Privacy watchdogs from the UK, Australia team up, snap on gloves to probe AI-for-cops creeeps Clearview

Posted on July 14, 2020 by Robin Edgar

Following Canada’s lead earlier this week, privacy watchdogs in Britain and Australia today launched a joint investigation into how Clearview AI harvests and uses billions of images it scraped from the internet to train its facial-recognition algorithms.

The startup boasted it had collected a database packed with more than three billion photos downloaded from people’s public social media pages. That data helped train its facial-recognition software, which was then sold to law enforcement as a tool to identify potential suspects.

Cops can feed a snapshot of someone taken from, say, CCTV footage into Clearview’s software, which then attempts to identify the person by matching it up with images in its database. If there’s a positive match, the software links to that person’s relevant profiles on social media that may reveal personal details such as their name or where they live. It’s a way to translate previously unseen photos of someone’s face into an online handle so that person can be tracked down.

Now, the UK’s Information Commissioner (ICO) and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) are collaborating to examine the New York-based upstart’s practices. The investigation will focus “on the company’s use of ‘scraped’ data and biometrics of individuals,” the ICO said in a statement.

“The investigation highlights the importance of enforcement cooperation in protecting the personal information of Australian and UK citizens in a globalised data environment,” it added. “No further comment will be made while the investigation is ongoing.”

Source: Privacy watchdogs from the UK, Australia team up, snap on gloves to probe AI-for-cops upstart Clearview • The Register

Guilty: Russian miscreant who hacked LinkedIn, Dropbox, Formspring, stole 200-million-plus account records

Posted on July 14, 2020 by Robin Edgar

The Russian hacker accused of raiding LinkedIn, Dropbox and Formspring, and obtaining data on 213 million user accounts, has been found guilty.

On Friday, Yevgeniy Nikulin was convicted [PDF] by a San Francisco jury of committing computer intrusion, data theft, and other charges [PDF] relating to the databases he broke into and siphoned off in 2012.

The jury reckoned Nikulin probably swiped the LinkedIn account details, all 117 million of them, for commercial gain, though they didn’t think greed played a role in his theft of 28 million account records from Formspring and 68 million from Dropbox. The Linkedin info was put up for sale, and leaked online along with the Dropbox data and at least a portion of the Formspring haul. The data contained usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords.

The prosecution outlined how Nikulin had stolen the login credentials of employees at a bunch of US tech firms, and then used them to access back-end systems before downloading vast amounts of personal data that he later sold. Much of the case rested on persuading the jury that various pseudonyms used by the hacker were, in fact, Nikulin.

Despite the unanimous jury decision, it was far from certain Nikulin would be found guilty, with district judge William Alsup repeatedly criticizing the prosecution’s case, at one point calling it “gobbledygook,” and the next day “mumbo jumbo,” as prosecutors tried to connect Nikulin to a wider hacking conspiracy.

Nikulin’s defense team argued the only solid evidence connecting him to the hacker was a document provided by the Russian government whose reliability it questioned, arguing that Nikulin had been set up by the Russians, who were feeding misinformation. Nikulin himself may have been hacked, his lawyer argued.

The FBI in response said that it had tracked Nikulin down to his Moscow apartment by following the hacker’s IP addresses and then confirmed it was him by observing his communications with others. As one example, an FBI agent testified that the hacker, using the alias “dex.007”, had told another hacker that he was going to buy himself a $25,000 watch for his 25th birthday. Nikulin turned 25 the day afterwards, said the agent.

Flash the cash… then dash

It was Nikulin’s ostentatious taste that finally led to his downfall. He was a wanted man, and Interpol, at the request of the US, had issued a Red Notice for his arrest. He attracted the attention of the Czech police when he visited Prague in 2016 with his girlfriend, driving around in a flashy car and spending liberally. The cops nabbed him in a restaurant.

Despite having been arrested four years ago, the trial has been dogged by delays; first by Russian authorities who tried to prevent him being extradited to America, and then following a lengthy dispute over whether he was mentally fit to stand trial.

When the trial finally began, it was almost immediately put on hold due to the coronavirus outbreak and was nearly abandoned after jury members made it plain they were uncomfortable spending the whole day in a confined space.

Source: Guilty: Russian miscreant who hacked LinkedIn, Dropbox, Formspring, stole 200-million-plus account records • The Register

Collabera hacked: IT staffing’n’services giant hit by ransomware, employee personal data stolen

Posted on July 14, 2020 by Robin Edgar

Hackers infiltrated Collabera, siphoned off at least some employees’ personal information, and infected the US-based IT consultancy giant’s systems with ransomware.

We understand this swiped data included workers’ names, addresses, contact and social security numbers, dates of birth, employment benefits, and passport and immigration visa details. Basically, everything needed for identity theft. The recruitment’n’staffing biz, which employs more than 16,000 people globally and banks hundreds of millions of dollars a year in sales, does not believe the lifted records have been used for fraud.

Collabera could not be reached for comment, though El Reg has seen a copy of the internal memo sent to staff disclosing the details of the leak. File-scrambling malware was detected on the IT consultants’ network on June 8, and within a couple of days, it emerged at least some data had been stolen, according to the business.

Source: Collabera hacked: IT staffing’n’services giant hit by ransomware, employee personal data stolen • The Register

Porsche Found a Way to 3D-Print Lightweight Pistons That Add Even More Horsepower

Posted on July 14, 2020 by Robin Edgar

With select bucket seats from the 911 and 718 as well as various classic car parts—including clutch release levers for the 959—already being produced using 3D printing, Porsche is more familiar with the technology than most. Now, the automaker is taking things even further, 3D printing entire pistons for its most powerful 991-gen 911, the GT2 RS.

Although it doesn’t sound like these 3D-printed pistons will actually be found in many production Porsches anytime soon, they represent a bit more than just an engineering flex. There are some very real mechanical benefits here. For starters, they weigh 10 percent less than their forged equivalents and feature an integrated and closed cooling duct in the piston crown that’s apparently unable to be reproduced using traditional manufacturing methods. The decrease in weight and temperature results in an extra 30 horsepower on top of the GT2 RS’s already mighty 700.

Porsche

“Thanks to the new, lighter pistons, we can increase the engine speed, lower the temperature load on the pistons and optimize combustion,” said Porsche advance drive senior engineer Frank Ickinger. “This makes it possible to get up to 30 [horsepower] more power from the 700 [hp] bi-turbo engine, while at the same time improving efficiency.”

Produced in partnership with German auto part maker Mahle and industrial machine manufacturer Trumpf, the pistons are made out of a high-purity metal powder developed in-house by the former using the laser metal fusion process, essentially a laser beam that heats and melts the metal powder into the desired shape. The end result is then validated using measurement technology from Zeiss, the German optics company best known for camera lenses.

With the advent of electric cars, it’s only a matter of time before internal combustion engines become a novelty rather than the default. It’ll be interesting to see how much efficiency (and, in turn, time) 3D-printed components buy for the internal-combustion engine as a whole.