#arstechnica

joseph_teller@diaspora.glasswings.com

Novel attack against virtually all VPN apps neuters their entire purpose

TunnelVision, as the researchers have named their attack, largely negates the entire purpose and selling point of VPNs, which is to encapsulate incoming and outgoing Internet traffic in an encrypted tunnel and to cloak the user’s IP address. The researchers believe it affects all VPN applications when they’re connected to a hostile network and that there are no ways to prevent such attacks except when the user's VPN runs on Linux or Android. They also said their attack technique may have been possible since 2002 and may already have been discovered and used in the wild since then.

Your VPN may not actually be functioning

#VPNs #ArsTechnica #Computers #Linux #TunnelVisionVulnerability #Android

birne@diaspora.psyco.fr

Viral news story of botnet with 3 million toothbrushes was too good to be true

Alas, fiction is sometimes stranger than truth. There weren't really 3 million Internet-connected toothbrushes accessing the website of a Swiss company in a DDoS attack that did millions of dollars of damage. The toothbrush botnet was just a hypothetical example that some journalists wrongly interpreted as having actually happened.

Ping @sfb@nerdpol.ch

#ArsTechnica #ToothBrush #DDoS #Journalism #WheresStanleyBTW

smokeinfog@diasp.org

The amazing helicopter on Mars, Ingenuity, will fly no more

Ingenuity has spent more than two hours flying above Mars since April 2021.

Something has gone wrong with NASA's Ingenuity helicopter on the surface of Mars. Although the US space agency has not made any public announcements yet, a source told Ars that the plucky flying vehicle had an accident on its last flight and broke one of its blades. It will not fly anymore. (Shortly after this article was published, NASA confirmed the end of Ingenuity's mission).

When it launched to Mars more than three years ago, the small Ingenuity helicopter was an experimental mission, a challenge to NASA engineers to see if they could devise and build a vehicle that could make a powered flight on another world.

This was especially difficulty on Mars, which has a very thin atmosphere, with a pressure of less than 1 percent that of Earth's. The solution they landed on was a very light 4-lb helicopter with four blades. It was hoped that Ingenuity would make a handful of flights and provide NASA with some valuable testing data.

But it turns out that Ingenuity had other ideas. Since its deployment from the Perseverance rover in April 2021, the helicopter has flown a staggering 72 flights. It has spent more than two hours—128.3 minutes, to be precise—flying through the thin Martian air. Over that time, it flew 11 miles, or 17 km, performing invaluable scouting and scientific investigations. It has been a huge win for NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, one of the greatest spaceflight stories of this decade.

. . .

#Ingenuity #NASA #Mars #helicoptor #Perseverance #space #science #engineering #innovation #ArsTechnica

joseph_teller@diaspora.glasswings.com

Marketer sparks panic with claims it uses smart devices to eavesdrop on people

(Note the article attempts to downplay the claims by the companies involved but it doesn't actually prove that they don't do exactly what they said they were doing.... listening in on the microphone)

Your Smart Phone Is Possibly Spying On You And Recording Your Conversations Near It

#News #Smartphones #Spying #ActiveEavesdropping #CMG #ArsTechnica #CoxMediaGroup #Technology

smokeinfog@diasp.org

Nature bans AI-generated art from its 153-year-old science journal | Ars Technica

. . .

"Apart from in articles that are specifically about AI, Nature will not be publishing any content in which photography, videos or illustrations have been created wholly or partly using generative AI, at least for the foreseeable future," the publication wrote in a piece attributed to itself.

The publication considers the issue to fall under its ethical guidelines covering integrity and transparency in its published works, and that includes being able to cite sources of data within images:

"Why are we disallowing the use of generative AI in visual content? Ultimately, it is a question of integrity. The process of publishing — as far as both science and art are concerned — is underpinned by a shared commitment to integrity. That includes transparency. As researchers, editors and publishers, we all need to know the sources of data and images, so that these can be verified as accurate and true. Existing generative AI tools do not provide access to their sources so that such verification can happen."

As a result, all artists, filmmakers, illustrators, and photographers commissioned by Nature "will be asked to confirm that none of the work they submit has been generated or augmented using generative AI."

. . .

#Nature #science #journal #AI #generativeAI #artificalIntelligence #ArsTechnica

birne@diaspora.psyco.fr

EU threatens Musk with Twitter ban as firm defends new approach to moderation

According to the Financial Times, "Breton told Musk that Twitter must adhere to a checklist of rules, including ditching an 'arbitrary' approach to reinstating banned users, pursuing disinformation 'aggressively' and agreeing to an 'extensive independent audit' of the platform by next year."

#ArsTechnica #Twatter #EU #Elmo

birne@diaspora.psyco.fr

Musk faces fines if Twitter’s gutted child safety team becomes overwhelmed

According to Wired, there’s only one child safety team member left to handle all the reports coming from the Asia-Pacific region. This means Twitter has one expert who understands both regional laws to coordinate with law enforcement and evolving code words used in languages other than English in that region to evade detection.

That means his “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach” promise (planning to contain non-criminal hate speech and information simply by not promoting it to Twitter users) is not an acceptable strategy for dealing with CSAM. Especially in Europe, lawmakers are cracking down on CSAM, with new laws dictating how platforms approach online child safety. Musk could continue losing money on Twitter if he risks fines, which could be as high as 10 percent of Twitter’s revenue, for breaking child safety laws.

#ArsTechnica #Twatter #Elmo