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Spyware Maker Settles With NY for $7.5M

Intermix Media Inc. which calls themselves a web marketer will be paying the state of New York $7.5 million dollars over the course of three years to settle accusations that the company installs spyware on user’s computer systems.

As part of the new agreement, Intermix Media will also stop any ad-related downloads from being distributed, although the company says they have voluntarily stopped distributing their adware products and programs to users.

Although Intermix Media has settled on terms, they have not admitted any public wrongdoing. For those unfamiliar with Intermix Media, they own several websites that feature online games, jokes, quizzes and other entertainment products. Believe it or not, Intermix Media is a publicly traded company which you can own a part of.

We ran into a similar site the other day and wondered who owned it. Games.com immediately tried to download spyware to our systems.

It just goes to show how much money is being made in the spyware industry.

Ian Bell
I work with the best people in the world and get paid to play with gadgets. What's not to like?
A dangerous new jailbreak for AI chatbots was just discovered
the side of a Microsoft building

Microsoft has released more details about a troubling new generative AI jailbreak technique it has discovered, called "Skeleton Key." Using this prompt injection method, malicious users can effectively bypass a chatbot's safety guardrails, the security features that keeps ChatGPT from going full Taye.

Skeleton Key is an example of a prompt injection or prompt engineering attack. It's a multi-turn strategy designed to essentially convince an AI model to ignore its ingrained safety guardrails, "[causing] the system to violate its operators’ policies, make decisions unduly influenced by a user, or execute malicious instructions," Mark Russinovich, CTO of Microsoft Azure, wrote in the announcement.

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