Jeffrey J. Bloom

Jeffrey J. Bloom

"The speed of technology, combined with always-changing threats, demand that we go faster in getting capabilities to the field," said Doug Wiltsie, director of the Army Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO). "The Army needs to act quickly on cyber technologies & prototyping can help expedite that."

One such prototype is a deployable defensive cyberspace operations "fly away" kit. It's easily deployable & enables Army cyber protection teams to quickly provide cyber defense around the world.
https://www.militaryspot.com/news/prototypes-rapidly-deliver-cyber-capabilities

Jeffrey J. Bloom

On June 5, a leaked NSA report revealed, among other things, the agency knew Russians had allegedly hacked the systems of a vendor dealing with voter information. "The former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson repeatedly told my colleagues & I [that] no specific or credible threats existed.."  Indiana’s secretary of state said, "It's unclear why our intelligence agencies would withhold timely & specific threat information from election officials."
https://news.vice.com/story/feds-wont-say-which-21-state-election-systems-russia-hacked

Jeffrey J. Bloom

"We are pleased to be working with Dow on leading-edge quantum computing software development for the material sciences," said CEO of 1QBit. This collaboration will augment Dow’s discovery process by building strong fundamental understanding of new chemicals & materials. The next-generation computational methodologies & experimental design will accelerate product & process development.
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170621005730/en/Dow-1QBit-Announce-Collaboration-Agreement-Quantum-Computing

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Contractors unplugged network cables from vending machines enabling "non-paying" contractors to use unfunded FreedomPay cards.
*The Office of Security installed surveillance cameras & captured several contractors participating in the scheme.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/watchdog-cia-contractors-fired-for-stealing-3000-in-vending-machine-snacks/article/2626699

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Customs & Border Protection started testing facial recognition at Dulles Airport in 2015 & expanded to New York's JFK Airport last year.
*"Biometric Exit" is currently being tested on a single flight from Atlanta to Tokyo & is expected to eventually roll out to every international flight & border crossing in the U.S.
*"We currently have everyone's photo, so we don't need to do any sort of enrollment. We have access to the Department of State records so we have photos of U.S. Citizens, we have visa photos, we have photos of people when they cross into the U.S. and their biometrics are captured into [DHS biometric database] IDENT."
https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/18/15332742/us-border-biometric-exit-facial-recognition-scanning-homeland-security

Jeffrey J. Bloom

EU agrees cyberattacks on any member state will be met by joint response, including sanctions on state & non-state hackers. The bloc will use a "cyber diplomacy toolbox" in response to targeted malicious cyber activities. "A joint EU response to malicious cyber activities would be proportionate to the scope, scale, duration, intensity, complexity, sophistication & impact.."
http://www.dw.com/en/eu-agrees-to-joint-sanctions-on-cyberattacks/a-39314085

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Researchers demonstrated how certain neural networks can be used to describe a large portion of quantum systems. The team focused on studying visible & hidden neurons. The first represents real quantum particles while the second links up with the first. Together they capture physical interactions between real particles. This neural network will always remain simple as long as the number of connections stays small.
http://trendintech.com/2017/06/18/neural-networks-are-now-being-used-to-represent-quantum-systems/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

The "Quadratic Convolutional" is a mathematical model that uses algorithms to define how V2 neurons process images in the visual cortex.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/science/looking-to-the-human-brain-to-improve-artificial-intelligence/article/495422

Jeffrey J. Bloom

The CIA just vouched for Amazon Web Services (AWS) at their Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C.

Along with the Modernizing Government Technology Act ($250 million for digital modernization of government agencies), president Trump's executive order aims to improve cybersecurity--primarily in the public sector--, with cloud technology being of special interest.

Carlson noted a learning curve in the way organizations acquire IT, particularly. "They know how to write acquisitions for a missile or a tanker or something really big in IT. And what’s changing is their ability to write acquisitions for agile IT, things like cloud utility-based models,"
https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/06/16/with-cia-credentials-can-amazon-repeat-commercial-success-in-the-public-sector-awspssummit-guestoftheweek/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

“[Jeff Bezos] recently secured a $600 million contract from the CIA. That’s at least twice what Bezos paid for the Post this year. Bezos recently disclosed that the company’s Web-services business is building a ‘private cloud’ for the CIA to use for its data needs.”
http://investmentwatchblog.com/washington-post-amazon-the-cia-exposed/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

"When we started out in this process, we probably had a handful of states really doing exceptional work, & some of the states were doing mediocre work, & a lot of states really had not anything in the cyber area," McAuliffe said.
*During the yearlong push, McAuliffe's team set up a cyber resource center, hosted regional summits & brought in government experts--including DHS & FBI--to speak to the governors about cybersecurity.
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/338213-mcauliffe-touts-buildup-of-cyber-defenses-in-the-states

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Although no strong conclusions exist, Britain's National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) has attributed WannaCry to North Korea's Lazarus Group.
*Most evidence gathered during the spread of WannaCry supports this (I.e. the range of IP addresses were mostly China based, which has been historically used by North Korea's RGB).

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Costing 22k+ companies over $3 billion, Kaspersky says Nigerian cyber-criminals used malicious attachments in phishing emails to steal technical drawings, floor plans & diagrams showing the structure of electrical & information networks.
https://ynaija.com/3bn-stolen-by-nigerian-hackers-report/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Musk further elaborated on his Mars plans in October during an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit. He outlined a four-stage process to inhabit Mars, explained how he'd create fuel & air on the planet, & disclosed his name for the main spaceship: Heart of Gold, a nod to the book "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-mars-colony-details-new-space-study-2017-6

Jeffrey J. Bloom

On July 12, the video streaming company will join Amazon, Reddit, Pornhub, Imgur & more to incorporate slowed-down or disrupted service to raise awareness for the importance of strong net neutrality guidelines, giving visitors to its site a taste of what a future without a free & open internet could look like. The protest, organized by Fight for the Future, freepress & Demand Progress, takes place five days before the first deadline for comments on the FCC's proposal to roll back net neutrality protections.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/netflix-has-rejoined-the-fight-for-net-neutrality

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Some BCI researchers zero in on one particular kind of regularly occurring brain signal that alerts us to important changes in our environment. Neuroscientists call these signals "event-related potentials." In the lab, they help us identify a reaction to a stimulus.
http://www.govtech.com/computing/Helping-or-Hacking-Engineers-and-ethicists-must-work-together-on-brain-computer-interface-technology.html

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Seamless dSPP integration with Keras & Tensorflow machine learning frameworks is achieved via dspp-keras Python package, available for download & setup in under 60 seconds time. Thus, virtually any person with basic understanding of machine learning can start experimenting with protein structure prediction methodology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=2jNgUisU8og

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Cherry Blossom version 5 allows infection of wireless & wired access points by installing a firmware upgrade dubbed FlyTrap that can be put on the device without needing physical access to it.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/15/wikileaks_dumps_cia_wifi_pwnage_tool_docs_online/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Google’s DeepMind was able to beat nearly 50 Atari games back in 2015, but the complexity of Ms. Pac-Man, with its many boards & moving parts, has made the classic title an especially difficult target. Maluuba describes its approach as "divide & conquer," taking on the Atari 2600 title by breaking it up into various smaller tasks & assigning each to individual AI agents.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/15/microsofts-ai-beats-ms-pac-man/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

The ghosts in "Ms. Pac-Man" seem pretty smart, but they've got nothing on Microsoft's AI-based Maluuba, which absolutely crushes the classic Atari game in a seriously inventive way.
http://digg.com/video/artificial-intelligence-ms-pac-man

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Google's DeepMind researchers, were able to develop a relational reasoning module for neural networks. The effort is part of developing AI systems capable of cognition with the same flexibility & efficiency that the human mind possesses.
"State-of-the-art results on CLEVR using standard visual question answering architectures are 68.5%, compared to 92.5% for humans[...]But using our RN-augmented network, we were able to show super-human performance of 95.5%."
https://futurism.com/deepmind-develops-a-neural-network-that-can-make-sense-of-objects-around-it/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Cuban officials say they also have notified a special cyber security team at DHS about hacking attacks aimed at Cuban networks & apparently originating from IP addresses in the U.S.
Regardless, Vladimir Putin is ready to step in, forgiving billions in Cuban government debt, selling Cuba Russian oil & winning a bid to build Cuba's new railroad. There's even talk of reopening a Russian military base after a 15-year-- the improved relations with the U.S. could face not just a rollback, but a flashback to the Cold War.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/inside-cuba-s-military-cyber-command-n772726

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Accenture Labs with Quantum software provider 1QBit created a first-of-its-kind Quantum-enabled molecular comparison application. It could significantly improve advanced molecular design. It will increase the speed of drug discovery for very complex neurological conditions like multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s & Lou Gehrig’s disease. Biogen now has a new Quantum-enabled application that is going to help it create molecular comparison results that give much deeper insights about shared genetic traits.
https://www.accenture.com/us-en/blogs/blogs-marc-carrel-billiard-quantum-computing

Jeffrey J. Bloom

"The leaking of classified information jeopardizes our national security," McCaskill said in a statement. "We need to determine if Ms. Winner’s security clearance process was handled correctly or if we missed any red flags."
Additionally, senators asked what OPM is doing about a provision that passed last year mandating a review of the government’s enhanced security clearance program.
https://origin-nyi.thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/338019-senators-seek-answers-on-alleged-nsa-leakers-security-clearance

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Facebook has started experimenting with AI to understand text that might be advocating for terrorism. They're also working with other platforms, clamping down on re-activated accounts by previously banned users & identifying & removing clusters of terror supporters online.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/16/facebook-using-artificial-intelligence-combat-terrorist-propaganda/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

By mid-2012, The CIA had developed implants "for roughly 25 different devices from 10 different manufacturers," including Asus, Belkin, D-Link, Linksys & Netgear, according to one 2010-dated document.
https://www.cnet.com/news/cia-reportedly-hacked-wi-fi-routers-for-years-wikileaks/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

"The perception that Russia’s actions achieved unprecedented success increases the likelihood that the U.S. & others will experience more serious attacks in the coming years."
"Unfortunately, instead of promoting the use & development of encryption, governments have worked separately & in partnership to create a narrative that undermines its essential functions. It's essential that we reverse course & put these 'crypto wars' to bed permanently so stakeholders can turn to other increasingly important questions about the future of the internet."

Jeffrey J. Bloom

CherryBlossom allows operatives to interact & control SOHO routers. The tool can sniff, log & redirect Internet traffic, open a VPN to the victim's local network, execute actions based on predefined rules, alert operators when victim's active & more. Documentation lists 200+ vulnerable routers from 21 vendors, including Apple, D-Link, Belkin, Aironet (Cisco), Linksys & Motorola.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/cia-created-toolkit-for-hacking-hundreds-of-routers-models/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Researchers published two papers this week about teaching relational reasoning to AI. Researchers modified existing machine-learning methods to include the capability to learn about physical relationships between static objects & the behavior of moving objects over time. THIS is exactly what’s needed to broaden & advance Skynet, or AI. Without new ideas, AI remains incapable of holding real conversations or solving difficult problems on their own.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608108/forget-alphago-deepminds-has-a-more-interesting-step-towards-general-ai/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

In a bizarre & under-reported revelation, government officials say Russians "hacked" the Zephyrs Internet naming contest last year & changed the majority of votes to "Baby Cakes."
*No one really voted for "Baby Cakes," said the investigation’s lead cyber-security expert on the condition we not reveal his name is Brad Milton.
http://neutralgroundnews.com/baby-cakes-russian-hackers-reportedly-behind-zephyrs-name-change/