The massive computer outage over the weekend was not a cyber attack, and I’m not sure why we have to keep saying that

Youre not going to believe this, but there was a lot of misinformation on social media over the weekend after the massive CrowdStrike/Microsoft outage. As airlines cancelled flights, hospitals had to reschedule patients and some companies just flat-out couldnt work on Friday, people were quick to...

Checking in on the state of cybersecurity and the Olympics

With the 2024 Olympics Opening Ceremony only two weeks away now, there is one thing thats an absolute guarantee of one thing happening during the traditionally unpredictable games: Cyber attacks. Every time there is a new Olympic Games, theres a renewed discussion about how threat actors,...

Rethinking Democracy for the Age of AI

There is a lot written about technologys threats to democracy. Polarization. Artificial intelligence. The concentration of wealth and power. I have a more general story: The political and economic systems of governance that were created in the mid-18th century are poorly suited for the 21st...

Enjin: Cloudflare /cdn-cgi/ path allows resizing images from unauthorised sources on enjinusercontent.com

The Cloudflare /cdn-cgi/ path on enjinusercontent.com was discovered to allow resizing and rendering of images from unauthorized sources without restriction. This behavior could have led to HTML injection, SSRF, and portal scanning attacks, as well as the unrestricted display of external resource...

The sliding doors of misinformation that come with AI-generated search results

As someone who used to think that his entire livelihood would come from writing, Ive long wondered if any sort of computer or AI could replace my essential functions at work. For now, it seems there are enough holes in AI-generated language that my ability to write down a complete, accurate and...

Could the Brazilian Supreme Court finally hold people accountable for sharing disinformation?

If youre a regular reader of this newsletter, you already know about how strongly I feel about the dangers of spreading fake news, disinformation and misinformation. And honestly, if youre reading this newsletter, I probably shouldnt have to tell you about that either. But one of the things that...

AI and the Evolution of Social Media

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. A decade ago, social media was celebrated for sparking democratic uprisings in the Arab world and beyond. Now front pages are splashed with stories of social platforms’ role in misinformation, business conspiracy, malfeasance, and risks to mental health. In a 2022...

Not everything has to be a massive, global cyber attack

Some of my Webex rooms recently have been blowing up with memes about blaming Canada or wild speculation that a state-sponsored actor is carrying out some sort of major campaign. After a widespread outage of cellular service with AT&T and other carriers a few weeks ago, people were sure it was so...

Researchers Highlight Google's Gemini AI Susceptibility to LLM Threats

Google's Gemini large language model LLM is susceptible to security threats that could cause it to divulge system prompts, generate harmful content, and carry out indirect injection attacks. The findings come from HiddenLayer, which said the issues impact consumers using Gemini Advanced with Goog...

How Public AI Can Strengthen Democracy

With the worlds focus turning to misinformation, manipulation, and outright propaganda ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, we know that democracy has an AI problem. But were learning that AI has a democracy problem, too. Both challenges must be addressed for the sake of democratic...

TikTok’s latest actions to combat misinformation shows it’s not just a U.S. problem

When we talk about the term "fake news," most people likely picture a certain person who made the term infamous. And when we talk about misinformation and disinformation, many will remember the "Russian troll farms" that popped up during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and were unmasked and...

Why the toothbrush DDoS story fooled us all

Ill be the first to admit that, like many people on the internet last week, I got caught up in the toothbrush distributed denial-of-service attack that wasnt. I had a whole section on it written up in last weeks newsletter, and then I came across Graham Cluleys blog post debunking the whole thing...

AI-generated voices in robocalls are illegal, rules FCC

The Federal Communications Commission FCC has announced that calls made with voices generated with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI will be considered “artificial” under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act TCPA. Effective immediately, that makes robocalls that implement voice cloning...

SEC X (Twitter) Account Hacked, Spreads Fake News About Bitcoin ETFs

By Deeba Ahmed Bitcoin's price spiked near $48,000 after the fake post but later fell to around $45,700. This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: SEC X Twitter Account Hacked, Spreads Fake News About Bitcoin ETFs...

A personal Year in Review to round out 2023

As youve probably seen by now, Talos released our 2023 Year in Review report last week. Its an extremely comprehensive look at the top threats, attacker trends and malware families from the past year with never-before-seen Cisco Talos telemetry. We have podcasts, long-form videos and even Reddit...

Offensive and Defensive AI: Let's Chat(GPT) About It

ChatGPT: Productivity tool, great for writing poems, and… a security risk?! In this article, we show how threat actors can exploit ChatGPT, but also how defenders can use it for leveling up their game. ChatGPT is the most swiftly growing consumer application to date. The extremely popular...

YouTube makes sweeping changes to tackle spam on Shorts videos

YouTube is rolling out unclickable links. Video portals like YouTube have had to deal with spam comments and bogus links for many years. With new additions to a platform come new places for scammers to go about their business. YouTube is now cracking down on links posted to the comments section o...

Improper Authorization

gitlab is vulnerable to Improper Authorization. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to add malicious comments to vulnerabilities, which could then be seen by other users. These malicious comments could contain misinformation or phishing links, which could be used to deceive users and...

Debunking misinformation about Opera’s browsers

Privacy, Security Debunking misinformation about Opera’s browsers Share July 6th, 2023 At Opera, we take the privacy and security of our users very seriously. As a European company, we have to be compliant with the GDPR – one of the strongest, if not the strongest, data protection frameworks in t...

Code injection

In Wi-Fi, there is a possible low throughput due to misrepresentation of critical information. This could lead to remote denial of service with no additional execution privileges needed. User interaction is not needed for exploitation. Patch ID: GN20220829014; Issue ID: GN20220829014...