November 2019 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

Online Disinformation and Political Discourse: Applying a Human Rights Framework | Chatham House
by J.C. DE MARTIN Nov. 6, 2019

Nov. 6, 2019

https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/online-disinformation-and-politica… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Facebook ends appeal against ICO micro-fine: Admit liability? Never. But you can have £500k
by Giacomo Tesio Nov. 6, 2019

Nov. 6, 2019

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/30/facebook_ends_appeal_against_ico_m… "Given the way our platform worked at the time," Zuck has said, "this meant Kogan was able to access tens of millions of their friends' data". Facebook has always claimed it learned of the data misuse from news reports, though this has been disputed. Both sides will now end the legal fight and Facebook will pay the ICO a fine but make no admission of liability or guilt. The money is not kept by the data protection watchdog but goes to the Treasury consolidated fund and both sides will pay their own costs. The ICO spent an eye-watering £2.5m on the Facebook probe. [...] Deputy commissioner of the ICO James Dipple-Johnstone said: "The ICO welcomes the agreement reached with Facebook for the withdrawal of their appeal against our Monetary Penalty Notice and agreement to pay the fine. The ICO's main concern was that UK citizen data was exposed to a serious risk of harm. Protection of personal information and personal privacy is of fundamental importance, not only for the rights of individuals, but also as we now know, for the preservation of a strong democracy." [...] In October 2018 the ICO imposed a fine of £500,000 on Facebook, which equates to about 17 minutes' profit for the firm – the maximum possible fine because the offences occurred between 2013 and 2015. Under the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) brought in last year, however, Facebook could be fined 4 per cent of its $56bn global turnover. ____ Ridicolo. Giacomo

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AI4CH - Artificial Intelligence in Geomatics for Cultural Heritage - abstract submission
by Agata Lo Tauro Nov. 6, 2019

Nov. 6, 2019

Perdonate il sistema da problemi (Abstract submission) Please help? Apologise for any inconvenience and appreciate understanding agata

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Support Engineer Job family country-of-residence block
by Giacomo Tesio Nov. 5, 2019

Nov. 5, 2019

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/issues/5555 In e-group on Monday October 15, 2019 we took the decision to enable a "job family country-of-residence block" for team members who have access to customer data. This is at the expressed concern of several enterprise customers, and also what is becoming a common practice in our industry in the current geopolitical climate. The countries involved are: - China - Russia This issue is to track the addition of the process to the support handbook, and whatever recruiting processes need to be update to make certain that: 1. We do not make offers to individuals residing in these countries 2. Current team members are prevented from moving to these countries and remaining in a role that prohibits it. We do not have a technical way, today, to handle this based on permissions. Doing so would also force us to confront the possibility of creating a "second class of citizens" on certain teams who cannot take part in 100% of their responsibilities, which is a dynamic some of us have experienced at other companies and found highly negative. As such we feel a country block is the most humane solution at this time--especially because it affects zero current employees. We should look into the effort to do this on a permissions-basis. So everyone is clear what the effort would be, and roughly how long this would take. Discussion in #job-family-country-blocks since there are multiple related issues open and content should be consistent, if not shared. Note: In addition to Support, this also affects SREs in infra and SecOps & Anti-Abuse in Security (see related issue). _____ Questione spinosa ed interessante. Non riesco a pensare ad un'altra soluzione che possa ridurre i rischi di sicurezza per l'azienda ed i clienti. GitLab, per chi non lo sapesse, è una società statunitense che non solo è multinazionale, ma fisicamente distribuita in tutto il globo: il lavoro remoto è la norma. Questa scelta (se confermata) sarà estremamente interessante. Vi partecipano concause ed effetti che sono tecniche, culturali e geopolitiche. In una specie di teorema CAP umano, non possiamo avere dimensione globale e sicurezza locale a costi finiti. Giacomo

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Conferenza IoT a Firenze, 15 Novembre 2019
by Carrozza, Chiara Nov. 5, 2019

Nov. 5, 2019

Buon pomeriggio, come da gentile indicazione degli amministratori della lista inoltro alcune informazioni su un evento che sto organizzando a Firenze per il prossimo 15 Novembre, che spero possa essere di interesse per qualcuno/a. In tal caso, non esitate a fare un salto a Firenze ;) Un saluto, Chiara Chiara Carrozza European University Institute Via Boccaccio 121, 50133 Florence +39 055 4685236 The European University Institute is pleased to invite you to the Conference "The way towards the Internet of Things: Open Standards vs Silos<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffsr.eui.e…>", which will take place on the 15 November 2019 in Via dei Roccettini 9, San Domenico di Fiesole, Florence, Italy. The one-day conference is focused on standardisation and interoperability in the Internet of Things (IoT). The first session "Interoperability in IoT: open standards versus Silos" will address the implications for competition and innovation of the different paths towards realizing the IoT, while the second panel will focus on crucial issues in "Patent licensing in IoT" discussing the current licensing practices of SEPs and the need for facilitating access to standardised technologies. During the afternoon, the panel "The industrial Internet of Things: self-driving vehicles" will discuss the most dynamic sector of the industrial IoT. Confirmed speakers include: Nikolaos Isaris (DG CNCT); Lapo Filistrucchi (Tilburg University and University of Florence); Javier Gozalvez (University Miguel Hernandez de Elche); Kirti Gupta (Qualcomm); Björn Lundqvist (Stockholm University); Elisabeth Opie (Office of Elisabeth Opie); Nicolas Petit (University of Liege); Pier Luigi Parcu (EUI); Giovanni Romano (Telecom Italia); Ilja Rudyk (European Patent Office (EPO); Heike Schweitzer (Humboldt University of Berlin); Gregory Sidak (Criterion Economics); Teo Taponen (Nokia); Antonio Nicita (Italian regulatory authority AGCOM); Lorenzo Casaccia (Qualcomm); Joachim Henkel, (Technical University of Munich). The event will be an opportunity to learn from and discuss with renowned speakers, networking and, of course, enjoy Tuscany hills. The Conference is free of charge for registered participants<https://rscas.eu/view-form/the-way-towards-the-internet-of-things-open-stan…>. The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination, distribution, forwarding, or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited without the express permission of the sender. If you received this communication in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer.

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Alexa, did he do it? Smart device could be witness in suspicious Florida death
by don Luca Peyron Nov. 5, 2019

Nov. 5, 2019

Here we are guys.... Have a nice day dl https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/01/alexa-florida-death-witness… _________________________ www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

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Implementations of Novel Technologies in Sustainability
by Agata Lo Tauro Nov. 5, 2019

Nov. 5, 2019

Gentilissimi, si potrebbero implementare ricerche sul tema della sostenibilità e nuove tecnologie. Tempo fa avevo anche scritto un libro ( https://www.amazon.com/Geomatics-Cultural-Conservation-Valorisation-Interna… sostenibilità applicata in particolare a BBCC - ma le ricerche si possono sempre implementare, correct?). *Si fa quel che si può...* Perdonate la domanda: Implementazioni di cordate? Sound good? PS_Un bando l'ho già inviato a pedico via "messaggistica - LinkedIn" (anche lui legge in cc.). Lui mi ha consigliato di metterci in contatto anche con J.C. De Martin. What do you think/suggest? ad maiora, agata https://it.linkedin.com › agata-lo-tauro-6723257b <https://it.linkedin.com/in/agata-lo-tauro-6723257b>

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Natural i mage reconstruction from brain waves: a novel visual BCI system with native feedback
by Giacomo Tesio Nov. 4, 2019

Nov. 4, 2019

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2019/10/16/787101.full.pdf Here we hypothesize that observing the visual stimuli of different categories trigger distinct brain states that can be decoded from noninvasive EEG recordings. We introduce an effective closed-loop BCI system that reconstructs the observed or imagined stimuli images from the co-occurring brain wave parameters. The reconstructed images are presented to the subject as a visual feedback. The developed system is applicable to training BCI-naïve subjects because of the user-friendly and intuitive way the visual patterns are employed to modify the brain states. [...] Our stimulation protocol can be considered as a cognitive test that aims to extract subject-specific stable EEG patterns. Each person has specific reactions to different kinds of visual stimuli, thus, for an effective BCI paradigm a preliminary step of individual stimuli set selection from some excessive basic set could be of a great value. Another benefit of this approach is that no additional cognitive task for attention or memory is required, and the subject can remain completely passive throughout the session. This makes it possible to implement this protocol for the patients with cognitive disorders. Basing on the results achieved through the developed experimental protocol, we proposed a novel closed-loop BCI system, which is capable of real-time image reconstruction from the subject’s EEG features. We developed a deep learning model which consists oftwo separately trained deep learning networks, one of which is used for decoding of different categories of images, and the second one transforms the EEG features into the image decoder spatial domain. We demonstrated that the proposed technique can potentially be used for training BCI-naïve subjects by replacing the original stimuli with the subject’s mind-driven image reconstruction model. We suggest that using native feedback could produce a strong self-regulating effect and help a BCI operator to master the imagery commands more effectively. ____ Fortuna che per il momento questi pattern stabili sono "subject specific". Giacomo

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Russian government cyber spies ‘hid behind Iranian hacker group’
by Alberto Cammozzo Nov. 4, 2019

Nov. 4, 2019

<https://intelnews.org/2019/10/22/01-2653/> Russian hackers hijacked an Iranian cyber espionage group and used its infrastructure to launch attacks, hoping that their victims would blame Iran, according to British and American intelligence officials. The information, released on Monday, concerns a Russian cyber espionage group termed “Turla” by European cyber security experts. Turla is believed to operate under the command of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), and has been linked to at least 30 attacks on industry and government facilities since 2017. Since February of 2018, Turla is believed to have successfully carried out cyber espionage operations in 20 different countries. Most of the group’s targets are located in the Middle East, but it has also been connected to cyber espionage operations in the United States and the United Kingdom. On Monday, officials from Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and America’s National Security Agency (NSA) said Turla had hijacked the attack infrastructure of an Iranian cyber espionage group. The group has been named by cyber security researchers as Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) 34, and is thought to carry out operations under the direction of the Iranian government. The officials said there was no evidence that APT34 was aware that some of its operations had been taken over by Turla. Instead, Russian hackers stealthily hijacked APT34’s command-and-control systems and used its resources —including computers, servers and malicious codes— to attack targets without APT34’s knowledge. They also accessed the computer systems of APT34’s prior targets. In doing so, Turla hackers masqueraded as APT34 operatives, thus resorting to a practice that is commonly referred to as ‘fourth party collection’, according to British and American officials. [...]

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Researchers hack Siri, Alexa, and Google Home by shining lasers at them
by Giacomo Tesio Nov. 4, 2019

Nov. 4, 2019

Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are vulnerable to attacks that use lasers to inject inaudible—and sometimes invisible—commands into the devices and surreptitiously cause them to unlock doors, visit websites, and locate, unlock, and start vehicles, researchers report in a research paper published on Monday. Dubbed Light Commands, the attack works against Facebook Portal and a variety of phones. Shining a low-powered laser into these voice-activated systems allows attackers to inject commands of their choice from as far away as 360 feet (110m). Because voice-controlled systems often don’t require users to authenticate themselves, the attack can frequently be carried out without the need of a password or PIN. Even when the systems require authentication for certain actions, it may be feasible to brute force the PIN, since many devices don’t limit the number of guesses a user can make. Among other things, light-based commands can be sent from one building to another and penetrate glass when a vulnerable device is kept near a closed window. The attack exploits a vulnerability in microphones that use micro-electro-mechanical systems, or MEMS. The microscopic MEMS components of these microphones unintentionally respond to light as if it were sound. While the researchers tested only Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, Facebook Portal, and a small number of tablets and phones, the researchers believe all devices that use MEMS microphones are susceptible to Light Commands attacks. # A novel mode of attack The laser-based attacks have several limitations. For one, the attacker must have direct line of sight to the targeted device. And for another, the light in many cases must be precisely aimed at a very specific part of the microphone. Except in cases where an attacker uses an infrared laser, the lights are also easy to see by someone who is close by and has line of sight of the device. What’s more, devices typically respond with voice and visual cues when executing a command, a feature that would alert users within earshot of the device. Despite those constraints, the findings are important for a host of reasons. Not only does the research present a novel mode of attack against voice-controllable, or VC, systems, it also shows how to carry out the attacks in semi-realistic environments. Additionally, the researchers still don’t fully understand the physics behind their exploit. A better understanding in the coming years may yield more effective attacks. Last, the research highlights the risks that result when VC devices, and the peripherals they connect to, carry out sensitive commands without requiring a password or PIN. “We find that VC systems are often lacking user authentication mechanisms, or if the mechanisms are present, they are incorrectly implemented (e.g., allowing for PIN bruteforcing),” the researchers wrote in a paper titled Light Commands: Laser-Based Audio Injection Attacks on Voice-Controllable Systems. “We show how an attacker can use light-injected voice commands to unlock the target’s smart-lock protected front door, open garage doors, shop on e-commerce websites at the target’s expense, or even locate, unlock and start various vehicles (e.g., Tesla and Ford) if the vehicles are connected to the target’s Google account.” Continua con video, paper e considerazioni molto interessanti sui problemi dei MEMS su https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/11/researchers-hack-sir… Giacomo -- Inviato da un terminale mobile. Perdonate brevità ed orrori grammaticali.

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