Using Neural Networks to Identify Blurred Faces

Neural networks are good at identifying faces, even if they're blurry:

In a paper released earlier this month, researchers at UT Austin and Cornell University demonstrate that faces and objects obscured by blurring, pixelation, and a recently-proposed privacy system called P3 can be successfully identified by a neural network trained on image datasets­ -- in some cases at a more consistent rate than humans.

"We argue that humans may no longer be the 'gold standard' for extracting information from visual data," the researchers write. "Recent advances in machine learning based on artificial neural networks have led to dramatic improvements in the state of the art for automated image recognition. Trained machine learning models now outperform humans on tasks such as object recognition and determining the geographic location of an image."

Research paper

Posted on September 27, 2016 at 9:39 AM5 Comments

Brian Krebs DDoS

Brian Krebs writes about the massive DDoS attack against his site. In fact, the site is down as I post this.

EDITED TO ADD (9/27): Good commentary here.

Posted on September 26, 2016 at 3:59 PM22 Comments

Friday Squid Blogging: Space Kraken

A Lego model of a giant space kraken destroying a Destroyer from Star Wars.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.

Posted on September 23, 2016 at 4:14 PM139 Comments

iPhone 7 Jailbreak

It took 24 hours.

Slashdot thread.

Posted on September 23, 2016 at 10:11 AM10 Comments

Amtrak Security Awareness

I like this Amtrak security awareness campaign. Especially the use of my term "security theater."

Posted on September 22, 2016 at 1:03 PM20 Comments

Tesla Model S Hack

Impressive remote hack of the Tesla Model S.

Details. Video.

The vulnerability has been fixed.

Remember, a modern car isn't an automobile with a computer in it. It's a computer with four wheels and an engine. Actually, it's a distributed 20-400-computer system with four wheels and an engine.

Posted on September 21, 2016 at 7:33 AM41 Comments

Two Good Essays on the NSA's "Upstream" Data Collection under Section 702

Both are worth reading.

Posted on September 20, 2016 at 1:32 PM106 Comments

More on the Equities Debate

This is an interesting back-and-forth: initial post by Dave Aitel and Matt Tait, a reply by Mailyn Filder, a short reply by Aitel, and a reply to the reply by Filder.

Posted on September 20, 2016 at 7:34 AM5 Comments

Periscope ATM Skimmers

"Periscope skimmers" are the most sophisticated kind of ATM skimmers. They are entirely inside the ATM, meaning they're impossible to notice.

They've been found in the US.

Posted on September 19, 2016 at 6:16 AM35 Comments

Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid on Japanese Television

I got this video from PZ Myers's blog. I know absolutely nothing about it.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.

Posted on September 16, 2016 at 4:11 PM181 Comments

Photo of Bruce Schneier by Per Ervland.

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