The X social media platform has removed hundreds of Hamas-affiliated accounts and taken action to remove or label

Metropolitan Police chiefs should carry out a thorough investigation of the force’s cyber security practices following an IT breach, industry experts have said. Scotland Yard said on Saturday that it had been made aware of “unauthorised access to the IT system of one of its suppliers”. The company in question had access to names, ranks, photos, vetting levels and pay numbers for officers and staff. The force is now working with the company to understand if there has been any security breach relating to its data, and was unable to confirm how many personnel might be affected. Cyber security experts said the possible data breach is “extremely worrying” but unsurprising as cyber attackers frequently target third-party companies. The Met Police are extremely good at keeping their own data secure, but they do use third parties. As they have to use these parties, if they aren’t up to date with their own security then that becomes a weakness that could be targeted Jake Moore, ESET Jake Moore, global cyber security adviser for software firm ESET, told the PA news agency: “This is another extremely worrying episode of what we seem to be seeing quite a lot of this year. “It’s just worrying to think these police forces are coming under attack in what I would suggest are relatively simple ways.” Mr Moore said the current suspected breach appears to have been “a targeted attack to test the security within the supply chain” where criminals were “looking for the weakest link”. He added: “The Met Police are extremely good at keeping their own data secure, but they do use third parties. “As they have to use these parties, if they aren’t up to date with their own security then that becomes a weakness that could be targeted.” Mr Moore suggested that current cyber security systems used by police forces, coupled with a lack of resources, may have led to flaws opening up. He said: “It’s not impossible to stop this. It’s to do with understanding where all your data is. “When you amalgamate systems, particularly when police forces join together, they tend not to understand completely where all their data is or who has access to it, and that can cause problems down the line. “They need to do a complete analysis on who has access, why they have access to their data, and to reduce all of those weak points as best they can. “It will take time – not necessarily too much money – but it will take resources and people power to mitigate this in the future, and hopefully something like this will shake the boots of all the chiefs around the country to wake up and act faster.” We do have best practices and guidelines in the industry on how to protect the systems, so maybe it comes down to someone conducting an external audit in the aftermath to see whether or not they are following these practices Professor Kevin Curran, Ulster University Kevin Curran, professor of cyber security at Ulster University, agreed that the breach is likely to be down to “a third-party supplier issue”. He said: “I’m not surprised really – data breaches are such a common occurrence and police are no exception. “They have the same resources as a lot of other companies, where any data systems which have external access to the internet are a risk.” Mr Curran said questions need to be asked about why third parties have access to such information, and if the Met has the right data classification methods in place. He added: “It boils down to resources. Every organisation has to allocate a percentage of their IT budget to cyber security. “It’s a publicly-funded organisation so there’s only a finite amount of resources you have, but we do have best practices and guidelines in the industry on how to protect the systems, so maybe it comes down to someone conducting an external audit in the aftermath to see whether or not they are following these practices.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Social media firms should reimburse online purchase scam victims – Barclays Hozier would consider striking over AI threat to music industry Snapchat experiences ‘temporary outage’ as My AI chatbot posts own Story

By Milana Vinn NEW YORK Ed Wehle, a senior Barclays Plc technology banker, has resigned to join U.S.

McKenzie Graham is slowly but surely gaining attention as a golf influencer

Nintendo is reporting a 52% increase in profit for the first fiscal quarter following the success of its Super Mario movie and the new Zelda video game

SHENZHEN, China--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 1, 2023--

An artificial intelligence chatbot under development at Uber Technologies Inc. will offer recommendations to food-delivery customers and help

The top climate envoys from the US and China ended five days of face-to-face talks late Wednesday, hailing

This content originally appeared on Mashable for a US audience and has been adapted for

It didn’t take very long for conservatives to pounce on Meta’s new Twitter competitor and accuse it of censoring a prominent conservative, forcing the social media giant to back down. Last week, the New York Post reported that users of Instagram Threads — the upstart from Facebook’s parent company meant to take advantage of Twitter users’ discontent over the site’s Elon Musk-era problems — were offered a warning when they attempted to follow Donald Trump Jr, the eldest son of twice-impeached, twice-indicted ex-president Donald Trump. They were asked if they were “sure” they wanted to do so, and warned that the younger Mr Trump had “repeatedly posted false information that was reviewed by independent fact-checkers or went against our Community Guidelines”. The Trump Organization executive, who frequently posts false and inflammatory statements targeting prominent Democrats, posted a screen grab of the warning to Twitter on Thursday, around the time the new app went live. “Threads not exactly off to a great start,” he wrote. “Hey Instagram, threads is verbal, so the whole skimpy bikini thing is not going to work so well if your influencers can’t actually formulate a sentence… IMHO you may want to rethink cutting off those who can”. Meta communications boss Andy Stone responded that the warning “was an error and shouldn’t have happened”. “It’s been fixed,” he added. In response, Mr Trump replied: “Ok thanks I appreciate that”. The frustrated would-be poster’s father was banned from Instagram and Facebook for two years after he incited a deadly riot at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. On that day, a mob of the defeated president’s supporters stormed the seat of the US legislature in hopes of preventing certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Read More Instagram Threads hits 100 million users, becoming easily the fastest growing app ever Twitter restores old, ‘better’ version of TweetDeck – but for how long? Account tracking Elon Musk’s jet is now on Threads after it was suspended from Twitter Elon Musk says ‘Zuck is cuck’ as Threads inches closer to 100m users

Breakdancing is part of a minor sports revolution going on in Mongolia

Facebook owner Meta is working on a ChatGPT-style chatbot with the personality of Abraham Lincoln, according to reports. The new AI bot is part of a series of prototypes under development at the tech giant, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, with each one featuring a different human-like persona. The new chatbots form part of the company’s attempts to boost its engagement with its social media platforms, according to the report, citing people with knowledge of the plans. Beyond the chatbot based on the former US president, the California-based social media giant is also exploring a chatbot that advises on travel options in the style of a surfer. The purpose of these chatbots, which Meta employees have dubbed ‘personas’, will be to provide a new search function as well as offer recommendations. The report comes as Meta executives are focusing on boosting retention on its new text-based app Threads, after the app lost more than half of its users in the weeks following its launch on 5 July. The Facebook parent reported a strong rise in advertising revenue in its earnings last week, forecasting third-quarter revenue above market expectations. The company has been climbing back from a bruising 2022, buoyed by hype around emerging AI technology and an austerity drive in which it has shed around 21,000 employees since last fall. Meta launched a new version of its open-source artificial intelligence model in July called Llama 2 for commercial use, which will be distributed by Microsoft through its Azure cloud service and will run on the Windows operating system. Bloomberg News reported in July that Apple is working on AI offerings similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, adding that it has built its own framework, known as ‘Ajax’, to create large language models and is also testing a chatbot that some engineers call ‘Apple GPT’. Reports of a ‘Chat with an AI’ feature first emerged in June, when app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi shared screenshots of a new tool that offers users the option to ask questions and seek advice from up to 30 different AI chatbots on Instagram. Meta reportedly plans to launch the new AI chatbots in September. The Independent has reached out to Instagram for comment, though the company typically does not speak about unreleased products. Additional reporting from agencies Read More ‘I’ve got Elon Musk dying’: Voice clone baffles tech billionaire