A Review of the Best News of the Week on AI, IoT, & Mobile Security

New Mirai Version Targets Business IoT Devices (Dark Reading, Mar 19 2019)
The notorious Internet of Things botnet is evolving to attack more types of devices – including those found in enterprises.

RSA 2019: Happily Not Over-AI’d (Gartner Blog Network, Mar 12 2019)
“My RSA Conference (#RSAC) this year was only a one day affair due to a new baby at home, but I cannot skip my ”duty” of writing this blog post with conference observations and impressions.”

Most Android Antivirus Apps Are Garbage (Wired, Mar 16 2019)
Fraudulent and ineffective antivirus apps persist on the Google Play Store, and it’s unclear whether they’ll ever totally go away.


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Data Sheet—Intel’s A.I. Plan Vs. Donald Trump’s (Fortune, Mar 19 2019)
About a month later the semiconductor giant Intel offered its own A.I. plan, a 13-page whitepaper of its recommendations for a U.S. strategy on A.I. Intel cites the work of many management consultants, and it uses (in an accompanying fact sheet) some interestingly diplomatic language, like grouping together China, India, Japan, and the European Union as “global neighbors” to the U.S. (One president’s punching bags are a multinational corporation’s neighbors.)

C3 Unwraps Low Code/No Code Enterprise AI Development Environment (eWEEK, Mar 13 2019)
The C3 Integrated Development Studio is a complete low code/no code environment designed to help developers build scalable, AI applications that can draw data from disparate systems to give companies a more comprehensive view of operations as well as analyze and predict trends.

Businesses recognize the need for AI & ML tools in cybersecurity (Help Net Security, Mar 14 2019)
71 percent of businesses surveyed in the United States plan to use more artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) in their cybersecurity tools this year, although over half (58%) aren’t sure what that technology really does, according to Webroot.

Businesses Increase Investments in AI and Machine Learning (Dark Reading, Mar 14 2019)
More than three-quarters of IT pros say they feel safer for having done so, according to a new report.

Is AI really intelligent or are its procedures just averagely successful? (Help Net Security, Mar 15 2019)
Based on an ever increasing amount of data and powerful novel computer architectures, learning algorithms appear to reach human capabilities, sometimes even excelling beyond. The issue: so far it often remains unknown to users, how exactly AI systems reach their conclusions. Therefore it may often remain unclear, whether the AI’s decision making behavior is truly ‘intelligent’ or whether the procedures are just averagely successful.

Orgs Say Yes to AI Use But Ask ‘What Is It?’ (Infosecurity Magazine, Mar 14 2019)
IT pros see a need for but don’t fully understand AI and ML security tools, report says.

Facebook Is Launching a New Machine Learning Algorithm to Combat Revenge Porn (Motherboard, Mar 15 2019)
Facebook told Motherboard that this tool is trained on “previously confirmed non-consensual intimate images.”

IoT Anomaly Detection 101: Data Science to Predict the Unexpected (Dark Reading, Mar 13 2019)
Yes! You can predict the chance of a mechanical failure or security breach before it happens. Part one of a two-part series.

“FINAL WARNING” email – have they really hacked your webcam? (Naked Security – Sophos, Mar 13 2019)
In the last 24 hours, SophosLabs received 1,700 samples of just one new sextortion campaign. Good news? It’s all a pack of lies. Don’t reply. Don’t engage.

New IoT Security Bill: Third Time’s the Charm? (Dark Reading, Mar 18 2019)
The latest bill to set security standards for connected devices sold to the US government has fewer requirements, instead leaving recommendations to the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Google launches the next version of Android—Android Q—in beta (Ars Technica, Mar 13 2019)
The beta is open to any Google Pixel phone.

Google Play apps with 150 million installs contain aggressive adware (Ars Technica, Mar 13 2019)
Google removes 210 apps after outside researchers report them as abusive.

Android Q will come with improved privacy protections (Help Net Security, Mar 18 2019)
Android Q, the newest iteration of Google’s popular mobile OS, is scheduled to be made available to end users at the end of August. While we still don’t know what its official release name will be, the first preview build and accompanying information released by Google give us a peek into some of the privacy improvements that we can look forward to.