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Hackers and digital activists have fully entered the wars waged with digital propaganda, electronic sabotage, cyber espionage and software hacking tools. DDoS attacks, malware, ransomware, but also algorithms, deepfakes, trolls and bots are their weapons. This is how they participate in the hybrid war fought among States. In this scenario, it is alleged that the techniques for manipulating perceptions that exploit digital tools are fully included among the weapons of hybrid warfare, as they are capable of influencing the reactivity of the adversary. In this regard we speak of Cognitive War. This also means that information campaigns are no longer based only on traditional media, but also on digital media, social platforms and direct messaging channels. Among the tools of these campaigns, those of computational propaganda, used to change the mindset of the target, to generate fear, uncertainty, and doubt, are increasingly arousing the concerns of States. The reason is easy to understand: where public opinion is able to influence the choices of the warring parties, manipulation can change the phases of the conflict. In this paper we will try to describe the techniques of computational propaganda and how hacker activists and State hackers can use them. Indeed, in the global election year ahead of us, 2024, computational propaganda could represent a risk for the democratic process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents "The Big Game", a free training and gaming initiative on cybersecurity, digital awareness, and safe use of the Net and social networks, aimed at young people, carried out by the Cybersecurity National Lab of CINI (National Interuniversity Consortium for Informatics), under the sponsorship of the National Cybersecurity Agency - ACN. More than 30 thousand students have been involved so far, thanks also to the development of a network of high schools, which support these activities by accompanying their students in the different organized programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2018 European member states according to the first NIS Directive created their National Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT). CSIRTs manage cyber incidents and cyber threats targeting national digital assets and among their duties they also have to monitor the cyber threat landscape, in order to always have a situational picture and to foresee and anticipate the next cyber attackers move. The paper presents the methodology developed by the Italian CSIRT to represent the current threat landscape, defining, and describing what indicators and metrics are in place and how raw data are collected, processed, and analyzed in order to accurately depict the cyber threat landscape of the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A bogeyman lurks around the world: the fear that intelligent technological beings will substitute human beings in (almost) all their activities, starting from work. In this sense, AI is often perceived as a magical helper, a high technology (maybe the highest one) potentially capable of performing any task. Guided by Gilbert Simondon's takes on technical alienation, this paper argues that automation is actually the lowest form of human-machine interaction. Recalling some milestones in the history of AI, it makes some suggestions on why, regardless of their human design, the so-called 'intelligent' digital machines based on data reduction algorithms, tends to incorporate ideological assumptions, beliefs and values. And by analysing human interactions with search engines, it shows that automated systems implies human-machine mutual conditioning: the more humans address these machines in a mechanically, simple and unambiguous way, the more the latter act 'automatically' and appear 'intelligent'. Drawing on this analysis this paper finally discusses the exploitation of that mutual conditioning mechanics by a myriad of for-profit digital micro-activities. "Trained" machines, in this context, are far away from the ideal of the Simondonian "open machine". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combined work of Turing and Shannon shaped today's "information society", and founded it on a new metaphysics to which we've become so accustomed that we see it as something obvious and natural. But covertly it was set up to be machine-oriented instead of human-oriented, from the very beginning. To highlight the aberrations and hazards of this culture, and what it entails for us humans to live in a machine-biased habitat, in this paper I take help from the lucidity of Karl Marx. As I show with examples from various works, certain topoi of Marx's critique of the political economy of his time can be rewritten by substituting a few keywords, producing a surprisingly relevant analysis of the information society and the role that data and Artificial Intelligence play in it. The explanation for this strange phenomenon stems from the fact that information can be seen as the current upgrade of marxian money, a dehumanizing abstraction and "automatic fetish" that expands itself independently of human needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from a 2002 paper, the author examines the many changes that have occurred or taking place in the sector of the online education. He points out two drivers - technologies and didactical model - as the main elements of the current dynamics. Finally, he indicates collaborative work as an important key for future developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an overall framework of numerical illiteracy (i.e., innumeracy), mathematical games can provide useful introductory tools to critical thinking and the scientific method to deal with logical and probability problems that arise in everyday life. The work provides a unified framework to a number of puzzles, already spread in several papers. The majority of them are somewhat paradoxical, i.e., of counterintuitive solution, but, in addition to being entertaining, allow us to critically and quantitatively evaluate situations, even subjective ones, related to our lives. Many cases, e.g., the controversial Monty Hall problem, a classical brain teaser, can be tackled intuitively, often with the aid of heuristics or rules of thumb, by using very simple arithmetic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the ban of using lightweight free plastic bags effective June 1, 2008 in China. Manufacturing, selling and using bags less than .025 millimeters thick is prohibited. The initiative is undertaken to end the use of flimsiest bags which pollute the waterways, clog the sewers and toxify the ground resulting to flood and damage of marine life.