A group of computer scientists from Florida-based cyber security company, Cyxtera Technologies, are reported to have built machine-learning software that can generate phishing URLs that can beat popular security tools.

Look Legitimate

Using the Phishtank database (a free community site where anyone can submit, verify, track and share phishing data) the scientists built the DeepPhish machine-learning software that is able to create URLs for web pages that appear to be legitimate (but are not) login pages for real websites.

In actual fact, the URLs, which can fool security tools, lead to web pages that can collect the entered username and passwords for malicious purposes e.g. to hijack accounts at a later date.

DeepPhish

The so-called ‘DeepPhish’ machine-learning software that was able to produce the fake but convincing URLs is actually an AI algorithm. It was able to produce the URLs by learning effective patterns used by threat actors and using them to generate new, unseen, and effective attacks based on that attacker data.

Can Increase The Effectiveness of Phishing Attacks

Using Phishtank and the DeepPhish AI algorithm in tests, the scientists found that two uncovered attackers could increase their phishing attacks effectiveness from 0.69% to 20.9%, and 4.91% to 36.28%, respectively.

Training The AI Algorithm

The effectiveness of AI algorithms is improved by ‘training’ them. In this case, the training involved the team of scientist first inspecting more than a million URLs on Phishtank. From this, the team were able to identify three different phishing attacks that had generated web pages to steal people’s credentials. These web addresses were then fed into the AI phishing detection algorithm to measure how effective the URLs were at bypassing a detection system.

The team then added all the text from effective, malicious URLs into a Long-Short-Term-Memory network (LSTM) so that the algorithm could learn the general structure of effective URLs, and extract relevant features.

All of this enabled the algorithm to learn how to generate the kind of phishing URLs that could beat popular security tools.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

AI offers some exciting opportunities for businesses to save time and money, and improve the effectiveness of their services. Where cyber-security is concerned, AI-enhanced detection systems are more accurate than traditional manual classification, and the use of intelligent detection systems has enabled the identification of threat patterns and the detection of phishing URLs with 98.7% accuracy, thereby giving the battle advantage to defensive teams.

However, it has been feared for some time that if cyber-criminals were able to use a well-trained and sophisticated AI systems to defeat both traditional and AI-based cyber-defence systems, this could pose a major threat to Internet and data security, and could put many businesses in danger.

The tests by the Florida-based cyber-security scientists don’t show very high levels of accuracy in enabling effective defence-beating phishing URLs to be generated. This is a good thing for now, because it indicates that most cyber-criminals with even fewer resources may not yet be able to harness the full power to launch AI-based attacks. The hope is that the makers of detection and security systems will be able to use AI to stay one step ahead of attackers.

State-sponsored attackers, however, may have many more resources at their disposal, and it is highly likely that AI-based attack methods are already being used by state-sponsored players. Unfortunately, state-sponsored attacks can cause a lot of damage in the business and civilian worlds.

Tests are being completed of robot fruit-picking machines that can pick strawberries as carefully and quickly as humans, and can help growers solve the labour shortage challenge next growing season.

Belgian Fruit-Picking Prototype Very Promising

European strawberry growers in Spain, Belgium and the UK are welcoming tests of robotic prototypes that can harvest soft fruit mechanically.

One example that has enjoyed some publicity is the Octinion robotic arm on a self-driving trolley. Produced by a Belgian start-up, it is claimed that the Octinion can compete with a human in terms of price and speed as it is able to pick one strawberry every four seconds, collect between 70% and 100% of the ripe fruit, and leave the berry with only the calyx (and not the stalk), which is the way European consumers are used to buying their berries.

The success of this robot, which can grip and turns the fruit by 90 degrees to snap it off its stalk just like a human, means that it is now completing final tests in partnership with real-world growers in the UK and continental Europe, and looks like being a realistic option for next season.

Dogtooth Robot From Cambridge

Another soft fruit-picking robot prototype that looks like being a serious competitor is the Dogtooth which has been produced by a Cambridge-based start-up, has recently been tested in Australia, and is also made up of a robot arm mounted on a self-driving trolley.

The Dogtooth has been designed to be able to pick strawberries the way UK retailers prefer, by leaving around a centimetre of stem still attached, because it has been found to extend shelf life.

Unlike the Octinion’s machine which has been built to work on fruit grown on raised platforms in polytunnels, Dogtooth’s machine has been designed to be able to pick traditional British varieties in the field.

Genuine Labour Shortage

Some commentators have suggested that the motivation for producing the robots is simply to replace migrant labour with a cheaper, more efficient alternative, but strawberry producers across Europe and the US have insisted that they face a genuine shortage of workers to pick their fruit.

In the UK for example, the value of sterling following the Brexit vote has made it difficult to recruit overseas workers, and UK-based workers don’t appear to find seasonal picking work attractive or practical.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

This is an example of how a range of technologies have been combined to produce a tool that can meet very real agricultural challenges, and could revolutionize a whole industry across the world. Although these machines may be expensive to buy, they can pay for themselves over time because, unlike humans, they don’t require wages, can work any number of hours, and they don’t take holidays, get sick or leave. They also mean that growers can plan their production with more certainty and don’t have to expend time, effort, and money on recruitment.

Automation, aided by huge technological advances, is a growing trend across most industry sectors. For example, a report by PwC from March 2017 claimed that over 30% of UK jobs could be lost to automation by the year 2030. According to the report, 44% jobs in manufacturing (where there are already many robots, e.g. car manufacturing), especially those involving manual work, look likely to go to AI led software or robots. Transportation jobs are also in the high-risk category for robot replacements, and according to the report, 56% of jobs could be lost to autonomous vehicles. Jobs in the UK’s largest sectors, wholesale retail jobs, also look vulnerable to automation into the future.

AI and robotics will alter what jobs look like in the future, but it is also important to remember that, as with the strawberry-picking robots, they could provide huge advantages and opportunities for businesses.

Workers can only really try to insulate themselves from the worst effects of automation by seeking more education / lifelong learning, and by trying to remain positive towards and adapting to changes. How much automation and what kind of automation individual businesses adopt will, of course, depend upon a cost / benefit analysis compared to human workers, and whether automation is appropriate and is acceptable to their customers.

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Google, in partnership with energy supplier E.ON and with help from German software firm Tetraeder, has released an online tool called ‘Project Sunroof’ that uses Google’s Earth and Maps apps to estimate how much money homeowners could save by switching to solar power.

How?

Smart machine learning is at the heart of the tool, and it is able to examine factors like its roof area and angle, and weather data, and sun positioning to help it arrive at an estimate of the solar potential of a house, and the total amount of sunlight that falls on a particular rooftop every year.

7 Million Rooftops

The partnership with E.ON covers seven million rooftops across Germany. It uses E.ON’s solar power and battery product offerings to calculate how much a specific household could save by installing solar panels and a battery pack.

Renewable Energy

The idea is part of a move towards countries, including the UK, adopting more renewable energy ideas, and is clearly a way to help inform and convince homeowners to cut energy bills, and help the environment by installing solar panels on their roofs.
International Energy Agency figures show that, even back in 2016, renewable energy accounted for two-thirds of new power added to the world’s grids. Solar power was the fastest-growing source of new energy worldwide that year, and is still growing in popularity now.

In the EU, the Renewable Energy Directive set out for all member countries to reach a 20% renewables target before 2020. Google’s shared project, therefore, helps to feed into that goal.

In recent years, many UK homeowners have taken advantage of grants and tariffs e.g. the Feed-in Tariff and Generation Tariff schemes to install and get money back / save money on the green energy they help produce and feed / sell into the grid.

Fears

Some fears have been expressed that the spread of renewables such as solar and wind across the US (for example) could suffer if the US International Trade Commission imposes tariffs on imports of Chinese solar panels.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

There is wide agreement that sustainable, renewable, green energy sources are needed to meet world demand while minimising the impact on the environment, and not contributing to climate change. Many businesses, some of which are big polluters, are coming to accept the many benefits that renewables and involvement with green projects have to offer.

Google’s involvement with this scheme is consistent with its recent, public commitment to green energy, and having the Google brand name involved in the project is a positive association that could help to convince customers to adopt solar. For example, back in December 2016, Google announced that all of its data centres and the offices for its 60,000 staff would be powered entirely by renewable energy from 2017, a formidable target that it now claims to have met. Even when the announcement was made, Google was already the world’s biggest corporate buyer of renewable electricity.

Google’s image and brand can only benefit from its public commitment to renewable energy, as it will from ‘Project Sunroof’, although Google’s commitment is also based on reducing costs in the longer term, and being seen to pave the way for other corporations.

In a recent court case in Canada, an Apple Smart Watch was classified as being the same kind of distraction as a mobile phone as a student was handed a fine for being observed looking at her Apple Watch while waiting at traffic lights.

Distraction Law in Ontario

Student Victoria Ambrose is reported to have fallen foul of Ontario’s strict ‘distracted driving’ law, resulting in the fine.

In Ontario, the law states that using a phone to talk, text, check maps or choose a playlist while you’re behind the wheel all count as distracted driving, as do other activities like eating, reading or typing a destination into a GPS.

In the case of Victoria Ambrose, the judge likened the Apple smartwatch to being as much of a distraction as a “cell phone taped to someone’s wrist”.

Defence

In her defence, the student said that she had looked at the watch to tell the time, and that, because the watch was securely fastened to her wrist, it should be subject to an exemption in the Ontario law which covers devices that are “securely mounted”.

The Judge rejected both arguments, and said that the amount of time she was observed looking at the watch meant that she was distracted while driving, rather than simply glancing at her watch to find out the time.

According to Ontario’s Ministry of Transport data, deaths from collisions there, caused by distracted driving have doubled since 2000, and 2013 data shows that one person is injured in a distracted-driving collision every half hour, and a driver using a phone is four times more likely to crash than a driver focusing on the road

Fine

In this case, the student was fined Canadian $400 (£230).

Warning In The UK

Back in 2014, the UK Department for Transport (DfT) issued a warning about looking at smartwatches while driving, saying that smartwatches are covered by existing laws designed to stop people checking gadgets while on the move, and that drivers caught texting from a smartwatch will have given police enough material to be able to charge them.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

This story illustrates that while technology can be helpful, it can also be potentially dangerous and / or costly distraction.

In the workplace, for example, studies show that smartphone-users touch their device somewhere between twice a minute to once every seven minutes, and that conducting tasks while receiving e-mails and phone calls can reduce a worker’s IQ by approximately ten points relative to working in uninterrupted quiet.

In an age where 85% of UK citizens use smartphones (Deloitte figures, Oct 2017), there are arguments as to whether they, and other gadgets e.g. with BOYD policies, are helping or hindering productivity.

For companies with employees who drive as part of their work, this story should illustrate the need to warn employees of the current law and safety recommendations regarding distraction, and if possible, to ensure that they have appropriate hands-free equipment to use while handling work calls.

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