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Category: security – Page 79

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.

Apple’s new ID system for its Wallet will be rolled out at airports to start.

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.

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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.

Despite the impending widespread deployment of foundation models, we currently lack a clear understanding of how they work, when they fail, and what they are even capable of due to their emergent properties.

To tackle these questions, we believe much of the critical research on foundation models will require deep interdisciplinary collaboration commensurate with their fundamentally sociotechnical nature.

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

Qualcomm has unveiled the world’s first drone platform and reference design that will tap in both 5G and AI technologies. The chipmaker’s Flight RB5 5G Platform condenses multiple complex technologies into one tightly integrated drone system to support a variety of use cases, including film and entertainment, security and emergency response, delivery, defense, inspection, and mapping.

The Flight RB5 5G Platform is powered by the chipmaker’s QRB5165 processor and builds upon the company’s latest IoT offerings to offer high-performance and heterogeneous computing at ultra-low power consumption.

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Facebook and Google have both already laid thousands of miles of undersea internet cable together, and are in the process of laying thousands of miles more.

Google announced in June it would lay a cable linking the US East Coast to Argentina, and both companies announced in March they were funding two cables hooking up the US West Coast with Singapore and Indonesia.

Over the course of 2020 and early 2021, Google and Facebook both scrapped numerous projects linking the US with Hong Kong in response to political pressure with the US government, which cited security concerns.

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It must be stressed an underlying condition to any 2FA alternative is the user themselves must have some level of active participation and responsibility.

At the same time, further work must be carried out by service providers, developers, and researchers to develop more accessible and secure authentication methods.

Essentially, these methods need to go beyond 2FA and towards a multi-factor authentication environment, where multiple methods of authentication are simultaneously deployed and combined as needed.

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