The Linkielist

Linking ideas with the world

Ghostery, uBlock, Privacy Badger lead the anti-tracking browser extensions

Posted on by Robin Edgar

A group of researchers in France and Japan say RequestPolicyContinued and NoScript have the toughest policies, while Ghostery and uBlock Origin offer good blocking performance and a better user experience. The study also gave a nod to the EFF’s Privacy Badger, which uses heuristics rather than block lists, but once trained is nearly as good Read more about Ghostery, uBlock, Privacy Badger lead the anti-tracking browser extensions[…]

Another AI attack, this time against ‘black box’ machine learning

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Unlike adversarial models that attack AIs “from the inside”, attacks developed for black boxes could be used against closed system like autonomous cars, security (facial recognition, for example), or speech recognition (Alexa or Cortana).The tool, called Foolbox, is currently under review for presentation at next year’s International Conference on Learning Representations (kicking off at the Read more about Another AI attack, this time against ‘black box’ machine learning[…]

Older Adults’ Forgetfulness Tied To non syncing Brain Rhythms In Sleep

Posted on by Robin Edgar

During deep sleep, older people have less coordination between two brain waves that are important to saving new memories, a team reports in the journal Neuron. To find out, Walker and a team of scientists had 20 young adults learn 120 pairs of words. “Then we put electrodes on their head and we had them Read more about Older Adults’ Forgetfulness Tied To non syncing Brain Rhythms In Sleep[…]

Seagate’s lightbulb moment: Make read-write heads operate independently

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Seagate is increasing IO performance in disk drives by separating read-write heads into two separate sets which can operate independently and in parallel.The heads are positioned at one end of actuator arms which rotate around a post at their other end to move the heads across the platter surfaces. Thus, with an eight-platter drive, each Read more about Seagate’s lightbulb moment: Make read-write heads operate independently[…]

KLM uses AI to answer questions on social media

Posted on by Robin Edgar

olgens KLM worden wekelijks 30.000 gesprekken gevoerd door de 250 socialmediamedewerkers. De luchtvaartmaatschappij wordt wekelijks ruim 130.000 keer genoemd op social media. Gemiddeld bestaat een gesprek tussen KLM en een klant uit vijf tot zes vragen en antwoorden. De veelgestelde vragen die met behulp van kunstmatige intelligentie automatisch kunnen worden beantwoord, worden meestal aan het Read more about KLM uses AI to answer questions on social media[…]

China’s big brother: how artificial intelligence is catching criminals and advancing health care

Posted on by Robin Edgar

“Our machines can very easily recognise you among at least 2 billion people in a matter of seconds,” says chief executive and Yitu co-founder Zhu Long, “which would have been unbelievable just three years ago.” Yitu’s Dragonfly Eye generic portrait platform already has 1.8 billion photographs to work with: those logged in the national database Read more about China’s big brother: how artificial intelligence is catching criminals and advancing health care[…]

AI helps find planets in other solar systems

Posted on by Robin Edgar

The neural network is trained on 15,000 signals from the Kepler dataset that have been previously verified as planets or non-planets. A smaller test set with new, unseen data was fed to the neural network and it correctly identified true planets from false positives to an accuracy of about 96 per cent.The researchers then applied Read more about AI helps find planets in other solar systems[…]

Tripwire detects hacks companies haven’t told us about by creating accounts with unique emails on thousands of servers. If the email account is accessed, the site has been breached. No-one knows or cares that there has been a breach in vast majority of cases.

Posted on by Robin Edgar

a prototype tool created by researchers from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) aims to bring greater transparency to such breaches. The system, called Tripwire, detects websites that were hacked, as is detailed in this study. Here’s here how it works: To detect breaches, the researchers created a bot that automatically registered accounts on Read more about Tripwire detects hacks companies haven’t told us about by creating accounts with unique emails on thousands of servers. If the email account is accessed, the site has been breached. No-one knows or cares that there has been a breach in vast majority of cases.[…]

Windows 10 Password Manager Keeper allows sites to steal any password.

Posted on by Robin Edgar

A Google security researcher has found and helped patch a severe vulnerability in Keeper, a password manager application that Microsoft has been bundling with some Windows 10 distributions this year.”I’ve heard of Keeper, I remember filing a bug a while ago about how they were injecting privileged UI into pages,” said Tavis Ormandy, the Google Read more about Windows 10 Password Manager Keeper allows sites to steal any password.[…]

“Suspicious” event routes traffic for big-name sites through Russia

Posted on by Robin Edgar

According to a blog post published Wednesday by Internet monitoring service BGPMon, the hijack lasted a total of six minutes and affected 80 separate address blocks. It started at 4:43 UTC and continued for three minutes. A second hijacking occurred at 7:07 UTC and also lasted three minutes. Meanwhile, a second monitoring service, Qrator Labs, Read more about “Suspicious” event routes traffic for big-name sites through Russia[…]

Looking through walls, now easier than ever • The Register

Posted on by Robin Edgar

In a paper published on Thursday in the journal Optica, Duke professors Daniel Marks and David R. Smith, and postdoctoral researcher Okan Yurduseven describe a method for through-wall imaging (TWI) that compensates for the varied distortion produced by different wall materials, to allow details to be captured more accurately. Source: Looking through walls, now easier Read more about Looking through walls, now easier than ever • The Register[…]

How to Track a Cellphone Without GPS—or Consent

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Using only data that can be legally collected by an app developer without the consent of a cellphone’s owner, researchers have been able to produce a privacy attack that can accurately pinpoint a user’s location and trajectory without accessing the device’s Global Position System—GPS. And while the ramifications of this ability falling into the wrong Read more about How to Track a Cellphone Without GPS—or Consent[…]

Google Taught an AI to Make Sense of the Human Genome

Posted on by Robin Edgar

This week, Google released a tool called DeepVariant that uses deep learning to piece together a person’s genome and more accurately identify mutations in a DNA sequence.Built on the back of the same technology that allows Google to identify whether a photo is of a cat or dog, DeepVariant solves an important problem in the Read more about Google Taught an AI to Make Sense of the Human Genome[…]

Apparent Google update glitch disconnects student Chromebooks in schools across the U.S. – GeekWire

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of Google Chromebooks, widely prized by schools due to their low cost and ease of configuration, were reported to be offline for several hours on Tuesday. The apparent cause? A seemingly botched WiFi policy update pushed out by Google that caused many Chromebooks to forget their approved network connection, leaving Read more about Apparent Google update glitch disconnects student Chromebooks in schools across the U.S. – GeekWire[…]

China Has Launched the World’s First All-Electric Cargo Ship

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Constructed by Guangzhou Shipyard International Company Ltd, it can travel 80 kilometers (approximately 50 miles) after being charged for 2 hours. As noted by Clean Technica, 2 hours is roughly the amount of time it would take to unload the ship’s cargo while docked.Other stats for China’s cargo ship include being 70.5 meters (230 feet) Read more about China Has Launched the World’s First All-Electric Cargo Ship[…]

HP laptops found to have hidden keylogger – BBC News

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Hidden software that can record every letter typed on a computer keyboard has been discovered pre-installed on hundreds of HP laptop models.Security researcher Michael Myng found the keylogging code in software drivers preinstalled on HP laptops to make the keyboard work.HP said more than 460 models of laptop were affected by the “potential security vulnerability”.It Read more about HP laptops found to have hidden keylogger – BBC News[…]

Airgapping via PLC

Posted on by Robin Edgar

CyberX demonstrated how to inject specially-crafted ladder logic code into a Siemens S7-1200 PLC. The code uses memory copy operations to generate frequency-modulated RF signals slightly below the AM band (340kHz-420kHz), with the modulation representing encoded data.The emitted RF signals are a byproduct of repeatedly writing to PLC memory in a specific way.Once transmitted the Read more about Airgapping via PLC[…]

AI in storytelling: Machines as cocreators

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Sunspring debuted at the SCI-FI LONDON film festival in 2016. Set in a dystopian world with mass unemployment, the movie attracted many fans, with one viewer describing it as amusing but strange. But the most notable aspect of the film involves its creation: an artificial-intelligence (AI) bot wrote Sunspring’s screenplay. ome researchers have already used Read more about AI in storytelling: Machines as cocreators[…]

New battery boffinry could ‘triple range’ of electric vehicles • The Register

Posted on by Robin Edgar

A new battery designed at the University of Waterloo in Ontario could triple the range of electric vehicles, a new paper has claimed. The development, described by the article An In Vivo Formed Solid Electrolyte Surface Layer Enables Stable Plating of Li Metal (PDF) in energy journal Joule, is due to an improvement in the Read more about New battery boffinry could ‘triple range’ of electric vehicles • The Register[…]

New Ruski hacker clan exposed: They’re called MoneyTaker, and they’re gonna take your money • The Register

Posted on by Robin Edgar

The group has conducted more than 20 successful attacks on financial institutions and legal firms in the USA, UK and Russia in the last two months alone, according to Russian incident response firm Group-IB. MoneyTaker has primarily targeted card processing systems, including the AWS CBR (Russian Interbank System) and purportedly SWIFT (US).In addition to banks, Read more about New Ruski hacker clan exposed: They’re called MoneyTaker, and they’re gonna take your money • The Register[…]

Email tracking now extends to your acquantances: 1 in 5!

Posted on by Robin Edgar

According to OMC’s data, a full 19 percent of all “conversational” email is now tracked. That’s one in five of the emails you get from your friends. And you probably never noticed.“Surprisingly, while there is a vast literature on web tracking, email tracking has seen little research,” noted an October 2017 paper published by three Read more about Email tracking now extends to your acquantances: 1 in 5![…]

New Google Home Mini update 1.29 restores top tap functionality with long-press on the side: doesn’t record everything anymore?

Posted on by Robin Edgar

The Google Home Mini is a super-affordable way to get Google Assistant in your life, but Google was forced to hobble the device shortly after launch because a sticky touch sensor caused Artem’s Mini to record everything he said. Part of that functionality is now coming back with a small tweak. Instead of tapping the Read more about New Google Home Mini update 1.29 restores top tap functionality with long-press on the side: doesn’t record everything anymore?[…]

AI-Assisted Fake Porn Is Here and We’re All Fucked – Motherboard

Posted on by Robin Edgar

There’s a video of Gal Gadot having sex with her stepbrother on the internet. But it’s not really Gadot’s body, and it’s barely her own face. It’s an approximation, face-swapped to look like she’s performing in an existing incest-themed porn video.The video was created with a machine learning algorithm, using easily accessible materials and open-source Read more about AI-Assisted Fake Porn Is Here and We’re All Fucked – Motherboard[…]