Unbound: No 175
How to fix the top 5 cybersecurity vulnerabilities
by Dave Shackleford | TechTarget
The threat landscape is more challenging than ever. Cross-site scripting, SQL injection, phishing and DDoS attacks are far too common. Additionally, attackers are using more and more sophisticated attacks, leaving security teams scrambling to keep up. Teams are faced with many issues, including successful advanced phishing attacks and ransomware attacks that many seem unable to prevent.
How do hackers wreak havoc on enterprises as well as cause sensitive data loss and exposure? The answer is through a variety of cybersecurity vulnerabilities in processes, technical controls and user behaviors that help hackers perform malicious actions. Many different vulnerabilities exist, including code flaws in OSes and applications, systems and services misconfiguration, poor or immature processes and technology implementations, and end users susceptible to attacks.
The most common attacks that result in data breaches include phishing, credential theft, vulnerability exploits, ransomware and privilege abuse.
The secret to making language models useful
by Brian Evergreen | Venturebeat
If you described your symptoms to me as a business leader and I typed them into ChatGPT, would you want me to generate and prescribe a treatment plan for you, sending orders to your local pharmacist — without consulting a doctor?
What if you were offered a trade: The top data scientists in the world will join your organization, but with the catch that every one of your business experts must join your competitor, leaving only data to work with and no experts to provide context?
In the era of AI, the public square is filled with voices touting the opportunities, risks, threats and recommended practices for adopting generative AI — especially language models such as GPT-4 or Bard. New open-sourced models, research breakthroughs and product launches are announced daily.
GameStop to shut down NFT marketplace due to regulatory limbo
by CIARAN LYONS | Cointelegraph
Gaming retailer GameStop has warned its users that it will be phasing out its nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace next month due to regulatory uncertainty.
In a statement on GameStop’s website, it notified users that they have just over two weeks remaining to access its NFT platform. However, the company assured NFT holders that the decision to further scale down its relationship with crypto will not impact their NFTs.
“Effective as of February 2, 2024, customers will no longer be able to buy, sell or create NFTs. Your NFTs are on the blockchain and will remain accessible and saleable through other platforms.”
The gaming company cited a lack of regulation as the cause for further diminishing its crypto services.
🌙 NASA - Best Photo from Last Week
Hubble Captures a Monster Merger
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features Arp 122, a peculiar galaxy that in fact comprises two galaxies – NGC 6040, the tilted, warped spiral galaxy and LEDA 59642, the round, face-on spiral – that are in the midst of a collision. This dramatic cosmic encounter is located at the very safe distance of roughly 570 million light-years from Earth. Peeking in at the lower-left corner is the elliptical galaxy NGC 6041, a central member of the galaxy cluster that Arp 122 resides in, but otherwise not participating in this monster merger.
Galactic collisions and mergers are monumentally energetic and dramatic events, but they take place on a very slow timescale. For example, the Milky Way is on track to collide with its nearest galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), but these two galaxies have a good four billion years to go before they actually meet. The process of colliding and merging will not be a quick one either: it might take hundreds of millions of years to unfold. These collisions take so long because of the truly massive distances involved.
Galaxies are composed of stars and their solar systems, dust, gas, and invisible dark matter. In galactic collisions, therefore, these constituent components may experience enormous changes in the gravitational forces acting on them. In time, this completely changes the structure of the two (or more) colliding galaxies, and sometimes ultimately results in a single, merged galaxy. That may well be what results from the collision pictured in this image. Galaxies that result from mergers are thought to have a regular or elliptical structure, as the merging process disrupts more complex structures (such as those observed in spiral galaxies). It would be fascinating to know what Arp 122 will look like once this collision is complete… but that will not happen for a long, long time.
Text credit: European Space Agency
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
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