A Review of the Best News of the Week on AI, IoT, & Mobile Security
Apple Calms Nerves After GitHub Code Leak (Infosecurity Magazine, Feb 09 2018)
Smartphone giant says there’s nothing to worry about from iBoot leak
He Predicted The 2016 Fake News Crisis. Now He’s Worried About An Information Apocalypse. (BuzzFeed, Feb 12 2018)
“What happens when anyone can make it appear as if anything has happened, regardless of whether or not it did?”
Mobile Android Is an Even Bigger Opportunity for Attackers Than Windows PCs (Palo Alto Networks Blog, Feb 07 2018)
According to Statcounter, at the end of 2017, the leading mobile operating system, Android OS, was the most used global operating system, surpassing usage of 17 other operating systems, including Windows. Android had surpassed Windows shipments a few years ago, reaching 1.9 billion by the end of 2017 – nine times the shipments of traditional PCs according to Gartner. There are now 2.7 billion Android-based smart devices in use, compared to an estimated 1.5 billion Windows devices.
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Polisis AI Reads Privacy Policies So You Don’t Have To (Wired, Feb 09 2018)
Polisis, a machine-learning-trained tool, automatically produces readable charts of where your data ends up for any online service.
Job One for Quantum Computers: Boost Artificial Intelligence (Wired, Feb 10 2018)
The fusion of quantum computing and machine learning has become a booming research area. Can it possibly live up to its high expectations?
Back to Basics: AI Isn’t the Answer to What Ails Us in Cyber (Dark Reading, Feb 09 2018)
The irony behind just about every headline-grabbing data breach we’ve seen in recent years is that they all could have been prevented with simple cyber hygiene.
Behind Artificial Intelligence Lurk Oddball Low-Paid Tasks (Wired, Feb 09 2018)
Now, researchers and entrepreneurs want to see AI understand and act in the physical world. Hence the need for workers to act out scenes in supermarkets and homes. They are generating the instructional material to teach algorithms about the world and the people in it.
HEROIC.com Intends To Disrupt Cybersecurity With AI And The Blockchain (Forbes, Feb 12 2018)
Chad Bennett founded HEROIC.com to decentralize cybersecurity and make AI-powered protection available to the masses. As more users join the network, the more secure everyone in the ecosystem becomes, creating a new paradigm for cyber protection.
Google Releases Hardware Accelerators for Machine Learning Apps (eWEEK, Feb 13 2018)
Google has started beta testing Cloud Tensor Processing Units that are designed to give enterprises more options for speeding up their machine learning workloads in the cloud.
Most CIOs plan to deploy artificial Iintelligence (Help Net Security, Feb 13 2018)
Meaningful AI deployments are just beginning to take place. Gartner’s 2018 CIO Agenda Survey shows that four percent of CIOs have implemented AI, while a further 46 percent have developed plans to do so.
Amazon may be developing AI chips for Alexa (TechCrunch, Feb 12 2018)
The Information has a report this morning that Amazon is working on building AI chips for the Echo, which would allow Alexa to more quickly parse information and get those answers.
Why banning autonomous killer robots wouldn’t solve anything (Aeon, Feb 13 2018)
“But this does not mean that the UN should implement a preventive ban on the further development of these weapons, as the signatories of the open letter seem to urge.”
Tips for securing IoT on your network (Network World Security, Feb 09 2018)
As internet of things devices proliferate, it’s more important to discover how many and what kind are on your network and figure out how to make them secure.
Consumers want more IoT regulation (Help Net Security, Feb 13 2018)
A demand for more regulation may seem counterintuitive in today’s world and yet that’s exactly what consumers who understand IoT technologies want, according to a new study from Market Strategies International.
New AndroRAT Exploits Dated Permanent Rooting Vulnerability, Allows Privilege Escalation (TrendLabs, Feb 13 2018)
Trend Micro detected a new variant of Android Remote Access Tool (AndroRAT) (identified as ANDROIDOS_ANDRORAT.HRXC) that has the ability to inject root exploits to perform malicious tasks such as silent installation, shell command execution, WiFi password collection, and screen capture.
Verizon kills its generous unlocked-phone policy and will begin locking new phones (CNET, Feb 13 2018)
It had previously sold all of its phones unlocked, allowing you to swap SIM cards and use other carriers immediately.
Tinder’s Lack of Encryption Lets Strangers Spy on Your Swipes (Wired, Feb 07 2018)
Thanks to Tinder’s patchwork use of HTTPS, researchers found they could reconstruct someone’s entire experience in the app.
Drive-by cryptomining targeting millions of Android devices (SC Magazine, Feb 13 2018)
Drive-by cryptomining campaigns were spotted targeting millions of Android devices via infected apps and malicious browser redirects
Google is bringing AMP to email (Graham Cluley, Feb 13 2018)
“One thing I’ve learnt over the years is that making email “richer” in terms of features has always brought new security challenges. My worry would be that new levels of interaction like this might make it easier for unsuspecting users to fall for a phishing attack or scam.”
SandBlast Mobile delivers new Orange Mobile Threat Protection service (Check Point Blog, Feb 08 2018)
To combat these burgeoning mobile attacks, Orange Cyberdefense, a division of the Orange Group focused on cybersecurity, and Check Point have partnered to secure enterprise mobile devices with a new Orange service called Mobile Threat Protection.