Industry News

CISA says two systems were hacked in February through vulnerabilities in Ivanti products. In response, the agency had to shut down both systems, which reportedly had critical ties to U.S. infrastructure.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is a government agency responsible for basically enhancing the United States’ overall cybersecurity posture. It was established within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in November 2018, primarily in response to rising concerns around cyber threats and the protection of critical infrastructure.

Computer scientists have discovered a new way to multiply large matrices faster than ever before by eliminating a previously unknown inefficiency, reports Quanta Magazine. This could eventually accelerate AI models like ChatGPT, which rely heavily on matrix multiplication to function. The findings, presented in two recent papers, have led to what is reported to be the biggest improvement in matrix multiplication efficiency in over a decade.

Two teenage boys from Miami, Florida, were arrested in December for allegedly creating and sharing AI-generated nude images of male and female classmates without consent, according to police reports obtained by WIRED via public record request.

The arrest reports say the boys, aged 13 and 14, created the images of the students who were “between the ages of 12 and 13.”

The China-linked threat actor known as Evasive Panda orchestrated both watering hole and supply chain attacks targeting Tibetan users at least since September 2023.

The end of the attacks is to deliver malicious downloaders for Windows and macOS that deploy a known backdoor called MgBot and a previously undocumented Windows implant known as Nightdoor.

The House Commerce Committee today voted 50-0 to approve a bill that would force TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the company or lose access to the US market.

CEO George Kurtz told CNBC’s Jim Cramer that cybercriminals are growing because they increasingly have access to advanced generative artificial intelligence and can carry about attacks even if they themselves are less skilled.

He said generative AI is democratizing “very esoteric techniques and attacks,” for adversaries who don’t have the same sophistication or skill level.

San Francisco made history in 2019 when its Board of Supervisors voted to ban city agencies including the police department from using face recognition. About two dozen other US cities have since followed suit. But on Tuesday San Francisco voters appeared to turn against the idea of restricting police technology, backing a ballot proposition that will make it easier for city police to deploy drones and other surveillance tools.

On Tuesday, OpenAI published a blog post titled "OpenAI and Elon Musk" in response to a lawsuit Musk filed last week. The ChatGPT maker shared several archived emails from Musk that suggest he once supported a pivot away from open source practices in the company's quest to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI). The selected emails also imply that the "open" in "OpenAI" means that the ultimate result of its research into AGI should be open to everyone but not necessarily "open source" along the way.

Counterpoint Research has an interesting new report on the return of Huawei in China. Market share for the Chinese government's favorite tech company has shot up 64 percent for the first six weeks of 2024. Counterpoint says this is thanks to "continued demand for Huawei’s Mate 60 series," Huawei's first big smartphone release in its US-sanctions comeback tour.

In a notable shift toward sanctioned use of AI in schools, some educators in grades 3–12 are now using a ChatGPT-powered grading tool called Writable, reports Axios. The tool, acquired last summer by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, is designed to streamline the grading process, potentially offering time-saving benefits for teachers. But is it a good idea to outsource critical feedback to a machine?