Lifeboat Foundation

Two types of technologies could change the privacy afforded in encrypted messages, and changes to this space could impact all of us.

On October 9, I moderated a panel on encryption, privacy policy, and human rights at the United Nations’s annual Internet Governance Forum. I shared the stage with some fabulous panelists including Roger Dingledine, the director of the Tor Project; Sharon Polsky, the president of the Privacy and Access Council of Canada; and Rand Hammoud, a campaigner at Access Now, a human rights advocacy organization. All strongly believe in and champion the protection of encryption.

I want to tell you about one thing that came up in our conversation: efforts to, in some way, monitor encrypted messages.

Policy proposals have been popping up around the world (like in Australia, India, and, most recently, the UK) that call for tech companies to build in ways to gain information about encrypted messages, including through back-door access. There have also been efforts to increase moderation and safety on encrypted messaging apps, like Signal and Telegram, to try to prevent the spread of abusive content, like child sexual abuse material, criminal networking, and drug trafficking.

Continue reading “IGF 2023 WS #356 Encryption’s Critical Role in Safeguarding Human Rights” »

🕵️‍♂️ Nation-state hackers are turning to Discord. Discover how they’re using this social platform for potential cyber-espionage and target critical infrastructure.

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In what’s the latest evolution of threat actors abusing legitimate infrastructure for nefarious ends, new findings show that nation-state hacking groups have entered the fray in leveraging the social platform for targeting critical infrastructure.

Continue reading “Discord: A Playground for Nation-State Hackers Targeting Critical Infrastructure” »

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch 22 Starlink internet satellites to orbit this evening (Oct. 17), if all goes according to plan.

The Falcon 9 is scheduled to lift off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 5:20 p.m. EDT (2120 GMT). If SpaceX doesn’t hit that target, there are five backup opportunities available between 6:11 p.m. EDT and 8:48 p.m. EDT (2211 to 48 GMT), company representatives wrote in a mission description.

This Jenner-active AI is frighteningly good.

Our sci-fi-inspired fears of artificial intelligence replicating us may not be unfounded: Meta set off alarm bells after introducing an AI chatbot named Billie that resembled Kendall Jenner so closely, they thought it was the model herself, the NY Post reports.

A video introducing the creepy Kardashian doppelganger is currently eliciting screams across the web.

“The CIA and other US intelligence agencies will soon have an AI chatbot similar to ChatGPT. The program, revealed on Tuesday by Bloomberg, will train on publicly available data and provide sources alongside its answers so agents can confirm their validity. The aim is for US spies to more easily sift through ever-growing troves of information, although the exact nature of what constitutes “public data” could spark some thorny privacy issues.

“We’ve gone from newspapers and radio, to newspapers and television, to newspapers and cable television, to basic internet, to big data, and it just keeps going,” Randy Nixon, the CIA’s director of Open Source Enterprise, said in an interview with Bloomberg. “We have to find the needles in the needle field.” Nixon’s division plans to distribute the AI tool to US intelligence agencies “soon.””.

The CIA confirmed that it’s developing an AI chatbot for all 18 US intelligence agencies to quickly parse troves of ‘publicly available’ data.

The researchers tested their algorithm on a replica of a US Army combat ground vehicle and found it was 99% effective in preventing a malicious attack.

Australian researchers have developed an artificial intelligence algorithm to detect and stop a cyberattack on a military robot in seconds.

The research was conducted by Professor Anthony Finn from the University of South Australia (UniSA) and Dr Fendy Santoso from Charles Sturt University in collaboration with the US Army Futures Command. They simulated a MitM attack on a GVT-BOT ground vehicle and trained its operating system to respond to it, according to the press release.

Continue reading “New AI algorithm promises defense against cyberattacks on robots” »

The tech giant is following Uber and eBay’s lead in ditching passwords and could have the greatest impact in making it happen.

The death of passwords is imminent and Google has taken a giant step in ensuring it by suggesting users switch to an easier option – passkeys. Starting immediately, Google users will be able to create passkeys and use them to sign in to their accounts, avoiding passwords when possible, the company said in a recent blog post.

Since the advent of the internet passwords have been the most hated component of the entire experience. Early on, users could get away with using simpler combinations of letters and numbers but as cybersecurity risks grew, passwords started becoming longer, tougher, and harder to remember.

Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and Bard have taken the world by storm this year, with companies investing millions to develop these AI tools, and some leading AI chatbots being valued in the billions.

These LLMs, which are increasingly used within AI chatbots, scrape the entire Internet of information to learn and to inform answers that they provide to user-specified requests, known as “prompts.”

However, computer scientists from the AI security start-up Mindgard and Lancaster University in the UK have demonstrated that chunks of these LLMs can be copied in less than a week for as little as $50, and the information gained can be used to launch targeted attacks.

NEC Corporation has developed a 150 GHz transmitter IC chip and supporting technologies in preparation for Beyond 5G and 6G mobile access radio communication systems. According to an NEC survey, this is the first demonstration of preferred beam steering performance with 4-channel Antenna-on-Chip (AoC) IC technology using On the Air (OTA) radiation pattern measurement.

Based on innovative RF circuit design technology, it has become possible to integrate 150 GHz phased array antenna elements, phase shifters and transmission amplifiers into a single chip. The 22-nm SOI-CMOS technology used for manufacturing this IC is cost effective, suitable for mass production, and has the ability to support large scale integration of digital, analog and RF functionalities in a chip.

This allows for both higher frequencies and smaller sizes, which also contributes to lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and potentially accelerates social implementation.