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US to end anti-nuclear missile treaty with Russia
The US will officially withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with Russia, signed in 1987 to prevent the development and deployment of missiles with ranges between 500-5,500km and due for renewal today (BBC News). The withdrawal follows US accusations earlier this year, backed by NATO, that Russia's new 9M729 missile was in breach of the treaty, which Russia denies.
The US military is preparing to test a new intermediate-range cruise missile of its own once the treaty is officially dissolved. The end of the treaty marks a reversal in decades of work to reduce the number of ballistic missiles capable of bearing nuclear warheads and UN secretary general António Guterres warned that with it, we lose “an invaluable brake on nuclear war.”
FBI says online conspiracy theories drive US domestic terrorism
An internal FBI document obtained by Yahoo News warns that prominent online conspiracy theories such as QAnon and Pizzagate are inspiring “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists.” Both conspiracy theories are popular with the internet's right-wing fringe movements and the document says that “the FBI assesses these conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts.”
Facebook open-sources video-matching algorithms to combat child exploitation and terrorism
Facebook has released its tools for detecting reposted videos of terrorism and child exploitation in an open source GitHub repository (The Verge). The Temporal Match Kernel algorithm detects identical and nearly-identical copies of videos to help prevent harmful content from being re-uploaded. The company has also made public the research version of the TMK algorithm, for more general video copy detection.
Vigilante hackers are exploiting SMS to send millions of texts
The hacktivists who hijacked thousands of insecure printers to raise awareness of potential vulnerabilities in the world’s internet-connected systems have struck again (WIRED).
Twitter user @j3ws3r, alongside @0xGiraffe, has attempted to send text messages to every mobile phone in the United States using a system called SMS gateways, drawing attention to their weakness against hacking. “Companies are very… let’s say stupid, to leave these SMS gateways open to anyone to use,” says @j3ws3r, who refused to reveal their identity, age or location, fearing legal repercussions.
Microsoft has poached Ninja from Twitch
Microsoft's Mixer video streaming platform has signed an exclusive deal with Tyler "Ninja" Blevins, perhaps the internet's the best-known Fortnite streamer, with over 14 million Twitch followers and earnings in the region of $500,000 a month (Ars Technica). It's not clear how willing those fans will be to follow Ninja to an entirely new platform and Microsoft is staying mum about how much it's paying him to start an exclusive channel from scratch on Mixer.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
