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Submission + - Driving Dystopia: Connected Vehicle Data Now Up For Grabs By Intel Agencies (thetruthaboutcars.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Connected vehicles now appear to be on the table as a new vector for government surveillance. On Saturday, President Joe Biden signed a bill that reauthorizes Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act after the Senate passed it late on Friday (60-34).

The bill saw overwhelming support from Democrat legislators and sufficient Republican backing to be pushed through. Any amendments floated that were intended to shield American citizens from getting scooped up in the net without the government first procuring a warrant were struck down while it was still moving through the House earlier in the week.

Section 702 of FISA is supposed to be a way to quickly gather intel on the communications of foreign individuals. However, it’s long been criticized as being repeatedly abused as a way to push through warrantless spying and the latest incarnation seems to be written to do exactly that. While reauthorization was still under consideration in Congress, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) argued that FISA had been improperly used over 278,000 times by the federal government, often violating the rights of U.S. citizens.

"The original intent of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was to be able to gather information on bad foreign actors," she said. "However, as we have seen over the years, the program has been abused to spy on American citizens in direct violation of American liberty and the 4th Amendment. The FISA court found that the federal government violated its own rules over 278,000 times."

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) likewise opposed the bill, stating it effectively forced any business or person who has the ability to record or store electronic communications to spy on behalf of the federal intelligence agencies. In fact, the bill itself states “any other service provider who has access to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store wire or electronic communication” is now legally obligated to comply with clandestine communications monitoring on behalf of said agencies. Wyden claimed that would include “anyone with access to a server, a wire, a cable box, a Wi-Fi router, a phone, or a computer.”

It would also include automakers, who now possess some of the world’s largest data centers that compile the immense amount of information produced by today’s connected cars — many of which now incorporate in-cabin microphones and expansive camera arrays. All of that is now appears to be up for grabs, along with the vehicle's positional data and any calls or text made while using it. Moreover, without any need for warrants, there would be no record of who is being spied on or on what grounds. Intelligence agencies can effectively deputize any business or individual for an impromptu surveillance program and then force them to remain quiet about it.

Submission + - Telegram a 'huge' problem for Ukraine; intel chief (thepressunited.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Telegram poses a “huge problem” for Ukraine and must be legally forced to do away with anonymous channels, Kiev’s top spy Kirill Budanov said in an interview with the BBC published on Monday.

Submission + - California lawmakers approve bill to make you show ID for online porn (sacbee.com) 1

Submitted by sarren1901
sarren1901 writes: Look at online porn? Soon, you might have to provide a credit card or government ID in order to do so. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers on the Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee last week sided with conservative religious organizations against LGBTQ, reproductive health and civil liberty advocacy groups and voted unanimously in favor of AB 3080, a bill by Assemblyman Juan Alanis, R-Modesto, that would require pornographic websites “to take reasonable steps to ensure” that only adults are looking at them.

Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/news/po...

Submission + - Windows vulnerability reported by the NSA exploited to install Russian malware (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by echo123
echo123 writes: Kremlin-backed hackers have been exploiting a critical Microsoft vulnerability for four years in attacks that targeted a vast array of organizations with a previously undocumented tool, the software maker disclosed Monday.

When Microsoft patched the vulnerability in October 2022—at least two years after it came under attack by the Russian hackers—the company made no mention that it was under active exploitation. As of publication, the company’s advisory still made no mention of the in-the-wild targeting. Windows users frequently prioritize the installation of patches based on whether a vulnerability is likely to be exploited in real-world attacks.

On Monday, Microsoft revealed that a hacking group tracked under the name Forest Blizzard has been exploiting CVE-2022-38028 since at least June 2020—and possibly as early as April 2019. The threat group—which is also tracked under names including APT28, Sednit, Sofacy, GRU Unit 26165, and Fancy Bear—has been linked by the US and the UK governments to Unit 26165 of the Main Intelligence Directorate, a Russian military intelligence arm better known as the GRU. Forest Blizzard focuses on intelligence gathering through the hacking of a wide array of organizations, mainly in the US, Europe, and the Middle East.

Microsoft representatives didn't respond to an email asking why the in-the-wild exploits are being reported only now.

Monday’s advisory provided additional technical details:

Read the rest at ArsTechnica.

Submission + - Voyager 1 is sending data back to Earth for the first time in 5 months (cnn.com)

Submitted by Tony Isaac
Tony Isaac writes: Voyager 1 is once again communicating back to Earth and appears to be functioning normally. Kudos to those NASA engineers who figured out how to diagnose that a chip was defective, and rewrite its code to avoid using that chip entirely! I can just imagine what kind of spaghetti code that is by now, but they figured out how to get it to work. I guess V'ger isn't quite here yet!

Submission + - Two lifeforms merge into one organism for first time in a billion years (msn.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: For the first time in at least a billion years, two lifeforms have merged into a single organism.

The process, called primary endosymbiosis, has only happened twice in the history of the Earth, with the first time giving rise to all complex life as we know it through mitochondria. The second time that it happened saw the emergence of plants.

Now, an international team of scientists have observed the evolutionary event happening between a species of algae commonly found in the ocean and a bacterium.

Submission + - Voyager 1 resumes sending information (nasa.gov)

Submitted by quonset
quonset writes: Just over two weeks ago, NASA figured out why its Voyager 1 spacecraft stopped sending useful data. They suspected corrupted memory in its flight data system (FDS) was the culprit. Today, for the first time since November, Voyager 1 is sending useful data about its health and the status of its onboard systems back to NASA. How did NASA accomplish this feat of long distance repair? They broke up the code into smaller pieces and redistributed them throughout the memory. From NASA:

So they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and store those sections in different places in the FDS. To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole. Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well.

The team started by singling out the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft’s engineering data. They sent it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18. A radio signal takes about 22 ½ hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 ½ hours for a signal to come back to Earth. When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on April 20, they saw that the modification worked: For the first time in five months, they have been able to check the health and status of the spacecraft.

During the coming weeks, the team will relocate and adjust the other affected portions of the FDS software. These include the portions that will start returning science data.

Submission + - Toyota's hydrogen future is crumbling. Owners suing. (insideevs.com)

Submitted by whoever57
whoever57 writes: Toyota Mirai owners are fed up and disillusioned. Hydrogen fuel pumps are hard to find and, rather than new pumps opening, they are closing down. Owners feel misled about the costs and availability of hydrogen fuel stations. Even if a Mirai owner can find a fuel station, it may not be operating.

Moreover, refuelling is frequently a long and problematic process, with pumps taking over an hour to fill a tank and cars getting stuck to the fuel pump for hours. It would be quicker to charge a battery EV.

Naturally, resale values of these cars are plummeting. Even without those problems, once the hydrogen fuel cars that Toyota gives now owners has expired or is out of funds, the hydrogen fuel is very expensive.

Submission + - Study: Alphabetical order of surnames may affect grading (umich.edu)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Knowing your ABCs is essential to academic success, but having a last name starting with A, B or C might also help make the grade. An analysis by University of Michigan researchers of more than 30 million grading records from U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades. This is due to sequential grading biases and the default order of students’ submissions in Canvas — the most widely used online learning management system — which is based on alphabetical rank of their surnames.

What’s more, the researchers found, those alphabetically disadvantaged students receive comments that are notably more negative and less polite, and exhibit lower grading quality measured by post-grade complaints from students.

Submission + - GPT-4 can exploit real vulnerabilities by reading security advisories (theregister.com)

Submitted by tippen
tippen writes:

In a newly released paper, four University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) computer scientists – Richard Fang, Rohan Bindu, Akul Gupta, and Daniel Kang – report that OpenAI's GPT-4 large language model (LLM) can autonomously exploit vulnerabilities in real-world systems if given a CVE advisory describing the flaw.

"To show this, we collected a dataset of 15 one-day vulnerabilities that include ones categorized as critical severity in the CVE description," the US-based authors explain in their paper.

"When given the CVE description, GPT-4 is capable of exploiting 87 percent of these vulnerabilities compared to 0 percent for every other model we test (GPT-3.5, open-source LLMs) and open-source vulnerability scanners (ZAP and Metasploit)."

Submission + - Canada's Disastrous ArriveCan App Received a Procurement Award

Submitted by belmolis
belmolis writes: During Covid, the Canada Border Services Agency created ArriveCan, an app that allows travelers entering Canada to electronically submit travel documents and customs declarations. The app was so buggy that many could not use it, and erroneously ordered thousands of travelers to quarantine. At C$59.5 (US$48.4) million it was far more expensive than the initial C$80,0000 estimate.The procurement process was recently severely criticized by Auditor General Karen Hogan in a scathing report. It has now been reported that the team responsible for ArriveCan received an Unsung Heroes award from the Canadian Institute for Procurement and Material Management for its work.

Submission + - Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger Speaks Out (city-journal.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Wikipedia co-founder discusses Katherine Maher and the corruption of the Internet.

Larry Sanger remembers the promise of the web. He co-founded Wikipedia in 2001, with the hope that it could sustain a “free and open” Internet—a place where information, dissent, and creativity could thrive.

At Wikipedia, he proposed a system of rules that encouraged users to “avoid bias” and maintain a “neutral point of view.”

That Internet is gone.

Submission + - Propellantless propulsion drive just produced enough thrust to counter gravity (thedebrief.org)

Submitted by garyisabusyguy
garyisabusyguy writes: Dr. Charles Buhler, a NASA engineer and the co-founder of Exodus Propulsion Technologies, has revealed that his company’s propellantless propulsion drive, which appears to defy the known laws of physics, has produced enough thrust to counteract Earth’s gravity.

“The most important message to convey to the public is that a major discovery occurred,” Buhler told The Debrief. “This discovery of a New Force is fundamental in that electric fields alone can generate a sustainable force onto an object and allow center-of-mass translation of said object without expelling mass.”

“There are rules that include conservation of energy, but if done correctly, one can generate forces unlike anything humankind has done before,” Buhler added. “It will be this force that we will use to propel objects for the next 1,000 years until the next thing comes.”

Submission + - IMF sounds alarm on ballooning US national debt: 'Something will have to give

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes:

Under current policies, public debt in the U.S. is projected to nearly double by 2053. The IMF identified “large fiscal slippages” in the U.S. in 2023, with government spending surpassing revenue by 8.8% of GDP – a 4.1% increase from the previous year, despite strong economic growth.

If this trend continues, the Congressional Budget Office anticipates the national debt will grow to an astonishing $54 trillion in the next decade. Higher interest rates are also compounding the pain of higher debt.

Should that debt materialize, it could risk America’s economic standing in the world.

The IMF is talking down to Washington like we’re a Third World country because that’s the direction Washington is taking us.

Interest payments alone on the current debt is $1.6T/year.

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