Finance edition
This week is about who can get to your numbers: through a share link, an agent, a consulting firm or a fake colleague.
Shared chats with Meta Muse turned out to be findable with a search query
Muse is a new AI assistant from Meta. Users could share a chat through a link. Researchers at the security company Claroc found 6,800 such links with a search query. After opening a few hundred links, they came across information that should not have been public. It included a loan application from a small business owner and an internal revenue report for a CEO. There was also a report of bank fraud that included part of an account number, and a report from a real estate investor with addresses and exact return figures. Claroc reported this to Meta on 8 October, but says it got no reply. Meta says the sharing of chats has now been stopped. The company is looking at the report and considering changes to how the links can be found.
Background for subscribersMake a list of the AI tools and services that receive your financial data. For each line, note who else can get to it: through a share link, through an agent with access to your systems, or through a consulting firm that uses AI. Where you cannot answer that question, an agreement is still missing.
PHP flaw takes many Dutch websites down
Many websites went offline as a precaution, including RTL Nieuws, DigiD, MijnOverheid and the website of the Tweede Kamer. The cause is a flaw in PHP, a programming language that many websites run on. There are two bugs, and both score 9.2 out of 10. Anyone who exploits them can break into a site and, for example, steal customer data. A fix only came around 4 pm, and the flaw already seemed to have been exploited for hours. No concrete examples of abuse are known yet, but it cannot be ruled out. The patch, the repair, is online. Sites still have to install it. Smaller companies and hobby sites often update late and stay extra vulnerable. The ethical hackers who found the flaw used AI. For your work, you will mostly notice this through DigiD: things that depend on it, such as tax matters, could stand still for a while.
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