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From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-25 21:55:43 (unread)
Apple releases eight small AI language models aimed at on-device use
OpenELM mirrors efforts by Microsoft to make useful small AI language models that run locally.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-25 19:49:07
Zombie worm continues to infect millions of IPs years after it was left for dead
Ability of PlugX worm to live on presents a vexing dilemma: Delete it or leave it be.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-25 16:30:01
Alleged AI voice imitation leads to arrest in Baltimore school racism controversy
Police uncover plot to defame principal with AI-generated racist and antisemitic comments.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-24 21:55:20
Nation-state hackers exploit Cisco firewall 0-days to backdoor government networks
Perimeter devices ought to prevent network hacks. Why are so many devices allowing attacks?
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-24 21:14:34
Deepfakes in the courtroom: US judicial panel debates new AI evidence rules
Panel of eight judges confronts deep-faking AI tech that may undermine legal trials.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-23 22:03:01
Hackers infect users of antivirus service that delivered updates over HTTP
eScan AV updates were delivered over HTTP for five years.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-23 21:47:32
Microsoft’s Phi-3 shows the surprising power of small, locally run AI language models
Microsoft’s 3.8B parameter Phi-3 may rival GPT-3.5, signaling a new era of “small language models."
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-22 21:36:56
Windows vulnerability reported by the NSA exploited to install Russian backdoor
Microsoft didn't disclose the in-the-wild exploits by Kremlin-backed group until now.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-19 14:07:06
Microsoft’s VASA-1 can deepfake a person with one photo and one audio track
YouTube videos of 6K celebrities helped train AI model to animate photos in real time.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-18 22:04:42
LLMs keep leaping with Llama 3, Meta’s newest open-weights AI model
Zuckerberg says new AI model "was still learning" when Meta stopped training.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-18 19:42:06
LastPass users targeted in phishing attacks good enough to trick even the savvy
Campaign used email, SMS, and voice calls to trick targets into divulging master passwords.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-18 12:00:46
OpenAI winds down AI image generator that blew minds and forged friendships in 2022
How a group of friends found themselves at the center of a fierce debate about the future of art.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-17 22:55:30
Kremlin-backed actors spread disinformation ahead of US elections
To a lesser extent, China and Iran also peddle disinfo in hopes of influencing voters.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-17 17:44:44
Broadcom says “many” VMware perpetual licenses got support extensions
Broadcom reportedly accused of changing VMware licensing and support conditions.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-16 22:51:20
Linus Torvalds reiterates his tabs-versus-spaces stance with a kernel trap
One does not simply suggest changing a kernel line to help out a parsing tool.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-16 22:31:25
Attackers are pummeling networks around the world with millions of login attempts
Attacks coming from nearly 4,000 IP addresses take aim at VPNs, SSH and web apps.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-16 15:51:38
UK targets “despicable individuals” who create AI sex deepfakes with new law
Under new law, those who create the "horrific images" would face a fine and possible jail time.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-16 14:55:34
Why the US government’s overreliance on Microsoft is a big problem
Microsoft continues to get a free pass after series of cybersecurity failures.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-15 20:46:03
Alleged cryptojacking scheme consumed $3.5M of stolen computing to make just $1M
Indictment says man tricked cloud providers into giving him services he never paid for.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-15 12:00:44
Framework’s software and firmware have been a mess, but it’s working on them
New features, security updates, and Linux support are all on a long to-do list.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-13 19:25:32
Change Healthcare faces another ransomware threat—and it looks credible
Hackers already received a $22 million payment. Now a second group demands money.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-12 21:48:47
“Highly capable” hackers root corporate networks by exploiting firewall 0-day
No patch yet for unauthenticated code-execution bug in Palo Alto Networks firewall.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-12 21:31:08
Words are flowing out like endless rain: Recapping a busy week of LLM news
Gemini 1.5 Pro launch, new version of GPT-4 Turbo, new Mistral model, and more.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-11 21:56:59
Intel’s “Gaudi 3” AI accelerator chip may give Nvidia’s H100 a run for its money
Intel claims 50% more speed when running AI language models vs. the market leader.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-11 19:53:03
Hackable Intel and Lenovo hardware that went undetected for 5 years won’t ever be fixed
Multiple links in the supply chain failed for years to identify an unfixed vulnerability.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-10 23:28:02
AT&T: Data breach affects 73 million or 51 million customers. No, we won’t explain.
When the data was published in 2021, the company said it didn't belong to its customers.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-10 22:47:44
New AI music generator Udio synthesizes realistic music on demand
But it still needs trial and error to generate high-quality results.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-09 20:12:47
Thousands of LG TVs exposed to the world. Here’s how to ensure yours isn’t one.
LG patches four vulnerabilities that allow malicious hackers to commandeer TVs.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-09 18:25:09
Elon Musk: AI will be smarter than any human around the end of next year
While Musk says superintelligence is coming soon, one critic says prediction is "batsh*t crazy."
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-08 23:46:43
MIT License text becomes viral “sad girl” piano ballad generated by AI
"Permission is hereby granted" comes from Suno AI engine that creates new songs on demand.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-08 19:56:51
Critical takeover vulnerabilities in 92,000 D-Link devices under active exploitation
D-Link won't be patching vulnerable NAS devices because they're no longer supported.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-05 20:03:05
German state gov. ditching Windows for Linux, 30K workers migrating
Schleswig-Holstein looks to succeed where Munich failed.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-05 18:05:01
Ivanti CEO pledges to “fundamentally transform” its hard-hit security model
Part of the reset involves AI-powered documentation search and call routing.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-04 19:50:46
Fake AI law firms are sending fake DMCA threats to generate fake SEO gains
How one journalist found himself targeted by generative AI over a keyfob photo.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-03 19:59:56
AI hype invades Taco Bell and Pizza Hut
Everything is suddenly "AI" in corporate food marketing, and we may have hit peak buzz.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-03 19:51:54
Microsoft blamed for “a cascade of security failures” in Exchange breach report
Summer 2023 intrusion pinned to corporate culture, "avoidable errors."
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-03 17:06:13
TSMC “still assessing” chipmaking facilities after 7.4-magnitude quake hits Taiwan
TSMC makes most high-end chips for Apple, Nvidia, AMD, and others.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-03 12:30:26
The fine art of human prompt engineering: How to talk to a person like ChatGPT
People are more like AI language models than you might think. Here are some prompting tips.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-03 00:59:50
Missouri county declares state of emergency amid suspected ransomware attack
Outage occurs on same day as special election, but elections offices remain open.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-02 21:14:58
Billie Eilish, Pearl Jam, 200 artists say AI poses existential threat to their livelihoods
Artists say AI will "set in motion a race to the bottom that will degrade the value of our work."
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-02 20:19:18
Broadcom execs say VMware price, subscription complaints are unwarranted
Industry groups aren't giving up hope for government intervention.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-01 23:31:38
OpenAI drops login requirements for ChatGPT’s free version
ChatGPT 3.5 still falls far short of GPT-4, and other models surpassed it long ago.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-01 18:47:34
Redis’ license change and forking are a mess that everybody can feel bad about
Cloud firms want a version of Redis that's still open to managed service resale.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-01 15:38:59
Microsoft splits up the Teams and Office apps worldwide, following EU split
Salesforce-owned Slack and other companies claim MS abused its market position.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-01 07:55:22
What we know about the xz Utils backdoor that almost infected the world
Malicious updates made to a ubiquitous tool were a few weeks away from going mainstream.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-29 21:16:07
Playboy image from 1972 gets ban from IEEE computer journals
Use of "Lenna" image in computer image processing research stretches back to the 1970s.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-29 18:50:34
Backdoor found in widely used Linux utility breaks encrypted SSH connections
Malicious code planted in xz Utils has been circulating for more than a month.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-29 17:13:47
OpenAI holds back wide release of voice-cloning tech due to misuse concerns
Voice Engine can clone voices with 15 seconds of audio, but OpenAI is warning of potential harms.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-28 18:50:22
PyPI halted new users and projects while it fended off supply-chain attack
Automation is making attacks on open source code repositories harder to fight.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-28 18:23:51
Ubuntu will manually review Snap Store after crypto wallet scams
Former Canonical employee calls out the "Safe" label applied to Snap apps.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-28 17:15:35
Proxmox gives VMware ESXi users a place to go after Broadcom kills free version
Proxmox is a Linux-based hypervisor that could replace ESXi for some users.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-27 22:40:53
Thousands of servers hacked in ongoing attack targeting Ray AI framework
Researchers say it's the first known in-the-wild attack targeting AI workloads.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-27 19:27:24
Canva’s Affinity acquisition is a non-subscription-based weapon against Adobe
But what will result from the companies' opposing views on generative AI?
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-27 18:10:10
“MFA Fatigue” attack targets iPhone owners with endless password reset prompts
Rapid-fire prompts sometimes followed with spoofed calls from "Apple support."
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-27 16:32:24
“The king is dead”—Claude 3 surpasses GPT-4 on Chatbot Arena for the first time
Anthropic's Claude 3 is first to unseat GPT-4 since launch of Chatbot Arena in May '23.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-26 19:56:09
Thousands of phones and routers swept into proxy service, unbeknownst to users
Two new reports show criminals may be using your device to cover their online tracks.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-25 20:20:53
Justice Department indicts 7 accused in 14-year hack campaign by Chinese gov
Hacks allegedly targeted US officials and politicians, their spouses, and dozens of companies.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-22 00:37:51
Never-before-seen data wiper may have been used by Russia against Ukraine
AcidRain, discovered in 2022, is tied to AcidPour. Both are attributed to Russia.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-21 20:11:24
World’s first global AI resolution unanimously adopted by United Nations
Nonbinding agreement seeks to protect personal data and safeguard human rights.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-21 15:33:03
Vernor Vinge, father of the tech singularity, has died at age 79
Vinge won multiple Hugo awards and created a sci-fi concept that drives AI researchers.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-21 14:40:50
Hackers can extract secret encryption keys from Apple’s Mac chips
Fixing newly discovered side channel will likely take a major toll on performance.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-20 21:53:26
GPT-5 might arrive this summer as a “materially better” update to ChatGPT
Sources say to expect OpenAI's next major AI model mid-2024, according to a new report.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-20 20:21:52
Nvidia announces “moonshot” to create embodied human-level AI in robot form
As companies race to pair AI with general-purpose humanoid robots, Nvidia's GR00T emerges.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-20 18:12:00
Formula 1 chief appalled to find team using Excel to manage 20,000 car parts
Williams team leader may only be shocked because he hasn't worked IT.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-20 00:26:15
“Disabling cyberattacks” are hitting critical US water systems, White House warns
Biden administration rallies nation's governors to security facilities in their states.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-19 15:27:33
Nvidia unveils Blackwell B200, the “world’s most powerful chip” designed for AI
208B transistor chip can reportedly reduce AI cost and energy consumption by up to 25x.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-18 19:56:29
Apple may hire Google to power new iPhone AI features using Gemini—report
With Apple's own AI tech lagging behind, the firm looks for a fallback solution.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-18 19:44:23
Fujitsu says it found malware on its corporate network, warns of possible data breach
Company apologizes for the presence of malware on company computers.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-18 19:07:32
Dell tells remote workers that they won’t be eligible for promotion
Report highlights big turnaround from Dell's previous pro-WFH stance.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-18 16:55:58
Elon Musk’s xAI releases Grok source and weights, taunting OpenAI
Amid criticism of OpenAI's closed models, Musk makes the Grok-1 AI model free to download.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-16 00:17:24
ASCII art elicits harmful responses from 5 major AI chatbots
LLMs are trained to block harmful responses. Old-school images can override those rules.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-15 22:40:01
Internet outages hit 13 countries in Africa due to undersea cable damage
Parts of Africa were already seeing web disruptions from damaged Red Sea cables.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-15 20:56:31
Once “too scary” to release, GPT-2 gets squeezed into an Excel spreadsheet
OpenAI's GPT-2 running locally in Microsoft Excel teaches the basics of how LLMs work.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-15 19:14:39
After 114 days of change, Broadcom CEO acknowledges VMware-related “unease”
"There's more to come."
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-15 10:45:23
Banish OEM self-signed certs forever and roll your own private LetsEncrypt
Toss certbot or acme.sh onto some servers and baby, you got a stew going!
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-14 23:15:46
Member of LockBit ransomware group sentenced to 4 years in prison
33-year-old Canadian-Russian national pleaded guilty last month.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-14 12:30:55
Hackers can read private AI assistant chats even though they’re encrypted
All non-Google chat GPTs affected by side channel that leaks responses sent to users.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-12 00:33:07
Never-before-seen Linux malware gets installed using 1-day exploits
Discovery means that NerbianRAT is cross-platform used by for-profit threat group.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-11 21:42:17
Image-scraping Midjourney bans rival AI firm for scraping images
Midjourney pins blame for 24-hour outage on "bot-net like" activity from Stability AI employee.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-11 15:04:29
OpenAI CEO Altman wasn’t fired because of scary new tech, just internal politics
As Altman cements power, OpenAI announces three new board members—and a returning one.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-08 21:07:18
Matrix multiplication breakthrough could lead to faster, more efficient AI models
At the heart of AI, matrix math has just seen its biggest boost "in more than a decade.”
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-08 18:42:39
Microsoft says Kremlin-backed hackers accessed its source and internal systems
Midnight Blizzard is now using stolen secrets in follow-on attacks against customers.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-07 22:29:46
Attack wrangles thousands of web users into a password-cracking botnet
Ongoing attack targeting thousands of sites, continues to grow.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-07 16:58:28
US gov’t announces arrest of former Google engineer for alleged AI trade secret theft
Linwei Ding faces four counts of trade secret theft, each with a potential 10-year prison term.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-06 22:57:48
Some teachers are now using ChatGPT to grade papers
New AI tools aim to help with grading and lesson plans—but they may have serious drawbacks.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-06 20:19:39
VMware sandbox escape bugs are so critical, patches are released for end-of-life products
VMware ESXi, Workstation, Fusion, and Cloud Foundation all affected.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-06 17:59:27
OpenAI clarifies the meaning of “open” in its name, responding to Musk lawsuit
"The open in OpenAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after it's built."
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-05 22:28:13
After collecting $22 million, AlphV ransomware group stages FBI takedown
Affiliate claims payment came from AlphV victim, and AlphV took the money and ran.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-05 19:17:43
Anthropic’s Claude 3 causes stir by seeming to realize when it was being tested
Claude: "This pizza topping 'fact' may have been inserted as a joke or to test if I was paying attention."
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-04 22:47:04
Hackers exploited Windows 0-day for 6 months after Microsoft knew of it
Technically, Microsoft doesn't consider such bugs as vulnerabilities. It patched it anyway.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-04 20:50:15
The AI wars heat up with Claude 3, claimed to have “near-human” abilities
Willison: "No model has beaten GPT-4 on a range of widely used benchmarks like this."
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-01 21:59:46
US prescription market hamstrung for 9 days (so far) by ransomware attack
Patients having trouble getting lifesaving meds have the AlphV crime group to thank.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-03-01 18:02:29
Hugging Face, the GitHub of AI, hosted code that backdoored user devices
Malicious submissions have been a fact of life for code repositories. AI is no different.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-02-29 22:51:15
HP wants you to pay up to $36/month to rent a printer that it monitors
"Never own a printer again."
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-02-29 22:00:51
AI-generated articles prompt Wikipedia to downgrade CNET’s reliability rating
Futurism report highlights the reputational cost of publishing AI-generated content.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-02-29 19:03:12
HDMI Forum to AMD: No, you can’t make an open source HDMI 2.1 driver
Linux users can't hit the same resolutions and speeds as Windows—or DisplayPort.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-02-29 18:00:59
Self-pay gas station pumps break across NZ as software can’t handle Leap Day
"We'll add it to our Outlook reminders..."
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-02-28 22:12:25
GitHub besieged by millions of malicious repositories in ongoing attack
GitHub keeps removing malware-laced repositories, but thousands remain.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-02-28 20:48:37
Microsoft faces scrutiny from EU after partnership with OpenAI rival Mistral
15M euro investment comes as Microsoft hosts Mistral's GPT-4 alternatives on Azure.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-02-27 21:37:11
Wendy’s will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
Surge pricing test next year means your cheeseburger may get more expensive at 6 pm.