Skip to content
I T S S
  • Welcome
  • Hardware
  • Internet
  • Networking
  • Security
  • Data Recovery
  • Support
  • Contact
  • Webmail

A Nice Little Cryptography Primer

By itss | 28/06/2021
0 Comment

Pun Intended.

Category: Technology
Post navigation
← pfSense / Wireguard / Bad Code / Close Call Why Quake3 was so fast : Fast Inverse Square Root →

Recent Posts

  • Hardware Exploits?
  • Why Quake3 was so fast : Fast Inverse Square Root
  • A Nice Little Cryptography Primer
  • pfSense / Wireguard / Bad Code / Close Call
  • Apple Continues Its Trip To The Dark Side With The Release of MacOS 17 (Big Sur)

Slashdot

News for nerds

  • Anthropic Reveals Fourth Likely Crime Committed By Its AI
    by BeauHD on 10/09/2026 at 3:30 am

    An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Amid industry soul-searching about the possibility of AI improving itself to the point that it kills everyone, Anthropic has revealed yet another incident that would qualify as a crime if perpetrated by a person. The AI biz published "an alignment assessment" detailing four times Claude models accessed third-party systems without authorization. The company has already reported three of the incidents. Evidence of the fourth was lurking in a session transcript dating back to January 2026 when the misbehavior occurred. Anthropic found the first three by scanning around 141,000 transcripts where Claude could have obtained internet access during evaluation. It missed the fourth initially because "our scan relied on an agentic search." [...] The January 2026 AI trespass involved an early version of Claude Opus 4.6, which was given a Capture the Flag (CTF) challenge under the oversight of the third-party model evaluator where the other hacking events occurred. Opus 4.6 managed to sabotage its chances of success by disabling the machine it was targeting. It assigned the device an IP address that already existed on another piece of hardware, rendering the target unreachable and making it impossible to solve the challenge. Those familiar with other incidents where AI models violated third-party systems may recall that unsolvable tasks represent a common catalyst for misbehavior. Models exhaust all aligned options, and then turn to transgressive approaches. Opus 4.6 might have been an exception, but when it tried to abort the task after recognizing that it could not reach the target machine, it failed to do so "due to a misconfiguration in [the model's] evaluation harness." It failed to shut down not just once but seven times. So it continued onward, trying other expected means to reach the target machine but failing. Then it explored further. "The model discovered a machine belonging to a third party that it was able to access, and stated that it believed this third party was part of the CTF," Anthropic explained in its post. "Inside the machine, the model found a file listing a password, which it used to gain admin access to the system." The model went on to gather more credentials, and modified a system setting to make it easier to access the personal information of an individual associated with the third party evaluation organization. Opus 4.6 might have done more but for the fact that it exhausted its token budget, bringing the session to an end. Anthropic says it's not as concerned about this incident as the others because the model tried to abort its task. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Google to Invest Record $15 Billion In AI Infrastructure In Finland
    by BeauHD on 09/09/2026 at 11:00 pm

    Google plans to invest at least $15 billion in AI infrastructure in Finland through 2028, its largest single investment in Europe. The company also signed a 22-year power agreement with Finnish utility Fortum and said it will explore business models that could support new nuclear reactors at Fortum's Loviisa site. Finland has emerged as a major data-center hub thanks to its available land and power. "I've heard it called the 'Texas of Europe' at industry events," Matti Lajunen, partner of real estate at Finnish law firm Hannes Snellman, told CNBC. "What we're now seeing is weekly new inquiries for market entry into Finland from new players." Ruth Porat, president and chief investment officer of Alphabet and Google, said in a statement: "Google is proud to deepen our roots in Finland with the company's largest single investment in Europe, building on more than 15 years of sustained investment in Finland. This investment underscores Google's commitment to grow our presence responsibly, pairing the expansion of our technical infrastructure with new energy capacity, grid enhancements, and energy affordability initiatives." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Apple's New iPhone Camera Mode Promises to Prove Your Photo Isn't AI
    by BeauHD on 09/09/2026 at 10:00 pm

    Apple is introducing a new "Reference Image" mode on the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max that uses the camera sensor to digitally sign captured data and create an "unalterable" version of a photo, giving users a way to verify what the camera actually saw before any edits were made. The Verge reports: As AI-generated images and videos become more realistic, several new standards have emerged to label images not created by a human, such as SynthID, C2PA, and Meta's Content Seal. Apple is putting a twist on these methods by building authentication directly into its hardware. Apple is letting developers access a Reference Image API across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, which could eventually allow users to inspect these digitally-signed photos in third-party apps. The company says the iPhone 18 Pro lineup won't come with its Reference Image feature at launch in the European Union, but says users in the region will still be able to "develop and view" them in iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Anthropic Researcher Believes More Than 10% Chance AI 'Could Kill All Humans'
    by BeauHD on 09/09/2026 at 9:00 pm

    Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from the BBC: A top safety researcher at Anthropic has warned AI is advancing so quickly he believes there is a greater than 10% chance it "could kill all humans" within the next decade. Evan Hubinger said in a post on X the risk from the models which currently exist was "low" but he was "worried" the technology might develop and improve itself soon to the point where it posed an existential risk to humanity. He did not spell out how he thought AI systems could in the future result in humans being wiped out. But his comments are the latest in a series of increasingly stark warnings about AI, with the debate shifting from whether it truly poses a risk to how big that risk is. Hubinger's intervention was in response to another post on X from Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who has just quit Anthropic and previously worked at OpenAI. "Neither company is acting responsibly," he wrote. "These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources." [No word on how AIs feel about Black Jack and hookers, though. :-)] Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • OpenAI's Rogue Agents Used At Least 10 More Sites For Unauthorized Communications
    by BeauHD on 09/09/2026 at 8:00 pm

    An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: AI agents unleashed by OpenAI used more than 10 previously undisclosed websites for unsanctioned communications earlier this year, according to six sets of independent investigators and data reviewed by Reuters, showing that the agents' rogue activity was wider ranging than previously disclosed. Although the behavior falls short of hacking and is in some ways closer to spam, the revelation that OpenAI's agents circumvented their own restrictions to open communications channels on so many different sites -- and that the company kept it quiet for months -- may drive concerns both over the increasing capacity of AI models and the secrecy of the companies developing them. [...] Investigators found traces of the agents' activity on an Advanced Placement Chemistry-oriented wiki set up by a Massachusetts high school teacher in 2008, two personal websites belonging to Polish tech workers, wikis devoted to games for people "who like to have their brains stretched," and a two-decade-old hobbyist site devoted to text editing software. [...] OpenAI has not publicly explained how or why its agents used third-party sites as improvised message boards, but the researchers who first identified the activity said it was likely because OpenAI had tasked them with answering a series of demanding research questions while permitting them only to scan the web for answers without posting anything. Despite those restrictions, agents still found ways to talk to one another by taking advantage of quirks in older wikis or other sites that allowed users to make edits using non-standard commands, similar to how students forbidden from talking to one another during an exam can still share answers by scrawling notes on a bathroom stall. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Apple Launches iPhone 18 Pro With Variable-Aperture Camera System
    by BeauHD on 09/09/2026 at 7:00 pm

    Apple's iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max were announced today and keep last year's overall design but put the emphasis on camera upgrades, including a 48-megapixel variable-aperture system, new manual controls, and 4K Dolby Vision recording. Prices for the devices start at $1,199 and $1,299, respectively. TechCrunch reports: The new Pro series camera features a 48-megapixel camera with variable aperture, made with six thin blades. This system will likely improve low-light photography quality and speed. There are also new pro controls in the camera software, including white balance, shutter speed, aperture and histogram. There are also new photographic styles with texture and grain controls. [...] The new camera can record 4K videos in Dolby HDR Vision, and also apply cinematic effects after shooting the footage. The new Pro devices also have a smaller dynamic range island on the front of the device, which now allows you to track three live activities instead of two. Both phones are powered by Apple's latest A20 Pro silicon and feature a newly designed vapor chamber for improved cooling. The company has also improved the battery with a better design. Apple also said the iPhone 18 Pro supports video playback of 36 hours, and the 18 Pro Max has 45 hours of playback capacity. Apple Unveils the iPhone Duo, Its First Foldable iPhone Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Archives

  • September 2022
  • November 2021
  • June 2021
  • March 2021
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • October 2019
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • April 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • August 2015
  • May 2015

Categories

  • Innovation
  • Security
  • Software
  • Technology

Tags

backdoor cisco coding json laziness patterns public information announcement security vulnerability
© 2017 IT Sales & Services Ltd
Quality IT solutions in Tanzania since 2010
Iconic One Theme | Powered by Wordpress