April 2018 – Page 15 – Peter's Quasi-Daily Blah-g

April 9, 2018

Global cyberattack targets 200,000 network switches (updated)

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The past few days haven’t been great for the internet’s broader security. Iran’s Communication and Information Technology Ministry has reported that it was a victim in a global cyberattack that compromised about 200,000 Cisco switches that hadn’t yet received patches for exploits in the company’s legacy Smart Install protocol. The attackers displayed a US flag on at least some screens, complete with a "don’t mess with our elections" warning, but the attack wasn’t focused on Iran — only 3,500 switches fell to the exploit in the country. About 55,000 of the victim devices were in the US, IT Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi said, while 14,000 were in China. Other victims were located in Europe and India.

Iran’s report came shortly after Cisco’s Talos research group warned that there had been "several incidents" around the world where "specific advanced actors" had targeted its switches using Smart Install. There had been a spike in scanning as of November 2017, and it only increased in intensity in March and April.

The damage, at least in Iran, might be minimal — Iran said it tackled the flaw within hours, and that it hadn’t lost data. However, the reach of the attack and its messaging are more than a little baffling. If this was a warning over election meddling, why not focus on Russia instead of countries that could frequently be victims of those attacks? This could be an indiscriminate protest, or even a deliberate attempt to throw investigators off the trail by foisting the blame on one country.

Whoever’s responsible, the cyberattacks highlight a recurring problem: many of the breaches in recent months have been the result of lax security practices. These switches could have been fixed in time to prevent the attack, but a slow response left them wide open. It may take a long time before a lear majority of network operators treat patches and operating system upgrades as high priorities.

Update: In a response to Motherboard, the attackers claimed this was a protest against Russia and other countries meddling in American elections. Also, some of the targets were Russian. It’s still odd that the US and other countries got caught in the crossfire (especially as the attackers claimed they fixed the flaws on US and UK devices), but the campaign makes more sense as a result.

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— MJ Azari Jahromi (@azarijahromi) April 6, 2018

Via: Reuters

Source: Talos, MJ Azari Jahromi (Twitter)

Tech

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

April 7, 2018 at 03:42PM

April 9, 2018

Chinese AI startup dwarfs global rivals with $4.5 billion valuation

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Chinese artificial intelligence startups are attracting ever richer valuations as the country bets big on the emerging technology.

SenseTime, which specializes in software that can identify people’s faces in surveillance videos, said Monday that it had secured $600 million in fresh funds and is already in talks with investors to raise more money. The latest cash injection values SenseTime at more than $4.5 billion, according to a person familiar with the company’s fundraising.

That’s more than any other artificial intelligence startup on the planet, according to CB Insights. The second biggest AI startup is also Chinese: Shanghai-based Yitu Technology with a valuation of about $2.4 billion.

SenseTime tapped big names for cash in its latest funding round, including China’s leading e-commerce company, Alibaba (BABA). It had already announced an investment from US computer chip maker Qualcomm (QCOM) last year.

The new funding will “help us widen the scope” for putting artificial intelligence to use in different industries, SenseTime CEO Li Xu said in a statement. Specifically, the company said it will pump more money into areas like security, smartphones, advertising and autonomous driving.

The investment comes amid intensifying commitment by corporations and governments in AI research and development, despite warnings from some tech leaders and academics of the potential misuse of the emerging technology.

The world’s biggest tech companies like Google (GOOG) and Facebook (FB) are pouring resources into artificial intelligence. Last week, Apple (AAPL) said it had poached Google’s AI chief to help boost its own efforts in the technology.

Facial recognition technology in particular is big business in China, including in government efforts to keep tabs on citizens.

SenseTime’s software is already used by Chinese smartphone makers like Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo to organize photo albums or unlock phones by scanning faces.

SenseTime artificial intelligence detection tracking tech — A demonstration of SenseTime’s facial recognition technology at an industry conference.

Alibaba said it is still figuring out how to use SenseTime tech in its businesses. One potential area could be in the company’s cashless grocery store chain.

Chinese retailer Suning, which has also invested in SenseTime, is already using the startup’s software to develop cashier-free stores. They’re similar to Amazon Go, where shoppers can just grab products and walk out, with AI software determining what was taken from shelves and settling the bill electronically.

SenseTime said it has more than 400 partners and clients using its AI applications.

That includes city governments that have paired facial recognition software with the massive number of surveillance cameras trained on city streets. AI software analyzes the footage, scanning faces to identify people or analyzing crowds to detect suspicious behavior.

SenseTime said as far as it knows, Chinese police have only used the company’s tech to catch criminals.

But critics have slammed the deployment of AI to track Chinese citizens, saying it violates privacy and targets political dissidents.

China has said it wants to be the dominant player in AI by 2030, aiming to build an industry worth $150 billion. The country’s ambitious surveillance plans have helped spur spending on the technology.

Investment in facial recognition tech, including government grants, surged to $1.7 billion in 2017, a more than sixfold increase from the previous year, according to a CB Insights report.

All that cash has made China home to some of the most valuable AI startups on the planet, including SenseTime, Yitu and Megvii, according to CB Insights.

CNNMoney (Hong Kong) First published April 9, 2018: 7:30 AM ET

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via Business and financial news – CNNMoney.com https://ift.tt/UU2JWz

April 9, 2018 at 06:49AM

April 9, 2018

Why Japan’s answer to Amazon is building a mobile network

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Rakuten: Why Japan's answer to Amazon is building a cell-phone network

Japan’s biggest e-commerce company has received government approval to launch its very own wireless network.

Rakuten (RKUNF) is aiming to get the network up and running next year with the goal of eventually signing up 15 million subscribers.

Analysts said the move was likely a response to fierce competition in Rakuten’s core shopping business.

“This is a defensive strategy,” says Mitsunobu Tsuruo, an analyst at Citibank in Tokyo. “Rakuten is competing against two big players — Amazon Japan and Softbank — they’re both eating into its online shopping market share.”

Building a wireless network from scratch is a serious undertaking. Rakuten estimates it will need to spend around 200 billion yen ($1.9 billion) to get the mobile network online next year, and as much as 600 billion yen ($5.6 billion) by 2025.

And it will face tough competition. The Japanese market is dominated by three established mobile networks that have tens of millions of users each: NTT Docomo (DCM), KDDI (KDDIF) and Softbank (SFTBF).

Rakuten, which only started out 20 years ago, has a market value of $11 billion and owns businesses such as messaging app Viber. It announced an alliance with Walmart (WMT) in January and has tried to build its international brand by sponsoring top sports teams like the Golden State Warriors and soccer giant Barcelona.

But it’s a financial minnow next to Japan’s big three mobile operators, which are worth several times as much. The internet company could try to gain an edge by offering consumers prices that are too low to ignore, analysts said.

“There will be a price war,” Tsuruo said. “Their only weapon will be price, and they will certainly be aggressive.”

That’s likely to be welcomed by the Japanese government and other critics who have complained about the prices the big three carriers charge.

Rakuten also says it plans to lure customers by linking its customer loyalty system with the wireless network.

The company already has some experience in the wireless industry. It launched Rakuten Mobile in 2014, but that involves renting capacity on DoCoMo’s network rather building its own.

An internet company building a new mobile network contrasts with recent moves in the United States, where big telecommunications companies have been seeking to grow by acquiring businesses that produce popular content.

Verizon (VZ) recently bought Yahoo, and AT&T (T) is trying to buy Time Warner (TWX), the parent of CNN.

CNNMoney (Tokyo) First published April 9, 2018: 8:11 AM ET

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April 9, 2018 at 07:25AM

April 6, 2018

Facebook’s disappearing message saga is the act of a company in turmoil

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Facebook’s disappearing message saga is the act of a company in turmoil - MIT Technology Review

Facebook’s disappearing message saga is the act of a company in turmoil

First it came to light that Facebook had been deleting Mark Zuckerberg’s messages from inside Messenger chats, then the firm said it would turn the trick into a feature for everyone. Given its current predicament, no wonder it decided to.

Mark’s amazing messages: TechCrunch yesterday reported that some Facebook users ad found that conversations that they had held with Mark Zuckerberg on Messenger had been edited, so that the CEO’s messages were no longer visible. Facebook said it was done to protect Zuck’s communications, and in “full compliance” with its legal obligations.

Deletion for all: There was, rightly, outcry at the news—that Zuck and his fellow execs should get such privileges when using the same system as others, and at the fact that it meant Facebook was directly tampering with inboxes. Now, Facebook has told TechCrunch that, actually, it will roll out a feature so that everyone can unsend messages in the next few months. (And Zuck won’t be able to delete any until then.)

Why it matters: Facebook is in major damage-limitation mode in the wake of its huge data scandal, with Zuck blitzing the press this past week with new announcements. Why? To have a raft of new privacy measures in place that he can point to when he testifies to Congress on April 11. The disappearing message saga is another example of how the firm is doing all it can to calm any controversy, as lawmakers decide whether to regulate his social network.

Tech

via Technology Review Feed – Tech Review Top Stories https://ift.tt/1XdUwhl

April 6, 2018 at 11:24AM

April 6, 2018

Watch Virgin Galactic’s new SpaceshipTwo take flight

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As Virgin Galactic continues its quest to "open" space flight, it completed its first powered test flight since the 2014 crash that killed one of its pilots. Now we have video of the new SpaceShipTwo, VSS Unity, separating from its carry vehicle and using its rocket to reach supersonic speeds. It hit Mach 1.87 during its 30-second rocket burn and then coasted until reaching an altitude of 84,271 ft before preparing for its return.

Source: Virgin Galactic, Virgin Galactic (YouTube)

Tech

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

April 5, 2018 at 10:03PM

April 6, 2018

Hot-air dryers suck in nasty bathroom bacteria and shoot them at your hands

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Researchers found these spewing bacteria and spores.

Washing your grubby mitts is one of the all-time best ways to cut your chances of getting sick and spreading harmful germs to others. But using the hot-air dryers common in bathrooms can undo that handy hygienic work.

Hot-air dryers suck in bacteria and hardy bacterial spores loitering in the bathroom—perhaps launched into the air by whooshing toilet flushes—and fire them directly at your freshly cleaned hands, according to a study published in the April issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology. The authors of the study, led by researchers at the University of Connecticut, found that adding HEPA filters to the dryers can reduce germ-spewing four-fold. However, the data hints that places like infectious disease research facilities and healthcare settings may just want to ditch the dryers and turn to trusty towels.

Indeed, in the wake of the blustery study—which took place in research facility bathrooms around UConn—”paper towel dispensers have recently been added to all 36 bathrooms in basic science research areas in the UConn School of Medicine surveyed in the current study,” the authors note.

The research findings largely square with other data showing that hot-air dryers and jet dryers can launch and disperse germs from hands into the air and onto surfaces—essentially setting off a very dirty bathroom bomb. But the new study clearly demonstrates that the less powerful hot-air dryers can also bathe hands with germs already swirling in the wash room.

The researchers speculated that “one reason hand dryers may disperse so many bacteria is the large amount of air that passes through hand dryers, 19,000 linear feet/min at the nozzle. The convection generated by high airflow below the hand dryer nozzles could also draw in room air.”

Commode commotion

The researchers landed on that speculation by first placing plates of gelled bacteria food (agar media plates) in some of UConn’s bathrooms—either for two minutes without hot-air dryers blowing or blasting them with dryer air for 30 seconds while they were 12 inches from the nozzle. If bacteria landed on the plates, they’d begin to grow tiny, domed colonies, which researchers can then count.

In the still bathrooms, the researchers caught an average of zero to one bacterial landings per plate. When they left the plates open for 18 hours, that average leapt to 6 colonies per plate. But in the line of fire from the blowers for 30 seconds, the plates collected averages from 18 to 60, with a range as high as 254 depending on the bathroom.

The researchers concluded that those launched germs were originating from around the bathroom—not the air dryer nozzles themselves. They deduced this because the bacterial splatter could be replicated by placing tiny, sterile fans around the bathrooms (after accounting for rates of air flow and exposure times). Retrofitting the dryers with HEPA filters reduced the germ count about four-fold.

A unique ripple in the study was that the bathrooms were in the vicinity of a lab studying the harmless spore-forming bacterium Bacillus subtilis strain PS533. Though B. subtilis is a common environmental bug, this lab strain has a distinctive resistance to the antibiotic kanamycin. The researchers could easily pick it out of their bathroom samples by simply growing collected toilet germs in the presence of kanamycin—the survivors were likely PS533 and confirmed by further testing. The researchers ended up finding PS533 milling about in all the bathrooms tested—even the ones in different buildings from the lab.

Brutal blowout

Perhaps most concerning, the researchers found that the air dryers were spreading the spores of PS533. They tested this by exposing their potty germ collections to heat—which will kill growing bacteria and germinated spores but not the spores themselves—then seeing if any spores grew. They did. The researchers then found that the hand dryers were spewing spores onto the surfaces of the bathroom.

PS533 “was almost certainly dispersed throughout bathrooms in the research areas as spores, which would easily survive desiccation in room air, as well as the elevated temperatures in hand dryer air; however, growing or stationary-phase bacteria would not be nearly so hardy as spores,” the authors note. “However, the facile dispersion of one bacterial strain throughout a research facility should probably be a concern to risk assessors and risk managers when dispersion of potentially pathogenic bacteria is considered.”

In a final test, the researchers did a cursory look at some of the other bacteria the dryers were blowing around. They found that with or without a HEPA filter, the blowers stirred up potential pathogens, including Staphylococcus aureus.

The findings should be a wake-up call to managers of research and clinical settings. The authors note that Clostridium difficile—a devastating and intractable diarrheal plague—also forms spores, and researchers have found that a flushing toilet can easily launch it into the air.

“This suggests another means of C. difficile transmission and one that may not be interrupted by either hand washing or traditional surface decontamination methods,” the authors conclude. “The role of this potential mode of C. difficile transmission is worthy of future study.”

Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 2018. DOI: 10.1128/AEM.00044-18 (About DOIs).

Tech

via Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com

April 6, 2018 at 01:34PM

April 6, 2018

Facebook admits Zuckerberg wiped his old messages—which you can’t do

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Enlarge /

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2017.

Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook has been quietly deleting old messages from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg out of their recipients’ Facebook Messenger inboxes, the company has acknowledged. This isn’t an option available to ordinary users. Users can delete their own copy of a Messenger conversation, but if they do the other party will retain his or her own copy.

“Three sources confirm to TechCrunch that old Facebook messages they received from Zuckerberg have disappeared from their Facebook inboxes, while their own replies to him conspicuously remain,” Techcrunch’s Josh Constine wrote.

Facebook argues that it has done nothing wrong.

“After Sony Pictures’ emails were hacked in 2014, we made a number of changes to protect our executives’ communications,” the company told Techcrunch. “These included limiting the retention period for Mark’s messages in Messenger. We did so in full compliance with our legal obligations to preserve messages.”

While deleting the messages may not have been illegal, it is going to raise some eyebrows. For weeks, Facebook has faced criticism for appearing to put its own financial interests ahead of the privacy interests of users in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Now we’re learning that Facebook has essentially created a two-tier system of privacy for Messenger users: Zuckerberg and a handful of other Facebook executives enjoy a limited “retention period” of their messages, whereas the embarrassing messages of ordinary users live on as long as their recipients want to keep them.

Zuckerberg has a history of having old, embarrassing instant messaging conversations come back to haunt him.

“Yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard just ask,” Zuckerberg wrote shortly after the site’s 2004 launch as a social network for Harvard students. “I have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns.”

“How’d you manage that one?” the friend asks.

“People just submitted it,” Zuckerberg replied. “I don’t know why. They ‘trust me.’ Dumb fucks.”

Presumably Zuckerberg has become more circumspect in recent years, so the deleted Messenger messages probably don’t contain anything quite that embarrassing. But with ever-increasing scrutiny into Facebook’s business practices, it’s not hard to see why Zuckerberg would want to minimize his paper trail.

Tech

via Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com

April 6, 2018 at 10:58AM