Lifeboat Foundation

Blockchain shows major potential to drive positive change across a wide range of industries. Like any disruptive technology, there are ethical considerations that must be identified, discussed, and mitigated as we adopt and apply this technology, so that we can maximize the positive benefits, and minimize the negative side effects.

Own Your Data

For decades we have sought the ability for data subjects to own and control their data. Sadly, with massive proliferation of centralized database silos and the sensitive personal information they contain, we have fallen far short of data subjects having access to, let alone owning or controlling their data. Blockchain has the potential to enable data subjects to access their data, review and amend it, see reports of who else has accessed it, give consent or opt-in / opt-out of data sharing, and even request they be forgotten and their information be deleted.

Monetize Your Data

Continue reading “Blockchain: 6 Key Ethical Considerations” »

There’s no shortage of data breaches these days, but this one should make you sit up and pay attention. The newly discovered “Collection #1” is the largest public data breach by volume, with 772,904,991 unique emails and 21,222,975 unique passwords exposed.

The breach was first reported by Troy Hunt, the security researcher who runs the site Have I Been Pwned (HIBP), where you can check if your email has been compromised in a data breach. In his blog, Hunt says a large file of 12,000 separate files and 87GB of data had been uploaded to MEGA, a popular cloud service. The data was then posted to a popular hacking forum and appears to be an amalgamation of over 2,000 databases. The troubling thing is the databases contain “dehashed” passwords, which means the methods used to scramble those passwords into unreadable strings has been cracked, fully exposing the passwords.

#MachineLearning and #ArtificialIntelligence are revolutionising the online world. They are capable of reducing costs, analysing data, recognising patterns and trends we can’t see with the human eye and making real- time decisions. Now, they are being used to help prevent financial fraud and they’re learning how to do it better every day.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence are revolutionising the online world. They are capable of reducing costs, analysing data, recognising patterns and trends we can’t see with the human eye and making real-time decisions. Now, they are being used to help prevent financial fraud and they’re learning how to do it better every day.

Currently it is estimated that cybercrime costs the global economy approximately $600 billion, with one of the most common forms being credit card fraud which has grown considerably with the increase in the online market. As more and more people chose to transact online it is becoming increasingly important for financial services to invest in better, faster and more accurate fraud detection and prevention techniques.

Continue reading “How AI is Working to Crush Financial Fraud” »

Cyberconflicts are, right now, at this very moment, like the first military aeroplanes of 1909. Within decades, planes destroyed entire cities. So when we talk about cyber weapons, we’re still basically in 1909.

Despite the devastation cyberweapons have caused around the world over the last decade, they are still in their infancy. David E. Sanger, a New York Times national security correspondent, explains why the threat is growing.

Continue reading “Cyberconflict: Why the Worst Is Yet to Come | NYT News” »

An international team of researchers has, for the first time, demonstrated that by fixing a common glitch in photosynthesis, a crop’s yield could be improved by around 40 percent. The landmark study suggests optimizing a plant’s photosynthetic efficiency could significantly increase worldwide food productivity.

Just like last year, this year’s 60 predictions reveal the state-of-mind of key participants in the cybersecurity industry (on the defense team, of course) and cover all that’s hot today. Topics include the use and misuse of data; artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning as a double-edge sword helping both attackers and defenders; whether we are going to finally “get over privacy” or see our data finally being treated as a private and protected asset; how the cloud changes everything and how connected and moving devices add numerous security risks; the emerging global cyber war conducted by terrorists, criminals, and countries; and the changing skills and landscape of cybersecurity.

https://paper.li/e-1437691924#/

A team of researchers from Austria, Italy and Sweden has successfully demonstrated teleportation using on-demand photons from quantum dots. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group explains how they accomplished this feat and how it applies to future quantum communications networks.

Scientists and many others are very interested in developing truly quantum communications networks—it is believed that such networks will be safe from hacking or eavesdropping due to their very nature. But, as the researchers with this new effort point out, there are still some problems standing in the way. One of these is the difficulty in amplifying quantum signals. One way to get around this problem, they note, is to generate photons on-demand as part of a quantum repeater—this helps to effectively handle the high clock rates. In this new effort, they have done just that, using semiconductor quantum dots.

Continue reading “Researchers demonstrate teleportation using on-demand photons from quantum dots” »

“We’re sorry this happened,” Facebook said in a statement after disclosing yet another privacy failing.

Facebook said on Friday in a developer-focused blog post that it had discovered a nasty bug in its photo software.

The bug allowed authorized app programmers to access photos that people had uploaded to Facebook but not publicly shared, as well as those posted on Facebook’s Marketplace software or Facebook Stories, the post said.

Continue reading “Facebook’s latest privacy scandal: The private photos of millions of users were accidentally shared with 1,500 apps” »

Recent studies show that 1 out of every 100 emails sent globally has malicious intent.

This is one of the many statistics that illustrate the rise in hacking and phishing. The subject of phishing, in particular, has played big roles and some of the largest data breaches recently.

An example of this would be the 2014 Sony Pictures breach perpetrated is to be believed by North Korea per the US Department of Justice. in this instance, it only took one email being opened by an employee to provide malicious actors a way to take control of Sony’s network.

A common thing we see among phishing attacks is impersonating an actual employee inside of the business. Some Phishing messages have even been reported as coming from the CEO of the company and play off of existing relationships to convince the victim to part with confidential information.

Continue reading “The Rise of Hacking and Phishing in 2018 — Where Are We Headed?” »