The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update

This week, Hertz lost your driver's license, birthday, and maybe your Social Security number—but don’t worry, it was their vendor’s fault. Boarding passes and check-ins are going extinct, and your face is the new passport—because what could possibly go wrong with global biometric surveillance? The EU is now handing out burner phones for U.S. trips, because apparently D.C. is the new Beijing wh...

1. Concerns About AGI Development DeepMind’s 108-page report outlines four major risks of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): Misuse: AGI used maliciously (e.g., creating viruses). Misalignment: AGI acting contrary to intended goals. Mistakes: Errors causing unintended harm, especially in high-stakes sectors like defense. Structural Risks: Long-term impacts on trust, power, and truth in society...

EP 237.  DeepMind just released a 108-page manual on not getting wiped out by our own invention.  Highlighting the fact that planning for an AI apocalypse could now be a core business line function. Sigstore machine learning model signing - AI models are finally getting digital signatures, because “mystery code from the internet” just wasn't a scalable trust strategy. Turns out your AI  progra...

1. What are some recent major cryptocurrency hacks, and how were they carried out? High-profile crypto breaches include Bybit (~$1.5B), Ronin Network ($625M), and Poly Network ($611M). Attackers exploited vulnerabilities via social engineering (notably in the Bybit case), smart contract flaws, phishing, and targeted blockchain bridges. State-backed groups are increasingly active in this space. 2....

EP 236 For the Biggest Crypto Hacks it turns out “HODL” doesn’t protect you from miscreants with social engineering degrees. Hackers are now coding in Rust and Go, because multilingual malware is harder to catch. An esteemed University Computer Scientist simply disappears. (See if you can pick up on the clues.) Anthropic expands into AI workplace cleaning, but before you get too excited, they'...

Privacy Risks of 23andMe Bankruptcy A breach impacting 7 million users, coupled with lawsuits and financial distress, means 23andMe’s 15 million genetic profiles could be sold or misused under a new buyer. The California Attorney General has urged users to delete their data and destroy physical samples, highlighting the vulnerability of storing sensitive genetic information with for‑profit entitie...

EP 235 The IT Privacy and Security Weekly Update and a Gene Genie for the Week Ending March 25th., 2025 3/25/2025 0 Comments EP 235.  ​ - click the pic to hear the podcast - DNA of 15 Million People For Sale.  Turns out your great-great-grandparents' DNA is now a going-out-of-business clearance sale!" Clearview Tried to Buy Social Security Numbers and Mugshots.  Shopping list: milk, eggs,...

1. Why Should I Change My Passwords Immediately? Recent studies show that around 50% of online passwords are already compromised, and 41% of successful logins involve breached credentials. Common passwords like “123456” and password reuse make it easy for cybercriminals—especially with automated bots—to access multiple accounts. Changing passwords and using unique, strong credentials with multi-fa...

EP 234 For the other 50%.  The IT Privacy and Security Weekly Update for the Week Ending March 18th., 2025 3/18/2025 0 Comments EP 234 - click the pic to hear the podcast - For our first story, Apparently there’s a 50% chance your password is headlining a hacker convention.  Perhaps it's time to change up from ‘123456' (still the most commonly used password). Starting On March 28, Everythi...

EP 233.5 Key Cryptocurrency Threats & Scams In 2025, crypto remains a hotspot for scams like Ponzi schemes, fake ICOs, pump-and-dumps, phishing attacks, and malicious wallets or exchanges designed to steal funds. Social media is often used for deceptive giveaways, impersonations, and investment scams. Other risks include fake mining operations, rug pulls, fraudulent apps, SIM swapping, and imp...

EP 233 This week...  is seized Crypto Linked to LastPass? Feds pocket $23M in hot crypto—but with hackers still sitting on hundreds of millions, it’s like finding loose change in the couch. Signal’s boss says our ‘magic AI butler’ needs root access to everything.  What could possibly go wrong? AI is Reshaping Tech Jobs and with nearly one in four tech gigs demanding AI skills, either learn to talk...

How did Microsoft's Copilot expose private GitHub repositories, and what are the risks? Copilot accessed over 20,000 private GitHub repositories due to cached data from when they were public. Even after repos were made private, Copilot could still generate responses using this cached data, risking exposure of sensitive information like credentials and corporate secrets. What is the "nRoot...

This week:  Microsoft’s Copilot is living up to its name—because apparently, once it gets a glimpse of your code, it just can't unsee it. Hackers just turned every Bluetooth device into an involuntary AirTag—so congrats, your wireless headphones are now a tracking device. The UK wants a backdoor to look into iCloud, and the US just responded with a very diplomatic “absolutely not.” Sweden want...

Which AI chatbots pose the biggest privacy risks, and what data are they collecting and sharing? A recent study revealed that all top ten AI chatbots on the Apple App Store collect user data, with 30% sharing it with third parties for advertising or measurement. Specific incidents include an AI chatbot named WotNot exposing 346,000 sensitive customer files and ChatGPT facing temporary bans over th...

EP 231 This week we wonder which chatbot takes "sharing is caring" a little too far. Turns out some of them are spilling secrets faster than the office gossip at happy hour. Apple just told the UK, ‘You want a backdoor? Fine—we’ll just remove the whole door. France wants VPNs to stop streaming soccer pirates—because obviously the best way to protect privacy is to ban it entirely. Califor...

1. What happened with Elon Musk's DOGE (.gov) website, and why is it significant? DOGE's official website, doge.gov, suffered a significant security breach due to a glaring vulnerability. The site's database was accessible and editable by the public because it was built on Cloudflare Pages instead of secure government servers. This allowed unauthorized individuals to modify content, hi...

In this week's update:  Musk's DOGE website gets more editing than his tweets. Employees sharing secrets with AI chatbots prove humans haven't learned anything from social media oversharing. South Korea puts DeepSeek in the digital doghouse until it learns to play nice with privacy rules. Chinese hackers show that even after sanctions, you can't stop a Salt Typhoon with an umbrella...

Frequently Asked Questions: Privacy, Security, and the State of Tech (Early 2025) 1. What is "SparkCat" and why is it significant? SparkCat is malware discovered hiding in both the Apple App Store and Google Play. It uses optical character recognition (OCR) to scan users' photo galleries for cryptocurrency wallet recovery phrases and uploads them to attacker-controlled servers. Over...

Episode 229 If your seed phrase was in your photo gallery, congratulations! You might have just funded North Korea's next Missile launch. The UK government just asked Apple to make privacy optional—because nothing says "secure" like a government-mandated security hole. A man wants to buy an entire rubbish tip to find his lost Bitcoin hard drive—because sometimes, your financial futur...

What is the primary concern regarding the use of WhatsApp and other encrypted messaging apps recently? Recent reports indicate that spyware, specifically "Graphite," has been used to target journalists and civil society members through zero-click attacks on encrypted apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal. This means that these apps are not as secure as previously thought, even though...

First, for some, it looks like WhatsApp chats weren’t just end-to-end encrypted—they also came with a side of espionage. ​ Then... your heart monitor might be more interested in Beijing than in your beats per minute. deepseek AI Blocked in Italy & Taiwan, Welcomed in India – "Two countries said ‘no way,’ one said ‘namaste’—deepseek’s global tour has some mixed reviews." And what happ...

What is "surveillance pricing" and how does it affect me? Surveillance pricing is a practice where online retailers adjust prices based on your personal data, such as location, browsing history, and demographics. Companies collect data like mouse movements and items left in your shopping cart to determine what you're likely willing to pay. This can lead to different individuals being...

EP 227 In this week's update we present 21 Cyber attacks and a self defense program to stop and drop every single one of them. Shopping online? Your browsing habits might be telling stores you're willing to pay double. Congratulations to Subaru owners as the latest stars in ‘Hack My Ride.’ Meta’s new AI buddy knows your secrets—and nope, there’s no "off" button for this overshare. The FBI just dis...

Data Privacy, Security, and Tech Trends in Early 2025 1. What was the scale of healthcare data breaches in the U.S. during 2024? In 2024, the U.S. healthcare sector experienced a massive surge in cyberattacks, with approximately 720 reported breaches compromising an estimated 186 million user records. This exposed a vast amount of sensitive information, including names, contact details, Social Sec...

EP 226 In 2024, hackers gave U.S. healthcare a crash course in oversharing—186 million records spilled, proving patient privacy is still on life support. UnitedHealth tried to bury its breach notice deeper than your inbox's spam folder, leaving 100 million victims googling in vain.  A new AI tool can guess your photo's location faster than your nosiest neighbor—use portrait mode, or prepar...