Lifeboat Foundation

The TechCrunch Global Affairs Project examines the increasingly intertwined relationship between the tech sector and global politics.

Geopolitical actors have always used technology to further their goals. Unlike other technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) is far more than a mere tool. We do not want to anthropomorphize AI or suggest that it has intentions of its own. It is not — yet — a moral agent. But it is fast becoming a primary determinant of our collective destiny. We believe that because of AI’s unique characteristics — and its impact on other fields, from biotechnologies to nanotechnologies — it is already threatening the foundations of global peace and security.

The rapid rate of AI technological development, paired with the breadth of new applications (the global AI market size is expected to grow more than ninefold from 2020 to 2028) means AI systems are being widely deployed without sufficient legal oversight or full consideration of their ethical impacts. This gap, often referred to as the pacing problem, has left legislatures and executive branches simply unable to cope.

Here’s the true pros and cons of VPNs.

Don’t believe all the exaggerated claims that VPNs make about protecting your privacy and security, experts say.

Tech institutions are trying to find ways to guarantee security as new processing systems becoming increasingly sophisticated.

The vulnerability could provide hackers with an easy method to take over your phone.

A newly disclosed security flaw in the Linux kernel could be leveraged by a local adversary to gain elevated privileges on vulnerable systems to execute arbitrary code, escape containers, or induce a kernel panic.

Tracked as CVE-2022–25636 (CVSS score: 7.8), the vulnerability impacts Linux kernel versions 5.4 through 5.6.10 and is a result of a heap out-of-bounds write in the netfilter subcomponent in the kernel. The issue was discovered by Nick Gregory, a senior threat researcher at Sophos.

Researchers at Duke University have demonstrated the first attack strategy that can fool industry-standard autonomous vehicle sensors into believing nearby objects are closer (or further) than they appear without being detected.

The research suggests that adding optical 3D capabilities or the ability to share data with nearby cars may be necessary to fully protect autonomous cars from attacks.

The results will be presented Aug. 10–12 at the 2022 USENIX Security Symposium, a top venue in the field.

Applying machine learning techniques to its rule-based security code scanning capabilities, GitHub hopes to be able to extend them to less common vulnerability patterns by automatically inferring new rules from the existing ones.

GitHub Code Scanning uses carefully defined CodeQL analysis rules to identify potential security vulnerabilities lurking in source code.

A report specialized in WordPress security points to a 150% increase in reported flaws during 2021 compared to the previous year, in addition to establishing that almost 30% of the vulnerabilities detected in plugins for WordPress do not receive updates.

Since this is the most widely used content management system (CMS) in the world, this should be a worrisome issue for tens of millions of website administrators.

Continue reading “1 out of 3 WordPress plugins does not receive security updates; millions of websites at risk” »

Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday update for the month of March has been made officially available with 71 fixes spanning across its software products such as Windows, Office, Exchange, and Defender, among others.

Of the total 71 patches, three are rated Critical and 68 are rated Important in severity. While none of the vulnerabilities are listed as actively exploited, three of them are publicly known at the time of release.

It’s worth pointing out that Microsoft separately addressed 21 flaws in the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser earlier this month.