Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: security – Page 109

Blockchain is not a magic bullet for security. Can we trust it?

Up to 10% of global GDP could be stored on blockchains by 2025, according to the World Economic Forum. From product identifiers, medical records to land registries, academic degrees and insurance contracts, blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) are already functioning in many sectors.

What blockchain promises is no less than the technological backbone of the 21st century’s renaissance of the social commons, giving back power to the people. In this century more than ever, power comes from data. Blockchain promises to give control of data back to the people. But this requires one element: trust in the technology, trust that it does what it’s supposed to do.

The paradox here is that blockchain removes the need to trust the intermediary – i.e., notaries, insurers and bankers – by requiring us to trust the technology. But how likely are we to trust the technology if it is breached repeatedly?

Edward Snowden on the Dangers of Mass Surveillance and Artificial General Intelligence

AI is Pandora’s box, s’ true…

On the one hand we can’t close it and on the other hand our current direction is not good. And this is gonna get worse as AI starts taking its own ‘creative’ decisions… the human overlords will claim it has nothing to do with them if and when things go wrong.

The solution for commercialization is actually quite simple.

If my dog attacks a child on the street when off the leash who is responsible?

The owner of course. Although I dislike that word when it comes to anything living, maybe the dogs human representative is a better term.

Business must be held accountable for its AI dogs off the leash, if necessary keep the leash on for longer. So no need to stop commercialization, just reinstate clear accountability, something which seems to be lacking today.

And in my view, this would actually be more profitable… Everyone happy then.

Continue reading “Edward Snowden on the Dangers of Mass Surveillance and Artificial General Intelligence” | >

Singapore’s human-centric artificial intelligence strategy | The Straits Times

The national artificial intelligence strategy, which was unveiled in November, will focus on five key sectors — transport and logistics, smart cities and estates, safety and security, healthcare, and education.

Read the full story: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/tapping-ai-to-deliver…ect-issues

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The Straits Times, the English flagship daily of SPH, has been serving readers for more than a century. Launched on July 15, 1845, its comprehensive coverage of world news, East Asian news, Southeast Asian news, home news, sports news, financial news and lifestyle updates makes The Straits Times the most-read newspaper in Singapore.

Almost 60% Of Malicious Ads Come from Three Ad Providers

In Confiant’s “Demand Quality Report for Q3 2019”, the ad fraud and security company analyzed 120 billion ad impressions between January 1st and September 20th that flowed through their systems in order to provide a breakdown of different malicious ad campaigns.

While Confiant’s report also discussed low quality ads and banner ads that appear in video slots, we will focus on the detected malicious ads and the campaigns that utilize them.

A malicious ad is defined by Confiant as one that performs unwanted behavior such as a forced redirect to scams, cryptojacking, or ads that infect a visitor’s device.

Team saw how an attacker could hijack Android camera for spyfest

Android camera security threat, disclosed and since addressed, had spy vulnerabilities. These were fixed by Google and Samsung with a patch rolled out for Pixel and Samsung devices The recent headlines surrounding the flaw on Android devices teased a discomforting thought in the latest of numerous discomforting thoughts about security risks in the Android ecosystem.

Imagine your app is recording video and taking photos without your permission.

In short, attackers could hijack your phone camera. Dan Goodin in Ars Technica: This was all about “an app needed no permissions at all to cause the camera to shoot pictures and record video and audio.”

Mystery blurs dump of over 1 billion people’s personal data

Two security sleuths last month discovered an enormous amount of data that was left exposed on a server. Data found on the server belonged to around 1.2 billion people.

Kartikay Mehrotra wrote about it on Friday for Bloomberg, in a story, along with one from Wired, that was frequently quoted over the weekend. The data was left unprotected on a Google Cloud server.

The FBI were contacted and the server was shut down. Not trivial. Wired referred to the situation as a “jumbo” data leak. Wired said the information was sitting exposed and easily accessible on an unsecured server.

What Is End-to-End Encryption? Another Bull’s-Eye on Big Tech

Law enforcement and technologists have been arguing over encryption controls for more than two decades. On one side are privacy advocates and tech bosses like Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, who believe people should be able to have online communications free of snooping. On the other side are law enforcement and some lawmakers, who believe tough encryption makes it impossible to track child predators, terrorists and other criminals.

After years of on-and-off debate over nearly snoop-proof security, the industry is girding for new pressure from law enforcement around the world.