Month: August 2016

Quite a bit to unpack here: Glitch art rendering in wall paint doing a riff on Bernini’s 17th century sculpture, the…

Quite a bit to unpack here: Glitch art rendering in wall paint doing a riff on Bernini’s 17th century sculpture, the Orgasm Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Barcelona-based artists Txemy and Muro and situated at the National Theatre of Timisoara, Romania.

I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.

— Saint Teresa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecstasy_of_Saint_Teresa

Originally shared by Jamez Frondeskias

The agony of realising that everything is not black and white

We follow Equation Group traffic.

We follow Equation Group traffic. We find Equation Group source range. We hack Equation Group. We find many many Equation Group cyber weapons. You see pictures. We give you some Equation Group files free, you see. This is good proof no? You enjoy!!! You break many things. You find many intrusions. You write many words. But not all, we are auction the best files.

That’s some very impressive broken Russian English right there. The NSA got hacked by Borat?

Originally shared by John Baez

The Equation Group

We live in a world of shadowy struggles.   A team of hackers called the Equation Group has remarkable powers:

• They can reprogram your hard drive firmware.  This lets them put software on your machine that will survive even if you reformat your hard drive and reinstall your operating system.  They can create an invisible, persistent area in your hard drive, store data there, and collect it later.

• They can retrieve data from networks not connected to the internet.  They can use an infected USB stick with a hidden storage area to collect information from a computer.   When this USB stick is later plugged into a computer they’ve subverted that does have an internet connection, they can retrieve this information.

• Since 2001, the Equation Group has infected thousands of computers in over 30 countries, focusing on government and diplomatic institutions, telecommunications, aerospace, energy, nuclear research, oil and gas, military, nanotechnology, Islamic activists and scholars, mass media, transportation, financial institutions and companies developing encryption technologies. 

You can see a map of computers infected by the Equation Group here:

http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Victims-map.png

They also seem to be connected to StuxNet, the computer worm that destroyed centrifuges used by the Iranians for uranium enrichment.

Given all this, it’s a good guess that the Equation Group is connected to the NSA, the National Security Agency of the US.  I sort of hope so – because while that’s scary, the alternatives scare me more. 

Now another mysterious group called Shadow Brokers has released 256 megabytes of hacking tools that may be used by the Equation Group  – and has offered to sell the rest for $500 million!   They wrote:

We follow Equation Group traffic. We find Equation Group source range. We hack Equation Group. We find many many Equation Group cyber weapons. You see pictures. We give you some Equation Group files free, you see. This is good proof no? You enjoy!!! You break many things. You find many intrusions. You write many words. But not all, we are auction the best files.

At first researchers doubted that these guys had been able to steal software from the Equation Group.  But new research at the cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Labs seems to confirm it.

Read the linked article for more!  Also try these:

On how the Equation Group was found by researchers at Kapersky Labs last year:

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/02/how-omnipotent-hackers-tied-to-the-nsa-hid-for-14-years-and-were-found-at-last/

http://www.kaspersky.com/about/news/virus/2015/equation-group-the-crown-creator-of-cyber-espionage

On how Shadow Brokers released 256 megabytes of hacking software on their blog:

http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/group-claims-to-hack-nsa-tied-hackers-posts-exploits-as-proof/

Wikipedia is collecting information on the Equation Group here, so this should eventually be the best place to access information about them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_Group

http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/code-dumped-online-came-from-omnipotent-nsa-tied-hacking-group

Good points Wayne Radinsky​. AI will not subjugate humanity. It will help perfect it.

Good points Wayne Radinsky​. AI will not subjugate humanity. It will help perfect it.

Possibly to extinction.

It will perfect our profit seeking corporations. It will perfect our mechanised war machines.

Originally shared by Wayne Radinsky

Steven Pinker argues that the AI Apocalypse is “more myth than reality”, that AI doesn’t need “subjugate humans” as a goal, because it is created by humans and humans will put in safeguards.

My reaction: His argument would be more convincing if it weren’t for the fact that a lot of AI today is created for the sole purpose of making the maximum amount of money on financial markets. The other primary avenues for funding of AI research are the military, which wants to use AI to win wars, obviously, and corporations like Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc, which want to use AI to increase profits.

A superintelligence doesn’t need “subjugate humanity” as a goal; all it needs is “maximize profits”. Extremely like considering that that’s why most AI is being developed now.

http://www.artificialbrain.xyz/461/a-i-apocalypse-more-myth-than-reality-steven-pinker.html