It's Thursday, which doesn't just mean that Friday and the weekend are right around the corner but also time for this Week in Tech!
Google disrupts the CryptBot info-stealing malware operation
Our first story comes from BleepingComputer. A federal judge in the Southern District of New York unsealed Google's lawsuit against the malware distributors of CryptBot, which it estimate infected ~670,000 computers this past year and targeted users of Google Chrome to steal their data. If you're unsure what CryptBot is, it is an "info stealer" that identifies and steals sensitive information from victims' computers, like authentication credentials, social media account logins, and cryptocurrency wallets.
Learn more: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/google-disrupts-the-cryptbot-info-stealing-malware-operation/
How prompt injection attacks hijack today's top-end AI – and it's tough to fix
The Register posted an article based on Simon Willison's weblog entry, "Prompt injection: What's the worst that can happen?" Here's a quick snippet in case you're interested:
Large language models that are all the rage all of a sudden have numerous security problems, and it's not clear how easily these can be fixed.
The issue that most concerns Simon Willison, the maintainer of open source Datasette project, is prompt injection.
When a developer wants to bake a chat-bot interface into their app, they might well choose a powerful off-the-shelf LLM like one from OpenAI's GPT series. The app is then designed to give the chosen model an opening instruction, and adds on the user's query after. The model obeys the combined instruction prompt and query, and its response is given back to the user or acted on.
Read on: https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/26/simon_willison_prompt_injection/
What's new in Rust 1.69
InfoWorld overviews what is new in the recently released Rust 1.69. While it doesn't offer any new major features, it contains many, many improvements, including more than 3,000 commits.
Learn more: https://www.infoworld.com/article/3267624/whats-new-in-the-rust-language.html
Scientists Built a Machine From Lego That Can Grow Human Skin
Yes, you read that correctly. Scientists from Cardiff University have used one of my favorite toys growing up (okay, I still like them a lot!) to build a 3D printer capable of creating layers of skin cells, with the hope that one day it will be able to print a full-scale skin model.
Here's a quick snippet from their article:
Anyone who's ever tinkered with it will know that not only is Lego extremely cheap and versatile, but it's also manufactured to very high precision with standardized parts that are globally accessible.
We also knew Lego had already been used to create traditional 3D printers. But what remained uncertain was whether we could take the basic notion of a Lego 3D printer - which prints solid 3D structures from plastic - and engineer one that could print soft biological material.
Learn more: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-built-a-machine-from-lego-that-can-grow-human-skin
Pwned!! Dev Dash Cisco Live US 23
Last but not least, I want to plug the latest teaser published on our DevNet YouTube channel about the upcoming Dev Dash at Cisco Live:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fOVMG9l3qcQ
What was your favorite story above? Or what story did we miss that you felt should have been added?
