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Category: cybercrime/malcode – Page 241

Are you feeling confident about those robots and other AI machines and apps connected to the cloud environments self managing themselves?

The latest round of embarrassing federal data breaches struck the very agencies charged with protecting Americans, evidence one leading member of Congress believes is proof that throwing money at a problem doesn’t solve much unless there’s accountability to go with it.

Last week, the personal data of some 20,000 FBI employees and more than 9,000 Department of Homeland Security workers was released.

Days later, the story took on additional embarrassment when authorities arrested the perpetrator, a 16-year-old boy in Great Britain. The teen said he gained access to the information through weak security in the Department of Justice email system.

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I believe that AI holds a lot of promise and many great things; however, we have to correct some very critical issues 1st before compound a huge issue that we have today. And, that is Cyber Security and re-establish trust with our consumers and customers. Without these 2 being fully addressed; you will compound these two challenges with AI plus run the risk of having an IoT that most people will not wish to use due to hackers, bad data, etc. Not to mention lawsuits for Wi-Fi connected robotics that were hacked and injured or worse some innocent person.

I believe need to ensure priorities are in order before we make things worse.

Unexpected convergent consequences…this is what happens when eight different exponential technologies all explode onto the scene at once.

This post (the second of seven) is a look at artificial intelligence. Future posts will look at other tech areas.

An expert might be reasonably good at predicting the growth of a single exponential technology (e.g., the Internet of Things), but try to predict the future when A.I., robotics, VR, synthetic biology and computation are all doubling, morphing and recombining. You have a very exciting (read: unpredictable) future. This year at my Abundance 360 Summit I decided to explore this concept in sessions I called “Convergence Catalyzers.”

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Watch out for new patch from Magento — hackers are at it again.

Attackers are still trying to find Magento installations that haven’t patched a particularly bad vulnerability, this time trying to trick people into downloading a fake patch.

The bogus patch purports to fix a flaw known as the Shoplift Bug, or SUPEE-5344, wrote Denis Sinegubko, a senior malware researcher with Sucuri.

“While the patch was released February 2015, many sites unfortunately did not update,” he wrote. “This gave hackers an opportunity to compromise thousands of Magento powered online stores.”

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Nice article; something that I agree very much with is the perspective that both Cyber Security is intertwined with technology innovation and adoption. Tech and other companies creating products or even services that leverages the net, can easily see their revenue potentials impacted due to poor Cyber Security. Example, Hello (Wi-Fi) Barbie by Mattel; when it was announced that the doll was indeed hackable; many buying consumers buying for their children left her on the shelf.

Hackers use innovative thinking when breaching systems, why can’t government?

by Larry Karisny

February 14, 2016.

U.S. Office of Personnel Management

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I believe it is wonderful to think about cognitive computing. However, as a fellow CIO & CTO, I would suggest a key priority has to be focused on Cyber Security until it is resolved; or in a better position to proactively blocker would be intruders. Without a solid Cyber Security plan and model in place and operational; your cognitive computing capabilities will be worth nothing in the end once hackers are helping themselves to your IP and other information as well as your AI machines.

The news comes from the recent IBM Institute for Business Value study, “Redefining Competition: Insights from the Global C-suite Study — The CEO perspective.” Researchers interviewed more than 5,000 C-level executives worldwide about their perspectives on a variety of technology issues, including the importance of mobile solutions, cloud Relevant Products/Services computing, and the Internet of Things.

Torchbearers and Market Followers.

Cognitive computing, which involves developing computing resources that are capable of mimicking the way human brains work to tackle increasingly complex problems, emerged as one of the most important issues likely to confront business executives in the near future.

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China’s public report on their own Cyber Security Strategy — don’t get too excited; it is a “public” version of their plan (mean nothing in depth).

New cyber warfare unit

While China was assessed to have cyber warfare capabilities for quite some time, the declaration by its Central Military Council of the formation of a new military branch focussed on digital battleground technically called Strategic Support Force on 1st Jan. 2016 confirmed this. This new force is mainly aimed at providing resources capable of protecting China’s cyber and space security. On this occasion Xi pointed out that this force is central to achieving the “Chinese Dream” suggesting its importance.

This development has not come as a surprise. Last year China had released it’s first-ever White Paper on military strategy [entitled “China’s Military Strategy”] which stressed on need to shift to “active defence” and emphasized China’s commitment to “winning informationized local wars” as also becoming a maritime power. The White Paper also contained the first official acknowledgement of China’s commitment to building a cyber force with the capability to engage in offensive cyber operations.

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Very good read; and hints at something that I have been highlighting for a while around AI, NextGen transformation and adoption, etc. One very large brick wall that I highlighted in my latest posts around 5 areas that need to be address for AI to be adopted more broadly is Cyber Security.

If we do not get Cyber Security address soon around hackers, cloud, etc. AI (including robotics), brain interfaces, etc. will be either rejected or very limited in its adoption. It is just that simple.

What are CISO’s (Chief Information Security Officers) worrying about in 2016?

According to the recent 2016 Security Pressures report from Trustwave, theft of information from a successful breach or cyber-attack ranks as the top worrying outcome for nearly two-thirds of respondents.

With the Identity Theft Resource Center placing the number of records exposed from data breaches in 2015 somewhere around 170 million, it’s no surprise.

Continue reading “Clueless In Cyber-Security Land” | >

If Russia, China, etc. upgrades their infrastructure to Quantum before US and it’s does; today’s breaches will not even compare to this scenario.

The push to bring more technology-related businesses to the state has officials hoping for long-term growth over places like Fairfax County, Va., where the federal government has already made substantial technological investment.

After the ceremony, an expert panel discussed some of the opportunities and challenges facing information infrastructure, the importance of collaboration between the public and private sectors, and how to increase consumers’ cybersecurity confidence.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker said during the panel that the current standing of federal cybersecurity has vastly improved since she was appointed to the post in 2013 — but there is still a ways to go.

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Brand’s view and concerns about hacking driverless cars are valid. And, I do believe in time that government will eventually catch up in passing some laws that will make companies ensure that their technology is safe for consumer usage and are safe for the public. I just hope that the pendulum does swing too far to the other side of over regulation.

It is not easy to slot Brad Templeton. What do you make of a person who is not only the networks and computing chair at Singularity University in Silicon Valley but also a software architect, a director of the Foresight Nanotech Institute, board member of the cyberspace watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation, the first person to have set up an Internet-based business, a futurist lecturer, hobby photographer, artist, as well as a consultant on Google’s driverless car design team?

In a phone interview from the US, Templeton, who will be in India this month as a key speaker during the SingularityU India Summit (to be held in association with INK, which hosts events like INKtalks—a platform for the exchange of cutting-edge ideas and inspiring stories), shared his views on driverless cars, the perceived threat from intelligent machines and censorship of the Internet. Edited excerpts:

Driverless cars are not hacker-proof and may find it difficult to navigate chaotic traffic. How are we addressing such issues?

It’s absolutely true that people are concerned about security of these cars, but it is wrong to presume that people in the media learnt about this before those who built the driverless car. The people who built the car are working to make the car secure. They won’t be able to do it perfectly, but they are going to get there. The Google team certainly has the most miles to its credit. Right now over 2 million km in automatic mode, driving around mostly in California. The chaotic driving in India is slower than some of the roads in Europe or North America. And it is actually easier to do slower and chaotic driving than faster. You get more time to stop, perceive the situation and make accurate moves. The real challenge is that in many chaotic driving situations, there are unwritten rules so you have to figure out how to sort of, play a game with the other cars. It may mean that some of the more chaotic places may have to clean up their act a bit if they want to have a technology like this.

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