G'mar tov

The Day of Atonement is a day for reflection.  This is good for all of us, Tribe or not. 

To our Jewish readers, Shanna tovah. 

Dad Joke CCCLXII

Tuna sends in another one.  It looks like he's doing all my blogging now:

I was rejected for a job at the sunscreen factory. They said to just reapply every 4 hours.

Attacking AI via prompt manipulation

This is actually pretty clever:

The attack involves hiding prompt instructions in a pdf file—white text on a white background—that tell the LLM to collect confidential data and then send it to the attackers.

...

The fundamental problem is that the LLM can’t differentiate between authorized commands and untrusted data. So when it encounters that malicious pdf, it just executes the embedded commands. And since it has (1) access to private data, and (2) the ability to communicate externally, it can fulfill the attacker’s requests. I’ll repeat myself:

This kind of thing should make everybody stop and really think before deploying any AI agents. We simply don’t know to defend against these attacks. We have zero agentic AI systems that are secure against these attacks. Any AI that is working in an adversarial environment­—and by this I mean that it may encounter untrusted training data or input­—is vulnerable to prompt injection. It’s an existential problem that, near as I can tell, most people developing these technologies are just pretending isn’t there.

Essentially, this means that AI is simply not fit for purpose.  And clearly, it's not even a little bit "intelligent", security-wise.  

Where all your phone spam comes from

Lawrence points to an interesting "datacenter":

This seems like a story that should have gotten a lot more attention than it has. “Secret Service Dismantles Weaponized SIM Farms Designed To ‘Shut Down’ NYC Cell Networks.”

Hours before President Donald Trump’s address to the United Nations General Assembly, the U.S. Secret Service announced that it had dismantled a massive, decentralized SIM farm network, just 35 miles from New York City, hidden inside five abandoned apartment buildings. The telecommunications stealth weapon was capable of paralyzing regional cell networks through denial-of-service attacks.

My first instinct was that this was a State Actor prepping some sort of cyber attack.  Now I think it's a Phone Spam datacenter:

SIM farms allow “bulk messaging at a speed and volume that would be impossible for an individual user,” one telecoms industry source, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the Secret Service’s investigation, told WIRED. “The technology behind these farms makes them highly flexible—SIMs can be rotated to bypass detection systems, traffic can be geographically masked, and accounts can be made to look like they’re coming from genuine users.” 

Bastards.  95% of all the calls I get are along the lines of "You have been pre-approved ...".  I don't even answer a call where I don't recognize the number anymore.

Dad Joke CCCLXI

Tuna sends in another one:

My card got declined at the Sweater Store. They had to run my cardigan. 

No word yet from Glen Filthie ... 

Clouds In Space!

Well, this is the 21st Century after all:

Axiom Space and Spacebilt have announced plans to add optically interconnected Orbital Data Center (ODC) infrastructure to the International Space Station (ISS).

The company plans to launch two Axiom Orbital Data Center (AxODC) Nodes by the end of 2025, with at least three running by the end of 2027. It all sounds very exciting until you consider that Axiom Data Center Unit One (AxDCU-1), which eventually launched to the ISS in August, was a prototype that was roughly the size of a shoebox.

AxDCU-1 is more of a demonstrator to show that the concept works – think of an edge device on-orbit that can host hybrid cloud and applications, as well as cloud-native workloads. The AxODC Nodes are altogether more serious beasts. In addition to being interconnected, the hardware will be supported by an Optical Communication Terminal (OCT), allowing service to be provided to any spacecraft or satellite equipped with compatible OCTs.

So Cloud Computing for spacecraft.  It will be interesting to see where this goes, and how they handle the power demands of an orbiting data center. 

 

Happy Hobbit Day!

Why yes - I am a nerd.  Why did you ask? 

In Memoriam Charlie Kirk

Charlie Kirk gets laid to rest today.  He was a man of faith who always reached out to the greater crowd.  I like to think that he would think that this song speaks to how he lived his life.

Rest in peace.