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Posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 12, 2023

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Cracks, hacks, attacks: California’s vulnerable water system faces many threats

=> ↺ Cracks, hacks, attacks: California’s vulnerable water system faces many threats

On a February morning in 2021, a water treatment plant operator in Oldsmar, Fla., noticed something unusual: An unidentified user had remotely accessed the plant’s computer system and was moving the mouse around the screen.

The operator watched as the intruder clicked into various software programs before landing on a function that controls the amount of sodium hydroxide, or lye, in the plant’s water system. The hacker then increased the amount of lye — a potentially dangerous substance used to control acidity — from 100 parts per million to 11,100 parts per million.

The plant operator reversed the change almost immediately, and officials said there was never any threat to public safety. But the incident has highlighted the threats facing major drinking water systems across the country.

[Repeat] U.S. Says It Dismantled Russia’s ‘Most Sophisticated’ Malware Network

=> ↺ U.S. Says It Dismantled Russia’s ‘Most Sophisticated’ Malware Network

In a newly unsealed 33-page court filing from a federal judge in Brooklyn, a cybersecurity agent, Taylor Forry, laid out how the effort, called Operation Medusa, would take place.

The Snake system, the court documents said, operated as a “peer to peer” network that linked together infected computers around the world. Leveraging that, the F.B.I. planned to infiltrate the system using an infected computer in the United States, overriding the code on every infected computer to “permanently disable” the network.

Russia’s Snakes Got DePlaned

=> ↺ Russia’s Snakes Got DePlaned

The US claims to have substantially shut down the infrastructure of one of Russia's most sophisticated cyberespionage groups.

Flooding The Zone With Shit

=> ↺ Flooding The Zone With Shit

My immediate reaction to the news of ChatGPT was to tell friends "at last, we have solved the Fermi Paradox"[1]. It wasn't that I feared being told "This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it", but rather that I assumed that civilizations across the galaxy evolved to be able to implement ChatGPT-like systems, which proceeded to irretrievably pollute their information environment, preventing any further progress.

Below the fold I explain why my on-line experience, starting from Usenet in the early 80s, leads me to believe that humanity's existential threat from these AIs comes from Steve Bannon and his ilk flooding the zone with shit[2].

=> gemini.tuxmachines.org