Comment PatchWorks (Score 1) 69
The nickname we used for PathWorks was PatchWorks due to obvious reasons, but I give credit to the solution successfully scaling up to run Windows file sharing for many hundreds of PCs in the mid 90s.
Submission + - macOS Malware Used Run-Only AppleScripts To Avoid Detection For Five Years (zdnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes: For more than five years, macOS users have been the targets of a sneaky malware operation that used a clever trick to avoid detection and hijacked the hardware resources of infected users to mine cryptocurrency behind their backs. Named OSAMiner, the malware has been distributed in the wild since at least 2015 disguised in pirated (cracked) games and software such as League of Legends and Microsoft Office for Mac, security firm SentinelOne said in a report published this week. But the cryptominer did not go entirely unnoticed. SentinelOne said that two Chinese security firms spotted and analyzed older versions of the OSAMiner in August and September 2018, respectively. But their reports only scratched the surface of what OSAMiner was capable of, SentinelOne macOS malware researcher Phil Stokes said yesterday.
The primary reason was that security researchers weren't able to retrieve the malware's entire code at the time, which used nested run-only AppleScript files to retrieve its malicious code across different stages. As users installed the pirated software, the boobytrapped installers would download and run a run-only AppleScript, which would download and run a second run-only AppleScript, and then another final third run-only AppleScript. Since "run-only" AppleScript come in a compiled state where the source code isn't human-readable, this made analysis harder for security researchers.
The primary reason was that security researchers weren't able to retrieve the malware's entire code at the time, which used nested run-only AppleScript files to retrieve its malicious code across different stages. As users installed the pirated software, the boobytrapped installers would download and run a run-only AppleScript, which would download and run a second run-only AppleScript, and then another final third run-only AppleScript. Since "run-only" AppleScript come in a compiled state where the source code isn't human-readable, this made analysis harder for security researchers.
Submission + - Calculations Show It'll Be Impossible to Control a Super-Intelligent AI (sciencealert.com)
schwit1 writes: The catch is that controlling a super-intelligence far beyond human comprehension would require a simulation of that super-intelligence which we can analyse. But if we're unable to comprehend it, it's impossible to create such a simulation.
Rules such as 'cause no harm to humans' can't be set if we don't understand the kind of scenarios that an AI is going to come up with, suggest the authors of the new paper. Once a computer system is working on a level above the scope of our programmers, we can no longer set limits.
"A super-intelligence poses a fundamentally different problem than those typically studied under the banner of 'robot ethics'," write the researchers.
If we are going to push ahead with artificial intelligence, we might not even know when a super-intelligence beyond our control arrives, such is its incomprehensibility. That means we need to start asking some serious questions about the directions we're going in.
Rules such as 'cause no harm to humans' can't be set if we don't understand the kind of scenarios that an AI is going to come up with, suggest the authors of the new paper. Once a computer system is working on a level above the scope of our programmers, we can no longer set limits.
"A super-intelligence poses a fundamentally different problem than those typically studied under the banner of 'robot ethics'," write the researchers.
If we are going to push ahead with artificial intelligence, we might not even know when a super-intelligence beyond our control arrives, such is its incomprehensibility. That means we need to start asking some serious questions about the directions we're going in.
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