Month: November 2024

Child safety org launches AI model trained on real child sex abuse images

AI will make it harder to spread CSAM online, child safety org says.

For years, hashing technology has made it possible for platforms to automatically detect known child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) to stop kids from being retraumatized online. However, rapidly detecting new or unknown CSAM remained a bigger challenge for platforms as new victims continued to be victimized. Now, AI may be ready to change that.

Today, a prominent child safety organization, Thorn, in partnership with a leading cloud-based AI solutions provider, Hive, announced the release of an AI model designed to flag unknown CSAM at upload. It's the earliest AI technology striving to expose unreported CSAM at scale.

An expansion of Thorn's CSAM detection tool, Safer, the new "Predict" feature uses "advanced machine learning (ML) classification models" to "detect new or previously unreported CSAM and child sexual exploitation behavior (CSE), generating a risk score to make human decisions easier and faster."

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Feds Shut Down Pirate Sports Streaming Service 247TVStream, Indict Operators

247TVStream, a pirate IPTV streaming service boasting over 1,000 channels and catering to sports fans worldwide, has been shut down by U.S. authorities. The service, allegedly operated by two brothers, generated millions in revenue. One of the defendants was arrested in New York and the other remains at large. Both men face multi-year prison sentences.

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

247TVStreamIn recent years, rightsholders of major sports events have repeatedly complained that piracy of live sports is getting out of hand.

Increasingly, lawmakers and law enforcement were asked to help out. This week, these calls were heard.

247TVStream Shutdown and Indictment

The Department of Justice for the Eastern District of New York announced that it had effectively shut down a major pirate IPTV streaming operation, 247TVStream. The service was allegedly owned and operated by two brothers, Noor Nabi Chowdhury and Mohammad Mahmudur Rahman.

Chowdhury, who’s a New York resident, was arrested on Tuesday and arraigned in the New York court on the same day. His brother Rahman allegedly resides in Bangladesh and remains at large.

The men were charged with four counts; conspiracy to provide to the public an illicit digital transmission service, providing an illicit digital transmission service; conspiracy to commit wire fraud; and aggravated identity theft.

1000+ Channels

247TVStream was a subscription streaming service that offered illegal access to live television and sports programming. The service had over 1,000 television channels and was specifically targeted at sports fans.

These pirated channels could be viewed via dedicated devices or Android and iOS apps such as the ‘247 IPTV Player’, for streaming on the go.

“247tvstream.com is a place where sports fans can watch live sports online around the world with an alternative way from the comfort of their PC/Laptop/Smartphone/Tablets or SmartTV,” the service explained in its FAQ.

247TVStream

channels

$7 Million in Subscription Fees

The authorities say that the service had been in operation since May 2017 and caused more than $100 million in damages to copyright holders. The pirate service itself also generated substantial revenues during this time; over $7 million in subscriber fees according to the indictment.

These revenues, typically $10 per month, partially went through payment processors which were presumably unaware of the nature of the business. The operators also made efforts to conceal their true identities through shell companies and false documents.

“To conceal the true nature of 247TVStream, Chowdhury and Rahman falsely described, and caused to be falsely described, the nature of 247TVStream and the identity of its owners on applications to the Merchant Processors,” the indictment reads.

Working with Dutch and UK law enforcement agencies, authorities seized the servers that hosted 247TVStream’s illegal content. They also seized the domain names tvschedule24.com and 247tvstream.com, which now display a banner announcing the seizure.

Seizure Banner

feds seized

“The domain has been seized by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations in accordance with a seizure warrant issued pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §§ 981, 982, 1030, and 2323 by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York,” it reads.

Multi-Year Prison Sentences

Commenting on the news, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Breon Peace, thanked Canadian, Dutch, and UK partners for their cooperation. He is pleased with the outcome thus far.

“My Office and the Department of Justice are committed to protecting the rights of intellectual property holders from digital pirates like these defendants,” Peace notes.

After his arraignment on Tuesday, Chowdhury was released from custody with the bond set at $25,000. Rahman has yet to be apprehended.

The brothers could face decades behind bars if convicted on all charges. The penalties for their alleged crimes include a maximum of 20 years for wire fraud, five years for conspiracy related to the illegal streaming service, and a mandatory two-year sentence for identity theft, all of which could be served consecutively.

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A copy of the indictment, released by the Department of Justice for the Eastern District of New York, is available here (pdf)

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

5 charged in “Scattered Spider,” one of the most profitable phishing scams ever

Phishing attacks were so well-orchestrated that they fooled some of the best in the business.

Federal prosecutors have charged five men with running an extensive phishing scheme that allegedly allowed them to compromise hundreds of companies nationwide, gain non-public information, and steal millions of dollars in cryptocurrency.

The charges, detailed in court documents unsealed Wednesday, pertain to a crime group security researchers have dubbed Scattered Spider. Members were behind a massive breach on MGM last year that cost the casino and resort company $100 million. MGM preemptively shut down large parts of its internal networks after discovering the breach, causing slot machines and keycards for thousands of hotel rooms to stop working and slowing electronic transfers. Scattered Spider also breached the internal network of authentication provider Twilio, which allowed the group to hack or target hundreds of other companies.

Not your father’s phishing campaign

Key to Scattered Spider’s success were phishing attacks so methodical and well-orchestrated they were hard to detect even when sophisticated defenses were implemented. Microsoft researchers, who track the group under the name Octo Tempest, declared it “one of the most dangerous financial criminal groups.”

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Nasa: Waldbrandbekämpfung durch Höhenballons

Die Nasa unterstützt ein Projekt zur Waldbrandbekämpfung. Der erste Testlauf war gut. Nun sollen die Daten für die nächste Waldbrandsaison aufgearbeitet werden. (Nasa, Satelliten)

Die Nasa unterstützt ein Projekt zur Waldbrandbekämpfung. Der erste Testlauf war gut. Nun sollen die Daten für die nächste Waldbrandsaison aufgearbeitet werden. (Nasa, Satelliten)

Horrifying medical device malfunction: Abdominal implant erupts from leg

Suspicious deaths, perforated sheep veins went unreported before device hit market.

On May 7, 2011, Georgia resident Tonya Brand noticed a pain on the inside of her right thigh. As the pain grew worse in the 4- to 5-inch area of her leg, she headed to a hospital. There, doctors suspected she had a blood clot. But an ultrasound the next day failed to find one. Instead, it revealed a mysterious toothpick-sized object lodged in Brand's leg.

Over the next few weeks, the painful area became a bulge, and on June 17, Brand put pressure on it. Unexpectedly, the protrusion popped, and a 1.5-inch metal wire came poking out of her leg, piercing her skin.

The piece of metal was later determined to be part of a metal filter she had implanted in a vein in her abdomen more than two years earlier, in March 2009, according to a lawsuit Brand filed. The filter was initially placed in her inferior vena cava (IVC), the body's largest vein tasked with bringing deoxygenated blood from the lower body back up to the heart. The filter is intended to catch blood clots, preventing them from getting into the lungs, where they could cause a life-threatening pulmonary embolism. Brand got the IVC filter ahead of a spinal surgery she had in 2009, which could boost her risk of clots.

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As NASA increasingly relies on commercial space, there are some troubling signs

“The government’s really got to look at itself.”

When it comes to space policy, a hallmark of the first Trump administration was its embrace of private companies. NASA sought to build fewer expensive things and buy more lower-cost services. In doing so, it aimed to foster a healthy ecosystem of private space companies.

Under the leadership of Jim Bridenstine, NASA, during these years, stood on the shoulders of more than a decade of government investment in commercial space. This culminated in a triumphant Crew Dragon mission in the summer of 2020, the first privately led human orbital spaceflight.

This Demo-2 mission, sending NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station on a SpaceX vehicle, validated NASA’s long push into commercial space. Since then, the agency has only doubled down on this approach, generally using fixed-price contracts and buying a service instead of telling companies what and how to build while paying a premium.

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