Linked List: April 1, 2019

Monday, 1 April 2019

From the Euphemism Hall of Fame 

Pedro Canahuati, VP of engineering for security and privacy at Facebook, in a post titled “Keeping Passwords Secure”:

As part of a routine security review in January, we found that some user passwords were being stored in a readable format within our internal data storage systems.

This post is from March 21, but I missed this particular item. What’s so delicious is that by “some” they mean 600 million. You know, some.

Small Stickers on the Ground Tricked Tesla Autopilot Into Steering Into Opposing Traffic Lane 

Cory Doctorow, writing at Boing Boing:

Researchers from Tencent Keen Security Lab have published a report detailing their successful attacks on Tesla firmware, including remote control over the steering, and an adversarial example attack on the autopilot that confuses the car into driving into the oncoming traffic lane.

The researchers used an attack chain that they disclosed to Tesla, and which Tesla now claims has been eliminated with recent patches.

Regular autonomous driving, in honest non-adversarial conditions, is a hard problem to solve. But these sort of “What if someone maliciously tries to screw with the autonomous system?” scenarios are terrifying.

Bragi Exits Wearables; Sells Dash Business to Mystery Buyer 

Hugh Langley, writing for Wareable:

Bragi, creator of the Dash wireless earbuds, has made an exit from the consumer market.

The company confirmed to Wareable that it sold its product business to “a third-party buyer” in March this year. Bragi will continue to license its IP and AI, but it will no longer be creating new devices, company CEO Nikolaj Hviid confirmed.

Previously on DF: August 2016 and July 2017.