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Hackers lure people by promising ChatGPT, steal information instead

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People are being hoodwinked by hackers with the help of generative artificial intelligence (AI) to install harmful codes on their devices, Meta warned Wednesday.

Chief information security officer Guy Rosen said in a news briefing that “over the course of the past month, security analysts with the social-media giant have found malicious software posing as ChatGPT or similar AI tools.”

The officer said: “The latest wave of malware campaigns have taken notice of generative AI technology that’s been capturing people’s imagination and everyone’s excitement.”

Rosen was of the view that the parent company of WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram often shares what it learns with industry peers and others in the cyber defence community.

Rosen said: “Meta has seen threat actors hawk internet browser extensions that promise generative AI capabilities but contain malicious software designed to infect devices.”

Hackers easily trap their prey through click-bait attempts encouraging people to click on malicious links or installing programs that have the potential to steal the victims’ data and essential information.

Rosen added: “We’ve seen this across other topics that are popular, such as crypto scams fuelled by the immense interest in digital currency,” while noting that “from a bad actor’s perspective, ChatGPT is the new crypto.”

Meta’s security team maintained: “Meta has found and blocked more than a thousand web addresses that are touted as promising ChatGPT-like tools but are actually traps set by hackers, according to the tech firm’s security team”.

Rosen said: “Meta has yet to see generative AI used as more than bait by hackers, but is bracing for the inevitability that it will be used as a weapon”.

“Generative AI holds great promise and bad actors know it, so we should all be very vigilant to stay safe,” Rosen said.

Meanwhile, the tech behemoth is working to use ChatGPT for defensive purposes such as shielding against hackers’ attacks and misleading online campaigns.

Meta head of security policy Nathaniel Gleicher said in the briefing: “We have teams that are already thinking through how [generative AI] could be abused, and the defences we need to put in place to counter that.”

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ChatGPT by OpenAI experiences a significant outage!

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Users were unable to use ChatGPT, the well-known AI chatbot, due to a major outage that occurred today.

The problem was initially noticed by users on outage-tracking websites and social media channels. The company that created ChatGPT, OpenAI, has acknowledged the outage and is attempting to fix it.

There is currently an outage affecting us. We have located the problem and are in the process of implementing a solution.

“We’re currently experiencing an outage,” the business wrote in a statement on X, the platform that was originally known as Twitter. We have located the problem and are in the process of implementing a solution. We apologise and will keep you informed.

ChatGPT Outage

Users are unable to access the chatbot and are presented with error messages suggesting that the service is offline; however, the precise cause of the outage is still unknown. Many users have been affected by this disruption, including researchers, students, enterprises, and individuals who depend on ChatGPT for a variety of purposes.

OpenAI has not yet given a projected timeline for the complete restoration of the service. It is recommended that users keep up with the most recent information via OpenAI’s official channels.

Earlier, late Friday night, thousands of users from all around the world, including Pakistan, experienced interruptions on Meta platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Nearly 1,000 customers in Pakistan reported problems with Meta services at approximately 11 p.m., according to Downdetector.com, a real-time platform outage tracker. In the meantime, 2,259 complaints have been filed against WhatsApp since 10:52 p.m. In the same period, Instagram, which is also owned by Meta, received more than 1,200 reports of outages.

On the competing platform X, several Facebook and Instagram users reported running into issues with messages like “something went wrong.” In a succinct Facebook comment, Meta acknowledged the problem and said, “We’re working on getting this fixed as soon as we can.”

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How to avoid falling victim to scammers on WhatsApp groups

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Smartphone users occasionally find themselves in a difficult situation when they are part of multiple WhatsApp groups.

To his annoyance, a user is typically added to dozens of WhatsApp groups for friends, family, and the office. This is because his phone rings every other second from the constant barrage of forwarded messages.

But these days, scammers are busy in WhatsApp groups, coming up with novel ways to con people.

After joining a WhatsApp group, a man lost INR 16 lakh to scammers, according to a startling disclosure.

Reports from the Indian media state that the event took place in Mangaluru and that the victim was deceived into joining a WhatsApp group by an unidentified individual.

The victim clicked on a dubious link and was duped into downloading a malicious program after being seduced with promises of large rewards in share market investing.

Hoping for large rewards, the victim transferred INR 16.9 lakh to the scammer’s bank account.

The victim discovered he had been duped, however, when he attempted to withdraw the money and was unable.

A clear reminder of the dangers of believing unidentified links and promises made online is provided by this instance.

Advice for Guarding Against These Scams:

Be cautious of unknown links and apps.
Avoid unverified investments with promises of high returns.
Research before downloading apps.
Enable two-factor authentication for added security.

Report suspicious activities to the platform or local police.

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Google claims that its new chip has solved a quantum computing problem.

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Google announced on Monday that it had solved a complex quantum computing problem in five minutes using a new generation of chips, which would have taken a classical computer a longer time than the universe’s history.

Alphabet’s Google is pursuing quantum computing, like other corporate behemoths like Microsoft and International Business Machines (IBM), because it promises to achieve computer speeds that are significantly quicker than those of the most advanced systems available now. While there are currently no commercial applications for the arithmetic problem solved by the company’s Santa Barbara, California, quantum lab, Google expects that quantum computers can eventually solve issues in artificial intelligence, medicine, and battery chemistry that are beyond the capabilities of current computers.

A new chip named Willow, which has 105 “qubits,” the fundamental units of quantum computers, produced the findings that were made public on Monday. Despite their speed, qubits are prone to errors because they can be jostled by subatomic particles or events in space.

A semiconductor may become no more advanced than a standard computer chip when more qubits are crammed onto it. Scientists have been working on quantum error correction since the 1990s.

Google said in an article published Monday in the journal Nature that it has discovered a method to connect the qubits of the Willow chip in such a way that error rates decrease with increasing qubit count. Additionally, the business claims that it can instantly fix mistakes, which is a crucial step in making its quantum machines workable.

In an interview, Hartmut Neven, the head of Google’s Quantum AI division, stated, “We are past the break-even point.”

Using differing technical assumptions about a classical system, IBM contested Google’s claim in 2019 that its quantum processor solved a problem that would take a conventional computer 10,000 years, claiming that the problem could be solved in two and a half days.

Google says it considered some of those worries in its most recent projections in a blog post on Monday. Google claimed that a traditional computer would still require a billion years to achieve the same outcomes as its newest chip, even in the most optimistic circumstances.

In an interview, Anthony Megrant, principal architect for Google Quantum AI, stated that while some of Google’s competitors are manufacturing circuits with more qubits than Google, Google is concentrated on creating the most dependable qubits possible.

Prior to creating its own specialized fabrication facility to create its Willow chips, Google used a shared facility at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The new facility, according to Megrant, would increase the speed at which Google can produce future chips, which are kept cold in enormous freezers known as cryostats for experimental purposes.

“If we have a good idea, we want somebody on the team to be able to… get that into the clean room and into one of these cryostats as fast as possible, so we can get lots of cycles of learning,” Megrant explained.

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