MIT’s AI-powered device lets doctors monitor coronavirus patients remotely
A new device that uses AI to monitor coronavirus symptoms is helping doctors treat patients beyond the reach of infection. The box-like device emits wireless signals that bounce off human bodies before returning to the system. Algorithms then analyze changes in the signals to infer the person’s breathing rate, sleep patterns, and movements. The system, named Emerald, was developed at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). The researchers initially envisioned using Emerald to detect and monitor chronic diseases, but the coronavirus outbreak has given it a new purpose.
Facebook is building a hidden, bot-only platform to learn about trolls and scammers
Facebook wants to stop people from abusing its system, so it’s making a world of bots that can imitate them. Company researchers have released a paper on a “Web Enabled Simulation” (WES) for testing the platform — basically a shadow Facebook where nonexistent users can like, share, and friend (or harass, abuse, and scam) away from human eyes. Facebook describes building a scaled-down, walled-off simulation of its platform populated by fake users modeling different kinds of real behavior. For example, a “scammer” bot might be trained to connect with “target” bots that exhibit behaviors similar to real-life Facebook scam victims. Other bots might be trained to invade fake users’ privacy or seek out “bad” content that breaks Facebook’s rules.
ICANN asks registrars to crack down on scam coronavirus websites
When is ICANN going to do something about the explosion of scammy domains spawned by the COVID-19 pandemic? We can’t, the overseers of the internet said last Tuesday (7 April), throwing its hands in the air and telling domain registrars that they can — and should. On Wednesday, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported that the internet domain-name overseers at ICANN – that’s the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – had taken the unusual step of sending a letter to the hundreds of domain name registrars around the globe that are accredited by ICANN to issue new website domain names.
Google Keeps Support for FTP in Chrome
Google has decided to keep support for the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) in Chrome a bit longer, after initially saying it would completely remove it in Chrome 82. Due to the lack of support for secure connections or proxies, the implementation of FTP in Chrome creates security risks for users. Moreover, usage of the protocol is low, and removing it from the browser will not impact a large number of users. Chrome 80, which arrived in the stable channel in early February, deprecated support for FTP. At the time, Google said the protocol would be disabled in Chrome 81 and completely removed in Chrome 82. Although it has been considering removing FTP support for a couple of years, Google has decided to keep the protocol untouched for a bit longer, due to the current COVID-19 pandemic.
49 malicious Chrome extensions caught pickpocketing crypto wallets
Google has kicked 49 malicious Chrome browser extensions out of its Web Store that were posing as cryptocurrency wallets in order to drain the contents of bona fide wallets. The extensions were discovered by researchers from MyCrypto – an open-source interface for the blockchain that helps store, send and receive cryptocurrency – and from PhishFort, which sells anti-phishing protection. On Tuesday, Harry Denley, MyCrypto Director of Security, said that malicious browser extensions aren’t new, but the targets in this campaign are: they include the cryptocurrency wallets Ledger (57% of the bad extensions targeted this wallet, making it the most targeted of all the wallets, for whatever reason), Trezor, Jaxx, Electrum, MyEtherWallet, MetaMask, Exodus, and KeepKey. Denley said that essentially, “the extensions are phishing for secrets,” including users’ mnemonic phrases, private keys, and keystore files, which are security files used for things like identifying app developers or in SSL encryption.