BREACH (a backronym: Browser Reconnaissance and Exfiltration via Adaptive Compression of Hypertext) is a security vulnerability against HTTPS when using HTTP compression. BREACH is built based on the CRIME security exploit. BREACH was announced at the August 2013 Black Hat USA conference by security researchers Angelo Prado, Neal Harris and Yoel Gluck. == Details == While the CRIME attack was presented as a general attack that could work effectively against a large number of protocols, only exploits against SPDY request compression and TLS compression were demonstrated and largely mitigated in browsers and servers. The CRIME exploits against HTTP compression has not been mitigated at all, even though the authors of CRIME have warned that this vulnerability might be even more widespread than SPDY and TLS compression combined. BREACH is an instance of the CRIME attack against HTTP compression—the use of gzip or DEFLATE data compression algorithms via the content-encoding option within HTTP by many web browsers and servers. Given this compression oracle, the rest of the BREACH attack follows the same general lines as the CRIME exploit, by performing an initial blind brute-force search to guess a few bytes, followed by divide-and-conquer search to expand a correct guess to an arbitrarily large amount of content. == Mitigation == BREACH exploits the compression in the underlying HTTP protocol. Therefore, turning off TLS compression makes no difference to BREACH, which can still perform a chosen-plaintext attack against the HTTP payload. As a result, clients and servers are either forced to disable HTTP compression completely (thus reducing performance), or to adopt workarounds to try to foil BREACH in individual attack scenarios, such as using cross-site request forgery (CSRF) protection. Another suggested approach is to disable HTTP compression whenever the referrer header indicates a cross-site request, or when the header is not present. This approach allows effective mitigation of the attack without losing functionality, only incurring a performance penalty on affected requests. Another approach is to add padding at the TLS, HTTP header, or payload level. Around 2013–2014, there was an IETF draft proposal for a TLS extension for length-hiding padding that, in theory, could be used as a mitigation against this attack. It allows the actual length of the TLS payload to be disguised by the insertion of padding to round it up to a fixed set of lengths, or to randomize the external length, thereby decreasing the likelihood of detecting small changes in compression ratio that is the basis for the BREACH attack. However, this draft has since expired without further action. A very effective mitigation is HTB (Heal-the-BREACH) that adds random-sized padding to compressed data, providing some variance in the size of the output contents. This randomness delays BREACH from guessing the correct characters in the secret token by a factor of 500 (10-byte max) to 500,000 (100-byte max). HTB protects all websites and pages in the server with minimal CPU usage and minimal bandwidth increase.
Alipay
Alipay (simplified Chinese: 支付宝; traditional Chinese: 支付寶; pinyin: zhīfùbǎo) is a third-party mobile and online payment platform, established in Hangzhou, China, in February 2004 by Alibaba Group and its founder Jack Ma. In 2015, Alipay moved its headquarters to Pudong, Shanghai, although its parent company Ant Financial remains Hangzhou-based. Alipay overtook PayPal as the world's largest mobile (digital) payment platform in 2013. As of June 2020, Alipay serves over 1.3 billion users and 80 million merchants. According to the statistics of the fourth quarter of 2018, Alipay has a 55.32% share of the third-party payment market in mainland China, and it continues to grow. Along with WeChat, Alipay has been described to be China's super-app with a wide range of functionalities including ridesharing, travel booking and medical appointments. == History == The service was first launched in 2003, by Taobao. The People's Bank of China, China's central bank, issued licensing regulations in June 2010 for third-party payment providers. It also issued separate guidelines for foreign-funded payment institutions. Because of this, Alipay, which accounted for half of China's non-bank online payment market, was restructured as a domestic company controlled by Alibaba CEO Jack Ma in order to facilitate the regulatory approval for the license. The 2010 transfer of Alipay's ownership was controversial, with media reports in 2011 that Yahoo! and Softbank (Alibaba Group's controlling shareholders) were not informed of the sale for nominal value. Chinese business publication Century Weekly criticised Ma, who stated that Alibaba Group's board of directors was aware of the transaction. The incident was criticised in foreign and Chinese media as harming foreign trust in making Chinese investments. The ownership dispute was resolved by Alibaba Group, Yahoo!, and Softbank in July 2011. In 2013, Alipay launched a financial product platform called Yu'e Bao. Alipay partnered with Tianhong Asset Management to launch the it. Yu'e Bao offers an online money market account in which Alipay customers can deposit money and receive a higher interest rate than that available from banks. It soon became China's largest online money market fund and prompted competitors like Baidu and Tencent to introduce alternatives. Alibaba (the parent company of Alipay) reported having 152 million Yu'e Bao users in mid-2016, with 810 billion RMB (US$117 billion) in funds under management. In 2015, Alipay's parent company was re-branded as Ant Financial Services Group. In 2017, Alipay unveiled their facial recognition payment service. In 2020, Alipay upgraded from a payment financial instrument to an open platform for digital life. In 2021, the mandate by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) to open up the "walled garden" ecosystems of the major tech companies has led to the introduction of interoperability of payment QR codes of Alipay and competing WeChat Pay and UnionPay's Cloud QuickPass platforms. In response to the increase in Alipay's payment volume due to use on Alibaba's e-commerce sites and others, Chinese regulators introduced new rules in 2020. The new rules focused on Alipay because the payment volume exploded due to its use on Alibaba's e-commerce sites and other platforms. By the second quarter in 2020, Alipay held 55.6% of China's third party mobile payment market. The People's Bank of China made rules that required payment firms to place money with regulators and anti-monopoly reviews would be triggered if the amount exceeded 50% market share. The rules included that the People's Bank of China mandate an online-payment clearing route through the NetsUnion Clearing Corporation, a centralized, state-overseen clearing body, and that unused consumer funds be held by a third-party payment provider in a non-interest-bearing account. These measures increased transparency and reduced systemic risk. When Alipay operates outside of China, it must comply with local financial regulations, which may treat specific functions such as money-market funds or investment-linked products. In Singapore, such services may require prior authorization from securities or financial-services regulators before they can be offered to residents. == Services == Alipay states that it operates with more than 65 financial institutions including Visa and MasterCard to provide payment services for Taobao and Tmall as well as more than 460,000 online and local Chinese businesses. Alipay is used in smartphones with their Alipay Wallet app. QR code payment codes are used for local in-store payments. The Alipay app also provides features such as credit card bill payments, bank account managements, P2P transfer, prepay mobile phone top-up, bus and train ticket purchases, food orders, vehicles for hire, insurance selections and a digital identification document storage. Alipay also allows online check-out on most Chinese-based websites such as Taobao and Tmall. The Alipay app allows users to add their own services provided from different companies to create a more personalised experience. Since late 2008, Alipay has promoted public service payment services and has covered more than 300 cities nationwide, supporting more than 1,200 partner organizations. In addition to utility bills such as water and electricity, Alipay also extends their services to areas such as paying transportation fines, property fees, and cable television fees. Common online payment services also include hydropower coal payment, tuition payment and traffic fine. On 15 January 2009, Alipay launched a credit card repayment service, supporting 39 domestic bank-issued credit cards. It is currently the most popular third-party repayment platform. The main advantages are free credit card bills checking, repayments with no administrative fee, as well as automatic repayment, repayment reminders and other value-added services. In the first quarter of 2014, 76% of credit cards were also paid by Alipay Wallet. From December 2013, several chain convenience store companies, including Meiyijia, Hongqi Chain, and Qishiduo C-STORE and 7-Eleven, have successively supported Alipay payment; in December, Beijing taxi drivers began to accept Alipay to pay the fare. Subsequently, Wanda Cinema, Joy City, Wangfujing and other large-scale retail companies as well as movie theaters, KTV, and catering companies have access to Alipay. From 26 March 2019, the service fee will be charged for the payment of credit card through Alipay. Customers only pay the portion of the payment that exceeds 2,000 yuan at 0.1%. In addition to this, in 2019, Walgreens accepted Alipay as payment in 3,000 US stores. Walgreen's products are available to Chinese customers through Alibaba's Tmall online marketplace. The payment application can also be used on Alibaba.com's site and Taobao as a means of payment. A Nielsen report suggests that over 90% of Chinese tourists would be willing to use mobile payment overseas if given the option. Many Chinese tourists do not have international credit cards, and so Alipay is a payment option. Digital payments have become the norm in China as the government pushes a cashless system even in rural and village areas. In November 2019, Alipay introduced Tourpass, a service component that allows non-Chinese users to use its mobile payment feature by pre-loading Chinese Yuan equivalent foreign currency into the app. In 2020, Alipay used a QR code system to help in containing the COVID-19 outbreak. The health code system tags users one of three colors according to their location, basic health information and travel history. "Beauty filters" were included to Alipay's face-scan payment system in a new upgrade that was released in July 2019. The market has responded well to the "beauty filters," which make users seem better when they use the program to make payments. Alipay Tap is a payment function launched by Alipay in July 2024. Alipay+ NFC enables wallets to offer tap-to-pay acceptance across Mastercard's global contactless network, all within your existing wallet infrastructure. == Foreign expansion == Outside of China, more than 300 worldwide merchants use Alipay to sell directly to consumers in China. It currently supports transactions in 18 foreign currencies. Since the launch of Alipay in the Mainland China, Ant Financial introduced a series of expansion of the services to other countries. Other than expanding into individual countries, the system would also be integrated with online payment platform providers. Ant Group had acquired a majority stake into 2C2P, a Singapore-based provider used by merchants worldwide in April 2022, and would eventually integrate Alipay with 2C2P. === Asia === ==== Bangladesh ==== In 2018, Alipay bought 20% shares in Bangladeshi mobile financial service provider bKash Limited. ==== Hong Kong ==== In 2017, Ant Financial expanded to Hong Kong. In a joint venture with CK Hutchison, as Alipay Payment Ser
Margaret Mitchell (scientist)
Margaret Mitchell is a computer scientist who works on algorithmic bias and fairness in machine learning. She is most well known for her work on automatically removing undesired biases concerning demographic groups from machine learning models, as well as more transparent reporting of their intended use. == Education == Mitchell obtained a bachelor's degree in linguistics from Reed College, Portland, Oregon, in 2005. After having worked as a research assistant at the OGI School of Science and Engineering for two years, she subsequently obtained a Master's in Computational Linguistics from the University of Washington in 2009. She enrolled in a PhD program at the University of Aberdeen, where she wrote a doctoral thesis on the topic of Generating Reference to Visible Objects, graduating in 2013. == Career and research == Mitchell is best known for her work on fairness in machine learning and methods for mitigating algorithmic bias. This includes her work on introducing the concept of 'Model Cards' for more transparent model reporting, and methods for debiasing machine learning models using adversarial learning. Margaret Mitchell created the framework for recognizing and avoiding biases by testing with a variable for the group of interest, predictor and an adversary. In 2012, Mitchell joined the Human Language Technology Center of Excellence at Johns Hopkins University as a postdoctoral researcher, before taking up a position at Microsoft Research in 2013. At Microsoft, Mitchell was the research lead of the Seeing AI project, an app that offers support for the visually impaired by narrating texts and images. In November 2016, she became a senior research scientist at Google Research and Machine intelligence. While at Google, she founded and co-led the Ethical Artificial Intelligence team together with Timnit Gebru. In May 2018, she represented Google in the Partnership on AI. In February 2018, she gave a TED talk on "How we can build AI to help humans, not hurt us". In January 2021, after Timnit Gebru's termination from Google, Mitchell reportedly used a script to search through her corporate account and download emails that allegedly documented discriminatory incidents involving Gebru. An automated system locked Mitchell's account in response. In response to media attention Google claimed that she "exfiltrated thousands of files and shared them with multiple external accounts". After a five-week investigation, Mitchell was fired. Prior to her dismissal, Mitchell had been a vocal advocate for diversity at Google, and had voiced concerns about research censorship at the company. In late 2021, she joined AI start-up Hugging Face. Mitchell is a co-founder of Widening NLP, a special interest group within the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) seeking to increase the proportion of women and minorities working in natural language processing; and Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology, an annual workshop within the ACL that brings together clinicians and computational linguists to advance the state of the art in clinical psychology.
Is an AI Paraphrasing Tool Worth It in 2026?
Curious about the best AI paraphrasing tool? An AI paraphrasing tool is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it combines speed, accuracy, and an interface that just works. Hands-on testing shows real-world results vary, so a short free trial is the smartest way to decide. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI paraphrasing tool slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. This guide breaks down the top picks, their pros and cons, and who each one is best for.
Jollo
Jollo was an online machine translation service where users could instantly translate texts into 23 languages, request human translations from a community of volunteers around the world, and compare the correctness of several leading machine translation websites. It was discontinued in 2012. == System == Jollo was a free Web 2.0 website that attempted to improve the way in which people translate online through the use of existing machine translation websites and a community of volunteers who correct and rate translations. The system relied on a similar methodology as computer-assisted translation to ensure translation quality, and featured a public translation memory that records past translations. Jollo received some notable media attention, including in The Daily Telegraph. According to the blog KillerStartups, Jollo combined the benefits of the speed of machine translations and human reviews to ensure translation quality. According to Jeffrey Hill from The English Blog, the community features made Jollo an interesting alternative to other online translation services. == Development == The Jollo website was classified as beta. It was developed using LAMP and was praised for its colorful graphics and simple user interface. Jollo offered a simple web-based API that could be used for translations. For example, the URL: http://www.jollo.com/translate.php?st=I%20love%20you&sl=en&tl=zh was used to translate the sentence "I love you" from English into Chinese.
Showbox.com
Showbox is an online video streaming platform that enables users to stream and download many videos, commonly movies and TV shows, for free. == History == The company opened the platforms to users who registered from its beta in late 2015. The platform was officially launched in February 2016, enabling any visitor to sign up and create videos online. In April 2016, Showbox was featured on the Product Hunt website, coming to the top of the website's lists for that day and week with over 1400 upvotes from the Product Hunt community. Also in April 2016, Showbox partnered with YouTube's leading multi-channel networks, including Fullscreen, BroadbandTV, StyleHaul, AwesomenessTV, and BuzzMyVideos, to enable their communities of creators to access the platform. In June 2016, the company launched Showbox For Brands, a business-oriented video creation platform, enabling companies to create video content in-house and with their communities and influencers. In March 2017, the company launched Showbox Engage, a use case of its B2B product launched in 2016, enabling companies to launch user-generated content campaigns with their communities. In April 2017, Showbox and the United Nations announced a partnership around the 70th anniversary of the declaration of human rights, with an annual, ongoing global campaign in 135 languages, inviting people worldwide to create their part of the declaration in a video from anywhere around the world. In November 2017, Showbox partnered with the Ad:tech and Digital Marketing World Forum conferences (DMWF) in New York to provide their users and communities with a User Generated Content video solution. == Technology == Showbox's video creation technology includes an online green screen feature, proprietary computer vision algorithms, deep learning technology to support the automatic creation of videos in the cloud, and advanced video composition, including special effects. == Coverage and awards == In March 2015, Showbox was nominated as one of the 10 Israeli startups to take over our TV screens this year. In July 2016, Showbox won the Publicis90 award as part of Publicis' "global initiative to foster digital entrepreneurship". In March 2017, Showbox was chosen as one of The Culture Trip's 10 startups to watch for in 2017.
Anil K. Jain (computer scientist, born 1948)
Anil Kumar Jain (born 1948) is an Indian-American computer scientist and University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Michigan State University. He is one of the most highly cited researchers in computer science, and is internationally recognized for his foundational contributions to pattern recognition, computer vision, and biometric recognition, particularly in fingerprint recognition and face recognition. Jain is a member of the United States National Academy of Engineering, a Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering. He is a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE, AAAS, IAPR, and SPIE. His research has shaped the field of biometrics and has been applied in systems used worldwide for identity verification, law enforcement, and border security. In 2024, he was awarded the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of Information and Communication Technologies. == Early life and education == Born in Basti, India, Jain received his Bachelor of Technology in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1969. He then moved to the United States, where he earned his M.S. in 1970 and Ph.D. in 1973 from Ohio State University. His doctoral dissertation, titled Some Aspects of Dimensionality and Sample Size Problems in Statistical Pattern Recognition, was supervised by Robert B. McGhee and laid the groundwork for his subsequent research in pattern recognition. == Career == Jain began his academic career at Wayne State University, where he taught from 1972 to 1974. In 1974, he joined the faculty of Michigan State University, where he has remained for over five decades and currently holds the position of University Distinguished Professor. Throughout his career, Jain has conducted pioneering research in data clustering, fingerprint recognition, and face recognition. His work has been published in leading scientific journals including Scientific American, Nature, IEEE Spectrum, and MIT Technology Review. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence from 1991 to 1994. Jain has also contributed to national security and policy through his service on several advisory bodies. He served as a member of the U.S. National Academies panels on Information Technology, Whither Biometrics, and Improvised Explosive Devices (IED). He has also served on the Defense Science Board, the Forensic Science Standards Board, and the AAAS Latent Fingerprint Working Group. In 2014, Jain was named Innovator of the Year at Michigan State University for transferring several technologies on face and fingerprint recognition to major players in the biometrics industry. He holds eight U.S. and Korean patents related to biometric technologies. == Research contributions == Jain's research spans pattern recognition, computer vision, machine learning, and biometric recognition. His contributions have been particularly influential in several areas: === Biometric recognition === Jain is considered one of the foremost authorities on biometric recognition systems. His research group at Michigan State University has developed algorithms and systems for fingerprint, face, and iris recognition that have been widely adopted in both academic research and commercial applications. His work on fingerprint matching algorithms has been instrumental in establishing standards for automated fingerprint identification systems (AFIS) used by law enforcement agencies worldwide. In recent years, Jain and his research team have made significant advances in child fingerprint recognition, demonstrating that digital scans of a young child's fingerprint can be correctly recognized one year later with over 99 percent accuracy for children as young as six months old. This research has important implications for child identification in developing countries, where it can be used to track immunization records and provide access to medical care. === Data clustering === Jain's survey article "Data clustering: a review" (1999), co-authored with M. N. Murty and P. J. Flynn, is one of the most highly cited papers in computer science. His 2010 paper "Data Clustering: 50 Years Beyond K-Means" provided a comprehensive overview of the evolution of clustering methods and remains an essential reference in the field. === Statistical pattern recognition === Jain's work on statistical pattern recognition, including his influential survey "Statistical pattern recognition: A review" (2000) with R. P. W. Duin and Jianchang Mao, has shaped the theoretical foundations of the field. == Citation metrics and academic impact == Jain is among the most highly cited researchers in computer science. Based on his Google Scholar profile, he had an h-index of 200 in 2020, which was the highest among computer scientists identified in a survey published by UCLA at the time. As of August 2023, his h-index on Google Scholar is 211. He has since been surpassed by Yoshua Bengio, a researcher of similar subjects (neural networks and deep learning for artificial intelligence), who had an h-index of 224 as of August 2023. Another source reported that as of December 2022, he had the highest discipline h-index (D-index) in computer science. == Honors and awards == Jain has received numerous awards and honors recognizing his contributions to computer science and engineering: === Academy memberships === Member, United States National Academy of Engineering (2016) — elected "for contributions to the engineering and practice of biometrics" Foreign Fellow, Indian National Academy of Engineering (2016) Foreign Member, Chinese Academy of Sciences (2019) Member, The World Academy of Sciences (2019) Fellow, National Academy of Inventors === Professional society fellowships === Fellow, ACM Fellow, IEEE (1988) — for contributions to image processing Fellow, AAAS Fellow, International Association for Pattern Recognition Fellow, SPIE === Major awards === BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Information and Communication Technologies (2024) IAPR King-Sun Fu Prize (2008) IEEE W. Wallace McDowell Award (2007) — the highest technical honor awarded by the IEEE Computer Society, for pioneering contributions to theory, technique, and practice of pattern recognition, computer vision, and biometric recognition systems IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award (2003) IAPR Pierre Devijver Award (2002) Humboldt Research Award (2002) Guggenheim Fellowship (2001) Fulbright Fellowship (1998) IEEE ICDM Research Contribution Award (2008) === Best paper awards === IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks (1996) Pattern Recognition journal (1987, 1991, 2005) === Honorary doctorates === Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (2018) Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (2021) == Legacy and endowments == Two endowed funds have been established in Jain's honor at Michigan State University, recognizing his lasting impact on the field and the university. In 2015, a former visiting scholar from Jain's laboratory made an anonymous $400,000 gift to create the Anil K. Jain Endowed Graduate Fellowship, which supports doctoral-level research in pattern recognition, computer vision, and biometric recognition. In 2022, the Anil K. and Nandita K. Jain Endowed Professorship was established through $1 million in contributions from multiple donors, including a substantial gift from the Jain family, to support faculty recruitment and retention in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. == Selected publications == === Books === 1988. Algorithms For Clustering Data. With Richard C. Dubes. Prentice Hall. 1993. Markov Random Fields: Theory and Applications. With Rama Chellappa eds. Academic Press. 1999. Biometrics: Personal Identification in Networked Society. With Ruud M. Bolle and Sharath Pankanti eds. Springer. 2003. Handbook of Fingerprint Recognition. (2nd edition 2009). With D. Maio, D. Maltoni, S. Prabhakar. Springer. 2005. Handbook of Face Recognition. (2nd edition 2011). With S. Z. Li ed. Springer. 2006. Handbook of Multibiometrics. With A. Ross and K. Nandakumar. Springer. 2007. Handbook of Biometrics. With P. Flynn and A. Ross eds. Springer. 2011. Introduction to Biometrics. With A. Ross and K. Nandakumar. Springer. 2015. Encyclopedia of Biometrics (Second Edition). With Stan Li. Springer. === Research articles === Cross, George R. and Anil K. Jain. "Markov random field texture models". IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (1983): 25–39. Jain, Anil K., and Farshid Farrokhnia. "Unsupervised texture segmentation using Gabor filters". Pattern Recognition 24.12 (1991): 1167–1186. Jain, Anil K., and Douglas Zongker. "Feature selection: Evaluation, application, and small sample performance". IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 19.2 (1997): 153–158. Jain, Anil K., L. Hong, S. Pankanti, R. Bolle. "An Identity-A