Cyber Security

It’s been reported that a trade group for U.S. authors (including John Grisham) has sued OpenAI, accusing it of unlawfully training its chatbot ChatGPT on their work. Which Authors?  The Authors Guild trade group has filed the lawsuit (in Manhattan federal court) on behalf of a number of prominent authors including John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen,…

Falcon 1 Launched : 28th September 2008 Rocket Man! This week on September 28 2008 SpaceX managed to finally get the Falcon 1 rocket into space. Founder Elon Musk was obviously thrilled, although curiously he wasn’t hungry – even though he’d skipped breakfast earlier that day. It was because he’d had such a big launch.…

It’s been reported that according to a dark web victim blog of cybercrime hacking gang ‘Donut,’ Nottingham-based IT Service Provider Agilitas may have been the subject of a ransomware attack. Donut is reported to be claiming that it is in possession of the source code and SQL databases belonging to Agilitas and is threatening to…

Following the recent news that sales of Apple’s iPhone 12 in France have been banned over radiation fears, we look at where these fears came from and how much danger, if any, Apple iPhone 12 users may be in. France, Fears, Ban, & Update  France’s National Frequency Agency (ANFR), the watchdog that manages all radio…

In this insight, we take closer look at the subject of tech companies getting into trouble over antitrust issues, why it happens, what can be done, and what part organisations like the UK ‘Monopoly Commission’ plays. The Monopoly Commission The Monopoly Commission dates back to a previous incarnation of a regulator and is often used…

Video-focused social media platform TikTok has been fined €345m by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) over the privacy of child users. The Processing of Personal Data  The fine, as well as a reprimand (and an order requiring them to bring its data processing into compliance within three months) were issued in relation to how the…

A study by the University of Copenhagen and Roskilde University has revealed that computer problems are responsible for us wasting between 11 and 20 per cent of our time. How The Study Worked  The study involved 234 participants, in varying jobs (and education) including students, accountants, consultants and IT workers who spent between six and…

FORTRAN Developed : 20th September Q. Why Do Python Programmers Wear Specs? A – Because they don’t see sharp! That’s a programming humour for you. And talking of programming, there’s currently an explosion of code being auto-generated by AI and before long, human-coders may go the way of the early switchboard operators. Hmm, possibly! Yet…

Microsoft has warned of a new phishing campaign from the “financially motivated” Storm-0324 threat actor which uses an open-source tool to send phishing lures through Microsoft Teams chats. The goal is accessing corporate networks and enabling follow-on attacks like ransomware, i.e. handing off access to compromised networks to other threat actors. The campaign leverages the…

In an apparent admission of defeat, the UK government has conceded that requiring scanning of platforms like WhatsApp for messages with harmful content, as required in the Online Safety Bill, is not (currently) feasible. The ‘Spy Clause’  Under what’s been dubbed the ‘spy clause’ (Clause 122) in the UK’s Online Safety Bill, the government had stated…