Archinect - News

Hackers are using architects’ computers for crypto-mining, cybersecurity firm warns

2023-09-08T11:09:00-04:00

Cybersecurity firm Cisco Talos is warning of the potential for hackers to target architects and other designers with crypto-mining malware. The hacking campaign, which has largely targeted French-speaking architects, engineers, and graphic designers, sees the victim’s computer infected with malware via installer tools.

“Cybercriminals are abusing Advanced Installer, a legitimate Windows tool used for creating software packages, to drop cryptocurrency-mining malware on infected machines,” Cisco Talos explains.

The vulnerability centers on Advanced Installer, a package used in the installations of legitimate software installers such as Adobe Illustrator, Autodesk Revit, and SketchUp. The hackers package such installers with malicious scripts and use Advanced Installer’s Custom Actions feature to make the software installers execute the malicious scripts.

The resulting malware allows h...

BIG’s cybersecurity and AI hub imitates its surrounding hills in Slovakia

2021-11-30T14:26:00-05:00

Days after BIG’s conceptual floating city idea was adopted by South Korea, the firm has unveiled its design for the European AI and Cybersecurity Hub on the ESET Campus in Bratislava, Slovakia. The 55,000-square-meter (590,000-square-foot) headquarters consists of twelve individual buildings organized around a central courtyard, with a form echoing the surrounding Carpathian Mountains.

Image by BLOOM

The campus replaces a former military hospital on the site and will house ESET’s 1,500-strong workforce, who research and develop cybersecurity solutions. Mimicking the peaks of the nearby hills, low-lying buildings along the outer perimeter of the campus are designated as public spaces, while four taller buildings towards the center house ESET’s operations.

Image by BLOOM

“Rather than a single hermetic entity, we have dissolved the ESET Campus into an urban village of interconnected buildings, framing public paths and urban squares,” explains Bjarke Ingels. “The diverse cluster of indivi...

Amazon to re-program human workforce

2019-07-11T16:42:00-04:00

Amazon has increasingly turned to robots and automation technology to fetch products from the shelves of its warehouses to ship to customers. Now the company says it needs to help its workers adapt to the rapid change. The e-commerce giant said on Thursday that it planned to spend $700 million to retrain a third of its workers in the United States, an acknowledgment that advances in technology are remaking the role of workers in nearly every industry.

Amazon is planning to spend $700 million over the next five years retraining 100,000 human workers to help smooth a transition toward greater automation in its operations.

“When automation comes in, it changes the nature of work but there are still pieces of work that will be done by people,” Ardine Williams, Amazon’s vice president of people operations, told The New York Times. She added, “You have the opportunity to up-skill that population so they can, for example, work with the robots.”

The retraining effort, according to The New York Times, will include software engineering classes, part of the company's plan to fill a growing need for data mapping specialists, data scientists, security engineers, and logistics coordinators.

Imagining the future cyberattack that could bring down New York City

2016-06-21T14:46:00-04:00

Copycat attacks sprang up around the world: trains going haywire in Japan; smart thermostats freezing pipes in Minneapolis; Chinese hackers noodling around a water utility in San Francisco. Americans suddenly realized that, although they had spent plenty of time anguishing about how to protect the country’s physical borders, with every device they bought, they had been letting more and more invaders into their cities, their homes, and their lives.

"They had moved everything they did online, thinking they were moving into the future; they woke up the morning after thinking they’d moved into a war zone instead."

This is a great work of speculative fiction that imagines a cyberattack that brings down New York City in the near-future. Self-driving cars smash into the roadside, hospital staff can't access their records, power plants go offline causing mass blackouts.

The article's subheading reads "A scenario that could happen based on what already has." And, indeed, most of the technology described is already in use.

The automation of cars, homes, and entire cities means IRL hacks are a real threat. For more on this, check out Archinect's interview with Joseph Grima of Space Caviar about the RAM House, a prototype dwelling equipped with "airplane mode."

For tips and tricks on how to shore up your cybersecurity, take a look at this handy beginner's guide specifically tailored to architects. And for more content related to changing not...

Are we losing the cyberwar?

2016-06-16T18:09:00-04:00

There are simply too many ways for an attacker to get into your computer now. If you log on to the office network with a smartphone, or if you carry a laptop between work and home..you make it very easy for intruders to enter the office network [..] With Wi-Fi hot spots, which can be easy to tap into, popping up everywhere, and with ever more network-enabled devices entering both the office and the home—smart TVs, smart front-door locks—intruders have a panoply of ways to break into your life.

"Looming darkly over this almost Mordorian cyber threatscape is the prospect of cyber war—a future conflict fought with weaponized code that can do physical damage to infrastructure, and potentially kill people."

According to this New Yorker article, cybersecurity experts look back fondly on the days of computer viruses. The real problem now is cybercrime – and it's increasingly becoming an IRL threat as well, as we make "smart" everything from our houses to our cars to our lightbulbs.

This month, Archinect's coverage includes a special thematic focus on Privacy. For more on the ways that technology is changing our notions of privacy and security, check out some recent articles:

Do you have projects that grapple with cha...

City governments are learning the hard way that there's no one-size-fits-all approach to cybersecurity

2016-04-04T13:09:00-04:00

Among the toughest cybersecurity challenges cities face are recruiting a skilled workforce, increasing education and training for employees on cyberthreats, and taking steps to ensure utility companies and service providers are protecting public water and electrical systems. [...] Cybersecurity experts say large cities are competing with private companies to recruit and retain skilled workers. Smaller cities, particularly in rural areas, often lack staffing and funds for cybersecurity

More cybersecurity and hacker news on Archinect: