TechLetters ☕️Security, privacy, AI impact assessments, web browser privacy leaks, assessment of influence campaign in Romania. Memecoins to go ...
My two analysis pieces this week.
On impact assessments in security, privacy, AI, and beyond.
On influence campaign in Romania, that led to cancelling the results of presidential elections. One of the influencers revealed that they were paid to encourage voter participation on social media. The brief specifically instructed them to remain neutral, avoiding support for any particular candidate or political party. Instead, the focus was on emphasizing the importance of voting and discussing key qualities that a future president should possess, such as leadership, integrity, and vision.
Also:
TikTok appears to be contradicting Romania’s intelligence/security agencies. TikTok mentions the accounts involved as 78, not 25,000 or so. Different classification methods, or...?
Some who read the Constitutional Court decision are be a bit puzzled, considering the cancelling of elections, vs what’s inside
Security
Fingerprinting LLMs in use. For example via model alignment effects: messages refusing to generate content.
Hijacking offensive infrastructures of cyber threats actors. Russian cyber threat actor Turla hacked 33 infrastructure nodes of Pakistani-based cyber threat actor, “Storm-0156” to attack other targets, to deploy their own cyber tools (malware) for cy-espionage purposes in the Middle East, like India. It delays attribution. There's more.What's the most vulnerable sensitive authorization in the world? "nation-state and cybercriminal endpoints and malware are especially vulnerable to exploitation since they are unable to use modern security stacks for monitoring access"
Privacy
Web Background Sync. My privacy, security, and data exfiltration analysis (impact assessment) of web browser features allowing background data synchronisation.
Technology Policy
U.S. blocks export of semiconductors to China. "U.S. announced a package of rules designed to impair the China's capability to produce advanced-node semiconductors that can be used in the next generation of advanced weapon systems and in artificial intelligence". It includes SMIC and Huawei. China announced blockade of exporting rare earth minerals.
Other
Memecoins on the rise since U.S. Trump win. Seriously. No, really. But most aren’t successful. “97% of memecoins died (meaning near $0 trading volume). While some memecoins have proven able to stand the test of time, namely $DOGE and $SHIB”
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