intelligent personal assistant | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Apple today announced some major changes to its controversial 'Siri audio grading program' following criticism for employing humans to listen to audio recordings of users collected via its voice-controlled Siri personal assistant without their knowledge or consent. The move came a month after The Guardian reported that third-party contractors were regularly listening to private conversations of Apple users giving voice commands to Siri in a bid to improve the quality of its product's response. While the data received by the contractors were anonymized and not associated to Apple devices, the private conversations—which also includes private discussions between doctors and patients, business deals, seemingly criminal dealings, people having sex and so on—sometimes reveal identifiable details like a person's name or medical records. In response to the backlash Apple received after the report went public, the company initially responded by temporarily suspending ...

Remember BlueBorne? A series of recently disclosed critical Bluetooth flaws that affect billions of Android, iOS, Windows and Linux devices have now been discovered in millions of AI-based voice-activated personal assistants, including Google Home and Amazon Echo . As estimated during the discovery of this devastating threat, several IoT and smart devices whose operating systems are often updated less frequently than smartphones and desktops are also vulnerable to BlueBorne. BlueBorne is the name given to the sophisticated attack exploiting a total of eight Bluetooth implementation vulnerabilities that allow attackers within the range of the targeted devices to run malicious code, steal sensitive information, take complete control, and launch man-in-the-middle attacks. What's worse? Triggering the BlueBorne exploit doesn't require victims to click any link or open any file—all without requiring user interaction. Also, most security products would likely not be abl...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

What's the coolest part of the Iron Man movies? The hyper-intelligent Artificial Intelligence that helps Tony Stark by doing data analysis, charging his armor, presenting information at crucial times and doing other business operations. That's right — we are talking about J.A.R.V.I.S. , Iron Man's personal assistant. We all dream of having one of its kinds, and even Facebook's Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has ambitions to live more like Iron Man's superhero Tony Stark. While disclosing his 2016 resolution via a Facebook post on Sunday, Zuckerberg revealed that he is planning to build his own Artificial Intelligence to help him run his home and assist him at office — similar to Iron Man's digital butler Edwin Jarvis . "You can think of it kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man," Zuckerberg wrote in his Facebook post . "I'll start teaching it to understand my voice to control everything in our home — music, lights, tempe...

It has been known from year 2013 that commands we have been whispering to Siri are being stored on Apple servers for up to two years for analysis, but this news might be the most shocking development yet. Apple admits that its Siri — an intelligent personal assistant for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices — is collecting and also transmitting users voice data to 3rd party companies, which was disclosed in an unsurprising revelation two weeks back on Reddit. FallenMyst , a Reddit user claimed to had recently started a new job with a company called Walk N' Talk Technologies, where job profile requires her to listen voice data collected from Apple, Microsoft users and check for incorrect interpretations. " I get to listen to sound bites [sic] and rate how the text matches up with what is said in an audio clip and give feedback on what should be improved. " Fallenmyst wrote. " Guys, I'm telling you, if you've said it to your phone, it's been recorded…and ...