Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: security – Page 74

Microsoft on Wednesday announced a new passwordless mechanism that allows users to access their accounts without a password by using Microsoft Authenticator, Windows Hello, a security key, or a verification code sent via SMS or email.

The change is expected to be rolled out in the coming weeks.

“Except for auto-generated passwords that are nearly impossible to remember, we largely create our own passwords,” said Vasu Jakkal, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Security, Compliance, and Identity. “But, given the vulnerability of passwords, requirements for them have gotten increasingly complex in recent years, including multiple symbols, numbers, case sensitivity, and disallowing previous passwords.”

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“With a single packet, an attacker can become root on a remote machine by simply removing the authentication header.” ‘ Unfortunately, Microsoft can’t fix it for you. Users affected by these vulnerabilities must manually update the OMI agent to the patched versions.

Microsoft on Tuesday addressed a quartet of security flaws as part of its Patch Tuesday updates that could be abused by adversaries to target Azure cloud customers and elevate privileges as well as allow for remote takeover of vulnerable systems.

The list of flaws, collectively called OMIGOD by researchers from Wiz, affect a little-known software agent called Open Management Infrastructure that’s automatically deployed in many Azure services

Open Management Infrastructure (OMI) is an open-source analogous equivalent of Windows Management Infrastructure (WMI) but designed for Linux and UNIX systems such as CentOS, Debian, Oracle Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server, SUSE Linux, and Ubuntu that allows for monitoring, inventory management, and syncing configurations across IT environments.

Continue reading “Critical Flaws Discovered in Azure App That Microsoft Secretly Installed on Linux VMs” | >

Ending the global sanitation crisis — jack sim, founder world toilet organization.

Around 2 billion people worldwide still lack access to the basic tools of improved sanitation (toilets and latrines). One billion people still have to defecate in the open, and at least 10% of the world’s population is thought to consume food irrigated by raw wastewater. An estimated 800,000 children, younger than 5 years of age, perish from diarrhea each year, including conditions related to cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid and polio.

Mr. Jack Sim is the Founder of the World Toilet Organization (https://www.worldtoilet.org/), an organization established with the aim to break the taboo around toilets and this global sanitation crisis.

Continue reading “Mr. Jack Sim — Founder, World Toilet Organization — Ending The Global Sanitation Crisis” | >

The 36th Space Symposium began with an opening ceremony honoring outstanding individuals and organizations in the space community.

Among the honorees, the team behind NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter received the John L. “Jack” Swigert, Jr. Award for Space Exploration. The annual award recognizes extraordinary accomplishments by a company, space agency, or consortium of organizations in the realm of space exploration and discovery.

Also, Bill Ingalls, a senior contract photographer at NASA received the 2021 Douglas S. Morrow Public Outreach Award. For over three decades Ingalls has been capturing NASA’s most spectacular moments through his camera lens. His iconic photos have captured Neil Armstrong’s burial at sea, Space Shuttle Endeavor’s final landing in 2,011 and the first launch of a US citizen on a Russian rocket.

The Space Symposium brings together space leaders from around the world to discuss, address and plan for the future of space. It runs from Aug. 23 to 26 in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Continue reading “2021 Space Symposium | Opening Ceremony” | >

The rapid commercialization of space and the establishment of the U.S. Space Force have created ideal conditions for change in the national security space business, says Steve Isakowitz, CEO of the Aerospace Corp. and former president of Virgin Galactic.

Aerospace, based in El Segundo, California, is a federally funded research and development center focused on analysis and assessment of space programs for the Defense Department, NASA and the National Reconnaissance Office.

In an interview with SpaceNews, Isakowitz says unprecedented opportunities are emerging for national security space organizations to capture commercial innovation. Defense programs won’t transform overnight, he says, but change is definitely in the air.

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Arizona, and Georgia will introduce the system first, with Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Utah also signed up.

The “first locations” to use the system will be airport security checkpoints run by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Apple says.

Americans usually need some form of state ID only to travel by air domestically, unlike other countries, in which a passport is widely used.

Tapping a phone at an identity reader at supported airports will prompt passengers to use their Face ID or fingerprint to authorise sending information to the machine.

“Users do not need to unlock, show, or hand over their device to present their ID,” Apple said.

Continue reading “US states to accept driver’s licence on iPhones” | >

There are a wealth of light fleet, business, and commercial applications where single occupants dominate,” says Paul Rivera, Electra Meccanica president and CEO. “From fast food franchise delivery and pizza delivery, to grocery delivery, small parcel and post, to tech repair and security firms, the Solo Cargo EV is the ideal solution to help companies minimize operational costs and maximize efficiency.

A hatchback is usually a solid choice for hauling cargo, but when the hatchback in question is a single-seat three-wheeler, things get a little more cramped. Canadian EV maker Electra Meccanica looks to solve this dilemma with a new cargo version of its three-wheeled all-electric Solo, replacing the usual lift-gate with a dedicated cargo trunk.

Adding a big rear box to a car as tiny and curvy as the Solo would usually be a drag on aesthetics, but Electra Meccanica has managed to integrate it pretty well. From the front 3/4 position, the new trunk looks almost like an aerodynamic Kamm tail element … or maybe a hyper-boost jet thruster.

We’re sure some will disagree on how well the cargo trunk blends with the pre-existing Solo design, but there’s no arguing with a dedicated 226 liters of storage in a car as small and space-deprived as the Solo. That’s an increase from the standard model’s 142 liters. Electra has developed the Solo Cargo with commercial customers in mind and says that the cargo box can be customized with third-party upgrades like warming/refrigeration, lighting, internal shelves and bins, and more.

Continue reading “Newest Electra Meccanica Solo electric 3-wheeler packs a cargo trunk” | >

A now-patched high-severity security vulnerability in WhatApp’s image filter feature could have been abused to send a malicious image over the messaging app to read sensitive information from the app’s memory.

Tracked as CVE-2020–1910 (CVSS score: 7.8), the flaw concerns an out-of-bounds read/write and stems from applying specific image filters to a rogue image and sending the altered image to an unwitting recipient, thereby enabling an attacker to access valuable data stored the app’s memory.

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Eight states will roll out a feature allowing users to add driver’s license and state IDs to Apple Wallet for iPhone and Apple Watch to use at security at participating airports, Apple announced Wednesday.

Arizona and Georgia are the first states to adopt the feature and Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma and Utah will follow, though the company did not specify a timeline.

The news comes just months after Apple said at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June that it was working on the feature with the Transportation Security Administration. The update is a crucial step in Apple’s plan to replace physical wallets and will offer more convenience to travelers looking for a touchless airport experience, the company said.

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# On the Opportunities and.
Risks of Foundation Models.

AI is undergoing a paradigm shift with the rise of models (e.g., BERT, DALL-E, GPT-3) that are trained on broad data at scale and are adaptable to a wide range of downstream tasks. We call these models foundation models to underscore their critically central yet incomplete character.

This report provides a thorough account of the opportunities and risks of foundation models, ranging from their capabilities (e.g., language, vision, robotics, reasoning, human interaction) and technical principles (e.g., model architectures, training procedures, data, systems, security, evaluation, theory) to their applications (e.g., law, healthcare, education) and societal impact (e.g., inequity, misuse, economic and environmental impact, legal and ethical considerations).

Though foundation models are based on conventional deep learning and transfer learning, their scale results in new emergent capabilities, and their effectiveness across so many tasks incentivizes homogenization.

Homogenization provides powerful leverage but demands caution, as the defects of the foundation model are inherited by all the adapted models downstream.

Continue reading “## Center for Research on Foundation Models • Aug 16 2021” | >