infosec Archives

GitLab: Developers view AI as ‘essential’ despite concerns

A survey by GitLab has shed light on the views of developers on the landscape of AI in software development.

The report, titled ‘The State of AI in Software Development,’ presents insights from over 1,000 global senior technology executives, developers, and security and operations professionals.

The report reveals a complex relationship between enthusiasm for AI adoption and concerns about data privacy, intellectual property, and security.

“Enterprises...

6 September 2023 | Applications

NCSC: Chatbot ‘prompt injection’ attacks pose growing security risk

The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has issued a stark warning about the increasing vulnerability of chatbots to manipulation by hackers, leading to potentially serious real-world consequences.

The alert comes as concerns rise over the practice of "prompt injection" attacks, where individuals deliberately create input or prompts designed to manipulate the behaviour of language models that underpin chatbots.

Chatbots have become integral in various applications...

30 August 2023 | Artificial Intelligence

Assessing the risks of generative AI in the workplace

Amid the exponential growth of generative AI, there is a pressing need to evaluate the legal, ethical, and security implications of these solutions in the workplace.

One of the concerns highlighted by industry experts is often the lack of transparency regarding the data on which many generative AI models are trained.

There is insufficient information about the specifics of the training data used for models like GPT-4, which powers applications such as ChatGPT. This lack...

17 July 2023 | Applications

The risk and reward of ChatGPT in cybersecurity

Unless you’ve been on a retreat in some far-flung location with no internet access for the past few months, chances are you’re well aware of how much hype and fear there’s been around ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by OpenAI. Maybe you’ve seen articles about academics and teachers worrying that it’ll make cheating easier than ever. On the other side of the coin, you might have seen the articles evangelising all of ChatGPT’s potential...

3 April 2023 | Applications

F-Secure details nature-inspired AI project harnessing ‘swarm intelligence’

fsecure project blackfin ai autonomous agents artificial intelligence cybersecurity infosec

Cybersecurity giant F-Secure has detailed Project Blackfin, an AI initiative which harnesses nature-inspired “swarm intelligence” techniques.

The concept sounds similar to Fetch.ai in that decentralised autonomous AI agents will collaborate in order to achieve common goals.

Cambridge-based Fetch.ai is focusing its efforts on the use of autonomous AI agents for IoT purposes. Naturally, F-Secure is currently seeking to use such agents to further improve the company’s...

21 November 2019 | Security

McAfee: Keep an eye on the humans pulling the levers, not the AIs

Security firm McAfee has warned that it’s more likely humans will use AI for malicious purposes rather than it going rogue itself.

It’s become a cliché metaphor, but people are still concerned a self-thinking killer AI like SkyNet from the film Terminator will be created.

McAfee CTO Steve Grobman spoke at this year’s RSA conference in San Francisco and warned the wrong humans in control of powerful AIs are his company’s primary concern.

To provide an...

6 March 2019 | Security

Microsoft wants AI to predict when a PC is going to be infected

Microsoft wants to harness AI's incredible prediction abilities to detect PC malware attacks before they even happen. The company has sponsored a competition on Kaggle which challenges data scientists to create models which predict if a device is likely to become infected with malware given a current machine state. In a blog post, Microsoft wrote:

“The competition provides academics and researchers with varied backgrounds a fresh opportunity to work on a...

14 December 2018 | Microsoft

Information Commissioner targets intrusive facial recognition

Facial recognition offers huge opportunities, but the Information Commissioner is more concerned about how it could impact privacy. In a post on the ICO blog, Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham highlights the advantages and disadvantages of facial recognition. “I have identified FRT by law enforcement as a priority area for my office and I recently wrote to the Home Office and the NPCC setting out my concerns,” Denham wrote. “Should my concerns not be addressed, I will...

15 May 2018 | Legislation & Government

Experts believe AI will be weaponised in the next 12 months – attacks unslowed by dark web shutdowns

The majority of cybersecurity experts believe AI will be weaponised for use in cyberattacks within the next 12 months, and the shutting down of dark web markets will not decrease malware activity. Cylance posted the results of their survey of Black Hat USA 2017 attendees yesterday, and 62 percent of the infosec experts believe cyberattacks will become far more advanced over the course of the next year due to artificial intelligence. Interestingly, 32 percent said there wasn’t a chance...