Baidu’s metaverse has recently been captured by “hackers” around the world!
How can you miss such a big melon, let’s go to find out.
The location of the incident is said to be in the westernmost part of the world of Baidu Xiyong, which happens to be the place where several new buildings were newly “built” not long ago.
The rumors are not false, as expected, it is already crowded.
Out of curiosity, I pulled over a big brother next to me and hurriedly asked, “Is this place really occupied by hackers?”
The elder brother answered without hesitation: “That’s right.”
“Why?” I quickly asked.
The elder brother looked at me with contempt, and only a few words came out of his mouth:
DEF CON, understand?
It turns out that DEF CON, known as the “Oscar” in the security field and the top conference in the global network security field, moved its 30th conference to the Metaverse for the first time.
And this new “cover” venue is called DEF CONstruct, and it is said that the name is still from Jeff Moss, the founder of the conference.
He superimposes the repeated “con” parts of the two words, which is a little subtle.
It is also said to be a tribute to the science fiction novel Neuromancer published in 1984. This novel depicts a virtual world similar to the metaverse, which is more than the well-known novel Avalanche that first proposed the concept of “metaverse”. morning.
As for the “hackers” in the rumors, they are naturally security experts from all over the world, as well as geeks who are obsessed with security technology such as Red Hat and White Hat.
But there is one thing to say.
DEF CON has been famous for its GEEK spirit and high activity since its establishment.
This time, the whole process was carried out in Baidu Xiyang, and the atmosphere was set off here. The quality of the effect is worth discussing.
Is the atmosphere of the GEEK circle in the Metaverse in place?
Without further ado, the experience is over.
After entering the square, in the crowd of Wuyangyang, there is a geek behavior that stands out (the kind that jumps directly into the eyes).
He is the vice president of Baidu, Ma Jie. In 2018, he joined hands with DEF CON to introduce the world’s top security industry conference into China for the first time.
Not only that, there is a big brother in the center of the square and even showed off a trapeze.
He is wearing the standard costume of The Matrix, stepping on “Hot Wheels”, and playing rock with a guitar.
And this person is not small, it is the founder of DEF CON Jeff Moss.
(It is said to be a tribute to the classic section of guitar fire in “Mad Max”)
But when it comes to “iconic characters”, apart from the two big guys above, how can there be no “big pineapple”.
Big Pineapple is one of the most famous fans of DEF CON. Before that, he would go to Las Vegas to check in almost every year.
And the reason he was called the Big Pineapple was because he would walk around the scene with a bunch of equipment with antennas on his back.
The device, called WiFi cactus, monitors which networks are available, who is connecting to whom over Wi-Fi, and how.
While his intention was to impress on-site attendees of the horrors of connecting to unfamiliar WiFi, the device looked so pineapple-like that the geeks gave him that nickname.
Then in Baidu Xirong DEF CONstruct, the figure of the big pineapple really appeared:
It can be said that it not only restores the characters one-to-one, but also allows the metaverse DEF CON to retain that familiar flavor.
However, after all, it is a top security meeting. Although the scene in the Metaverse is lively enough, how about the academic exchanges such as the serious KeyNote?
Let’s take a look at the venue.
It is understood that this conference is fully synchronized with DEF CON 30, and the three-day zero-day live broadcast in Las Vegas will be conducted for global geeks through Xiyang, covering core links including KEYNOTE, VILLAGE and CONTEST. The immersive experience and multiple forms of interaction, deliver the most cutting-edge research results in the field of network security, and demonstrate the spirit of exploration and creativity of geeks.
In addition, BCTF·AutoDriving, co-organized by Baidu Safety BCTF and the University of California, Irvine, also entered CONTEST for the second consecutive year at this DEF CON 30, continuing to contribute to the safety practice in the field of autonomous driving. Involves 6 types of autopilot classic scenarios and functions (24 questions in total):
- § Lane Detection: Build adversarial patches and send false signals to sensors.
- § LiDAR Spoofing Forensics: Investigating safety incidents related to autonomous driving.
- § GPS Spoofing: Deceptive detection and false obstacle detection on sensor input.
- § Adversarial NPC: Creates dangerous traffic patterns to detect the robustness of automated driving system designs.
- ADC Programming: Create intelligent path planning programs to accomplish dangerous tasks that are difficult to achieve with manned driving.
- §Traffic Sign: Creates an adversarial attack pattern to stop the autopilot system
In addition, participating in this competition will have a feeling of breaking through, and the difficulty will increase step by step. Players need to answer in order to unlock the difficult questions.
The above is the experience of participating in the top meeting in the Metaverse.
And one more thing, I have also come to Xiyang to participate in activities before, but this time the experience is really different.
The biggest difference comes from the picture quality.
A year ago, the effect of opening Xiron was like this:
To be honest, the experience is really not that good.
This time, the picture quality, characters and many other details have been greatly improved.
The reason is that Xi Rong’s version has been iteratively updated, and the person in charge Ma Jie explained:
At the beginning of 2021, Xi Rong’s version was -7.0. At that time, it was thought that it would take 7 years to reach the origin.
And the functions of Xi Rong at that time were particularly imperfect. I also joked that Xi Rong at that time was just a plate of spicy chicken. There was no function in it, and it was all bugs.
It’s version -5.5 now, but the Metaverse is a very complex and complete system.
I still think it’s early days and there are a lot of imperfections, but compared to the time when all the chili peppers couldn’t find chicken, now I think there are at least some interesting chicken nuggets that you can try.
Metaverse conferences have always been an important application scenario for Metaverse innovation at home and abroad.
Since the end of last year, Baidu Xiyang took the lead in building the first super venue that can accommodate 100,000 people interacting on the same screen, Xiyang Metaverse World has successfully held more than ten national industry conferences and major conferences, and completed A number of metaverse spaces for different industries have been established, and a series of important progress and technological breakthroughs have been made.
At this DEF CON 30 CHINA Party, Baidu Xirong brought a series of new experiences to geeks.
From the newly completed landmark building “DEF CONstruct”, to the digital exclusive virtual Badge badge, to the venue and interaction with a typical geek style, it not only became the core venue of this event, but also became a showcase for the history of DEF CON. , an important interactive platform to spread the geek spirit and promote the popularization of network security.
But then again, is a computer security conference really a safe choice in the Metaverse?
Computer Security Conference in the Metaverse, is it safe?
Whether the metaverse is safe, to put it bluntly, it is still whether the technology behind the metaverse is safe.
Whether there will be vulnerabilities exploited or even used in attacks.
In addition to dealing with traditional security issues, the metaverse with artificial intelligence technology as one of the important infrastructures is more worth considering the emerging AI security issues.
Situations such as adversarial attacks using AI algorithm vulnerabilities, potential security risks in AI applications, or data leakage, etc., may all occur in the Metaverse, including but not limited to the theft of digital collections obtained, and the “scratching of wool” by AI algorithms. ”, online meeting rooms were invaded by hackers, etc.
In this regard, Baidu summarizes these new computer network security issues in the era of the intelligent economy, and pioneered three dimensions of AI security research in the industry—Security (strong adversarial security), Safety (non-adversarial security) and Privacy (privacy & data security) .
Strong against security, a “cat and mouse” game between white hat and black hat hackers. In the traditional security field, it may be a scenario where penetration testing is used to prevent vulnerability attacks. In the AI field, it includes attacking with algorithm vulnerabilities, such as a photo breaking through an automatic driving/face recognition system.
The difference between non-adversarial security and strong confrontational security is that it is not artificial, and the attacks may come from application scenarios or even natural environments. Environmental factors such as light and weather make AI “disordered”.
Privacy & data security is related to the data required for AI training and the privacy security brought by big data applications. For example, once the data behind the face recognition system is leaked, it may face further problems such as property security.
After being superimposed with traditional hardware security and cyberspace security issues, the metaverse security issue has become a collection of old and new security issues.
In order to ensure the security of the DEF CON online conference, Baidu has made preparations from two aspects.
On the one hand, the original protection system was migrated and upgraded and adapted to the metaverse.
In addition to traditional anti-intrusion and anti-violence attack technologies, it also comes with a risk control system for cracking down on black products (such as mining scripts, detecting illegal words, etc.) and the wool party. Safety issues are constantly being improved.
As for the adversarial samples and techniques for attacking AI algorithms, Baidu has been packaged into a set of tools, Paddlesleeve, which is provided to AI researchers in a flying paddle, so that they can design more secure algorithms.
On the other hand, communicate with hardware manufacturers, chip manufacturers and even more technology manufacturers, and cooperate at different levels to solve more potential security problems.
For example, according to Ma Jie, vice president of Baidu, at DEF CON CHINA a few years ago, there was a security issue that impressed him, and it was related to the fix for a ghost vulnerability on the CPU of an international chip giant.
At that time, after research by Baidu researchers, they found that this repair plan “also has loopholes”, and raised questions at the conference, which was finally taken seriously and adopted.
But on the other hand, as one of the application scenarios of new technologies, the Metaverse does not only bring new security problems, but also opens up ideas for solving traditional security problems.
For example, let self-driving cars be tested in the metaverse, creating random scenarios that are closer to the effects of road tests.
Based on this idea, Baidu made a project called “Iron Horse Glacier”, which is like a “treadmill” for a car, using rendering and AI technology to virtualize road conditions, but the car will respond physically in the real world .
Compared with the automatic driving simulation system that can only be simulated in the computer, “Iron Horse Glacier” can not only detect more potential safety problems on hardware devices, but also combine environmental safety problems more freely.
And in mid-June of this year, it also landed on Baidu Xiyang. As a result, researchers can incarnate NPCs and interact with test vehicles in a more realistic way, so as to better capture and feedback the safety that autonomous driving needs to face when encountering various artificial emergencies. hidden danger.
While ensuring the safety test effect, combine physical and virtual to create a random situation that is closer to the real road test effect, reducing the overall cost of the test.
At present, Baidu is using fuzzing to permutate and combine severe weather environments by changing input parameters, and train the autonomous driving system to adapt to this climate in the “Iron Horse Glacier” to deal with more non-confrontational safety issues.
Now, “Iron Horse Glacier” has been put into practice in application scenarios such as automatic driving model safety evaluation and intelligent cockpit interaction design.
The emphasis on safety issues has also made substantial progress in autonomous driving. Baidu has recently become the first commercial operation license approved for pure unmanned driving in Chongqing and Wuhan, and the safety officer has been removed.
Of course, if you look a little further, not only the metaverse itself, but also more AI technologies in the metaverse can also be applied to the solution of traditional security problems, including the detection of deep forgery with AI against AI, the use of machines Learn to do data privacy protection and more.
For example, in the field of AIoT, Baidu has recently developed a tool to detect Unix Domain Socket (UDS) service vulnerabilities in Android systems, helping companies discover 12 UDS service security vulnerabilities, and related topics have been listed on the top security conference Black Hat.
In addition, in the fields of cloud computing, industry, Internet of Vehicles, and data security, AI security applications can also be seen, such as detecting the safe production environment of workshops, assisting the safe and orderly circulation of data elements, and combating Internet black production.
Going back to this DEF CON, Baidu’s hosting of this global security conference in the Metaverse is more than just discussing security itself.
What does DEF CON’s move mean?
The successful holding of DEF CON actually means that the Metaverse has the ability to “break the circle”.
Whether it is from offline gatherings or online exhibitions, compared to the previous time when you could only go to Las Vegas or watch live broadcasts, the holding of DEF CON in the Metaverse this time is obviously attractive. More “outsiders” were involved.
There are not only domestic and foreign geeks who are studying different security fields, but also many researchers who are purely interested in AI technology, and even technology enthusiasts who just came to Xiyang to visit the Metaverse, but were attracted by the atmosphere of DEF CON.
As the provider behind the “infrastructure” of the metaverse, Baidu, the reason for holding this event is not only because Xiyang has the technology that can accommodate 100,000 people to interact with the screen, or has intelligent vision, natural language understanding and knowledge AI algorithms such as Graph, and metaverse “infrastructure” such as cloud computing power.
Fundamentally speaking, it is because the Metaverse has the potential to break down geographical and circle barriers and bring cross-innovation to more technological fields.
As Maggie said:
Thirty years ago, DEF CON seemed like a whim at the time, but who knew that the butterfly wings could be up to now, maybe even 60 years later.
So, at this point in time, in this small and very imperfect metaverse, we are officially presenting DEF CON for the first time, and the ripples of it may be interesting to see 30 years from now.
From another point of view, the fields and methods that rely on the metaverse to “break the circle” are not limited to the computer network security conference.
Looking at a wider field, in addition to academic conferences, there are more potential application scenarios in industry, art, education, etc. in the metaverse.
For example, if you hold a car digital exhibition in the Metaverse, you can now experience the scene in the car, and you can directly visit the manufacturing process of the whole car in the digital factory in the future:
Or learn case interpretation in the virtual classroom of Metaverse, and experience the feeling of a trial of “Zhang San”:
Artists such as Ma Yansong have room to further develop their imagination in the metaverse. Whether it is architecture or painting, they can create many works that may not be realized in the real world…
If you can’t go to the site and are interested in DEF CON or the Metaverse, you can go to Xiyong to experience a wave~
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