Unsupervised Learning: No. 163

Unsupervised Learning is my weekly show where I spend 5-20 hours finding the most interesting stories in security, technology, and humans, which I then curate into a 30-minute podcast & companion newsletter.

The goal is to catch you up on current events, show you the best content from around the web, and hopefully give you something to think about as well.

?️ Security NewsMy takeaways from ENIGMA 2019—one of my two favorite conferences in the world. LinkThe US has charged Huawei with stealing trade secrets, money laundering, and fraud. This escalates the already tense situation with China on a number of fronts. LinkAn engineer does a Twitter thread on AI-created videos on YouTube. He describes how they are created, promoted, and selected for display in recommendations. Fascinating read. LinkThis is a video of thieves scanning a BMW key fob through the wall of the owner’s house, and driving away in their car. It could be that proximity-based security devices might need a trigger event (from the owner) before becoming active, like for mobile payments. LinkFacebook has removed 783 pages, groups, and accounts for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior tied to Iran. Much of it looked related to promoting Iran’s view of the world regarding worldwide political situations, so it didn’t appear to be the same as the Russian efforts to create discord within the U.S. LinkThe Washington Post says Americans received 26.3 billion spam calls in 2018, which is up almost 50% from 2017. STIR/SHAKEN is a protocol for authenticating phone calls in order to fight the problem, which uses certificate-based PKI for the validation in conjunction with the phone carriers. The major players (Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile are all looking to implement it soon. Can’t wait. LinkSan Francisco could be the first city to ban government use of facial recognition. Strange how similar in politics it is to London, but how different it is on this topic. LinkA Dutch researcher found a common Kremlin backdoor account on thousands of MongoDB instances facing the internet in Russia. The account was evidently required by the Kremlin to do financial business in the country. LinkFascinating story about a number of former NSA employees that were working for the United Arab Emirates, who eventually got uncomfortable when they realized what they were being asked to do. They were essentially being asked to spy on various enemies of the UAE, including American interests. This highlights a major problem where you have top intelligence community talent, that often isn’t rewarded or respected enough, combined with large amounts of money from unethical sources. When these two things find each other we should expect bad things to happen. This doesn’t happen with Machine Learning experts because they get high status and high pay jobs almost immediately. We need to track these people with these high-level IC skills in a similar way, and make sure they’re being taken care of here rather than being poached by people who will use them against us and against the world. LinkFamily Tree DNA is sharing its datasets with the FBI. This should surprise no one, but it will. This is why it’s so important to threat model in life. You have to know what you’re worried about, and make decisions accordingly. LinkA digital currency exchange loses $137 million when its founder dies without having shared his passwords to the wallets. LinkAdvisories: Google Chrome, Apple Facetime, Adobe AcrobatBreaches: Houzz, Huddle House⚙️ Technology NewsGameStop is in big trouble. They’re having trouble selling, and their stock is tanking. LinkAmazon received more than double its number of job applications after it raised its minimum wage to $15/hour. LinkChina is creating official e-Sports job titles for players and managers. Link??  Human NewsChina is doing a stimulus package for recent university graduates and low-income workers, basically giving them tax breaks for starting new businesses. It’s part of a larger effort to address their economic slowdown. LinkSan Francisco has more drug addicts than people enrolled in public school. This is fine. LinkFortnite ran a whole Marshmello concert in game. LinkWe’ve found a new galaxy relatively close to us. It’s a very small dwarf galaxy around thirty million light years away from the Milky Way. Link? Ideas, Trends, & AnalysisChina is establishing a presence in multiple places in Africa, and there have been constant reports of segregation, outright racism, and general hatred of the local Africans. This story records a Chinese guy telling his employee that Kenyans are basically monkeys. It’s well-known that many Chinese are extremely racist towards non-whites and non-Chinese, and that this is especially bad towards black people, but this was still incredible to watch. The interesting thing about it is that China can still do it and nobody can say anything. These countries can’t really kick them out because they need the investment, and Europe and the U.S. can’t offer them alternatives because of our (justified) colonialist shame. So China will continue to expand into Africa unchallenged, harvesting its resources, and disrespect its people while doing so. It’s pretty gross. LinkWe had a similar scare with Photoshop that we’re now having with Deepfakes. The argument was that you wouldn’t be able to tell reality from fantasy, but it turned out ok. I think this is an interesting comparison, but I’m not sure it means we’re safe. There was a lot more independent thought back then, less belief in conspiracy theories, no social media, etc. So I think the chance of a good Deepfake getting magnified in upcoming years is fairly high. I think audio is a serious issue as well. LinkAI might further help rich people regarding medicine by passing over poor people for organ transplants because they’re less likely to be compliant. LinkWeather forecasts are now remarkably accurate. A 5-day forecast is now as accurate as a 1day forecast in 1980, and forecasts can be useful up to 10 days in the future. Link? DiscoveryThe Definition of a Purple Team LinkWinners and Losers in the Age of Amazon LinkBig-O Notation Explained Link? The Need for Abusability Testing LinkBillionaire morning routines. LinkWatch a single cell become an organism in a 6-minute timelapse. LinkAnalyzing a New Stealer Written in GoLang LinkInterlace — A tool for multi-threading single commands during pentesting and security research. Link? Notes? I’m gathering feedback from readers on the newsletter. Topics include length, content, style, etc. Would love if you could give your thoughts on how to make it even better. Provide Your FeedbackCurrently Reading: This Will Make You SmarterUp Next to Read: Industry of Anonymity, The Master Switch, The Daily StoicFollow me on Feedly FollowDo me a favor and go rate the podcast for me on iTunes. LinkIf you run Homebrew on your Mac, brew update to version 2.0 that was just released.?️ Recommendations? An unbelievable analysis of the current competitive marketplace with respect to Amazon. Done by Scott Galloway, who has an extraordinary presentation style. Link? Aphorism“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: not going all the way, and not starting.”~ Buddha

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