It's Friday folks. Ready for your dose of positive security news?
No, you’re not talking to Jason Statham I had to scratch my head a little here. This gets in the positive news update for this week purely because it's comedy gold. Not only that, but Jason was born around the corner from me, so naturally we have a lot in common... Funniness aside, online romance and other impersonation scams are not to be laughed at. Keep skeptical when something feels off, and keep your genitals off the camera. Source: Grahamcluley.com
DeepMind uses AI to tackle neglected deadly diseases Finally, artificial intelligence (AI) being put to good use. A laboratory process which usually takes years now takes days with AI. These are the types of use cases we were once promised AI could help society with. Source: BBC Technology
Google pushes bug databases to get on the same page for open-source security This is good news. Open-source software is widely admired for it's 'free', transparent approach to providing technology solutions. It does have it's weaknesses, though. A big one for security minded people is the lack of ownership and reliability when it comes to updating the software dependencies. This basically means a bunch of security bugs and weaknesses end up jeopardizing the security of open-source software. Google are trying to solve that. "A unified format means that vulnerability databases, open source users, and security researchers can easily share tooling and consume vulnerabilities across all of open source". Cool. Source: The Register
UK watchdog fines biz £130k for 900,000+ direct marketing calls to folk who had opted out Now. I wouldn't usually shout about fines against companies for making mistakes. That said, we're sick of receiving unsolicited marketing crap and fines such as this one sends a warning out to other dodgy companies. Which ultimately means, less crappy spam for us. Yippee. Source: The Register
Boffins promise protection and perfect performance with new ZeRØ, No-FAT memory safety techniques One for the techies. Ultra-security geeks (but thank god for them) have found a way to improve security on devices without sacrificing performance. The protection should even work about the supposedly ultra dangerous Spectre vulnerabilities, that's if they are ever exploited as part of a security incident... Source: The Register
Have a great weekend and don't respond to Jason Statham's offer to send you nude pics.