X-Industry

Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit is pursuing legal action to disrupt cybercriminals who create malicious tools that evade the security guardrails and guidelines of generative AI (GenAI) services to create harmful content.  According to a spokesman, it has observed a threat group seeking out vulnerable customer accounts using generative AI, then creating tools to abuse these services.[1]

See:  https://redskyalliance.org/xindustry/microsoft-s-new-copilot-ai-agents

According to an unsealed complaint

Businesses are more likely to face a costly cyber-crime attack than a robbery or fire this year as hackers continue to employ devious social-engineering skills to lure unsuspecting victims.  This reality has been highlighted in several reports by global cybersecurity experts who have analyzed cybercrimes, such as ransomware (where hackers encrypt and steal data), smishing (SMS link scams) and phishing (email link/attachment scams) in recent years and have warned that Artificial Intelligence (AI)

From the boardroom to the cyber combat zone, the past 12 months will go down as a year that society came under attack from an unprecedented wave of digital threats.  The new battlefield.  Sophisticated ransomware, deepfake phishing scams and state-sponsored cyber-attacks highlighted just how pervasive the danger has become. At the same time, businesses and governments accelerated efforts to develop new defenses– actions which, while vital, sparked debates around privacy and the ethics of cyberse

Cyberattacks utilizing generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technology as a tool are expected to grow next year, a government report reported recently.  In 2025, hacking groups are expected to increasingly use various generative AI models, such as ChatGPT, to create spear phishing emails customized to their attack subjects and fake news materials to be used for political propaganda, according to the annual cybersecurity report issued by the Ministry of Science and ICT.  “It will be difficu

Back in the 1960’s there was a comedy show where a character played by Flip Wilson used to say, “The devil made me do it.”  This was all tongue in cheek and made people laugh, but this recent revelation, if true, is not so funny.  Google’s Gemini AI Chatbot faces backlash after multiple incidents of it telling users to die, raising concerns about AI safety, response accuracy, and ethical guardrails.  AI chatbots have become integral tools, assisting with daily tasks, content creation, and advice

In a recent Forbes article, technical author Davey Winder shared insights into a Check Point blog post.  Hackers have been seen using AI which very nearly compromised the account of a Gmail user, as explained in a recent report by Winder.  Now both Gmail and AI are back in the forefront, but now as part of a large-scale hacking campaign targeting both consumers and corporates with a financially-motivated payload.  Check Point analyzes the new campaign the CopyRh(ight)adamantys cyber-attack.

Unli

Qualcomm has historically been quiet about its automotive aspirations, preferring to focus attention on its Snapdragon mobile and laptop processor offerings.  That might be changing.  The company flew TechCrunch to its Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit on Maui to see its latest Snapdragon Elite chips.  This year it is all about automotive.  The Snapdragon Digital Chassis has been powering cars for a couple of years, but now Qualcomm is touting its Elite horn with Snapdragon Ride Elite and Snapdragon Co

With everything turning digital, Cyber Security threats have been growing each day as the attack surface is massive and continuing to grow and evolve rapidly.  In response to this unprecedented challenge, Artificial Intelligence (AI) based tools for cyber security have emerged to help information security teams reduce breach risk and improve their security posture efficiently and effectively.

See:  https://redskyalliance.org/xindustry/ai-s-impact-on-cyber

AI is helping firms to become more resil

The US election cycle is here, and it is becoming more important for voters not to be fooled by Deepfakes.  According to recent research, just over half of Britons surveyed (53%) either have not heard of the term Deepfake or have misunderstood its meaning, with only 17% feeling confident in their ability to spot them.  Meanwhile, two in five have encountered at least one deepfake in the past six months, as recent reports reveal that over 4k celebrities have fallen victim to Deepfakes, and 400 di

The 2024 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for their fundamental discoveries in machine learning, which paved the way for how artificial intelligence is used today.

Hopfield, a professor at Princeton University and Hinton, a computer scientist at the University of Toronto, were praised for laying the foundations for the machine learning that powers many of today’s AI-based products and applications.  Hinton, however, has also expressed fears about AI’s

Automating the on-demand collection of memory dumps, process information, system files, and event logs for inclusion in threat-hunting activities allows for a more comprehensive and proactive approach to adaptive threat-hunting. In the WatchTower Threat Hunting blog series, Sentinel Labs calls out some adaptive threat-hunting methodologies, including Chained Detections, a Multi-Directional Approach, and AI-powered hunts. This shows the benefits of applying a multi-directional approach to adaptiv

I recently saw the title of a Recorded Future podcast regarding AI and police reporting.  I have 28 years of law enforcement experience, 8 years as a uniformed police officer and this title really intrigued me.  So I watched the segment: AI is Writing Police Reports, Should We be Worried?[1]  

The story starts with police body cams, which began somewhat experimentally in 2011 and now has gain acceptance throughout US policing.  The main purpose of demanding police wear body cams was to change po

The CEO at Redwood Research, Buck Shlegeris, a nonprofit company exploring AI's risks, recently learned an amusing but hard lesson in automation when he asked his LLM-powered agent to open a secure connection from his laptop to his desktop machine.  "I expected the model would scan the network and find the desktop computer, then stop," Shlegeris explained.  "I was surprised that after it found the computer, it decided to continue taking actions, first examining the system and then deciding to do

A controversial bill to regulate the Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry, SB-1047, has been passed by the California’s State Assembly Appropriations Committee.  It will pass the California Senate by the end of this month before going to the Democrat Governor, Gavin Newsom, for signature to pass into law.  The most controversial part of the debate is the question of who is legally responsible and takes the blame if the AI causes harm.  Should the AI system be blamed or the person who used the A

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has taken a pioneering step in the realm of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity by appointing its first Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, and it is not a computer, Lisa Einstein.  This position, announced on 01 August 2024, underscores the growing importance of AI in national security and sets a precedent that other organizations may soon follow.

Einstein has served as CISA's Senior Advisor for AI since 2023 and as the Exe

X has had its own AI chatbot, Grok, for a while, but it would be fair to say it's not mentioned in the same way that OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google Gemini are.  That's not for the want of trying, though, and with a huge user base of X users providing data for the model, a new version was always expected.

Now, the obviously-named Grok-2 has entered beta.  In a new blog post, X says it represents "a significant step forward from our previous model Grok-1.5, featuring frontier capabilities in chat, cod

Climate and weather modeling has long been a staple of high-performance computing, but as meteorologists look to improve the speed and resolution of forecasts, machine learning is increasingly finding its way into the mix.  In a paper published in the journal Nature this week, a team from Google and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) detailed a novel approach that uses machine learning to overcome limitations in existing climate models and try to generate forecasts fa

AI is fueling a lot of wild ideas for our tech-driven future.  If everything pans out, we will not have to write our own essays, take our notes, or drive our cars.   But with AI’s rapid growth, it is hard not to give at least some of those lofty visions credence, even the most sci-fi ones, even Star Wars-level humanoid robots.  There are a lot of humanoid bots now and a lot more seemingly on the way, Figure’s AI robot, Unitree’s speed demon, Agility’s workhorse, but arguably most important of al

A recent post on ClearanceJobs (https://www.clearancejobs.com), the most significant career network for professionals with federal government security clearance, listed the "10 Highest Paying Tech Jobs in 2024 and Beyond."

What was interesting: 1) The number of these jobs that did not exist 10, five, or even one or two years ago; and 2) How many of the roles are tied to cybersecurity directly or indirectly.[1]

Here is the list (you can check the link above for specific job details):

1. Data Scient

The European Union has warned Microsoft that it could be fined up to 1% of its global annual turnover under the bloc’s online governance regime, the Digital Services Act (DSA), after the company failed to respond to a request for information (RFI) that focused on its generative AI tools.  In March 2024, the EU asked Microsoft and several other tech giants for information about systemic risks posed by generative AI tools.  On 16 May 2024, the Commission said Microsoft failed to provide some reque