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The RISKS Digest Volume 34 Issue 05



The RISKS Digest Volume 34 Issue 05

























Wednesday, 31st January 2024

Forum on Risks to the Public in Computers and Related Systems

ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy,
Peter G. Neumann, moderator

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Contents


Offshore Wind Farms Vulnerable to Cyberattacks
Rizwan Choudhury

Tesla Hacked at Pwn2Own Automotive 2024
Sergiu Gatlan

America’s Dangerous Trucks
Frontline

Authorities investigating massive security breach at Global Affairs Canada
CBC

Why the 737 MAX 9 door plug blew out
Lauren Weinstein

Man sues Macy’s, saying false facial recognition match led to jail assault
WashPost

Bugs in our pockets: the risks of client-side scanning
Journal of Cybersecurity Oxford Academic

Sleeper Agents: Training Deceptive LLMs that Persist Through Safety Training
Arxiv

ERCIM News 136 published – Special Theme: Large Language Models
Peter Kunz

Deepfake Audio of Biden Alarms Experts
Margi Murphy

The Great Freight-Train Heists of the 21st Century
Slashdot

Nightshade: a new tool artists can use to *poison* AI models that scrape their online work
Lauren Weinstein

ChatGPT is leaking passwords from private conversations of users
Ars Technica reader says

Impact of AI on Software Development
Taylor Soper

AI maxim
Lauren Weinstein

Is American Journalism Headed Toward an Extinction-Level Event?
geoff goodfellow

Huge Proportion of Internet Is AI-Generated Slime, Researchers Find
Maggie Harrison

How Beloved Indie Blog ‘The Hairpin’ Turned Into an AI Clickbait Farm
WiReD

Twitter/X says that it has temporarily blocked some searches for Taylor Swift while they try deal with the flood of AI-porn related to her
LW

Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce and a MAGA Meltdown
NYTimes

YOUR PAPERS PLEASE! – Florida House passes bill that would ban children under 16 from social media
Axios

Hawley and the tech CEOs
Lauren Weinstein

Congress and the states want to bring a Chinese-style police state Internet to the U.S.
Lauren Weinstein

iPhone Apps Secretly Harvest Data When They Send Notifications
Thomas Germain

In India, an algorithm declares them dead; they have to prove they’re alive
Steve Bacher

Tech Layoffs Shock Young Workers. The Older People? Not So Much.
NYTimes

Re: Even after a recall, Tesla’s Autopilot does dumb dangerous things
Geoff Kuenning

Re: ChatGPT can answer yes or no at the same time
Amos Shapir

Re: Tesla Drivers in Chicago Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather (Goldberg,
John Levine

One-star rating deserved for apps that allow full-screen ads
Dan Jacobson

Info on RISKS (comp.risks)


Offshore Wind Farms Vulnerable to Cyberattacks (Rizwan Choudhury)

ACM TechNews
<[email protected]>

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 11:05:43 -0500 (EST)

Rizwan Choudhury, *Interesting Engineering*, 24 Jan 2024
via ACM TechNews, 31 Jan 2024

Researchers at Canada's Concordia University and the Hydro-Quebec Research
Institute studied the cybersecurity risks associated with offshore wind
farms, specifically those using voltage-source-converter high-voltage
direct-current (VSC-HVDC) connections. In simulations, the researchers found
that cyberattacks could cause blackouts or equipment damage by prompting
poorly dampened power oscillations that are amplified by the HVDC system and
spread to the main grid.


Tesla Hacked at Pwn2Own Automotive 2024 (Sergiu Gatlan)

ACM TechNews
<[email protected]>

Fri, 26 Jan 2024 11:19:56 -0500 (EST)

Sergiu Gatlan, *BleepingComputer*, 24 Jan 2024

On the first day of the Pwn2Own Automotive 2024 hacking contest, security
researchers hacked a Tesla Modem, collecting awards totaling $722,500 for
three bug collisions and 24 unique zero-day exploits. The Synacktiv Team
chained three zero-day bugs to obtain root permissions on a Tesla Modem, for
which it won $100,000. The team won another $120,000 by hacking a Ubiquiti
Connect EV Station and a JuiceBox 40 Smart EV Charging Station using unique
two-bug chains, and $16,000 related to a known exploit chain targeting the
ChargePoint Home Flex EV charger.


America’s Dangerous Trucks (Frontline)

Gabe Goldberg
<[email protected]>

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 12:46:13 -0500

Deadly traffic accidents involving large trucks have surged over the past
decade. FRONTLINE and ProPublica examine one gruesome kind of truck accident
”- underride crashes -” and why they keep happening.

Trucking industry representatives and the government’s lead agency on
traffic safety have said that their top priority is safety. Drawing on more
than a year of reporting ”- including leaked documents and interviews with
former government insiders, trucking industry representatives, and families
of underride crash victims ”- the documentary reveals how, for decades,
federal regulators proposed new rules to try to prevent underride
crashes. Over and over, pushback from trucking industry lobbyists won the
day, leaving drivers of smaller vehicles vulnerable.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/americas-dangerous-trucks/

The risks? Regulatory capture and science denial. Plus a cavalier attitude
towards people dying. Stay away from trucks.


Authorities investigating massive security breach at Global Affairs Canada (CBC)

Matthew Kruk
<[email protected]>

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 16:41:06 -0700

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/global-affairs-security-breach-1.7099290

Canadian authorities are investigating a prolonged data security breach
following the "detection of malicious cyber activity" affecting the internal
network used by Global Affairs Canada staff, according to internal
department emails viewed by CBC News.

The breach affects at least two internal drives, as well as emails,
calendars and contacts of many staff members.

CBC News spoke to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation,
including employees who have received instructions on how the breach affects
their ability to work. Some were told to stop working remotely as of last
Wednesday.


Why the 737 MAX 9 door plug blew out

Lauren Weinstein
<[email protected]>

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 10:20:52 -0800

It is now reported that the reason the door plug blew out on that 737
MAX 9 is that Boeing workers at the factory failed to install the
necessary bolts to hold it in place. This permitted the plug to
gradually move upward out of its slot and then ultimately blow out.
This also is the probable reason why that plane had a number of
pressure warnings in preceding days, because air would have likely
been leaking past the plug as it worked loose. -L

  [added later:
  Just to be clear, the actual bolt installation failure may have been
  by a subsidiary/contractor, but Boeing was responsible in any case
  since the plane left their factory in that condition. -L
  ]


Man sues Macy’s, saying false facial recognition match led to jail assault (WashPost)

Jan Wolitzky
<[email protected]>

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 19:01:31 -0500

A man was sexually assaulted in jail after being falsely accused of armed
robbery due to a faulty facial recognition match, his attorneys said, in a
case that further highlights the dangers of the technology's expanding use
by law enforcement.

Harvey Murphy Jr., 61, said he was beaten and raped by three men in a Texas
jail bathroom in 2022 after being booked on charges he'd held up employees
at gunpoint inside a Sunglass Hut in a Houston shopping center, according to
a lawsuit he filed last week.

A representative of a nearby Macy's told Houston police during the
investigation that the company's system, which scanned surveillance-camera
footage for faces in an internal shoplifter database, found evidence that
Murphy had robbed both stores, leading to his arrest.

But at the time of the robbery, his attorneys said, Murphy was in a
Sacramento jail on unrelated charges, nearly 2,000 miles away. Hours after
his sexual assault, prosecutors released him with all charges dropped, his
attorneys said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/22/facial-recognition-wrongful-identification-assault/


Bugs in our pockets: the risks of client-side scanning (Journal of Cybersecurity Oxford Academic)

Gabe Goldberg
<[email protected]>

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 13:26:08 -0500

Our increasing reliance on digital technology for personal, economic, and
government affairs has made it essential to secure the communications and
devices of private citizens, businesses, and governments. This has led to
pervasive use of cryptography across society. Despite its evident
advantages, law enforcement and national security agencies have argued that
the spread of cryptography has hindered access to evidence and
intelligence. Some in industry and government now advocate a new technology
to access targeted data: client-side scanning (CSS). Instead of weakening
encryption or providing law enforcement with backdoor keys to decrypt
communications, CSS would enable on-device analysis of data in the clear. If
targeted information were detected, its existence and, potentially, its
source would be revealed to the agencies; otherwise, little or no
information would leave the client device. Its proponents claim that CSS is
a solution to the encryption versus public safety debate: it offers
privacy”in the sense of unimpeded end-to-end encryption”and the ability to
successfully investigate serious crime. In this paper, we argue that CSS
neither guarantees efficacious crime prevention nor prevents surveillance.
Indeed, the effect is the opposite. CSS by its nature creates serious
security and privacy risks for all society, while the assistance it can
provide for law enforcement is at best problematic. There are multiple ways
in which CSS can fail, can be evaded, and can be abused.

https://academic.oup.com/cybersecurity/article/10/1/tyad020/7590463


Sleeper Agents: Training Deceptive LLMs that Persist Through Safety Training (Arxiv)

<[email protected]>

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 10:31:49 -0500

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.05566.pdf

"Humans are capable of strategically deceptive behavior: behaving helpfully
in most situations, but then behaving very differently in order to pursue
alternative objectives when given the opportunity. If an AI system learned
such a deceptive strategy, could we detect it and remove it using current
state-of-the-art safety training techniques? To study this question, we
construct proof-of-concept examples of deceptive behavior in large language
models (LLMs). For example, we train models that write secure code when the
prompt states that the year is 2023, but insert exploitable code when the
stated year is 2024. We find that such backdoor behavior can be made
persistent, so that it is not removed by standard safety training
techniques, including supervised fine-tuning, reinforcement learning, and
adversarial training (eliciting unsafe persistent in the largest models and
in models trained to produce chain-of-thought reasoning about deceiving the
training process, with the persistence remaining even when the
chain-of-thought is distilled away. Furthermore, rather than removing
backdoors, we find that adversarial training can teach models to better
recognize their backdoor triggers, effectively hiding the unsafe
behavior. Our results suggest that, once a model exhibits deceptive
behavior, standard techniques could fail to remove such deception and create
a false impression of safety."


ERCIM News 136 published – Special Theme: Large Language Models

Peter Kunz
<[email protected]>

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 15:23:57 +0100

A new ERCIM News issue (136) is online with a special theme on Large
Language Models (LLMs). This issue features articles on diverse topics, such
as LLMs in education and professional training, ethics and fairness in
public sector use, knowledge management, information retrieval, software
modeling, LLM capability assessment, and advancements like enhanced
pre-training efficiency.  You can access the issue at
https://ercim-news.ercim.eu/


Deepfake Audio of Biden Alarms Experts (Margi Murphy)

ACM TechNews
<[email protected]>

Wed, 24 Jan 2024 11:45:53 -0500 (EST)

Margi Murphy, Bloomberg, 22 Jan 2024, via ACM TechNews, 24 Jan 2024

A telephone message containing deepfake audio of U.S. President Joe
Biden called on New Hampshire voters to avoid yesterday's Democratic
primary and save their votes for the November election. This comes
amid rising concerns about the use of political deepfakes to
influence elections around the world this year. Audio deepfakes are
especially concerning, given that they are easy and inexpensive to
create and hard to trace.


The Great Freight-Train Heists of the 21st Century (Slashdot)

Tom Van Vleck
<[email protected]>

Sat, 27 Jan 2024 09:15:55 -0500

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/01/27/0010210/the-great-freight-train-heists-of-the-21st-century

The e-commerce boom "reshaped freight shipping to meet consumer demand,
opening vulnerabilities."  So crooks are breaking into containers being
shipped by freight and stealing the Amazon boxes.

  [Is this a "computer related RISK"?  almost every crime nowadays has a
  computer nearby.  THVV]

    [It is a probably a computer-related risk, and certainly so if they can
    get access to the manifests and container IDs.  PGN]


Nightshade: a new tool artists can use to *poison* AI models that scrape their online work

Lauren Weinstein
<[email protected]>

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 07:22:34 -0800

Note that their project web page at:
  https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
is in what to me is an almost impossible-to-read light font. I assume
"poisoning" human readers is not also part of their goal set. -L

https://boingboing.net/2024/01/22/nightshade-a-new-tool-artists-can-use-to-poison-ai-models-that-scrape-their-online-work.html


ChatGPT is leaking passwords from private conversations of users (Ars Technica reader says)

Dave Farber
<[email protected]>

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 06:03:16 +0900



Impact of AI on Software Development (Taylor Soper)

ACM TechNews
<[email protected]>

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 11:36:46 -0500 (EST)

Taylor Soperxo, *GeekWire*, 23 Jan 2024,
via ACM TechNews, 29 Jan 2024

An analysis of 153 million lines of code changed by GitClear, a developer
analytics tool built in Seattle, found that "code churn," or the percentage
of lines thrown out less than two weeks after being authored, is on the
rise. It also found that the percentage of "copy/pasted code" is increasing
faster than "updated," "deleted," or "moved" code. Said GitClear's Bill
Harding, "In this regard, the composition of AI-generated code is similar to
a short-term developer that doesn't thoughtfully integrate their work into
the broader project."


AI maxim

Lauren Weinstein
<[email protected]>

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 10:42:30 -0800

The familiar computing maxim "garbage in, garbage out"—dating to the late
1950s or early 1960s—needs to be updated to "quality in, garbage out"
when it comes to most generative AI systems. -L

  [Maybe it's a minim, not a maxim. PGN]


Is American Journalism Headed Toward an Extinction-Level Event?

geoff goodfellow
<[email protected]>

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 11:45:28 -0700

For a few hours last Tuesday, the entire news business seemed to be
collapsing all at once. Journalists at Time magazine and National Geographic
announced that they had been laid off. Unionized employees at magazines
owned by Conde Nast staged a one-day strike to protest imminent cuts. By
far the grimmest news was from the Los Angeles Times, the biggest newspaper
west of the Washington DC area. After weeks of rumors, the paper announced
that it was cutting 115 people, more than 20 percent of its newsroom.

  [News is no longer news or even new.
  AI is just one under-miner of honest journalism.
  Money is also driving the demise.
  The more biased journalism becomes, the more ads either
  go away or pile on, depending on the bias.

  The money for Superbowl ads is something like $7M for 30 seconds.
  The money for Superbowl tickets is approaching $10K per ticket,
  especially if you want to sit together with anyone else.  PGN]


Huge Proportion of Internet Is AI-Generated Slime, Researchers Find (Maggie Harrison)

Dave Farber
<[email protected]>

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 07:32:37 +0900

Maggie Harrison, *Futurism*, 19 Jan 2024
https://futurism.com/the-byte/internet-ai-generated-slime

  [Note: paper has not been peer reviewed.(djf) ]


How Beloved Indie Blog ‘The Hairpin’ Turned Into an AI Clickbait Farm (WiReD)

Lauren Weinstein
<[email protected]>

Fri, 26 Jan 2024 14:50:54 -0800

https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-hairpin-blog-ai-clickbait-farm/


Twitter/X says that it has temporarily blocked some searches for Taylor Swift while they try deal with the flood of AI-porn related to her

Lauren Weinstein
<[email protected]>

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 08:07:03 -0800

  Also:
  If Taylor Swift Can't Defeat Deepfake Porn, No One Can
  There's also word that the estate of legendary comedian George Carlin
  is suing over a special that reportedly used an AI recreation of him. -L
https://www.wired.com/story/taylor-swift-deepfake-porn-artificial-intelligence-pushback/


Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce and a MAGA Meltdown (NYTimes)

Monty Solomon
<[email protected]>

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 09:33:22 -0500

The fulminations surrounding the world’s biggest pop icon-” and girlfriend
of KC Chiefs' tight-end Travis Kelce -” reached the stratosphere after
Kansas City made it to the Super Bowl.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/us/politics/taylor-swift-travis-kelce-trump.html


YOUR PAPERS PLEASE! – Florida House passes bill that would ban children under 16 from social media (Axios)

Lauren Weinstein
<[email protected]>

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 18:51:55 -0800

These fascist plans would end up requiring ALL USERS to be verified and
identified via government IDs, irrespective ot their age, resulting
eventually in the ability to track all users' Internet usage in detail.
Don't be fooled by the "protect the children" claims. -L

https://www.axios.com/2024/01/25/florida-house-bill-social-media-child-ban


Hawley and the tech CEOs

Lauren Weinstein
<[email protected]>

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 09:33:49 -0800

It's really something to see Hawley, who should be in prison for his actions
on 6 Jan 2023, yelling at the tech CEOs. There's lots wrong with Big Tech,
but Congress has no clue how to fix it, and will only make it far worse and
more dangerous for children and adults. And this holds for BOTH parties. In
this respect they are EQUALLY BAD. -L


Congress and the states want to bring a Chinese-style police state Internet to the U.S.

Lauren Weinstein
<[email protected]>

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 09:08:15 -0800

Basically, both parties in Congress—and legislators in both blue
and red states—want to turn the Internet into a China-style police
state, where all activity is tracked and tied to government IDs. Even
if you trust one party not to abuse this, imagine when the other party
gets into power! All of this is being leveraged on a "protect the
children" basis where the legislative demands would be ineffective at
preventing children from accessing the materials of concern, trample
on the rights of adults to use the Net, and actually expose children
to more risks from abusive parents. That's the bottom line. -L


iPhone Apps Secretly Harvest Data When They Send Notifications (Thomas Germain)

ACM TechNews
<[email protected]>

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 11:36:46 -0500 (EST)

Thomas Germain, *Gizmodo*, 25 Jan 2024,
via ACM TechNews, 29 Jan 2024

Security researchers at the app development firm Mysk Inc. found that some
iPhone apps are using notifications to get around Apple's privacy rules
governing the collection of user data. The researchers said the data being
collected through notification appears related to analytics, advertising,
and tracking users across different apps and devices. The use of
notifications for gathering user data also gets around the practice of
closing apps to prevent them from background data collection.


In India, an algorithm declares them dead; they have to prove they’re alive

Steve Bacher
<[email protected]>

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 12:47:36 -0800

*Rohtak and New Delhi, India:* Dhuli Chand was 102 years old on September 8,
2022, when he led a wedding procession in Rohtak, a district town in the
north Indian state of Haryana.

As is customary in north Indian weddings, he sat on a chariot in his wedding
finery, wearing garlands of Indian rupee notes, while a band played
celebratory music and family members and villagers accompanied him.

But instead of a bride, Chand was on his way to meet government officials.

Chand resorted to the antic to prove to officials that he was not only alive
but also lively. A placard he held proclaimed, in the local dialect: “thara
foofa zinda hai”, which literally translates to “your uncle is alive”.

Six months prior, his monthly pension was suddenly stopped because he was
declared “dead” in government records.

Under Haryana’s Old Age Samman Allowance scheme, people aged 60 years and
above, whose income together with that of their spouse doesn't exceed
300,000 rupees ($3,600) per annum, are eligible for a monthly pension of
2,750 rupees ($33).

In June 2020, the state started using a newly built algorithmic system “ the
Family Identity Data Repository or the Parivar Pehchan Patra (PPP) database
“ to determine the eligibility of welfare claimants.

The PPP is an eight-digit unique ID provided to each family in the state and
has details of birth and death, marriage, employment, property, and income
tax, among other data, of the family members. It maps every family’s
demographic and socioeconomic information by linking several government
databases to check their eligibility for welfare schemes.  The state said
that the PPP created “authentic, verified and reliable data of all
families”, and made it mandatory for citizens to access all welfare schemes.

But in practice, the PPP wrongly marked Chand as “dead”, denying him his
pension for several months. Worse, the authorities did not change his “dead”
status even when he repeatedly met them in person.  [...]

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/1/25/in-india-an-algorithm-declares-them-dead-they-have-to-prove-theyre


Tech Layoffs Shock Young Workers. The Older People? Not So Much. (NYTimes)

Monty Solomon
<[email protected]>

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 09:34:54 -0500

The industry’s recent job cuts have been an awakening for a generation of
workers who have never experienced a cyclical crash.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/20/technology/tech-layoffs-millennials-gen-x.html


Re: Even after a recall, Tesla’s Autopilot does dumb dangerous things (The Washington Post)

Geoff Kuenning
<[email protected]>

Wed, 24 Jan 2024 18:15:43 -0800

I was completely unimpressed by the Washington Post article on Tesla's
autosteering feature.  Cancel that: I was disgusted.

I am hardly a Tesla fan.  But the author of the article complained that the
automatic STEERING feature blew through stop signs.  No duh.  My Kia Niro
would do the same thing; steering has nothing to do with controlling speed.
Anybody who expects a steering feature to recognize speed bumps, stop signs,
etc. is far too stupid to operate an automobile, let alone write a
*WashPost* column on technology.


Re: ChatGPT can answer yes or no at the same time (RISKS-34.04)

Amos Shapir
<[email protected]>

Tue, 23 Jan 2024 11:26:30 +0200

This item, as well as the next one about Tesla's Autopilot, show a strangely
ignored fact: These systems are simply not ready for public use.  Would you
accept an accounting system which makes simple calculation errors, or a
search application which invents nonexistent results rather than seek them?


Re: Tesla Drivers in Chicago Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather (Goldberg, RISKS-34.05)

“John Levine”
<[email protected]>

21 Jan 2024 09:32:41 -0500

> In freezing temperatures, the batteries of electric vehicles can be less
> efficient and have shorter range, a lesson many Tesla drivers in Chicago
> learned this week.

There is an old joke that we are lucky the car industry grew up in Detroit
rather than in Miami. Otherwise every time it snowed, all cars would come to
a halt.

Now we know it's true!


One-star rating deserved for apps that allow full-screen ads

Dan Jacobson
<[email protected]>

Sat, 27 Jan 2024 11:57:12 +0800

The ads on my phone have two sizes,
  1) A few lines at the bottom of the screen, and
  2) Full screen.

The full screen ones, no matter what app they appear in, these days all say
things like "press to continue" or "press for next step". I.e., fooling the
user into thinking it is the app doing the talking.

With the "few lines at the bottom of the screen" ads, no matter what
wild things it says, we still know it is just an ad, because the babble
appears in the ad spot.

So when apps get "one star ratings" it is often due to the ads in the
apps, not the apps themselves. But they are still deserved, due to the
developer taking the risk to allow full screen ads.

Please report problems with the web pages to the maintainer

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