Author Archives: John Brandon

Almost every day, there’s news about a massive data leak — a breach at Yahoo that reveals millions of user accounts, a compromise involving Gmail phishing scams. Security professionals are constantly moving the chess pieces around, but it can be a losing battle.

Yet, there is one ally that has emerged in recent years. Artificial intelligence can stay vigilant at all times, looking for patterns in behavior and alerting you to a new threat.

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Almost every day, there’s news about a massive data leak — a breach at Yahoo that reveals millions of user accounts, a compromise involving Gmail phishing scams. Security professionals are constantly moving the chess pieces around, but it can be a losing battle.

Yet, there is one ally that has emerged in recent years. Artificial intelligence can stay vigilant at all times, looking for patterns in behavior and alerting you to a new threat.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Want to make a cool $20,000?

All you have to do is hack the Nintendo 3DS, a handheld console that’s been out for a few years already. A listing on HackerOne spells everything out: Hackers will receive a cash payment for discovering a vulnerability in the system, which does let gamers make purchases and stores private information like your age and gender. There’s a range for this, of course — some discoveries will pay $100. Also, anyone who files a report must follow the exact template.

It makes you wonder — why would a major Japanese corporation offer a reward like this? Why is it even worth the expense, especially when you know they have internal security researchers?

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A product marketing manager at your company just posted a photo on LinkedIn. The problem? In the background of the image, there’s a Post-It note that contains his network passwords. You can barely see it, but using artificial intelligence algorithms, hackers can scan for the publicly available image, determine there are network passwords, and use them for data theft.

According to data security expert David Maynor, this is not rocket science. In fact, the AI program is easier to use than a search engine. “The AI can identify objects in an image and the environment of the photo, guess at a description of the image contents as well as your likely age, gender, facial expression, and more,” says Maynor. “And these tools are becoming increasingly powerful with every image they scan, learning and becoming more accurate.”

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They have blinking lights and tend to chirp constantly. One of them can vacuum your living room carpet on a schedule. Another can play games with the kids using artificial intelligence.

Yet, for homeowners (and security professionals) there’s a question about whether home robots could become an attack vector for hackers. Tapping into a live webcam feed and recording it? Stealing Wi-Fi information from an unprotected signal so you can transmit illegal wares? What makes a home robot such an ingenious ploy is that few of us think a vacuum could possibly become anything remotely viable for criminal use. Yet, that’s exactly the danger.

“Homeowners never change the default passwords or use simple passwords which can be broken thus allowing hackers to leverage their way onto a home network and use the robot as a pivot point for further exfiltration of sensitive data or plant malware,” says Kevin Curran, a senior lecturer in computer science at the University of Ulster and IEEE member.

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Mobile security is a bit of a misnomer. Few of us can say we’ve been attacked by a piece of malware or have quarantined an actual virus. The odds are stacked against us. Mobile operators like Verizon and Sprint routinely scan for threats, and both Google Android and the Apple iPhone include multiple security measures on their devices, from fingerprint scanners to full encryption.

Yet, there’s a sneaking suspicion that mobile security is a bigger concern. According to one HP report, 67 percent of employees in the U.S. now work remotely. We’re relying on phones more and more. We store sensitive business documents on them and use them to make purchases.

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Mobile security is a bit of a misnomer. Few of us can say we’ve been attacked by a piece of malware or have quarantined an actual virus. The odds are stacked against us. Mobile operators like Verizon and Sprint routinely scan for threats, and both Google Android and the Apple iPhone include multiple security measures on their devices, from fingerprint scanners to full encryption.

Yet, there’s a sneaking suspicion that mobile security is a bigger concern. According to one HP report, 67 percent of employees in the U.S. now work remotely. We’re relying on phones more and more. We store sensitive business documents on them and use them to make purchases.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Wait, what?

If this rumor about Verizon buying Yahoo for $5B is true, we have an honest to goodness schadenfreude moment for me as someone who remembers the days of the Buddy List, giant banner ads (which is actually still common at Yahoo Mail for some reason), and those plastic discs they might still sell at Walmart for gaining “high-speed Internet” access.

As you may know, Verizon also owns AOL. Those three letters, combined with the Yahoo exclamation mark, create some vivid memories. Few of them are good ones. I remember having to wait for my modem to connect to AOL back in the day, and for the banner ads at Yahoo.com to finish loading. It’s a curious development, but it makes about as much sense as other luminous icons of tech combining into an ungodly entity driven by brand dominance.

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