioritized selling AI tools like Bedrock, which gives customers access to third-party AI models. AWS also offers cloud access to in-house AI chips that compete with Nvidia GPUs, with mixed results so far.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Pavel Durov, the Russian-born billionaire co-founder of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested in France in connection with an investigation into criminal activity on the platform and a lack of cooperation with law enforcement, prosecutors announced on Monday. From a report: Durov, who has French citizenship, was detained at Le Bourget airport, just outside Paris, on Saturday evening after arriving from Azerbaijan on his private jet. His surprise arrest has sparked debate over free speech worldwide and led to an outcry in Moscow. The Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said the investigation concerned crimes related to illicit transactions, child sexual abuse, fraud and the refusal to communicate information to authorities. Earlier in the day the French president, Emmanuel Macron, gave the first confirmation that Durov had been arrested as part of a judicial inquiry in relation to Telegram. "In a state governed by the rule of law, freedoms are upheld within a legal framework, both on social media and in real life, to protect citizens and respect their fundamental rights," Macron wrote on X, adding that the arrest was "in no way a political decision." "It is up to the judiciary, in full independence, to enforce the law," he said. A senior official at Ofmin, a French agency set up last year to prevent violence against children, said Durov's arrest was linked to Telegram's failure to properly fight crime on the app, including the spread of child sexual abuse material.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Car buyers are increasingly skeptical of advanced automotive technologies, a new JD Power survey reveals. The study found that while drivers appreciate practical innovations like blind spot monitoring, they see little value in features such as automatic parking systems and passenger-side infotainment screens. The survey measured user experiences with new vehicle technologies. Results show that systems partially automating driving tasks had low perceived usefulness, aligning with recent Insurance Institute for Highway Safety data indicating no safety improvements from such features. The survey identified AI-based smart climate control as popular among users. However, facial recognition, fingerprint scanners, and gesture controls were largely viewed negatively.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Millions of Australians just got official permission to ignore their bosses outside of working hours, thanks to a new law enshrining their "right to disconnect." From a report: The law doesn't strictly prohibit employers from calling or messaging their workers after hours. But it does protect employees who "refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact or attempted contact outside their working hours, unless their refusal is unreasonable," according to the Fair Work Commission, Australia's workplace relations tribunal. That includes outreach from their employer, as well as other people "if the contact or attempted contact is work-related." The law, which passed in February, took effect on Monday for most workers and will apply to small businesses of fewer than 15 people starting in August 2025. It adds Australia to a growing list of countries aiming to protect workers' free time. "It's really about trying to bring back some work-life balance and make sure that people aren't racking up hours of unpaid overtime for checking emails and responding to things at a time when they're not being paid," said Sen. Murray Watt, Australia's minister for employment and workplace relations. The law doesn't give employees a complete pass, however.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
theodp writes: Typos happen to the best of us, but spelling still counts when it comes to software development. So, it's kind of surprising to see that both Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and former AWS CEO Adam Selipsky failed to notice an embarrassing typo in a demo video they offered to their millions of followers on social media as evidence of Amazon Q AI's Java upgrade capabilities, which Amazon has been trumpeting for months in SEC filings, shareholder communication, and Amazon's latest earnings call with Wall Street analysts. Just 37 seconds into the demo of the software that Amazon says saved it 4,500 developer-years of work and provided an additional $260M in annualized efficiency gains, Amazon Q kicks off the Java upgrade conversation by saying, "I can help you upgrade your Jave [sic] 8 and 11 codebases to Java 17." The embarrassing misspelling did prompt Twitter user @archo5dev to alert Jassy to the typo, but there's been no response yet from Jassy, who boasted that Amazon developers were unable to find any mistakes in Q's work in "79% of the auto-generated code reviews." It's probably worth noting that both Jassy and Selipsky opted to showcase a drop-dead simple demo of Amazon Q Code Transformation rather than some of the lengthier and less-magical demos of the product.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that the French government was not involved in the arrest of Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov. From a report: "The arrest of Telegram's president on French territory took place as part of an ongoing judicial investigation. This is in no way a political decision. It is up to the judges to decide," Macron said. Durov was detained Saturday night after his private jet arrived in Paris. The Paris prosecutor has not yet communicated the reasons for the arrest of Durov, who founded the messaging app in 2013. The tech chief currently remains in policy custody. The arrest follows probes "accusing Telegram of being complicit in numerous affairs linked to drug trafficking, apology for terrorism and cyberbullying," French daily Le Monde reported. In a statement, Telegram said that its CEO -- a Russian-born French-Emirati citizen -- had "nothing to hide" and that the company abided by EU law. [...] "More than anything else, France is committed to freedom of expression and communication, innovation and entrepreneurship," Macron said Monday. "In a state governed by the rule of law, on social networks as in real life, freedoms are exercised within a framework established by law to protect citizens and respect their fundamental rights."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
IBM is the latest American company to downsize its presence in China amid heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing. From a report: China's efforts to decrease its dependence on the West have ratcheted up local market competition -- and U.S. tech giants including Microsoft are looking elsewhere to house their operations. IBM will shut down its research and development department in China, impacting about 1,000 jobs, multiple outlets reported Monday. The Chinese government has encouraged domestic companies to overtake and push out U.S. tech dominance out of the country in a bid for self-sufficiency in the sector, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year. IBM has faced mounting competition in China in recent years, IBM executive Jack Hergenrother told employees virtually Monday, per the Journal. IBM reportedly plans to move its R&D operations to other overseas facilities. According to the company's 2023 annual report released earlier this year, the company saw its revenue in China drop 19.6% last year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Messaging app Telegram has said its CEO Pavel Durov, who was detained in France on Saturday, has "nothing to hide." From a report: Mr Durov was arrested at an airport north of Paris under a warrant for offences related to the app, according to officials. The investigation is reportedly about insufficient moderation, with Mr Durov accused of failing to take steps to curb criminal uses of Telegram. The app is accused of failure to co-operate with law enforcement over drug trafficking, child sexual content and fraud. Telegram said in a statement that "its moderation is within industry standards and constantly improving." The app added: "It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform." Telegram said Mr Durov travels in Europe frequently and added that it abides by European Union laws, including the Digital Services Act, which aims to ensure a safe and accountable online environment. "Almost a billion users globally use Telegram as means of communication and as a source of vital information," the app's statement read. "We're awaiting a prompt resolution of this situation. Telegram is with you all." Judicial sources quoted by AFP news agency say Mr Durov's detention was extended on Sunday and could last as long as 96 hours.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
This weekend NASA said they'd turn to SpaceX to return two astronauts from the International Space Station, notes the Associated Press, "rather than risk using the Boeing Starliner capsule that delivered them." (They add that Boeing's capsule "has been plagued by problems with its propulsion system.") But Reuters reported that even before the setback, Boeing and Lockheed Martin were "in talks to sell their rocket-launching joint venture United Launch Alliance to Sierra Space, two people familiar with the discussions said."A deal to sell ULA, a major provider of launch services to the U.S. government and a top rival to Elon Musk's SpaceX, would mark a significant shift in the U.S. space launch industry as ULA separates from two of the largest defense contractors to a smaller, privately held firm. The potential sale comes after years of speculation about ULA's future and failed attempts to divest the joint venture over the past decade. In 2019, Boeing and Lockheed Martin reportedly explored selling ULA but couldn't agree on terms with potential buyers... Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Cerberus Capital Management had placed bids in early 2023 for the company, according to people familiar with the negotiations. Rocket Lab had also expressed interest, two people said. None of those discussions led to a deal... A potential deal could accelerate deployment of [Sierra Space's] crewed spaceflight business, analysts said. A ULA acquisition, they said, would give the company in-house access to launch vehicles that could send its spaceplane and space-station components into Earth's orbit, rather than spending hundreds of millions of dollars for those launches as a customer... ULA has faced challenges in scaling Vulcan production and upping its launch rate to meet commercial demand and fulfill contract obligations with the Space Force, which in 2021 picked Vulcan for a sizable chunk of national security missions alongside SpaceX's Falcon fleet. A sale of ULA would unshackle the company from Boeing and Lockheed, whose boards have long resisted ideas from ULA to expand the business beyond rockets and into new competitive markets such as lunar habitats or maneuverable spacecraft, according to former executives. While Reuters's sources say the negotiations could still end without a deal, they also said ULA could be valued between $2 billion and $3 billion, giving Boeing some cash while shifting its focus to its core businesses of aerospace and defense. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google may be the most successful company in the world. But a Washington Post reporter argues that Google "makes you largely responsible for dodging the criminals who are hurting legitimate businesses and swindling people."On Monday, I found what appeared to be impostors of customer service for Delta and Coinbase, the cryptocurrency company, in the "People also ask" section high up in Google. A group of people experienced in Google's intricacies also said this week that it took about 22 minutes to fool Google into highlighting a bogus business phone number in a prominent spot in search results... If you look at the two impostor phone numbers in Google for Delta and Coinbase, there are red flags. There are odd fonts and a website below the bogus numbers that wasn't for either company. (I notified Google about the apparent scams on Monday and I still saw them 24 hours later.) The correct customer help numbers did appear at the very top, and Google says businesses have clear instructions to make their customer service information visible to people searching Google. The larger issue is "a persistent pattern of bad guys finding ways to trick Google into showing scammers' numbers for airlines, hotels, local repair companies, banks or other businesses."The toll can be devastating when people are duped by these bogus business numbers. Fortune recently reported on a man who called what a Google listing said was Coinbase customer support, and instead it was an impostor who Fortune said tricked the man and stole $100,000... Most of the time, you will find correct customer service numbers by Googling. But the company doesn't say how often people are tricked out of time and money by bogus listings - nor why Google can't stop the scams from recurring. The article makes two points.Google says when they identify listings violating their rules, they move quickly against them."Impostor numbers pop up so persistently that I am once again begging you to be wary of Google or Google Maps listings for business phone numbers... You still might see bogus phone numbers in some spots in Google. And if you're stressed trying to find help with a flight or a financial problem, you might overlook warning signs. Scams work because humans make errors in judgment, especially when we're confused or panicky. And business impostors aren't always obvious."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
To build the massive datacenters generative AI requires, major companies like Amazon and Microsoft "are going nuclear," reports CIO magazine.AWS:Earlier this year, AWS paid $650 million to purchase Talen Energy's Cumulus Data Assets, a 960-megawatt nuclear-powered data center on site at Talen's Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, nuclear plant, with additional data centers planned - pending approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency... In addition to its purchase of the Cumulus data center, AWS will have access to nuclear energy as part of a 10-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) from the Susquehanna site. Microsoft:Last year, Constellation signed a deal giving Microsoft the rights to receive up to 35% of its power from nuclear sources in addition to its existing solar and wind purchases from Constellation for Microsoft's Boydton, Va., data center. Microsoft has also signed a nuclear carbon credits deal with Ontario Power Generation for its operations in Canada. The broader industry:Many of the deals under discussion are with existing nuclear power providers for hyperscalars [large-scale datacenters] to access energy or to employ small module nuclear reactors (SMRs) with smaller carbon footprints that will be annexed to existing nuclear power plants. Nucor, Oklo, Rolls-Royce SMR, Westinghouse Electric, Moltex Energy, Terrestrial Energy, General Electric, Hitachi Nuclear Energy, and X-energy are among the roster of companies with SMRs under development to meet the growing needs of AI data centers... One energy analyst does not expect nuclear SMRs to be operational until 2030, yet he and many others acknowledge the need for sustainable, carbon-free alternatives to electricity, wind, and solar is very pressing. "Today's electric grids are struggling to keep up with demand, even as datacenter companies are planning huge new additions to their fleets to power generative AI applications. As a result, companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are increasingly taking matters into their own hands and getting creative. They are now looking at on-site nuclear-based SMRs, and even fusion reactors," says Peter Kelly-Detwiler, principal of Northbridge Energy Partners. "This global arms race for power arose pretty quickly, and it's like nothing we have ever seen before." Thanks to Slashdot reader snydeq for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
America's Department of Energy has three R&D labs, according to Wikipedia, one of which is Sandia National Labs. And that New Mexico-based lab has just announced that "A milestone in quantum sensing is drawing closer, promising exquisitely accurate, GPS-free navigation." with research into "a motion sensor so precise it could minimize the nation's reliance on global positioning satellites."Until recently, such a sensor - a thousand times more sensitive than today's navigation-grade devices - would have filled a moving truck. But advancements are dramatically shrinking the size and cost of this technology. For the first time, researchers from Sandia National Laboratories have used silicon photonic microchip components to perform a quantum sensing technique called atom interferometry, an ultra-precise way of measuring acceleration. It is the latest milestone toward developing a kind of quantum compass for navigation when GPS signals are unavailable. The team published its findings and introduced a new high-performance silicon photonic modulator - a device that controls light on a microchip - as the cover story in the journal Science Advances... The new modulator is the centerpiece of a laser system on a microchip. Rugged enough to handle heavy vibrations, it would replace a conventional laser system typically the size of a refrigerator... Besides size, cost has been a major obstacle to deploying quantum navigation devices. Every atom interferometer needs a laser system, and laser systems need modulators. "Just one full-size single-sideband modulator, a commercially available one, is more than $10,000," said Sandia scientist Jongmin Lee. Miniaturizing bulky, expensive components into silicon photonic chips helps drive down these costs. "We can make hundreds of modulators on a single 8-inch wafer and even more on a 12-inch wafer," Kodigala said. And since they can be manufactured using the same process as virtually all computer chips, "This sophisticated four-channel component, including additional custom features, can be mass-produced at a much lower cost compared to today's commercial alternatives, enabling the production of quantum inertial measurement units at a reduced cost," Lee said. As the technology gets closer to field deployment, the team is exploring other uses beyond navigation. Researchers are investigating whether it could help locate underground cavities and resources by detecting the tiny changes these make to Earth's gravitational force. They also see potential for the optical components they invented, including the modulator, in LIDAR, quantum computing, and optical communications. Thanks to Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
SecurityWeek reports:A significant backdoor in millions of contactless cards made by China-based Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics Group allows instantaneous cloning of RFID smart cards used to open office doors and hotel rooms around the world. French security services firm Quarkslab has made an eye-popping discovery... Although the backdoor requires just a few minutes of physical proximity to an affected card to conduct an attack, an attacker in a position to carry out a supply chain attack could execute such attacks instantaneously at scale, researcher Philippe Teuwen explained in a paper. Thanks to Slashdot reader wiredmikey for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A university in Taiwan was breached with "a previously unseen backdoor (Backdoor.Msupedge) utilizing an infrequently seen technique," Symantec reports.The most notable feature of this backdoor is that it communicates with a command-and-control server via DNS traffic... The code for the DNS tunneling tool is based on the publicly available dnscat2 tool. It receives commands by performing name resolution... Msupedge not only receives commands via DNS traffic but also uses the resolved IP address of the C&C server (ctl.msedeapi[.]net) as a command. The third octet of the resolved IP address is a switch case. The behavior of the backdoor will change based on the value of the third octet of the resolved IP address minus seven... The initial intrusion was likely through the exploit of a recently patched PHP vulnerability (CVE-2024-4577). The vulnerability is a CGI argument injection flaw affecting all versions of PHP installed on the Windows operating system. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability can lead to remote code execution. Symantec has seen multiple threat actors scanning for vulnerable systems in recent weeks. To date, we have found no evidence allowing us to attribute this threat and the motive behind the attack remains unknown. More from The Record:Compared to more obvious methods like HTTP or HTTPS tunneling, this technique can be harder to detect because DNS traffic is generally considered benign and is often overlooked by security tools. Earlier in June, researchers discovered a campaign by suspected Chinese state-sponsored hackers, known as RedJuliett, targeting dozens of organizations in Taiwan, including universities, state agencies, electronics manufacturers, and religious organizations. Like many other Chinese threat actors, the group likely targeted vulnerabilities in internet-facing devices such as firewalls and enterprise VPNs for initial access because these devices often have limited visibility and security solutions, researchers said. Additional coverage at The Hacker News. Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Long-time Slashdot reader UnderAttack explains: A blog post at the SANS Internet Storm Center suggests that OpenAI actions are being abused to scan for WordPress vulnerabilities. Honeypot sensors at the Storm Center detected scans for URLs targeting WordPress that originated exclusively from OpenAI systems. The URLs requested all pages including the pattern '%%target%%', which may indicate that the scan is meant to include additional path components but the expansion of the template failed. The scans were not only identified by the unique user agent but also by the origin IP addresses matching addresses OpenAI published as being used for OpenAI actions. OpenAI actions allow OpenAI to connect to external APIs. Johannes B. Ullrich, Ph.D. , Dean of Research, SANS.edu, wrote that OpenAI seems to be scanning random IP addresses - including honeypots.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Long-time Slashdot reader mmell writes:Recent reports have indicated a near-complete collapse in the population of Snow Crabs in the Bering Sea. Scientists with the US Government's National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration have concluded that warming in the environment has led to vast numbers of snow crabs starving to death. There has been a lot of back-and-forth, a lot of argument on whether or how much humanity has had an effect on the fundamental ecology of our planet... Here is a fine example of anthropogenic change to the planet's weather, ecosystems and even the planet's very ability to feed us. From the government's findings on the NOAA web site:"What is particularly noteworthy is these boreal conditions associated with the snow crab collapse are more than 200 times likely to occur in the present climate (1.0 degrees -1.5 degrees of warming rate) than in the preindustrial era," said Mike Litzow, lead author and director of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center's Kodiak Lab. "Even more concerning is that Arctic conditions conducive for snow crabs to retain their dominant role in the southeastern Bering Sea are expected to continue to decline in the future." [...] Litzow and his team expect to see Arctic conditions in only 8 percent of future years in the southeastern Bering Sea. The warmer temperatures brought existential threats including including a fatal disease and more crab-eating predators, their study found. CNN reports that the crabs' "horrific demise appears to be just one impact of the massive transition unfolding in the region, scientists reported... Parts of the Bering Sea are literally becoming less Arctic."Billions of crabs ultimately starved to death, devastating Alaska's fishing industry in the years that followed... The decline of the Alaskan snow crab signals a wider ecosystem change in the Arctic, as oceans warm and sea ice disappears. The ocean around Alaska is now becoming inhospitable for several marine species, including red king crab and sea lions, experts say... The Arctic region has warmed four times fasterthan the rest of the planet, scientists have reported. Litzow called what's happening in the Bering Sea a "bellwether" of what's to come. "All of us need to recognize the impacts of climate change," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader shared this story from the blog Decrypt:Michael Lewis, author of Going Infinite, an account of the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, has argued that the disgraced FTX founder didn't have "the character of a thief" in a new The Washington Post article. "His crime was of a piece with his character. The character wasn't the character of a thief. It was the character of a person numb to risk." Lewis explained in the final paragraphs of a 4,500 word essay adapted from a new introduction to his book. "Unable to feel risk himself, he can't really imagine other people feeling much at all about the risk he has subjected them to...." Lewis doubled down on previous claims that Bankman-Fried wasn't running a Ponzi scheme, arguing that "The crime was unnecessary to the business in a way that, say, Bernie Madoff's was not," and that "The crime made no sense." The collapse of FTX, he added, "might have been avoided and FTX might have survived." "That doesn't mean I think that Sam Bankman-Fried is innocent. It merely informs how I feel about him," Lewis explained. "I think the truth is closer to 'young person with an intellectually defensible but socially unacceptable moral code makes a huge mistake in trying to live by it' than "criminal on the loose in the financial system.'" From from The Daily Beast:Lewis also pointed to bankruptcy court filings from FTX in the weeks after Bankman-Fried's sentencing showing that "against the $8.7 billion in missing customer deposits, FTX was now sitting on something like $14.5 to $16.3 billion." "Whatever the exact sum, it was enough to repay all depositors and various other creditors at least 118 cents on the dollar - that is, everyone who imagined they had lost money back in November 2022 would get their money back, with interest," Lewis writes. Michael Lewis's article offers some vivid details:Inside of three years, he'd gone from socially and emotionally isolated 25-year-old with an upper-middle-class bank account to leader of a small army of math nerds and (according to Forbes magazine) not merely the world's richest person under 30 but maybe the fastest creator of wealth in recorded history... He'd gone from having no friends as a child to having too many as an adult without ever developing a capacity for friendship.... The prosecutors didn't need Sam's help. Sam helped them anyway by ignoring the counsel of his lawyers and testifying on his own behalf... As Lewis Kaplan, the federal judge who presided over the case, said later: "When he wasn't outright lying, he was often evasive, hairsplitting, dodging questions and trying to get the prosecutor to reword questions in ways that he could answer in ways he thought less harmful than a truthful answer to the question that was posed would have been. I've been doing this job for close to 30 years. I've never seen a performance quite like that...." [T]he judge ordered Sam to rise so that he might address him directly. Two hours or so earlier, Sam had shuffled into the courtroom in prison khakis with his head down and his hands oddly clasped behind his back. Just before he'd entered, his guards had told him he was meant to be wearing handcuffs and asked if he could create the impression that he was doing so... "There is a risk that this man will be in a position to do something very bad in the future, and it's not a trivial risk, not a trivial risk at all," said the judge. "So, in part, my sentence will be for the purpose of disabling him." He then sentenced Sam to 25 years in prison, with no possibility of parole. A few minutes later, Sam dutifully clasped his hands behind his back and shuffled out of the courtroom. Lewis adapted his 4,500-word article from the upcoming (updated) paperback edition of his book - which was originally published in 2023 on the same day jurors were selected for Bankman-Fried's trial...Read more of this story at Slashdot.
One of Slashdot's most-visited stories of all time was the 2016 story asking: Can Cow Backpacks Reduce Global Methane Emissions?"Enteric fermentation," or livestock's digestive process, accounts for 22 percent of all U.S. methane emissions, and the manure they produce makes up eight percent more, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency... Methane, like carbon, is a greenhouse gas, but methane's global warming impact per molecule is 25 times greater than carbon's, according to the EPA. Cow methane still "heats the Earth more than every flight across the world combined," the Washington Post added today, reporting on a new $30 million genetic engineering experiment undertaken by the Innovative Genomics Institute and the University of California at Davis. Its mission: to transform a cow's gut so it no longer releases methane.Using tools that snip and transfer DNA, researchers plan to genetically engineer microbes in the cow stomach to eliminate those emissions. If they succeed, they could wipe out the world's largest human-made source of methane and help change the trajectory of planetary warming... The average cow produces around 220 pounds of methane per year, or around half the emissions of an average car; cows are currently responsible for around 4 percent of global warming, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization... Scientists envision a kind of probiotic pill, given to the cow at birth, that can transform its microbiome permanently... The current project doesn't target only a particular cow species - it takes aim at the microbiome itself, offering a solution that could apply to all of them. Brad Ringeisen, executive director at the genomics institute, cut his teeth running biotechnology at the U.S. defense research agency DARPA, which helped pioneer transformative innovations including the internet, miniaturized GPS, stealth aircraft and the computer mouse. "I'm taking the DARPA mentality here," he said. "Let's solve it for all cows, not just a fraction of the cows." ...] "There's no reason a cow has to produce methane," Ringeisen said. So what if scientists could just ... turn it off? "I personally think this is the one that can make the biggest impact in the world," Ringeisen said. "Say you could wave a magic wand and eliminate all those emissions." The article says that currently the scientists are feeding red-seaweed oil to a cow to measure the changes, to prepare for their final goal: "replicate those changes with gene editing." (They're using machine learning to reassemble the hundreds of pieces of each miccroorganism's DNA, so they can understand which changes they need to make with their early-intervention probiotic.)Such a probiotic could also improve a farm's productivity. Cows can lose up to 12 percent of their energy through burping up methane; other ruminants, like sheep and goats, also lose energy in this way. "If there is a way to redirect that hydrogen and convert it into milk, meat, wool - it would be much more accepted by farmers," said Ermias Kebreab [a professor of animal science at UC-Davis]. Early treatments will be tested on the cows at Davis, with researchers tracking their burps to evaluate the drop-off in methane emissions. There is still a long way to go. While scientists have proved that they can gene-edit microbes, researchers have so far only shown that they can edit a small fraction of the microbes in the cow gut - or the human gut, for that matter. Institute researchers are developing microbial gene-editing tools, even as they are mapping the species of the microbiome. They are building the plane while flying it. The teams have received enough funding for seven years of research. The project started last year, and they hope to have a trial treatment ready for testing in cows in the next two years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The nonprofit American Radio Relay League - founded in 1914 - has approximately 161,000 members, according to Wikipedia (with over 7,000 members outside the U.S.) But sometime in early May its systems network was compromised, "by threat actors using information they had purchased on the dark web," the nonprofit announced this week. The attackers accessed the ARRL's on-site systems - as well as most of its cloud-based systems - using "a wide variety of payloads affecting everything from desktops and laptops to Windows-based and Linux-based servers." Despite the wide variety of target configurations, the threat actors seemed to have a payload that would host and execute encryption or deletion of network-based IT assets, as well as launch demands for a ransom payment, for every system... The FBI categorized the attack as "unique" as they had not seen this level of sophistication among the many other attacks, they have experience with. Within 3 hours a crisis management team had been constructed of ARRL management, an outside vendor with extensive resources and experience in the ransomware recovery space, attorneys experienced with managing the legal aspects of the attack including interfacing with the authorities, and our insurance carrier. The authorities were contacted immediately as was the ARRL President... [R]ansom demands were dramatically weakened by the fact that they did not have access to any compromising data. It was also clear that they believed ARRL had extensive insurance coverage that would cover a multi-million-dollar ransom payment. After days of tense negotiation and brinkmanship, ARRL agreed to pay a $1 million ransom. That payment, along with the cost of restoration, has been largely covered by our insurance policy... Today, most systems have been restored or are waiting for interfaces to come back online to interconnect them. While we have been in restoration mode, we have also been working to simplify the infrastructure to the extent possible. We anticipate that it may take another month or two to complete restoration under the new infrastructure guidelines and new standards. ARRL's called the attack "extensive", "sophisticated", "highly coordinated" and "an act of organized crime".And tlhIngan (Slashdot reader #30335) shared this detail from BleepingComputer. "While the organization has not yet linked the attack to a specific ransomware operation, sources told BleepingComputer that the Embargo ransomware gang was behind the breach."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Volkswagen said this week it would wait to see where EV demand goes before building out the last three of its six planned battery factories. And now Ford has also cancelled its planned electric SUV and delayed production of an all-new electric pickup, according to CNBC, moves Ford now believes could cost up to $1.9 billion. But Ford isn't giving up. Ford's COO told CNBC Thursday that "We're quite convinced that the highest adoption rates for electric vehicles will be in the affordable segment on the lower size-end of the range."Instead of the three-row SUV or large pickup, the company's first new EV is expected to be a commercial van in 2026, followed the next year by a midsized pickup and then the T3 full-size pickup... And the midsize pickup is scheduled to be the first vehicle from a specialized "skunkworks" team in California. The company had tasked the team two years ago with developing a new small EV platform... "In ICE, a business we've been in for 120 years, the bigger the vehicle, the higher the margin. But it's exactly the opposite for EVs...." Ford's current EVs - the Mustang Mach-E crossover, F-150 Lightning and a commercial van in the U.S. - are not profitable overall. The Model e operations have lost nearly $2.5 billion during the first half of this year and lost $4.7 billion in 2023. The losses, as well as changing market conditions and business plans, caused Ford earlier this year to withdraw an ambitious 8% profit margin for its EV unit by 2026. Investors and Wall Street analysts have largely supported the EV changes, most recently sending the company's shares up about 2.3% since the announcement earlier this week, despite the expected costs. "Overall, these changes will position Ford to benefit from growing demand for EVs, while also focusing on areas in which it has a Core competitive advantage," BofA's John Murphy wrote Wednesday in an investor note... The updates are the latest for Ford's electrification plans, which now include a heavy focus on hybrid and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, or PHEVs, to assist in meeting tightening fuel economy regulations in addition to all-electric vehicles. Ford CFO John Lawler said Wednesday that the company's future capital expenditure plans will shift from spending about 40% on all-electric vehicles to spending 30%... "What we saw in '21 and '22 was a temporary market spike where the demand for EVs really took off," Gjaja told CNBC during an interview earlier this year. "It's still growing but not nearly at the rate we thought it might have in '21, '22." The article also points out that while Ford is discontinuing its giant electric SUV, Ford's rival GM is doing exactly the opposite:America's largest automaker has pulled back spending and delayed many of its EVs, but it has several large all-electric vehicles on sale coming soon... As recently as last month, GM reconfirmed expectations for its EVs to be profitable on a production, or contribution-margin basis, once it reaches output of 200,000 units by the fourth quarter. A GM spokesman Thursday said the automaker continues "to work to reach variable profit positive during the fourth quarter." The article also notes "an industrywide fear that Chinese automakers could be able to flood markets with cheaper, more profitable EVs," with Chinese automakers like BYD "quickly growing exports of vehicles to Europe and other countries..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
After announcing it had 200 million active users earlier this month, Threads is now "testing the option for users to put a 24-hour expiration timer on their posts," writes Engadget:A spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that the feature is being tested among a group of users after it was first spotted earlier this summer by developer Alessandro Paluzzi... It comes a few months after Instagram head Adam Mosseri shared that Threads was experimenting with auto-archiving. That optional feature would let users designate a date for their posts to be hidden from the feed. But Threads users in the past have indicated that they largely aren't into the idea of automatic archiving, and such a feature hasn't yet shown up on a wider scale.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Six months after going public, Reddit "is winning over advertisers," reports Bloomberg, "by showing that it's different than other internet platforms, which often rely on users' identities and personal information to target ads."Instead, Reddit is targeting people based on their interests, relying on the site's [100,000+] deeply detailed communities - called subreddits - to match advertisers with potential customers... Early returns on that strategy have been promising. The text-based site easily surpassed expectations in its first two earnings reports this year, disclosing strong sales and better-than-expected projected growth. The stock is up 66% from its $34 initial public offering price in March. Beyond targeting subreddits, the company also can use specific keywords to sell what it calls conversation ads. If a Redditor in r/HydroHomies - a community about the benefits of drinking water that has more than 1.2 million users - asks for advice about a specific brand of water bottle, an ad for that exact product could appear next to that user's post. These conversation ads are the fastest-growing ad format on the platform, the company said. They also give marketers a chance to appear in subreddits where customers are already talking about them... Despite being around for close to 20 years, Reddit only started investing heavily in its advertising business in 2018, and is now hoping that marketers and investors are ready to acknowledge the site has grown up. Executives often point to its unique form of content moderation as proof that it's a safer place for brands than other sites. Reddit largely relies on a group of more than 60,000 human moderators - users who volunteer to serve as a sort of content police - to flag or take down unsavory content. On top of that, the site has a voting system so users can rate the quality of content. "From everything we're seeing, they have a level of brand safety and content safety for advertisers that is very comparable to most other social platforms," said Jack Johnston, senior social innovation director at performance marketing agency Tinuiti, which buys ads on Meta, Pinterest, X and Reddit. "That wasn't necessarily the case a couple years ago." Those improvements have paid dividends. Reddit recently signed new content partnerships with major sports leagues, including the NFL, NBA and MLB, and the majority of Reddit's advertising revenue comes from Fortune 500 companies. Last year, the site made close to $800 million in ad sales, and counts marquee brands like Toyota, Disney, Samsung and Ulta Beauty among its advertisers. This year, analysts expect Reddit's overall advertising business to eclipse $1.1 billion in revenue and see the company reaching $2 billion in sales as soon as 2027, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. To get there, Reddit will need to court smaller marketers, too. The company makes more than 25% of its revenue from just 10 advertisers, meaning any unexpected pullback from a key partner could have a significant impact on the company's business, said Dan Salmon, lead analyst at New Street Research. "This army of small businesses - that's the most important thing for all of those platforms, for Reddit, for Pinterest, for X," he said... Advertisers large and small say they're already planning to spend more on Reddit in the coming quarters. The article points out that more than 90 million people visit Reddit each day.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
"At The Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit China conference, Linus Torvalds and his buddy Dirk Hohndel, Verizon's Head of the Open Source Program Office, once more chatted about Linux development and related issues," reports ZDNet:Torvalds: "Later this year, we will have the 20th anniversary of the real-time Linux project. This is a project that literally started 20 years ago, and the people involved are finally at that point where they feel like it is done... well, almost done. They're still tweaking the last things, but they hope it will soon be ready to be completely merged in the upstream kernel this year... You'd think that all the basics would have been fixed long ago, but they're not. We're still dealing with basic issues such as memory management...." Switching to a more modern topic, the introduction of the Rust language into Linux, Torvalds is disappointed that its adoption isn't going faster. "I was expecting updates to be faster, but part of the problem is that old-time kernel developers are used to C and don't know Rust. They're not exactly excited about having to learn a new language that is, in some respects, very different. So there's been some pushback on Rust." On top of that, Torvalds commented, "Another reason has been the Rust infrastructure itself has not been super stable...." The pair then moved on to the hottest of modern tech topics: AI. While Torvalds is skeptical about the current AI hype, he is hopeful that AI tools could eventually aid in code review and bug detection. In the meantime, though, Torvalds is happy about AI's side effects. For example, he said, "When AI came in, it was wonderful, because Nvidia got much more involved in the kernel. Nvidia went from being on my list of companies who are not good to my list of companies who are doing really good work."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp shared this anecdote about Amazon's GenAI assistant for software development, Amazon Q:On Thursday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy took to Twitter to boast that using Amazon Q to do Java upgrades has already saved Amazon from having to pay for 4,500 developer-years of work. ("Yes, that number is crazy but, real," writes Jassy). And Jassy says it also provided Amazon with an additional $260M in annualized efficiency gains from enhanced security and reduced infrastructure costs. "Our developers shipped 79% of the auto-generated code reviews without any additional changes," Jassy explained. "This is a great example of how large-scale enterprises can gain significant efficiencies in foundational software hygiene work by leveraging Amazon Q." Jassy - who FORTUNE reported had no formal training in computer science - also touted Amazon Q's Java upgrade prowess in his Letter to Shareholders earlier this year, as has Amazon in its recent SEC filings ("today, developers can save months using Q to move from older versions of Java to newer, more secure and capable ones; in the near future, Q will help developers transform their .net code as well").Earlier this week, Business Insider reported on a leaked recording of a fireside chat in which AWS CEO Matt Garman predicted a paradigm shift in coding as a career in the foreseeable future with the prevalence of AI. According to Garman, "If you go forward 24 months from now, or some amount of time - I can't exactly predict where it is - it's possible that most developers are not coding."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
"It's going to be violent," warns the creator of Terminator Zero, an eight-episode anime series premiering Thursday August 29th on Netflix. "It's going to be dark, it's going to be horrific, and it's going to be arresting." And the Netflix blog has now shared the first six minutes online:In the world of Terminator, the future is never set, yet some things are guaranteed: The Terminator is still a cyborg that feels no remorse, pity, or fear. The anime series TERMINATOR ZERO, landing on Netflix on Aug. 29 - known to fans as Judgment Day - looks different from any incarnation of the Terminator franchise we've seen before, but you can tell from these opening six minutes that the brutal, sophisticated action will remain. "I realized the first minutes of the show have to declare what it is," creator and executive producer Mattson Tomlin tells Tudum. A joint production between Skydance and the Japanese animation studio Production I.G, TERMINATOR ZERO has the challenge of drawing in both anime fans and fans of the Terminator series. "The way to do that was to have a sequence that had no dialogue, that was really planting a flag in letting everybody know this is going to be violent, it's going to be dark, it's going to be action-driven, it's going to be horrific, and it's going to be arresting," says Tomlin, who previously wrote Project Power for Netflix and is currently writing The Batman Part II. "That's just what it has to be." The series follows "a new batch of characters who live in Japan in 1997," writes CBR - and in an interview the show's director said "There's a balance" when representing Japan's actual culture while keeping the show futuristic:One of the things that I really took for granted was guns. [Points to self] Dumb American over here had to write a scene where Eiko gets into a parking lot and smashes the window of a car, goes to the glove box, takes out a revolver, and it instantly gets flagged. [Other people working on the series] were like, "No, we don't have guns. What you are describing, that's over there. We're over here in civilization where that can't happen." That triggered a really fruitful and creatively challenging discussion about weapons. The military has guns and the police have guns. That's kind of it. So these characters have to arm themselves. How are they going to do it? What could we do? And that's why the Terminator has a crossbow. Eiko has all of these different weapons that she concocted from a hardware store. It was all born out of that.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Telegram's billionaire founder/CEO Pavel Durov was arrested Saturday night outside Paris, reports Reuters, citing French TV news stations TF1 TV and BFM TV which attributed the news to unnamed sources:Durov was travelling aboard his private jet, TF1 said on its website, adding he had been targeted by an arrest warrant in France as part of a preliminary police investigation. TF1 and BFM both said the investigation was focused on a lack of moderators on Telegram, and that police considered that this situation allowed criminal activity to go on undeterred on the messaging app. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft will meet with CrowdStrike and other security companies" on September 10, reports CNBC, to "discuss ways to evolve" the industry after a faulty CrowdStrike software update in July caused millions of Windows computers to crash: [An anonymous Microsoft executive] said participants at the Windows Endpoint Security Ecosystem Summit will explore the possibility of having applications rely more on a part of Windows called user mode instead of the more privileged kernel mode... Attendees at Microsoft's September 10 event will also discuss the adoption of eBPF technology, which checks if programs will run without triggering system crashes, and memory-safe programming languages such as Rust, the executive said. Wednesday Crowdstrike argued no cybersecurity vendor could "technically" guarantee their software wouldn't cause a similar incident. On a possibly related note, long-time Slashdot reader 278MorkandMindy shares their own thoughts: The "year of the Linux desktop" is always just around the corner, somewhat like nuclear fusion. Will Windows 11, with its general advert and telemetry BS, along with the recall feature, FINALLY push "somewhat computer literate" types like myself onto Linux?Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Reuters reports that the Iranian hacking team which compromised the campaign of U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump "is known for placing surveillance software on the mobile phones of its victims, enabling them to record calls, steal texts and silently turn on cameras and microphones, according to researchers and experts who follow the group."Known as APT42 or CharmingKitten by the cybersecurity research community, the accused Iranian hackers are widely believed to be associated with an intelligence division inside Iran's military, known as the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC-IO. Their appearance in the U.S. election is noteworthy, sources told Reuters, because of their invasive espionage approach against high-value targets in Washington and Israel. "What makes (APT42) incredibly dangerous is this idea that they are an organization that has a history of physically targeting people of interest," said John Hultquist, chief analyst with U.S. cybersecurity firm Mandiant, who referenced past research that found the group surveilling the cell phones of Iranian activists and protesters... Hultquist said the hackers commonly use mobile malware that allows them to "record phone calls, room audio recordings, pilfer SMS (text) inboxes, take images off of a machine," and gather geolocation data... APT42 also commonly impersonates journalists and Washington think tanks in complex, email-based social engineering operations that aim to lure their targeting into opening booby-trapped messages, which let them takeover systems. The group's "credential phishing campaigns are highly targeted and well-researched; the group typically targets a small number of individuals," said Josh Miller, a threat analyst with email security company Proofpoint. They often target anti-Iran activists, reporters with access to sources inside Iran, Middle Eastern academics and foreign-policy advisers. This has included the hacking of western government officials and American defense contractors. For example, in 2018, the hackers targeted nuclear workers and U.S. Treasury department officials around the time the United States formally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), said Allison Wikoff, a senior cyber intelligence analyst with professional services company PricewaterhouseCoopers. "APT42 is still actively targeting campaign officials and former Trump administration figures critical of Iran, according to a blog post by Google's cybersecurity research team."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Boeing "will return its Starliner capsule from the International Space Station without the NASA astronauts," reports CNBC. Though they've been on the space station since early June, the plan is to have them stay "for about six more months before flying home in February on SpaceX's Crew-9 vehicle. "The test flight was originally intended to last about nine days."The decision to bring Starliner back from the ISS empty marks a dramatic about-face for NASA and Boeing, as the organizations were previously adamant that the capsule was the primary choice for returning the crew. But Starliner's crew flight test, which had been seen as the final major milestone in the spacecraft's development, faced problems - most notably with its propulsion system. "Boeing has worked very hard with NASA to get the necessary data to make this decision," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a press conference with top NASA officials at Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday. "We want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS." He reiterated that test flights are "neither safe, nor routine," and that the decision was the "result of a commitment to safety." NASA will now conduct another phase of its Flight Readiness Review to determine when to bring the empty Starliner home. Boeing officials had been adamant in press briefings that Starliner was safe for the astronauts to fly home in the event of an emergency, despite delaying the return multiple times. NASA said there was a "technical disagreement" between the agency and the aerospace company, and said it evaluated risk differently than Boeing for returning its crew. Nonetheless, NASA officials repeatedly expressed support for Boeing, and Nelson said he was "100% certain" that Starliner would be able to launch with a crew again someday. NASA posted on X.com that they'd reached the decision "after extensive review by experts across the agency. And CNBC adds that "Ken Bowersox, NASA associate administrator, said NASA officials were unanimous in their decision to choose SpaceX to bring the crew home."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
He was employee #13 at Apple Computers - after impressing Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs with his "blue box" phone-phreaking technique. Now 81-year-old John "Captain Crunch" Draper has launched a new YouTube channel and web site. "I spent decades exploring the depths of communication technology," Draper says in a recent video, "always pushing the boundaries of what's possible, and challenging the status quo." The video is embedded at the top of the new web site, welcoming visitors to "your gateway to my world, where I share everything from my secrets the early phone freaking days to the latest in emergency communication systems that could one day save your life.""Here you'll find insights into my current projects including advanced uses of artificial intelligence, emergency communication preparedness, and much more. Whether you're a technology enthusiast, a fellow veteran, or someone curious about the unseen forces that connect our world, here's something for you." And clicking the "Current Projects" link leads to an interesting list:"My involvement in the field of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) recently took me to "Contact in the Desert," a pivotal gathering of leading scientists pushing for governmental transparency in UAP research.""Artificial Intelligence, particularly ChatGPT, has captivated my interest. I'm refining my skills as a prompt engineer, integrating AI into various facets of my life, from web development and programming to personal research on UAPs and anti-gravity phenomena.""In light of global tensions, such as the Ukrainian conflict, I'm actively preparing for potential disruptions in conventional communication systems. Together with a hardware partner, we are pioneering advanced communication technologies under the unlicensed ISM band using the Meshtastic protocol. This technology, which is popular in the UK but less so in the US, facilitates secure, low-power, and nearly undetectable communication. I am advocating for its adoption in Las Vegas, where it remains largely underutilized.""My YouTube channel not only serves as a platform for project updates but also as a conduit for preserving the legacy of the computing era's pioneers." [Draper plans to host interviews with members of the original 1970s HomeBrew Computer Club.]Draper's home page also has a 59-minute video of a conference talk where Draper tells his life story... And five months ago Draper released a video on YouTube showing what happened when he asked ChatGPT to design his logo. It resulted in "really hokey pictures - terrible." But Draper scrolls them all to provide his critique.... There's also a Patreon account where Draper is offering to schedule Zoom meetings with subscribers (for between $22 and $45 an hour).Read more of this story at Slashdot.
NASA's 2022 DART mission "successfully demonstrated how a fast-moving spacecraft could change an asteroid's trajectory by crashing into it," remembers Gizmodo, "potentially providing a way to defend Earth - though the asteroid in this test was never a real threat." But a followup study suggests debris from that 525-foot (160-meter) asteroid "could actually strike back," they add, "though we're not in any danger."The [DART] team posits that the collision produced a field of rocky ejecta that could reach Earth within 10 years... [Various aerospace scientists] studied data collected by the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, or LICIACube, which observed DART's impact of Dimorphos up close. Then, they fed LICIACube's data into supercomputers at NASA's Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility to simulate how the debris from the asteroid - basically dust and rock - may have disseminated into space. The simulations tracked about 3 million particles kicked up by the impact, some of which are large enough to produce meteors that could be spotted on Earth. Particles from the impact could get to Mars in seven to 13 years, and the fastest particles could make it to our own world in just seven years. "This detailed data will aid in the identification of DART-created meteors, enabling researchers to accurately analyze and interpret impact-related phenomena," the team wrote in the paper. "However, these faster particles are expected to be too small to produce visible meteors, based on early observations," said Dr. Eloy Pena-Asensio, who lead the research team, in an interview with Universe Today. (He's a Research Fellow with the Deep-space Astrodynamics Research and Technology group at Milan's Polytechnic Institute.) The team's simulations indicated it could take up to 30 years before any of the ejecta is observed on Earth, in a new (and human-created) meteor shower called the Dimorphids. So while they won't pose any risk, "If these ejected Dimorphos fragments reach Earth... their small size and high speed will cause them to disintegrate in the atmosphere, creating a beautiful luminous streak in the sky."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Under the streets of New York City, they're testing a "quantum network," reports Phys.org - where engineers from a Brooklyn company named Qunnect Inc are taking steps to "overcome the fragility of entangled states in a fiber cable and ensure the efficiency of signal delivery."For their prototype network, the Qunnect researchers used a leased 34-kilometer-long fiber circuit they called the GothamQ loop. Using polarization-entangled photons, they operated the loop for 15 continuous days, achieving an uptime of 99.84% and a compensation fidelity of 99% for entangled photon pairs transmitted at a rate of about 20,000 per second. At a half-million entangled photon pairs per second, the fidelity was still nearly 90%... They sent 1,324 nm polarization-entangled photon pairs in quantum superpositions through the fiber, one state with both polarizations horizontal and the other with both vertical - a two-qubit configuration more generally known as a Bell state. In such a superposition, the quantum mechanical photon pairs are in both states at the same time. "While others have transmitted entangled photons before, there has been too much noise and polarization drift in the fiber environment for entanglement to survive," the article points out, "particularly in a long-term stable network." So the Qunnect team built "automated polarization compensation" devices to correct the polarization of the entangled pairs:In their design, an infrared photon [with a wavelength of 1,324 nanometers] is entangled with a near-infrared photon of 795 nanometers. The latter photon is compatible in wavelength and bandwidth with the rubidium atomic systems, such as are used in quantum memories and quantum processors. It was found that polarization drift was both wavelength- and time-dependent, requiring Qunnect to design and build equipment for active compensation at the same wavelengths... Qunnect's GothamQ loop demonstration was especially noteworthy for its duration, the hands-off nature of the operation time, and its uptime percentage. It showed, they wrote, "progress toward a fully automated practical entanglement network" that would be required for a quantum internet. And Qunnect's co-founder/chief science officer says "since we finished this work, we have already made all the parts rack-mounted, so they can be used everywhere..." Their network design and results are published in PRX Quantum.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Monday brought spectacular footage of an explosion at a UK rocket test site after an engine test went awry. The plan had been to test-fire all of a rocket stage's nine engines at the same time - they've successfully ignited the mores more than a hundred times - but this time one of the first eight had an "unusual" anomaly - "most likely a fire in the oxygen pump," according to a video posted by space company RFA on X.com. The trouble "spread onto neighboring engines," eventually leading to a billowing jet of fire from the side of the vehicle. ("The engine-propellant manifold system was damaged to such a great extent that kerosene kept fueling the fire.") Slashdot reader AleRunner writes:A rocket company has vowed to return to regular operations "as soon as possible" after an explosion during a test at the UK's new spaceport in Shetland. The explosion happened after "an "anomaly" had led to "the loss of the stage" - but there were no injuries according to a Guardian report. The test was carried out by German company Rocket Factory Augsburg which hopes to make the first UK vertical rocket launch into orbit... "We develop iteratively with an emphasis on real testing."This is part of our philosophy and we were aware of the higher risks attached to this approach. Our goal is to return to regular operations as soon as possible." "In true RFA fashion, we're being as transparent as possible," the company posted Friday on X.com, "and sharing our own raw footage of the incident." The day of the explosion they'd posted that "The launch pad has been saved and is secured," and Friday posted that six-minute video explaining what happened. (It emphasizes there's an improved version of this stage that's already been built.) The Guardian added that the explosion comes three months after RFA's successful 8-second test firing of its rocket engines - the spaceport's first rocket test.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Alien: Romulus director Fede Alvarez "briefly dropped into an Alien franchise subreddit this week to chat with fans about his new sequel," reports Deadline. "But the moderators weren't having it, flagging Alvarez as an imposter in a notice that he is 'permanently banned' from the subreddit."The moderator shared an update that Alvarez "was immediately reinstated and had a very friendly conversation with us. Awesome guy." They also shared the filmmaker's response. "I'm sorry, just found it hilarious," wrote Alvarez. "My bad. Not harm done. Thanks again for such great work moderating my favorite subreddit." Fangoria notes this might not be the last Alien movie from director Alvarez:Talking with The Hollywood Reporter earlier this week, the Evil Dead and Don't Breathe director teased that ideas are in the pipeline for an Alien: Romulus sequel, which would - if it comes to fruition - be the eighth instalment in the legendary sci-fi horror franchise." The Hollywood Reporter also notes that Ash, the "calculating synthetic character" from the original 1979 movie Alien (played by the late Ian Holm) got a kind of reprise in 2024 with another character named Rook:According to Alvarez, Rook was a collaborative decision with [Ridley] Scott, who also wanted to see another version of the artificial person he introduced 45 years ago. The Romulus team then received approval from Holm's estate, and using the English actor's headcast from The Lord of the Rings as a foundation, Legacy Effects built Rook's torso and head as an animatronic. The practical character was then enhanced by CG and deepfake AI technology for certain shots as needed... "There might be some deepfake in the eyes because it's the best when it comes to creating the likeness of the eyes, but it's a whole bag of tricks from 1970s and 1980s technology to technology from yesterday." The article also notes one horrifying plot twist "received some respectful opposition to this unsettling choice from 20th Century and Disney, but that's precisely when [director Alvarez] knew he was on the right course." "If you're given an Alien movie by a corporation that is owned by Disney and they immediately say, 'Yeah, let's make it,' then you are failing somehow. So we really pushed it to the limit, and I'm glad we did." Alvarez's social media feed also explores what Alien: Romulus would look like as trading cards or as 1950s comic book, shares posts from the movie's poster designer, and admits that "everything I do is influenced by Terminator / Alien / Predator."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Volkswagen will wait to see what electric car demand is like before building out all six of its previously planned battery factories. Thomas Schmall, VW's board member in charge of technology, told a German newspaper that "building battery cell factories is not an end to itself" and that a goal of 200 GWh of lithium-ion cells by 2030 was not set in stone. [...] For VW, the previous goal of 200 GWh by 2030 from six factories (through a new subsidiary called PowerCo) could now be just 170 GWh capacity from three already-announced plants in Valencia, Spain; Ontario, Canada; and Salzgitter, Germany. If necessary, Schmall said that the Spanish and Canadian battery factories could be expanded to meet additional demand. This battery news follows another sign of slowing confidence in EVs at VW. Last week, it emerged that the company has pushed back plans for the ID.4's successor, which now may not see showrooms until 2032.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Verge's Adi Robertson reports: An appeals court revived a lawsuit against the anonymous messaging service Yolo, which allegedly broke a promise to unmask bullies on the app. In a ruling (PDF) issued Thursday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shouldn't block a claim that Yolo misrepresented its terms of service, overruling a lower court decision. But it determined the app can't be held liable for alleged design defects that allowed harassment, letting a different part of that earlier ruling stand. Yolo was a Snapchat-integrated app that let users send anonymous messages, but in 2021, it was hit with a lawsuit after a teenage user died by suicide. The boy, Carson Bride, had received harassing and sexually explicit messages from anonymized users that -- he believed -- he likely knew. Bride and his family attempted to contact Yolo for help, but Yolo allegedly never answered, and in some cases, emails to the company simply bounced. Snap banned Yolo and another app targeted in the lawsuit, and a year later, it banned all anonymous messaging integration. Bride's family and a collection of other aggrieved parents argued that Yolo broke a legally binding promise to its users. They pointed to a notification where Yolo claimed people would be banned for inappropriate use and deanonymized if they sent "harassing messages" to others. But as the ruling summarizes, the plaintiffs argued that "with a staff of no more than ten people, there was no way Yolo could monitor the traffic of ten million active daily users to make good on its promise, and it in fact never did." Additionally, they claimed Yolo should have known its anonymous design facilitated harassment, making it defective and dangerous. A lower court threw out both of these claims, saying that under Section 230, Yolo couldn't be held responsible for its users' posts. The appeals court was more sympathetic. It accepted the argument that families were instead holding Yolo responsible for promising users something it couldn't deliver. "Yolo repeatedly informed users that it would unmask and ban users who violated the terms of service. Yet it never did so, and may have never intended to," writes Judge Eugene Siler, Jr. "While yes, online content is involved in these facts, and content moderation is one possible solution for Yolo to fulfill its promise, the underlying duty ... is the promise itself." The Yolo suit built on a previous Ninth Circuit ruling that let another Snap-related lawsuit circumvent Section 230's shield. In 2021, it found Snap could be sued for a "speed filter" that could implicitly encourage users to drive recklessly, even if users were responsible for making posts with that filter. (The overall case is still ongoing.) On top of their misrepresentation claim, the plaintiffs argued Yolo's anonymous messaging capability was similarly risky, an argument the Ninth Circuit didn't buy -- "we refuse to endorse a theory that would classify anonymity as a per se inherently unreasonable risk," Siler wrote.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Chinese scientists have developed a new method to produce significant quantities of water from lunar soil brought back by the Chang'e-5 mission in 2020, state broadcaster CCTV reported. The "brand-new method" involves heating moon minerals containing hydrogen to generate water vapor, which could be crucial for future lunar research stations and space exploration. Reuters reports: "After three years of in-depth research and repeated verification, a brand-new method of using lunar soil to produce large amounts of water was discovered, which is expected to provide important design basis for the construction of future lunar scientific research stations and space stations," said CCTV. The discovery could have important implications for China's decades-long project of building a permanent lunar outpost amid a U.S.-China race to find and mine the moon's resources. Using the new method, one tonne of lunar soil will be able to produce about 51-76 kg of water, equivalent to more than a hundred 500ml bottles of water, or the daily drinking water consumption of 50 people, the state broadcaster said. China hopes that recent and future lunar expeditions will set the foundations to build the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), an initiative it is co-leading with Russia.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Just under a year ago, the east coast of Greenland was hit by a megatsunami. Triggered by a large landslide entering the uninhabited Dickson Fjord, the resulting tsunami was 200 meters high -- equivalent to more than 40 double-decker buses. Luckily no one was hurt, though a military base was obliterated. Now analysis of the seismic data associated with the event has revealed that the tsunami was followed by a standing wave, which continued to slosh back and forth within the narrow fjord for many days. Angela Carrillo Ponce from the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, analyzed the seismic data, recorded at earthquake monitoring stations more than 3,000 miles (5,000km) away, and found signals persisting long after the 16 September 2023 landslide event. Using satellite images and computer modeling, Ponce and her colleagues were able to confirm the presence of a standing wave of about 1 meter in height which lasted for more than a week. Their findings, published in The Seismic Record, warn that climate change is accelerating the melt of Greenland's glaciers and permafrost, increasing the chance of landslides and subsequent megatsunamis. Smaller events have been observed a number of times in recent years, such as the rock avalanche into western Greenland's Karrat Fjord in 2017, which triggered a tsunami that flooded the village of Nuugaatsiaq, destroying 11 houses and killing four people.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Nearly 200 Google DeepMind workers signed a letter urging Google to cease its military contracts, expressing concerns that the AI technology they develop is being used in warfare, which they believe violates Google's own AI ethics principles. "The letter is a sign of a growing dispute within Google between at least some workers in its AI division -- which has pledged to never work on military technology -- and its Cloud business, which has contracts to sell Google services, including AI developed inside DeepMind, to several governments and militaries including those of Israel and the United States," reports TIME Magazine. "The signatures represent some 5% of DeepMind's overall headcount -- a small portion to be sure, but a significant level of worker unease for an industry where top machine learning talent is in high demand." From the report: The DeepMind letter, dated May 16 of this year, begins by stating that workers are "concerned by recent reports of Google's contracts with military organizations." It does not refer to any specific militaries by name -- saying "we emphasize that this letter is not about the geopolitics of any particular conflict." But it links out to an April report in TIME which revealed that Google has a direct contract to supply cloud computing and AI services to the Israeli Military Defense, under a wider contract with Israel called Project Nimbus. The letter also links to other stories alleging that the Israeli military uses AI to carry out mass surveillance and target selection for its bombing campaign in Gaza, and that Israeli weapons firms are required by the government to buy cloud services from Google and Amazon. "Any involvement with military and weapon manufacturing impacts our position as leaders in ethical and responsible AI, and goes against our mission statement and stated AI Principles," the letter that circulated inside Google DeepMind says. (Those principles state the company will not pursue applications of AI that are likely to cause "overall harm," contribute to weapons or other technologies whose "principal purpose or implementation" is to cause injury, or build technologies "whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.") The letter says its signatories are concerned with "ensuring that Google's AI Principles are upheld," and adds: "We believe [DeepMind's] leadership shares our concerns." [...] The letter calls on DeepMind's leaders to investigate allegations that militaries and weapons manufacturers are Google Cloud users; terminate access to DeepMind technology for military users; and set up a new governance body responsible for preventing DeepMind technology from being used by military clients in the future. Three months on from the letter's circulation, Google has done none of those things, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. "We have received no meaningful response from leadership," one said, "and we are growing increasingly frustrated."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
After a couple of years of regular use, Samsung's $400 Galaxy Ring will end up contributing to the growing e-waste problem. "The Galaxy Ring -- and all smart rings like it -- comes with a huge string attached," writes iFixit in a blog post. "It's 100% disposable, just like the AirPod-style Buds3 that Samsung just released. The culprit? The lithium ion batteries." ZDNet reports: The problem is the battery, and how they have a finite lifespan. Usually that's about 400 recharge cycles, and after that the batteries are finished. And if you can't replace it, then it's the end of the line for the gadget, and it's tossed onto the e-waste pile. [...] iFixit is damning about this sort of tech. "There's nothing wrong with simple but there is something wrong with unrepairable. Just like the Galaxy Buds3, the Galaxy Ring is a disposable tech accessory that isn't designed to last more than two years." And the bottom line is simple: "We can't recommend buying disposable tech like this." Here's what iFixit's Shahram Mokhtari had to say about the Galaxy Ring's battery, after putting it through a CT scanner: On the right hand side of the ring is the faint outline of a lithium polymer battery pouch. There's an inductive coil sitting right on top of the battery (the lines that look like a rectangular track) and another very similar inductive coil that's parallel and slightly separated from the first. That second inductive coil is inside the charging case and works together with the inductive coil in the ring to recharge the battery inside the Galaxy Ring. Inductive charging is the only practical way to deliver power to a device that doesn't have any ports. But there's something else here that sticks out like a sore thumb ... that is a press connector joining the battery to the rest of the board! This is a surprising use of space, why isn't this directly soldered? Nobody is getting back in there to disconnect this thing! We love press connectors, they're easy to work with and make replacing batteries a sight easier than desoldering a half dozen wires. But this one is sealed into the device and serves no purpose in replacement or repair. Our best guess as to why it's in the Galaxy Ring: The battery and wireless charging coil were made in one place, the circuit board somewhere else, and it all comes to a production line somewhere where the two need to be connected together quickly and cheaply. Hence the press connector. It's not for your benefit, it's for the manufacturers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Amazon may be forced to meet some unionized delivery drivers at the bargaining table after a regional National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) director determined Thursday that Amazon is a joint employer of contractors hired to ensure the e-commerce giant delivers its packages when promised. This seems like a potentially big loss for Amazon, which had long argued that delivery service partners (DSPs) exclusively employed the delivery drivers, not Amazon. By rejecting its employer status, Amazon had previously argued that it had no duty to bargain with driver unions and no responsibility for alleged union busting, The Washington Post reported. But now, after a yearlong investigation, the NLRB has issued what Amazon delivery drivers' union has claimed was "a groundbreaking decision that sets the stage for Amazon delivery drivers across the country to organize with the Teamsters." In a press release reviewed by Ars, the NLRB regional director confirmed that as a joint employer, Amazon had "unlawfully failed and refused to bargain with the union" after terminating their DSP's contract and terminating "all unionized employees." The NLRB found that rather than bargaining with the union, Amazon "delayed start times by grounding vans and not preparing packages for loading," withheld information from the union, and "made unlawful threats." Teamsters said those threats included "job loss" and "intimidating employees with security guards." [...] Unless a settlement is reached, the NLRB will soon "issue a complaint against Amazon and prosecute the corporate giant at a trial" after finding that "Amazon engaged in a long list of egregious unfair labor practices at its Palmdale facility," Teamsters said. Apparently downplaying the NLRB determination, Amazon is claiming that the Teamsters are trying to "misrepresent what is happening here." Seemingly Amazon is taking issue with the union claiming that an NLRB determination on the merits of their case is a major win when the NLRB has yet to issue a final ruling. According to the NLRB's press release, "a merit determination is not a 'Board decision/ruling' -- it is the first step in the NLRB's General Counsel litigating the allegations after investigating an unfair labor practice charge." Sean M. O'Brien, the Teamsters general president, claimed the win for drivers unionizing not just in California but for nearly 280,000 drivers nationwide. "Amazon drivers have taken their future into their own hands and won a monumental determination that makes clear Amazon has a legal obligation to bargain with its drivers over their working conditions," O'Brien said. "This strike has paved the way for every other Amazon worker in the country to demand what they deserve and to get Amazon to the bargaining table."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Register's Connor Jones reports: The U.S. is suing one of its leading research universities over a litany of alleged failures to meet cybersecurity standards set by the Department of Defense (DoD) for contract awardees. Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT), commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, and its contracting entity, Georgia Tech Research Corporation (GTRC), are being investigated following whistleblower reports from insiders Christopher Craig and Kyle Koza about alleged (PDF) failures to protect controlled unclassified information (CUI). The series of allegations date back to 2019 and continued for years after, although Koza was said to have identified the issues as early as 2018. Among the allegations is the suggestion that between May 2019 and February 2020, Georgia Tech's Astrolavos Lab -- ironically a group that focuses on cybersecurity issues affecting national security -- failed to develop and implement a cybersecurity plan that complied with DoD standards (NIST 800-171). When the plan was implemented in February 2020, the lawsuit alleges that it wasn't properly scoped -- not all the necessary endpoints were included -- and that for years afterward, Georgia Tech failed to maintain that plan in line with regulations. Additionally, the Astrolavos Lab was accused of failing to implement anti-malware solutions across devices and the lab's network. The lawsuit alleges that the university approved the lab's refusal to deploy the anti-malware software "to satisfy the demands of the professor that headed the lab," the DoJ said. This is claimed to have occurred between May 2019 and December 2021. Refusing to install anti-malware solutions at a contractor like this is not allowed. In fact, it violates federal requirements and Georgia Tech's own policies, but allegedly happened anyway. The university and the GTRC also, it is claimed, submitted a false cybersecurity assessment score in December 2020 -- a requirement for all DoD contractors to demonstrate they're meeting compliance standards. The two organizations are accused of issuing themselves a score of 98, which was later deemed to be fraudulent based on various factors. To summarize, the issue centers around the claim that the assessment was carried out on a "fictitious" environment, so on that basis the score wasn't given to a system related to the DoD contract, the US alleges. The claims are being made under the False Claims Act (FCA), which is being utilized by the Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative (CCFI), which was introduced in 2021 to punish entities that knowingly risk the safety of United States IT systems. It's a first-of-its-kind case being pursued as part of the CCFI. All previous cases brought under the CCFI were settled before they reached the litigation stage.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Wyoming is pioneering the next phase of crypto growth by creating its own U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, the Wyoming stable token. The state aims for an early 2025 launch and have it serve as a model for a digitized dollar at the federal level, while also using the token's reserves to fund public schools. CNBC reports: Wyoming is currently vetting potential partners and vendors with more tech expertise to help build the stable token. It will require an exchange and wallet providers -- Coinbase and Kraken, for example, offer both -- to purchase and hold the token. The state plans to issue the token to an exchange so the exchange can issue it to the retail user. From there, it should be just another payment method for everyday things, said Flavia Naves, a commissioner at the Wyoming Stable Token Commission. "When you walk into Cowboy Coffee in Jackson, Wyoming, and you want to buy your latte, there's going to be their wallet there in Solana that you can use to buy your coffee with the Wyoming token," she said, describing the vision for the stablecoin. It also has a public good tilt to it: the commission plans to invest reserves that back each token in circulation into Treasurys and reverse repos, and use the interest made on those investments to fund its public schools. At the conference, [Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon] emphasized the importance of resisting the urge to focus too much on how much money the state can make here and to instead prioritize reserve management. [...] Naves emphasized that there will be a "buffer" in the reserves to account for any potential deviations and full transparency to establish and maintain public trust. "There will be audits available to the public on how many tokens [are] in circulation [and] how much money is in the bank account backing, so you can always see there is a 1-to-1 [stablecoin-to-dollar ratio]," she said. "This is a public token as well so as with any public service, all the information is available." The commission invites the public virtually to its meetings on the stable token and posts the minutes to its website afterward. "This is fully reserved and part of what we've been working out ... is to make sure that we can fully back whatever it is we're going to do," Gordon said. "Plus the fact that our legislation says that when a person buys a Treasury or a repo, we're going to have that in evidence, you're going to be able to see that. So hopefully we can avoid the de begging issues." Success would be "adoption of a stablecoin ... that's transparent, that is fully backed by our short-term Treasurys [and] that's dollar dependent," Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon told CNBC at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium in Jackson Hole. "One of the big things for me is to be able to bring back onshore a lot of our debt, because if it's bought by treasuries and supported by Treasurys, it will help to stabilize that market to a degree." "It is clear to me is that digital assets are going to have a future," Gordon said. "The United States has to address this issue. Washington's being a little bit stodgy, which is why Wyoming, being a nimble and entrepreneurial state, can make a difference."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Slashdot