Lifeboat Foundation

Lookout for MAZAR Bot — Androids should be scared.

One interesting feature of Mazar is that it can not be installed on smartphones running Android with “Russian” selected as the operating system’s language.

The malware allows the attackers to spy on nearly every activity capable on an Android device, including establishing a backdoor connection, sending premium SMS messages, reading texts sent to the device, including bank authentication PINs.

Continue reading “Mazar BOT Can Erase Android Phones” »

Government and tech + telecom & ISPs need to come to an agreement in how to ensure innocent people’s privacy are respected. When a person murders, stalk, threaten, kidnap, and/ or assault a person then we have a responsibility first to protect the innocent public. And, with the resistance being displayed by Apple, are we running the risk of further alienating the consumers and business customers more when it comes to releasing AI like robots, self driving cars, etc. onto the public where criminals can buy AI technology and use it to hurt others?

We really need to be addressing these issues soon.

Tim Cook is playing a dangerous game of brinkmanship with the U.S. government. In the process, he may set in motion political and judicial processes that will endanger the security of all our mobile devices.

Continue reading “Apple CEO Tim Cook’s Dangerous Game” »

The bottom line is robots are machines; and like any other machine, a robot system can be (with the right expertise) reprogram. And, a connected robot to the net, etc. poses a risk as long as hackers poses a risk in the current Cyber environment. Again, I encourage government, tech companies, and businesses work collectively together in addressing the immediate challenge around Cyber Security.

And, there will need to be some way to also track robots & deactivate them remotely especially when the public are allowed to buy them (including criminals).

“We believe story comprehension in robots can eliminate psychotic-appearing behavior and reinforce choices that won’t harm humans and still achieve the intended goal”.

Continue reading “Researchers are Using Fairy Tales to Prevent a ‘Psychotic’ Robot Uprising” »

The lack of collaboration on cyber security between the senior levels of business is leaving UK firms exposed to fines and reputational damage, a study has revealed.

One in 10 C-level respondents to a survey by Palo Alto Networks said they “kind of” understand what defines an online security risk, but admitted they “still have to use Google to help explain it”.

This finding suggests that the lack of consensus on where the responsibility for cyber security lies could stem from some lack of cyber security understanding at the leadership level.

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Although this article highlights the lack of awareness by some CEOs and board members on all things around Cyber Security; I do see a larger gap and risk. I do believe if a fully funded and dedicated joint task force effort among Silicon Valley, US Government, and Wall Street are not in place tackling this jointly to help the country and economy to diffuse this situation within the next 14 to 18 months that AI could fail in its delivery due to public’s concerns around trust and security.

Therefore, tech spent millions if not billions on new AI technology that businesses and consumers see no value in due to risks.

Some board executives still need help from a search engine to explain cyber security issues, warns report.

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Cyber Carjacking the new way to steal someone’s auto.

Cyber security was one of the topics on the agenda at the recent CyberTech conference held in Tel Aviv.

Last year, hackers in the US managed to remotely access a Jeep Cherokee SUV through its on-board computer, taking control of its steering, transmission and brakes.

Continue reading “Car cyber hijacking on the rise” »

This is very true; everyone knows in order for AI to truly be embraced by both consumers and industry; that Cyber Security on multiple fronts will need to be invested in to ensure better adoption of all the great technology on the horizon.

Though the cyber security industry has lost its momentum in the past several months, partially due to the weakness in the broad technology sector, it is poised for exponential growth in the coming years in the face of increasing cybercrime and the need to protect against these threats. According to Gartner, global security spending will increase 4.7% year over year to $75.4 billion in 2015 with some analysts projecting the global market to grow from $77 billion in 2015 to $170 billion by 2020.

The Q4 earnings reports of several industry players reflect this trend as most of them have beaten our earnings and revenue estimates with an encouraging outlook. Yet, they failed to drive the space and its ETFs higher that might suggest attractive entry point at the current level (read: 16 Bold ETF Predictions for 2016 ).

Continue reading “Time to Buy Cyber Security ETFs on Decent Q4 Results?” »

See even Space gets it — the importance of great Cyber Security is needed now.

The disruption of capabilities that space assets provide would have immediate, far-reaching and devastating economic, political, and geostrategic consequences. Over the past two decades, space vulnerabilities have grown dramatically in a manner commensurate with terrestrial dependency on space-based capabilities and enablers. This is true for both civilian and military activities. Purposeful interference with space systems could rather easily trigger a retaliatory spiral of actions that could compromise a safe and secure operating environment in space. Accordingly, having available a range of measures to prevent or preempt an incident, or even full-up conflict, is of rapidly growing importance to an increasing number of countries.

The interruption of space services through a cyber attack could involve large, and possibly very complex, knock-on effects. As the space and cyberspace domains are linked operationally—space cannot exist without cyber and cyber, in some cases, without space—and they permeate all other warfighting domains (i.e. land, air, and sea), cyber-related vulnerabilities of space assets are a major concern. Global effects would be virtually instantaneous.

Continue reading “Governance challenges at the intersection of space and cyber security” »

82% of Energy Industry (power grids, nuclear, solar, gas, etc.) say that a Cyber Attack Could Cause Physical Damage — and they didn’t highlight those on some sort of life support or machine to help patients, etc. to live.

According to the results of a recent Tripwire survey of more than 150 IT professionals in the energy, utilities, and oil and gas industries, 82 percent of respondents said a cyber attack on operational technology (OT) in their organization could cause physical damage.

The survey, conducted in November 2015 by Dimensional Research, also found that almost 60 percent of respondents said they aren’t able to track all the threats targeting their OT networks, either because they don’t have the visibility necessary to track all threats (16.2 percent), because they only track threats that directly target their department (8.1 percent) or because there are just too many threats (35.4 percent).

Continue reading “82 Percent of Energy Sector IT Pros Say a Cyber Attack Could Cause Physical Damage” »