Cyber Security Today, Week in Review for the week ending Friday, Sept. 29, 2023
This episode features discussion on October Security Awareness Month, ransomware, teenage hackers and the start of hearings into proposed Canadian privacy a
H&R Block sued for sharing tax data with Meta and Google
A class action lawsuit is alleging that H&R Block, Google, and Meta “jointly schemed” to install trackers on the H&R Block site to scan and transmit tax data back to the tech companies, which then used the data for targeted advertising. The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of California, stems from a Congressional report […]
DeepMind rolls out human-style encouragement to enhance AI math abilities
Google DeepMind researchers have developed a new technique to improve the math ability of AI language models by using human-style encouragement. The technique, called Optimization by PROmpting (OPRO), uses natural language to guide the language model in problem-solving. OPRO improves LLMs using natural language. It uses two LLMs; one to rate solutions and one to […]
Admins urged to quickly patch holes in WS_FTP file transfer server
This is the fourth file transfer application — and the second from Progress Software — to recently face critical vulne
X disables election misinformation reporting
X (formerly Twitter) has reportedly disabled a feature that allowed users to report misinformation about elections, a move that has sparked fears of a surge in disinformation ahead of key elections in Australia and the United States. The feature, which was introduced in 2021, allowed users to select “Report Content,” then “It’s misleading,” and then […]
Cloudflare, Meta partner to democratize AI with Llama 2
Cloudflare has partnered with Meta to make the Llama 2 open-source large language model (LLM) available to developers building AI applications on Cloudflare’s developer platform, Workers. LLMs are a type of artificial intelligence that can generate and understand text, translate languages, and write different kinds of creative content. They are trained on massive datasets of […]
Epic Games cuts 870 jobs, sells Bandcamp
Epic Games, the maker of one of the world’s most successful video games, Fortnite, is laying off 870 jobs – around 16% of its workforce. The company is also selling Bandcamp, the online music site it acquired just last year. In a memo to staff, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said that the company had tried […]
Reddit removes user control over personalized ads
Reddit is removing the ability for users to opt out of personalized ads based on their site activity. The change, which is expected to take effect over the next few days, will apply to all users except those in “select” countries that Reddit has not yet specified. In a post to the r/reddit subreddit, Reddit’s […]
Meta’s AI Assistant trained on public posts
Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company has revealed through Nick Clegg, its President of Global Affairs, its strategy for training its new Meta AI virtual assistant. According to Meta, it uses public Facebook and Instagram posts as a part of the training data for its Meta AI. However, it excludes private posts shared exclusively with […]
Cyber Security Today, Sept. 29, 2023 – Protect your routers from this attacker, new open-source malware packages found, and more
This episode reports on a China-based group that specializes in hacking branch office routers of major
