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‘Microsoft’ Scammers Steal the Most, the FTC Says

28 May 2024 at 12:54
A pig in a muddy farm field

Scammers impersonating Microsoft, Publishers Clearing House, Amazon and Apple are at the top of the FTC’s “who’s who” list. Based on consumer reports and complaints to the agency, hundreds of millions of dollars were stolen by bad actors pretending to be brands.

The post ‘Microsoft’ Scammers Steal the Most, the FTC Says appeared first on Security Boulevard.

Hobbyist archaeologists identify thousands of ancient sites in England

27 May 2024 at 10:04

Exclusive: Bronze age remains and Roman roads among 12,802 sites discovered using latest technology

Bronze age burial mounds, Roman roads and deserted medieval villages are among almost 13,000 previously-unknown ancient sites and monuments that have been discovered by members of the public in recent months, it will be announced this week.

Truck drivers and doctors are among more than 1,000 people who participated in Deep Time, a “citizen science project” which has harnessed the power of hobbyists to scour 512 sq km (200 sq miles) of Earth Observation data, including high-resolution satellite and lidar – laser technology – imagery.

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© Photograph: John Finney Photography/Getty Images

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© Photograph: John Finney Photography/Getty Images

King to plant sapling from Sycamore Gap tree in Windsor Great Park

27 May 2024 at 08:18

National Trust gives first successful seedling from illegally felled Northumberland tree to King Charles

The first successful seedling nurtured from seeds collected from the 200-year-old Sycamore Gap tree, which was illegally felled, will be planted in Windsor Great Park after being given to King Charles by the National Trust.

The king intends that the seedling, presented as a gift on the last bank holiday Monday in May, known as Celebration Day, when we remember those no longer with us, will be planted when it has matured into a sapling for visitors to the park to enjoy it as a symbol that hope and beauty can come from loss, the charity said.

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© Photograph: Mark Pinder/The Guardian

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© Photograph: Mark Pinder/The Guardian

Extinct mountain plant reintroduced to secret location in north Wales

25 May 2024 at 06:26

Rosy saxifrage returns to Eryri, where it was last seen in the wild in 1962

A plant that has been extinct in the wild in Great Britain for more than 60 years has been reintroduced at a secret location.

The rosy saxifrage, a small mountain jewel plant, was last seen in the wild in 1962 in the Cwm Idwal nature reserve in Eryri. It is listed as extinct.

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© Photograph: Wirestock, Inc./Alamy

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© Photograph: Wirestock, Inc./Alamy

Black Basta Ascension Attack Redux — can Patients Die of Ransomware?

24 May 2024 at 13:45
Psychedelic doctor image, titled “Bad Medicine”

Inglorious Basta(rds): 16 days on, huge hospital system continues to be paralyzed by ransomware—and patient safety is at risk.

The post Black Basta Ascension Attack Redux — can Patients Die of Ransomware? appeared first on Security Boulevard.

A House Falls On The NCAA

24 May 2024 at 11:20
Facing the potential of a ruinous $20B decision against them in the House v. NCAA antitrust lawsuit, the NCAA and the major conferences are coming to a settlement that will see college athletes recieve revenue sharing, as well as former athletes being eligible to recieve damages for payments wrongly withheld.

This is a culmination of over a decade of litigation over the antitrust violations in college athletics, starting with O'Bannon establishing that players' NIL rights had value, followed by the Alston ruling definitively laying out that the NCAA did not have an antitrust exemption, opening the door for the House class action lawsuit - and the way the NCAA's arguments went over like lead balloons at those hearings has pushed them to the settlement table. Further emphasizing the losses in courts of law are the two injunctions the NCAA has had placed on their policies: first, they were enjoined over limiting transfers through the transfer portal, then an attempt to sanction Tennessee over NIL payments resulted in the Tennessee and Virginia AGs suing, resulting in an injunction on the NCAA's NIL rules. In addition, Dartmouth men's basketball players won a major win for labor with the regional NLRB ruling that they are in fact employees, leading them to pursue unionization, which the school is fighting. In addition (and likely to the death of OJ Simpson bringing new scrutiny to the decision) the Heisman Trust has reinstated Reggie Bush as the 2005 Heisman winner, further weakening the NCAA's position. It is in that context that the NCAA is coming to the negotiating table - having lost over and over, they are staring down a loss that would end the organization. And there's still a chance the cart gets upset - while the lion's share of the damages are due to the behavior of the major conferences, it's the non-majors who are being told to pay the majority of the settlement, which they are pushing back on.

Personal AI Assistants and Privacy – Source: www.schneier.com

personal-ai-assistants-and-privacy-–-source:-wwwschneier.com

Source: www.schneier.com – Author: Bruce Schneier Microsoft is trying to create a personal digital assistant: At a Build conference event on Monday, Microsoft revealed a new AI-powered feature called “Recall” for Copilot+ PCs that will allow Windows 11 users to search and retrieve their past activities on their PC. To make it work, Recall records […]

La entrada Personal AI Assistants and Privacy – Source: www.schneier.com se publicó primero en CISO2CISO.COM & CYBER SECURITY GROUP.

Personal AI Assistants and Privacy

23 May 2024 at 07:00

Microsoft is trying to create a personal digital assistant:

At a Build conference event on Monday, Microsoft revealed a new AI-powered feature called “Recall” for Copilot+ PCs that will allow Windows 11 users to search and retrieve their past activities on their PC. To make it work, Recall records everything users do on their PC, including activities in apps, communications in live meetings, and websites visited for research. Despite encryption and local storage, the new feature raises privacy concerns for certain Windows users.

I wrote about this AI trust problem last year:

One of the promises of generative AI is a personal digital assistant. Acting as your advocate with others, and as a butler with you. This requires an intimacy greater than your search engine, email provider, cloud storage system, or phone. You’re going to want it with you 24/7, constantly training on everything you do. You will want it to know everything about you, so it can most effectively work on your behalf.

And it will help you in many ways. It will notice your moods and know what to suggest. It will anticipate your needs and work to satisfy them. It will be your therapist, life coach, and relationship counselor.

You will default to thinking of it as a friend. You will speak to it in natural language, and it will respond in kind. If it is a robot, it will look humanoid—­or at least like an animal. It will interact with the whole of your existence, just like another person would.

[…]

And you will want to trust it. It will use your mannerisms and cultural references. It will have a convincing voice, a confident tone, and an authoritative manner. Its personality will be optimized to exactly what you like and respond to.

It will act trustworthy, but it will not be trustworthy. We won’t know how they are trained. We won’t know their secret instructions. We won’t know their biases, either accidental or deliberate.

We do know that they are built at enormous expense, mostly in secret, by profit-maximizing corporations for their own benefit.

[…]

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that we need trustworthy AI. AI whose behavior, limitations, and training are understood. AI whose biases are understood, and corrected for. AI whose goals are understood. That won’t secretly betray your trust to someone else.

The market will not provide this on its own. Corporations are profit maximizers, at the expense of society. And the incentives of surveillance capitalism are just too much to resist.

We are going to need some sort of public AI to counterbalance all of these corporate AIs.

EDITED TO ADD (5/24): Lots of comments about Microsoft Recall and security:

This:

Because Recall is “default allow” (it relies on a list of things not to record) … it’s going to vacuum up huge volumes and heretofore unknown types of data, most of which are ephemeral today. The “we can’t avoid saving passwords if they’re not masked” warning Microsoft included is only the tip of that iceberg. There’s an ocean of data that the security ecosystem assumes is “out of reach” because it’s either never stored, or it’s encrypted in transit. All of that goes out the window if the endpoint is just going to…turn around and write it to disk. (And local encryption at rest won’t help much here if the data is queryable in the user’s own authentication context!)

This:

The fact that Microsoft’s new Recall thing won’t capture DRM content means the engineers do understand the risk of logging everything. They just chose to preference the interests of corporates and money over people, deliberately.

This:

Microsoft Recall is going to make post-breach impact analysis impossible. Right now IR processes can establish a timeline of data stewardship to identify what information may have been available to an attacker based on the level of access they obtained. It’s not trivial work, but IR folks can do it. Once a system with Recall is compromised, all data that has touched that system is potentially compromised too, and the ML indirection makes it near impossible to confidently identify a blast radius.

This:

You may be in a position where leaders in your company are hot to turn on Microsoft Copilot Recall. Your best counterargument isn’t threat actors stealing company data. It’s that opposing counsel will request the recall data and demand it not be disabled as part of e-discovery proceedings.

Borrowdale rainforest in Lake District declared national nature reserve

Five nature reserves will be created each year for next five years to celebrate coronation of King Charles

A temperate rainforest in the Lake District has been declared a national nature reserve in a move that will protect the rare ancient habitat for future generations.

The Borrowdale rainforest is one of the few surviving examples of a “mysterious and untouched” landscape that covers less than 1% of the UK.

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© Photograph: Paul Harris/National Trust/PA

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© Photograph: Paul Harris/National Trust/PA

FBI/CISA Warning: ‘Black Basta’ Ransomware Gang vs. Ascension Health

13 May 2024 at 13:08
Closeup photo of street go and stop signage displaying Stop

Будет! Russian ransomware rascals riled a Roman Catholic healthcare organization.

The post FBI/CISA Warning: ‘Black Basta’ Ransomware Gang vs. Ascension Health appeared first on Security Boulevard.

Report: Microsoft to face antitrust case over Teams

13 May 2024 at 10:03
Report: Microsoft to face antitrust case over Teams

Enlarge (credit: Microsoft)

Brussels is set to issue new antitrust charges against Microsoft over concerns that the software giant is undermining rivals to its videoconferencing app Teams.

According to three people with knowledge of the move, the European Commission is pressing ahead with a formal charge sheet against the world’s most valuable listed tech company over concerns it is restricting competition in the sector.

Microsoft last month offered concessions as it sought to avoid regulatory action, including extending a plan to unbundle Teams from other software such as Office, not just in Europe but across the world.

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Brandywine Realty Trust Confirms Data Breach After Ransomware Attack

By: Alan J
8 May 2024 at 02:11

Brandywine Realty Trust data breach

Brandywine Realty Trust issued a recent filing to the US Securities And Exchange Commission (SEC), where it confirmed that an unauthorized third-party had gained access to portions of its internal network. The Brandywine Realty Trust data breach is stated to have affected the functioning of some of its internal systems, following preventative measures as part of the firm's incident response plan. Brandywine Realty Trust is one of the largest publicly traded real estate companies in the United States with a primary focus in the Philadelphia, Texas and Austin markets. The firm is organized as a real estate investment trust and manages 69 properties comprising of 12.7 million square feet in land spanning multiple states. Upon detecting the intrusion, the trust initiated its response protocols and took steps to contain affected systems, assess the extent of the attack and move towards remediation. Investigative efforts were held together with external cybersecurity professionals, while details were shared with law enforcement.

Brandywine Realty Trust Data Breach Disrupted Trust's Operations

The filing reveals that along with unauthorized access to its internal systems, the attack also involved the  encryption of some of the company's internal resources. The encryption process disrupted access to portions of the company’s business applications responsible for several of the company's internal and corporate functions, including its financial and reporting systems. The company disclosed that certain files were stolen during the attack, but that it is still working on determining the extent of sensitive and confidential information accessed during the intrusion into its IT systems, and establishing if any personal information had been accessed. However, the company believes that the intrusion had been been contained from spreading further into its systems and stated that it is working diligently to restore its IT systems back online. The Company is also  evaluating if any additional regulatory and legal notifications are required after facing the incident and will issue appropriate notifications according to its findings.

Perpetrator Behind Brandywine Realty Trust Data Breach Unknown

The company is known to have rented out commercial properties to various prominent firms, with its biggest tenants including IBM, Spark Therapeutics, Comcast, and the FMC Corporation. However, the attack comes during a recent period of increased ongoing volatility in the office commercial space with  Brandywine recently cutting down its quarterly dividend, from 19 cents to 15 cents a share, for the first time since 2009. In an recent interview, the company's CEO acknowledged “turbulent times” in commercial real estate space and the company aimed at covering its “danger points.” He added the company has plenty of cash and available credit, while noting that compared to its peers, the firm had a substantially lower number of leases set to expire over the next few years.
As the investigation of the incident is ongoing, the full scope, nature and impact of the incident are not yet known. No threat actor individual or group has seemed to claim responsibility for the attack yet. The disclosure likely follows  the introduction of the new rules by the U.S. government in December 2023, where publicly traded companies are required to disclose security incidents they believe may have a material impact on the business. However, Brandywine indicated in its filing that it does not believe the incident is 'reasonably likely to materially impact the Company’s financial condition or results of operations.'
Media Disclaimer: This report is based on internal and external research obtained through various means. The information provided is for reference purposes only, and users bear full responsibility for their reliance on it. The Cyber Express assumes no liability for the accuracy or consequences of using this information.

Licensing AI Engineers

25 March 2024 at 07:04

The debate over professionalizing software engineers is decades old. (The basic idea is that, like lawyers and architects, there should be some professional licensing requirement for software engineers.) Here’s a law journal article recommending the same idea for AI engineers.

This Article proposes another way: professionalizing AI engineering. Require AI engineers to obtain licenses to build commercial AI products, push them to collaborate on scientifically-supported, domain-specific technical standards, and charge them with policing themselves. This Article’s proposal addresses AI harms at their inception, influencing the very engineering decisions that give rise to them in the first place. By wresting control over information and system design away from companies and handing it to AI engineers, professionalization engenders trustworthy AI by design. Beyond recommending the specific policy solution of professionalization, this Article seeks to shift the discourse on AI away from an emphasis on light-touch, ex post solutions that address already-created products to a greater focus on ex ante controls that precede AI development. We’ve used this playbook before in fields requiring a high level of expertise where a duty to the public welfare must trump business motivations. What if, like doctors, AI engineers also vowed to do no harm?

I have mixed feelings about the idea. I can see the appeal, but it never seemed feasible. I’m not sure it’s feasible today.

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