Google has decided not to allow the use of Artificial Intelligence software in weapons and in surveillance efforts taken up by the government. Thus, with the latest declaration, the internet juggernaut has put an end to the months of protest put forward by their employees against the Company’s work with the US Military on Project Maven. However, the web search giant is keen to work on other government projects such as cybersecurity, training, military recruitment, veterans architecture, and search & rescue.
Coming to the other news which has hit the cybersecurity headlines, Facebook has disclosed that a new bug which hit its servers last month caused the privacy settings of more than 14 million users go public. The social media giant released an official statement on this note and disclosed that the flaw affected Facebook systems for 10 days in May this year and all users who have been impacted by the flaw will be informed about the flaw via an email notification. Sources reporting to our Cybersecurity Insiders said that the error occurred when Facebook was testing a new feature which accidentally tweaked the privacy settings to go public for a certain section of users.
Marcus Hutchins who stopped the spread of WannaCry Ransomware attack of last year is now facing fresh charges for creating a new notorious malware named ‘UPAS Kit ’ and lying to FBI when confronted. UPAS Kit is said to have the potential to steal personal info from targeted users. In August last year, the same person was arrested for creating Kronos malware which had the potential to steal bank details. At that time, England born Hutchins denied that he was involved in the creation of the said malware. But in reality, his knowledge did help the authors of Kronos malware to create it.
Voice assistants on Smartphones are now being used to analyze your private conversations in order to target ads. This was revealed by Dr. Peter Henway, a senior security consultant for cybersecurity firm Asterisk. The researcher claims that keywords like ‘Hey Siri, Ok Google’ are being picked by apps such as Instagram, facebook, twitter and being used for advertising purposes. That means, whenever you say hey Siri and then within an hour discussing buying a new pair of jeans with your friend in a room, the conversation is being picked up the apps and the timeline is being plastered with advertisements related to clothes or deals offered on different websites. It is said that all internals of the applications send this data in encrypted form, so it’s very difficult to define the exact trigger. Thus, conversation mining is said to be taking place behind our backs via our own smartphones.
