Showing posts with label hackers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hackers. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 29, 2026

Anthropic’s New AI Model Can Identify More Software Bugs Than Ever. Microsoft Is Struggling to Fix Them Fast Enough.; ProPublica, July 29, 2026

 , ProPublica; Anthropic’s New AI Model Can Identify More Software Bugs Than Ever. Microsoft Is Struggling to Fix Them Fast Enough.

Anthropic’s Mythos has flagged bugs faster than Microsoft can fix them. Documents reviewed by ProPublica reveal the tech giant's “mad dash” behind the scenes to patch holes before hackers can find and exploit them.

"“The problem now is that you can chain four low-level flaws, and that can equal a high severity,” said Vinh Nguyen, a senior technical adviser to Anthropic and a senior fellow for AI at the Council on Foreign Relations who formerly served as chief AI officer and chief data scientist at the National Security Agency. “If you’re Microsoft, the current triage strategy may be underpricing risks.”

In emailed responses to ProPublica’s questions, Microsoft stood by its approach, saying its triaging decisions are based on a number of factors, including exploitability and the impact on customers. The company presentation did not mention chaining, but a spokesperson told ProPublica that the technique “has long been considered as part of vulnerability assessment and risk analysis.”"

Saturday, July 18, 2026

Hackers Expose How AI Music App Suno Stole Decades Worth of Copyrighted Music; Futurism, July 17, 2026

, Futurism; Hackers Expose How AI Music App Suno Stole Decades Worth of Copyrighted Music

The evidence is damning.

"A hack revealed in detail how AI music generating app Suno scraped millions of songs, likely including copyrighted ones, from across the web to feed into its AI model, 404 Media reports.

Suno, which is currently embroiled in multiple ongoing copyright lawsuits, has already admitted in response to legal action that it used “essentially all music files of reasonable quality that are accessible on the open internet” to train its music-generating AI."

Monday, May 11, 2026

Google Says Criminal Hackers Used A.I. to Find a Major Software Flaw; The New York Times, May 11, 2026

, The New York Times ; Google Says Criminal Hackers Used A.I. to Find a Major Software Flaw

"A criminal hacking group recently attempted to launch a widespread cyberattack that appeared to rely on artificial intelligence to detect a previously unknown bug, Google said in research published Monday, highlighting the potential threat that A.I. poses to digital security.

Security experts have feared for years that malicious hackers could eventually rely on A.I. models to identify undisclosed flaws in computer code to launch crippling attacks that are difficult to guard against. That fear was largely theoretical until now.

“We have high confidence that the actor likely leveraged an A.I. model to support the discovery and weaponization of this vulnerability,” the report said.

The tech giant did not say precisely when the thwarted attack happened, whom it was targeting or which A.I. platform the hackers used, but the company added that it did not believe it was its own Gemini chatbot."

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

How John Deere Hijacked Copyright Law To Keep You From Tinkering With Your Tractor; Reason, January 8, 2024

  , Reason; How John Deere Hijacked Copyright Law To Keep You From Tinkering With Your Tractor

"For nearly 25 years, Section 1201 has been hanging over the developers and distributors of tools that give users more control over the products they own. The ways in which John Deere and other corporations have used the copyright system is a glaring example of regulatory capture in action, highlighting the absurdity of a system where owning a product doesn't necessarily convey the right to fully control it. There are certainly circumstances where the manufacturers are justified in protecting their products from tampering, but such cases should be handled through warranty nullification and contract law, not through exorbitant fines and lengthy prison sentences."

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Apple Was Slow to Act on FaceTime Bug That Allows Spying on iPhones; The New York Times, January 29, 2019

Nicole Perlroth, The New York Times; Apple Was Slow to Act on FaceTime Bug That Allows Spying on iPhones


"A bug this easy to exploit is every company’s worst security nightmare and every spy agency, cybercriminal and stalker’s dream. In emails to Apple’s product security team, Ms. Thompson noted that she and her son were just everyday citizens who believed they had uncovered a flaw that could undermine national security." 

“My fear is that this flaw could be used for nefarious purposes,” she wrote in a letter provided to The New York Times. “Although this certainly raises privacy and security issues for private individuals, there is the potential that this could impact national security if, for example, government members were to fall victim to this eavesdropping flaw."

Thursday, October 25, 2018

Hackers Are Breaking into Medical Databases to Protect Patient Data; The Scientist, October 1, 2018

Catherine Offord, The Scientist; Hackers Are Breaking into Medical Databases to Protect Patient Data

"The first few times Ben Sadeghipour hacked into a computer, it was to access the video games on his older brother’s desktop. “He would usually have a password on his computer, and I would try and guess his password,” Sadeghipour tells The Scientist. Sometimes he’d guess right. Other times, he wouldn’t. “So I got into learning about how to get into computers that were password protected,” he says. “At the time, I had no clue that what I was doing was considered hacking.”

The skills he picked up back then would become unexpectedly useful later in life. Sadeghipour now breaks into other people’s computer systems as a profession. He is one of thousands of so-called ethical hackers working for HackerOne, a company that provides services to institutions and businesses looking to test the security of their systems and identify vulnerabilities before criminals do."

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Lessons from zombie warfare can help us beat hackers at their own game; Quartz, 9/26/16

Patrick Lin, Quartz; Lessons from zombie warfare can help us beat hackers at their own game:
"The current lack of respect for the power and vulnerabilities of our computing devices has helped create the debate over hacking back and other security issues. To be fair, the internet wasn’t designed for security when it was created decades ago, but only for a small group of researchers who trusted one another. That circle of trust has long been breached. We now need more vigilant and prepared users to help prevent cyberattacks from landing in the first place, making moot the decision to hack back.
Therefore, to truly address cybersecurity, we may need to seriously consider requiring computer users to have special training and licensing, or at the very least to keep up with basic hygiene requirements. Firearms and automobiles also have a high potential for misuse, so they require proper training and licensing. The US Federal Aviation Administration just required aerial drones to be registered, similarly recognizing that drone operation can be both recreational and dangerous.
Perhaps this solution is too radical to work. A new report on the ethics of hacking back, released today (Sept. 26) by the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group based at Cal Poly, explores other possibilities. But a radical change of perspective may be what’s needed to solve such a relentless problem, and the right metaphor may be able to inspire that paradigm shift."