{"id":2719,"date":"2017-01-16T00:00:37","date_gmt":"2017-01-16T08:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.168.3.4\/?p=2719"},"modified":"2018-01-09T06:51:28","modified_gmt":"2018-01-09T14:51:28","slug":"encryption-ai-and-the-iot-word-on-the-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cloudacm.com\/?p=2719","title":{"rendered":"Encryption, AI, and the IoT word on the street"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the last stories I read about at the end of 2016 was about a hedge fund company and its use of AI, (Hedge fund turns to AI&#8230;<a href=\"https:\/\/nakedsecurity.sophos.com\/2016\/12\/30\/hedge-fund-turns-to-ai-to-navigate-through-the-maze\/\">https:\/\/nakedsecurity.sophos.com\/2016\/12\/30\/hedge-fund-turns-to-ai-to-navigate-through-the-maze\/<\/a>).\u00a0 The algorithms they use for trading stocks have been in place for quite some time now.\u00a0 The story struck me not because of this.\u00a0 What I found compelling was their intent on applying AI to their business operations.\u00a0 Bridgewater Associates has what they call a &#8220;Principles Operating System&#8221; or PriOS for short.\u00a0 It will act as an arbitrator when management is in gridlock on decisions.\u00a0 The hopes are that within five years, most day to day management decisions will be performed by AI.\u00a0 Never mind that factory worker whose repetitive task is replace by mechanical devices, enter cognitive and intellectual decisions made by silicon.<\/p>\n<p>My son and I not long afterward found in interesting online video game called &#8220;Fallout Shelter&#8221;, (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fallout_Shelter\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fallout_Shelter<\/a>).\u00a0 It&#8217;s amusing and has some interesting aspects about how management works.\u00a0 The basis of the game is to place a work force in key positions to obtain the best results.\u00a0 The work conditions, work force, and responses lead to positive or negative outcomes based on management decisions.\u00a0 It really does a good job at this.\u00a0 As the saying goes, there is no such thing as free lunch, this also applies to free games.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not sure exactly how algorithms are formed to make PriOS like systems.\u00a0 However, I suspect that using readily available trends from thousands or millions of gamers is a potent element.\u00a0 Who would have imagined an 8 year old shaping the decisions of one of the world&#8217;s largest hedge funds.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"How algorithms shape our world - Kevin Slavin\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ENWVRcMGDoU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Artificial Intelligence, commonly referred to as AI, is essentially algorithms.\u00a0 They are complex flowcharts that follow a decision making path based on conditions, constance, feedback, and input.\u00a0 In its present state, the term AI should stand for Algorithmic Infrastructure.\u00a0 Kevin Slavin&#8217;s lecture in 2011 illustrates how stock market algorithms are shaping infrastructure for that nano second advantage over the competition.\u00a0 He points out that physical location inherently determines the response time for electronic communication.\u00a0 With at least 70% of stock market activity executed by algorithmic functions, these response times are critical.\u00a0 As a result, communication hubs such as the Carrier Hotel in New York are seeing a trend.\u00a0 The blocks surrounding it are less occupied by humans and more by silicon.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Algorithms Are Taking Over The World: Christopher Steiner at TEDxOrangeCoast\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/H_aLU-NOdHM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Christopher Steiner&#8217;s lecture goes on to say that the AI functions that dominate the stock market also perform psychological profiling.\u00a0 Personality traits have long been used in government as a function of determining placement in mission critical design.\u00a0 This method decreased the likelihood that compromise would occur.\u00a0 The match made in heaven functions are now used commercially.\u00a0 The message when calling in for support that states &#8220;your call may be monitored or recorded for training purposes&#8221; is likely an algorithm on the ready to profile your personality as you speak.\u00a0 He points out that the haves and have nots will be determined by the lines drawn by algorithms in the next 20 years.\u00a0 This can be exciting or disturbing depending on what side of the line you may end up.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"What happens when our computers get smarter than we are? | Nick Bostrom\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MnT1xgZgkpk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The ethics of AI is a bigger challenge than understanding what AI is doing.\u00a0 The driving force behind AI is economic stability.\u00a0 Economic stability binds us to modes and methods that typically are not improvements to the long term of humanity, but the immediacy of today.\u00a0 AI concerns are expressed in lectures from Jeremy Howard, Nick Bostrom, and Stefan Wess.\u00a0 The lack of understanding and control have had consequences.\u00a0 The flash crash of May 6th, 2010 is an indicator of AI manipulation.\u00a0 Many resources were used to uncover what had occurred, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/2010_Flash_Crash\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/2010_Flash_Crash<\/a>.\u00a0 If the losses were smaller or only impacted a few, would the same resources to uncover the cause be employed?\u00a0 The answer to that question fuels the unease.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Artificial intelligence: dream or nightmare? | Stefan Wess | TEDxZurich\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MaItaCQcYIE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>With behavioral science rooted in the drive behind AI, there are concerns about privacy. This has prompted the creation of laws, such as those to protect public privacy from internet service providers.\u00a0 This law, which is enforced through the FCC, defines how ISPs can gather and market internet usage of its subscribers.\u00a0 With recent political changes, it will likely be reversed.\u00a0 Consumer protection is by and large a responsibility of the Federal Trade Commission, commonly refereed to as the FTC.\u00a0 The issue is the trading of personal information for profit.\u00a0 If ISPs offered compensation to its subscribers in exchange for data marketing, then privacy might be a moot point.\u00a0 The full disclosure of how the data is used remains clouded.\u00a0 This limits ones ability to make an informed decision about personal privacy.\u00a0 Human internet activity isn&#8217;t the only player now with the rise of the internet of things.<\/p>\n<p>The internet of things, or IoT, is a device that typically doesn&#8217;t interact directly with humans and has connectivity to the internet.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s an example of IoT.\u00a0 Digital video recorders capture video from cameras that are connected together with a network.\u00a0 The DVR would be accessed by a human and they would interact with it.\u00a0 However, the DVR is what interacts with the cameras, not the human.\u00a0 The same is true for any device that has some type of controller.\u00a0 Access points are a good example.\u00a0 All though we may connect to them, we don&#8217;t interact with them.\u00a0 In actuality, our interaction with APs is brief and we then move along to interact with something else, like browsing the internet, checking email, or getting on social media.\u00a0 Those APs and cameras are just flouting in internet space and they remain connected even when we aren&#8217;t.\u00a0 They share a common weaknesses that are inherent to all computers, the operating system.\u00a0 In most cases, these devices use hard encoded programs burned on silicon chips.\u00a0 This is commonly refereed to as firmware.\u00a0 Many systems have the ability to upgrade firmware, while others do not.\u00a0 This is a severe security issue.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Black Hat 2013 - Exploiting Network Surveillance Cameras Like a Hollywood Hacker\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/B8DjTcANBx0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>There have been documented steps on how to reverse engineer firmware to reveal the inner workings of devices.\u00a0 Lets take our internet camera as an example, since it was the root cause of a major internet disruption last year.\u00a0 One of the most damning discoveries was a particular firmware that had hard coded an administrator account in it.\u00a0 This information was obtainable and since it was hard coded, any device of this make on the internet was vulnerable.\u00a0 Let me put emphasis on this.\u00a0 Hard coded means no one can override the setting, it is fixed and cannot be changed without a firmware update that does not have this information in it.\u00a0 The other issue is the non flashable programing that is burnt on silicon chips.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/GvGVGcWS3Pg<\/p>\n<p>Silicon chip manufacturing is the brain child of Robert Noyes in the late 1950&#8217;s.\u00a0 He and a host of others, known as the &#8220;traitorous eight&#8221;, went on the revolutionize how electronic circuits are made.\u00a0 Gone was the old world idea of discrete components.\u00a0 Now these discrete components are printed, sprayed, etched, and formed on silicon wafers to make what we call the integrated circuit.<\/p>\n<p>When an integrated circuit or silicon chip is created, the end result typically will not change.\u00a0 These chips are factory programed.\u00a0 The issue from this is a question of integrity.\u00a0 If a chip is created with a bug or with intended backdoors, very little can be done to correct this.<\/p>\n<p>The manufacturing process is considered intellectual property and is protected as such under law.\u00a0 However, those outside of the law can surface grind the chips and examine the layers microscopically to reverse engineer its construction.\u00a0 As a result, the public is unaware and the outlaws are informed.\u00a0 Could a backdoor exist?<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Cryptography in the Open: History of Crypto and the NSA\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GvWG4jAen8I?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The idea of backdoors is not new.\u00a0 Last year also saw the issue of encryption and the ability to circumvent it when law enforcement and Apple went at odds with each other.\u00a0 Many security experts agree that creating a backdoor in encryption would require a master key.\u00a0 Should the master key be misplaced, the entire mechanism that encryption was designed to be used for no longer works.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Stanford Engineering Hero Martin Hellman on inventing cryptography\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/caoDRvR2Jo8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>From its beginings, the development of encryption use for the general public was opposed.\u00a0 It wasn&#8217;t until the transfer of money through electronic means.\u00a0 Since these transactions would be carried out by the public sector, they would need the absolute certainty that the transactions were valid.\u00a0 Encryption validates that communications between two points is unrecognizable by a third party.\u00a0 It also ensures that the two points know for certain they are communicating with each other without a third party being able to spoof either of them.\u00a0 Without encryption, the financial institutions would be vulnerable to electronic fraud.\u00a0 Ultimately the policy on public encryption yielded and it became available.<\/p>\n<p>Another form of validation is file checksum algorithm.\u00a0 Digital data is unique.\u00a0 If changed it will not be mathematically the same.\u00a0 The checksum of a file can validate its change state.\u00a0 This means data sent through non secure channels could be validated.\u00a0 It seems reasonable that such a mechanism would exist for hardware, software, or AI that processes data and outputs an expected result.\u00a0 Validation will be key to the integrity of the ever changing face of the internet and the big data it contains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the last stories I read about at the end of 2016 was about a hedge fund company and its use of AI, (Hedge fund turns to AI&#8230;https:\/\/nakedsecurity.sophos.com\/2016\/12\/30\/hedge-fund-turns-to-ai-to-navigate-through-the-maze\/).\u00a0 The algorithms they use for trading stocks have been in place for quite some time now.\u00a0 The story struck me not because of this.\u00a0 What I found compelling was their intent on applying AI to their business operations.\u00a0 Bridgewater Associates has what they call a &#8220;Principles Operating System&#8221; or PriOS for&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cloudacm.com\/?p=2719\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-data-mining","category-rd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudacm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudacm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudacm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudacm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudacm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2719"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudacm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2732,"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudacm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2719\/revisions\/2732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudacm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudacm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudacm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}