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Facebook defends encryption, says it is countering terrorism using AI – SC Magazine

Posted on June 16, 2017 by admin

"There's no place on Facebook for terrorism. We remove terrorists and posts that support terrorism whenever we become aware of them," reads a new Facebook company blog post.

Aware that terrorists take advantage of social media to spread propaganda, Facebook on Thursday divulged some of its methods for combating the problem, including recent efforts to employ machine learning to automatically identify objectionable content.

"Our stance is simple: There's no place on Facebook for terrorism. We remove terrorists and posts that support terrorism whenever we become aware of them," states a company blog postauthored by Facebook officialsMonika Bickert, director of global policy management, andBrian Fishman, counterterrorism policy manager.

The post came shortly after news broke that James Hodgkinson, the man who on Wednesday shot and critically injured House Majority Whip Steve Scalise at a baseball practice, regularly posted angry extremist views on Facebook regarding President Donald Trump and other Republicans. That same Wednesday, Facebook removed Hodgkinson's online profiles, according to various reports.

Facebook on Thursday also acknowledged the controversy surrounding terrorists who use encrypted messaging platforms such as the company's WhatsApp service tosecurely communicate with each other. It was following the March 2017 Westminster terror attack that British home secretary Amber Rudd suggested that UK law enforcement must be able to listen in on WhatsApp conversations, after it was discovered that the attacker, Khalid Masood, used the service before murdering four people.

Defending encryption technology, the blog post notes that these services also have legitimate purposes such as protecting the privacy of journalists and activists. In their joint blog post, Bickert and Fishman wrote that while Facebook does not have the ability to read encrypted messages, "we do provide the information we can in response to valid law enforcement requests, consistent with applicable law and our policies."

Prior to Thursday's post, Facebook had not previously detailed its use of AI to root out terrorist activity on its platforms. According to the post, the company is focusing its most cutting-edge machine-learning techniques on curbing terrorist content submitted by ISIS, Al Qaeda, and related affiliates, adding that its efforts are "already changing the ways we keep potential terrorist propaganda and accounts off Facebook."

Facebook reported that its AI technology allows its systems to image-match photos or videos that have previously been linked to terrorism, and reject such forbidden content before it is displayed.

The company is also experimenting with natural language recognition capabilities in order to identity content that appears to advocate for terrorism. To that end, Facebook has been feeding previously flagged content toits AI engine so that it does a better job recognizing such language in the future.

Additionally, Facebook is using algorithms to determine if various pages, posts, profiles and groups likely support terrorism based on connections and shared attributions with other confirmed terrorist pages. The company also claims it is getting faster at detecting new fake accounts created by repeat offenders.

Facebook has also begun to apply these AI techniques to take down terrorist accounts additional platforms, including WhatsApp and Instagram. "Given the limited data some of our apps collect as part of their service, the ability to share data across the whole family is indispensable to our efforts to keep all our platforms safe," the blog post reads.

Outside the realm of AI, Facebook is also relying on its own human expertise to counter terrorism activity online, including its global Community Operations teams that review user complaints and reports, more than 150 terrorism and safety specialists, and a global team that was formed to promptly respond to emergency law enforcement requests. The company also relies in cooperation with industry partners, governments and various community groups and non-governmental organizations.

Companies are increasingly turning to AI and automation technologies to fight a variety of illegal and forbidden online activity. A new study released this week by cybersecurity and application delivery solution provider Radware found that 81 percent of surveyed executives reported that they either recently implemented or began more heavily relying on automated solutions. Moreover, 57% of these polled executives said that they trust automated systems as much or more than humans to protect their organizations. And 38 percent predicted that automated security systems would be the primary resource for managing cyber security within two years.

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Facebook defends encryption, says it is countering terrorism using AI - SC Magazine

Quantum-encrypted communication satellites could be a reality within five years – Wired.co.uk

Posted on June 16, 2017 by admin

Google/ESA

A laser in space has measured quantum states on Earth, 38,000km away, for the first time.

This means a network of satellites communicating through quantum encryption could become a reality within five years, according to researchers behind the breakthrough experiment.

"We were quite surprised by how well the quantum states survived traveling through the atmospheric turbulence to a ground station," said Christoph Marquardt from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Germany, and lead author of the new paper.

Cracking quantum measurements at long distance is crucial to developing a network for quantum-encrypted communication.

Quantum-encrypted communication would be much more secure than the mathematical algorithms used currently. This is because of the properties of quantum mechanics called Heisenbergs uncertainty principle.

Currently, information can be encrypted with techniques based on mathematical algorithms. It is difficult to figure out the exact algorithm used to encrypt a piece of data, making the approach largely safe for now.

However, experts anticipate computers powerful enough to crack the codes will surface in the next 10 to 20 years. This development would mean current encryption methods would be redundant as they could easily be broken.

Last year, researchers at Chatham House's International Security Department said satellites and other space communications technology are at significant risk from hackers and cyber attacks.

But there is a potential solution - and this is where quantum mechanics comes into it.

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Heisenbergs uncertainty principle means the act of observing a particle creates certain changes in its behaviour. Specifically, it means we cannot know both the momentum and position of a particle to the same degree of certainty at once.

Quantum encryption uses this to create encoded data in the form of light that, if intercepted, will change its behaviour. This can alert the people communicating that the security key is not safe to use.

The problem comes when sending data over long distances. Researchers have been moving towards satellite-based systems because previous attempts at using optical fibres have proven difficult due to signal losses.

Marquardt and his team measured quantum states encoded in a laser beam sent from one of the satellites already in space, working with satellite telecommunications company Tesat-Spacecom GmbH and the German Space Administration.

The satellites had been designed for laser communication, but was not ideally suited for the task.

"From our measurements, we could deduce that the light traveling down to Earth is very well suited to be operated as a quantum key distribution network," Marquardt said. "We were surprised because the system was not built for this. The engineers had done an excellent job at optimizing the entire system."

The team created quantum states in a range the satellite normally does not operate, and were able to make quantum-limited measurements from the ground.

Based on the results, Marquardt says we could see quantum-encrypted communications via satellites within five to ten years.

"The paper demonstrates that technology on satellites, already space-proof against severe environmental tests, can be used to achieve quantum-limited measurements, thus making a satellite quantum communication network possible. This greatly cuts down on development time, meaning it could be possible to have such a system as soon as five years from now."

But there is much work left to do, he added. "There is serious interest from the space industry and other organizations to implement our scientific findings," said Marquardt.

"We, as fundamental scientists, are now working with engineers to create the best system and ensure no detail is overlooked."

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Quantum-encrypted communication satellites could be a reality within five years - Wired.co.uk

Germany Ready to Undermine Encryption in Terror Fight – Infosecurity Magazine

Posted on June 16, 2017 by admin

Germany has become the latest Western nation to signal its intent to undermine encryption in the name of preventing terrorism.

Central and state-level ministers have apparently expressed dismay that terrorists are using apps such as WhatsApp and Signal to communicate out of the reach of the authorities.

We can't allow there to be areas that are practically outside the law", said interior minister Thomas de Maiziere, according to Reuters.

He reportedly added that Berlin is planning a new law which will effectively give the authorities the right to view private messages.

Its not known how the government intends to achieve its ends. Its unlikely it would be able to force companies like Apple and Facebook to put backdoors in their products or services and a ban is most likely unworkable.

One option being mooted is "source telecom surveillance", where the authorities would force telecoms providers to install software on their customers devices which effectively bypasses the encrypted app to intercept messages before they are scrambled.

Germany has suffered its fair share of terror incidents of late, most notably when a lorry ploughed into a Christmas market in Berlin last December, killing 12.

However, the country has always been resistant to heavy-handed state surveillance given what it endured under the Nazis and in East Germany after the war.

The UK, on the other hand, appears to be blazing a trail with its Investigatory Powers Act, widely regarded as granting the most intrusive state surveillance powers of any Western democracy.

The Australian government is said to be considering implementing its own version of the law, while the European Commission has indicated it is willing to introduce legislation which would undermine end-to-end encryption.

Security experts maintain that doing so would fail to have the intended effect, as terrorists will migrate to more secure platforms, while ordinary users and businesses are left exposed.

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Germany Ready to Undermine Encryption in Terror Fight - Infosecurity Magazine

Open source security challenges in cars – Information Age

Posted on June 16, 2017 by admin

Both auto OEMS and their suppliers should adopt management practices that inventories open source software; that maps software against known vulnerabilities as well as alerting to new security threats; that identifies potential licensing and code quality risks; and that can maximise the benefits of open source while effectively managing risks

A revolution is underway in the automotive industry. The car is no longer simply a means of getting from here to there. Todays car reaches out for music streamed from the cloud, allows hands-free phone calls, and provides real-time traffic information and personalised roadside assistance.

Almost every modern automobile feature speed monitoring, fuel efficiency tracking, anti-lock braking, traction and skid-control is now digitised to provide drivers with easier, safer operation and better information.

>See also:The scariest vulnerabilities in driverless cars

Recent innovations enable automobiles to monitor and adjust their position on the highway, alerting drivers if they are drifting out of their lane, even automatically slowing down when they get too close to another car. And whether were ready or not, well soon be sharing the roads with autonomous vehicles.

Driving the technology revolution in the automotive industry is software, and that software is built on a core of open source. Open source use is pervasive across every industry vertical, including the automotive industry.

When it comes to software, every auto manufacturer wants to spend less time on what are becoming commoditiessuch as the core operating system and components connecting the various pieces togetherand focus on features that will differentiate their brand. The open source model supports that objective by expediting every aspect of agile product development.

But just as lean manufacturing and ISO-9000 practices brought greater agility and quality to the automotive industry, visibility and control over open source will be essential to maintaining the security, license compliance, and code quality of automotive software applications and platforms.

When someonethinks of building software, we think of it being created by an internal development teams. But auto manufacturers rely on hundreds of independent vendors supplying hardware and software components to Tier 1 and 2 vendors as well as directly to OEMs.

>See also:The future of driverless cars and data security

The software from each of those vendors is likely a mix of custom code written by the vendor and third-party code (both proprietary and open source). With tens of millions of lines of code executing on as many as 100 microprocessor-based electronic control units (ECUs) networked throughout the car, understanding exactly which open source components are part of the mix can be extremely difficult for the OEMs. When you add in the fact that over 3,000 open source vulnerabilities are reported every year, the security implications are clear.

Lets assume a Tier 2 vendor is using an open source component, and a vulnerability is disclosed.

First the vendor needs to know they are using that specific open source component. Next they need to be monitoring sources in order to know about the newly reported vulnerability. Then they need to re-factor and test their code to remediate the issue.

When all this is done, the software update needs to go to the OEM or Tier 1 vendor, be incorporated into an update of that entitys component and, ultimately, be updated in each consumers vehicle.

Updating presents its own challenges. When security researchers demonstrated in 2015 that they could hack a Jeep over the Internet to hijack its brakes and transmission, it posed a security risk serious enough that Chrysler recalled 1.4 million vehicles to fix the bug that enabled the attack. Recall is in quotes because Chrysler didnt actually require owners to bring their vehicles to a dealer. Instead, they were sent a USB drive with a software update they could self-install. But how many owners are comfortable updating the software in their cars?

>See also:How cyber attackers will shift gear once connected cars hit the road

Vehicles can be updated during routine service, of course, but probably only if the service is provided by an authorised dealer, a prospect that decreases as a vehicle ages. Over-the-air updates of software are still the exception rather than the rule, and may require that the vehicle be stopped for safety reasons. After all, we probably dont want a software reboot when a vehicle is moving at highway speed.

Your cell phone may have a practical life of 2-3 years, but receives regular operating systems updates and perhaps hundreds of app updates each year. The laptop Im using to write this likewise receives regular updates and patches, and will likely be replaced after 3-5 years. This is the typical lifecycle software vendors are used to addressing.

A modern car, however, is in design for years prior to production, and the average vehicle may be on the road for 10-15 years. Supporting software over that period of time requires a different thought process. Vendors (and open source communities) need to be considered in light of the operational risk they present. Questions vendors need to ask include:

How sure are you that the components you are using will be supported by the open source community in the future? Are you prepared to provide ongoing support for projects if the community (or vendor) abandons them? What does the release cycle look like? How many vulnerabilities has the component had over the last few years compared to the size of the code base? Is the community security-aware?

>See also:Everything you need to know about car hacking

When a supplier or auto OEM is not aware all the open source in use in its products software, it cant defend against attacks targeting vulnerabilities in those open source components. Any organisation leveraging connected car technology will need to examine the software eco-system its using to deliver those features, and account for open source identification and management in its security program.

Sourced byMike Pittenger, VP, Security Strategy, Black Duck Software

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Webinar: Application Security in the Age of Open Source – IT Business Edge (blog)

Posted on June 16, 2017 by admin

Live Webinar:June 20, 2017 @ 1:00 p.m. ET / 10:00 a.m. PT

Open source software is the foundation for application development worldwide, comprising 80 to 90% of the code in today's applications. Its value in reducing development costs, speeding time to market and accelerating innovation is driving adoption, but the explosion in open source use has not been accompanied by effective security and management practices.

A 2017 Black Duck analysis of code audits conducted on 1,071 applications found that 97% contained open source, but 67% of the applications had open source vulnerabilities, half of which were categorized as "severe."

Join IT industry veteran Lenny Liebmann and Black Duck VP of Security Strategy Mike Pittenger for a discussion of best practices in open source security and management to reduce application security risk.

Topics discussed in the event will include:

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Webinar: Application Security in the Age of Open Source - IT Business Edge (blog)

Julian Assange fuels conspiracy theories about Democratic …

Posted on June 16, 2017 by admin

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Tuesday floated a theory that the Democratic National Committee staffer who was shot dead in the streets of Washington, D.C., last month had been targeted because the operative was an informant.

In an interview on Dutch television, the Australian cyber-activist invoked the unsolved killing of Seth Rich, 27, earlier this summer to illustrate the risks of being a source for his organization.

Citing WikiLeaks protocol, Assange refused to confirm whether or not Rich was in fact a source for WikiLeaks, which released thousands of internal DNC emails, some of them politically embarrassing. Experts and U.S. government officials reportedly believe that hackers linked to the Russian government infiltrated the DNC and gave the email trove to WikiLeaks.

But Assange was apparently interested in hinting about an even darker theory.

Whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often very significant risks. As a 27-year-old, works for the DNC, who was shot in the back, murdered just a few weeks ago for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington, Assange said on Nieuwsuur. BuzzFeed drew more attention to the interview in the U.S.

Somewhat startled, news anchor Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal said, That was just a robbery, I believe wasnt it?

No, theres no finding, Assange responded. Im suggesting that our sources take risks and they become concerned to see things occurring like that.

Why make the suggestion about a young guy being shot in the streets of Washington? van Rosenthal asked.

Because we have to understand how high the stakes are in the United States, Assange said, and that our sources face serious risks. Thats why they come to us, so we can protect their anonymity.

The Metropolitan Police Department in Washington have not established a motive for the killing but reportedly told the young mans family that he died during a robbery attempt turned tragic. His father, however, told Omaha CBS-affiliate KMTV he did not think it was a robbery because nothing was stolen: his watch, money, credit cards and phone were still with him.

The WikiLeaks founder said that others have suggested that Rich was killed for political reasons and that his organization is investigating the incident.

I think it is a concerning situation. There isnt a conclusion yet. We wouldnt be able to state a conclusion, but we are concerned about it, he continued. More importantly, a variety of WikiLeaks sources are concerned when that kind of thing happens.

WikiLeaks further fanned the flames of conspiracy by offering a $20,000 reward for anyone with information leading to the conviction of the person responsible for killing Rich.

Rich, who worked in voter outreach for the Democrats, was shot and killed just after 4 a.m. on July 10 a block from his home in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington.

Late last month, WikiLeaks published nearly 20,000 emails from DNC employees that exacerbated the tension between Bernie Sanders supporters and the Democratic establishment during the partys national convention in Philadelphia. The emails led to the resignation of several DNC leaders, including Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Snopes has debunked that claim that Rich was killed to prevent him from meeting with the FBI to discuss his plans to testifying against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The Metropolitan Police Department currently offers a reward of up to $25,000 for anyone who can provide information that leads to the conviction of someone for any murders in Washington.

Brad Bauman, a spokesperson for the Rich family, released a statement to Business Insider Wednesday saying that people trying to politicize the death of their loved one are doing more harm than good and preventing police officers from fully doing their jobs.

The family welcomes any and all information that could lead to the identification of the individuals responsible and certainly welcomes contributions that could lead to new avenues of investigation, the statement read.

That said, some are attempting to politicize this horrible tragedy, and in their attempts to do so, are actually causing more harm [than] good and impeding on the ability for law enforcement to properly do their job. For the sake of finding Seths killer, and for the sake of giving the family the space they need at this terrible time, they are asking for the public to refrain from pushing unproven and harmful theories about Seths murder.

Julian Assange – WIRED

Posted on June 16, 2017 by admin

Mark Chew/Fairfax Media/Fairfax Media/Getty Images

Amid a seemingly incessant deluge of leaks and hacks, Washington, DC staffers have learned to imagine how even the most benign email would look a week later on the homepage of a secret-spilling outfit like WikiLeaks or DCLeaks. In many cases, they've stopped emailing altogether, deleted accounts, and reconsidered dumbphones . Julian Assangeor at least, a ten-years-younger and more innocent Assangewould say he's already won.

After another week of Clinton-related emails roiling this election, the political world has been left to scrub their inboxes, watch their private correspondences be picked over in public, and psychoanalyze WikiLeaks' inscrutable founder. Once they're done sterilizing their online lives, they might want to turn to an essay Assange wrote ten years ago, laying out the endgame of his leaking strategy long before he became one of the most controversial figures on the Internet.

In " Conspiracy as Governance ," which Assange posted to his blog in December 2006, the leader of then-new WikiLeaks describes what he considered to be the most effective way to attack a conspiracyincluding, as he puts it, that particular form of conspiracy known as a political party.

"Consider what would happen if one of these parties gave up their mobile phones, fax and email correspondencelet alone the computer systems which manage their [subscribers], donors, budgets, polling, call centres and direct mail campaigns. They would immediately fall into an organisational stupor and lose to the other."

And how to induce that "organisational stupor?" Foment the fear that any correspondence could leak at any time.

"The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive 'secrecy tax') and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaptation."

WikiLeaks would publish its first leak the same month as that blog post, a communication from a Somalian Islamic cleric calling for political assassinations. Three years later it'd put out the Pentagon and State Department leaks provided by Chelsea Manning, and six years after that, leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton advisor John Podesta would lead to the ousting of DNC Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and shake Hillary Clinton's campaign.

It was a crappy, annoying manifesto. And it was ahead of its time by many years.

Dave Aitel, former NSA analyst

The last decade has shown just how prescient Assange was. Take, for example, the Russian hackers who published private files from the World Anti-Doping Agency after Russia's athletes got banned from the Olympics for doping. "Now a group like WADA has to take everything they say to every person into account. They have to think, this could leak," says Dave Aitel, a former NSA staffer and founder of the security firm Immunity who focuses on cyberwar and information warfare. "The idea is, 'If we can prevent them from having secrets, they have to operate very differently.'"

That move comes straight from Assange. "It was a crappy, annoying manifesto," Aitel says. "And it was ahead of its time by many years."

A spokesperson for WikiLeaks says Assange's essay was a "thought experiment" that the organization still believes to be true. "Organizations have two choices (1) reduce their levels of abuse or dishonesty or (2) pay a heavy 'secrecy tax' in order to engage in inefficient but secretive processes," the spokesperson writes. "As organizations are usually in some form of competitive equilibrium this means that, in the face of WikiLeaks, organizations that are honest will, on average, grow, while those that are dishonest and unjust will decline."

The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie.

Julian Assange, writing in 2006

Of course, Assange's claim that a political party leaks in direct proportion to its dishonesty looks almost laughable after the last several months. WikiLeaks has published leaks exclusively damaging to Clinton and the Democratic Party, while publishing nothing from Donald Trump or his campaign. (Trump has, of course, faced the leaks of his 1995 tax returns and a damning video where he brags about sexual assault . But mainstream newspapers published both, and neither came from the sort of internal communications Assange wrote about. Trump himself also famously doesn't use email , as good a security measure as anyone could hope for.)

In fact, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence have both said that recent WikiLeaks releases originated with Russian state-sponsored hackers seeking to influence US electoral politics. Assange's essay doesn't account for the possibility that a government might exploit or collude with a leak platform like WikiLeaks. (WikiLeaks' spokesperson denied that there has been any "official claim that any documents published by WikiLeaks have come from a state actor," somehow ignoring last week's DHS and ODNI announcement.)

The notion in Assange's essay that only corrupt conspiracies keep secrets is one that Clinton herself has argued againstironically, something we know because she said it in a speech whose partial transcript WikiLeaks leaked last Friday . Speaking to the National Multi-Housing Council in 2013, Clinton cited how President Lincoln secretly promised jobs to lame duck Congressmen of the opposing political party if they agreed to vote for the 13th Amendment, which ended slavery. "If everybody's watching all of the backroom discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least," she said. "So, you need both a public and a private position."

But the other point Assange makesthe "secrecy tax" that organizations pay when they try to avoid leaksrings true. Any organization that has tried to encrypt all its communications, delete them, or throttle, quarantine, and compartmentalize them in the name of secrecy knows the toll that paranoia takes.

"An authoritarian conspiracy that cannot think efficiently cannot act to preserve itself against the opponents it induces.... When we look at a conspiracy as an organic whole, we can see a system of interacting organs, a body with arteries and veins whose blood may be thickened and slowed till it falls, unable to sufficiently comprehend and control the forces in its environment."

Let that be a warning to the Democratic Party and any other organization with secrets to keep. If the leaks don't kill you, the fear of them just might.

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Julian Assange - WIRED

Inside Julian Assange’s office – CNET

Posted on June 16, 2017 by admin

A room of one's own

This office looks like any other, but it's a scale re-creation of the tiny London room where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been in self-imposed exile for almost five years, since June 19, 2012.