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New ChatGPT rival, Claude 2, launches for open beta testing

posted onJuly 11, 2023
by l33tdawg
Credit: Arstechnica

On Tuesday, Anthropic introduced Claude 2, a large language model (LLM) similar to ChatGPT that can craft code, analyze text, and write compositions. Unlike the original version of Claude launched in March, users can try Claude 2 for free on a new beta website. It's also available as a commercial API for developers.

Russian railway site allegedly taken down by Ukrainian hackers

posted onJuly 5, 2023
by l33tdawg
Credit: The Record

The Russian state-owned railway company RZD said Wednesday that its website and mobile app were down for several hours due to a “massive” cyberattack, forcing passengers to only buy tickets at railway stations.

The Ukrainian hacktivist group IT Army claimed responsibility for the attack on its Telegram channel. “The terrorist state is heading non-stop to the station called Chaos,” the hackers said. The group’s claims could not be immediately verified.

Chinese hackers target European embassies with HTML smuggling technique

posted onJuly 4, 2023
by l33tdawg
Credit: The Record

Chinese cyber spies have been targeting the foreign affairs ministries and embassies of European states in recent months, according to new research.

The espionage campaign “represents a larger trend within the Chinese ecosystem, pointing to a shift to targeting European entities, with a focus on their foreign policy,” researchers from Check Point said Monday.

Cisco urges users to stop using weak crypto algorithms with OSPF

posted onJuly 3, 2023
by l33tdawg
Credit: Wikipedia

To reduce the risk of service problems, Cisco is making it harder for organisations to use weak cryptographic algorithms when setting up authentication for OSPF packets on certain Catalyst Edge Platforms and Integrated Services Routers (ISR).

Newer versions of Cisco’s IOS XE software (Release 17.11.1 and later) no longer support those algorithms—DES, 3DES, and MD5—by default, Cisco stated in a field Notice.

BlackCat Operators Distributing Ransomware Disguised as WinSCP via Malvertising

posted onJuly 3, 2023
by l33tdawg
Credit: THN

Threat actors associated with the BlackCat ransomware have been observed employing malvertising tricks to distribute rogue installers of the WinSCP file transfer application.

"Malicious actors used malvertising to distribute a piece of malware via cloned webpages of legitimate organizations," Trend Micro researchers said in an analysis published last week. "In this case, the distribution involved a webpage of the well-known application WinSCP, an open-source Windows application for file transfer."

Meet the Psychedelic Boom’s First Responders

posted onJuly 3, 2023
by l33tdawg
Credit: Wired

verything was insane and fine. The walls had begun to bend, the grain in the floorboards was starting to run. Jeff Greenberg's body had blown apart into particles, pleasantly so. When he closed his eyes, chrysanthemums blossomed.

A Crypto Micronation’s Future Hangs on a Border Dispute

posted onJuly 3, 2023
by l33tdawg
Credit: Wired

Late one morning in April, a boat called Liberty sailed down the Danube on a reconnaissance mission, toward a destination found on no map or atlas. It was decorated with the yellow livery of the Free Republic of Liberland—a tiny new country in the making on the border between Serbia and Croatia. As Liberty turned onto the river, at the rear of a small convoy, a Croatian police boat pulled out from among the waterside vegetation and began to follow.