Tag Archive for: Sound

Microsoft and OpenAI Sound the Alarm


Generative AI, a rapidly advancing technology, is increasingly becoming a tool of choice for offensive cyber operations by U.S. rivals. Microsoft and OpenAI have sounded the alarm about this disturbing trend, highlighting its potential to create sophisticated and hard-to-detect cyber attacks that could pose significant threats to national security. Traditional cybersecurity measures may struggle to counter such AI-driven threats, underscoring the urgent need for enhanced cybersecurity measures and preparedness.

Generative AI in Offensive Cyber Operations

Microsoft and OpenAI have detected and disrupted the malicious use of AI technologies for offensive cyber operations by U.S adversaries, including Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China. The adversaries have utilized generative AI for various purposes, such as social engineering, phishing, and researching technologies related to warfare.

Generative AI is expected to enhance malicious social engineering leading to more sophisticated deepfakes and voice cloning. Critics have raised concerns about the hasty public release of large-language models and the need for increased focus on making them more secure.

The Role of Large Language Models

The use of large language models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, has led to an increase in sophisticated deepfakes, voice cloning, and other malicious social engineering tactics. Cybersecurity firms have long used machine learning for defense, but offensive hackers are now also utilizing it. Microsoft, which has invested billions in OpenAI, has reported that generative AI is expected to enhance malicious social engineering.

Notably, the North Korean cyberespionage group known as Kimsuky, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, the Russian GRU military intelligence unit known as Fancy Bear, and Chinese cyberespionage groups have all used generative AI in various ways to conduct offensive cyber operations. Critics argue that Microsoft’s creation and selling of tools to address vulnerabilities in large language models may be contributing to the problem, and that more secure foundation models should be created instead.

Microsoft and OpenAI’s Response

Microsoft and OpenAI have collaborated to publish research on…

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Hacking healthcare: With 385M patient records exposed, cybersecurity experts sound alarm on breach surge


Healthcare companies more than ever are using electronic records and tapping digital services. That’s also creating more opportunities for cybercriminals — who already have exposed the private medical information of millions of patients — and bolsters the case for the industry to make security priority No. 1, experts say.

Healthcare breaches have exposed 385 million patient records from 2010 to 2022, federal records show, though individual patient records could be counted multiple times.

Hacking incidents, a type of breach, at healthcare firms have skyrocketed in the past five years as cybercriminals demand ransoms in exchange for restoring access to sensitive medical data.

Hacking or IT incident is the most common breach type

Other types include unauthorized access/disclosure, theft, loss, improper disclosure, other and unknown.

While healthcare companies have to improve their cybersecurity given the rise in breaches and cyberattacks, regulators need to raise the bar on cybersecurity standards, experts told Healthcare Dive.

“Could all these organizations do a better job? Absolutely,” said Jim Trainor, former assistant director of the Cyber Division at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and who is now a senior vice president of Aon Cyber Solutions, a global professional services firm.

Disrupting any one of the nation’s 16 critical infrastructure sectors, including the healthcare industry, poses a national security threat. These sectors are vital to daily life for millions of Americans and disabling them would have a debilitating effect on society, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, the country’s cyber defense agency.


Cyberattacks that disrupt hospital operations put patients’ lives at risk. The FBI said that the healthcare industry was hit the hardest by ransomware attacks in 2021 compared to other critical infrastructure. And the threats come as hospitals struggle with staffing shortages and financial pressures exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the wake of a ransomware attack on one of the nation’s largest hospital operators last year, Healthcare Dive analyzed more than 5,000 breaches…

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Voting security advocates, computer scientists sound alarm over new R.I. voting law


Rob Rock, state elections director, with machines used at voting places around the state.
PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

Once a common office fixture, fax machines have been reduced to a rare, if novelty, relic. Unless, of course, you’re a military member or overseas resident who wants to vote in a Rhode Island election. The good, old-fashioned fax machine has long been the only alternative to sluggish snail mail for overseas and military voters…



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Self-piloting boat could guide itself across LI Sound to supply North Shore food market


Since opening a year ago, the Harbor Harvest market on the waterfront in Halesite has been stocked by a hybrid-powered catamaran traveling across Long Island Sound from Connecticut.

Now that vessel, the Captain Ben Moore, is being retrofitted with a remote-control system that will make it the first-known autonomously operated cargo vessel in the United States, officials said.

The boat, the market on Huntington Harbor and a four-year-old food store of the same name in Connecticut are all owned by First Harvest Navigation of Norwalk, a company that prides itself on being cutting-edge environmentally and technologically. So last month it began installing the $100,000 SM300 remote-helm control system from Boston-based Sea Machines Robotics that allows the vessel to be operated with no crew aboard.

But First Harvest plans to keep its crew in place as it carries fresh produce and other food items— and sometimes passengers — across the Sound and moves cargo from other customers to and from other destinations. Company president Bob Kunkel said that after concluding discussions with the Coast Guard over vessel safety and computer security to prevent hacking, the rest of the software and hardware will be installed, probably by February, and then testing can begin on the Sound. He hopes to have the control system on the 65-foot aluminum catamaran in full operation by spring.

Kunkel said trucking the food products from Connecticut to Long Island would be more than an eight-hour round trip, while the catamaran reaches Huntington in about 40 minutes.

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