Welcome back to another edition of Tuesday Newsday™. On the sampling menu this week: our first course is a disturbing new use of generative AI, followed by a main course of the plummeting NFT market and more iPhone zero-day exploits. For dessert, the chef has prepared a special edition of the possible end of encryption. Let's dive in head first!
- A small Spanish town has been embroiled in controversy after numerous school girls were victims of AI-generated fake nude photographs
Add that to the list of things I never knew I should be afraid of. Sure, generative AI has a lot of promise in several different fields, but that's not to say it doesn't come without risk. This is a seriously disturbing example of the dark side of this kind of technology. The perpetrators were able to generate the fake nude photos using fully clothed photos taken from the victims' social media profiles. This kind of thing could literally happen to anyone with an Instagram. Scary stuff.
- Egyptian opposition politician Ahmed Altantawy was targeted by predator spyware
Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) alongside the Citizen Lab in Canada published their findings last Friday. They discovered an "in-the-wild 0-day exploit chain for iPhones." Similar to Pegasus spyware, this spyware is developed by a "commercial surveillance vendor" called Intellexa.
- A recent study concluded that 69,795 out of 73,257 NFT collections have a market cap of 0 Ether
Well, well, well, color me shocked. Do you mean to tell me that a digital picture with no intrinsic value isn't worth a million dollars?!?!? In all seriousness, I'm glad this trend is over.
- The UK passes a bill that casts serious doubt on the future of encryption
They pulled a page out of the dictator handbook and framed this as being "for the children." Here's the reality: "Under the terms of the bill, encrypted messaging apps would be obligated to check users’ messages for child sexual abuse material."
Obviously, we think it's a good thing to find ways to prevent the proliferation of CSAM; that goes without question. Our issue is that depending on how this law is implemented, it could be the death blow of end-to-end encryption on apps like WhatsApp. Even Meta is protesting this bill; that's how bad it is...
If you'd like to know more, we have an article on the subject!
2023 keeps on churning out Brave New World-esque headlines, and we're just along for the ride:
- Generative AI has started to show it's dark side
- That NFT you bought probably wasn't a sound investment
- The UK government wants to kill encryption
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