Home

On:

The actions of a quick thinking cyber security expert may have saved untold thousands of computers around the world from infection from the ransomware known as "WannaCry", a form of malware that crippled hundreds of thousands of computer systems around the world when it was launched on Friday. Cyber-security experts are warning that the attack could rear its ugly head once again, and Microsoft has issued a stern warning against nation-state spy agencies that would hoard such computer vulnerabilities, rather than reporting them to the appropriate vendors so that they can be rectified, rather than being turned into crippling weapons of mass extortion.
read more

On:

One of the biggest barriers to the implementation of useful artificial intelligence in our culture is the limitations imposed by our computer hardware: modern computer chips have their circuits arranged in a two-dimensional layout, running programs that are meant to mimic our own three-dimensional neurological processes. The 2D setup was, and indeed still is, better suited to the more linear processing that the majority of our computer programs require, but running AI-based programs presents a sizable drop in efficiency — it is apparent that if AI is to grow as a valuable tool, a new form of computer hardware will be required to accommodate it.
read more

On:

Over the past week, the African country of Liberia has been the target of a series of high-bandwidth directed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, nearly crippling the nation’s fledgling internet service.

The attacks originated from a network called Mirai botnet #14, intermittently flooding Libera’s networks with traffic of over 500 gigabits per second in bandwidth during each attack. Botnets consist of a network of thousands of "zombie computers", typically home computers that, unknown to their individual owners, have viruses or other malware that send out data when commended to by the controller of the malware.
read more