cryptogon.com

Hardware manufacturers must take steps to address this problem before more firmware disasters comes to pass. In the past, hardware manufacturers have been more worried about physical and side-channel attacks. Manufacturers therefore focused mainly on making their hardware and firmware opaque and tamper-proof in hopes that, if no one could reverse engineer the firmware, then no one would be able to attack it. Unfortunately this defense has proven ineffective. This should serve as a stark reminder of the old adage: “Security through obscurity is no security at all.” We we need to take back transparency and verifiability in our hardware.

Although this is a daunting problem, it is solvable. To avert this disaster there are three things that must happen right away:

Firmware must be properly audited. Hardware manufacturers need to hire security professionals to audit their firmware and publish the results. Preferably, hardware companies should hire full time security staff to make sure that their code is audited before it ever gets installed. Hardware manufacturers could also release the source code for their device’s firmware, allowing independent security researchers and laypersons to review the code as well—and perhaps even improve it. People have a right to inspect the code that is running on their computers.
Firmware updates must be signed. Firmware updates should be signed by the manufacturers so that we can be sure we are installing trusted code when we upgrade our firmware. Additionally, manufacturers should ensure that there is an easy mechanism for the average user to check the signature and upgrade their firmware. Ideally users would not have to rely on the broken certificate authority system to verify these signatures.
We need a mechanism for verifying the integrity of installed firmware. Of course, even if we have signed updates to firmware, some piece of malware could reprogram the firmware already on the device and have a good long life, before it eventually gets updated (if ever). Because of this, we need a way to verify the code on our hardware devices at boot time or run time in a way that can’t be subverted by malicious firmware already on the device. 2

Four of them will be located in Wales — in Swansea, Cardiff, Newport and Colwyn Bay — and there’ll be one each in Bridgewater in Somerset and West Cumbria. Tidal Lagoon Power, the firm behind the project, eventually believes that six lagoons could generate eight percent of the UK’s electricity for a cost of £12 billion. The plan is backed by energy secretary Ed Davey.

One strong hint is buried in the fine print of the closely guarded draft. The provision, an increasingly common feature of trade agreements, is called “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” or ISDS. The name may sound mild, but don’t be fooled. Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty.

ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws — and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here’s how it would work. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions — and even billions — of dollars in damages.

If that seems shocking, buckle your seat belt. ISDS could lead to gigantic fines, but it wouldn’t employ independent judges. Instead, highly paid corporate lawyers would go back and forth between representing corporations one day and sitting in judgment the next. Maybe that makes sense in an arbitration between two corporations, but not in cases between corporations and governments. If you’re a lawyer looking to maintain or attract high-paying corporate clients, how likely are you to rule against those corporations when it’s your turn in the judge’s seat?

Playing Atari 2600 games from the 1980s may seem a bit “Back to the Future,” but researchers with Google’s DeepMind project say they have taken a small but crucial step toward a general learning machine that can mimic the way human brains learn from new experience.

…

The researchers chose the Atari 2600 platform in part because it offered an engineering sweet spot — not too easy and not too hard. They plan to move into the 1990s, toward 3-D games involving complex environments, such as the “Grand Theft Auto” franchise. That milestone could come within five years, said Hassabis.

The three men are the first to undergo what doctors refer to as “bionic reconstruction”, which involves a voluntary amputation, the transplantof nerves and muscles and learning to use faint signals from them to command the hand.

People with bionic hands have in the past controlled them primarily with manual settings.

“This is the first time we have bionically reconstructed a hand,” said Dr Oskar Aszmann, of the Medical University of Vienna, who developed the approach with colleagues. “If I saw these kinds of patients five to seven years ago, I would have just shrugged my shoulders and said ‘there’s nothing I can do for you.’”

He said the procedure had its complications, including the need for patients to take anti-rejection medicines for the rest of their lives.