Recent Entries
Tech (100)
Serving the Technologist for more than a decade. IT news, reviews, and analysis.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-17 20:27:45
Financial institutions have 30 days to disclose breaches under new rules
Amendments contain loopholes that may blunt their effectiveness.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-16 23:49:22
Arizona woman accused of helping North Koreans get remote IT jobs at 300 companies
Alleged $6.8M conspiracy involved "laptop farm," identity theft, and résumé coaching.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-16 18:44:02
Archie, the Internet’s first search engine, is rescued and running
A journey through busted tapes, the Internet Old Farts Club, and SPARCstations.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-15 23:37:55
BreachForums, an online bazaar for stolen data, seized by FBI
An earlier iteration of the site was taken down last year; now its reincarnation is gone.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-15 21:51:44
Google unveils Veo, a high-definition AI video generator that may rival Sora
Google's video synthesis model creates minute-long 1080p videos from written prompts.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-15 17:56:03
Linux maintainers were infected for 2 years by SSH-dwelling backdoor with huge reach
Ebury backdoors SSH servers in hosting providers, giving the malware extraordinary reach.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-15 04:05:43
Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever leaves OpenAI six months after Altman ouster
CEO Altman: "OpenAI would not be what it is without him."
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-14 20:11:20
Google strikes back at OpenAI with “Project Astra” AI agent prototype
AI model updates galore at Google I/O, including 2m context window, Imagen 3, Veo, and more.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-14 15:40:32
Apple, SpaceX, Microsoft return-to-office mandates drove senior talent away
"It’s easier to manage a team that’s happy.”
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-14 15:03:45
The hunt for rare bitcoin is nearing an end
Rare bitcoin fragments are worth many times their face value.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-13 22:33:34
Before launching, GPT-4o broke records on chatbot leaderboard under a secret name
Anonymous chatbot that mystified and frustrated experts was OpenAI's latest model.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-13 20:55:52
Black Basta ransomware group is imperiling critical infrastructure, groups warn
Threat group has targeted 500 organizations. One is currently struggling to cope.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-13 18:58:08
ChatGPT-4o allows real-time audio-video conversations with an “emotional” AI chatbot
GPT-4o demo shows new AI model singing a bedtime story, detecting user's facial expressions.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-10 18:02:14
Google patches its fifth zero-day vulnerability of the year in Chrome
Exploit code for critical "use-after-free" bug is circulating in the wild.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-09 22:20:15
Stack Overflow users sabotage their posts after OpenAI deal
Anti-AI users who change or delete answers in protest are being punished.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-09 19:40:08
Dell warns of “incident” that may have leaked customers’ personal info
Notification follows claim of compromised database with 49M Dell customers' data.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-08 22:35:08
Critical vulnerabilities in BIG-IP appliances leave big networks open to intrusion
Hackers can exploit them to gain full administrative control of internal devices.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-08 21:57:34
Dell responds to return-to-office resistance with VPN, badge tracking
Report claims new tracking starts May 13 with unclear consequences.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-08 20:59:38
Robot dogs armed with AI-targeting rifles undergo US Marines Special Ops evaluation
Quadrupeds being reviewed have automatic targeting systems but require human oversight to fire.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-07 20:34:00
Ransomware mastermind LockBitSupp reveled in his anonymity—now he’s been ID’d
The US places a $10 million bounty for the arrest of Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-07 20:22:10
Microsoft launches AI chatbot for spies
Air-gapping GPT-4 model on secure network won't prevent it from potentially making things up.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-06 21:35:29
Novel attack against virtually all VPN apps neuters their entire purpose
TunnelVision vulnerability has existed since 2002 and may already be known to attackers.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-06 20:51:22
New Microsoft AI model may challenge GPT-4 and Google Gemini
In project headed by former Inflection chief, MAI-1 may have 500B parameters.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-04 12:37:56
These dangerous scammers don’t even bother to hide their crimes
Cybercriminals openly run dozens of scams across social media and messaging apps.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-04 00:42:26
Microsoft plans to lock down Windows DNS like never before. Here’s how.
ZTDNS brings the best of both worlds to DNS: encryption and fine-grained control.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-03 22:58:50
Counterfeit Cisco gear ended up in US military bases, used in combat operations
"One of the largest counterfeit-trafficking operations ever."
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-03 21:25:53
Microsoft ties executive pay to security following multiple failures and breaches
Microsoft has been criticized for "preventable" failures and poor communication.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-03 20:04:13
AI in space: Karpathy suggests AI chatbots as interstellar messengers to alien civilizations
Andrej Karpathy muses about sending a LLM binary that could "wake up" and answer questions.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-02 20:02:38
Maximum-severity GitLab flaw allowing account hijacking under active exploitation
The threat is potentially grave because it could be used in supply chain attacks.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-02 01:20:12
Hacker free-for-all fights for control of home and office routers everywhere
How and why nation-state hackers and cybercriminals coexist in the same router botnet.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-01 22:36:09
Anthropic releases Claude AI chatbot iOS app
Anthropic finally comes to mobile, launches plan for teams that includes 200K context window.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-05-01 17:17:09
The BASIC programming language turns 60
Easy-to-use language that drove Apple, TRS-80, IBM, and Commodore PCs debuted in 1964.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-30 22:52:24
Here’s your chance to own a decommissioned US government supercomputer
145,152-core Cheyenne supercomputer was 20th most powerful in the world in 2016.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-30 21:44:58
Health care giant comes clean about recent hack and paid ransom
Ransomware attack on the $371 billion company hamstrung US prescription market.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-30 20:43:07
AWS S3 storage bucket with unlucky name nearly cost developer $1,300
Amazon says it's working on stopping others from "making your AWS bill explode."
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-30 20:31:01
Mysterious “gpt2-chatbot” AI model appears suddenly, confuses experts
Mystery LLM highlights transparency issues in AI testing.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-29 21:15:10
Critics question tech-heavy lineup of new Homeland Security AI safety board
CEO-heavy board to tackle elusive AI safety concept and apply it to US infrastructure.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-29 20:45:16
Connected devices with awful default passwords now illegal in UK
The law aims to prevent global-scale botnet attacks.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-29 20:35:32
Account compromise of “unprecedented scale” uses everyday home devices
Credential-stuffing attack uses proxies to hide bad behavior.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-26 20:07:51
Hackers make millions of attempts to exploit WordPress plugin vulnerability
WP Automatic plugin patched, but release notes don't mention the critical fix.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2024-04-25 21:55:43
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.