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For years, the cryptocurrency economy has been rife with black market sales, theft, ransomware, and money laundering—despite the strange fact that in that economy, practically every transaction is written into a blockchain’s permanent, unchangeable ledger. But new evidence suggests that years of advancements in blockchain tracing and crackdowns on that illicit underworld may be having
Enlarge / An iteration of what happens when your site gets shut down by a DDoS attack.
Threat actors loyal to the Kremlin have stepped up attacks in support of its invasion of Ukraine, with denial-of-service attacks hitting German banks and other organizations and the unleashing of a new destructive data wiper on Ukraine.
Germany’s BSI agency, which monitors cybersecurity
Enlarge / An AI-generated image of a robot typewriter-journalist hard at work. (credit: Ars Technica)
On Thursday, an internal memo obtained by The Wall Street Journal revealed that BuzzFeed is planning to use ChatGPT-style text synthesis technology from OpenAI to create individualized quizzes and potentially other content in the future. After the news hit, BuzzFeed’s stock rose 200 percent
Enlarge / An example of computer-synthesized handwriting generated by Calligrapher.ai. (credit: Ars Technica)
Thanks to a free web app called calligrapher.ai, anyone can simulate handwriting with a neural network that runs in a browser via JavaScript. After typing a sentence, the site renders it as handwriting in nine different styles, each of which is adjustable with properties such as speed,
Three weeks ago, panic swept across some corners of the security world after researchers discovered a breakthrough that, at long last, put the cracking of the widely used RSA encryption scheme within reach by using quantum computing.
Scientists and cryptographers have known for two decades that a factorization method known as Shor’s algorithm makes it theoretically possible for a
Enlarge / Nvidia’s Eye Contact feature automatically maintains eye contact with a camera for you. (credit: Nvidia)
Nvidia recently released a beta version of Eye Contact, an AI-powered software video feature that automatically maintains eye contact for you while on-camera by estimating and aligning gaze. It ships with the 1.4 version of its Broadcast app, and the company is
Enlarge / An illustration of a chatbot exploding onto the scene, being very threatening. (credit: Benj Edwards / Ars Technica)
ChatGPT has Google spooked. On Friday, The New York Times reported that Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin held several emergency meetings with company executives about OpenAI’s new chatbot, which Google feels could threaten its $149 billion search
Enlarge / Holding up corporations, utilities, and hospitals for malware-encrypted data used to be quite profitable. But it’s a tough gig lately, you know? (credit: ifanfoto/Getty Images)
Two new studies suggest that ransomware isn’t the lucrative, enterprise-scale gotcha it used to be. Profits to attackers’ wallets, and the percentage of victims paying, fell dramatically in 2022, according to two separate
Enlarge / The OpenAI logo superimposed over the Microsoft logo. (credit: Ars Technica)
On Monday, AI tech darling OpenAI announced that it received a “multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment” from Microsoft, following previous investments in 2019 and 2021. While the two companies have not officially announced a dollar amount on the deal, the news follows rumors of a $10 billion investment
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
Secure Boot is an industry standard for ensuring that Windows devices don’t load malicious firmware or software during the startup process. If you have it turned on—as you should in most cases, and it’s the default setting mandated by Microsoft—good for you. If you’re using one of more than 300 motherboard models made by manufacturer
Enlarge / DNS hijacking concept.
Researchers have uncovered a malicious Android app that can tamper with the wireless router the infected phone is connected to and force the router to send all network devices to malicious sites.
The malicious app, found by Kaspersky, uses a technique known as DNS (Domain Name System) hijacking. Once the app is installed, it
