Daily Archives: December 1, 2022

As US, UK Embrace ‘Age Verify Everyone!’ French Data Protection Agency Says Age Verification Is Unreliable And Violates Privacy Rights

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We’ve already spent many, many words explaining how age verification technology is inherently dangerous and actually puts children at greater risk. Not to mention it’s a privacy nightmare that normalizes the idea of mass surveillance, especially for children.

But, why take our word for it?

The French data protection agency, CNIL, has declared that no age verification technology in existence can be deemed as safe and not dangerous to privacy rights.

Now, there are many things that I disagree with CNIL about, especially its views that the censorial “right to be forgotten in the EU” should be applied globally. But one thing we likely agree on is that CNIL does not fuck around when it comes to data protection stuff. CNIL is generally seen as the most aggressive and most thorough in its data protection/data privacy work. Being on the wrong side of CNIL is a dangerous place for any company to be.

So I’d take it seriously when CNIL effectively notes that all age verification is a privacy nightmare, especially for children:

The CNIL has analysed several existing solutions for online age verification, checking whether they have the following properties: sufficiently reliable verification, complete coverage of the population and respect for the protection of individuals’ data and privacy and their security.

The CNIL finds that there is currently no solution that satisfactorily meets these three requirements.

Basically, CNIL found that all existing age verification techniques are unreliable, easily bypassed, and are horrible regarding privacy.

Despite this, CNIL seems oddly optimistic that just by nerding harder, perhaps future solutions will magically work. However, it does go through the weaknesses and problems of the various offerings being pushed today as solutions. For example, you may recall that when I called out the dangers of the age verification in California’s Age Appropriate Design Code, a trade group representing age verification companies reached out to me to let me know there was nothing to worry about, because they’d just scan everyone’s faces to visit websites. CNIL points out some, um, issues with this:

The use of such systems, because of their intrusive aspect (access to the camera on the user’s device during an initial enrolment with a third party, or a one-off verification by the same third party, which may be the source of blackmail via the webcam when accessing a pornographic site is requested), as well as because of the margin of error inherent in any statistical evaluation, should imperatively be conditional upon compliance with operating, reliability and performance standards. Such requirements should be independently verified.

This type of method must also be implemented by a trusted third party respecting precise specifications, particularly concerning access to pornographic sites. Thus, an age estimate performed locally on the user’s terminal should be preferred in order to minimise the risk of data leakage. In the absence of such a framework, this method should not be deployed.

Every other verification technique seems to similarly raise questions about effectiveness and how protective (or, well, how not protective it is of privacy rights).

So… why isn’t this raising alarm bells among the various legislatures and children’s advocates (many of whom also claim to be privacy advocates) who are pushing for these laws?

Source: As US, UK Embrace ‘Age Verify Everyone!’ French Data Protection Agency Says Age Verification Is Unreliable And Violates Privacy Rights | Techdirt

Square Enix paid mobile games To Be Completely Disappeared With Studio Shutdown

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It’s a lesson that apparently keeps needing to be re-learned over and over again: for far too many types of digital purchases, you simply don’t own the thing you bought. The arena for this perma-lesson are varied: movies, books, music. And, of course, video games. The earliest lesson in that space may have been when Sony removed a useful feature on its PlayStation 3 console after the public had already begun buying it, which is downright insane. But while that was an entire console being impacted, the lesson has been repeated in instances where games and mobile apps simply stop working when the maker decides to shut their servers down, or purchased DLC disappearing for the same reason.

And here we are again, with the announcement that Onoma, previously Square Enix Montreal, is going to be shuttering some of its mobile games. The end result is not that new purchases won’t be available. Instead, the game will just not be a thing anymore. Anywhere.

Arena Battle Champions, Deus Ex GO, Hitman Sniper: The Shadows and Space Invaders: Hidden Heroes will be shutting down on January 4th. The games will be removed from the App Store/Google Play Store on December 1st, and current players will not be able to access the games past January 4th.

Effective immediately, in-game purchases are stopped. We encourage prior in-game purchases to be used before January 4th, as they will not be refunded. On behalf of the development team, we would like to thank you for playing our games.

Deus Ex Go costs $6 on the Google Play Store. You can go buy it right damned now if you wanted to. But why would you, given that the game will simply brick and no longer function in five weeks? And, more importantly, did any of the 500k-plus people who downloaded the game over the years know that it disappearing was a possibility? I mean, I’m sure that buried in the ToS is the standard “you’re just licensing this for as long as we let you” language exists, but I’m also sure that the vast majority of the people who paid for the game didn’t realize this would be a possibility.

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Source: ‘Deus Ex Go’ To Be Completely Disappeared With Studio Shutdown | Techdirt

Scientists simulate ‘baby’ wormhole in quantum computer

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Researchers have announced that they simulated two miniscule black holes in a quantum computer and transmitted a message between them through what amounted to a tunnel in space-time.

They said that based on the quantum information teleported, a traversable wormhole appeared to have emerged, but that no rupture of space and time was physically created in the experiment, according to the study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

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Caltech physicist Maria Spiropulu, a co-author of the research, described it as having the characteristics of a “baby wormhole”, and now hopes to make “adult wormholes and toddler wormholes step-by-step”. The wormhole dynamics were observed on a quantum device at Google called the Sycamore quantum processor.

Experts who were not involved in the experiment cautioned that it was important to note that a physical wormhole had not actually been created, but noted the future possibilities.

Daniel Harlow, a physicist at MIT, told the New York Times the experiment was based on a modelling that was so simple that it could just as well have been studied using a pencil and paper.

“I’d say that this doesn’t teach us anything about quantum gravity that we didn’t already know,” Harlow wrote. “On the other hand, I think it is exciting as a technical achievement, because if we can’t even do this (and until now we couldn’t), then simulating more interesting quantum gravity theories would certainly be off the table.”

The study authors themselves made clear that scientists remain a long way from being able to send people or other living beings through such a portal.

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“These ideas have been around for a long time and they’re very powerful ideas,” Lykken said. “But in the end, we’re in experimental science, and we’ve been struggling now for a very long time to find a way to explore these ideas in the laboratory. And that’s what’s really exciting about this. It’s not just, ‘Well, wormholes are cool.’ This is a way to actually look at these very fundamental problems of our universe in a laboratory setting.”

Source: Scientists simulate ‘baby’ wormhole without rupturing space and time | Space | The Guardian

LastPass breached again

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In keeping with our commitment to transparency, I wanted to inform you of a security incident that our team is currently investigating. 

We recently detected unusual activity within a third-party cloud storage service, which is currently shared by both LastPass and its affiliate, GoTo. We immediately launched an investigation, engaged Mandiant, a leading security firm, and alerted law enforcement. 

We have determined that an unauthorized party, using information obtained in the August 2022 incident, was able to gain access to certain elements of our customers’ information. Our customers’ passwords remain safely encrypted due to LastPass’s Zero Knowledge architecture. 

We are working diligently to understand the scope of the incident and identify what specific information has been accessed. In the meantime, we can confirm that LastPass products and services remain fully functional.

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Source: Notice of Recent Security Incident – The LastPass Blog

Scientists produce nanobodies in plant cells that block emerging pathogens – using plants to grow bodies that block Covid (and more?)

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Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) recently announced that plants could be used to produce nanobodies that quickly block emerging pathogens in human medicine and agriculture. These nanobodies represent a promising new way to treat viral diseases, including SARS-CoV-2.

Nanobodies are small antibody proteins naturally produced in specific animals like camels, alpacas, and llamas.

ARS researchers turned to evaluating nanobodies to prevent and treat citrus greening disease in citrus trees. These scientists are now using their newly developed and patented SymbiontTM technology to show that nanobodies can be easily produced in a plant system with broad agricultural and public health applications.

As a proof-of-concept, researches showed that nanobodies targeting the SARS-CoV-2 virus could be made in plant cells and remain functional in blocking the binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to its receptor protein: the process responsible for initiating viral infection in human cells.

“We initially wanted to develop to pathogens in ,” said ARS researcher Robert Shatters, Jr. “The results of that research are indeed successful and beneficial for the nation’s agricultural system. But now we are aware of an even greater result—the benefits of producing therapeutics in plants now justify the consideration of using to mass produce COVID-19 protein-based therapies.”

AgroSource, Inc. collaborated with USDA-ARS to develop the plant-based production system. They are currently taking the necessary steps to see how they can move this advancement into the commercial sector.

“This is a huge breakthrough for science and innovative solutions to agricultural and public health challenges,” said ARS researcher Michelle Heck. “This cost-efficient, plant-based system proves that there are alternative ways to confront and prevent the spread of emerging pathogens. The approach has the potential to massively expand livelihood development opportunities in rural agricultural areas of the nation and in other countries.”

The findings are published on the bioRxiv preprint server.

More information: Marco Pitino et al, Plant production of high affinity nanobodies that block SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binding with its receptor, human angiotensin converting enzyme, bioRxiv (2022). DOI: 10.1101/2022.09.03.506425

Source: Scientists produce nanobodies in plant cells that block emerging pathogens

Disney Made an AI Tool That Automatically De-Ages Actors

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To make an age-altering AI tool that was ready for the demands of Hollywood and flexible enough to work on moving footage or shots where an actor isn’t always looking directly at the camera, Disney’s researchers, as detailed in a recently published paper, first created a database of thousands of randomly generated synthetic faces. Existing machine learning aging tools were then used to age and de-age these thousands of non-existent test subjects, and those results were then used to train a new neural network called FRAN (face re-aging network).

A step-by-step illustration of how FRAN generates aging/de-aging changes which are applied to the original input face.
Screenshot: YouTube – DisneyResearchHub

When FRAN is fed an input headshot, instead of generating an altered headshot, it predicts what parts of the face would be altered by age, such as the addition or removal of wrinkles, and those results are then layered over the original face as an extra channel of added visual information. This approach accurately preserves the performer’s appearance and identity, even when their head is moving, when their face is looking around, or when the lighting conditions in a shot change over time. It also allows the AI generated changes to be adjusted and tweaked by an artist, which is an important part of VFX work: making the alterations perfectly blend back into a shot so the changes are invisible to an audience.

 


Source: Disney Made an AI Tool That Automatically De-Ages Actors

Players are boycotting Nintendo and Panda events in the wake of Smash Bros tournaments being instacanceled by Nintendo

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n the wake of Nintendo being Nintendo and unceremoniously canceling the Smash World Tour, one of the year’s biggest esports tournaments dedicated to all things Super Smash Bros., copious folks in the game’s community have come out in protest. Casual fans, pro players, long-time commentators, and even other tournament organizers, from AITX eSports to Beyond the Summit, have all publicly denounced not just Nintendo for its asinine decision but also Panda Global for allegedly causing the Smash World Tour to get shut down. Now, it appears many of those people are boycotting all of Nintendo’s officially licensed tournaments as well.

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Super Smash Bros. fans aren’t happy about what’s going on, with many posting their frustrations on Twitter. Some pointed fingers at Panda Global CEO and co-founder Dr. Alan Bunney for allegedly trying to recruit tournaments to the Panda Cup by threatening to get Nintendo involved to shut the Smash World Tour down and reportedly attempting to create a monopoly by requesting exclusive streaming rights to the Panda Cup. Others fear this may hurt their careers and livelihoods. The main consensus is to never watch, support, or attend a Panda Global event ever again. A lot of people seem to feel this way.

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The future of Super Smash Bros.’s competitive fighting game scene is looking quite precarious, with Video Game Boot Camp admitting in the statement that it’s “currently navigating budget cuts, internal communications with our team and partners, commitments/contracts, as well as sponsorship negotiations that will inevitably be affected by all of this.” It’s possible that smaller tournaments will continue without Nintendo’s blessing, but, as has been done time and again, it’s likely only a matter of time until Nintendo comes a-knocking.

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Source: Smash Bros. Fans Are Totally Done With Nintendo And Tournaments

The article says that Smash Bros tournaments were cancelled due to Nintendo not sponsoring them, but the tournaments were cancelled due to Nintendo throwing cease and desist letters at the organisers. Also see: Nintendo Shuts Down Smash World Tour – worlds largest e-sports tournament – out of the blue

Telegram shares users’ data in copyright violation lawsuit to Indian court

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Telegram has disclosed names of administrators, their phone numbers and IP addresses of channels accused of copyright infringement in compliance with a court order in India in a remarkable illustration of the data the instant messaging platform stores on its users and can be made to disclose by authorities.

The app operator was forced by a Delhi High Court order to share the data after a teacher sued the firm for not doing enough to prevent unauthorised distribution of her course material on the platform. Neetu Singh, the plaintiff teacher, said a number of Telegram channels were re-selling her study materials at discounted prices without permission.

An Indian court earlier had ordered Telegram to adhere to the Indian law and disclose details about those operating such channels.

Telegram unsuccessfully argued that disclosing user information would violate the privacy policy and the laws of Singapore, where it has located its physical servers for storing users’ data. In response, the Indian court said the copyright owners couldn’t be left “completely remediless against the actual infringers” because Telegram has chosen to locate its servers outside the country.

In an order last week, Justice Prathiba Singh said Telegram had complied with the earlier order and shared the data.

“Let copy of the said data be supplied to Id. Counsel for plaintiffs with the clear direction that neither the plaintiffs nor their counsel shall disclose the said data to any third party, except for the purposes of the present proceedings. To this end, disclosure to the governmental authorities/police is permissible,” said the court (PDF) and first reported by LiveLaw.

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Source: Telegram shares users’ data in copyright violation lawsuit | TechCrunch

More Details On China’s Exotic Orbital Hypersonic Weapon Come To Light

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This information was included in the Defense Department’s annual Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China report, more commonly known as the China Military Power Report (CMPR), which serves as an assessment of China’s current defense strategy and military capabilities. While the CMPR analyzes a wide array of Chinese military advancements, it was especially beneficial in clarifying what exactly occurred during the country’s highly intriguing hypersonic weapon test that took place on July 27, 2021, which can be read about in detail here.

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“On July 27, 2021, China conducted the first fractional orbital launch of an ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] with an HGV [hypersonic glide vehicle],” the CMPR revealed. “The HGV flew around the world and impacted inside China. This demonstrated the greatest distance flown (~40,000 km) and longest flight time (~100+ minutes) of any land-attack PRC [People’s Republic of China] weapons system to date. According to senior U.S. military officials, the HGV did not strike its target, but came close.”

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As The War Zone discussed in this previous breakdown of the FOB concept, the depressed flight profile and capacity to strike really any target near its orbital path pose quite the challenge for an opponent’s tracking and missile defense networks. The FOB system could attack from vectors that its opponent’s radars are not looking toward, affecting its ability to anticipate where and when a strike may occur, let alone counter one.

An infographic depicting the flight path of a FOB system. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

China’s FOB-like system, though, instead carries a maneuverable hypersonic glide vehicle as opposed to a traditional nuclear-armed reentry vehicle, allowing it to change course dynamically and fly at lower altitudes, even porpoising as it goes, during its flight through the atmosphere. This allows it to hit targets much farther off its orbital flight path and makes interception nearly impossible. As noted earlier, reports that China’s hypersonic glide vehicle had also released its own projectile while on its very high-speed descent complicates things further, as The War Zone explained in detail in this past article.

The Financial Times, which was the first to report on the test, even emphasized how caught off-guard the Pentagon was by this development considering how technically complex it would be for anything moving at high hypersonic speeds to launch its own projectile.

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The Pentagon throughout the CMPR cited the U.S. military’s own advancements in the hypersonic realm as the predominant driving factor behind China’s innovations while admitting that most of China’s missile systems are “comparable in quality to systems of other international top-tier producers.” An underlying fear that the proliferation of hypersonic technology could soon “blur the line between nuclear and conventional escalation” was also highlighted as a potential motivator behind these advancements. These influences are being reflected in other Chinese strategic developments, as well.

Regardless, it is important to note that U.S. missile defenses, as they exist now, aren’t anywhere capable of deflecting a massive nuclear strike from a near-peer like China or Russia, which is something The War Zone has previously touched on. Defending against hypersonic weapons, especially ones that can attack from unpredictable vectors like this FOB-capable system would be able to, is an even more challenging proposition.

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Source: More Details On China’s Exotic Orbital Hypersonic Weapon Come To Light