Month: August 2018

Enlarge (credit: Amazon)

The success of Internet of Things devices such as Amazon's Echo and Google Home have created an opportunity for developers to build voice-activated applications that connect ever deeper—into customers' homes and personal lives. And—according to research by a team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)—the potential to exploit some of the idiosyncrasies of voice-recognition machine-learning systems for malicious purposes has grown as well.

Called "skill squatting," the attack method (described in a paper presented at USENIX Security Symposium in Baltimore this month) is currently limited to the Amazon Alexa platform—but it reveals a weakness that other voice platforms will have to resolve as they widen support for third-party applications. Ars met with the UIUC team (which is comprised of Deepak Kumar, Riccardo Paccagnella, Paul Murley, Eric Hennenfent, Joshua Mason, Assistant Professor Adam Bates, and Professor Michael Bailey) at USENIX Security. We talked about their research and the potential for other threats posed by voice-based input to information systems.

Its master’s voice

There have been a number of recent demonstrations of attacks that leverage voice interfaces. In March, researchers showed that, even when Windows 10 is locked, the Cortana "assistant" responds to voice commands—including opening websites. And voice-recognition-enabled IoT devices have been demonstrated to be vulnerable to commands from radio or television ads, YouTube videos, and small children.

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

Apple will unveil its newest devices at an event on Wednesday, September 12, at the Steve Jobs Theater at its Cupertino campus, as confirmed by invites sent to media today. The invite didn't provide any more details about the event, but it was accompanied by a graphic of a circle with the phrase "Gather Round" underneath it. It's unclear what that image may be referencing, but it does resemble Apple Park's circular shape.

This is a September Apple event, so we'll likely see the company debut the newest iPhones. Apple is said to be announcing a total of three new smartphones: a 6.5-inch handset with an OLED display, glass back, and stainless steel edges; a "more affordable" 6.1-inch model with an LCD display and aluminum edges; and a 5.8-inch model that's nearly identical to the original iPhone X but with a faster processor and an improved camera.

Reports suggest Apple wants to diversify the iPhone lineup by offering more sizes, colors, and price points. The 6.5-inch model would be the largest iPhone to date, and the 6.1-inch model would be a new, less-expensive model for customers to consider. It's rumored to come in new colors, too, but which colors those will be remains unknown. Notably, all new iPhone models are expected to have edge-to-edge displays, gesture controls, and FaceID.

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. Today's list is headlined by a deal on Dell's XPS Tower desktop, a configuration of which with a six-core Intel Core i7-8700 chip and 16GB of RAM is going for $700 as of this writing.

You do have to deal with a 1TB HDD here instead of a faster SSD, but the machine is easy to upgrade, and you get a full array of ports, including two USB-C ports. While Intel's 9th-generation chips aren't too far from an unveiling, this is still a good price for a solid amount of horsepower, particularly if you're planning to grab a new Nvidia GPU in the near future. Just note that the deal appears to be in limited stock, so you may need to move quickly.

If you don't need a new desktop, we also have deals on the Apple Watch Series 3, Bose noise-cancelling headphones, portable batteries, and more. Have a look for yourself below.