Tag: technology

Chrome VPN Extension With 100k Installs Screenshots All Sites Users Visit

FreeVPN.One, a Chrome extension with over 100,000 installs and a verified badge on the Chrome Web Store, is exposed by researchers for taking screenshots of users’ screens and exfiltrating them to remote servers.

A Koi Security investigation of the VPN tool reveals that it has been capturing full-page screenshots from users’ browsers, logging sensitive visual data like personal messages, financial dashboards, and private photos, and uploading it to aitd[.]one, a domain registered by the extension’s developer.

Koi Security’s forensic analysis showed that the surveillance mechanism is triggered automatically, within seconds of loading any web page. Using Chrome’s privileged chrome.tabs.captureVisibleTab() API, screenshots are silently taken in the background and bundled with metadata including page URLs, tab IDs, and unique user identifiers. This data is then transmitted to the attacker-controlled server aitd.one/brange.php, without user interaction or visible indication.

The spying behavior is powered by a two-stage architecture:

  1. A content script injected into every visited site using matches (http:///, https:///).
  2. A background service worker that listens for an internal captureViewport message and initiates the screenshot capture.

The extension also promotes an “AI Threat Detection” feature which, when clicked, captures another screenshot and sends it to aitd.one/analyze.php. However, the real issue lies in the fact that screenshots are being taken long before users ever interact with this feature, making the user interface a decoy.

Koi Security further explains that the latest version of the extension, v3.1.4, introduced AES-256-GCM encryption with RSA key wrapping to obfuscate the exfiltrated data, making it harder to detect or analyze with network monitoring tools.

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The Average Person Is Far More Scared of AI Than Excited by It, Studies Find

AI is dominating the economy and at the top of policy agendas. Ads for it are everywhere. Your favorite artist is probably experimenting with it. And as hundreds of billions of dollars get poured into the tech, it can feel like the whole world is holding its breath for when it somehow becomes superintelligent and magically ushers us into a utopic age. The optimism is breathless and inescapable.

But if you’re feeling anxious about AI, you’re not alone.

An overwhelming 71 percent of Americans are worried that AI will put vast swaths of the workforce permanently out of a job, according to a new Reuters poll conducted with the firm Ipsos — a proportion that stands in stunning contrast to the absurd levels of hype being blasted out of the AI industry.

The survey, which polled over 4,400 adults this month, also found that 67 percent of respondents believed that AI will have consequences beyond our control. And 47 percent said outright that AI is bad for humanity, compared to less than a third who said that it wasn’t.

Job destruction was one of the top concerns, and for good reason. It’s already happening at a smaller scale, with some CEOs publicly gloating about replacing their workers with AI agents. And industry leaders like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have frequently said their systems could wipe out entire professions and automate parts of the economy. 

But the largest portion of respondents, 77 percent, said that they were concerned about “political chaos” caused by US rivals, such as AI being used to generate disinformation, including videos depicting events that never happened. (Reuters notes how president Trump recently shared an AI-faked video of former president Obama getting arrested in the White House in front of him.) Meanwhile, 61 percent worried about the tech’s voracious electricity demands.

Another recent survey, conducted by advocacy group TechEquity and highlighted by tech journalist Brian Merchant in his newsletter Blood in the Machine, also illustrates Americans’ dampening enthusiasm for a technology propped up by hype. Specifically, it interviewed Californians — whose state, as the home of Silicon Valley, is uniquely positioned to pass laws reining in the industry while federal regulators, under Trump’s direction, are letting them off the leash.

Of the over 1,400 Californians who responded to the survey, 55 percent were more concerned than excited about AI, compared to just 33 percent who said they were excited about the tech. And 59 percent believed that AI will “most likely benefit the wealthiest households and corporations.”

Most striking of all, 70 percent of Californians believed there’s a need for “strong laws” regulating AI and AI companies.

These are damning numbers in a state that, we can’t stress enough, is the locus of the American tech industry and where nearly 1.5 million people are employed by tech companies.

“Californians are more concerned than excited about advancements in AI,” TechEquity CEO Catherine Bracy told Merchant. “Many feel it is advancing too fast, and are concerned about AI-fueled job loss, wage stagnation, privacy violations, and discrimination.”

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‘Godfather of AI’ Warns Superintelligent Machines Could Replace Humanity

Geoffrey Hinton, the pioneering computer scientist called the “Godfather of AI,” has once again sounded the alarm that the very technology he helped bring to life could spell the end of humanity as we know it.

In an interview clip released Aug. 18 as part of the forthcoming film “Making God,” Hinton delivered one of his starkest warnings yet. He said that humanity risks being sidelined—and eventually replaced—by machines far smarter than ourselves.

“Most people aren’t able to comprehend the idea of things more intelligent than us,” Hinton, a Nobel prize-winner for physics and a former Google executive, said in the clip.

“They always think, well, how are we going to use this thing? They don’t think, well, how’s it going to use us?”

Hinton said he is “fairly confident” artificial intelligence will drive massive unemployment, pointing to early examples of tech giants like Microsoft replacing junior programmers with AI. But the larger danger, he said, goes far beyond the workplace.

“The risk I’ve been warning about the most … is the risk that we’ll develop an AI that’s much smarter than us, and it will just take over,” Hinton said.

“It won’t need us anymore.”

The only silver lining, he joked, is that “it won’t eat us, because it’ll be made of silicon.”

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Big Tech Could Soon Use Brain Chips To Read Your Innermost Thoughts: Study

A new study out of Stanford University reveals that neural implants, also known as brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), might not just help paralyzed individuals communicate – they could potentially lay bare your innermost thoughts to Big Tech.

Published in the medical journal Cell, the research shows these devices can decode brain signals to produce synthesized speech faster and with less effort.

BCIs work by using tiny electrode arrays to monitor activity in the brain’s motor cortex, the region controlling speech-related muscles. Until now, the tech relied on signals from paralyzed individuals actively trying to speak. The Stanford team, however, discovered that even imagined speech generates similar, though weaker, signals in the motor cortex. With the help of artificial intelligence, they translated those faint signals into words with up to 74% accuracy from a 125,000-word vocabulary.

“We’re recording the signals as they’re attempting to speak and translating those neural signals into the words that they’re trying to say,” said Erin Kunz, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford’s Neural Prosthetics Translational Laboratory.

But this technological leap has raised red flags among critics who warn of a dystopian future where your private thoughts could be exposed.

Nita Farahany, a Duke University law and philosophy professor and author of The Battle for Your Brain, sounded the alarm telling NPR, “The more we push this research forward, the more transparent our brains become.”

Farahany expressed concern that tech giants like Apple, Google, and Meta could exploit BCIs to access consumers’ minds without consent, urging safeguards like passwords to protect thoughts meant to stay private.

“We have to recognize that this new era of brain transparency really is an entirely new frontier for us,” Farahany said.

While the world fixates on artificial intelligence, some of the tech industry’s heaviest hitters are pouring billions into BCIs. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has raised $1.2 billion for his Neuralink venture, which is now conducting clinical trials with top institutions like the Barrow Neurological Institute, The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, and the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi.

Now, another tech titan is entering the fray.

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Automating Pregnancy through Robot Surrogates

The most human of experiences has been automated as China unveiled a new AI robot that is capable of carrying a fetus to full term, replicating the entire pregnancy process from conception to birth. Kaiwa Technology in Guangzhou plans to release these robots in 2026 for $1,400, or a small fraction of what couples pay for surrogates. Has science gone to far in the quest to play God?

These “pregnancy robots” are vastly different from traditional incubators that are utilized for premature or at-risk newborns. The fetus develops within the robot’s artificial womb in synthetic amniotic fluid. Scientists have developed artificial placentas equipped with a tube system operated by AI, which can feed the baby oxygen and nutrients during gestation. Humans have never procreated through an artificial womb nor has a robot replicated the whole gestation process.

Surrogacy was deemed unethical, and the Chinese government banned the practice in 2001. The government prohibited the trade of ova, sperm, embryos, and other related reproductive items. If not outright banned, most nations have a complicated legal framework surrounding surrogacy and parental rights. The Chinese government believes gestational surrogacy exploits women in poverty, and the law recognizes the birthing mother as the legal mother. Still, repealing the one-child policy and infertility have caused a spike in interest.

Some believe this technology will be a breakthrough for couples suffering from infertility. Outside China, same-sex couples could also benefit from AI-driven surrogacy that costs a fraction of the price. Women may not be exploited for their wombs, but what about the babies born to non-human figures?

The mother-child relationship is the genesis of life and creation. The age-old debate of nature v nurture always concludes that both are essential. Scientists conducted a number of unethical studies during the last World War to see what would happen if a baby were deprived of nurture. Naturally, these studies could never be replicated again.

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A 2025 Assessment: The Emerging Artificial Intelligence Threat

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has been alarmingly rapid since 2022. Before then, AI was considered little more than a plaything or a novelty.  But now it is transforming businesses, wiping out entire categories of office jobs, and threatening human liberty. The first practical release of the Claude AI code-writing tool just by itself has completely transformed the global software industry. I’m talking about a Buggy Whips level of industry transformation. As a personal illustration, I should mention that my youngest son is now in his third year at a university here in The American Redoubt, studying for a degree in computer science. His prospects for finding a job when he graduates in 2027 have dropped dramatically since his freshman year. I’m now advising him to pursue a career in software design rather than programming. Otherwise, he’ll be another buggy whip maker.

AI has also changed the blogosphere.  It has been estimated that by the end of 2026, nearly 90 percent of blogs will be written by AI. The Internet will be flooded with AI-generated schlock, and it will become more difficult to differentiate between that which is human-written and AI-written. The same is happening with video blogs (“vlogs”). In another year, it will be hard to tell if a vlog host is a real living, breathing individual, or something AI-generated.  By the way, don’t worry about SurvivalBlog. We shall stalwartly remain one of the last of the Old School blogs. Take that, you Clankers!

I don’t want to sound like a prophet of doom, but the advance of AI troubles me deeply.  We’ve been warning about the threats posed by AI in SurvivalBlog since 2014.

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Thousands Of Grok chats Now Searchable On Google

Hundreds of thousands of conversations that users had with Elon Musk’s xAI chatbot Grok are easily accessible through Google Search, reports Forbes.

Whenever a Grok user clicks the “share” button on a conversation with the chatbot, it creates a unique URL that the user can use to share the conversation via email, text, or on social media. According to Forbes, those URLs are being indexed by search engines like Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo, which in turn lets anyone look up those conversations on the web. 

Users of Meta‘s and OpenAI‘s chatbots were recently affected by a similar problem, and like those cases, the chats leaked by Grok give us a glimpse into users’ less-than-respectable desires — questions about how to hack crypto wallets; dirty chats with an explicit AI persona; and asking for instructions on cooking meth. 

xAI’s rules prohibit the use of its bot to “promote critically harming human life” or developing “bioweapons, chemical weapons, or weapons of mass destruction,” though that obviously hasn’t stopped users from asking Grok for help with such things anyway.

According to conversations made accessible by Google, Grok gave users instructions on making fentanyl, listed various suicide methods, handed out bomb construction tips, and even provided a detailed plan for the assassination of Elon Musk.

xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. We’ve also asked when xAI began indexing Grok conversations.

Late last month, ChatGPT users sounded the alarm that their chats were being indexed on Google, which OpenAI described as a “short-lived experiment.” In a post Musk quote-tweeted with the words “Grok ftw,” Grok explained that it had “no such sharing feature” and “prioritize[s] privacy.”

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Democrats Can’t Take A Joke, So They’re Trying To Outlaw Free Speech

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., wants to make one thing perfectly clear: She has never said Sydney Sweeney has “perfect [breasts].” Nor has she accused her fellow Democrats of being “too fat to wear jeans or too ugly to go outside.”

The Minnesota leftist attempted to clear the air earlier this week in a New York Times opinion piece headlined, “Amy Klobuchar: What I Didn’t Say About Sydney Sweeney.” 

Klobuchar wrote that she is the victim of a hoax, a “realistic deepfake.” Some trickster apparently put together and pushed out an AI-generated video in which Klobuchar appears to make (hilariously) outrageous comments about Sweeney’s American Eagle jeans ad — after liberals charged that the commercial is racist and an endorsement of eugenics. 

‘Party of Ugly People’

The doctored Klobuchar appears to be speaking at a Senate committee hearing, She demands Democrats receive “representation.” Of course, the satirical video has gone viral. 

“If Republicans are going to have beautiful girls with perfect ti**ies” in their ads, we want ads for Democrats, too, you know?” the fake Klobuchar asserts in the vid. “We want ugly, fat bitches wearing pink wigs and long-ass fake nails being loud and twerking on top of a cop car at a Waffle House ‘cause they didn’t get extra ketchup.”

“Just because we’re the party of ugly people doesn’t mean we can’t be featured in ads, okay?” the AI Amy implores. “And I know most of us are too fat to wear jeans or too ugly to go outside, but we want representation.” 

She appears — and sounds — so sincere.  But Klobuchar wants you to know it certainly was not her saying such “vulgar and absurd” things. That’s why she’s urging Congress to pass laws to ban such AI videos, which would be as absurd as social justice warriors calling American Eagle white supremacists for paying a blue jeans-clad, beautiful actress to say she has great jeans. 

Any such law would certainly and rightly be challenged in court. 

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How Managers Are Using AI To Hire And Fire People

The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace is evolving rapidly, and some are warning that using AI to make executive decisions without careful consideration could backfire.

AI is being used more and more in recruitment, hiring, and performance evaluations that could lead to a promotion or termination.

Researchers, legal experts, legislators, and groups such as Human Rights Watch have expressed concern over the potential that AI algorithms are a gateway to ethical quagmires, including marginalization and discrimination in the workplace.

This warning bell isn’t new, but with more managers using AI to assist with important staff decisions, the risk of reducing employees to numbers and graphs also grows.

A Resume Builder survey released in June found that among a group of 1,342 managers in the United States, 78 percent use AI tools to determine raises, 77 percent use it for promotions, 66 percent use it for layoffs, and 64 percent use it for terminations.

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US Space Command Prepares For Satellite Vs. Satellite Combat

Late last year, an American military satellite and a French counterpart carried out a delicate orbital maneuver that signals a new phase in U.S. space operations. The two conducted a rendezvous and proximity operation (RPO) near an undisclosed foreign satellite (likely Russian), testing the ability to approach, inspect, and potentially manipulate another nation’s asset.

According to General Stephen Whiting, head of U.S. Space Command, the exercise demonstrated close coordination with France and reflected growing threats in orbit. “The French have talked about Russian maneuvers [near French satellites] over the years,” Gen. Whiting said. “And so…we demonstrated that we could both maneuver satellites near each other and near other countries’ satellites in a way that signaled our ability to operate well together.”

The success of the exercise, the first of its kind between the U.S. and a country outside the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, has prompted plans to repeat it later this year, according to The Economist.

Space Command, re-established in 2019 during President Donald Trump’s first term, has largely focused until now on building its headquarters and expanding staff. Gen. Whiting says that phase is over. “We now have a combatant command focused on war fighting in space,” he said.

Two developments are driving that shift:

  • Rising reliance on satellites for military operations. Gen. Whiting noted that America’s strike on Iran in June was “space enabled.”
  • Expanding threats from China and Russia. Since 2015, Chinese satellite launches have increased eightfold, and Beijing’s capabilities now surpass Russia’s, U.S. officials say. China, Russia, and India have all tested destructive anti-satellite weapons, and Washington accuses Moscow of developing an orbital nuclear weapon capable of disabling thousands of low-Earth orbit satellites.

Guess we don’t have space lasers after all?

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