October 2022 – Page 24 – news.buyenne.com

Feds say Ukrainian man running malware service amassed 50M unique credentials

Wondering if your data got swept up by Raccoon? Here’s how to find out.

A person's hand inserting a key into the lock on a jail-cell door.

Federal prosecutors have charged a 26-year-old Ukrainian national with operating a malware service that was responsible for stealing sensitive data from more than 2 million individuals around the world.

Prosecutors in Texas said on Tuesday that Mark Sokolovsky, 26, of Ukraine helped operate “Raccoon,” an info stealer program that worked using a model known as MaaS, short for malware-as-a-service. In exchange for about $200 per month in cryptocurrency, Sokolovsky and others behind Raccoon supplied customers with the malware, digital infrastructure, and technical support. Customers would then use the service to infect targets with the malware, which would surreptitiously harvest credentials for email and bank accounts, credit cards, cryptocurrency wallets, and other private information.

First seen in April 2019, Raccoon was able to extract sensitive data from a wide range of applications, including 29 separate Chromium-based browsers, Mozilla-based apps, and cryptocurrency wallets from Exodus and Jaxx. Written in C++, the malware can also take screenshots. Once Raccoon has extracted all data from an infected machine, it uninstalls and deletes all traces of itself.

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

‘AI-Powered’ Music Mixer Responds to RIAA Copyright Infringement Claims

The operator of several “AI” powered music mixer and extractor sites has responded to the RIAA’s copyright infringement allegations. The rebuttal admits that using popular artists to showcase its technology wasn’t smart so the references have been removed. However, the services themselves are not infringing. In fact, one of the core algorithms is created and publicly shared by Deezer.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

RIAA Earlier this month, the RIAA shared its recommendations for the USTR’s annual review of overseas notorious markets.

The music group reported well-known targets such as The Pirate Bay, Newalbumreleases, MP3Juices, RARBG, and RapidGator, plus other piracy-related sites and services.

AI Piracy?

The RIAA also carved out a brand new category this year, labeled AI Based Extractors/Mixers. These ‘Artificial Intelligence’ powered sites can extract vocals or musical tracks from songs, or “master” a song based on the style of another.

These technologies don’t have to be problematic, as long as all permissions are in order. However, when the names of some of the world’s top artists are used for promotional purposes, the RIAA typically becomes concerned.

For example, Songmastr promised to “master” songs based on the styles of well-known musical artists, such as Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Coltrane, Bob Dylan and James Brown, to mention just a few.

Similarly, acapella-extractor.com showcased links to several YouTube videos with vocals from top artists, whose labels are members of the RIAA. The featured vocals were extracted and published without permission.

Operator Responds

Most of the sites branded as notorious markets by the RIAA remain quiet but Songmastr, Acapella-extractor and Remove-Vocals, which are all operated by the same person, sent a rebuttal to the USTR which was published this week.

According to the person who manages these sites, the RIAA never reached out to share its concerns directly. In addition, they argue that the sites don’t deserve the ‘notorious’ brand for several reasons.

“[RIAA’s] arguments are a mix of factually wrong information, a misunderstanding of how these AI services work, and minor allegations regarding potential trademark infringement (corrected since) which are not piracy or counterfeiting,” the rebuttal reads (pdf).

“The only argument on actual dissemination of copyrighted material on these websites concerns a total of 6 links to Youtube videos (since removed) which were used as examples to illustrate the services.”

Links and References Removed

In response to the RIAA’s concerns, Songmastr removed all mentions of popular artists. Users of the site are now directed to only mix tracks when they have the rights, aspiring producers testing their own tracks, for example.

While the names of popular artists have been removed from the site, the operator astutely mentions that this wasn’t a copyright issue, but a potential trademark violation that’s beyond the scope of the piracy category.

Similarly, the Acapella-extractor website removed six YouTube links where the site’s capabilities were showcased. Going forward, these types of examples will no longer be used on the site.

The Deezer Connection

The services run by the operator mainly rely on third-party open-source technology. This leads to an interesting connection, as Acapella-extractor and Remove-Vocals use the Spleeter algorithm published by Deezer.

Deezer is one of the largest legal streaming services in the world and a key partner of many RIAA labels. On GitHub, Deezer explicitly advertises Spleeter’s music separation features, including the separation of vocals.

Songmastr is also based on third-party open-source software. The service uses the Matchering library, which is also used by the artist-endorsed Moises app.

Dumb AI…

Thus far, there hasn’t been any mention of artificial intelligence. The RIAA wasn’t sure about this element either but said that if the sites are training their AI models using copyrighted music, it would be considered problematic.

In their rebuttal, the operator of the sites offered reassurance that there is no learning involved in these AI platforms.

“The open source ‘matchering’ algorithm is not a trained algorithm. It is a predetermined set of operations, which transform the user input, using general properties of a reference song,” they write, adding that Deezer’s Spleeter algorithm ships pre-trained.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, the operator notes that the term AI is more a marketing term than a technical description. This type of marketing was perceived as a threat by the RIAA but after addressing these concerns the sites hope to stay off the final notorious markets list.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Samsung’s Maintenance Mode protects sensitive data on your phone during repairs

While a growing number of smartphone makers are offering spare parts, tools, and guides that let you repair a broken device at home, it’s probably easier for most people to take their phone to a repair shop. Now Samsung is rolling out a software…

The post Samsung’s Maintenance Mode protects sensitive data on your phone during repairs appeared first on Liliputing.

Leftover hardware from Mars mission to be used on the Moon

Extra parts from the Mars InSight mission will be used to detect Moonquakes.

Image of two landers on the surface of the Moon.

On May 5, 2022, the seismometer on board the InSight lander recorded a quake of magnitude 4.7 on the Martian surface, despite the epicenter being 2,250 km from the lander. It was one of the largest quakes recorded on Mars and the largest recorded by the Insight mission. In September, in the first measurement of its kind, the instrument registered a quake generated by a meteorite impact on Mars.

InSight’s seismometer is called the Seismic Experiment for Internal Structure (or SEIS), and it has recorded these and 20 odd additional quakes. Now, an instrument based on the same design will measure ground vibrations on the far side of the Moon, the first seismographs on our neighbor since the Apollo era.

Down to SEIS

Developed by the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP) and the French space agency CNES, the SEIS Very Broad Band (VBB) seismometer that’s now on Mars can detect the tiniest movements—to the tune of 10 picometers, which is much smaller than an atom. Consisting of three pendulums placed at 120 degrees to each other, SEIS measures the vertical and horizontal vibrations of the Martian surface.

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Senate has gone a full year without voting on Biden FCC nominee Gigi Sohn

Senate Democrats show no sign of action on one-year anniversary of Sohn nomination.

Gigi Sohn sits in front of a microphone and holds a pen in her hand at a Senate nomination hearing.

One year ago today, President Biden nominated Gigi Sohn to the empty spot on the Federal Communications Commission. Sohn, a longtime consumer advocate who worked for the Obama-era FCC, would have given Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel the tiebreaking vote needed to reverse Trump-era deregulation of the broadband industry, restore net neutrality rules, and pursue other rulemakings opposed by the commission's Republicans.

But Sohn is still waiting for the Senate to vote on her nomination. With Senate elections happening in two weeks, It's not clear that a vote on Sohn will ever happen.

"It has been a year since President Biden nominated Gigi Sohn to the FCC, which itself was 10 months into the first term of the Biden administration. It is long past time to vote on Ms. Sohn's nomination and confirm her to the FCC, where she can put her decades of experience to work for American consumers," CEO Chris Lewis of consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge said today. Sohn co-founded Public Knowledge in 2001 and led the group until taking a position as counselor for then-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in 2013.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Google profits plummet 27 percent in Q3 2022 earnings report

Google shut down a bunch of projects this quarter, and now we see why.

Enlarge (credit: Sean Gallup | Getty Images)

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has been on a belt-tightening mission at Google over the past three months, so it seems he saw this coming: Parent company Alphabet's latest earnings are kind of a disaster. The company's Q3 2022 earnings were released last night, and they show a 27 percent drop in profits compared to last year, with weaker-than-expected earnings and revenue.

Revenue was up 6 percent year over year to $69.1 billion, a sharp growth decline from 2021 Q3, which saw 41 percent growth. Profits were at $13.9 billion, down from $18.9 billion in Q3 2021. As usual, Alphabet earnings are mostly about Google ad revenue and click-through rates, with the company citing reduced spending from the "insurance, loan, mortgage, and crypto subcategories" in particular. Worries about the economy and inflation are causing many Google customers to cut their ad budgets.

Alphabet doesn't break down the non-ads business in much detail, but the two biggest money losers on Alphabet's reports are the "Other Bets" section and Google Cloud. Other Bets lost $1.6 billion, more than the $1.29 billion loss a year ago. "Other Bets" is the "non-Google" part of Alphabet and includes long-term R&D projects like Waymo self-driving cars and the "Wing" drone delivery project. Google says the only significant revenue generators for Other Bets are the "health technology" projects—that would be Verily and/or Calico—and "Internet services," aka Google Fiber.

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments