In late August 2023, Ilya Gambashidze was in a conference room at the office of Social Design Agency, a Russian IT company he founded that is based in Moscow, close to the world-renowned Moscow Conservatory. Gambashidze was relatively unknown in Russian politics at the time, but just a month earlier his name had appeared on a Council of the European Union's list of Russian nationals subjected to sanctions for playing a central role in a sprawling disinformation campaign against Ukraine. In the conference room, Gambashidze was laying out his plans for a new target: along with his colleagues, he began drafting what would become known as the "Good Old USA Project." The project was supposed to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in favor of former president Donald Trump, specifically targeting certain minorities, swing state residents, and online gamers, among others, in a scheme that included a full time team dedicated to the cause. On Wednesday, Gambashidze and his company were named by the Department of Justice among the architects of a disinformation campaign known as Doppelganger that has for the last two years been targeting Ukraine, and more recently, the US elections.

Everyone could use a longer battery life on their smartphone. CyberGuy shows you how to change your settings to make your battery last longer. Russian President Vladimir Putin is facing the biggest threat to his authority in decades. It comes after Yevgeny Prigozhin, who leads a private paramilitary group called Wagner, started a violent but brief uprising against Russia that may have long-lasting effects which could bring instability to Putin. If Putin is perceived as weakened by this assault on his leadership, then he is likely to exert aggressive strength in a show of power. CLICK TO GET KURT'S FREE CYBERGUY NEWSLETTER WITH SECURITY ALERTS, QUICK TIPS, TECH REVIEWS AND EASY HOW-TO'S TO MAKE YOU SMARTER What few know is that Vladimir Putin has been building a sophisticated facial recognition surveillance system since 2017 that is likely to be put into overdrive against any citizens willing to take on the views of the Russian leadership and military.

Japan has tightened its sanctions against Russia following its latest wave of missile attacks in Ukraine, adding goods to an export ban list and freezing the assets of Russian officials and entities. The decision on Friday comes after Russia launched missile attacks across Ukraine on Thursday, killing at least 11 people, following a pledge by Germany and the United States to supply tanks that could help Kyiv counter a new Russian offensive. "In light of the situation surrounding Ukraine and to contribute to international efforts to secure peace, Japan will implement export bans in line with other major nations," Japan's Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry said in a press release. Among the new sanctions, Japan will prohibit shipments of items to 49 organisations in Russia from February 3 that could be used to enhance Moscow's military capability. Those will include products ranging from water cannons, gas exploration equipment and semiconductor equipment to vaccines, X-ray inspection equipment, explosives and robots, the ministry said.

Russian cyber-criminals have been observed on dark web forums trying to bypass OpenAI's API restrictions to gain access to the ChatGPT chatbot for nefarious purposes. Various individuals have been observed, for instance, discussing how to use stolen payment cards to pay for upgraded users on OpenAI (thus circumventing the limitations of free accounts). Others have created blog posts on how to bypass the geo controls of OpenAI, and others still have created tutorials explaining how to use semi-legal online SMS services to register to ChatGPT. "Generally, there are a lot of tutorials in Russian semi-legal online SMS services on how to use it to register to ChatGPT, and we have examples that it is already being used," wrote Check Point Research (CPR), which shared the findings with Infosecurity ahead of publication. "It is not extremely difficult to bypass OpenAI's restricting measures for specific countries to access ChatGPT," said Sergey Shykevich, threat intelligence group manager at Check Point Software Technologies.

The United States has announced that it is sanctioning Iranian industries that produce ballistic missiles and drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which the US says have been used to facilitate Russia's war in Ukraine. In a news release on Friday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the sanctions would target seven people in leadership positions at Qods Aviation Industries -- an Iranian UAV manufacturer -- and Iran's Aerospace Industries Organization (AIO), which manages the country's ballistic missile programme. "Iran has now become Russia's top military backer," Blinken said in the statement. "Iran must cease its support for Russia's unprovoked war of aggression in Ukraine, and we will continue to use every tool at our disposal to disrupt and delay these transfers and impose costs on actors engaged in this activity." Iran is fueling Russia's war in Ukraine with its provision of UAV technology. Today, the United States sanctioned seven people involved in Iran's UAV and ballistic missile programs – programs Moscow is using to target Ukraine's critical infrastructure.

After all the dreaming, our technologies can still take unexpected turns, amazing and alarming us. As we agonize through another year about whether, as the Christmas carol says, "the wrong shall fail, the right prevail," I've traditionally started each new year with what I've called "a massive MapReduce on the year gone by" -- a lively lightning round of overlooked moments, in a final closing ceremony for the year gone by. But in asking what was truly significant about 2022, are we also highlighting events that foreshadow things to come? Besides technology playing a role in the world's geopolitical conflicts, there was also one unmistakable trend in 2022 that was both haunting and hilarious. It was the advances in both the performance and the accessibility of AI technology.

British navy personnel planted explosives and blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines last month, Russia's defence ministry says, a claim London called false and designed to distract from Moscow's military failures in Ukraine. Russia did not give evidence for its allegation that a leading NATO member had sabotaged critical Russian infrastructure amid the worst crisis in relations between the West and Moscow since the depths of the Cold War. The Russian ministry alleged "British specialists" from the same unit that directed Ukrainian drone attacks on ships from the Russian Black Sea fleet in Crimea earlier on Saturday were responsible for the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. "According to available information, representatives of this unit of the British Navy took part in the planning, provision and implementation of a terrorist attack in the Baltic Sea on September 26 this year – blowing up the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines," the ministry said. The United Kingdom denied the accusation.

The last year was a busy one for Russia's military and civilian artificial intelligence efforts. Moscow poured money into research and development, and Russia's civil society debated the country's place in the larger AI ecosystem. But Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in February and the resulting sanctions have brought several of those efforts to a halt--and thrown into question just how many of its AI advancements Russia will be able to salvage and continue. Ever since Putin extolled the development of robotic combat systems in the new State Armaments Program in 2020, the Russian Ministry of Defense has been hyper-focused on AI. We have learned more about the Russian military's focus on AI in the past year thanks to several public revelations.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. Microsoft on Monday warned that the same Russian group behind the SolarWinds cyber attack in 2020 has been attempting to "replicate" that approach, now targeting organizations "integral" to the global IT supply chain--specifically, resellers and technology service providers. Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Customer Security & Trust Tom Burt shared the "latest activity" the company has observed from Russian nation-state actor Nobelium. Burt, in a blog post, said Nobelium was identified by the U.S. government and others as being part of Russia's foreign intelligence service, known as the SVR.

Moscow City Hall has been instructed to determine the conditions, requirements and procedure for the development, creation, introduction and implementation of artificial intelligence technologies, as well as the cases and procedures for using the results of the application of artificial intelligence. It is expected that large IT companies using artificial intelligence in the field of medicine, urban infrastructure, face recognition and other uses will take part in the experiment. The Law separately outlines certain provisions relating to the storage and processing of personal data that will be obtained during the experiment. As a result, the Law makes it possible to use the previously anonymised personal data of individuals participating in the experiment to increase the effectiveness of the state or municipal government. However, the Law specifically establishes that such personal data can only be transferred to participants in the experiment and must be stored in Moscow.