Mark Zuckerberg was right when he wrote in his op-ed to the Washington Post that the internet needs new rules – though naturally, his view is limited as a CEO of a private company. For three decades governments across the globe have created an enormous regulatory vacuum due to a profound misunderstanding of the magnitude of technology on society. As a result, they neglected their duty to protect society in the mixed reality of technology and humanity. Facebook is the scapegoat of this debate due to its enormous impact on the social fabric, but the chasm between governments, regulation and …
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The mere thought of a computer lying to you about something has boggled my brain ever since I heard it from a friend professor on a flight as an anecdote on what could happen next in AI. That one sentence took me on a long trip in a rabbit hole of a wide range of implications. I did not want to write on it first, not to be the one which saws that idea in the brain of people with bad intentions, but today I saw that (The AI Learned to Hide Data From Its Creators to Cheat at Tasks …
2018 was a year of awakening to the dear side effects of technological innovation on privacy. The news from Facebook’s mishandling of users’ data has raised concerns everywhere. We saw misuse of private information for optimizing business goals and abuse of personal data as a platform to serve mind-washing political influencers posing as commercial advertisers. Facebook is in a way the privacy scapegoat of the world but they are not alone. Google, Twitter and others are on the same boat. Adding to the fiasco were the too many examples of consumer services which neglected to protect their customer data from …
Well, 2018 is almost over and cyber threats are still here to keep us alert and ready for our continued roller coaster ride in 2019 as well. So here are some of my predictions for the world of cybersecurity 2019: IoT IoT is slowly turning into reality and security becomes a growing concern in the afterthought fashion as always. This reality will not materialize into a new cohort of specialized vendors due to its highly fragmented nature. So, we are not set to see any serious IoT security industry emergence in 2019. Again. Maybe in 2020 or 2021. Devops …
In recent ten years, I was involved in the disclosure of multiple vulnerabilities to different organizations and each story is unique and diverse as there is no standard way of doing it. I am not a security researcher and did not find those vulnerabilities on my own, but I was there. A responsible researcher, subjective to your definition of what is responsible, discloses first the vulnerability to the developer of the product via email or a bug bounty web page. The idea is to notify the vendor as soon as possible so they can have time to study the vulnerability, …
A well-known truth among security experts that humans are the weakest link and social engineering is the least resistant path for cyber attackers. The classic definition of social engineering is deception aimed to make people do what you want them to do. In the world of cybersecurity, it can be mistakenly opening an email attachment plagued with malicious code. The definition of social engineering is broad and does not cover the deception methods. The classic ones are temporary confidence building, wrong decisions due to lack of attention and curiosity traps. Our lives have become digital. An overwhelming digitization wave with …
People create technologies to serve a purpose. It starts with a goal in mind and then the creator is going through the design phase and later on builds a technology-based system that can achieve that goal. For example, someone created Google Docs which allows people to write documents online. A system is a composition of constructs and capabilities which are set to be used in a certain intended way. Designers always aspire for generalization in their creation so it can serve other potential uses to enjoy reuse of technologies and resources. This path which starts at the purpose and goes …
Random Thoughts on Cyber Security, Artificial Intelligence, and Future Risks at the OECD Event – AI: Intelligent Machines, Smart Policies It is the end of the first day of a fascinating event in artificial intelligence, its impact on societies and how policymakers should act upon what seems like a once in lifetime technological revolution. As someone rooted deeply in the world of cybersecurity, I wanted to share my point of view on what the future might hold. The Present and Future Role of AI in Cyber Security and Vice Verse Every new day we are witnessing new remarkable results in …
Recently I’ve been thinking about the intersection of blockchain and AI and although several exciting directions are rising from the intersection of the technologies I want to explore one direction here. One of the hottest discussions on AI is whether to constraint AI with regulation and ethics to prevent apocalyptic future. Without going into whether it is right or wrong to do so, I think that blockchain can play a crucial role if such future direction materialize. There is a particular group of AI applications, mostly including automated decision making, which can impact life and death. For example, an autonomous …
I got a call last night on whether I want to come to the morning show on TV and talk about Google’s recent findings of alleged Russian sponsored political advertising. Advertising that could have impacted the last US elections results, joining other similar discoveries on Facebook and Twitter and now Microsoft is also looking for clues. At first instant, I wanted to say, what is there to say about it but still, I agreed as a recent hobby of mine is being guested on TV shows:) So this event got me reading about the subject quite a bit later at …