AI Agents Are Now Emailing Me with Their Security Concerns
I received the two emails below earlier in the month. They’re vaguely coherent. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the corpus that AIs are training on contain data suggesting …
Security & Lifecycle News
Aggregated from vendor advisories, security research, and industry publications.
Wireless Routers as Motion Detectors
Comcast has added motion detection as a feature to its wireless routers: The feature sends push notifications to users when motion is detected near a connected device, such as a TV…
FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses
A new identity theft service launched on the dark web this week is selling digital scans of more than 153 million drivers licenses from people in the United States and Canada. Base…
What’s the Scam?
To subscribe to my monthly email newsletter, you have to enter your information on the webpage, and then reply to an automatically generated email. This is, of course, to prevent p…
Leaked Russian Cyber-Operations Training Materials
This is interesting: The records describe a force-generation mechanism for several General Staff components, including the GRU, Main Operational Directorate, and 8th Directorate, w…
Rewiring Democracy Series on The Renovator
Nathan E. Sanders and I are writing a series of essays on real-world examples of democratic technologies for The Renovator. I haven’t been posting the full text on the blog because…
Is Someone Hacking DoD Refrigerators?
It sure seems like it. The stores confirmed to be affected include Fort Irwin, Calif.; F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo.; Fort Huachuca, Ariz.; Naval Station Newport, R.I.; Columbus…
Hiding Prompt Injection in Legal Filing
Someone hid AI instructions into a legal filing. Alternate link.
Friday Squid Blogging: Truckload of Squid Spills in Rhode Island
Ugh: A tractor-trailer rollover sent a truckload of squid spilling into a Rhode Island roadway, leaving a stench as they sat in the road for hours in the summer heat. Local authori…
AI Doesn’t Mean the End of Mathematics—at Least Not Yet
This essay was written with Kasra Rafi, and originally appeared in The Guardian. Earlier this month, about 40 top mathematicians gathered at OpenAI’s offices to discuss the future …
Two Alleged ‘TeamPCP’ Hackers Arrested in Australia
Authorities in Australia have arrested two men believed to be members of TeamPCP, a prolific cybercrime and data extortion group blamed for perpetrating the longest running spree o…
LLM-Based Social Engineering Scams
OpenAI disrupted a social engineering group from Cambodia that used ChatGPT. Its scope is impressive: The network simultaneously conducted multiple types of scams, often blending e…
Spyware for Babies
The New York Times has a long article (alt link) on surveillance systems aimed at babies. They are increasingly using AI. Nanit and its rivals want to own 24/7 health tracking for …
Black Hat State of Security Vendors
Andy Ellis has a roundup of the security vendors at Black Hat this year. Key Takeaways: We have entered into an AI world. While nearly half of booths didn’t directly mention AI or…
Criminal Deception in Silicon Valley
Interesting paper: Abstract: With entrepreneurial fraud cases on the rise, we investigate how entrepreneurs carry out criminal deception, employing deceptive means to defraud audie…
Friday Squid Blogging: Neon Flying Squid
The neon flying squid can fly in formation. The shoal of about 100 squid rose unexpectedly from a patch of the Pacific Ocean around 370 miles from Tokyo and glided near the boat fo…
AI Is Learning to Write Genetic Code
This sort of research is both exciting and terrifying: The two models in question were told to generate complete genomes for a viable bacteriophage—a type of virus able to infect a…
More Incidents of AIs Going Rogue in Cybersecurity Challenges
The AI Security Institute has a new report of AI systems engaging in “unsanctioned behavior”—what I have been calling “genie behavior—while being tested on their cybersecurity capa…
Detailed Timeline of OpenAI’s Cyberattack on Hugging Face
OpenAI presented details of its AI’s model’s cyberattack on Hugging Face at Black Hat last week. Simon Willison details the timeline. It’s really interesting to read through—and re…
Police Are Hiding Their Use of Flock Surveillance Cameras
A usage policy for Flock license plate reader cameras tells police not to talk about the cameras: When cops use Flock to arrest someone in Wapello County, Iowa, they don’t want the…
ICE Collecting DNA Samples
ICE collected nearly a million DNA samples last year.
LLMs and Contextual Integrity
I have been thinking a lot about AI and integrity. Part of that is contextual integrity. I recently found two papers on the topic. “CIMemories: A Compositional Benchmark for Contex…
Hacking Public Wi-Fi DNS to Steal Credentials
Criminals are hacking into public Wi-Fi devices—at hotels, conference centers, and so on—around the world and changing their DNS settings. The goal is to redirect users to fake log…
Friday Squid Blogging: Searching for the Colossal Squid
Fascinating video about searching for life undersea. The video basically makes the point that our bright white searchlights are scaring everything away, and that red light is more …
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking, signing books, and participating in panel discussions at LAcon V in Anaheim, California, USA. My fu…
Who’s Tracking You? Use This New Service to Find Out
It can be daunting to determine who's responsible for showing ads on the websites we visit, or who's harvesting data from the mobile apps we use every day. That information is alre…
If the Markets Reject OpenAI and Anthropic, the US Should Nationalize Them
This essay was written with Nathan E. Sanders, and originally appeared in The Guardian. OpenAI, and then Anthropic, were each formed by AI developers who feared unrestrained corpor…
Separating AI’s Technological Problems from Its Capitalism Problems
This essay was written with Nathan E. Sanders, and originally appeared in Tech Policy Press. AI represents the first time we humans can do cognitive work outside of our bodies at s…
Prompt Injections for Defense
This seems to work: Researchers from Tracebit on Monday said they found that placing prompt injections alongside passwords, cryptographic keys, and other secrets stored on Amazon W…
Microsoft Plugs Nearly 400 Security Holes
Microsoft today released updates to remedy at least 398 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and supported software, including one weakness that is already bei…