Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey thereon
Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech are you.
Speaker 1: I am still in Las Vegas, Nevada. You can probably
Speaker 1: tell that my voice is going. I did a lot
Speaker 1: of talking yesterday. I had to do some recordings of
Speaker 1: the Restless Ones podcast, and I did a lot of
Speaker 1: chatting with other folks, and yeah, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'm coming down with anything. I sure hope I'm not.
Speaker 1: I've been masking every time I can, whenever I'm going
Speaker 1: out in public, and I recommend that y'all who have
Speaker 1: to go out in public do the same if you can,
Speaker 1: because obviously COVID is having another surge, and I want
Speaker 1: folks to be safe. And hopefully all I have is
Speaker 1: just like wear and tear on the old vocal cords
Speaker 1: and that's it. We'll obviously be very careful and keep checking.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, we have some tech news to
Speaker 1: get to, so let's talk about that. Officials here in
Speaker 1: the United States, as well as some in Japan, have
Speaker 1: announced the discovery of a Chinese hacker attack that is
Speaker 1: infiltrating organizations by compromising older routers. You can read up
Speaker 1: on this in Ours Technica. There's an article by Dan Gooden.
Speaker 1: The article is titled Backdoored firmware lets China State hackers
Speaker 1: control routers with magic packets. The article goes into a
Speaker 1: lot of technical detail. I'm not going to bother doing
Speaker 1: that here because this is really just a news item.
Speaker 1: But essentially this hacker group, which has lots of different names,
Speaker 1: I'll just choose one of them, which is black Tech. First,
Speaker 1: they have to get access to a system. Now how
Speaker 1: they do that doesn't really matter. It's just they need
Speaker 1: to get access. First, administrative access, like administrator level access
Speaker 1: to be specific. They might get that through some compromise
Speaker 1: login credentials, perhaps from another hacker group, maybe they use
Speaker 1: social engineering, but whatever. First they get that access. With
Speaker 1: that administrator level access to the system, they then push
Speaker 1: an older version of firmware to certain routers, older routers
Speaker 1: that don't have a protection against this kind of attack.
Speaker 1: And typically they're targeting routers that are on the edge
Speaker 1: of networks. So for example, they might target a branch
Speaker 1: office of a larger company, partly because they're less likely
Speaker 1: to be noticed, and that security won't be quite as
Speaker 1: robust as it would be if it were at HQ. Now,
Speaker 1: because these routers have a trusted relationship with all the
Speaker 1: other computer systems that are connected to that company, the
Speaker 1: hackers are then able to get widespread access to the
Speaker 1: full organization. They target the edge routers, they infect those,
Speaker 1: and then they snoop around Good and explains in his
Speaker 1: piece that the more recent router hardware that has come
Speaker 1: out over the last couple of years includes protections against
Speaker 1: this type of attack, But obviously most organizations aren't updating
Speaker 1: their routers regularly. They do so when they need to,
Speaker 1: and determining if your system has been affected it seems
Speaker 1: like it's not very easy or straightforward, particularly if the
Speaker 1: hackers are actually being really careful. So it's another example
Speaker 1: of how cyberwar is a real ongoing thing and that
Speaker 1: state backed hackers continue to infiltrate both companies and public organizations.
Speaker 1: As for the magic packets, those are little small packets
Speaker 1: of data that the hackers are using essentially to open
Speaker 1: or close backdoor access into these systems, and typically the
Speaker 1: magic packets kind of blend in with overall network traffic
Speaker 1: so that's kind of why they were called that. Back
Speaker 1: in July, word got out that hackers had leveraged a
Speaker 1: stolen Microsoft certificate to gain access to the email systems
Speaker 1: belonging to really large organizations, including the United States State Department. Now,
Speaker 1: the New York Times report that the hackers stole around
Speaker 1: sixty thousand emails, primarily from ten email accounts. Further, nine
Speaker 1: of those ten accounts belong to members of the State
Speaker 1: Department who are working on projects that involve East Asian affairs. Now,
Speaker 1: the State Department has not formally accused China of being
Speaker 1: behind the attacks, but that seems to be the implication here.
Speaker 1: The hack has sparked conversations within the US government on
Speaker 1: how to harden systems against hacker attacks, including the possibility
Speaker 1: of moving away from single vendor solutions like using Microsoft.
Speaker 1: And while there's an element of closing the barn door
Speaker 1: after the horse has already escaped going on here, I
Speaker 1: do think putting all your trust in a single vendor
Speaker 1: can lead to massive problems down the line. But honestly,
Speaker 1: there aren't really any easy, fully reliable solutions here. Security
Speaker 1: researchers revealed that all modern GPUs, that is graphics processing
Speaker 1: units have their own way to compress data. But even
Speaker 1: though they're each using a different method, that method can
Speaker 1: be exploited to steal pixels from a website. Which sounds weird, right,
Speaker 1: but essentially here's how it works. You get hackers and
Speaker 1: they create a malicious website that has the same name
Speaker 1: but a different domain as their target. So let's say
Speaker 1: they've identified a target website that they don't have access
Speaker 1: to directly, maybe it's behind some sort of protective measure,
Speaker 1: So they create a different website has the same name
Speaker 1: but a different domain, so instead of dot com, maybe
Speaker 1: it's dot biz. Now in this malicious version of the website,
Speaker 1: they include an iframe. The iframe serves as a spot
Speaker 1: where you can embed other content into your website. So
Speaker 1: one common use for iframes is to embed ads in them,
Speaker 1: and that allows the site to swap ads out dynamically
Speaker 1: and the iframe kind of holds its place. They then
Speaker 1: rely on the GPU's data compression scheme to pull pixels
Speaker 1: into a side channel, and they pull it from the
Speaker 1: target website. You reconstruct what appears on your target site.
Speaker 1: So you might have a corporate website that's usually behind
Speaker 1: protection and the hackers create a malicious site named the
Speaker 1: same thing, but on a different domain, and by stealing pixels,
Speaker 1: they can recreate what was on that target website, potentially
Speaker 1: gaining access to sensitive data, including things like you know,
Speaker 1: log in credentials. The researchers were mostly showing that this
Speaker 1: is possible. They didn't indicate that it's an active concern, Like,
Speaker 1: they didn't say that this is something that they're seeing
Speaker 1: actively deployed out there, but that in fact the hardware
Speaker 1: across all GPU manufacturers allows for this, and since it
Speaker 1: is possible, sooner or later someone will do it. Right,
Speaker 1: So there are ways to block pixels stealing. Most of
Speaker 1: those involve website administrators being proactive on the matter. They
Speaker 1: can build stuff into the header of a web page
Speaker 1: that will protect against that kind of thing, but that's
Speaker 1: a lot of work. It is also probably, you know,
Speaker 1: it's likely, I think that we're going to see companies
Speaker 1: that make web browsers that facilitate this kind of attack
Speaker 1: to address that in the future. The European Union issued
Speaker 1: a report stating that after analyzing various social network platforms
Speaker 1: out there, one in particular stands out when it comes
Speaker 1: to the proliferation of disinformation. Do you have any guesses?
Speaker 1: If you said X marks the spot, meaning the platform
Speaker 1: formerly known as Twitter, you win a prize a virtual
Speaker 1: donut enjoy Anyway, the EU previously established a voluntary code
Speaker 1: of practice on disinformation, and tons of platforms signed to
Speaker 1: pledge and that they would follow this voluntary code, so
Speaker 1: that includes Google and YouTube, meta primarily Facebook and LinkedIn.
Speaker 1: They all signed it, along with like forty other platforms.
Speaker 1: It also used to include X, but at last May
Speaker 1: Elon Musk decided that X was going to peace out
Speaker 1: of that voluntary code. Now, researchers in the EU say
Speaker 1: that disinformation is spreading like wildfire on X and that
Speaker 1: the problem is only getting worse. Also, X has recently
Speaker 1: disabled a feature that used to allow users to report
Speaker 1: cases of misinformation about elections. So this means, assuming those
Speaker 1: EU researchers are right that X is not just the
Speaker 1: worst when it comes to preventing misinformation and disinformation from
Speaker 1: propagating across their system, they are actively turning off features
Speaker 1: that would do anything about it, which is a big
Speaker 1: old yikes. An article in the LGBTQ Nation reveals that
Speaker 1: TikTok is working with the government of Kenya to restrict
Speaker 1: and remove LGBTQ plus content from the platform within Kenya's borders. Now.
Speaker 1: This is because Kenya's government has banned same sex sexual relationships,
Speaker 1: and currently the government is also considering an additional law
Speaker 1: that would hunish homosexuality with a lifetime prison sentence. TikTok
Speaker 1: has already deplatformed and demonetized TikTok users in Kenya who,
Speaker 1: according to the country's laws, have posted restricted content. Apparently,
Speaker 1: TikTok CEO has committed to not only being more active
Speaker 1: to remove LGBTQ plus content from the platform within Kenya,
Speaker 1: but to also launch a campaign to urge users to
Speaker 1: instead post quote unquote positive content, which sounds disturbingly close
Speaker 1: to conversion therapy. In my opinion, it's really ugly stuff
Speaker 1: and my heart goes out to the people of Kenya.
Speaker 1: This week, Meta announced an update to its line of
Speaker 1: smart glasses, previously known as Stories, but to be really
Speaker 1: formal about they are now known as ray Ban Meta
Speaker 1: smart Glasses. The glasses have a pair of cameras in
Speaker 1: them when at the top of each corner of the frames,
Speaker 1: and they contain five microphones that are meant to provide
Speaker 1: better sound pickup when you use your glasses, you know,
Speaker 1: take a phone call or something. They also have speakers
Speaker 1: that the company says will make it easy for the
Speaker 1: wearer to hear what's playing on their glasses, but it won't,
Speaker 1: you know, irritate the living heck out of everybody else
Speaker 1: who happens to be nearby. The glasses can take about
Speaker 1: five hundred photos at twelve megapixel resolution or around one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty second long video clips at ten ADP
Speaker 1: before you end up using up all the storage on
Speaker 1: the device and it's time to offload stuff. The battery
Speaker 1: reportedly is good for like four to six hours of use,
Speaker 1: and they come in a case that can also serve
Speaker 1: as a charger, and the case itself can hold enough
Speaker 1: battery juice to recharge the glasses several times before the
Speaker 1: case itself needs to be recharged. You can also live
Speaker 1: stream while wearing these glasses too. The controls include both
Speaker 1: a touch system and the stems of the eyeglasses and
Speaker 1: voice commands, and essentially these things do some of, but
Speaker 1: not all, of the stuff that Google Glass did years ago,
Speaker 1: but they do look a lot better. They do not
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, create any sort of
Speaker 1: ar view of the world around you, which Google Glass
Speaker 1: could sort of do. And already folks are worried about
Speaker 1: privacy issues with these glasses. They're concerned that you could
Speaker 1: be on video or have someone snapping pictures of you
Speaker 1: without your knowledge or consent. Now I get that concern.
Speaker 1: It's a legit concern, don't get me wrong, But y'all,
Speaker 1: that's already happening. There are so many cameras out there,
Speaker 1: whether they're in phones or in security systems like in
Speaker 1: door bells or in cars, So I pretty much guarantee
Speaker 1: that you're on camera frequently throughout an average day. But
Speaker 1: I do understand how it gets creepy when you're talking
Speaker 1: about someone wearing the camera on their face. Anyway, Meta
Speaker 1: is taking pre orders on these things, which start at
Speaker 1: around two hundred and ninety nine US dollars, and they'll
Speaker 1: start shipping in mid October. So maybe your Halloween costume
Speaker 1: can be invasive surveillance. That's a fun one. All right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a quick break and we're gonna come
Speaker 1: back with more news in just a moment. We're back.
Speaker 1: Reddit indicated this week that it will remove the opt
Speaker 1: out feature for personalized ads, or at least some Reddit
Speaker 1: users around the world. So the new policy says that
Speaker 1: Reddit will take your activity on the platform and then
Speaker 1: use that to decide which ads to display to you.
Speaker 1: So let's say you spend a lot of time on
Speaker 1: subreddits that are dedicated to gaming, Well, then you're more
Speaker 1: likely to see ads related to gaming while on Reddit. Right.
Speaker 1: It says this is for your benefit, But there are
Speaker 1: a lot of users who are upset because the message
Speaker 1: that they're picking up on is Reddit is determined to
Speaker 1: track their behavior across the site and there's no way
Speaker 1: to tell Reddit to knock it off. And while Reddit
Speaker 1: says users all around the world will be able to
Speaker 1: opt out of personalized advertising based off of quote unquote
Speaker 1: information and activity from our partners, only users in select
Speaker 1: locations will actually be able to opt out of personalized
Speaker 1: ads based off their activity on Reddit itself. I'm guessing
Speaker 1: those select locations will be places like the European Union,
Speaker 1: which has some pretty strict rules in place when it
Speaker 1: comes to user privacy, and any place that doesn't have
Speaker 1: those kind of rules, Redd, it's going to be tracking
Speaker 1: you like crazy. And now, the latest in the long
Speaker 1: arduous story of Microsoft's plan to acquire Activision Blizzard. When
Speaker 1: last we left our tail, Microsoft was working hard to
Speaker 1: convince regulators in the UK that the deal would not
Speaker 1: result in an anti competitive situation within the world of
Speaker 1: console gaming in general and cloud based streaming gaming in particular.
Speaker 1: Well last week that regulatory agency gave provisional approval to
Speaker 1: the acquisition, so that roadblock was removed. But now the
Speaker 1: United States Federal Trade Commission has once again objected to
Speaker 1: this deal. Now, they previously attempted to secure an injunction
Speaker 1: against the deal closing, but a US District Court judge
Speaker 1: denied that request and said that the FTC had failed
Speaker 1: to produce evidence that this deal would actually be harmful
Speaker 1: toward competition. The FTC then appealed that ruling, but then
Speaker 1: withdrew the complaint not that long afterward, and it turns
Speaker 1: out that was temporary because now they have submitted the
Speaker 1: appeal again to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Once
Speaker 1: the regulators in the UK gave their provisional approval, and
Speaker 1: then once the court actually gives a decision one way
Speaker 1: or the other, the FTC plans on an evidentiary hearing
Speaker 1: on the matter. Now This on the surface sounds bad
Speaker 1: for Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, but they could still go
Speaker 1: through with their deal because there's no injunction against it,
Speaker 1: and that deal is scheduled to close on October eighteenth.
Speaker 1: Then once the deal is closed, they can worry about
Speaker 1: any ongoing legal issues they might face after the fact,
Speaker 1: but by then the deal will already be done. So
Speaker 1: what I'm seeing is that most analysts think this deal
Speaker 1: will finally close next month, and now for a few
Speaker 1: AI stories, it's always going to be that. In a
Speaker 1: tech Stuff News episode, an SEO consultant named Gagan Gotra
Speaker 1: brought some concerning information about Google Bard conversations. So it
Speaker 1: turns out if someone has a conversation with google Bard,
Speaker 1: which I'm just going to remind you that's Google's AI
Speaker 1: powered chatbot. It's similar to Open AI's chat GPT, specifically,
Speaker 1: as it is integrated with bing, well, if you then
Speaker 1: share a link of that conversation with someone else, then
Speaker 1: Google will actually index that conversation, which means that conversation
Speaker 1: with google Bard can pop up in future search results.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you and a coworker are using
Speaker 1: google Bard to help develop a business plan and this
Speaker 1: is something that you do not want to share outside
Speaker 1: of your organization. When you share that conversational link to
Speaker 1: your coworker, the link itself becomes indexable, and then Google's
Speaker 1: web craller will index the conversation, and if someone else
Speaker 1: uses the right search query, that conversation can potentially pop
Speaker 1: up in those search results, and the information that you
Speaker 1: intended to be private has now been made public. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously there are all sorts of situations where indexing the
Speaker 1: barred conversation could turn out to be a really bad thing.
Speaker 1: It's not that different from when open Ai had an
Speaker 1: issue with chat GPT, where the chatbot would occasionally give
Speaker 1: users access to other users chat histories with the chatbot. Now,
Speaker 1: in the Google case, we're not talking about a bug,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a feature. Because Gotra had an exchange
Speaker 1: with Google research scientist Peter Lieu, and Peter pointed out
Speaker 1: that the search engine will only end conversations if someone
Speaker 1: has clicked on the share button, and Goscher's reply was
Speaker 1: the same one I would have made. Namely, I think
Speaker 1: most users would just assume that share just means you've
Speaker 1: elected to share that conversation with someone in particular not
Speaker 1: the whole world in general, but that appears to be
Speaker 1: the case. Once upon a time, when chat GPT first
Speaker 1: splashed on the scene, the chatbot could only draw information
Speaker 1: from before September twenty twenty one. It didn't have access
Speaker 1: to the real time web. It could not crawl the
Speaker 1: web for current information. So you could not ask it
Speaker 1: about breaking news or anything like that because it literally
Speaker 1: just could not access those information sources. Now, back in
Speaker 1: July of this year, OpenAI created a subscription based tier
Speaker 1: of service that would let users rely on chat GPT
Speaker 1: through bing searches to access current information. But that feature
Speaker 1: soon went away. Why because users figured out that they
Speaker 1: could use this particular feature to bypass paywalls and get
Speaker 1: to content that normally you would have to pay a
Speaker 1: subscription to access. That's not exactly something that either open
Speaker 1: ai or Microsoft wants to deal with, so the feature
Speaker 1: went offline. But now it's come back. OpenAI announced yesterday
Speaker 1: that through bing, it will let users access real time
Speaker 1: information using the chatbot, and it calls this authoritative. Now.
Speaker 1: I personally find that designation questionable given how chatbots like
Speaker 1: chat GPT are prone to producing hallucinations or confabulations, which
Speaker 1: just means sometimes they make stuff up. So I'm not
Speaker 1: sure how authoritative you can actually claim to be. If
Speaker 1: you've been following the union strikes in Hollywood, you likely
Speaker 1: know that the Writer's Guild of America or WGA, has
Speaker 1: reached a provisional agreement with the Alliance of Motion Pictures
Speaker 1: and Television Producers aka the AMPTP. A lot of the
Speaker 1: WGA's concerns relate to tech, ranging from how streaming companies
Speaker 1: determine payouts like residuals, to the role of artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: should play in film and television. The agreement, which WGA
Speaker 1: members will have to ratify in a vote, essentially says
Speaker 1: that the studios will not be able to compel writers
Speaker 1: to use AI, that any content that does involve generative
Speaker 1: AI has to be labeled as such, and that AI
Speaker 1: is not eligible to get a writing credit. Now that's
Speaker 1: important when it comes to things like payments and residuals
Speaker 1: and so on, Considering the US courts have recently found
Speaker 1: that AI generated material is not eligible for copyright, I
Speaker 1: think these changes are ultimately of benefit to both the
Speaker 1: writers and the producers. Meanwhile, the actor strike still goes on. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's it for the news for today Thursday, September twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. Next week, I'll be back in Atlanta
Speaker 1: and episodes will return as normal. They'll probably sound more
Speaker 1: like the older episodes and not weird because I'm recording
Speaker 1: in some hotel room in Las Vegas. So I hope
Speaker 1: you are all well, and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.