Tag: ARTICLE

If you’ve read the many predictions about the future of AI, you’ve likely found them to be wildly different. They range from AI spelling doom for humanity, to AI ushering in Golden Age of peace, harmony and culture, to AI producing barely a blip on society’s path toward ever-greater technological achievement. Those three views – dystopian, utopian and organic – present issues we need to consider as we move deeper toward an AI-integrated future. Yet they also contain exaggerations and false assumptions that we need to separate from reality. The Dystopian View of the AI Future Those with a dystopian view of...

While Stuxnet is gone, the world now knows what can be accomplished through cyber-kinetic attacks. As we approach the 10th anniversary of when Stuxnet was (likely) deployed, it is worthwhile to examine the effect it still has on our world. As the world’s first-ever cyberweapon, it opened Pandora’s box. It was the first true cyber-kinetic weapon – and it changed military history and is changing world history, as well. Its impact on the future cannot be overstated. Stuxnet’s beginnings Stuxnet is believed to have been conceived jointly by the U.S. and Israel in 2005 or 2006 to cripple Iran’s nuclear weapon development...

In their growing efforts to increase efficiencies through digitization and automation, railways are becoming increasingly vulnerable to cyber-kinetic attacks as they move away from strictly mechanical systems and bespoke standalone systems to digital, open-platform, standardized equipment built using Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) components. In addition, the increasing use of networked control and automation systems enable remote access of public and private networks. Finally, the large geographical spread of railway systems, involving multiple providers and even multiple countries, and the vast number of people involved in operating and maintaining those widespread systems offer attackers an almost unlimited number of attack...

As our cities, our transportation, our energy and manufacturing – our everything – increasingly embrace Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Controls Systems (ICS), securing its underlying cyber-physical systems (CPS) grows ever more crucial. Yet, even among engineers and cybersecurity specialists, one potential attack trajectory is often overlooked: Intentional Electromagnetic Interference (IEMI). ICS and IoT – digital systems that run today’s modern society – rely on changes in electrical charges flowing through physical equipment. Creating the 1s and 0s of which all digital information is composed requires electronic switching processes in circuits. The current used in this process is not...

The attacker stepped out from behind a hedge in the upper-class suburban neighborhood, being careful to stay in the shadows. Across the street, the last lights shining through the windows of the house had just flickered out. She tugged the bottom of her black hoodie into place and pulled the hood up over her head, casting her face deeper in shadow. Her target sat in the driveway at the front of the house, a bright red and completely decked out SUV. Glancing up and down the street to ensure no one was looking, she slipped across the street into the...

Giving feedback is hard. Giving good feedback is even harder. Giving good feedback across cultures is next to impossible. On my first Canadian project two decades ago, my Canadian boss "suggested that I think about" doing something in a different manner. So I did. I thought about it, and I decided not to change anything. Not long afterwards, our Canadian client provided feedback on my first deliverable. I was elated to hear that I had "some original ideas" and that my report was "relatively fine." They concluded with a suggestion that perhaps I "should consider rewording parts of it." Never the one to go fixing what's...

Everybody has been confused about the furore over 5G recently. The confusion, of course, being why would anybody be so concerned with 5G now compared to 4G or 3G or indeed any of the past cellular mobile communications specifications. Why wasn’t the USA attempting sanctions when Huawei was providing 4G and 3G equipment? How come it is an issue now even in the non-Trumpified European governments who don’t have a mini-trade war going on with China? Well, the answer to your question is that unlike in the past 5G is actually not about mobile phones and how fast you...

Humans are moving to cities at an unprecedented rate. Today 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas with that number expected to grow to 68% by 2050. The trend of urbanization is dramatic enough, but when it is layered with the ubiquitous trend towards technological integration the question that surfaces is, ‘What kind of cities will people be living in by 2050?’ How will they reflect the cyber-physical world taking shape around us, and how will we ensure that they remain safe places to live? How will smart cities protect privacy of its citizens? The concept of the...

The maritime industry faces a not-so-distant future when ships will be completely autonomous, using navigation data that they receive to plot their own courses with only minimal input from shoreside control centers. The efficiencies this could bring are massive, but before this happens, cybersecurity issues must be addressed. Not only are many vessels configured in ways that invite cyberattacks, but security practices also need to be improved before the industry can safely navigate its future. An increasingly digitized maritime industry A fleet of 250 autonomous vessels may launch soon. And that would be only the beginning, according to McKinsey and Co....

Attackers, often employing techniques like model querying, can gather valuable information regarding the target model’s structure, parameters, and learned features, thereby gaining insights into crafting inputs that the model fails to classify correctly. This reconnaissance allows attackers to meticulously modify malicious payloads or network traffic patterns, ensuring that they resemble benign inputs to the model, thus evading detection while maintaining their damaging capabilities.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming ever more important, and not just in automating repetitive, manual labor jobs. Increasingly, it also enters the realm of highly trained knowledge workers. New. AI-driven world will require different skills. Systems like IBM Watson augment the expertise of tax preparers, lawyers, doctors and many other highly trained professionals. Corporate executives use AI’s ability to gather, analyze and run extensive simulations on data to help them make better-informed decisions. The applications for AI appear almost unlimited. The implications are clear. AI will reshape not just operations, but also all other aspects of the business world. So, how...

In one of those strange inversions of reason, The Internet of Things (IoT) arguably began before the Internet itself. In 1980, a thirsty graduate in Carnegie Mellon University’s computer science department, David Nichols, eventually grew tired of hiking to the local Coca Cola vending machine only to find it empty or stocked entirely with warm cola. So, Nichols connected the machine to a network and wrote a program that updated his colleagues and him on cola stock levels. The first IoT device was born. Things have moved on somewhat. Today, the world is home to 8 billion connected devices or “things”, with...

In a world where the population is increasing and resources are finite, we need to find smarter ways of living together. Smart technologies hold the key to making this happen but we need to proceed with caution and build a layer of respectful trust and privacy in our smart places.

AI leaders must adapt to the changing culture as young workers enter the job market with expectations strikingly different from the ones that leaders traditionally have encountered. These changes within their own business culture are not, though, the only culture changes to which leaders will have to adapt. AI and other emerging technologies are accelerating the process of globalization. For example, as 3D printers become more prevalent, manufacturers will sell designs rather than finished products. Breaking into new markets won’t be a multiyear, investment-heavy effort. Emerging technologies will greatly reduce logistics requirements and expand old, geographically limited markets into one,...

Connecting physical objects and processes to the cyber world offers us capabilities that exponentially exceed the expectations of science fiction writers and futurists of past generations. But it also introduces disquieting possibilities. Those possibilities reach beyond cyberspace to threaten the physical world in which we live and – potentially – our own physical well-being. That's the threat of cyber-kinetic attacks. Our physical world is becoming more connected – which makes it more dependent on the cyber world. Many physical objects around us are no longer just physical, but extend into cyberspace, being remotely monitored and controlled. Increasingly, our factories, cities,...