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Japan enacts new Active Cyberdefense Law allowing for offensive cyber operations

The new bill shifts Japan’s strategy from defensive cybersecurity to active threat disruption, similar to approaches in other countries like the U.S. However, it uniquely empowers military and law enforcement to take preemptive actions, including deploying ‘cyber harm prevention officers’ to disrupt enemy servers without explicit oversight during critical incidents, raising concerns about potential ‘vigilante (…)

Nintendo says your Switch 2 isn’t really yours even if you paid for it

Companies are taking advantage of the digital world to keep control over physical devices, even after you buy them. The latest licensing terms of the Nintendo Switch 2 contains wording that allows the company to permanently disable the console if it determines you’ve violated their terms. This highlights a serious trust concern: even after paying (…)

Democratizing large-scale AI for the benefit of society: Open calls for disruptive ideas

Posted on by Marwa Rezziki

In addition to its core research activities as outlined below, the Swiss AI Initiative is distributing 10-20 million GPU hours in 2025 for disruptive research projects through open calls. We look for research projects that aim to contribute to advances in AI fundamentals or impactful applications of AI. Researchers outside of Switzerland are encouraged to apply if they team up with at least one of our PIs and aim to create novel open science artifacts that benefit the Swiss, European or global ecosystem and societal context.

Book Review: “The Tech Coup – How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley” – Marietje Schaake (2024)

Posted on by Melanie Kolbe-Guyot

In our latest edition of the C4DT Digital Governance Book Review, we discuss Marietje Schaake’s book which explores the deep intertwining of Big Tech with politics, highlighting its threat to democracy and proposing practical regulatory solutions to reclaim democratic processes and safeguard state sovereignty.    

Book Review: The Tech Coup – How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley (2024)

Schaake, Marietje (2024). The Tech Coup – How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley. Princeton University Press, 336 pages. By Melanie Kolbe-Guyot It is safe to say that probably no other book should more be on your reading list this year than Marietje Schaake’s 2024 “The Tech Coup – How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley”. (…)

Factory Update, Fall 2024

Welcome to the Factory Update for Fall 2024. Twice a year we take the time to present some of the projects we see coming out of our affiliated labs and give you a short summary of what we’ve been doing the past 12 months. Please also give us a short feedback on what you most (…)

We finally have an ‘official’ definition for open source AI

I found this article fascinating since it highlights the complexity of defining what ‘open-source AI’ should mean. Today, it is a confusing topic, with many models being ‘open-source’ in name only. For neural networks, training data and source code are inseparable; together, they define how the model is programmed. Therefore, should we be allowed to (…)

TikTok executives know about app’s effect on teens, lawsuit documents allege

The leaked internal TikTok documents confirm the long-held suspicion that we urgently need to stop entrusting social media companies with putting up safety-rails. Dampening addictive features, bursting filter bubbles and moderating content directly contradicts maximising user engagement, the metric by which such companies live and die. We need binding regulations with real teeth to protect (…)

Curtain Call for our Demonstrators: A Summary

  One of our jobs at the C4DT Factory is to work on promising projects from our affiliated labs. This helps the faculties translate their research into formats accessible to different audiences. For a newly on-boarded project, we evaluate its current state and identify the required steps towards a final product. We may then also (…)

Crypto is betting it all on the 2024 elections

“In the US, despite public skepticism and lack of trust, the crypto-currency industry is determined to assert its influence in Washington, spending record amounts on political campaigns. I find it interesting how they are giving the subject a prominent place on the political agenda, when it’s clearly not a priority concern for the majority of (…)

[seal] call for projects

Posted on by Katherine Loh

Canton Vaud’s [seal] Program funds projects in digital trust and cybersecurity with up to CHF 100K or 90% of cost ! The aim of this latest call for projects is to stimulate collaborative innovation in order to propose solutions that help meet the challenges of multimedia content security, from data confidentiality to emerging threats linked (…)

AI in Public Sector Decision-Making: Challenges, Risks, and Recommendations

This white paper will analyze the extent to which concerns surrounding different classes of public sector use of AI—process automation, AI-driven decision-making, and citizen service delivery with AI tools—differ, consider the existing national and supranational regulatory frameworks, and develop recommendations for strategic areas necessary to guide the usage of AI decision-making tools in the public sector. To achieve this the project will include document analysis, stakeholder interviews, and comparative research from other countries’ use cases and regulations.

Pitfalls in Fine-Tuning LLMs

On the 19th of June 2024 the C4DT Factory organized a hands-on workshop to show what can go wrong when Large Language Models (LLMs) are fine-tuned. It was a pleasure working with our partners from armasuisse, FOITT (BIT), ELCA, ICRC, Kudelski Security, SICPA, Swiss Post, and Swissquote. LLMs take the world by storm, but for (…)

Strategic Academic Alliance for Innovation in Cybersecurity and Digital Trust

Posted on by Camille Montemagni

A noteworthy development in the field of innovation sees EPFL, HEIG-VD and UNIL joining forces at the highest level, with the support of the Canton of Vaud, to unveil the outline of the [seal] Program. This initiative aims to stimulate collaboration between the three universities and accelerate the transfer of knowledge and technologies to the socio-economic fabric in the field of digital trust and cybersecurity. The launch of the Program includes a first call for projects dealing with cybercrime. Just as innovation drives our economy, digitalization drives innovation, and trust drives digitalization. In this context of the rapid digitization of our society, the notion of trust and security is at the heart of all concerns.

Trust Valley : Global Encryption Forum 2023

The Global Encryption Forum, which will be held at the unlimitrust campus on 19 October in Lausanne. Industry leaders, experts, and professionals (including EPFL Professors Jean-Pierre Hubaux and Serge Vaudenay), are brought together to delve into the intricate web of encryption’s economic implications in our interconnected world.

Navigating the Complex Terrain of Software Supply-Chain Security: Challenges, Solutions, and Future Perspectives

Posted on by Melanie Kolbe-Guyot

By Imad Aad, Technical Project Manager, C4DT *This blog post has been written as part of the Geneva Dialogue on Responsible Behavior in Cyberspace.   Everyone can develop software, and the resulting quality can vary considerably. There is no single ‘right way’ to write code and reach a given goal. Numerous technologies exist with increasing (…)

asdf: a great way to manage all developers CLI tools

Do you ever code in modern Javascript? Then if you have multiple projects you are probably happy that nvm exists. Or maybe you’re more of a Python person? Then you must know about pyenv. Java? jenv or sdkman! Thing is, you often need to have multiple versions of a tool or binary installed when you (…)