Daily Tech Digest - March 06, 2023

Computer says no. Will fairness survive in the AI age?

A number of risks fall outside of these existing laws and regulations, so while lawmakers might wrestle with the far-reaching ramifications of AI, other industry bodies and other groups are driving the adoption of guidance, standards and frameworks - some of which might become standard industry practice even without the enforcement of law. One illustration is the US' National Institute of Standards and Technology's AI risk management framework, which is intended "for voluntary use and to improve the ability to incorporate trustworthiness considerations into the design, development, use, and evaluation of AI products, services, and systems". ... Bias is one particularly important element. The algorithms at the centre of AI decision making may not be human, but they can still imbibe the prejudices which hue human judgement. Thankfully, policymakers in the EU appear to be alive to this risk. The bloc's draft EU Artificial Intelligence Act addressed a range of issues on algorithmic bias, arguing technology should be developed to avoid repeating “historical patterns of discrimination” against minority groups, particularly in contexts such as recruitment and finance.


12 programming mistakes to avoid

Some say that a good programmer is someone who looks both ways when crossing a one-way street. But, like playing it fast and loose, this tendency can backfire. Software that is overly buttoned up can slow your operations to a crawl. Checking a few null pointers may not make much difference, but some code is just a little too nervous, checking that the doors are locked again and again so that sleep never comes. ... Scaling well is a challenge and it is often a mistake to overlook the ways that scalability might affect how the system runs. Sometimes, it’s best to consider these problems during the early stages of planning, when thinking is more abstract. Some features, like comparing each data entry to another, are inherently quadratic, which means your optimizations might grow exponentially slower. Dialing back on what you promise can make a big difference. Thinking about how much theory to apply to a problem is a bit of a meta-problem because complexity often increases exponentially. Sometimes the best solution is careful iteration with plenty of time for load testing.


EV Charging Infrastructure Offers an Electric Cyberattack Opportunity

The risks are not just theoretical: A year ago, after Russia invaded Ukraine, hacktivists compromised charging stations near Moscow to disable them and display their support for Ukraine and their contempt for Russian President Vladamir Putin. ... In many ways, EV charging infrastructure represents a perfect storm of technologies. The devices are connected via mobile applications and carry the same risks as other IoT devices, but they're also set to become a critical part of transportation network in the United States, like other operational technology (OT). And because EV charging stations must be connected to public networks, ensuring that their communications are encrypted will be critical to maintaining the security of the devices, says Dragos' Tonkin. "Hacktivists will always be looking for poorly secured devices on public networks, it's important that the owners of EV put in place controls to ensure they are not easy targets," he says. "The crown jewels of the operators of EV chargers have to be their central platforms, the chargers themselves intrinsically trust the instructions pushed down from the center."


Can WebAssembly Solve Serverless’s Problems?

Wasm computing structure is designed in such a way that it has “shifted” the potential of the serverless landscape, Butcher said. This is due, he said, to WebAssemby’s nearly instant startup times, small binary sizes, and platform and architectural neutrality, as Wasm binaries can be executed with a fraction of the resources required to run today’s serverless infrastructure. “Contrasted with heavyweight [virtual machines] and middleweight containers, I like to think of Wasm as the lightweight cloud compute platform,” he noted. “Developers package up only the bare essentials: a Wasm binary and perhaps a few supporting files. And the Wasm runtime takes care of the rest.” An immediate benefit of relying on Wasm’s runtime for serverless is lower latency, especially when extending Wasm’s reach not only beyond the browser but away from the cloud. This is because it can be distributed directly to and on edge devices with relatively low data-to-transfer and computing overhead.


Tracking device technology: A double-edged sword for CISOs

Clearly, the logistics side of the equation means vehicles and things can be tagged and tracked with relative ease. Not only will it help with locating and counting inventory, but the technology can also be used to ensure an alert occurs when those things which are supposed to stay within a specific geographic footprint leave that footprint. Then there is the negative side of the equation, on which employees might use the corporate tracking capability for nefarious purposes or bring their own tracking devices into the corporate environment. But don’t stop with the employee. What of the vendor or the competition? How might they wish to use these tracking devices to garner a bit of competitive intelligence? Tracking the movements of gear or people might be prudent in a specific circumstance — visitors to a corporate building, for example. A badge outfitted with the technology can be monitored to ensure visitors stay within the areas to which they are granted access and, if escorts are required, an escort tag can be issued to provide confirmation that their corporate escort is within proximity.


US Official Reproaches Industry for Bad Cybersecurity

Easterly specifically called out Google's August 2022 debut of Android 13, which was the first Android release in which a majority of the new code added to the release was in a memory-safe language. Easterly said there wasn't a single memory safety vulnerability discovered in the Rust code added to Android 13. Open-source software community Mozilla created Rust in 2015 and currently has a project to integrate Rust into its Firefox web browser. Amazon Web Services has begun to build critical services in Rust, which Easterly said has resulted in both security benefits as well as time and cost savings for the public cloud behemoth. Making memory-safe languages ubiquitous within universities will serve as a building block to companies migrating their key libraries to memory-safe languages, Easterly said. This effort hinges on the technology industry containing, and eventually rolling back, the prevalence of C and C++ in key systems. C and C++ are still written and taught due to the belief that migrating away from them would harm performance.


A key post-quantum algorithm may be vulnerable to side-channel attacks

Quantum computers have the potential to crack the cryptographic algorithms in use today, which is why “post-quantum” cryptographic algorithms are designed to be so strong that they can survive huge leaps in computing power. A team in Sweden, however, says it’s possible to attack some of the new algorithms with other methods. Researchers at the KTH Royal Institute say they found a vulnerability in a specific implementation of CRYSTALS-Kyber — a “quantum safe” algorithm that the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology has selected as part of its potential standards for future cryptographic systems. According to the Swedish team, CRYSTALS-Kyber is vulnerable to side-channel attacks, which use information leaked by a computer system to gain unauthorized access or extract sensitive information. Instead of trying to guess a secret key, a side-channel technique analyzes data such as small variations in power consumption or electromagnetic radiation to reconstruct what the machine is doing and find clues that would enable access.


How to achieve and shore up cyber resilience in a recession

With cybercriminals waiting in the wings, concerns about whether it’s a false economy to make cuts in cybersecurity investments is a growing concern. However, investing in expensive security tools will be ineffective if organizations neglect putting the right foundational security practices in place. When it comes to elevating organizational resilience, CIOs don’t need to choose between savings and safety. By reviewing processes, revisiting the basics, making the most of existing resources, and focusing on internal training, organizations can increase their security and digital resilience. Selectively deploying cybersecurity tools and product kits can then complement these good practices in a highly cost-effective way. In a downturn, it pays to reset cybersecurity priorities and review how and where finite resources can best be deployed. Unfortunately, all too often organizations conflate good security practices with good security purchases, in the misbegotten belief that, somehow, it’s possible to “buy security”.


Companies can’t stop using open source

Freely downloadable code has never been truly free (as in cost). The bits might be free, but there’s a cost to manage those bits. Developers always cost more than the code they write or manage. This may be one reason that when enterprises were asked what they most value in “open source leadership,” they responded with “makes it easy to deploy my preferred open source software in the cloud.” Companies increasingly want the benefits of open source without the expense of managing it themselves. ... Despite these problems and despite open source costs, even those who think open source is more expensive than proprietary alternatives say its benefits outweigh those costs. Chesbrough, when conducting the survey for the Linux Foundation, asked about this seemingly counterintuitive finding. “If you think [open source is] more expensive, why are you still using it?” he asked one respondent. Their response? “The code is available.” Meaning, “If we were to construct the code ourselves, that would take some amount of time. ...”


Do you have the courage of your convictions?

A courageous leader also has a healthy appreciation for the fact that sticking your neck out carries the risk of being wrong or failing. Many CEOs and senior leaders are looking to promote managers who have failed and can show they have learned from the experience. They want leaders who take big swings and, if they stumble, figure out what went wrong. But still, we’re all too prone to put up facades of invincibility and perfection, polishing resumes that show a smooth trajectory and consistent record of success. In job interviews, candidates are unwilling to acknowledge any failures or weaknesses beyond the predictable non-answers of “I work too hard” or “I care too much.” “People who don’t make bad decisions are indecisive and risk-averse,” said David Kenny, who was CEO of the Weather Company when I interviewed him years ago (he now runs market research firm Nielsen). “I love hiring people who’ve failed. We’ve got some great people here with some real flameouts.



Quote for the day:

"When you accept a leadership role, you take on extra responsibility for your actions toward others." -- Kelley Armstrong

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