Malevolent Technology
FBI, FCC, NSC among agencies that briefed senators
US government still assessing if Chinese hackers have access to U.S. telecom networks
Telecom executives went to White House last month for meeting on hacking
WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (Reuters) – U.S. government agencies held a classified briefing for all senators on Wednesday on China’s alleged efforts known as Salt Typhoon to burrow deep into American telecommunications companies and steal data about U.S. calls.
The FBI, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, the National Security Council and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were among the participants in the closed-door briefing, officials told Reuters.
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden told reporter
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Read MorePowell says Fed can afford to be a little more cautious
Salesforce jumps after beating Q3 revenue estimates
November ADP private payrolls at 146,000 versus 150,000 estimate
Indexes: Dow up 0.7%, S&P 500 up 0.6%, Nasdaq up 1.3%
NEW YORK, Dec 4 (Reuters) – All three major U.S. stock indexes scored record closing highs on Wednesday as technology shares rallied after upbeat results from Salesforce and as comments by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell gave a late boost to the market.
The economy is stronger than it appeared in September when the central bank began cutting interest rates, allowing policymakers to potentially be a little more cautious i
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Read MoreWASHINGTON, Dec 4 (Reuters) – A large number of Americans’ metadata has been stolen in the sweeping cyberespionage campaign carried out by a Chinese hacking group dubbed “Salt Typhoon,” a senior U.S. official told journalists on Wednesday.
The official declined to provide specific figures but noted that China’s access to America’s telecommunications infrastructure was broad and that the hacking was still ongoing.
“We believe a large number of Americans’ metadata was taken,” said the official, who spoke to reporters on condition that their name be withheld. Pushed on whether that might include every American cell phone’s records, the official said: “We do not believe it’s every cell phone in the country, but we believe it’s potentially a large number of individuals that the Chinese government was focused on.”
Dozens of companies across the world had been hit by the hackers, the official said, including “at least” eight telecommunications and telecom infrastructure firms in the United States.
U.S. officials have previously alleged the hackers targeted Verizon (VZ.N), opens new tab, AT&T (T.N), opens new tab, T-Mobile (TMUS.O), opens new tab, Lumen (LUMN.N), opens new tab and others. T-
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Read MoreHave you heard of a ‘super recogniser’? No nor me, until I met one such super recogniser this morning and discovered they are the people who rectify mistakes made by so-called AI. And sorry if everyone else knew this, but I realised there and then that AI is a misnomer and AI is not Artificial Intelligence, just more complicated computer technology. It’s a point that bears repeating before anyone gets carried away and thinks that AI will be the silver bullet to get the NHS working again, the police to solve crime or the traffic industry to stop jams.
So sorry to be a Debbie Downer, but let me explain the connection between super recognisers and the flaw in our leaders banking on AI to revive our ailing economies. Here goes:
My new super recogniser acquaintance discovered her
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Read MoreA new peer-reviewed study calling for a moratorium on mRNA COVID-19 vaccines adds to a growing chorus of voices demanding that public health officials hit the pause button on the shots until definitive safety studies are performed.
The study, published in the winter 2024 edition of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, analyzed COVID-19 vaccine and booster data from Pfizer and BioNTech. The authors concluded that “at minimum,” health officials should institute a moratorium on the shots.
According to the study, the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 shot is a gene therapy “misclassified as a traditional vaccine.” The study also highlighted a lack of toxicology and carcinogenicity testing, deficient clinical trials, regulatory oversight failures and safety concerns relating to the spike protein and lipid nanoparticles in the shots.
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Read MoreA U.K.-based biotech company is seeking U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approval to sell genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes directly to U.S. consumers as a “biopesticide.”
If the EPA approves the company’s product registration application, Oxitec could sell boxes of GM Aedes aegypti mosquitoes — under the brand name “Friendly” — directly to consumers across the U.S. in stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s, according to GMO Free USA.
After customers add water to the boxes, the GM mosquitoes hatch and take flight.
Critics say Oxitec has failed to scientifically show that its GM mosquitos are safe for human health, endangered species and the environment.
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Read MoreEric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, recently expressed concern over the potential negative impacts of AI romantic partners on younger generations, particularly young men.
Business Insider reports that in a recent podcast interview on The Prof G Show with Scott Galloway, Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO and a prominist leftist, cautioned that the rise of AI dating could lead to increased loneliness and obsessive behavior among young men. As young men continue to turn to AI to find their ideal companions, Schmidt believes this trend may have unintended consequences.
According to Schmidt, emotionally and physically “perf
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Read MoreA machine learning researcher has released a massive dataset containing one million public posts from leftist social media echo chamber Bluesky, raising questions about data privacy and consent. The data could potentially be used to train AI to be even more woke than notoriously left-leaning AI chatbots like ChatGPT.
404Media reports that in a move that has raised concerns about user privacy and consent, Daniel van Strien, a machine learning librarian at AI community platform Hugging Face, released a dataset composed of one million Bluesky posts. The dataset, intended for machine learning research, includes the text content of each
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Read MoreOne of 2024’s coolest hacking tales occurred two years ago, but it wasn’t revealed to the public until Friday at the Cyberwarcon conference in Arlington, Virginia. Hackers with ties to Fancy Bear—the spy agency operated by Russia’s GRU—broke into the network of a high-value target after first compromising a Wi-Fi-enabled device in a nearby building and using it to exploit compromised accounts on the target’s Wi-Fi network.
The attack, from a group security firm Volexity calls GruesomeLarch, shows the boundless lengths well-resourced hackers will go to hack high-value targets, presumably only after earlier hack attempts haven’t worked. When the GruesomeLarch cabal couldn’t get into the target network using easier methods, they hacked a Wi-Fi-enabled device in a nearby building and used it to breach the target’s network next door. After the first neighbor’s network was disinfected, the hackers successfully performed the same attack on a device of a second neighbor.
Too close for comfort
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Read MoreOpenAI has cut off testing access to its Sora video generation platform after a group of artists briefly shared their own early access in a publicly usable webpage Tuesday. The group, going by the moniker PR Puppets, claims the stunt was a protest against being asked to work as unpaid R&D and bug testers while participating in “art washing” of AI tools. But OpenAI says participation in the early alpha test is voluntary and has no requirements that testers provide feedback.
PR Puppets posted its “Generate with Sora” access point to Hugging Face at about 8:30 Eastern time Tuesday morning, according to Git commit logs. Quickly, AI experts on social media noticed the posting and confirmed that the page connected to endpoints on OpenAI’s actual Sora API and hosting on a videos.openai.com domain, presumably with authentication tokens provided to testers by OpenAI itself.
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