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Gary Marcus: Taming Silicon Valley | Starmus highlights

WeLiveScience The prominent AI researcher explores the societal impact of artificial intelligence and outlines his vision for a future in which AI upholds human rights, dignity, and fairness 03 Jan 2025 Will artificial intelligence (AI) be good for society or bad for society? What kind of artificial intelligence (AI) should we want? These are among the most pressing questions of our time, and they’re at the very heart of Gary Marcus’s talk. The prominent AI…

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This month in security with Tony Anscombe – December 2024 edition

From attacks leveraging new new zero-day exploits to a major law enforcement crackdown, December 2024 was packed with impactful cybersecurity news 27 Dec 2024 From new zero-day exploits to a major law enforcement crackdown, December 2024 was packed with impactful cybersecurity news. ESET Chief Security Evangelist Tony Anscombe dives into some of the month’s key stories, offering expert insights and commentary. Watch the video for a full breakdown and stay until the end to learn…

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AI moves to your PC with its own special hardware

Digital Security Seeking to keep sensitive data private and accelerate AI workloads? Look no further than AI PCs powered by Intel Core Ultra processors with a built-in NPU. Cameron Camp 06 Jan 2025  •  , 3 min. read Running AI workloads with sensitive data in the public cloud has its disadvantages, but a new generation of laptops can now perform many of the same tasks locally, in smaller form, and at a much lower cost.…

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Crypto is soaring, but so are threats: Here’s how to keep your wallet safe

Digital Security As detections of cryptostealers surge across Windows, Android and macOS, it’s time for a refresher on how to keep your bitcoin or other crypto safe Phil Muncaster 09 Jan 2025  •  , 5 min. read Bitcoin is on a tear. For the first time in its history, the digital currency surpassed $100,000 in early December, having surged more than 30% since election night in the US. Whether or not the optimism about President-elect…

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State-aligned actors are increasingly deploying ransomware – and that’s bad news for everyone

Business Security The blurring of lines between cybercrime and state-sponsored attacks underscores the increasingly fluid and multifaceted nature of today’s cyberthreats Phil Muncaster 07 Jan 2025  •  , 5 min. read There was a time when the boundary between cybercrime and state-aligned threat activity was rather easy to discern. Cybercriminals were fuelled solely by the profit motive. And their counterparts in the government carried out mainly cyberespionage campaigns, plus the occasional destructive attack, to further…

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Protecting children online: Where Florida’s new law falls short

Kids Online Some of the state’s new child safety law can be easily circumvented. Should it have gone further? Tony Anscombe 14 Jan 2025  •  , 4 min. read Florida’s state legislators recently passed a new bill aimed at protecting children online. The highlights of the bill, which is known as HB 3, are mandatory age verification for accessing material that is deemed harmful to minors, and prohibiting children younger than 14 from joining social…

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Under the cloak of UEFI Secure Boot: Introducing CVE-2024-7344

ESET researchers have discovered a vulnerability that allows bypassing UEFI Secure Boot, affecting the majority of UEFI-based systems. This vulnerability, assigned CVE-2024-7344, was found in a UEFI application signed by Microsoft’s Microsoft Corporation UEFI CA 2011 third-party UEFI certificate. Exploitation of this vulnerability leads to the execution of untrusted code during system boot, enabling potential attackers to easily deploy malicious UEFI bootkits (such as Bootkitty or BlackLotus) even on systems with UEFI Secure Boot enabled,…

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Cybersecurity and AI: What does 2025 have in store?

Digital Security In the hands of malicious actors, AI tools can enhance the scale and severity of all manner of scams, disinformation campaigns and other threats Phil Muncaster 15 Jan 2025  •  , 5 min. read AI has supercharged the cybersecurity arms race over the past year. And the coming 12 months will provide no respite. This has major implications for corporate cybersecurity teams and their employers, as well as everyday web users. While AI…

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PlushDaemon compromises supply chain of Korean VPN service

ESET researchers provide details on a previously undisclosed China-aligned APT group that we track as PlushDaemon and one of its cyberespionage operations: the supply-chain compromise in 2023 of VPN software developed by a South Korean company, where the attackers replaced the legitimate installer with one that also deployed the group’s signature implant that we have named SlowStepper – a feature-rich backdoor with a toolkit of more than 30 components. Key points of this blogpost: PlushDaemon…

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Trump 2.0 Brings Cuts to Cyber, Consumer Protections

One month into his second term, President Trump’s actions to shrink the government through mass layoffs, firings and withholding funds allocated by Congress have thrown federal cybersecurity and consumer protection programs into disarray. At the same time, agencies are battling an ongoing effort by the world’s richest man to wrest control over their networks and data. Image: Shutterstock. Greg Meland. The Trump administration has fired at least 130 employees at the federal government’s foremost cybersecurity…

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