10.31.25 Security News Bites
Mondelez Uses AI to Reduce Marketing Content Generation Costs by 30-50%
Mondelez owns Cadbury, Oreo, Ritz, Toblerone and many more brands. They spent $40 million on an AI ad generation tool to slash fees paid to ad agencies. To start with they plan to use the Accenture created tools to create TV ads, including, possibly, a Super Bowl ad. Credit: Cybernews
Politically Correct Elon Musk Says “If She’s a 10, You’re an Asset”
NOTE: That is a pretty broad brush, so we have to be careful here. Elon, of course, never lets the lack of facts get in his way. In this case, maybe, he was being hyperbolic. Not every pretty woman is a spy. Still both the US and our adversaries have used beautiful women to obtain information for hundreds of years. The UK Times is reporting that female spies are using “sex warfare” (their term), which includes seduction and psychological manipulation to extract sensitive trade secrets from America’s tech industry. The report says that the female spies go as far as marrying their targets and, in several cases, have children with their targets as part of a long term espionage strategy. This was confirmed, they say, by current and former US counter-intelligence officials.
US Gov Cyber Talent Corps Crashes Under President’s Watch
The CyberCorps has been, until this year, a way for the US government, which pays below market wages for cyber talent, to recruit hundreds of top students from colleges across the country. In exchange for (comparatively) low wages, the government provides scholarships and stipends to awardees, but they have to agree to work for the government. The program recruits both undergrads and graduate students. But now the government is reneging on its promise to hire these people – literally cancelling job offers already made – and telling them they have to find some other ACCEPTABLE to OMB government job in the next 18 months or their scholarship turns into a loan they have to repay. This is going to have a two-fold affect. First, these students will have to find another job, likely not with the feds and then have to repay their “loan” and second, other students who were considering working for the feds will rethink their career choices. In both cases, the country becomes less safe. Credit: Route Fifty
iRobot Faces Bankruptcy – Turning Smart Vacuums into Dumb Ones
iRobot, makers of the Roomba robot vacuum, faces bankruptcy after Amazon’s deal to buy them fell apart after facing massive regulatory challenges to the merger. Depending on what happens, your Roomba will still power on but will only work offline and no longer be very smart. It will only be able to vacuum a path that it’s local brain can figure out. Note that this is a problem you may face with any “smart” device you buy. If the manufacturer closes or stops supporting that device, it is unclear if the device will even work. Credit: MSN
If Google is Blocking 10 Billion Scam Messages a Month, How Many Are Being Sent?
Google says that the scam defenses built into Android are blocking more than 10 billion malicious calls and messages every month. Even though there are fewer iPhones out there than Android phones, there are a lot and if we assume that Apple is doing similar things, that means they are collectively blocking hundreds of billions of scams a year. What percentage is that? 10 percent? 90 percent? No one is saying but the scale is a bit insane. Credit: The Hacker News
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