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The Senate has agreed to pass legislation lifting regulations on manufacturers of self-driving cars. Full details will be announced the first week of October, but it's expected the bill will cover safety and manufacturing regulations as well as driver protection. Paving the Way United States roadways are one step closer to being traversed by driverless cars: on September 30, the Senate announced that it had reached an agreement to lift some of the regulations on manufacturers that made it harder to get self-driving cars on the road. “While this Senate self-driving vehicle legislation still has room for further changes,...

A GOP donor who once had ties to IBM is the man behind the millions of Twitter bots President Trump counts on as followers who could be employed to target voters with misleading or fake news on social media. In order for it to work, the scheme relies on the quiet guidance of Robert Mercer, a reclusive Republican mega-donor and staunch Trump supporter, sources told the Daily News. Mercer, who during the campaign with help from his daughter Rebekah, played a below-the-radar — but integral — role in raising money for Trump and connected him with critical figures like Stephen...

Hillary Clinton launched an all-out assault on Donald Trump Wednesday, claiming he must have 'guided' Russian efforts to keep her out of the White House. Openly saying that she believed he had 'colluded' with Russia, she made an astonishing series of claims about the presidential election, including claiming that the 'vast majority' of news about her on Facebook was 'fake'. She even cited 'Pizzagate', claiming that claims she was involved in a child sex-trafficking network in a Washington D.C. restaurant had helped swing 'low information voters'. Clinton spoke at a tech conference in Silicon Valley to an audience which applauded...

In a twist on the peddling of fake news to real people, researchers say that a Russian cyberforgery ring has created more than half a million fake internet users and 250,000 fake websites to trick advertisers into collectively paying as much as $5 million a day for video ads that are never watched. The fraud, which began in September and is still going on, represents a new level of sophistication among criminals who seek to profit by using bots — computer programs that pretend to be people — to cheat advertisers. “We think that nothing has approached this operation in...

ALBANY – New criminal penalties have been approved to restrict the use of automated ticket purchasing software known as “bots” that can gobble up mass amounts of sports and entertainment tickets before fans hoping to attend a popular event even have a chance to tap the buy button on their computers.

Voting is partially a social endeavor, in which people consider the opinions of others when making up their own minds. Increasingly, though, they’re being influenced by an inhuman force: software robots specifically designed to deceive them. Lest democracy be undermined, humans need help in distinguishing their brethren from the bots. Two years ago, in a report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the social networking site Twitter estimated that more than 23 million of its active user accounts were being run by “bots” — software agents or bits of code that act on their own to respond to...

The internet has revolutionized numerous disciplines, and propaganda is no exception. How can you know who's saying what -- and why -- online? Join Ben, Matt, and special guest Joe to learn more about the future of online manipulation.

An investigation by Dr Web suggests that about 600,000 Macs have the malware - potentially allowing them to be hijacked and used as a "botnet". It says that more than half that number are in the US. Flashback was first detected last September when anti-virus researchers flagged software masquerading itself as a Flash Player update. Once downloaded it deactivated some of the computer's security software. Remote control "By introducing the code criminals are potentially able to control the machine," the firm's chief executive Boris Sharov told the BBC. "We stress the word potential as we have never seen any malicious...

Link only - Small-business nightmare: 8 million sites hacked to harm customers' computers

Has anybody had a recent problem with Browser hijacking on their computer. Since Saturday when I got infected with a program called Think Point which makes itself look like Microsoft Defender my computer has had all kinds of problems. No matter which Malware program you try and clean it with it still shows back up. We have tried all the major fixes. I am not sure how I got it but it can't be cleaned. There are many sites talking about it. Now every time I try and do a search using Google, Yahoo, Chrome. You can see where its...

While Skype or similar teleconferencing technologies might seem like a more cost-effective and immediately available solution, the Defense Department rejects that possibility. The U.S. Department of Defense is looking to develop virtual parents to comfort children when moms and dads on active duty aren't available to talk. In a solicitation for proposals posted on the department's Small Business Innovation Research Web site, the military says it's seeking to "develop a highly interactive PC- or Web-based application to allow family members to verbally interact with 'virtual' renditions of deployed Service Members." "The child should be able to have a simulated conversation...

Scourge - Programs hiding on the Internet can take over a computer and make it send spam or perform other evil acts REDMOND, Wash. -- In a windowless room on Microsoft's campus in Redmond, T.J. Campana, a cybercrime investigator, connects an unprotected computer running an early version of Windows XP to the Internet. In less than a minute the computer is "owned." An automated program lurking on the Internet has remotely taken over the PC and turned it into a "zombie." That computer and other zombie machines are then assembled into systems called "botnets" -- home and business PCs hooked...

A criminal gang is using software tools normally reserved for computer network administrators to infect thousands of PCs in corporate and government networks with programs that steal passwords and other information, a security researcher has found. The new form of attack indicates that little progress has been made in defusing the threat of botnets, networks of infected computers that criminals use to send spam, steal passwords and do other forms of damage, according to computer security investigators. Several security experts say that although attacks against network administrators are not new, the systematic use of administrative software to spread malicious software...

Excerpts - ... 1. Make ISPs (and all organizations providing computer access to more than 100 people) responsible for filtering scan and attack traffic across their networks. ... 2. Make ISPs (and all organizations providing computer access to more than 100 people) responsible for knocking customer PCs off their network if they become bots. ... 3. Make end users liable if losses are incurred because of outdated security software. ... 4. Write some kind of law concerning efficient security software. ...

Hackers are hijacking thousands of PCs to spy on users, shake down online businesses, steal identities and send millions of pieces of spam. If you think your computer is safe, think again In the six hours between crashing into bed and rolling out of it, the 21-year-old hacker has broken into nearly 2,000 personal computers around the globe. He slept while software he wrote scoured the Internet for vulnerable computers and infected them with viruses that turned them into slaves. Now, with the smoke of his day's first Marlboro curling across the living room of his parents' brick rambler, the...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Sony's decision to ditch its Aibo robotic dog, along with its entire robot development team, is a reminder that we are still a long way from the age of automated domestic servants. Architects of the Robot Age have been busy rethinking the future. In the 1980s you could hardly move for suggestions that the Robot Age was upon us. From Metal Mickey, the wisecracking, head-spinning star of his eponymous sitcom, to the stylishly choreographed Fiat advert in which the Italian carmaker smugly revealed how it had apparently dispensed with humans altogether...

LOS ANGELES, CA, USA -- A US computer hacker on Monday pleaded guilty to hijacking around 400,000 computers, including military servers, and infecting them with malicious software. In the first such prosecution of its kind, "botmaster" Jeanson Ancheta, 20, admitted infecting the computers with software that caused them to send spam, show ads and launch crippling attacks on Internet sites. In federal court in Los Angeles, Ancheta admitted conspiring to violate both the Computer Fraud Abuse Act and an anti-spam law, to causing damage to US defense computers and to hacking into computers to commit fraud. His plea comes after...

THE time is 5am. A watery dawn light is bringing a new day into my study; I'm reaching the weary end of a bottle of brandy and a gruelling six-hour internet session on Paradisepoker.com. And I've just haemorrhaged a packet. It all started so well. I broke even for the first few hours. But since 2am, I've lost £670. They say you should never play poker with any more money than you can afford to take to the bottom of your garden and burn; I can't afford to burn £670. So now I'm playing like a wild man, trying to...

Tech's Big Gamble Online poker 'rife with cheats' Notorious casino cheat claims 99 per cent of players will one day be cheating... By Will Sturgeon Published: Friday 4 November 2005 The boom in internet gambling may be about to hit its greatest hurdle with one of the world's most famous casino cheats claiming the online world is far more at risk from cheating than the casinos in which he made millions. Richard Marcus is among an elite of casino cheats and during a 25-year reign he and a small team took casinos in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, London and Monte...

Did Miers Allow Armed Forces to Flout Law? by Elaine Donnelly Posted Oct 14, 2005 There is no reason to doubt the integrity of Harriet Miers, a person whom President Bush trusts and has nominated to the Supreme Court. There is reason for concern, however, about her actions as White House counsel on legal matters affecting the military. Miers does not have a judicial paper trail, but to the greatest extent possible the Senate should consider her record as the President’s chief legal adviser. The Office of White House Counsel sits at the intersection of law, politics and policy. Given...