Items tagged with Database
How do you defeat “deepfakes”? According to Google, you develop more of them. Google just released a large, free database of deepfake videos to help research develop detection tools. Google collaborated with “Jigsaw”, a tech “incubator” founded by Google, and the FaceForesenics Benchmark Program at the Technical University of Munich and the University Federico II of Naples. They worked with several paid actors to create hundreds of real videos and then used popular deepfake technologies to generate thousands of fake videos. Researchers will be able to freely access both the fake and real videos to develop “synthetic video detection methods”....
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It’s becoming harder to know which apps to trust these days, and that’s readily apparent with the disclosure of a vulnerability in the popular Android app “Wi-Fi Finder.” The purpose of the app is to make it easier for individuals to locate free public Wi-Fi hotspots that they can use on-the-go rather than digging into their cellular data. However, a password sharing feature of the app has been compromised according to security researcher Sanyam Jain. The feature allows users to upload Wi-Fi passwords stored on their devices so that they can be shared with others. However, this information – which should be separated from the public Wi-Fi hotpots that the app is...
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If you thought that the Equifax breach was a big deal, you ain't seen nothing yet. A Florida-based marketing firm called Exactis -- a little known company that specializes in data aggregation -- unknowingly exposed its database in a way that anyone who knew where to look would be able access all of its contents. The database was stored on a publicly accessible server, and within it were detailed records on 230 million Americans and 110 million businesses. Security researcher Vinny Troia of Night Lion Security is credited with discovering the gaping hole in Exactis' database, and told Wired, "It seems like this is a database with pretty much every US citizen in it. I don’t know where...
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The RadioShack bankruptcy took a harder turn into ugly territory yesterday with Apple's filing of a complaint in a Delaware court. The move is intended to keep the once-prevalent hardware giant from selling their customer data, joining the states of Texas and Tennessee in their efforts to prevent the company from opening their customer information coffers to the highest bidder. The Apple complaint states that as a condition of the arrangement by which RadioShack was allowed to sell iPhones and iPads in its stores, the retailer would protect the personal data of customers choosing to buy Apple products. Specifically, Apple's complaint states, “The Reseller Agreement between Apple and RadioShack...
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We hate to fan the flames of political mudslinging over government spending and other topics that tend to attract Internet tough guys, but even we were surprised by this one. MeriTalk, the government IT network, just published the findings of its "Uncle Sam's Lost and Found: $15.4 Billion" study that examines the Federal government's ability inability to sift through internal databases and breaks down how much time and money is spent doing so. According to the study, Federal employees tasked with searching for internal Federal files lost on average more than a month of work time each year all because of inefficient searches for documents in internal databases. Folks, that translates into $15.4...
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What we have here is a data breach of major proportions that's been turned into data-napping, as well. According to a post on WikiLeaks, which you may recall is an online database of leaked documents, the hackers are asking for $10,000,000 to release 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions. The hackers replaced the (more or less) secure site for the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program with the following ransom demand: "I have your sh*t! In *my* possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions. Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing,...
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ThinkComputers.org ponders the idea of a universal virus database. While there are a few websites out their with decent information on a wide range of bugs, there's still no official, central place to log information on all the new types of viruses, and similar software. "In response to the recent article on viruses and after a long time spent fighting the various beasties as they have popped up over the course of the past decade or so, I have come up with a few ideas which I believe might help battle the problem and should be implemented and regulated nationally, if not globally. I call it the "Universal Virus Database" but really, it should...
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Hey folks, we've got the last update of the weekend for you. For those of you who aren't exactly sure what Windows is loading when your computer is started, PC Review has created a startup file database to help you determine if a file is a harmless printer driver, or a menacing trojan. Adios for now folks, Mr. Sandman is tugging at my eyelids. Altec Lansing inMotion iM4 Portable Speakers Preview @ CoolTechZone "Their speaker aesthetics, although professional, were standard to the ones from every other manufacturer in the market. However, that changed when the company decided to deliver speaker sets for notebook computers, Apple's iPod and eventually the remaining portable audio market. While...
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