Lifeboat Foundation

Cyber attackers could target 3D printed objects in health care, aerospace, and other fields.

Cybersecurity researchers at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and the Georgia Institute of Technology have proposed new ways to protect 3D printed objects such as drones, prostheses, and medical devices from stealthy “logic bombs.”

The researchers will present their paper, titled “Physical Logic Bombs in 3D Printers via Emerging 4D Techniques,” at the 2021 Annual Computer Security Applications Conference on December 10, 2021.

Security experts around the world raced Friday to patch one of the worst computer vulnerabilities discovered in years, a critical flaw in open-source code widely used across industry and government in cloud services and enterprise software.

“I’d be hard-pressed to think of a company that’s not at risk,” said Joe Sullivan, chief security officer for Cloudflare, whose online infrastructure protects websites from malicious actors. Untold millions of servers have it installed, and experts said the fallout would not be known for several days.

New Zealand’s computer emergency response team was among the first to report that the flaw in a Java-language utility for Apache servers used to log user activity was being “actively exploited in the wild” just hours after it was publicly reported Thursday and a patch released.

The Artificial Intelligence industry should create a global community of hackers and “threat modelers” dedicated to stress-testing the harm potential of new AI products in order to earn the trust of governments and the public before it’s too late.

This is one of the recommendations made by an international team of risk and machine-learning experts, led by researchers at the University of Cambridge’s Center for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), who have authored a new “call to action” published today in the journal Science.

They say that companies building intelligent technologies should harness techniques such as “red team” hacking, audit trails and “bias bounties”—paying out rewards for revealing ethical flaws—to prove their integrity before releasing AI for use on the wider public.

Microsoft creates an AI bug detector that learns to hunt for and fix bugs without being trained on data from real bugs.

Google said Tuesday it has moved to shut down a network of about one million hijacked electronic devices used worldwide to commit online crimes, while also suing Russia-based hackers the tech giant claimed were responsible.

The so-called botnet of infected devices, which was also used to surreptitiously mine bitcoin, was cut off at least for now from the people wielding it on the internet.

“The operators of Glupteba are likely to attempt to regain control of the botnet using a backup command and control mechanism,” wrote Shane Huntley and Luca Nagy from Google’s threat analysis group.

One way or another, most phone calls these days involve the internet. Cybersecurity experts say that makes us vulnerable in ways we might not realize.

Hackers have taken $196 million from crypto trading platform Bitmart, a security firm said Saturday.

Bitmart confirmed the hack in an official statement Saturday night, calling it “a large-scale security breach” and writing that hackers withdrew about $150 million in assets. However, blockchain security and data analytics firm Peckshield estimates that the loss is closer to $200 million.

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Apple reportedly notified several U.S. Embassy and State Department employees that their iPhones may have been targeted by an unknown assailant using state-sponsored spyware created by the controversial Israeli company NSO Group, according to multiple reports from Reuters and The Washington Post.

Forget about Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook and all the talk about a metaverse. The real future will be a world that is convenient and scary and fantastical — at least according to futurologists. As this year ends, here’s a glimpse at what life might be like … one day.

Facial recognition is already common for phones, but “In 30 years it’s quite possible that you will not use a key or even a credit card. You’ll use your face or iris to make purchases and open locks. Recognition will be that good,” said Martin Ford, author of “Rule of the Robots: How Artificial Intelligence will Transform Everything.”

“The scary thing, though, will be if someone hacks your biometric data. Right now you can call the bank to change your pin or cancel a credit card. But you can’t cancel your biometrics.”