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Solving a Murder Case with IoT Devices

Solving a Murder Case with IoT Devices
by Daniel Payne on 12-28-2016 at 12:00 pm
Categories: EDA, IoT

I watch a lot of Netflix and there are so many detective movies and series for me to enjoy where I try and match wits with the bad guys and figure out who is guilty a few seconds before the law enforcement characters do. On TV and with our movies there is often critical evidence extracted from desktop computers, laptops, hard drives, smart phones and even automobile GPS devices. With an increase in connected devices used each day we are seeing more technology applied to help solve crimes, so it was no surprise to read the recent headline story about an Amazon Echo device confiscated by the police to possible help them solve a murder case in Bentonville, Arkansas.

The Amazon Echo device has the following characteristics:

  • WiFi connected
  • Tower speaker
  • 7 Microphone array
  • Voice activated by saying “Alexa, Amazon or Echo”
  • Remote control
  • Answers your questions
  • Music playback
  • Can create to-do lists
  • Set an alarm
  • Stream a podcast
  • Play an audio book
  • Provide weather reports, traffic and other real time info
  • Act as a home automation hub

Early adopters of the Echo were Amazon Prime members who could buy the device in early 2015, while the masses had to wait until June 2015 to buy one and start using it.

Semiconductor content inside of the Amazon Echo was provided by iFixIt in a teardown report:

  • Step-down regulator IC from TI
  • Ultra low-power stereo audio codec from TI
  • 15W filter-free Class D stereo amplifier from TI
  • Digital Media Processor, TI
  • LPDDR1 RAM, Samsung
  • 4GB iNAND Ultra Flash Memory, SanDisk
  • WiFi and Bluetooth module, Qualcomm
  • Power management IC, TI
  • Programmable 9-output LED Driver, TI
  • Low-power stereo ADC, TI
  • TTL Logic, TI

Our suspect in this particular murder case is named James and the victim was Victor who was strangled and drowned in James hot tub back in November 2015. The police have looked at the phone and text message records of suspect James. Some of the other IoT devices in the home include:

  • Nest thermostat
  • Honeywell alarm system

Because the Echo device is constantly listening to what’s going on inside your home, the police were naturally curious to find out if this particular Echo had overheard the conversations, fighting or actual murder. Since the Echo device listens with its 7 microphones and sends the info into the cloud, controlled by Amazon, the police have asked Amazon to hand over the audio from the time of the murder. Amazon officials have denied the initial request based on court records, and won’t release customer data from Echo, “without a valid and binding legal demand properly served on us. Amazon objects to over broad or otherwise inappropriate demands as a matter of course.”

This stand off sounds like deja vu from the Apple case where they wouldn’t unlock a drug dealer’s iPhone back in March 2016. At least in the case of the iPhone there appears to be an industry out there that knows how to unlock without Apple’s permission. Not so for the Echo devices.

Even though the local police have confiscated the Amazon Echo from the suspect, none of the audio is actually stored on the device, rather it would only be processed and stored on the cloud that Amazon controls. Nobody really knows how much data Amazon is gathering from their Echo devices, so perhaps this particular case will reveal what Amazon really does with always on, IoT devices like Echo that hear and decipher our speech. I really hope that justice is served in this murder case, with or without help from Amazon. We can only expect that law enforcement will continue to request IoT and consumer electronics companies to help them solve crimes using the amazing, new abilities of always-on devices that can hear and view what we are doing throughout our daily lives.

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3 Tips for Securing Home Cameras

3 Tips for Securing Home Cameras
by Matthew Rosenquist on 12-28-2016 at 7:00 am
Categories: IoT, Security

Installing a home surveillance camera system can add great benefits but also may introduce new risks to privacy and network security. The goal is to increase the security and peace of mind, while avoiding cybersecurity threats. Here are three tips to consider when purchasing, installing, and configuring your new home camera system.

The Risks
Home internet connected cameras are targets for cybercriminals. Recently a number of large Internet-of-Things (IoT) attacks have occurred where hacker have compromise hundreds of thousands of devices and enlisted them in massive botnets. These collections of ordinary devices, such as IP Cameras, DVRs, and home routers, are then directed by their bot-herder to all send network traffic to a target destination. The massive flow of data overwhelms the target site and makes it unavailable. A recent attack against DYN, an Internet DNS lookup service, took out much of the U.S. East Coast access to Twitter, Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, Tumblr, Reddit, PayPal and other sites. Hacking home internet connected devices has become a powerful tool for cybercriminals. That home camera you are considering could add to the problem and even be used by hackers to spy on you!

3 Tips for Securing Home Cameras
Most attacks are not incredibly sophisticated. They can be traced back to insecurely designed products, absence of patches, and poor installation configurations. Security does not need to be difficult or time consuming, but it does require forethought and care.

Here are my Top 3 recommendations for Securing Home Cameras:

1. Choose the vendor wisely.
It all starts with choice. If privacy and security is important to you, it should be part of your purchase criteria. Not all home camera vendors are equal. Look for ones which works hard to keep safe your privacy and security. How do you tell? Go out to their webpage and look beyond their marketing advertisements, as everyone will splash the word “secure” everywhere. The question you must consider is do they take it seriously and deliver? Look to see if they publish security updates, is there a security team, and do they talk in detail how they secure their products and services.

No product is safe for indefinitely, especially in the Internet of Things (IoT) world. What is important, is the level of commitment a company places on keeping their products secure for their customers. It is highly desirable if they are producing security patches and explaining what vulnerabilities they are closing. Transparency is a sign of trust. For your part, you must be sure to patch and keep products up to date.

Many companies don’t bother to have a security team. It is a major warning sign if the vendor is without such expertise. It means they are not likely designing in robust security features, don’t have people looking at vulnerabilities, not developing patches, and not verifying security in updates.

Those with a security team should be open in the controls designed into the product, testing criteria, certifications, and what bugs they have closed. Professionals work hard and want to build trust with their customers. I like companies who also have bug bounty programs that reward white-hat hackers who find vulnerabilities and bring them to the attention of the company. Having the hacker community helping make your products more secure is a good thing.

The first and most important step is yours. You must select a trustworthy partner who is supplying the camera, software, and any additional services. Look at reviews, comments from owners, and by security professionals who test these cameras. Choose wisely and you will be rewarded.

2. Setup in a non-sensitive area
Cameras are great ways to watch over your home. But expect at some time, even the best products, could be compromised for a period of time. Therefore, placement is hugely important. Entry, common areas, and even watching over babies are great places to setup cameras. Bedrooms, changing rooms, bathrooms, and other private areas are not optimal. Many modern cameras have microphones and other sensors. So even in common areas, you might want to consider what you are saying. Home cameras are tailored for easy setup and minimal fuss when dealing with data. Most work with cloud services which store data and make it accessible to you anywhere on most devices. A great feature, but that also means the recordings are not directly under your control and it is another place for hackers to target. So consider what data you want in the cloud. You don’t want embarrassing or private clips appearing on the internet. Where you setup the camera will determine the limits of how uncomfortable such situations become.

3. Change default passwords
Home cameras come with a number of default settings to facilitate easy setup. Most don’t need to be modified, but the default password should be changed! Change them to a unique and strong password which you don’t use anywhere else. Store it somewhere safe. Worst case, if you forget it, the can typically be reset on the camera itself. Many of the current variants of IoT botnets are targeting the vast number of devices which still have default passwords, which are published on the Internet, thus granting them full access to cameras. Some vendors are now forcing users to change the password upon installation, but many still don’t. Don’t be an easy target. Be smart and change the default password, as it makes a significant difference.

Home cameras a great. They provide a new sense of security and flexibility to our modern lives. It is important to balance those benefits with the accompanying risks. By following a few steps, you are increasing the controls and making yourself a less attractive target. Enjoy your new camera with the confidence of security and privacy.

Interested in more? Follow me on Twitter (@Matt_Rosenquist), Steemit, and LinkedIn to hear insights and what is going on in cybersecurity.

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The 2017 Leading Edge Semiconductor Landscape

The 2017 Leading Edge Semiconductor Landscape
by Scotten Jones on 12-27-2016 at 6:00 pm
Categories: Foundries, GlobalFoundries, Intel Foundry, Samsung Foundry, TSMC

In early September of 2016 I published an article “The 2016 Leading Edge Semiconductor Landscape” that proved to be very popular with many views, comments and reposting’s. Since I wrote that article a lot of new data has become available enabling some projections to be replaced by actual values and new analysis and projections to be made.
Continue reading “The 2017 Leading Edge Semiconductor Landscape”

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IoT and a few of my favourite things

IoT and a few of my favourite things
by John Moor on 12-27-2016 at 5:00 pm
Categories: IoT

I was at the 27th Hewlett Packard Colloquium on Information Security at Royal Holloway, University of London this week and met Alan Stockey of RiskingIT.com. Alan told me about a little ditty he wrote on IoT security to the tune of “My Favourite Things” from the Sound of Music. Amused me and he’s allowed me to share it at this festive time of year – hope you enjoy and thanks Alan (and RHUL – I learned a great deal about law enforcement hacking, block chain and computing on encrypted data).

Here goes…

Ding-dong Internet of Things
Smart new devices with wi-re-less hidden
Intelligent kettles with 5 billion minions!
Big data packages, next wondrous thing?
They capture the pulse of those Internet things

White coloured tablets, and Fitbits seduce us
Cameras and light bulbs, but doorbells? confuse us
Heart-trackers record when we’ve died, then send strings
So tempting to hack all these Internet things

When the BOT bites
When the Phish stings
Make us feel so mad
If we simply secure all our Internet things
Then we won’t feel so bad

Bluetooth in fridges need regular patches
TV and sex-toy voyeurs send dispatches
Hand-dryers in washrooms blow hot and then sing
Just a few more of those Internet things

Driverless cars could escape many crashes, with
Cyber patrolmen bug-testing their caches?
Intelligent toilets that flush and then ping
It’s to twenty-first century gadgets we cling

When the BOT bites
When the Phish stings
Make us feel so mad
When we’ve turned off all those Internet things
Would we all feel so glad

We really don’t need that bad… repeat to fade…

(c) Stockey2016

Oh, one last thing – don’t forget to use the IoTSF best practice guidelines and security framework if you want to avoid being a headline (they are free):

https://iotsecurityfoundation.org/best-practice-guidelines/

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Intel Spreadtrum ARM SoCs

Intel Spreadtrum ARM SoCs
by Daniel Nenni on 12-27-2016 at 12:00 pm
Categories: Arm, Intel Foundry, IP, Mobile

In June of 2013 Edward Snowden copied and leaked classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA). His actions exposed numerous surveillance programs that many governments around the world reacted to, including China. In September of 2013 China Vice Premier Ma Kai declared semiconductors a key sector for the security of China. As a result Chinese mobile carriers replaced American made networking equipment (Cisco) and the Chinese government has pledged more than $100B to internal semiconductor development including SoCs. A modern SoC has billions of gates and it only takes a handful to create a back door, right?

To secure smartphones the Chinese government tapped Spreadtrum Communications CEO Leo Li to make special-order “safe” SoCs to foil foreign spies. At the end of 2013 the publicly held Spreadtrum was acquired by Tsinghua Unigroup (backed by the Chinese government) for $1.78B. As a result, Spreadtrum has grown rapidly and now has R&D facilities in Shanghai, Beijing Tianjin, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Xiamen, San Diego, San Jose, Finland, and India. Spreadtrum is privately held now so revenues are not reported but from what I understand they will come very close to $2B in 2016 making them one of the top ten fabless semiconductor companies.

About Spreadtrum Communications
As an affiliate of Tsinghua Unigroup, Ltd, Spreadtrum Communications is a fabless semiconductor company that develops mobile chipset platforms for smartphones, feature phones and other consumer electronics products, supporting 2G, 3G and 4G wireless communications standards. Spreadtrum’s solutions combine its highly integrated, power-efficient chipsets with customizable software and reference designs in a complete turnkey platform, enabling customers to achieve faster design cycles with a lower development cost. Spreadtrum’s customers include global and China-based manufacturers developing mobile products for consumers in China and emerging markets around the world. For more information, visit www.spreadtrum.com.

The majority of Spreadtrum SoCs are ARM based using off-the-shelf ARM cores. That changed of course with the 2015 $1.5B Intel investment:

“China is now the largest consumption market for smartphones and has the largest number of Internet users in the world,” said Brian Krzanich, Intel CEO. “These agreements with Tsinghua Unigroup underscore Intel’s 29-year-long history of investing in and working in China. This partnership will also enhance our ability to support a wider range of mobile customers in China and the rest of the world by more quickly delivering a broader portfolio of Intel architecture and communications technology solutions.”

Spreadtrum is now sampling Intel based 14nm SoCs as well as TSMC/ARM based 16nm SOCs. This is standard Chinese strategy of developing multiple chip types and letting the best design win. The question is: Can off-the-shelf ARM and Intel cores compete against the custom ARM architecture SoCs designed by Qualcomm? The answer is no, not on the mid-to-high end smartphones. We can see this in the QCOM vs MediaTek SoC benchmarks and resulting China market shares (MKT uses off-the-shelf ARM cores).

It has always been my opinion that in order to compete with QCOM in the SoC business you will have to license the ARM architecture and create your own cores and that is what Spreadtrum has now done. Notice that Spreadtrum has an R&D center in San Jose (down the street from ARM), that is the group that is doing the custom ARM SoC architecture and from what I have heard they already taped out their first version (ARM Cortex-A53 Class) on TSMC 28nm with FinFET versions to follow.

The billion dollar questions is: Will the Spreadtrum custom SOCs benchmark better than Qualcomm and MediaTek? The answer of course is that they do not have to for rapid adoption in the Chinese market. Remember, Spreadtrum is backed by the Chinese government for the security of China, absolutely.

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The Other Half of AI

The Other Half of AI
by Bernard Murphy on 12-27-2016 at 7:00 am
Categories: General

I touched earlier on challenges that can appear in AI systems which operate as black-boxes, particularly in deep learning systems. Problems are limited when applied to simple recognition tasks, e.g. recognizing a speed limit posted on a sign. In these cases, the recognition task is (from a human viewpoint) simply choosing from among a limited set of easily distinguished options, so an expert observer can easily determine if/when the system made a bad decision.

But as AI is extended to more complex tasks, it becomes increasingly difficult to accurately grade the performance of those systems. Certainly, there will still be many cases where an expert observer can classify performance easily enough. But what about cases where the expert observer isn’t sure? Where is the student surpassing the master and where is the student simply wrong?

This reminded me of an important Indian mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan, whose methods were in some ways as opaque as current AI systems. There was a movie release this year – The Man Who Knew Infinity – covering Ramanujan’s career and challenges. He had an incredible natural genius for mathematics, but chose to present results with little or no evidence for how he got there (apparently because he couldn’t afford the extra paper required to write out the proofs).

This lack of demonstrated proofs raised concerns among professional mathematicians of Ramanujan’s time. Mathematical rigor requires a displayed proof leading to the result, so that other experts can validate (or disprove) the claim. This is not unlike the above-mentioned concern with modern deep learning systems. For conclusions which a human expert can easily classify there is no problem, but for more complex assertions a bald statement of a conclusion is insufficient. We want to know how the system arrived at that conclusion for one of two reasons: it might be wrong and if so we want to know where it went wrong so we can fix it (perhaps by improving the training set), or it might be right in which case we’d like to know why so we can improve our own understanding.

Recent work at UC Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute for Informatics has made progress in this direction for deep learning systems. The underlying mechanics are the same but they use multiple training datasets, to deliver a conclusion and to justify sub-steps leading to that conclusion. The domain for the study is image recognition, specifically determining aspects of what is happening in an image (for example, what sport is being played).

The research team noted that a system-generated chain of reasoning may not correspond to how a human expert would think of a problem, so a better approach needs some user friendliness. Instead of presenting the user with a proof, let them ask questions which the system should answer, an approach known as visual question answering (VQA). While this may not lead to mathematically rigorous proofs, it seems very appropriate for many domains where a human expert wants to feel sufficiently convinced but may not need every possible proof point.

The method requires two principle components: VQA augmented by spatial attention where the system looks at localized image features (such as a figure) to draw conclusions (this person is holding a bat), and more global activity recognition/explanation (this is a baseball game). These datasets were annotated through crowdsourcing with “proposition because explanation” labels.

The research team wanted also to point to an object supporting a proposition, for example if the VQA asserted “this person is holding a bat”, they wanted to point to the bat. This is where the attention aspect of the model becomes important. You could imagine this kind of capability being critical in a medical diagnosis where perhaps a key aspect of the diagnosis rests on an assumption that a dark spot in an X-ray corresponds to a tumor. “This patient has a tumor as shown in this X-ray” is hardly a sufficient proposition, whereas “this patient has a tumor in the liver as shown at this location in this X-ray” is much more usable information and something a doctor could confirm or challenge.

As we aim to push AI into more complex domains, this kind of justification process will become increasingly important. Which of us would trust a medical diagnosis delivered by a machine without a medical expert first reviewing and approving that diagnosis? Collision avoidance in a car may not allow time to review before taking action, but subsequent litigation may quite possibly demand review on whether the action taken was reasonable. Even (and perhaps especially) where AI is being used to guide scientific discovery or proof, the AI will need to demonstrate a chain of reasoning which human experts can test for robustness. It will be a very long time before “because my AI system said so” will be considered a sufficient alternative to peer review. Which is really the point. Important decisions, whether made by people or machines, should not be exempt from peer review.

You can read the UCB/MPI arXiv paper HERE.

More articles by Bernard…

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Real Time Virtualization, How Hard Can it Be?

Real Time Virtualization, How Hard Can it Be?
by Daniel Payne on 12-26-2016 at 12:00 pm
Categories: Automotive, EDA, Siemens EDA

My first exposure to running something virtual on a computer was when I decided to run the Windows OS on my MacBook Pro using software provided by Parallels. With that virtualization I was able to run the Quicken app under Windows on my MacBook Pro, along with the popular Internet Explorer web browser. The app performance on virtualized Windows isn’t the highest, so I don’t watch YouTube videos or stream Netflix on the Windows side.
Continue reading “Real Time Virtualization, How Hard Can it Be?”

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CTO Interview: Mohamed Kassem of efabless

CTO Interview: Mohamed Kassem of efabless
by Daniel Nenni on 12-26-2016 at 7:00 am
Categories: CEO Interviews, Semiconductor Services

Tell us about your personal vision for efabless
You recall that efabless is building a community of analog and mixed signal designers and providing the crowdsourcing platform that lets them (1) create and market their own new designs and (2) respond to customer requests for on-demand IP and ICs. I see us at the forefront of bringing open innovation and open source to the world of semiconductors and electronics in general.

I think that we are entering an era of countless new smart hardware products, each with its own specific form and function, that will require a whole new way of designing and developing a product – one that embraces the long-tail economics theme with sell less of more products and no prior knowledge of the “killer app”. A community-centered development model is an effective way to bring new innovative solutions to market under the constraints of countless customers and applications. In this world, customers and designers embrace a new risk/reward sharing mode.

Basically, I wanted to build on my past experience with smartphone evolution when I was at TI and adapt the open innovation and community collaboration processes that are so successful in software and inject them into electronics creation. This wave started with the evolution of the smart phone where almost everything was customized to fit in an unprecedented fusion of functions and utilities in an object that sits in the palm of your hand or fits in your pocket. What we see in the IoT world is essentially taking functions of the smartphone (or more), and adapting them for specific applications or markets.

After leaving TI, I spent several years learning from a variety of sources about community-based product development in the software world. I wanted to understand what worked and what didn’t work. I met with innovators in the open source, crowdsource and hardware worlds refining the vision and laying a strong foundation for it to become a reality. Along the way, I met Mike Wishart (our CEO) who had a very similar vision and together we have built a great team to pursue our dream.

Please remind our readers about your recent design challenge with X-FAB and let us know how it is going?
We announced our first customer engagement with X-FAB Silicon Foundries, on November 29. In this project, we are using a design challenge format to engage the community to deliver an ultra-low power band gap IP with restricted process technology options. We and X-FAB chose the challenge process as a tool to educate our community about the X-FAB value proposition and to meet specific innovation and design execution goals.

In thischallenge, all designs that meet the spec can be sold through our marketplace and the three designs with the lowest power consumption will split cash prizes totaling $15,000. X-FAB benefits because its customers will have access to multiple varieties of band gaps and more designers become familiar with their superior analog technology.

On the other side of the coin, our community members benefit through access to X-FAB customers and by retaining the rights to their IPs. It is a unique model for design enablement. It is important to highlight that the prize amount does not represent a sale price of the IP. The designer will set the sale and licensing terms once the IP is in our marketplace.

The punch line is that things are going very well. As of December 20, we had 80 active “solvers”, far more than even we expected. The effect on our overall community has also been very positive. We now have over 900 community members from more than 30 countries, up from about 600 at the time of challenge launch.

How are the next steps in the challenge?
As I said, we launched the challenge on November 29, and people are hard at work. Schematic submissions are due on January 16. The submission process is actually very interesting and showcases a unique capability of efabless. When the designer completes the band gap design, he or she submits the design through an automated verify-to-spec process.

In this process, we highlight where each design passes or fails and specifically show the full spectrum of conditions for each parameter and how the design complied or did not. Once the design is finished, simulated and completed to the designer’s satisfaction, it is submitted for final entry and we can then automatically and quickly confirm compliance with specs and rank order all of the entries by the challenge metric, lowest power.

We will announce the three finalists on the January 20[SUP]th[/SUP]. In order to qualify for the final prizes the designs need to proceed through layout which is due on February 20. We recognize that not all designers may want to complete layout, so finalists can request that efabless complete layout for them, in which case, efabless will retain $1,500 of the prizes.

We would encourage all designers, regardless of whether they make the finals or not, to continue through layout of a finished design. All designs that successfully do so will be made available to X-FAB customers through the X-FAB IP Portal and through our marketplace.

Tell us about your marketplace.
The efabless marketplace is unique as it is not limited to just offering the customer IP search and referral. Because it is integrated with our design platform, our marketplace allows the customer to access the available IP immediately as an integrator without exposing the design proprietary information. From the designer’s perspective, our marketplace enables them to “showcase” their IP differentiation right on the platform while protecting their proprietary information.

Today we offer the X-FAB Analog IP blocks library for its 350 nm process. That’s above and beyond the complete foundation IP. Going forward we will include IP for other nodes and IP from established IP vendors and foundries.

As we move through February, you will see us expand the features and functions of the marketplace to include more IP’s as well as options to bring in existing IP’s or verified open source IP to showcase community members and the IP that they define and design on our site. We will offer user profiles that includes badges and IP ratings earned and derived through our platform. Both users and IP will be searchable by customers looking for off the shelf and custom solutions.

Customers and community members will be able to access this library of IP, and incorporate various IPs in designs and simulate them before buying. Our “try before you buy” concept is a part of our value added to customers, IP vendors and community members and is a valuable element of lowering the constraints to semiconductor innovation.

Other than the great turnout; any surprises?
I don’t know that I would call it a surprise but I am thrilled with how engaged our community has been with their feedback. We encourage and have received lots of questions and comments through our “help” request tab. We have found that community members are actually chiming in during our webinars to share experiences and help one another as questions come up. Webinar and support – community style. Very cool. We will be taking all of the feedback and adding them to our “Knowledge Base” part of the site. Keep in mind that we will be learning a lot more from (and about) community dynamics as we run more challenges.

Let me probe again on “what next”
You should expect to see additional challenges after we get into the New Year. These will include an efabless-defined sponsored challenge series with cash prizes, “points” and badges for work-based recognition. These challenges will be structured to a) grow the community and b) to further enrich our IP library offering.

We also want to encourage the community to search the X-FAB portal and identify areas of opportunity for new IPs. We will be seeking out similar opportunities for the benefit of the community but we are firm believers that the community is the best source of true insight and creativity.

Final thoughts?
I appreciate your support and am excited about your additional awards of $500 apiece for winners that are SemiWiki subscribers as of the first of the year. Happy New Years to you, Dan, and to the SemiWiki community.

Also Read:

IEDM 2016 – Marie Semeria LETI Interview

CEO Interview: Dündar Dumlugöl of Magwel

CEO Interview: Jack Harding of eSilicon

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Asimo Creator Talks to Waymo

Asimo Creator Talks to Waymo
by Roger C. Lanctot on 12-25-2016 at 12:00 pm
Categories: Automotive

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It’s been 16 years since the debut of Honda’s Asimo robot. By now, millions of people around the world have seen Asimo and its offspring at trade shows and on television. The robot is still capable of drawing a crowd wherever it is found especially since it is not only capable of walking and running but also of recognizing faces and gestures and interacting with humans.

It is no surprise that Honda is also a leader in factory automation. But it looks like creating humanoid robots and automating factories is way easier than creating robotic self-driving cars now that Honda has turned to Alphabet spinoff Waymo for assistance in that department. The company is already getting an artificial intelligence helping hand from SoftBank. SoftBank is helping Honda develop the NeuV which will be introduced at CES 2017 in two weeks.



The Honda NeuV automated commuter vehicle
Honda’s outreach to Waymo is a huge endorsement of the newly sprung Alphabet refugee. It is one thing for Waymo to marry its self-driving car technology with 100 of FCA’s Pacifica mini-vans. It is quite another to be called to assist a leader in robotic technology to support that company’s internal development. The result of Honda-Waymo talks remain to be seen.

But it is an indication of the magnitude of the automated driving challenge. Multiple automated vehicle wannabees have stumbled including Tesla (multiple fatal crashes), GM (still refining Level 2 Supercruise), and Uber (San Francisco test vetoed by California).

Honda has graduated from making motorcycles and cars (and generators) to making commercial jets, a transportation space where inter-vehicle communications and collision avoidance are already solved problems. Most pilots wave off the prospect of self-driving cars unless they are true Level 4 with no driver control whatsoever. Pilots know the sky is far more forgiving than the land when it comes to transportation safety.



HondaJets with over-the-wing mounted engines
The winner of the race to full automotive automation will be the company with the most data and the most miles driven and Waymo is head and shoulders above the competition. While car makers continue to develop and test their vehicles on test tracks and mini-city mock-ups, Waymo is out riding the real roads gathering real data and putting miles between itself and the competition – albeit at about 25-30 miles per hour.

Honda R&D’s Waymo talks are significant because Honda is one of the most creative companies in the world when it comes to thinking outside or inside the mobility box. Having gotten its start in motorcycles, for example, Honda will be showing robotic motorcycle developments at CES 2017.

Honda has also been fielding an array of personal mobility systems for use at airports, factories, shopping malls and company and college campuses. These, too, could benefit from automation. (The Uni-Cub is reminiscent of Tumi’s ride-able luggage concept.) By day two of CES 2017 attendees will be longing for their own personal Uni-Cub.


For a company as innovative as Honda to reach out to Waymo suggests Waymo’s path to market may be as self-driving car training wheels for car makers desperate to play catch-up. Why pay $1B for some unproven start-up and bring some lunatic entrepreneur into your touchy, corporate, hide-bound organization when you can license a self-driving car data set and get your vehicles on the road along with the 20 other licensed self-driving car testers in California.

Or maybe, like Uber, you hunt for a more accommodating venue such as Arizona for your testing activities – at least until someone gets hurt. No, Waymo has you over a barrel Mr. Carmaker at least until you can get more of your cars fitted with the proper array of sensors and you can start gathering data on your own – as Toyota intends to do…eventually.

Until then, not even the robot dreams of Honda will be enough to cross the bridge to automated driving. If Honda and Waymo come to terms does it mean Honda surrenders its own development resources and algorithms, not really. But the licensing of Waymo data opens yet another door to potential automotive industry dominance for Alphabet. (Insert ominous background music, thunder and lightning and boogeyman references HERE.)

Waymo’s willingness to license, though, raises the question of Tesla Motors’ willingness to share its data. Tesla has shared a lot, but is likely to hold its high speed autopilot data set closely – especially now that it has separated from Mobileye. Even if Tesla were to share, would car makers dare? Tesla’s autopilot performance thus far has been both mind-blowing and terrifying.

The irony is that Waymo was created out of Alphabet’s impatience for a payoff. Waymo itself is hoping to leverage the impatience of car companies, like Honda, for an off-the-shelf and on-the-road automated driving solution. The automotive world will be watching Honda…and Waymo…and Tesla.


Honda’s Haneda Robotics Lab

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What Does Ransomware Sound Like?

What Does Ransomware Sound Like?
by Matthew Rosenquist on 12-25-2016 at 7:00 am
Categories: Security

Congratulations to the multinational government agencies involved in the takedown of the Avalanche cybercriminal infrastructure! The U.S. Attorney’s Office, FBI, Europol, German Police, and others from over 40 countries were involved in disrupting one of the largest support structures for malware, digital money laundering, and Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. Searches, seizures, and arrests in four countries were conducted to dismantle the sophisticated network of people and technology.

Burying Malware
Avalanche hosted, supported, and distributed dozens of malware families, including Citadel, TeslaCrypt, VM-Zues, bugat, QakBot, and many others. For a complete list, visit the US-CERT announcement page. Most notably, it targeted over 40 major financial institutions and hosted major ransomware malware. According to the U.S. CERT team, it was “used to run money mule schemes where criminals recruited people to commit fraud involving transporting and laundering stolen money or merchandise”.

The Avalanche group has been very active for many years. Back in 2010 it was known for its phishing activities and involvement with various Zeus banking trojan malware variants.

This takedown will have a cascading impact to cybercriminals who have relied on its capabilities. It will likely result in a reduced amount of activity until such time as criminals can replace or rebuild these functions. It is a greatly appreciated reprieve. The absence of money laundering services will also be a painful hit to many criminal groups. With Avalanche down or at the very least impacted, it will force changes on behalf of the criminals it serviced. Those deviations represent opportunities for law enforcement’s future actions.

Hidden Benefits
Depending upon the systems and data captured and the cooperation of the people arrested, there may be some great intelligence benefits. Law enforcement may be able to track down some of the organized criminals behind the various malware families and cyber-fraud campaigns. This could lead to more arrests and impacts to malware generation.

A job well done by the multinational team who cooperated to bring down this malignant structure supporting cybercriminals impacting people, governments, and businesses across the globe. Keep up the good work!

What Does Ransomware Sound Like?
Cybersecurity colleague Christiaan Beek went searching for great wisdom and discovered what ransomware sounds like. Not sexy, not ominous, not dark. More like a pinball machine, when you lose.

With all the money the ransomware cybercriminals rake in from their victims, you would think they could invest a bit more in the sound engineering quality or perhaps get a celebrity voice-over.

I think they would get a much better compliance rate for their extortion demands if this was voice by Morgan Freeman. Who could resist that? On second thought, perhaps James Earl Jones, with the Darth Vader mask, would be more appropriate!

They could even bump up the ransom prices. Something needs to justify the price of 10.5 bitcoins! That is almost $800. Wow, have the prices gone up or it just a premium to listen to this verbal notification from the malware?

Thanks Christiaan for sharing. I look forward to your next ransomware discovery! Follow Christiaan on Twitter (@ChristiaanBeek)

For those of you interested in the other sound of ransomware, it is from the victims, who shout in fear, then rage, followed by a whimper, and sometimes crying. If you are a victim of ransomware, visit the NoMoreRansom.org site. It is a free resource that may be able to help and is supported by some of the most respected cybersecurity organizations. Good luck.

Interested in more? Follow me on Twitter (@Matt_Rosenquist), Steemit, and LinkedIn to hear insights and what is going on in cybersecurity.

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