Lifeboat Foundation

Despite the obvious benefits of contemporary cloud-based, mobile application development solutions—such as cloud storage, notification management, real-time databases, and analytics—many developers of these solutions fail to properly take into account the potential security risks involved when these apps are misconfigured.

Most recently, Check Point Research has discovered misconfigurations and implementation issues that have exposed the data of 100 million mobile application users. This kind of exposure places both the users as well as the app developers at risk of reputation threats and security damage. In this instance, the developers left open notification managers, storage locations and real-time databases to access by attackers, thus leaving 100 million users vulnerable.

In terms of real-time databases, cloud services can help mobile app users sync their data to the cloud in real time. However, when developers do not correctly implement this service with authentication, any user can theoretically access that database, including all mobile customer data. In fact, researchers expressed surprise at facing no obstacles to accessing these open databases for certain apps on Google Play. Some of the aspects obtainable in this case were device locations, email addresses, passwords, private chats and user identifiers, among other attack vectors. Such vulnerabilities leave all of these users at risk for fraud and identity theft.

Thank you to China for trying to surpass the USA in Ai, otherwise they’d never open the wallet to fund this AI research. AGI 2025!!

China is showcasing its advances in the field of artificial intelligence — at an annual tech-themed forum.
It is being held in the port city of Tianjin.
Super computers, rockets and robots are among the innovations on display.
The event comes just months after the United States National Security Commission said that China is on track to overtake the US as the world’s AI superpower.
Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu reports.

Continue reading “China showcases artificial intelligence advances” »

Warning that the homeland is facing threats that have evolved significantly and become increasingly complex and volatile in 2021, the Department of Homeland Security issued a new National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin.

Harnessing the Hum of Fluorescent Lights for More Efficient Computing

The property that makes fluorescent lights buzz could power a new generation of more efficient computing devices that store data with magnetic fields, rather than electricity.

A team led by University of Michigan researchers has developed a material that’s at least twice as “magnetostrictive” and far less costly than other materials in its class. In addition to computing, it could also lead to better magnetic sensors for medical and security devices.

Nuclear Nonproliferation, Cooperative Threat Reduction and WMD Terrorism — Dr. Natasha Bajema, Director, Converging Risks Lab, The Council on Strategic Risks.

Dr. Natasha Bajema, is a subject matter expert in nuclear nonproliferation, cooperative threat reduction and WMD terrorism, and currently serves as Director of the Converging Risks Lab, at The Council on Strategic Risks, a nonprofit, non-partisan security policy institute devoted to anticipating, analyzing and addressing core systemic risks to security in the 21st century, with special examination of the ways in which these risks intersect and exacerbate one another.

Continue reading “Dr. Natasha Bajema — Dir., Converging Risks Lab, Council on Strategic Risks — WMD Threat Reduction” »

They’ve been dubbed “FragAttacks”.

The researcher, Mathy Vanhoef, calls the collection of vulnerabilities “FragAttacks,” with the name being a mashup of “fragmentation” and “aggregation.” He also says the vulnerabilities could be exploited by hackers, allowing them to intercept sensitive data, or show users fake websites, even if they’re using Wi-Fi networks secured with WPA2 or even WPA3. They could also theoretically exploit other devices on your home network.

Continue reading “A security researcher found Wi-Fi vulnerabilities that have existed since the beginning” »

It will serve as a backbone network for the China Environment for Network Innovations (CENI), a national research facility connecting the largest cities in China, to verify its performance and the security of future network communications technology before commercial use.

Experimental network connects 40 leading universities to prepare for an AI-driven society five to 10 years down the track.

After nearly five years in space, a NASA spacecraft is nearing the end of its historic mission, beginning its journey home to Earth with a plethora of asteroid samples.

NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft began its journey back to Earth on Monday — a trip that’s expected to take around two-and-a-half years. It’s returning from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, and it marks NASA’s first-ever asteroid sample return mission.

The spacecraft is only about 200 million miles away, but it will have to circle the sun twice to catch up to Earth — making the journey a total of 1.4 billion miles.

The findings could lead to faster, more secure memory storage, in the form of antiferromagnetic bits.

When you save an image to your smartphone, those data are written onto tiny transistors that are electrically switched on or off in a pattern of “bits” to represent and encode that image. Most transistors today are made from silicon, an element that scientists have managed to switch at ever-smaller scales, enabling billions of bits, and therefore large libraries of images and other files, to be packed onto a single memory chip.

But growing demand for data, and the means to store them, is driving scientists to search beyond silicon for materials that can push memory devices to higher densities, speeds, and security.