AI and Lossy Bottlenecks

Post Syndicated from B. Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/12/ai-and-lossy-bottlenecks.html

Artificial intelligence is poised to upend much of society, removing human limitations inherent in many systems. One such limitation is information and logistical bottlenecks in decision-making.

Traditionally, people have been forced to reduce complex choices to a small handful of options that don’t do justice to their true desires. Artificial intelligence has the potential to remove that limitation. And it has the potential to drastically change how democracy functions.

AI researcher Tantum Collins and I, a public-interest technology scholar, call this AI overcoming “lossy bottlenecks.” Lossy is a term from information theory that refers to imperfect communications channels—that is, channels that lose information.

Multiple-choice practicality

Imagine your next sit-down dinner and being able to have a long conversation with a chef about your meal. You could end up with a bespoke dinner based on your desires, the chef’s abilities and the available ingredients. This is possible if you are cooking at home or hosted by accommodating friends.

But it is infeasible at your average restaurant: The limitations of the kitchen, the way supplies have to be ordered and the realities of restaurant cooking make this kind of rich interaction between diner and chef impossible. You get a menu of a few dozen standardized options, with the possibility of some modifications around the edges.

That’s a lossy bottleneck. Your wants and desires are rich and multifaceted. The array of culinary outcomes are equally rich and multifaceted. But there’s no scalable way to connect the two. People are forced to use multiple-choice systems like menus to simplify decision-making, and they lose so much information in the process.

People are so used to these bottlenecks that we don’t even notice them. And when we do, we tend to assume they are the inevitable cost of scale and efficiency. And they are. Or, at least, they were.

The possibilities

Artificial intelligence has the potential to overcome this limitation. By storing rich representations of people’s preferences and histories on the demand side, along with equally rich representations of capabilities, costs and creative possibilities on the supply side, AI systems enable complex customization at scale and low cost. Imagine walking into a restaurant and knowing that the kitchen has already started work on a meal optimized for your tastes, or being presented with a personalized list of choices.

There have been some early attempts at this. People have used ChatGPT to design meals based on dietary restrictions and what they have in the fridge. It’s still early days for these technologies, but once they get working, the possibilities are nearly endless. Lossy bottlenecks are everywhere.

Take labor markets. Employers look to grades, diplomas and certifications to gauge candidates’ suitability for roles. These are a very coarse representation of a job candidate’s abilities. An AI system with access to, for example, a student’s coursework, exams and teacher feedback as well as detailed information about possible jobs could provide much richer assessments of which employment matches do and don’t make sense.

Or apparel. People with money for tailors and time for fittings can get clothes made from scratch, but most of us are limited to mass-produced options. AI could hugely reduce the costs of customization by learning your style, taking measurements based on photos, generating designs that match your taste and using available materials. It would then convert your selections into a series of production instructions and place an order to an AI-enabled robotic production line.

Or software. Today’s computer programs typically use one-size-fits-all interfaces, with only minor room for modification, but individuals have widely varying needs and working styles. AI systems that observe each user’s interaction styles and know what that person wants out of a given piece of software could take this personalization far deeper, completely redesigning interfaces to suit individual needs.

Removing democracy’s bottleneck

These examples are all transformative, but the lossy bottleneck that has the largest effect on society is in politics. It’s the same problem as the restaurant. As a complicated citizen, your policy positions are probably nuanced, trading off between different options and their effects. You care about some issues more than others and some implementations more than others.

If you had the knowledge and time, you could engage in the deliberative process and help create better laws than exist today. But you don’t. And, anyway, society can’t hold policy debates involving hundreds of millions of people. So you go to the ballot box and choose between two—or if you are lucky, four or five—individual representatives or political parties.

Imagine a system where AI removes this lossy bottleneck. Instead of trying to cram your preferences to fit into the available options, imagine conveying your political preferences in detail to an AI system that would directly advocate for specific policies on your behalf. This could revolutionize democracy.

a diagram of six vertical columns composed of squares of various white, grey and black shades

Ballots are bottlenecks that funnel a voter’s diverse views into a few options. AI representations of individual voters’ desires overcome this bottleneck, promising enacted policies that better align with voters’ wishes.
Tantum Collins, CC BY-ND

One way is by enhancing voter representation. By capturing the nuances of each individual’s political preferences in a way that traditional voting systems can’t, this system could lead to policies that better reflect the desires of the electorate. For example, you could have an AI device in your pocket—your future phone, for instance—that knows your views and wishes and continually votes in your name on an otherwise overwhelming number of issues large and small.

Combined with AI systems that personalize political education, it could encourage more people to participate in the democratic process and increase political engagement. And it could eliminate the problems stemming from elected representatives who reflect only the views of the majority that elected them—and sometimes not even them.

On the other hand, the privacy concerns resulting from allowing an AI such intimate access to personal data are considerable. And it’s important to avoid the pitfall of just allowing the AIs to figure out what to do: Human deliberation is crucial to a functioning democracy.

Also, there is no clear transition path from the representative democracies of today to these AI-enhanced direct democracies of tomorrow. And, of course, this is still science fiction.

First steps

These technologies are likely to be used first in other, less politically charged, domains. Recommendation systems for digital media have steadily reduced their reliance on traditional intermediaries. Radio stations are like menu items: Regardless of how nuanced your taste in music is, you have to pick from a handful of options. Early digital platforms were only a little better: “This person likes jazz, so we’ll suggest more jazz.”

Today’s streaming platforms use listener histories and a broad set of features describing each track to provide each user with personalized music recommendations. Similar systems suggest academic papers with far greater granularity than a subscription to a given journal, and movies based on more nuanced analysis than simply deferring to genres.

A world without artificial bottlenecks comes with risks—loss of jobs in the bottlenecks, for example—but it also has the potential to free people from the straitjackets that have long constrained large-scale human decision-making. In some cases—restaurants, for example—the impact on most people might be minor. But in others, like politics and hiring, the effects could be profound.

ASRock Rack 1U8S4E-EGS/2T Review 1P Intel Xeon Server

Post Syndicated from John Lee original https://www.servethehome.com/asrock-rack-1u8s4e-egs-2t-review-1p-intel-xeon-server/

In our ASRock Rack 1U8S4E-EGS/2T review, we see how this 1U Intel Xeon server is designed for hosting environments

The post ASRock Rack 1U8S4E-EGS/2T Review 1P Intel Xeon Server appeared first on ServeTheHome.

A Year-End Letter from our Vice President

Post Syndicated from Let's Encrypt original https://letsencrypt.org/2023/12/28/eoy-letter-2023/

Sarah Gran

This letter was originally published in our 2023 Annual Report.

We typically open our annual report with a letter from our Executive Director and co-founder, Josh Aas, but he’s on parental leave so I’ll be filling in. I’ve run the Brand & Donor Development team at ISRG since 2016, so I’ve had the pleasure of watching our work mature, our impact grow, and I’ve had the opportunity to get to know many great people who care deeply about security and privacy on the Internet.

One of the biggest observations I’ve made during Josh’s absence is that all 23 people who work at ISRG fall into that class of folks. Of course I was a bit nervous as Josh embarked on his leave to discover just how many balls he has been keeping in the air for the last decade. Answer: it’s a lot. But the roster of staff that we’ve built up made it pretty seamless for us to keep moving forward.

Let’s Encrypt is supporting 40 million more websites than a year ago, bringing the total to over 360 million. The engineering team has grown to 12 people who are responsible for our continued reliability and ability to scale. But they’re not maintaining the status quo. Let’s Encrypt engineers are pushing forward our expectations for ourselves and for the WebPKI community. We’ve added shorter-lived certificates to our 2024 roadmap. We’re committing to this work because sub-10 day certificates significantly reduce the impact of key compromise and it broadens the universe of people who can use our certs. In addition, the team started an ambitious project to develop a new Certificate Transparency implementation because the only existing option cannot scale for the future and is prone to operational fragility. These projects are led by two excellent technical leads, Aaron Gable and James Renken, who balance our ambition with our desire for a good quality of life for our teams.

Prossimo continues to deliver highly performant and memory safe software and components in a world that is increasingly eager to address the memory safety problem. This was evidenced by participation at Tectonics, a gathering we hosted which drew industry leaders for invigorated conversation. Meanwhile, initiatives like our memory safe AV1 decoder are in line to replace a C version in Google Chrome. This change would improve security for billions of people. We’re grateful to the community that helps to guide and implement our efforts in this area, including Dirkjan Ochtman, the firms Tweede golf and Ferrous Systems, and the maintainers of the many projects we are involved with

Our newest project, Divvi Up, brought on our first two subscribers in 2023. Horizontal, a small international nonprofit serving Human Rights Defenders, will be collecting privacy-preserving telemetry metrics about the users of their Tella app, which people use to document human rights violations. Mozilla is using Divvi Up to gain insight into aspects of user behavior in the Firefox browser. It took a combination of focus and determination to get us to a production-ready state and our technical lead, Brandon Pitman played a big role in getting us there.

We hired Kristin Berdan to fill a new role as General Counsel and her impact is already apparent within our organization. She joins Sarah Heil, our CFO, Josh, and me in ISRG leadership.

Collectively, we operate three impactful and growing projects for $7 million a year. This is possible because of the amazing leadership assembled across our teams and the ongoing commitment from our community to validate the usefulness of our work. As we look toward 2024 and the challenges and opportunities that face us, I ask that you join us in building a more secure and privacy respecting Internet by sponsoring us, making a donation or gift through your DAF, or sharing with the folks you know why security and privacy matter to them.

A Year-End Letter from our Vice President

Post Syndicated from Let's Encrypt original https://letsencrypt.org/2023/12/28/eoy-letter-2023.html

Sarah Gran

This letter was originally published in our 2023 Annual Report.

We typically open our annual report with a letter from our Executive Director and co-founder, Josh Aas, but he’s on parental leave so I’ll be filling in. I’ve run the Brand & Donor Development team at ISRG since 2016, so I’ve had the pleasure of watching our work mature, our impact grow, and I’ve had the opportunity to get to know many great people who care deeply about security and privacy on the Internet.

One of the biggest observations I’ve made during Josh’s absence is that all 23 people who work at ISRG fall into that class of folks. Of course I was a bit nervous as Josh embarked on his leave to discover just how many balls he has been keeping in the air for the last decade. Answer: it’s a lot. But the roster of staff that we’ve built up made it pretty seamless for us to keep moving forward.

Let’s Encrypt is supporting 40 million more websites than a year ago, bringing the total to over 360 million. The engineering team has grown to 12 people who are responsible for our continued reliability and ability to scale. But they’re not maintaining the status quo. Let’s Encrypt engineers are pushing forward our expectations for ourselves and for the WebPKI community. We’ve added shorter-lived certificates to our 2024 roadmap. We’re committing to this work because sub-10 day certificates significantly reduce the impact of key compromise and it broadens the universe of people who can use our certs. In addition, the team started an ambitious project to develop a new Certificate Transparency implementation because the only existing option cannot scale for the future and is prone to operational fragility. These projects are led by two excellent technical leads, Aaron Gable and James Renken, who balance our ambition with our desire for a good quality of life for our teams.

Prossimo continues to deliver highly performant and memory safe software and components in a world that is increasingly eager to address the memory safety problem. This was evidenced by participation at Tectonics, a gathering we hosted which drew industry leaders for invigorated conversation. Meanwhile, initiatives like our memory safe AV1 decoder are in line to replace a C version in Google Chrome. This change would improve security for billions of people. We’re grateful to the community that helps to guide and implement our efforts in this area, including Dirkjan Ochtman, the firms Tweede golf and Ferrous Systems, and the maintainers of the many projects we are involved with

Our newest project, Divvi Up, brought on our first two subscribers in 2023. Horizontal, a small international nonprofit serving Human Rights Defenders, will be collecting privacy-preserving telemetry metrics about the users of their Tella app, which people use to document human rights violations. Mozilla is using Divvi Up to gain insight into aspects of user behavior in the Firefox browser. It took a combination of focus and determination to get us to a production-ready state and our technical lead, Brandon Pitman played a big role in getting us there.

We hired Kristin Berdan to fill a new role as General Counsel and her impact is already apparent within our organization. She joins Sarah Heil, our CFO, Josh, and me in ISRG leadership.

Collectively, we operate three impactful and growing projects for $7 million a year. This is possible because of the amazing leadership assembled across our teams and the ongoing commitment from our community to validate the usefulness of our work. As we look toward 2024 and the challenges and opportunities that face us, I ask that you join us in building a more secure and privacy respecting Internet by sponsoring us, making a donation or gift through your DAF, or sharing with the folks you know why security and privacy matter to them.

Debian statement on the Cyber Resilience Act

Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/956187/

The Debian project has completed a
general-resolution vote
, adopting a statement expressing concern about
the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) pending in the European Union.

Even if only “commercial activities” are in the scope of CRA, the
Free Software community – and as a consequence, everybody – will
lose a lot of small projects. CRA will force many small enterprises
and most probably all self employed developers out of business
because they simply cannot fulfill the requirements imposed by
CRA. Debian and other Linux distributions depend on their work. If
accepted as it is, CRA will undermine not only an established
community but also a thriving market. CRA needs an exemption for
small businesses and, at the very least, solo-entrepreneurs

Bookblaze: The Second Annual Backblaze Book Guide

Post Syndicated from Stephanie Doyle original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/bookblaze-the-second-annual-backblaze-book-guide/

A decorative image showing a book and a bookshelves.

It’s that time again—cozy season is upon us and your Backblaze authors are eager to share some of their favorite reads. Feel free to use them as a gift guide (if you still have gifts to give, that is), as a list of recs to start your New Year’s resolutions off right, or just some excellent excuses to take some much-needed solo time away from the family. 

So, whether the weather outside is frightful, or, like at our home office in San Mateo, weird and drizzly, we hope you enjoy! And, as always, feel free to let us know what you thought in the comments. 

Tech Expertise and Whimsical Reads, All in One List

Pat Patterson, Chief Technical Evangelist

An image of the cover of the book Too Much Too Young by Daniel Rachel.

Too Much Too Young: The 2 Tone Records Story, by Daniel Rachel

In 1979, a clutch of young, multiracial bands burst onto the music scene in the UK, each offering their own take on ska, the precursor to reggae that originated in 1950’s Jamaica. “Too Much Too Young”, named after The Specials’ 1980 UK number one hit, tells the fascinating story of how bands such as The Specials, The Selecter, and The Beat (ok, “The English Beat” in the U.S.) took punk’s do-it-yourself ethic, blended it with reggae rhythms, and, as the 70s turned into the 80s, released a string of singles and albums that dominated the pop charts. 

Looking back from 2023, it’s astonishing to realize that this was the first time many audiences had seen black and white musicians on stage together, and musician-turned-author Daniel Rachel does a great job telling the 2 Tone story in the context of the casual racism, economic recession, and youth unemployment of the time. Highly recommended for any music fan, whether or not you remember moonstomping back in the day!

Vinodh Subramanian, Product Marketing Manager

An image of the book cover for Build: An Unorthodox Guide To Making Things Worth Making, by Tony Fadell.

Build: An Unorthodox Guide To Making Things Worth Making, by Tony Fadell

I picked up this book while waiting for a flight at an airport and it quickly became a source of inspiration. Authored by Tony Fadell, who played a significant role in building successful tech products like iPod, iPhone, and the Nest thermostat, the book provides insights and strategies on how to build yourself, build your career, and ultimately build products that users love. What I love about the book is how it creates a practical roadmap for building things in life and business, and it makes those things seem more possible and achievable regardless of what stage of career (or life) you’re in. I’d highly recommend this for anyone who loves to build things, but is not sure what to focus on in what order. 

nathaniel wagner, Senior Site Reliability Engineer

An image of the cover of the book Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann.

Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems, by Martin Kleppmann

Backblaze has created several data intensive applications, and while normally I am not a fan of deeply technical books because I am a learn-by-doing type of person, I think this book does a fantastic job at explaining the strengths and weaknesses of various strategies to handling large amounts of data. It also helps that I am a big fan of the freedom/speed of NoSQL, and here at Backblaze we use Cassandra to keep our index of over 500 billion Backblaze B2 files. 🙂

Nicole Gale, Marketing Operations Manager

An image of the cover of the book Before the coffee gets cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

It’s probably the shortest book I read this year, but the one that stuck with me the most. “Before the Coffee Gets Cold” is a new take (at least for me) on time traveling that dives into what would you do if you could go back in time, but it doesn’t change anything (or does it?). Each chapter is a short story following a different character’s journey to decide to sit in the chair and drink the coffee. You won’t regret picking up this book!

Andy Klein, Principal Cloud Storage Storyteller

An image of the book cover for Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time.

A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking

I reread “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking this past year. I read it years ago to understand the science. This time as I read it I felt an appreciation for the elegance that is the universe. The book is an approachable scientific read, but it does demand your full attention while reading, and if you slept through your high school and college physics classes, the book may not be for you.

Molly Clancy, Senior Content Editor

An image of the book cover for Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.

Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver

“Demon Copperhead” is the book that brought me back to reading for pleasure after having a baby. Some perspective for new parents—he’s almost one and a half, so… go easy on yourselves. Anyway, about this book: you probably never thought you wanted to get inside the head of a teenage boy from the hollers of coal country, but you do. Trust me, you do. Barbara Kingsolver doesn’t hold back when it comes to, let’s say, the authenticity of what a teenage boy from the hollers of coal country thinks about, and she somehow manages to do it without being cringe. It’s a damning critique of social services, the foster care system, the school system to some extent, Big Pharma to a huge extent, and even Big City Liberals in a way that’s clarifying for this Big City Liberal who now lives …in the hollers of coal country.

Troy Liljedahl, Director, Solutions Engineering

An image of the book cover for Radical Candor by Kim Scott.

Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity, by Kim Scott

The book that really stuck with me this year is “Radical Candor” by Kim Scott. This was the best book on leadership and management I’ve ever read, and I’ve been recommending it to my friends and colleagues who are looking for ways to improve in those skills. I love how Scott gives you actionable items to take with you into the workplace rather than generalized advice that’s less applicable to specific situations. I loved the book so much I started listening to the Radical Candor podcast, which has quickly become a favorite of mine as well.

Kari Rivas, Senior Product Marketing Manager

A cover image of the book The Grace Year by Kim Liggett.

The Grace Year, by Kim Liggett

For fans of “The Handmaid’s Tale”, “Hunger Games”, and any other books where women are badasses (can I say that?) fighting a dystopian empire, “The Grace Year” will not disappoint. This book examines the often fraught and complex relationships between women, with a magical bent. Think Lady of the Flies. Just like the mentioned references, this thrilling read will leave you feeling both hopeful and sad—exactly the mix of feelings we’re all looking for at the end of the year, amIright?

Yev Pusin, Senior Director, Marketing

An image of the book cover The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher.

The Aeronaut’s Windlass, by Jim Butcher

I do not feel like I need to sell this book too hard. Here’s the gist. Jim Butcher (of Dresden Files and Codex Alera fame) wrote this book. It’s about an airship-filled steampunk society that’s divided into living habitats they call spires. It has air ship battles. Magic. Snarky characters. And possibly most important of all: TALKING CATS AS A MAIN CHARACTER. Enjoy.

Mark Potter, Chief Information Security Officer

An image of the cover of the book To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose.

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath: The First Book of Nampeshiweisit, by Moniquill Blackgoose (and some other bonus books!)

I don’t really have a book recommendation, but I have a few books that I’m reading at the moment: “To Shape a Dragon’s Breath” (a recommendation from a fellow Backblazer that I’m only a couple of chapters into) and Robert Jordan’s “The Eye of the World” (has been on my list for over a decade, so far I’m underwhelmed).

Gleb Budman, Chief Executive Officer

An image of the book cover of Tubes by Andrew Blum.

Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, by Andrew Blum

The idea that the internet is “a series of tubes” may have been widely mocked when former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska famously described it. But he wasn’t entirely wrong. I love how Blum starts with a simple question: “Where does this cord that comes out of my modem actually go?” and then that takes him on a journey of exploration around the world.

Alison McClelland, Senior Technical Editing Manager

An image of the cover of the book Packing for Mars by Mary Roach.

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, by Mary Roach

Mary Roach presents a unique view of the challenges of space, investigating the comical side of planetary exploration, from zero-gravity hijinks to the surprisingly practical challenges of personal hygiene in orbit. Forget packing trendy outfits in your stylish carry-on; in the cosmos, it’s all about zero-gravity hairstyles and toothpaste that doesn’t float away mid-brush.

Stephanie Doyle, Associate Editor and Writer

An image of the book cover for All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders.

All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders

This book is a wonderful mashup of near-future sci fi, magical realism, strong character arcs, and so much more. It’s brilliant at taking things that seem familiar—urban San Francisco for example, or science as a concept—and inserting chaos and whimsy in ways that challenge our base assumptions and create a totally unexpected, but absolutely believable, universe. It’s so matter-of-fact in tone, that you may just question whether magic does exist. And, with all that, the book ends by delivering a poignant and thoughtful ending that turns all that quirkiness inside out, and forces you to wonder about the world you’re living in right now, and how you can change things. It’s one of my go-to recommendations for fans of all kinds of fiction.

Patrick Thomas, Senior Director, Publishing

An image of the book cover for Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan

So, full disclosure—I continue to struggle with being a toddler dad when it comes to reading. (Evidence: I’ve read “The Grinch”10 times in the last 24 hours and my heart is feeling three sizes too small). So this isn’t a new recommendation, but rather a recommendation I’m realizing not enough people in tech have received yet. “Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore” brings together my two worlds: books and tech… and, well, fantasy and mystery sort of (not my worlds, but I like to dwell in the idea that there’s a near-real fantasy world at the edge of our experience). If you like data and narrative structure, or if you like a spooky adventure, or if you like dusty old bookshops, Robin Sloan has you covered with this one. And, once you’ve read this, get on his email lists, he writes about history, fiction, and technology (and olive oil) beautifully. P.S.: I don’t know why Picador insists on this terrible cover, it does little to convey the world inside the book—don’t make my mistake and judge this book by its cover).

Happy Reading From Backblaze

We hope this list piques your interest—we may be a tech company, but nothing beats a good, old fashioned book (or audiobook) to help you unwind, disconnect, and lose yourself in someone else’s story for a while. (Okay, we may be biased on the Publishing team.) 

Any reading recommendations to give us? Let us know in the comments.

The post Bookblaze: The Second Annual Backblaze Book Guide appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

There’s One Last Gift Under the Tree, It’s Hands-On IoT!

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/12/27/theres-one-last-gift-under-the-tree-its-hands-on-iot/

There’s One Last Gift Under the Tree, It’s Hands-On IoT!

It’s the holiday season and since we’re in a giving mood we thought we’d surprise our loyal readers with a fun, hands-on hardware exercise to enjoy during some well-earned downtime.

But first, a little background. Every year Rapid7 has a pretty solid presence at DefCon in Las Vegas. This year was no exception. One of the cornerstones of our DefCon experience is participating in the IoT Village. Deral Heiland, our Principal Security Researcher for IoT, takes attendees through each of the steps of breaking into a particular piece of IoT hardware. And every year we release his talk (with a few additions) for those who couldn’t make it to Vegas for the conference.

What we have here is this year’s Hands-On IoT presentation for the hacking of an IP camera over Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (UART). It’s Deral’s original presentation with some added details and context. In this paper, Deral takes you step by step through the process, offering insight into how UART and U-Boots operate, as well as some troubleshooting techniques should your attempts not work as seamlessly as Deral’s.

Typically, we would release Deral’s presentation in a series of blog posts over a few weeks. But this year we decided to spare y’all the suspense each week and release it as one comprehensive paper. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed making it and we wish you all the best this holiday season.

Click here to download the paper.

New iPhone Security Features to Protect Stolen Devices

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/12/new-iphone-security-features-to-protect-stolen-devices.html

Apple is rolling out a new “Stolen Device Protection” feature that seems well thought out:

When Stolen Device Protection is turned on, Face ID or Touch ID authentication is required for additional actions, including viewing passwords or passkeys stored in iCloud Keychain, applying for a new Apple Card, turning off Lost Mode, erasing all content and settings, using payment methods saved in Safari, and more. No passcode fallback is available in the event that the user is unable to complete Face ID or Touch ID authentication.

For especially sensitive actions, including changing the password of the Apple ID account associated with the iPhone, the feature adds a security delay on top of biometric authentication. In these cases, the user must authenticate with Face ID or Touch ID, wait one hour, and authenticate with Face ID or Touch ID again. However, Apple said there will be no delay when the iPhone is in familiar locations, such as at home or work.

More details at the link.

Fall 2023 SOC reports now available in Spanish

Post Syndicated from Ryan Wilks original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/fall-2023-soc-reports-now-available-in-spanish/

Spanish version »

We continue to listen to our customers, regulators, and stakeholders to understand their needs regarding audit, assurance, certification, and attestation programs at Amazon Web Services (AWS). We’re pleased to announce that the Fall 2023 System and Organization Controls (SOC) 1, SOC 2, and SOC 3 reports are now available in Spanish. These translated reports will help drive greater engagement and alignment with customer and regulatory requirements across Latin America and Spain. The reports cover the period October 1, 2022, to September 30, 2023. We extended the period of coverage to 12 months so that you have a full year of assurance from a single report.

The Spanish language version of the reports doesn’t contain the independent opinion issued by the auditors or the control test results, but you can find this information in the English language version. Stakeholders should use the English version as a complement to the Spanish version.

Translated SOC reports in Spanish are available to customers through AWS Artifact. Translated SOC reports in Spanish will be published twice a year, in alignment with the Fall and Spring reporting cycles.

We value your feedback and questions—feel free to reach out to our team or give feedback about this post through the Contact Us page.

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below.
 


Spanish version

LLos informes SOC de Otoño de 2023 ahora están disponibles en español

Seguimos escuchando a nuestros clientes, reguladores y partes interesadas para comprender sus necesidades en relación con los programas de auditoría, garantía, certificación y atestación en Amazon Web Services (AWS). Nos complace anunciar que de Otoño SOC 1, SOC 2 y SOC 3 de AWS de Primavera de 2023 ya están disponibles en español. Estos informes traducidos ayudarán a impulsar un mayor compromiso y alineación con los requisitos regulatorios y de los clientes en las regiones de América Latina y España. Los informes cubren el período del 1 de octubre de 2022 al 30 de septiembre de 2023. Ampliamos el período de cobertura a 12 meses para que tenga un año completo de garantía con un solo informe.

La versión en inglés de los informes debe tenerse en cuenta en relación con la opinión independiente emitida por los auditores y los resultados de las pruebas de controles, como complemento de las versiones en español.

Los informes SOC traducidos en español están disponibles en AWS Artifact. Los informes SOC traducidos en español se publicarán dos veces al año según los ciclos de informes de Otoño y Primavera.

Valoramos sus comentarios y preguntas; no dude en ponerse en contacto con nuestro equipo o enviarnos sus comentarios sobre esta publicación a través de nuestra página Contáctenos.

Si tienes comentarios sobre esta publicación, envíalos en la sección Comentarios a continuación.

ryan wilks

Ryan Wilks

Ryan is a Compliance Program Manager at AWS. He leads multiple security and privacy initiatives within AWS. Ryan has 13 years of experience in information security. Ryan has a bachelor of arts degree from Rutgers University and holds ITIL, CISM and CISA certifications.

Nathan Samuel

Nathan Samuel

Nathan is a Compliance Program Manager at AWS. He leads multiple security and privacy initiatives within AWS. Nathan has a bachelor of commerce degree from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and has over 20 years of experience in security assurance. He holds the CISA, CRISC, CGEIT, CISM, CDPSE, and Certified Internal Auditor certifications.

Brownell Combs

Brownell Combs

Brownell is a Compliance Program Manager at AWS. He leads multiple security and privacy initiatives within AWS. Brownell holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Virginia and a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Centre College. He has over 20 years of experience in information technology risk management and CISSP, CISA, and CRISC certifications.

Paul Hong

Paul Hong

Paul is a Compliance Program Manager at AWS. He leads multiple security, compliance, and training initiatives within AWS, and has ten years of experience in security assurance. Paul is a CISSP, CEH, and CPA, and holds a master’s degree in accounting information systems and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from James Madison University, Virginia.

Author

Rodrigo Fiuza

Rodrigo is a Security Audit Manager at AWS, based in São Paulo. He leads audits, attestations, certifications, and assessments across Latin America, the Caribbean, and Europe. Rodrigo previously worked in risk management, security assurance, and technology audits for 12 years.

Security updates for Tuesday

Post Syndicated from jake original https://lwn.net/Articles/956156/

Security updates have been issued by Debian (curl, openssh, osslsigncode, and putty), Fedora (chromium, filezilla, libfilezilla, mingw-gstreamer1, mingw-gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, mingw-gstreamer1-plugins-base, mingw-gstreamer1-plugins-good, opensc, thunderbird, unrealircd, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), Gentoo (Ceph, FFmpeg, Flatpak, Gitea, and SABnzbd), Mageia (chromium-browser-stable), Slackware (kernel and postfix), and SUSE (cppcheck, distribution, gstreamer-plugins-bad, jbigkit, and ppp).

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