Fireside Chat with Joshua Baron of the White House National Security Council

Submitted by Amy Karns on

Josh Baron will discuss -- in the format of a fireside chat -- a range of technical topics, with a primary focus on data security and privacy-enhancing technologies (PETS). PETS technologies range from zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption to secure multi-party computation and differential privacy. He will also discuss some of the challenges of bringing technical advances in these and related areas to bear on pressing problems in national security. 

Automatic Program Transformation

Submitted by Amy Karns on

Software engineering as a practice is dominated by maintenance and extension activities. Programmers, by and large, never start from a blank page, but rather from an extant and usually long-running project in need of fixing or extension.  One way to view modern programming is thus as a process of iteratively transforming existing programs into something new, and hopefully better.  In this context, I will talk about the development of the area of automatic program repair, from research novelty to recent industrial deployment.

High-Assurance Synthesis and Analysis Techniques for Memory-Safe Programming Languages     

Submitted by Amy Karns on

Memory-safe programming languages have garnered significant interest in recent years, with memory-safe language initiatives issuing from NSA, as well as the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.  The Rust language has attracted particular attention, due to its unique memory ownership model and efficient compiler, capable of producing code that is competitive in efficiency with C/C++ compilers.

"Voter Registration System Taken Offline in Coffee County Cyber-Incident"

"Voter Registration System Taken Offline in Coffee County Cyber-Incident"

Coffee County in Georgia has been hit by a cyberattack, reportedly leading to its connection to the state's voter registration system being severed. In a statement, the Office of Coffee County Board of Commissioners said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) informed the County of unusual cyber activity on its IT infrastructure on April 15, 2024.

Submitted by Adam Ekwall on

"Threat Actor Uses Multiple Infostealers in Global Campaign"

"Threat Actor Uses Multiple Infostealers in Global Campaign"

Cisco's Talos is warning that a threat actor has been using multiple information stealers to harvest credentials and financial data from users worldwide. The threat actor is called CoralRaider and has been active since at least 2023. The threat actor is likely of Vietnamese origin and was previously seen targeting users in various Asian countries. The researchers warned of CoralRaider's use of a customized variant of QuasarRAT dubbed RotBot and the XClient stealer to target financial and login information and steal social media accounts, including business and advertising accounts.

Submitted by Adam Ekwall on

"This AI-Controlled Jet Fighter Has Now Flown Against Human Pilots"

"This AI-Controlled Jet Fighter Has Now Flown Against Human Pilots"

DARPA recently announced that an AI test pilot has successfully flown a jet fighter in dogfights against human opponents. It's the latest development for DARPA's Air Combat Evaluation program, which is trying to develop aerospace AI agents that can be trusted to perform safely. The USAF and DARPA started conducting X-62A test flights under AI control in December 2022, logging 17 hours by the time the program was announced in early 2023.

Submitted by Adam Ekwall on

"Computer Scientists Unveil Novel Attacks on Cybersecurity"

"Computer Scientists Unveil Novel Attacks on Cybersecurity"

A multi-university and industry research team led by computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, discovered two novel attacks targeting the conditional branch predictor in high-end Intel processors that could compromise billions of processors being used today. They found an attack that is the first to target a feature in the branch predictor known as the Path History Register (PHR), which tracks branch order and branch addresses. This attack exposes more information with greater precision than previous attacks that lacked branch predictor structure insight.

Submitted by Gregory Rigby on

"FTC Sending $5.6 Million in Refunds to Ring Customers Over Security Failures"

"FTC Sending $5.6 Million in Refunds to Ring Customers Over Security Failures"

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently announced that it will send a total of $5.6m in refunds to customers of Ring, a home camera provider, due to a settlement with Ring over security and privacy failings. Ring, which was bought by tech giant Amazon in 2018, reached a settlement with the FTC in 2023 over charges that the company allowed employees and contractors to access consumers’ private videos and failed to implement security protections, enabling hackers to take control of consumers’ accounts, cameras, and videos.

Submitted by Adam Ekwall on
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