Using AI to bypass firewalls

I’ve found yet another use for AI: Bypassing firewalls.

If you are accessing a computer behind a firewall and it allows AI like a GPT, but is tightly controlled otherwise, you could use the AI to bypass the firewall.

For example if you can’t read your favourite news feeds you can ask the AI to grab them for you and present them to you in whatever format. As far as the firewall is concerned it just sees traffic from your AI. It is not inspecting the data.

You can ask the AI to get the latest news, visit web sites, get data and other media etc, and all of it comes to you inside the firewall with no alerts.

Not that I am recommending that you do that of course. I’m just pointing out something I discovered, with permission.

I’m sure that most content restriction firewalls will become AI savvy soon enough.

Tracing a purchase

There was a suspicious entry on my credit card bill.

I check all my statements. It has proved to be a useful exercise in the past. Erroneous entries, double entries, and incorrect sums, to name but a few things I’ve spotted over the years.

In this case it was an unrecognised entry for a bar in another county. A bar I’ve never been to, and a county I haven’t visited in many months.

Now a few years ago I would have just picked up the phone and called the credit card company and asked them to explain the transaction. But I’ve become pretty nifty with the old OSINT knowledge. So I put on the deerstalker and started investigating…

First I looked up the company. They had been trading for a decade and their business was listed as bars and restaurants. Plural.

Next I looked at my diary and emails to work out where I was on the date of the entry and several days before, as it can take a couple of days for a payment to be processed. I had visited one reastaurant for a spot of lunch. I checked the restaurants web site but nothing obvious revealed a connection to the bar listed on my statement.

Next I downloaded a PDF of the restaurant’s example lunch menu and worked out what I had ordered including drinks and the estimated bill with taxes etc. We had a match. But still I had to prove it.

I started searching for both the restaurant and the bar’s trading names together, and found one article on Facebook about the bar’s owners venturing further afield and branching out into smaller venues in nearby counties. Eventually I located an article that linked both the bar and restaurant.

I now knew that this was a valid purchase. But how many other people that ate there and paid by card and looked at their statements like I do would think, hang on a minute, what’s this? There was nothing on the menu or in the restaurant that informed me that my bill payment will show up on my statement as X. Nothing. And they were paperless in that they did not do printed receipts.

At least I now know that the transaction wasn’t fraudulent. And I found yet another use for my ever growing OSINT skills.

AI is always polite

Have you noticed that AI is always polite?

No matter what I ask it or how aggressive my follow-on prompts get, it is always polite!

Certainly, of course, well spotted, Yes! Its replies are always positive, upbeat, polite. You have asked a very educated question and I will answer it in a polite and servitude way.

I was watching a TV series set in the 1800s and my interaction with chat AIs reminded me of how the actors spoke in this particular show. People communicating based on class, always polite as if each word was followed by a bow or curtsy. Even if the person you were talking to was a complete ass you would still address them with politeness and an air of servitude.

Maybe the AI system prompts have an Elizabethan politeness function?

Aggressive  energy

I was watching TV and a character said to another “Do you realise that you have aggressive energy?”. I paused to reflect on this as I hadn’t heard that term before.

Aggressive energy.

It’s the perfect term for people that always seem to be on the attack. They seem to spit venom when they talk. They are always angry, aggressive, scary even. Every conversation is a confrontation, a war that they must win.

I find them draining and in my life I have learned to spot and avoid them. Where I am forced to interact with them I keep it as brief as possible. Short and to the point. In and out. No time for a skirmish. Closed questions only. Yes or no. Then move on.

I like the term though and will use it from now on.

Aggressive energy.

New old stock

I came across this expression recently, “new old stock”. 

Apparently it means that something was made or manufactured some time ago but was never sold and is technically still classed as new. 

I found this expression confusing, like an oxymoron. How can something be both new and old? In this particular instance the item was an electronic device that had been manufactured a year ago, placed in storage, and was never sold. So technically it is still new, mint, boxed, etc. However the firmware was out-of-date and needed updating. So if the item is taken out of its box and the firmware is updated, is it still new old stock or is that technically refurbished?

What if some electronic specification or industry standard had changed since the item was manufactured and a part was changed. Is it then still new old stock or is it now reconditioned, or refurbished?

I used to know a freelancer who worked for DELL as a field engineer repairing laptops. DELL would ship a load of parts for laptop models still in warranty so that the engineers always had what they needed in stock. When certain models became out of warranty DELL did not want the spares back so these engineers would sell the parts online for extra cash advertising them as new old stock or like new.

I find it interesting how we define an item’s value in terms of how old it is and how much, if any, use it has had. Bare in mind that something that has been in storage for a long time does not necessarily equate to something that is as good as something manufactured yesterday. I’ve known electronic devices that have been in storage for months and even years to revert back to factory defaults, to have corrupt memory, or for the battery to completely drain, or leak, to the point that it is no longer fit for purpose.

When considering purchasing new old stock it’s worth considering how much time is represented by the “old”. How long has it sat on a shelf? Both new and old are parameters of time. Consider the difference between the new (date of manufacture) and old (today’s date).

When does it get classed as refurbished? When it is taken out of the box and refreshed with new software? Is that classed as still new?

Eternity has no time for regrets

You forget that we are mortal, that our time on earth is not a given. We can all go at any time. We are lucky to have the time that we have.

And then they start dying.

Family members, both near and far, friends both close and distant. You suddenly realise that you are going to more funerals than weddings. Saying goodbyes.

But these goodbyes, though sad with sorrow, are sad for other reasons. They are going before you had a chance to say what you wanted to say, to tell them how you felt, that you appreciated the time you had, however little. To show them who you are and what you have achieved. To show them that you did it, you reached your goals, you did what you said you would.

But now it’s too late. They’re gone. There’s no do-over, no inserting another coin to continue. For them it’s over. Your interaction is no more. You cannot tell them anything.

It hits you like a wave. Not only are they gone but there is no more them. You can’t talk to them, ask them anything, getting the answers to unanswered questions. Game over. It was what it was. Their time has ended while yours continues. Your two timeline’s interactions are over. It was what it was and there is no retrospective.

If this is teaching me anything it’s that I should appreciate the time I have left and to make peace, seek closure, get answers, whatever, with those that are still here, while they are here. Eternity has no time for regrets.

A sense of achievement

I love that feeling of a sense of achievement. Feeling that you’ve accomplished something today. Even if it’s something small. A win is a win.

Some days I can’t go to sleep if I feel like I’ve not accomplished anything today. That I achieved nothing. That nothing was crossed-out on my to do list. No feeling of progress being made.

Life isn’t all about progress. Sometimes you just have to enjoy it. Take a me day. Relax, recover, enjoy.

It’s nice to feel a sense of achievement, and just getting through another day can feel like a sense of achievement in itself. Don’t make life a tick-box exercise. Crossing off items on some imaginary list so that you feel like today had purpose, that it had meaning. Just being here, showing up, living your life is enough.

Everything seems so expensive

Everything seems so expensive.

But is it? 

I asked AI.

It gave a detailed response taking into account inflation, the pandemic, supply chain issues, energy prices, wars, the weather, and just about anything else it could think of.

The answer?

Yes everything is more expensive.

Over the last five years it has accelerated, with salaries, therefore spending power, not keeping up.

Thoughts on AI music

I experimented with listening to AI music. Some of it was good. But I wanted to remove it from my feeds. I couldn’t. It had worked its way into the algorithm. More and more AI music was being suggested to me. I went out of my way to search and play tracks from known human musicians. It got better at offering me better AI music.

There’s more options, of all genres. The AI music creators can churn out tracks in hours, albums in days. So many in fact that you can spot them a mile away. The better ones are harder to spot. Even the mainstream news is picking up on how good they are getting. Being unable to track down evidence of the artists existence in the real world. The artist and label having no real-world presence.

Does it matter if the music is good and you enjoy it? From a consumer perspective, not so much. But from a musicians perspective? If listener count isn’t increasing but the amount of AI music being played is, that means more payments are going to the creators of AI music and not actual musicians. Plus it takes far less time, a lot less time to create AI music than music that requires real instruments, singers, a recording studio, fuel, food, transportation etc.

And I guess it does affect some consumers. The fans. It’s not as if you can follow an AI artist on Instagram. Can you? You certainly can’t go to their live performances, unless they use holograms and a lot of technology. Would you want their autograph? Hey you write great prompts, I loved the end result. Could you sign my iphone?

What are your thoughts on AI music?

When you really put your mind to something

When you really put your mind to something.

When you give it your all, all your focus and energy.

It’s amazing what you can achieve.

But we rarely do it.

We procrastinate, we defer, we ignore, we phone it in.

Imagine what we could achieve if we really put our mind to it.

Gave it all our focus and energy.

Brought our A-game.

Each and every day.