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In late September 2021, the U.S. Department of Treasury (DoT) levied sanctions against the Russian cryptocurrency exchange Suex for the laundering of transactions from at least eight ransomware groups. This latest move to “follow the money” is designed to hinder ransomware operations that rely on cryptocurrency to receive payments from victims. Per the Department of…
In August of 2020, Matt Devost and Bob Gourley spoke with Chet Richards, a close associate of the late US Air Force Colonel John Boyd. Richards was there as the concept of the OODA Loop was being developed. Chet is the author of “Certain to Win”, the first book to describe how the OODA Loop…
What is the future of the Global Semiconductor Supply Chain? According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), China has a strategic framework for building a competitive advantage in the semiconductor industry. Implementation measures have also been announced by the Chines government that “encourage U.S. and foreign semiconductor companies to transfer certain technology, intellectual property (IP),…
Management guru Peter Drucker said, “what gets measured gets managed.” Which helps to explain why Cybersecurity Awareness Month is such a bad idea.
Facebook has been headlining the news the last three days – and not in a good way. Why are the scale, scope, and impact of Facebook and its family of social media platforms (Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.) so important?
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) recently fined three former National Security Agency (NSA) hackers who worked as service contractors for a United Arab Emirates (UAE) cybersecurity company named DarkMatter. These three individuals were not the only former ex-U.S. Intelligence officers working for the company. DarkMatter employed more than a dozen former NSA hackers who…
In March of this year, Bob spoke with Ellen McCarthy, a highly accomplished and distinguished executive who reached the very highest echelons of the US intelligence community. In January, Bob had a conversation with Kathy and Randy Pherson. The Phersons had successful careers in the US Intelligence Community, where they pioneered new analytical methods and…
On Draft Day, the 50 elite players from the US Cyber Combine Invitational comes down to the final 20 athletes who will be announced as members of the first U.S. Cyber Team. The Team will represent the United States at the inaugural global competition: The International Cyber Security Challenge (ICSC) held in Athens, Greece in June 2022.
The September monthly meeting covered a range of issues, from planning for an upcoming OODA Network wargame exercise to a recent cyber vulnerability and mitigation, future research on CISA and critical infrastructure, and recent events in France surrounding the discovery of IEDs with uranium traces.
In February of this year, Matt Devost spoke to Rob Richer, a highly regarded advisor to international executives and global government leaders including several heads of state. In October of 2020, Bob Gourley had a conversation with Rear Admiral Paul Becker, USN (Retired). In January of 2021, Admiral Beck also took part in an OODA…
Foresight strategy (scenario planning), as a discipline, requires setting up signal and sensemaking mechanisms to have the most unique ideas, projects, and mental models on hand when devising futures. The experience economy, or experiential learning, is a rewarding method for sensemaking. The Liberty Experience caught our eye, and we thought the OODA Loop Network would…
Disaster conditions will clearly be more impactful and more frequent due to the impact of climate change. The domestic terrorism threat stateside is becoming a constant, with the impact and frequency of growing domestic U.S. political instability and public safety incidents to be determined. We will need systems that are monitoring these temporal, ephemeral ecosystems…
We are entering an era when on-the-ground conditions and real-time disaster-level information flows grow in their value in the aftermath of more frequent and mounting disaster conditions. Is there a wave of democratization of access to tools and/or product commercialization ahead in this space? For now, the following are some current signals and use cases…
In August, Bob Gourley had a far-ranging conversation with Sir David Omand. One of the most respected intelligence professionals in the world, Omand is also the author of the book How Spies Think: Ten lessons in intelligence. In May of 2020, Bob’s OODAcast conversation was with Carmen Medina, who served 32 years in senior positions…
This most recent Russian election provides clear evidence that the Russian Government is meddling as much in their own elections, to achieve the Kremlin-designed outcome, as they have in recent American elections – with one RFE/RL headline proclaiming: “Hacking Servers. Online Blocking. Police Raids. Information Attacks. What Won’t The Kremlin Do To Stop ‘Smart Voting’?”
After seemingly lurking on the sidelines most of last year, Apple is starting to shake things up in the field of artificial intelligence—and open-source AI in particular. The Cupertino-based tech giant has partnered with the University of Santa Barbara to develop an AI model that can edit images based on natural language, the same way people…
Security analysts and officials have said they believe the risk of a nuclear weapon being used somewhere, while still small, has increased to a level not seen in decades. China’s military strategists are now “looking to nuclear weapons not only as a defensive shield, but as a potential sword — to intimidate and subjugate adversaries.”…
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping have spoken about creating a ‘multipolar, fairer world order’ in face of US-led efforts to contain their countries. During an hour-long phone call on Thursday, Xi and Putin denounced the “US policy of interfering in the internal affairs of other states”, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told…
Russia and Ukraine have each exchanged 100 prisoners of war (POWs) following mediation by the United Arab Emirates. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country “will make every effort to continue prisoner exchanges”, in a Friday post on X. So far, 3,135 Ukrainian POWs have been freed from Russian captivity. In January, the two countries…
OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, is gearing up to revolutionize task automation with its latest venture into agent software. This cutting-edge technology aims to streamline complex tasks by seamlessly taking control of users’ devices, heralding a new era of efficiency and productivity. Meanwhile, as the world eagerly anticipates the deployment of these innovative assistants, OpenAI’s CEO…
Right around the time you are getting this email, Google finally released their long-awaited powerful AI, which, in the continued tradition of sudden AI name changes, is no longer Bard but rather Gemini Advanced. I have had early access to this LLM for over a month (as a reminder, I take no payments from any…
The Biden administration on Thursday said leading artificial intelligence companies are among more than 200 entities joining a new U.S. consortium to support the safe development and deployment of generative AI. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced the U.S. AI Safety Institute Consortium (AISIC), which includes OpenAI, Alphabet, Anthropic and Microsoft along with Facebook-parent Meta Platforms,…
Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai still loves the web. He wakes up every morning and reads Techmeme, a news aggregator resplendent with links, accessible only via the web. The web is dynamic and resilient, he says, and can still—with help from a search engine—provide whatever information a person is looking for. Yet the web and its…
First, there were talking digital assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant. Then there were online chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Bard. Now, the two are merging. On Thursday, Google introduced Gemini, a smartphone app that behaves like a talking digital assistant as well as a conversational chatbot. Responding to voice and text requests, it…
Google recently announced a new feature of Google Play Protect, which will block the installation of sideloaded applications that request sensitive permissions on Android devices. Fraudsters frequently leverage these permissions to intercept passwords via SMS or notifications. The feature will specifically scan for four requests from apps in real-time: RECEIVE_SMS, READ_SMS, BIND_Notifications, and Accessibility. If…
Pakistan has begun counting votes after general election polling ended on Thursday. Pakistan has experienced phone outages, militant attacks, and widespread violence during the highly polarized voting period. On Wednesday, an Islamic State attack on electoral candidates’ offices in Balochistan province killed 26 people. Despite a widespread troop deployment across the country and the temporary…
On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected ceasefire and hostage release terms proposed by Hamas as strikes continued on Gaza’s southernmost border city of Rafah. Netanyahu called Hamas’s proposal “delusional” and claimed victory is only months away. Before Netanyahu’s rejection of the proposal, intense diplomatic efforts tried to prevent conflict from reaching Rafah, where…
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service stated that North Koreans working in China have staged rare protests in response to poor working conditions and various “incidents and accidents.” In one instance in late January, as many as 3,000 North Koreans working at a military-affiliated trading company protested due to unpaid wages and strict pandemic-era lockdowns. China…
USCENTCOM announced that they conducted an airstrike in Baghdad that killed at least one Kataib Hezbollah commander. Kataib Hezbollah is the organization responsible for a drone attack that killed three U.S. troops and injured dozens at Tower 22 in Jordan in late January. The now-deceased commander was Abu Baqir al-Saadi, who was in charge of…
Multiple cybersecurity organizations identified a vulnerability in Shim, a small application involved in the secure boot process of most Linux distributions (CVE-2023-40547). A NIST advisory rated the vulnerability as critical with a CVSS score of 9.8, and a Red Hat advisory rated the vulnerability as high with a CVSS score of 8.3. The flaw in…
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published a joint advisory on Wednesday that stated that the Chinese state-sponsored Volt Typhoon hacking group retains persistent access to numerous U.S. critical infrastructure organizations. CISA added that Volt Typhoon has remained in some IT environments for over five years without detection and is likely “pre-positioning” itself…
Verizon Communications first informed the Maine Attorney General’s Office on December 12, 2023, that they suffered an internal data breach on September 21, 2023. An unauthorized Verizon employee acquired a file that contained names, addresses, social security numbers, union affiliations, compensation rates, and other personally identifiable information of thousands of Verizon employees. Verizon recently told…
Russian missile and drone strikes targeted multiple cities across Ukraine, resulting in at least five deaths and numerous injuries. The attacks, which occurred in Kyiv, Mykolaiv, and other locations, caused extensive damage to residential buildings and infrastructure. Ukrainian authorities reported intercepting a significant number of missiles and drones, with Kyiv’s mayor noting that a downed…
Former Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, aged 74, tragically died in a helicopter crash near Lago Ranco in southern Chile, with reports indicating he was piloting the aircraft. Piñera, a billionaire businessman who served two terms as president, drowned in the crash, while three other passengers survived. His death prompted national mourning and tributes. Piñera, known…
Sudan has experienced a widespread internet blackout, leading many to attribute the disruption to the paramilitary group involved in the country’s 10-month civil war, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). However, the RSF has denied responsibility. NetBlocks, an internet freedom watchdog, reported a significant collapse in internet connectivity in Sudan, coinciding with a Sudanese hacktivist group…
Two bomb explosions occurred near candidates’ offices in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, killing at least 28 people and injuring many others on the eve of general elections. The first blast in Pishin district claimed 16 lives, while a second explosion in Qila Saifullah resulted in 12 deaths. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks. Balochistan,…
JetBrains issued a warning about a critical authentication bypass vulnerability in TeamCity, a widely-used build management server, which could be exploited remotely for arbitrary code execution. Tracked as CVE-2024-23917 with a CVSS score of 9.8, the flaw affects all TeamCity On-Premises versions from 2017.1 through 2023.11.2 and was discovered on January 19, 2024. Exploiting the…
Verizon Communications is informing over 63,000 employees about a data breach that exposed their personal information. Discovered on December 12, 2023, the breach occurred around September 21, 2023, when an employee accessed a file containing personal data without authorization. The compromised information includes names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, national identifiers, gender details,…
Device Authority, a UK-based provider of device identity management solutions, has secured $7 million in a Series A funding round led by Ten Eleven Ventures. The investment will support the expansion of the company’s product offerings and its presence in North America. Specializing in device identity lifecycle management and identity and access management (IAM) solutions…
A critical vulnerability in Shim, a crucial component used by most Linux distributions during the boot process to support secure boot, has been identified. Tracked as CVE-2023-40547, the flaw allows a network attacker to bypass secure boot and take control of a vulnerable Linux system. This vulnerability arises from Shim’s HTTP protocol handling, leading to…
OpenAI’s image generator DALL-E 3 will add watermarks to image metadata as more companies roll out support for standards from the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA). The company says watermarks from C2PA will appear in images generated on the ChatGPT website and the API for the DALL-E 3 model. Mobile users will get…
A court in Germany has issued an injunction against the sale of some of Intel’s chips, after finding in favour of a rival US company that had accused Intel of infringing its patent. The ramifications of Wednesday’s ruling could be far-reaching and lead to a ban on the sale of HP and Dell products containing…
A new open-source language model has claimed the throne of the best in the world, according to the latest rankings from Hugging Face, one of the leading platforms for natural language processing (NLP) research and applications. The model, called “Smaug-72B,” was released publicly today by the startup Abacus AI, which helps enterprises solve difficult problems…
Swedish astronaut Marcus Wandt took control of a series of robots in Germany while on board the International Space Station, zipping around the Earth at 28,000 kilometers per hour (17,500 mph.) Researchers want to understand how time delays can affect the remote control of robots from an orbiting platform. Future astronauts could control rovers on…
The speed of generative AI adoption is breathtaking. We only need look at how ChatGPT achieved wide-scale adoption in under a year—the internet took 17—and the excitement for tools like Microsoft Copilots to put the power of AI at employees’ fingertips. Yet the path to AI value in the workplace is less about flipping the…
AI’s evolution will be shaped by conflicting bets on whether the technology’s fate is to keep growing more gigantic. Why it matters: “Big AI” and “small AI” chart two different futures for the tech that’s likely to dominate business and society over the next decade. A big AI win could lock in the power of today’s tech…
Advanced Micro Devices unveiled its brand new Embedded+ architecture, a fusion of AMD Ryzen Embedded processors with Versal adaptive System-on-Chips (SoCs) on a unified integrated board. These chips — a hybrid of PC processors and Xilinx programmable chips — are engineered to empower hardware companies looking to accelerate power-efficient AI applications. It’s aimed at enabling…
IDC predicts that by 2026, 60% of A2000 companies will use generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools to support core supply chain processes as well as dynamic supply chain design and will leverage AI to reduce operating costs by 5%. This AI revolution holds significant implications for manufacturers, retailers, and other supply chain participants, promising a more…
If you asked ChatGPT to do something lately and it refused, or sassily gave you the runaround, you’re not alone. On X last December, ChatGPT acknowledged that people were concerned it’s gotten too lazy. Last December, Altman wrote that “we haven’t updated the model since Nov. 11, and this certainly isn’t intentional,” much to the relief…
On Sunday, a report from the South China Morning Post revealed a significant financial loss suffered by a multinational company’s Hong Kong office, amounting to HK$200 million (US$25.6 million), due to a sophisticated scam involving deepfake technology. The scam featured a digitally recreated version of the company’s chief financial officer, along with other employees, who…
Last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, called a nascent effort to detect artificially generated content “the most urgent task” facing the tech industry today. On Tuesday, Mr. Clegg proposed a solution. Meta said it would promote technological standards that companies across the industry could…
The president of Nigeria recently delivered a speech that condemned the stereotype that the country is full of cybercriminals and scammers. Cybercrime is a big issue in Nigeria and the economic impact of cybercrime in Nigeria is $500 million annually. President Bola Tinubu explained that cybercrime has damaged the country’s reputation and he stressed that…
Three high-risk vulnerabilities have been uncovered in Microsoft Azure’s HDInsight, its big-data analytics service. Orca Security disclosed eight vulnerabilities in the cloud data tool four and a half months ago, and now there is a new finding. The new findings include a denial-of-service and two privilege escalation bugs afflicting the same services as the previous…
Governments seeking to spy on dissidents and people of interest to them have driven a proliferation in commercial spyware vendors in recent years, with more cyber-weapons brokers entering the market. What was the domain of the Israel-based NSO Group is not crowded with small CSVs with varying levels of sophistication and capabilities. Their operations have…
Farmers in Spain have joined their European counterparts in protests that are being staged across the country. Farmers in the European Union are demanding more flexibility, tighter controls on the produce of non-EU countries and more help from their government. In several regions, the farmers have blocked roads and caused disruption to motorists. A large…
Wildfires continue to burn homes in Chile’s Valparaíso region and hundreds of people are missing. Over 120 people have been killed in the fires and thousands of homes have been burned. President Gabriel Boric said the fire is the worst catastrophe in the country since the earthquake in 2010. The fires broke out last week…
Colombia has agreed with the National Liberation Army to extend a truce deal that expired last week. The government said it has agreed with the armed rebel group to extend the suspension of conflict for an additional six months. There is hope that the deal will end decades of violence in Colombia. ELN is Colombia’s…
Hugging Face, the New York City-based startup that offers a popular, developer-focused repository for open source AI code and frameworks (and hosted last year’s “Woodstock of AI”), today announced the launch of third-party, customizable Hugging Chat Assistants. The new, free product offering allows users of Hugging Chat, the startup’s open source alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT,…
VentureBeat and other experts have argued that open-source large language models (LLMs) may have a more powerful impact on generative AI in the enterprise. More powerful, that is, than closed models, like the ones behind OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT, or competitor Anthropic. But that’s been hard to prove when you consider examples of actual deployments. While…
In a new study published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI, researchers have demonstrated that robots equipped with the ability to express emotions in real-time during interactions with humans are perceived as more likable, trustworthy, and human-like. Utilizing advanced artificial intelligence, the study found that when robots displayed emotions that matched the context of their…
The pornographic deepfakes of Taylor Swift that proliferated on social media late last month originated from an online challenge to break safety mechanisms designed to block people from generating lewd images with artificial intelligence, according to social network analysis company Graphika. For weeks, users of internet forum 4chan have taken part in daily competitions to…
China and Russia have agreed to consult and coordinate with each other on the military use of artificial intelligence, a technology that is becoming a new front in Beijing’s rivalry with Washington. During talks in Beijing on Thursday, departmental officials from the two countries had “a detailed exchange of assessments” of the use of AI…
Top U.S. Treasury officials are visiting Beijing this week for a round of economic talks as the world’s largest economies look to continue engagement efforts that President Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, agreed to pursue last year. A Treasury official said that the two days of meetings would include “frank conversations” about China’s…
Attacks on vessels by Yemen’s Houthi rebels in the Red Sea have disrupted international trade on the shortest shipping route between Europe and Asia. The strikes are targeting a route that accounts for about 15 percent of the world’s shipping traffic, forcing several shipping companies to reroute their vessels. The Houthi raids have had impacts…
The United States Senate has unveiled a $118bn bipartisan deal that would boost border security and provide wartime aid for Israel and Ukraine. The bill announced on Sunday would provide $60bn in aid to Ukraine and $14.1bn in military aid to Israel. Also under the deal, the president would be granted new powers to immediately…
The United States launched scores of strikes across the Middle East over the weekend as Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, set out for the region to push forward negotiations to secure the release of Israelis still held hostage in Gaza and get more humanitarian aid into the battered enclave. The American military has taken…
On Friday, the US government announced sanctions against six Iranian Government officials caught launching cyberattacks against Israeli PLC vendor Unitronics. The Treasury Department said the six officials are part of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Cyber-Electronic Command (IRGC-CEC), a Tehran organization “responsible for a series of malicious cyber activities against critical infrastructure in the…
General Timothy D. Haugh assumed command of the National Security Agency (NSA) and Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) on Friday, February 2, 2024. President Joe Biden chose Haugh back in May 2023 to take the leadership position that oversees America’s cyber warfare and defense, cryptology, and signals intelligence. General Haugh served in leadership positions at Sixteenth Air…
The European Commission adopted the implementing regulation concerning the EU cybersecurity certification scheme on Common Criteria (EUCC). The outcome aligns with the candidate cybersecurity certification scheme on EUCC that ENISA drafted in response to a request issued by the European Commission. This new scheme falls under the EU cybersecurity certification framework. The objective of this…
European Union member countries on Friday unanimously reached a deal on the bloc’s Artificial Intelligence Act, overcoming last-minute fears that the rulebook would stifle European innovation. EU deputy ambassadors green-lighted the final compromise text, hashed out following lengthy negotiations between representatives of the Council, members of the European Parliament and European Commission officials. The law…
Meta continues to sink billions of dollars a quarter into developing the metaverse, and is just now facing its first real competitive threat from Apple. In its fourth-quarter earnings report Thursday, Meta said its Reality Labs unit recorded an operating loss in the period of $4.65 billion. Analysts were expecting a loss of $4.26 billion,…
Tim Cook says that Apple is spending “a tremendous amount of time and effort” on AI features that will be announced in the coming months. Apple’s Cook took the opportunity of the firm’s latest financial earnings call to enthuse about the Apple Vision Pro and the future of AI. “We are announcing these results on…
In the coming decades, NASA plans to send human crews back to the moon, build a space station in lunar orbit, establish a permanent base on the lunar surface, and—hopefully—send astronauts to Mars. What could possibly go wrong? No, seriously, what could go wrong and how would we fix it? That is the question a group of…
Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said countries around the world aiming to build and run their own artificial intelligence infrastructure at home will drive up demand for his company’s products. Nations including India, Japan, France and Canada are talking about the importance of investing in “sovereign AI capabilities,” Huang said in an interview Thursday…
Dutch regulators have fined ride-hailing app Uber €10 million ($10.8 million) for lack of transparency in handling the personal data of its drivers. The Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) imposed the fine after 170 French drivers complained to a French human rights organisation. The complaint was dealt with in the Netherlands as it is where…
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