Unsupervised Learning Newsletter NO. 326

MEMBER EDITION  | EP. 326 | APR 11 2022
 

SECURITY NEWS

I've noticed (and heard a lot of people talking about) a new text spamming technique. The technique is to just text you with a non sequitur like, "Hey Charlie, can I still put this stuff in your garage?" It's effective because it makes people want to correct them. 1) My name isn't Charlie, and 2) I don't have a garage. Also who the hell is this? That's when you learn they want to see if you're lonely. Let your loved ones know to watch out for it and just delete the messages without responding.

Hamas-linked attackers are going after high-ranking Israeli officials in defense, law enforcement, and emergency services using profiles of young, attractive females on Facebook. Once contact was made, they then got the targets to install novel Windows and Android malware with software masquerading as messaging and archiving applications. More

Mailchimp had a security incident resulting from social engineering that resulted in the loss of customer data. That data was then used to target people in the crypto and finance industries. More

Researchers at Recorded Future say attackers likely associated with China's government have been targeting power infrastructure in North India. More

Someone found 58GB of largely Fox News-related data online with no protections, including some employee data. More

Companies:

• SeeMetrics | CISO Security Metrics | $6M raised More

TECHNOLOGY NEWS

OpenAI's DALL*E version 2 is just spectacular. It's an AI-based image generation engine that came out about a year ago, and this years version is massively improved. You have to see the demo. More | Examples

Google is now letting you search for things you can't describe by providing an image of something similar. More

Twitter is working on an edit button. My favorite quote about this is, "I don't know how the world ends, but I'm sure it starts with people being able to edit their tweets." More

Elon Musk bought around 9% of Twitter, and was going to take a board seat, but now he's not. He's been Musking about it on Twitter as well. More

Google says it considers AI-generated content to be spam. I see a big risk of AI-generated content farms in the near future, so it'll be an arms race between Blackhat SEO and Search Engines, as usual. More


HUMAN NEWS

A new study has found 42 new genetic risk factors for Alzheimer's disease. They should start showing up in genetic testing sites before long. More

Cops in San Francisco pulled over a car with no lights on and found out it was a driverless Cruise vehicle. I wonder if police will have to use an app to give those cars a ticket. More


CONTENT, IDEAS & ANALYSIS

Friendship and Vulnerability — I know of a lot of friendships where one or both of the friends is considered successful. One thing I see far too much in these relationships is a lack of depth, and I think a major cause of this is a lack of vulnerability. If both friends are worried about how the other sees them, or are concerned they'd lose respect by sharing something personal, they'll spend their time together posturing instead of communicating. Your life is finite. Friendships are precious. Don't waste them by being guarded. Don't open up to just anyone, but for someone you already trust you should consider sharing more of yourself, and especially the less-than-perfect parts. Vulnerability is a way to move a friendship from a 4-6 to a 9-10. You'll be dead soon. Friendships are worth taking risks for.

NOTES

I'm currently reading the new book by Robin Dunbar called Friends. Dunbar is the source of the Dunbar number of 150, which is the number of associates one can realistically maintain. This book covers a ton of additional research on friendship, which I am finding quite fascinating. More

A member of our UL community named Joshua used Jasper.ai to create some really cool InfoSec article content. He said he spent a few hours with the tool and was able to create around 1,400 words, which he shared with the group. It's pretty damn good. No wonder Google is worried from an SEO perspective. I'm starting to think it won't matter before too long because Google won't be able to tell the difference.

Can't wait for book club this month, because we're reading The Three-Body Problem!
 

DISCOVERY

/r/netsec's Q2 2022 InfoSec Hiring Thread More

"I'm Not Sure I Ever Enjoyed Programming" More

Explaining the LGBT Explosion More

Playing with DALL*E More

Open Source Web Scanners More

[ VULNERABILITY MANAGEMENT ] 🔥 CVE Markdown Charts — Markdown-based data visualization of CVEs over time. More | Code | Example | by ClearBlueJar

[ RECON ] Trufflehog 3 — The new version is rewritten in Go, supports GitLab/filesystem/S3, has automated key-validity-checks, and performance improvements. More | by Dylan Ayrey

[ VULNERABILITY MANAGEMENT ] Spring4Shell Scanner — A scanner to find Spring4Shell within your environment. More
 

RECOMMENDATION

If you have a friend that you trust, but who you feel you're not as close to as you'd like to be, ask yourself if you're presenting too flawless of an image to them. Lead with vulnerability more. And be explicit about it. "Hey, I feel like we're always putting a good face on and not talking about our problems, and I think it's keeping us from being better friends. I'd like to change that. I'll go first." Friendship > Comfort/Safety.


APHORISM

“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity."

— Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy