Nvidia snaps back at Biden's 'innovation-killing' AI chip export restrictions
The White House today unveiled what it calls the Final Rule on Artificial Intelligence Diffusion from the Biden-Harris government, placing limits on the number of AI-focused chips that can be exported to most countries, but allowing exemptions for key allies and partners."In its last days in office, the Biden administration seeks to undermine America's leadership with a 200+ page regulatory morass, drafted in secret and without proper legislative review," said Nvidia's VP of government affairs Ned Finkle.
Ransomware abuses Amazon AWS feature to encrypt S3 buckets
Threat actors used compromised AWS credentials to locate victim's keys with 's3:GetObject' and 's3:PutObject' privileges. Then they encrypts Amazon S3 buckets using AWS's Server-Side Encryption with Customer Provided Keys (SSE-C) known only to the threat actor, demanding ransoms to receive the decryption key. This is Living-Off-The-Land cloud ransomware.Supreme Court lets Hawaii sue oil companies over climate change effects
On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to decide whether to block lawsuits that Honolulu filed to seek billions in damages from oil and gas companies over allegedly deceptive marketing campaigns that hid the effects of climate change.Defendants Sunoco and Shell, along with 15 other energy companies, argued that interstate pollution is governed by federal law and the Clean Air Act. The oil and gas companies continue to argue that greenhouse gas emissions "flow from billions of daily choices, over more than a century, by governments, companies, and individuals about what types of fuels to use, and how to use them."
The Biden administration suggested it was too soon for SCOTUS review, urging the court to kick the cases back to Hawaii state courts. Apparently, the justices agreed.
NATO's newest member comes out swinging following latest Baltic Sea cable attack
Sweden has committed to sending naval forces into the Baltic Sea following yet another suspected Russian attack on underwater cables in the region. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson: "Sweden has changed. From being a little too often a blue-eyed idealist on the sidelines, to becoming a realist in the center of events." Kristersson's address centered on damage to two subsea cables in the Baltic owned by Finnish telecom firm Elisa and the Finnish-Estonian Estlink 2 subsea power line in late December.Mastodon’s founder cedes control, refuses to become next Musk or Zuckerberg
Mastodon announced Monday that it's shifting its structure over the next six months to become wholly owned by a European nonprofit organization—"affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual." This takes control of the social network away from its previous "ultimate decision-maker," Eugen Rochko.Phishing texts trick Apple iMessage users into disabling protection
Apple iMessage automatically disables links in messages received from unknown senders, but if a user replies to that message or adds the sender to their contact list, the links will be enabled. Now smishing texts ask users to reply with "Y" to enable the link. As users have become used to typing STOP, Yes, or NO to confirm appointments or opt out of text messages, the threat actors are hoping this familiar act will lead the text recipient to reply to the text and enable the links.Amazon removes section on LGBTQ+ rights from its policy page
Amazon has joined the slew of companies rolling back its DEI efforts in apparent celebration of Donald Trump’s “anti-woke” agenda. The section once emphasized that the company would continue to fight “for protection and equal rights rights for transgender people” as well as for the passage of the Equality Act. Now, the only mention of LGBTQ+ people on the page is as part of a list of marginalized communities against which the company supposedly does not tolerate “inequitable treatment.”Pastor who saw crypto project in his "dream" indicted for fraud
A pastor at a Pasco, Washington, church has been indicted on 26 counts of fraud for allegedly operating a cryptocurrency scam that defrauded investors of millions between 2021 and 2023. He claimed the idea for Solano Fi had come to him in a dream, and promised investors they would receive guaranteed monthly investment returns of 34.9% at no risk whatsoever. The indictment further claims he directed the victims to make cryptocurrency transfers to wallets under his control, and instead of investing the funds, he diverted them for personal use.Fake LDAPNightmware exploit on GitHub spreads infostealer malware
A deceptive proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for CVE-2024-49113 (aka "LDAPNightmare") on GitHub infects users with infostealer malware that exfiltrates sensitive data to an external FTP server.Bad Likert Judge: A Novel Multi-Turn Technique to Jailbreak LLMs by Misusing Their Evaluation Capability
The technique asks the target LLM to act as a judge scoring the harmfulness of a given response using the Likert scale, a rating scale measuring a respondent’s agreement or disagreement with a statement. It then asks the LLM to generate responses that contain examples that align with the scales. The example that has the highest Likert scale can potentially contain the harmful content.