Software Development

 New technique produces lots of bitflips and could one day help form an attack.   Enlarge In 2015, researchers reported a surprising discovery that stoked industry-wide security concerns—an attack called RowHammer that could corrupt, modify, or steal sensitive data when a simple user-level application repeatedly accessed certain regions of DDR memory chips. In the coming …

There’s a new way to flip bits in DRAM, and it works against the latest defenses Read More »

 Google-verified advertiser + legit-looking URL + valid TLS cert = convincing look-alike.   Enlarge (credit: Miragec/Getty Images) Google has been caught hosting a malicious ad so convincing that there’s a decent chance it has managed to trick some of the more security-savvy users who encountered it. Screenshot of the malicious ad hosted on Google. (credit: …

Google-hosted malvertising leads to fake Keepass site that looks genuine Read More »

 Is AI going to replace us all, or is it just humanity’s newest tool?   Enlarge / A view of the stage at TED AI 2023 on October 17, 2023, at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco. (credit: Benj Edwards) SAN FRANCISCO—On Tuesday, dozens of speakers gathered in San Francisco for the first-ever TED conference …

TED AI 2023: A historic symposium on benefits, risks, and applications of AI Read More »

 This troubling ability could be used by scammers or to target ads.   Enlarge (credit: atakan/Getty Images) The way you talk can reveal a lot about you—especially if you’re talking to a chatbot. New research reveals that chatbots like ChatGPT can infer a lot of sensitive information about the people they chat with, even if …

AI chatbots can infer an alarming amount of info about you from your responses Read More »

 Financial risk too great for dev working “in my spare time to help others.”   Enlarge (credit: Jonathan Gitlin) Before last week, owners of certain Mazda vehicles who also had a Home Assistant setup could create some handy connections for their car. A glimpse at some of Home Assistant’s Mazda data potential, before it was …

Mazda’s DMCA takedown kills a hobbyist’s smart car API tool Read More »

 An unknown threat actor is exploiting the vulnerability to create admin accounts.   Enlarge / Cables run into a Cisco data switch. (credit: Getty Images) Cisco is urging customers to protect their devices following the discovery of a critical, actively exploited zero-day vulnerability that’s giving threat actors full administrative control of networks. “Successful exploitation of …

Actively exploited Cisco 0-day with maximum 10 severity gives full network control Read More »

 New policy covers training data and AI output—but no mention of Bard.   Enlarge (credit: Getty Images / Benj Edwards) On Thursday, Google announced that it plans to defend users of its generative AI systems on Google Cloud and Workspace platforms against intellectual property violation claims, reports Reuters. The move follows similar commitments by Microsoft …

Google will shield AI users from copyright challenges, within limits Read More »

 More than 8 years after the adoption of HTTP/2, DDoSers devise rapid reset attack.   Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty) In August and September, threat actors unleashed the biggest distributed denial-of-service attacks in Internet history by exploiting a previously unknown vulnerability in a key technical protocol. Unlike other high-severity zerodays in recent years—Heartbleed or …

Biggest DDoSes of all time generated by protocol 0-day in HTTP/2 Read More »

 New icon, metadata seek to illuminate origins of content—AI-generated or otherwise.   Enlarge / The Content Credentials “CR” logo presented in front of an AI-generated image provided by Adobe. (credit: Adobe) On Tuesday, Adobe announced a new symbol designed to indicate when content has been generated or altered using AI tools, reports The Verge, as …

Adobe launches new symbol to tag AI-generated content—but will anyone use it? Read More »

 Firefly 2 improves detail, Firefly Vector generates scalable vectors from a prompt.   Enlarge / An AI-generated vector graphic of a barbarian and a landscape generated with Adobe Illustrator. (credit: Benj Edwards / Adobe) On Tuesday, Adobe announced major updates to AI image synthesis features across several products, including Photoshop, Illustrator, and Adobe Express. The …

Adobe’s AI image generators get beefy updates, including vector graphics Read More »