Tag Archive for: sinister

Sinister AI ‘eavesdropping’ trick lets ‘anybody read private chats’ on your Android or iPhone, security experts reveal

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CYBERCRIMINALS can spy on users’ conversations with artificial intelligence-powered chatbots, experts have warned.

Ever since ChatGPT came out in November 2022, cybersecurity experts have been concerned with the technology.

Criminals can spy on users’ conversations with AI chatbotsCredit: Getty

ChatGPT is an advanced chatbot that can seamlessly complete tasks like writing essays and generating code in seconds.

Today, several chatbots function like ChatGPT, including Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot within Bing.

The chatbots are easy to use, and many users quickly get captivated into conversations with the natural-language companions.

However, experts have expressed concerns over users sharing personal information with AI chatbots.

ChatGPT can collect highly sensitive details users share via prompts and responses.

It can then associate this information with a user’s email address and phone number, and store it.

That’s because to use the platform, users need to provide both an email address and mobile phone number.

Users cannot bypass this by using disposable or masked email addresses and phone numbers.

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As a result, ChatGPT is firmly tied to your online identity as it records everything you input.

What’s more, this private data can also be obtained by cybercriminals if they are keen enough.

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“Currently, anybody can read private chats sent from ChatGPT and other services,” Yisroel Mirsky, the head of the Offensive AI Research Lab at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University, told Ars Technica in an email.

“This includes malicious actors on the same Wi-Fi or LAN as a client (e.g., same coffee shop), or even a malicious actor on the internet — anyone who can observe the traffic.”

This is known as a “side-channel attack,” and it can be very dangerous for victims.

“The attack is passive and can happen without OpenAI or their client’s knowledge,” Mirsky revealed.

“OpenAI encrypts their traffic to prevent these kinds of eavesdropping attacks, but our research shows that the way OpenAI is using encryption is flawed, and thus the content of the…

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New Mac ransomware is even more sinister than it appears

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Scrabble letters sitting atop laptop computer spell Ransomware.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

The threat of ransomware may seem ubiquitous, but there haven’t been too many strains tailored specifically to infect Apple’s Mac computers since the first full-fledged Mac ransomware surfaced only four years ago. So when Dinesh Devadoss, a malware researcher at the firm K7 Lab, published findings on Tuesday about a new example of Mac ransomware, that fact alone was significant. It turns out, though, that the malware, which researchers are now calling ThiefQuest, gets more interesting from there. (Researchers originally dubbed it EvilQuest until they discovered the Steam game series of the same name.)

In addition to ransomware, ThiefQuest has a whole other set of spyware capabilities that allow it to exfiltrate files from an infected computer, search the system for passwords and cryptocurrency wallet data, and run a robust keylogger to grab passwords, credit card numbers, or other financial information as a user types it in. The spyware component also lurks persistently as a backdoor on infected devices, meaning it sticks around even after a computer reboots, and could be used as a launchpad for additional, or “second stage,” attacks. Given that ransomware is so rare on Macs to begin with, this one-two punch is especially noteworthy.

“Looking at the code, if you split the ransomware logic from all the other backdoor logic the two pieces completely make sense as individual malware. But compiling them together you’re kind of like what?” says Patrick Wardle, principal security researcher at the Mac management firm Jamf. “My current gut feeling about all of this is that someone basically was designing a piece of Mac malware that would give them the ability to completely remotely control an infected system. And then they also added some ransomware capability as a way to make extra money.”

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