Malicious Applications of Artificial Intelligence Escalate Existing Vulnerabilities to Cyberattacks

The democratization of artificial intelligence (AI) technology paired with existing malware technologies and social-engineering methods presents a dynamic threat that many existing cybersecurity systems are not prepared to mitigate. Malicious AI applied in cyberattacks is highly plausible in the near-term time-horizon and would be very characteristic of state and non-state actors. The subset of malware called ransomware is a likely candidate whose proliferation, when paired with AI, could have wide-reaching consequences to many individuals. NotPetya and WannaCry, are two examples of the immense financial damages that result from an effective ransomware attack. AI being used to instigate a ransomware attack provides the actor with the ability to commit more targeted attacks that utilize facial, voice, and geolocation trigger conditions. Next, the democratization of AI technology could make traditional phishing scams become more complex and allow attackers to graduate to widespread spear phishing attacks. These attacks would be much less labor-intensive and far more profitable because the application of AI would automate many of the steps that are taken to execute a target-specific attack and could replicate it indefinitely. This research will examine existing cyberattack methods that would benefit from AI systems being used in conjunction with existing methods by state and non-state actors. This analysis aims to raise awareness about AI being a dual-use technology with potentially malicious applications and to demonstrate how the democratization of AI technology will likely lead to more complex cyberattacks against individuals, corporations, and nations. The intended audience is cybersecurity professionals and intelligence analysts who may be affected by this emergent technology. Presentation Time: Thursday, 3-4 p.m

A review of the psychosocial and criminological factors underlying COVID-19 conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories and misinformation are becoming increasingly pervasive in recent years and have been spreading at an astounding rate during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to a range of problems, including non-adherence to safety protocols, refusal to be vaccinated and disregard for public safety. The uncontrollable spread of dubious information has been dubbed an infode-mic and is facilitated by social media and the internet. The belief in, and diffusion of conspiracy theories is linked to various factors familiar to the psychological and criminological fields. Key among these factors is a trait known as conspiratorial thinking. In order to combat this pheno-menon, it is essential that we understand how and why conspiracy theories spread and what makes people prone to believing in them. This literature review aims to highlight the principal research into the identifying characteristics of conspiracy theories, as well as the psycho-social and criminological factors that sustain them. It also explores the effects that conspiracy belief can have on people and groups. It then delves into the role of social media in the diffusion of conspiracy theories during the pandemic. Finally, it illustrates the main strategies that have been used to counter misinformation and conspiracy theories and suggests some areas where further research is required

COVID-19: Exploring linguistic indicators of conspiratorial thinking in the media. A case study of Coronacast

Health information is fundamental during an outbreak, but viral speculation can easily bury the limited information we have, notwithstanding the scientific community is making huge progress in understanding the Covid-19 infection and the World Health Organization (WHO) and other organizations are making a concerted effort to counter the infodemic and conspiracy theories (WHO 2019). A case in point is Coronacast, a podcast aimed at “break[ing] down the latest news and research to help [the Australian public] understand how the world is living through the pandemic”. In order to see whether its aim was met, the podcast hosts’ discourse during their daily episodes was examined through a cluster, collocation and concordance analysis to identify the possible presence of the CONSPIR tactic (Lewandowsky, Cook 2020). This tactic includes 7 traits of conspiratorial thinking characterized by Contradictory Logic, an Overwhelming Distrust of official explanations seen as Nefarious Intent to endanger people, and a conviction that Something Must be Wrong. Moreover, according to this tactic, the hosts would speak of themselves as Persecuted Victims, their narrative would be Immune to Evidence, and they would reinterpret Random Events as if they were woven into broader, interrelated patterns. Finally, this study added two more letters to the CONSPIR acronym – AC – as it examined whether the two podcast hosts express uncertainty in Anxious or Cognitive ways. This analysis seems to open the way for a better evidence-based understanding of the powerful impact of the ideological dimension of words being inculcated into Australian society’s belief system by emergent institutions such as podcasts

Sense-Making/Giving during the COVID-19 Crisis: A Multi-Method Study of Health Podcasting in Australia and the U.S.

Abstract Sense-making and sense-giving represent an issue of communication (Weick et al. 2005). The former is associated with emotional processes of crisisassessment and cognitive processes of justifying and seeking social acceptance for decisions (Søderberg and Vaara 2003), while the latter is the framework communicated to the public to facilitate their understanding and subsequently motivate certain actions (Maitlis and Christianson 2014). The medium used to communicate this framework varies depending on the relationship an authority figure has with their audience. Analysis of this communication and its medium has focused primarily on political leaders through the lens of the Charismatic, Ideological and Pragmatic (CIP) model (Crayne and Medeiros 2020), and of the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) (Wodak 2021). This study uses both the CIP model and the DHA via Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) to examine influential physicians communicating the COVID-19 crisis in health podcasts in the U.S. and Australia. It therefore interprets the healthrelated information they disseminate, and how this information is framed and given meaning, to develop a perspective on how and why these podcasters differ in how they make sense of the crisis and, consequently, appeal to a broader audience

The Streptococcus mutans Cid and Lrg systems modulate virulence traits in response to multiple environmental signals

The tight control of autolysis by Streptococcus mutans is critical for proper virulence gene expression and biofilm formation. A pair of dicistronic operons, SMU.575/574 (lrgAB) and SMU.1701/1700 (designated cidAB), encode putative membrane proteins that share structural features with the bacteriophage-encoded holin family of proteins, which modulate host cell lysis during lytic infection. Analysis of S. mutans lrg and cid mutants revealed a role for these operons in autolysis, biofilm formation, glucosyltransferase expression and oxidative stress tolerance. Expression of lrgAB was repressed during early exponential phase and was induced over 1000-fold as cells entered late exponential phase, whereas cidAB expression declined from early to late exponential phase. A two-component system encoded immediately upstream of lrgAB (LytST) was required for activation of lrgAB expression, but not for cid expression. In addition to availability of oxygen, glucose levels were revealed to affect lrg and cid transcription differentially and significantly, probably through CcpA (carbon catabolite protein A). Collectively, these findings demonstrate that the Cid/Lrg system can affect several virulence traits of S. mutans, and its expression is controlled by two major environmental signals, oxygen and glucose. Moreover, cid/lrg expression is tightly regulated by LytST and CcpA

Evaluation of the effects of erythritol on gene expression in Brucella abortus

Bacteria of the genus Brucella have the unusual capability to catabolize erythritol and this property has been associated with their virulence mainly because of the presence of erythritol in bovine foetal tissues and because the attenuated S19 vaccine strain is the only Brucella strain unable to oxydize erythritol. In this work we have analyzed the transcriptional changes produced in Brucella by erythritol by means of two high throughput approaches: RNA hybridization against a microarray containing most of Brucella ORF's constructed from the Brucella ORFeome and next generation sequencing of Brucella mRNA in an Illumina GAIIx platform. The results obtained showed the overexpression of a group of genes, many of them in a single cluster around the ery operon, able to co-ordinately mediate the transport and degradation of erythritol into three carbon atoms intermediates that will be then converted into fructose-6P (F6P) by gluconeogenesis. Other induced genes participating in the nonoxidative branch of the pentose phosphate shunt and the TCA may collaborate with the ery genes to conform an efficient degradation of sugars by this route. On the other hand, several routes of amino acid and nucleotide biosynthesis are up-regulated whilst amino acid transport and catabolism genes are down-regulated. These results corroborate previous descriptions indicating that in the presence of erythritol, this sugar was used preferentially over other compounds and provides a neat explanation of the the reported stimulation of growth induced by erythritol

Response of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus to Amicoumacin A

Amicoumacin A exhibits strong antimicrobial activity against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), hence we sought to uncover its mechanism of action. Genome-wide transcriptome analysis of S. aureus COL in response to amicoumacin A showed alteration in transcription of genes specifying several cellular processes including cell envelope turnover, cross-membrane transport, virulence, metabolism, and general stress response. The most highly induced gene was lrgA, encoding an antiholin-like product, which is induced in cells undergoing a collapse of Δψ. Consistent with the notion that LrgA modulates murein hydrolase activity, COL grown in the presence of amicoumacin A showed reduced autolysis, which was primarily caused by lower hydrolase activity. To gain further insight into the mechanism of action of amicoumacin A, a whole genome comparison of wild-type COL and amicoumacin A-resistant mutants isolated by a serial passage method was carried out. Single point mutations generating codon substitutions were uncovered in ksgA (encoding RNA dimethyltransferase), fusA (elongation factor G), dnaG (primase), lacD (tagatose 1,6-bisphosphate aldolase), and SACOL0611 (a putative glycosyl transferase). The codon substitutions in EF-G that cause amicoumacin A resistance and fusidic acid resistance reside in separate domains and do not bring about cross resistance. Taken together, these results suggest that amicoumacin A might cause perturbation of the cell membrane and lead to energy dissipation. Decreased rates of cellular metabolism including protein synthesis and DNA replication in resistant strains might allow cells to compensate for membrane dysfunction and thus increase cell survivability

The Transcriptome of the Nosocomial Pathogen Enterococcus faecalis V583 Reveals Adaptive Responses to Growth in Blood

gains access to the bloodstream and establishes a persistent infection is not well understood.. infections