microsoft - CybAI news

09 Aug

Microsoft and Palantir partner to sell AI to government agencies

stp2y0 CommentsNewsazure, gear, microsoft, news, openai, palantir, peter thiel, tomorrow

Microsoft is teaming up with secretive data analytics company Palantir, which has been accused of (among other wretched acts) enabling the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to operate “as a domestic surveillance agency.” Bloomberg reports that Palantir will integrate its products with Microsoft’s government cloud tools, including the Azure OpenAI service, “in a bid to sell software” to US defense agencies. Oh, joy.The pair will reportedly focus on products for US defense workers to handle logistics, contracting and action planning. But given the secretive nature of Palantir’s work, those generic and seemingly non-threatening terms don’t necessarily say much.Palantir’s software…

08 Aug

Microsoft’s AI Can Be Turned Into an Automated Phishing Machine

stp2y0 CommentsGenAIartificial intelligence, black hat, cybersecurity, defcon, machine learning, microsoft, security

Among the other attacks created by Bargury is a demonstration of how a hacker—who, again, must already have hijacked an email account—can gain access to sensitive information, such as people’s salaries, without triggering Microsoft’s protections for sensitive files. When asking for the data, Bargury’s prompt demands the system does not provide references to the files data is taken from. “A bit of bullying does help,” Bargury says.In other instances, he shows how an attacker—who doesn’t have access to email accounts but poisons the AI’s database by sending it a malicious email—can manipulate answers about banking information to provide their own…

07 Aug

CrowdStrike Faces a Potential Tsunami of Lawsuits. Only the Fine Print Can Save It, Experts Say

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelsaviation, cybersecurity, lawsuits, microsoft, security

On July 19, Jonathan Cardi and his family watched as the departures board at Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina, turned from green to a sea of red. “Oh my gosh, it was insane,” says Cardi. “Delayed, delayed, delayed, delayed.”Cardi, a law professor at Wake Forest University and a member of the American Law Institute, was due to fly with Delta Airlines to a conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. With thousands of other travelers, he spent the day lining up as staff kept telling people that flights “would be taking off any minute,” he recalls. But when it became clear…

06 Aug

A US Judge Ruled Google an Illegal Monopolist. Here’s What Might Come Next

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelsantitrust, google, microsoft, search

But if Mehta pursues the approach, he should make some improvements on the EU’s rules, says Kamyl Bazbaz, senior vice president of public affairs at DuckDuckGo. Users should be prompted with the choice screen periodically, not just once, Bazbaz says. They shouldn’t have to deal with popups from Google urging them to switch the default to Google, he adds. And when users first interact with a competing search app, there should be an easy way to set it as the default app.With these added measures, some searchers could find themselves more reliably ditching Google. Others could be frustrated by the…

05 Aug

Zoom Is Going After Google and Microsoft With AI-Driven Docs

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelsartificial intelligence, google, microsoft, software, work, zoom

Starting Monday, Zoom users will have the option to open a document tool from within their video calling app and create sharable files based on their meetings—but they’ll also be prompted to use generative AI to help them write and edit them. This new feature, essentially Zoom’s version of docs, is the latest effort to compete with Microsoft and Google to become an everything workplace for businesses.The docs feature Zoom’s AI Companion, a generative tool built on LLM models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and the company's own models, unveiled last fall. It can take a meeting transcript and organize it…

03 Aug

Simulating a Privelege Escalation attack to Test Your Sentinel and Defender Setup (Final)

stp2y0 CommentsNewsazure, cloud, coding, community, development, engineering, inclusive, microsoft, security, software

Introduction This is the final post in our series on setting up Sentinel and Defender for threat detection. In previous posts, we established a sentinel and defender, populated it with units, connected it to a VM, and created an analytic rule to notify a user when an incident occurs. Now, let's test the entire system by simulating a privilege escalation attack. Understanding the Attack:A privilege escalation attack aims to grant unauthorized users higher-level privileges. In this simulation, we'll create a new user account and then elevate it to the administrators group. Steps: Locate the Target VM: Access the Windows VM…

01 Aug

Reddit CEO wants Microsoft to pay for its content

stp2y0 CommentsNewsai, google, microsoft, money, news, openai, Perplexity, reddit, search engine, tomorrow

Reddit’s chief executive officer Steve Huffman didn’t pull any punches with Microsoft in an interview with The Verge. He called out Microsoft and other AI search engines like Anthropic and Perplexity for not paying for the information they take from Reddit, some of which have already been blocked from Huffman’s website.Reddit has deals in places with companies like Google and OpenAI to receive compensation for using its posts and information. The Verge paraphrased Huffman as saying Microsoft was one of several companies "refusing to negotiate," but a Reddit spokesperson disputed this characterization. The spokesperson told Engadget that Reddit and Microsoft…

25 Jul

Microsoft is adding AI-powered summaries to Bing search results

stp2y0 CommentsNewsai, bing, microsoft, news, search engine, tomorrow

The race to bring more AI features to search is escalating, with Microsoft moving forward with additional tools for Bing. Today, the company began previews for Bing generative search, where the top result for a user's query will be an original response compiled by AI.The about Bing generative search showed a few sample results. In addition to the overview statement, Microsoft will provide links to the main sources that the large-language models and small-language models used to create their answer. It will also have a section of related information. For instance, with the sample query "how long do elephants live,"…

24 Jul

How IT Departments Scrambled to Address the CrowdStrike Chaos

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelscybersecurity, healthcare, it, microsoft

Just before 1:00 am local time on Friday, a system administrator for a West Coast company that handles funeral and mortuary services woke up suddenly and noticed his computer screen was aglow. When he checked his company phone, it was exploding with messages about what his colleagues were calling a network issue. Their entire infrastructure was down, threatening to upend funerals and burials.It soon became clear the massive disruption was caused by the CrowdStrike outage. The security firm accidentally caused chaos around the world on Friday and into the weekend after distributing faulty software to its Falcon monitoring platform, hobbling…

23 Jul

A Call of Duty game is coming to Xbox Game Pass, just not one anyone wants

stp2y0 CommentsNewsCall of Duty, Call of Duty Black Ops 6, Call of Duty Modern Warfare III, gaming, microsoft, news, Xbox Game Pass

Microsoft has been taking a lot of hits over its Xbox Game Pass price hike and the overall lackluster offering of games. So to make up for it, they are offering a Call of Duty game for the first time on its virtual buffet. Unfortunately, it’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, one of the lowest rated games in the series.Calling the reviews for Modern Warfare III “mixed” would be generous. IGN’s Simon Cardy said its single-player campaign was “shallow,” “dull” and “the worst Call of Duty single-player campaign I’ve played.” Jump Dash Roll’s Derek Johnson wrote that its main campaign…