NEW RESOURCES

CISA: CISA, NSA, FBI, and MS-ISAC Release Phishing Prevention Guidance. “Today, the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency (CISA), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) released a joint guide, Phishing Guidance: Stopping the Attack Cycle at Phase One. The joint guide outlines phishing techniques malicious actors commonly use and provides guidance for both network defenders and software manufacturers to reduce the impact of phishing techniques used in obtaining credentials and deploying malware.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Twitch will allow simulcasting to competitor streaming platforms. “Twitch will now allow its users to stream concurrently on other live video sites. The announcement was made at TwitchCon in Las Vegas, just as it dropped new simulcasting guidelines. The company emphasized that simulcasting is permitted as long as the ‘Twitch user experience is not compromised’ on other platforms.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

South China Morning Post: Scam websites disguised as WhatsApp login pages top Google search results in Hong Kong despite efforts to remove them. “Scam websites disguised as login pages for the WhatsApp messaging platform are still topping Google search results in Hong Kong despite efforts to remove them, prompting calls from experts for enhanced security measures given the low cost of advertising such fraudulent links.”

Ars Technica, and I promise I did not plan to put these two stories together: Google-hosted malvertising leads to fake Keepass site that looks genuine. “Google has been caught hosting a malicious ad so convincing that there’s a decent chance it has managed to trick some of the more security-savvy users who encountered it.”

9to5 Google: Google Play Protect will prompt you to scan unknown apps before sideloading. “Google is now updating Play Protect with real-time scanning at the code level. It will ‘extract important signals from the app and send them to the Play Protect backend infrastructure for a code-level evaluation.’ This is intended to detect emerging threats, like polymorphic malware that can change its identifiable features.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Researchers Say Guardrails Built Around A.I. Systems Are Not So Sturdy. “Before it released the A.I. chatbot ChatGPT last year, the San Francisco start-up OpenAI added digital guardrails meant to prevent its system from doing things like generating hate speech and disinformation. Google did something similar with its Bard chatbot. Now a paper from researchers at Princeton, Virginia Tech, Stanford and IBM says those guardrails aren’t as sturdy as A.I. developers seem to believe.”

Fast Company: Why everyone seems to disagree on how to define Artificial General Intelligence. “We are just now seeing the first applications of new generative AI, but lots of people in the AI field are already thinking about the next frontier—Artificial General Intelligence. AGI was certainly on the minds of many at the TED AI conference in San Francisco Tuesday. But I didn’t hear a lot of consensus about when AGI systems will arrive, nor how we should define it in the first place.”

The Art Newspaper: Pandemic-fueled shift from in-person to virtual art activities may be permanent, two US surveys suggest. “A comprehensive statistical report of the 2022 SPPA data will be released next year, although a summarised report released today (18 October)—which aims to examine its results in light of the effects of the 2020 pandemic outbreak—reveals that the impact of the Covid-19 era made Americans increasingly inclined to consume art through their screens rather than in-person, even after government restrictions were lifted.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Boing Boing: Inventory management actually fun in free web game Homeward. “Homeward, by Wuppos, is a quickly-played free web game that’s part choose-your-own-adventure, part inventory management, all charming pixel art. It’s not hard to get home, but how rich can you be by the time you get there?”

Space: Scientists bury time capsule to celebrate upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (photos) . “On Oct. 13, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) celebrated its upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ETL) by burying a time capsule that was sealed in 2017, when construction first began. The capsule is filled with tokens celebrating ESO staff and the cooperation between the observatory and Chile. It also celebrates the amazing science and technology behind the 39.3-meter telescope.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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