RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Saturday 25 February 2023 Volume 33 : Issue 63

ACM FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks)
Peter G. Neumann, founder and still moderator

***** See last item for further information, disclaimers, caveats, etc. *****
This issue is archived at <http://www.risks.org> as
<http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/33.63>
The current issue can also be found at
<http://www.csl.sri.com/users/risko/risks.txt>

Contents:
Over 1,000 Trains Derail Each Year in America (NYTimes)
Wearable fitness trackers could interfere with cardiac devices, study finds
(The Guardian)
U.S. Air Force Studies Autonomous Cargo Jets (AVweb)
Put Electrical Transmission Lines Underground? Distributed is far cheaper
(TDWorld)
Power-Grid Attacks Surge and Are Likely to Continue, Study Finds (WSJ)
Climate change hotspots and implications for the global subsea
telecommunications network (M.A. Clare at al., Earth Science Reviews)
Cox Cable phone follies (Gabe Goldberg)
Google Issues article from 14 years ago, still relevant today
(Lauren Weinstein)
Amid cutbacks, desk sharing at Google Cloud, and office downsizing
(Lauren Weinstein)
Congress must act to keep kids off social media (Josh Hawley via
Gabe Goldberg)
Planting Undetectable Backdoors in Machine Learning Models
(IEEE via Victor Miller)
Microsoft's Bing AI Is Leaking Maniac Alternate Personalities Named
Venom and Fury (Futurism)
Is Your Smart Home Controlling You? 9Anna Kode')
Safety Advocates Say Hyundai, Kia's Anti-Theft Upgrade Doesn't Go Far Enough
(The Center for Auto Safety)
macOS targeted by evasive crypto-jacking malware (Apple Insider)
Sensitive U.S. military emails spill online (TechCrunch)
Florida surgeon general fudged data for dubious COVID analysis, tipster says
(Ars Technica)
SpaceX faces a $175,000 fine for not submitting info ahead of a recent
launch (TechCrunch)
Generative AI Is Coming For the Lawyers (WiReD)
U.S. says Google routinely destroyed evidence and lied about use of
auto-delete (Ars Technica)
Amazon hamstrings free app that makes Fire TV remotes reprogrammable
(Ars Technica)
The clever trick that turns ChatGPT into its evil twin (Will Oremus)
AI Search Is a Disaster (The Atlantic)
ChatGPT is a DDoS attack! (Gadi Evron)
Re: Why a Conversation With Bing's Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled
(Kevin Roose)
AI is starting to pick who gets laid off (WashPost)
Re: BBC News: Lufthansa tech failure leaves planes grounded (J0hn Levine)
In the Metaverse, Your Identity Can Be Revealed Just by Moving
(Lewis Maddison)
U.S. Census Data Vulnerable to Attack Without Enhanced Privacy Measures
(U.Penn)
Microsoft Researchers Use ChatGPT to Control Robots, Drones (Michael Kan)
German Court Rules Police Use of Crimefighting Software Unlawful
(Rachel More)
Re: Belated decryption (Wendy M. Grossman)
Re: These 26 words 'created the Internet.' Now the Supreme Court may be
coming for them (Steve Bacher)
Re: SMS-Based Multi-Factor Authentication: What Could Go Wrong? Plenty
(Steve Bacher)
Re: Peabody EDI Office responds to MSU shooting with email written using
ChatGPT (Steve Bacher)
Re: Trying Microsoft's new AI chatbot search engine, some answers are uh-ohs
(Steve Bacher)
Re: Re: rm -rf (Steve Bacher)
Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)

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Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2023 11:54:48 PST
From: Peter Neumann <neumann@csl.sri.com>
Subject: Over 1,000 Trains Derail Each Year in America (NYTimes)

David Sirota, Julie Rock, Rebecca Burns, and Matthew Cunningham-Cook
*The New York Times* Opinion, 20 Feb 2023
Let's Cut That Number.

The Ohio disaster shows that the government must improve rail safety rules.
Since 1970, the overall number of train cars derailed each year *fell* ...
while the number of cars carrying hazardous materials *grew*.

A chart lists the fate of the derailed train's cargo, contents of each
train car, and what happened to it.

Lots of lessons -- ignored warnings, weak standards and poor enforcement,
lobbies, lack of electronic brakes, crew of two on a train over 1.7 miles
long, no detectors for toxic leaks and fires?, misclassifying the train as
not *high-hazard flammable* and violation of HHFT regulations, lack of
detailed online content information for the hazmat team trying to cope
with 100-foot flames and highly toxic releases, and more. Another
total-system problem with optimization for saving money without including
the costs of disasters? PGN

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2023 19:20:37 +0000
From: paul cornish <paul.a.cornish@googlemail.com>
Subject: Wearable fitness trackers could interfere with cardiac devices,
study finds (The Guardian)

Oh great. Another unintended consequence. Your health sensing smart watch
could seriously impact your health.

An example of the observer effect in smart tech?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/22/wearable-fitness-trackers-could-interfere-with-cardiac-devices-study-warns?CMP=3DShare_iOSApp_Other

[ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics) ]

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2023 00:55:08 -0500
From: Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Subject: U.S. Air Force Studies Autonomous Cargo Jets (AVweb)

The Air Force has awarded a contract to Silicon Valley firm Reliable
Robotics to study the feasibility of flying its biggest iron autonomously.
The company will look at whether it makes sense to fly multi-engine jet
cargo planes from gate to gate with a remote pilot monitoring from the
ground.

https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/air-force-studies-autonomous-cargo-jets/

Maybe Tesla can help...

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2023 02:19:19 +0000
From: Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com>
Subject: Put Electrical Transmission Lines Underground? Distributed
is far cheaper (TDWorld)

In the rush for renewable energy, there has been a loud outcry for more
electrical transmission capacity. Unfortunately, almost all of these plans
call for large numbers of *above ground* electrical transmission towers and
wires, thus destroying the *visual environment*, if not the actual
environment through additional forest fires (cough, cough, PG&amp;E).

One alternative is to *bury* these transmission lines underground, but this
is not a 'silver bullet', as underground lines cost 4-10X the equivalent
above-ground transmission lines, and may last only 40% as long.

Furthermore, even underground transmission lines are vulnerable to a host of
risks, including lightning, earthquakes, etc., and may take far longer to
fix when a failure does occur.

Bottom line: let's significantly raise the planning costs of electrical
transmission, to make *local* *distributed* 'microgrids' better able to
compete. At the end of the day, rooftop solar panels are going to be a heck
of a lot more attractive than covering every inch of currently un-despoiled
land with transmission towers and power lines.

https://www.tdworld.com/intelligent-undergrounding/article/21215620/overhead-or-underground-transmission-that-is-still-the-question

INTELLIGENT UNDERGROUNDING, Jon T. Leman, Robert G. Olsen
Overhead or Underground Transmission? That is (Still) the Question
Feb. 24, 2022

Part one in a two-part series examines where things stand with the
challenges of using underground high-voltage ac lines to transmit bulk
electrical power.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2023 06:06:31 +0000 ()
From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
Subject: Power-Grid Attacks Surge and Are Likely to Continue, Study Finds
(WSJ)

Physical attacks on the U.S. power grid rose 71% last year compared with
2021 and will likely increase this year, according to a confidential
industry analysis viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

A division of the grid oversight body known as the North American Electric
Reliability Corporation found that ballistic damage, intrusion and vandalism
largely drove the increase. The analysis also determined that physical
security incidents involving power outages have increased 20% since 2020,
attributed to people frustrated by the onset of the pandemic, social
tensions and economic challenges.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2023 23:08:45 +0000
From: Richard Marlon Stein <rmstein@protonmail.com>
Subject: Climate change hotspots and implications for the global subsea
telecommunications network (M.A. Clare at al., Earth Science Reviews)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825222003804

[Richard's summary focused superficially on the undersea communications,
pointing out they dominate satellite communications. However, it gave no
hint of the breadth and depth of this remarkable report. Instead, I have
excerpted from the conclusions section:]

The critical role played by subsea cables in global communications means it
is important that they remain as resilient as possible over their design
lives. This study provides the first global review of how hazards to subsea
cables are anticipated to change in response to future climate change
scenarios. Our overarching conclusion is that ocean conditions are highly
likely to change on a global basis as a result of projected climate change,
but the feedbacks and links between climate change, natural processes and
human activities can be extremely complicated, resulting in pronounced
spatial and temporal variability. Not all regions will be affected in the
same way (nor at the same time) by the same processes, and in many cases,
there is anticipated to be local variability. Therefore, future cable routes
should be carefully selected based on local conditions.