Google

Google Launches OSS Rebuild (googleblog.com) 7

Google has announced OSS Rebuild, a new project designed to detect supply chain attacks in open source software by independently reproducing and verifying package builds across major repositories. The initiative, unveiled by the company's Open Source Security Team, targets PyPI (Python), npm (JavaScript/TypeScript), and Crates.io (Rust) packages.

The system, the company said, automatically creates standardized build environments to rebuild packages and compare them against published versions. OSS Rebuild generates SLSA Provenance attestations for thousands of packages, meeting SLSA Build Level 3 requirements without requiring publisher intervention. The project can identify three classes of compromise: unsubmitted source code not present in public repositories, build environment tampering, and sophisticated backdoors that exhibit unusual execution patterns during builds.

Google cited recent real-world attacks including solana/webjs (2024), tj-actions/changed-files (2025), and xz-utils (2024) as examples of threats the system addresses. Open source components now account for 77% of modern applications with an estimated value exceeding $12 trillion. The project builds on Google's hosted infrastructure model previously used for OSS Fuzz memory issue detection.
Businesses

US Signals Intention To Rethink Job H-1B Lottery (theregister.com) 162

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) intend to reevaluate how H-1B visas are issued, according to a regulatory filing. From a report: The notice, filed on Thursday with the US Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), seeks the statutory review of a proposed rule titled "Weighted Selection Process for Registrants and Petitioners Seeking To File Cap-Subject H-1B Petitions."

Once the review is complete, which could be a matter of days or weeks, the text of the rule is expected to be published in the US Federal Register. Based on the rule title, it appears the government intends to change the system for allocating H-1B visas the current lottery to some system that will favor applicants who meet specified criteria, possibly related to skills.

The H-1B visa program, which reached its Fiscal 2026 cap on Friday, allows skilled guest workers to come work in the US. As of 2019, there were about 600,000 H-1B workers in the US, according to USCIS. The foreign worker program is beloved by technology companies, ostensibly to hire talent not readily available from American workers. But H-1B -- along with the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program -- has long been criticized for making it easier to undercut US worker wages, limiting labor rights for immigrants, and for persistent abuse of the rules by outsourcing companies.

Medicine

At Least 750 US Hospitals Faced Disruptions During Last Year's CrowdStrike Outage, Study Finds (wired.com) 31

At least 759 US hospitals experienced network disruptions during the CrowdStrike outage on July 19, 2024, with more than 200 suffering outages that directly affected patient care services, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open by UC San Diego researchers. The researchers detected disruptions across 34% of the 2,232 hospital networks they scanned, finding outages in health records systems, fetal monitoring equipment, medical imaging storage, and patient transfer platforms.

Most services recovered within six hours, though some remained offline for more than 48 hours. CrowdStrike dismissed the study as "junk science," arguing the researchers failed to verify whether affected networks actually ran CrowdStrike software. The researchers defended their methodology, noting they could scan only about one-third of America's hospitals, suggesting the actual impact may have been significantly larger.
Music

Spotify Publishes AI-Generated Songs From Dead Artists Without Permission (404media.co) 13

Spotify was found publishing AI-generated songs on the official pages of deceased artists like Blaze Foley and Guy Clark -- without permission from their estates or labels. The tracks, flagged for deceptive content and now removed, were uploaded via TikTok's SoundOn distribution platform. "We've flagged the issue to SoundOn, the distributor of the content in question, and it has been removed for violating our Deceptive Content policy," a Spotify spokesperson told 404 Media. From the report: McDonald, who decided to originally upload Foley's music to Spotify in order to share it with more people, told me he never thought that an AI-generated track could appear on Foley's page without his permission. "It's harmful to Blaze's standing that this happened," he said. "It's kind of surprising that Spotify doesn't have a security fix for this type of action, and I think the responsibility is all on Spotify. They could fix this problem. One of their talented software engineers could stop this fraudulent practice in its tracks, if they had the will to do so. And I think they should take that responsibility and do something quickly."

McDonald's suggested fix is not allowing any track to appear on an artist's official Spotify page without allowing the page owner to sign off on it first. "Any real Blaze fan would know, I think, pretty instantly, that this is not Blaze or a Blaze recording," he said. "Then the harm is that the people who don't know Blaze go to the site thinking, maybe this is part of Blaze, when clearly it's not. So again, I think Spotify could easily change some practices. I'm not an engineer, but I think it's pretty easy to stop this from happening in the future."

Security

Alaska Airlines Resumes Operations After System Glitch Grounds All Flights (gizmodo.com) 13

Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air grounded all flights Sunday night due to a major IT outage, prompting a system-wide FAA ground stop that lasted until early Monday. Although operations have since resumed, passengers are still facing delays and residual disruptions. Gizmodo reports: The airline requested a system-wide ground stop from federal aviation authorities at about 11 p.m. ET on Sunday night. That stop remained in effect until around 2 a.m. ET Monday, when the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed it had been lifted. But disruptions didn't end there. Alaska warned passengers to brace for likely delays throughout the day. [...] The FAA's website listed the stop as applying to all Alaska Airlines aircraft. Gizmodo notes that the incident comes nearly a year after the massive 2024 CrowdStrike crash, which has become known as the largest IT outage in history. "The July 2024 outage brought down an estimated 8.5 million Microsoft Windows systems running CrowdStrike's Falcon Sensor software, disrupting everything from hospitals and airports to broadcast networks."

"There's no word yet from Alaska on whether the outage ties into a broader software problem, but the timing, almost exactly a year after the CrowdStrike crash, isn't going unnoticed on social media, with users wondering if the events are related."
Privacy

Weak Password Allowed Hackers To Sink a 158-Year-Old Company (bbc.com) 125

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: One password is believed to have been all it took for a ransomware gang to destroy a 158-year-old company and put 700 people out of work. KNP -- a Northamptonshire transport company -- is just one of tens of thousands of UK businesses that have been hit by such attacks. Big names such as M&S, Co-op and Harrods have all been attacked in recent months. The chief executive of Co-op confirmed last week that all 6.5 million of its members had had their data stolen. In KNP's case, it's thought the hackers managed to gain entry to the computer system by guessing an employee's password, after which they encrypted the company's data and locked its internal systems. KNP director Paul Abbott says he hasn't told the employee that their compromised password most likely led to the destruction of the company. "Would you want to know if it was you?" he asks. "We need organizations to take steps to secure their systems, to secure their businesses," says Richard Horne CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) -- where Panorama has been given exclusive access to the team battling international ransomware gangs. A gang of hackers, known as Akira, broke into the company's system and demanded a payment to restore the data. "The hackers didn't name a price, but a specialist ransomware negotiation firm estimated the sum could be as much as 5 million pounds," reports the BBC. "KNP didn't have that kind of money. In the end all the data was lost, and the company went under."
Security

Hackers Exploit a Blind Spot By Hiding Malware Inside DNS Records (arstechnica.com) 49

Hackers are hiding malware inside DNS records, allowing malicious code to bypass security defenses that typically monitor web and email traffic. DomainTools researchers discovered the technique being used to host Joke Screenmate malware, with binary files converted to hexadecimal format and broken into chunks stored in TXT records across subdomains of whitetreecollective[.]com.

Attackers retrieve the chunks through DNS requests and reassemble them into executable malware. The method exploits a blind spot in security monitoring, as DNS traffic often goes unscrutinized compared to other network activity.
Security

Microsoft Releases Emergency Patches for Actively Exploited SharePoint Zero-Days (bleepingcomputer.com) 18

Microsoft has released emergency security updates for two actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities in SharePoint, tracked as CVE-2025-53770 and CVE-2025-53771, that have compromised servers worldwide in what researchers call "ToolShell" attacks. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned over the weekend that hackers were exploiting the vulnerabilities to gain remote code execution on on-premises SharePoint installations, while Microsoft has not yet provided patches for all affected versions.

The vulnerabilities allow hackers to steal private digital keys from SharePoint servers without requiring credentials, enabling them to plant malware and access stored files and data. Eye Security, which first identified the attacks on Saturday, found dozens of actively exploited servers and warned that SharePoint's integration with Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive could enable further network compromise. Researcher Silas Cutler at cybersecurity firm Censys estimated more than 10,000 companies with SharePoint servers were at risk, with the largest concentrations in the United States, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Canada.

Microsoft released patches for SharePoint 2019 and Subscription Edition but is still working on fixes for SharePoint Server 2016. Administrators must install available updates immediately and rotate machine keys to prevent re-compromise, according to Microsoft's security guidance.
Security

'Tens of Thousands' of SharePoint Servers at Risk. Microsoft Issues No Patch (msn.com) 90

"Anybody who's got a hosted SharePoint server has got a problem," the senior VP of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike told the Washington Post. "It's a significant vulnerability."

And it's led to a new "global attack on government agencies and businesses" in the last few days, according to the article, "breaching U.S. federal and state agencies, universities, energy companies and an Asian telecommunications company, according to state officials and private researchers..."

"Tens of thousands of such servers are at risk, experts said, and Microsoft has issued no patch for the flaw, leaving victims around the world scrambling to respond." (Microsoft says they are "working on" security updates "for supported versions of SharePoint 2019 and SharePoint 2016," offering various mitigation suggestions, and CISA has released their own recommendations.)

From the Washington Post's article Sunday: Microsoft has suggested that users make modifications to SharePoint server programs or simply unplug them from the internet to stanch the breach. Microsoft issued an alert to customers but declined to comment further... "We are seeing attempts to exploit thousands of SharePoint servers globally before a patch is available," said Pete Renals, a senior manager with Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42. "We have identified dozens of compromised organizations spanning both commercial and government sectors.''

With access to these servers, which often connect to Outlook email, Teams and other core services, a breach can lead to theft of sensitive data as well as password harvesting, Netherlands-based research company Eye Security noted. What's also alarming, researchers said, is that the hackers have gained access to keys that may allow them to regain entry even after a system is patched. "So pushing out a patch on Monday or Tuesday doesn't help anybody who's been compromised in the past 72 hours," said one researcher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because a federal investigation is ongoing.

The breaches occurred after Microsoft fixed a security flaw this month. The attackers realized they could use a similar vulnerability, according to the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. CISA spokeswoman Marci McCarthy said the agency was alerted to the issue Friday by a cyber research firm and immediately contacted Microsoft... The nonprofit Center for Internet Security, which staffs an information-sharing group for state and local governments, notified about 100 organizations that they were vulnerable and potentially compromised, said Randy Rose, the organization's vice president. Those warned included public schools and universities. Others that were breached included a government agency in Spain, a local agency in Albuquerque and a university in Brazil, security researchers said.

But there's many more breaches, according to the article:
  • "Eye Security said it has tracked more than 50 breaches, including at an energy company in a large state and several European government agencies."
  • "At least two U.S. federal agencies have seen their servers breached, according to researchers."
  • "One state official in the eastern U.S. said the attackers had 'hijacked' a repository of documents provided to the public to help residents understand how their government works. The agency involved can no longer access the material..."

"It was not immediately clear who is behind the hacking of global reach or what its ultimate goal is. One private research company found the hackers targeting servers in China..."


Open Source

Jack Dorsey Pumps $10M Into a Nonprofit Focused on Open Source Social Media (techcrunch.com) 20

Twitter co-founder/Block CEO Jack Dorsey isn't just vibe coding new apps like Bitchat and Sun Day. He's also "invested $10 million in an effort to fund experimental open source projects and other tools that could ultimately transform the social media landscape," reports TechCrunch," funding the projects through an online collective formed in May called "andOtherStuff: [T]he team at "andOtherStuff" is determined not to build a company but is instead operating like a "community of hackers," explains Evan Henshaw-Plath [who handles UX/onboarding and was also Twitter's first employee]. Together, they're working to create technologies that could include new consumer social apps as well as various experiments, like developer tools or libraries, that would allow others to build apps for themselves.

For instance, the team is behind an app called Shakespeare, which is like the app-building platform Lovable, but specifically for building Nostr-based social apps with AI assistance. The group is also behind heynow, a voice note app built on Nostr; Cashu wallet; private messenger White Noise; and the Nostr-based social community +chorus, in addition to the apps Dorsey has already released. Developments in AI-based coding have made this type of experimentation possible, Henshaw-Plath points out, in the same way that technologies like Ruby on Rails, Django, and JSON helped to fuel an earlier version of the web, dubbed Web 2.0.

Related to these efforts, Henshaw-Plath sat down with Dorsey for the debut episode of his new podcast, revolution.social with @rabble... Dorsey believes Bluesky faces the same challenges as traditional social media because of its structure — it's funded by VCs, like other startups. Already, it has had to bow to government requests and faced moderation challenges, he points out. "I think [Bluesky CEO] Jay [Graber] is great. I think the team is great," Dorsey told Henshaw-Plath, "but the structure is what I disagree with ... I want to push the energy in a different direction, which is more like Bitcoin, which is completely open and not owned by anyone from a protocol layer...."

Dorsey's initial investment has gotten the new nonprofit up and running, and he worked on some of its initial iOS apps. Meanwhile, others are contributing their time to build Android versions, developer tools, and different social media experiments. More is still in the works, says Henshaw-Plath.

"There are things that we're not ready to talk about yet that'll be very exciting," he teases.

China

Chinese Companies Now Authorized to Conduct Foreign Cyberattacks, Sell Access to Government (msn.com) 57

"The U.S. is absolutely facing the most serious Chinese hacking ever." That's what the Washington Post was told by a China-focused consultant at security company SentinelOne: Undeterred by recent indictments alleging widespread cyberespionage against American agencies, journalists and infrastructure targets, Chinese hackers are hitting a wider range of targets and battling harder to stay inside once detected, seven current and former U.S. officials said in interviews. Hacks from suspected Chinese government actors detected by the security firm CrowdStrike more than doubled from 2023 to more than 330 last year and continued to climb as the new administration took over, the company said... Although the various Chinese hacking campaigns seem to be led by different government agencies and have different goals, all benefit from new techniques and from Beijing's introduction of a less constrained system for cyber offense, the officials and outside researchers told The Washington Post... Chinese intelligence, military and security agencies previously selected targets and tasked their own employees with breaking in, they said. But the Chinese government decided to take a more aggressive approach by allowing private industry to conduct cyberattacks and hacking campaigns on their own, U.S. officials said.

The companies are recruiting top hackers who discover previously unknown, or "zero-day," flaws in software widely used in the United States. Then the companies search for where the vulnerable programs are installed, hack a great many of them at once, and then sell access to multiple Chinese government customers and other security companies. That hacking-for-hire approach creates hundreds of U.S. victims instead of a few, making it hard to block attacks and to decide which were China's key targets and which were unintentionally caught in the hacks, an FBI official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to follow agency practices... "The result of that incentive structure is that there is significantly more hacking...."

China has mastered the ability to move undetected through networks of compromised U.S. devices, so that the final connection to a target appears to be an ordinary domestic connection. That makes it easy to get around technology that blocks overseas links and puts it outside the purview of the National Security Agency, which by law must avoid scrutinizing most domestic transmissions. Beijing is increasingly focused on hacking software and security vendors that provide access to many customers at once, the FBI official said. Once access is obtained, the hackers typically add new email and collaboration accounts that look legitimate... Beyond the increased government collaboration with China's private security sector is occasional collaborating with criminal groups, said Ken Dunham, an analyst at the security firm Qualys.

The article notes that China's penetration of U.S. telecom carriers "is still not fully contained, according to the current and former officials." But in addition, the group behind that attack "has more recently shown up inside core communications infrastructure in Europe, according to John Carlin, a former top national security official in the Justice Department who represents some U.S. victims of the group." And documents leaked last year from a security contractor that works with the Chinese military and other government groups "described contracts and targets in 20 countries, with booty including Indian immigration data, logs of calls in South Korea, and detailed information on roads in Taiwan.

"It also detailed prices for some services, such as $25,000 for promised remote access to an iPhone, payment disputes with government customers and employee gripes about long hours..."
Microsoft

Microsoft To Stop Using Engineers In China For Tech Support of US Military (reuters.com) 51

Microsoft will stop using China-based engineers to support U.S. military cloud services after a ProPublica report revealed their involvement, prompting backlash from Senator Tom Cotton and a two-week Pentagon review ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. In response, Hegseth announced an immediate ban on any Chinese involvement in Department of Defense cloud contracts. Reuters reports: The report detailed Microsoft's use of Chinese engineers to work on U.S. military cloud computing systems under the supervision of U.S. "digital escorts" hired through subcontractors who have security clearances but often lacked the technical skills to assess whether the work of the Chinese engineers posed a cybersecurity threat. [Microsoft] told ProPublica it disclosed its practices to the U.S. government during an authorization process.

On Friday, Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw said on social media website X the company changed how it supports U.S. government customers "in response to concerns raised earlier this week ... to assure that no China-based engineering teams are providing technical assistance" for services used by the Pentagon.

Open Source

Intel Kills Clear Linux OS As Support Ends Without Warning (nerds.xyz) 95

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Intel has quietly pulled the plug on Clear Linux OS, officially ending support for the once-promising Linux distribution that it had backed for nearly a decade. Effective immediately, the company says it will no longer provide any updates, security patches, or maintenance for the operating system. In a final blow, the Clear Linux OS GitHub repository is now archived in read-only mode.

The move was announced with little fanfare, and for users still relying on Clear Linux OS, there's no sugarcoating it... you need to move on. Intel is urging everyone to migrate to an actively maintained Linux distribution as soon as possible to avoid running unpatched software.
"Rest assured that Intel remains deeply invested in the Linux ecosystem, actively supporting and contributing to various open-source projects and Linux distributions to enable and optimize for Intel hardware," the company said in a statement. "A heartfelt thank you to every developer, user, and contributor who helped shape Clear Linux OS over the last 10 years. Your feedback and contributions have been invaluable."
The Courts

Google Sues Operators of 10-Million-Device Badbox 2.0 Botnet (securityweek.com) 14

Google has filed a lawsuit to dismantle the sprawling Badbox 2.0 botnet, which infected over 10 million Android devices with pre-installed malware. Badbox 2.0 "is already the largest known botnet of internet-connected TV devices, and it grows each day. It has harmed millions of victims in the United States and around the world and threatens many more," Google said in its complaint. SecurityWeek reports: The internet giant cautions that, while it has been used mainly for fraud, the botnet could be used for more harmful types of cybercrime, such as ransomware or distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. In addition to pre-installing the malware on devices, Badbox 2.0's operators also tricked users into installing infected applications that provided them with further access to their personal devices, Google says. As part of their operation, the individuals behind Badbox 2.0 sold access to the infected devices to be used as residential proxies, and conducted ad fraud schemes by abusing these devices to create fake ad views or to exploit pay-per-click compensation models, the company continues. The internet giant also points out that this is the second global botnet the perpetrators have built, after the initial Badbox botnet was disrupted by German law enforcement in 2023.

According to Google, Badbox 2.0 is operated by multiple cybercrime groups from China, each having a different role in maintaining the botnet, such as establishing infrastructure, developing and pre-installing the malware on devices, and conducting fraud. "The BadBox 2.0 Enterprise includes several connected threat actor groups that design and implement complex criminal schemes targeting internet-connected devices both before and after the consumer receives the device," Google says. "While each member of the Enterprise plays a distinct role, they all collaborate to execute the BadBox 2.0 Scheme. All of the threat actor groups are connected to one another through the BadBox 2.0 shared C2 infrastructure and historical and current business ties," the company continues.

The Military

Ukrainian Hackers Claim To Have Destroyed Major Russian Drone Maker's Entire Network (theregister.com) 274

Ukrainian hacker group BO Team, with help from the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance and possibly Ukraine's military, claims to have wiped out one of Russia's largest military drone manufacturers, destroying 47TB of production data and even disabling the doors in the facility. "Or, as described by the hacking collective (per Google translate), they 'deeply penetrated' the drone manufacturer 'to the very tonsils of demilitarization and denazification,'" reports The Register. From the report: BO Team (also known as Black Owl) announced the breach on its Telegram channel, and claimed to have carried out the operation alongside fellow hackers the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance "and one very well-known organization, the mention of which makes Vanya's bottle receivers explode," according to a Google translation of the Russian text. While the "very well-known organization" isn't named, BO Team included a link to Ukraine's Ministry of Defence.

The military intelligence agency, working alongside the attackers, "carried out large-scale work to capture the entire network and server infrastructure of Gaskar Group, collect valuable information about the UAVs being produced and prospective, and then destroy the information and disable this infrastructure," the Telegram post continued. This reportedly included 47TB of technical information about the production of Russian drones, and BO Team claims to have destroyed all of the information on Gaskar's servers, including 10TB of backup files. "By the way, from the information we received, China is providing assistance in the production and training of specialists of Gaskar Group," the hackers added via Telegram. BO Team also posted what they claim to be confidential employee questionnaires [PDF].

On their own Telegram channel, the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance said they also stole "all the source code" before destroying everything. "The network went down so thoroughly that the doors in the building were blocked," the pro-Ukraine crew wrote, per Google translate. "To open them, the administration had to turn on the fire alarm. Most likely, the defense order is on the verge of failure, and thousands of drones will not get to the front in the near future."

Security

Google Spots Tailored Backdoor Malware Aimed At SonicWall Appliances (therecord.media) 3

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Record: Threat actors are stealing sensitive data from organizations by breaching end-of-life appliances made by cybersecurity company SonicWall. Incident responders from Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) and Mandiant said on Wednesday that they have uncovered an ongoing campaign by an unidentified threat group that leverages credentials and one-time password (OTP) seeds stolen during previous intrusions -- allowing the hackers to regain access to organizations even after security updates are installed. [...]

The campaign is targeting fully patched end-of-life SonicWall Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 series appliances. Google explained that the malware the hackers are using removes log entries, making it difficult to figure out how they initially gained access to a system. Google said the campaign extends beyond the incidents they investigated directly and added that SonicWall has "confirmed reports of other impacted organizations." The company noted that SonicWall updated an advisory for a bug tracked as CVE-2024-38475 in light of Google's findings. "As an added security measure, we strongly advise customers to reset the OTP (One-Time Password) binding for all users. This step ensures that any potentially compromised or stale OTP secrets are invalidated, thereby mitigating unauthorized access risks," SonicWall said in the update to the advisory..

One novel aspect of the campaign is the use of a backdoor called OVERSTEP, which modifies the SonicWall appliance's boot process to maintain persistent access, steal sensitive credentials and conceal the malware's own components. Incident responders struggled to track other activities by the hackers because OVERSTEP allowed them to delete logs and largely cover their tracks. OVERSTEP is specifically designed for SonicWall SMA 100 series appliances, according to Google. In addition to CVE-2024-38475, Google and Mandiant experts floated several potential vulnerabilities the hackers may have used to gain initial access, including CVE-2021-20038, CVE-2024-38475, CVE-2021-20035, CVE-2021-20039 and, CVE-2025-32819. Beyond those, Google theorized that the hackers may have used an unknown zero-day vulnerability to deploy the malware on targeted SonicWall SMA appliances.

Privacy

Chinese Authorities Are Using a New Tool To Hack Seized Phones and Extract Data (techcrunch.com) 40

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Security researchers say Chinese authorities are using a new type of malware to extract data from seized phones, allowing them to obtain text messages -- including from chat apps such as Signal -- images, location histories, audio recordings, contacts, and more. In a report shared exclusively with TechCrunch, mobile cybersecurity company Lookout detailed the hacking tool called Massistant, which the company said was developed by Chinese tech giant Xiamen Meiya Pico.

Massistant, according to Lookout, is Android software used for the forensic extraction of data from mobile phones, meaning the authorities using it need to have physical access to those devices. While Lookout doesn't know for sure which Chinese police agencies are using the tool, its use is assumed widespread, which means Chinese residents, as well as travelers to China, should be aware of the tool's existence and the risks it poses. [...]

The good news ... is that Massistant leaves evidence of its compromise on the seized device, meaning users can potentially identify and delete the malware, either because the hacking tool appears as an app, or can be found and deleted using more sophisticated tools such as the Android Debug Bridge, a command line tool that lets a user connect to a device through their computer. The bad news is that at the time of installing Massistant, the damage is done, and authorities already have the person's data.
"It's a big concern. I think anybody who's traveling in the region needs to be aware that the device that they bring into the country could very well be confiscated and anything that's on it could be collected," said Kristina Balaam, a researcher at Lookout who analyzed the malware. "I think it's something everybody should be aware of if they're traveling in the region."
AI

Curl Creator Mulls Nixing Bug Bounty Awards To Stop AI Slop 55

Daniel Stenberg, creator of the curl utility, is considering ending its bug bounty program due to a surge in low-quality, AI-generated reports that are overwhelming the small volunteer team. Despite attempts to discourage AI-assisted submissions, these reports now make up about 20% of all entries in 2025, while genuine vulnerabilities have dropped to just 5%. The Register reports: "The general trend so far in 2025 has been way more AI slop than ever before (about 20 percent of all submissions) as we have averaged about two security report submissions per week," he wrote in a blog post on Monday. "In early July, about 5 percent of the submissions in 2025 had turned out to be genuine vulnerabilities. The valid-rate has decreased significantly compared to previous years."

The situation has prompted Stenberg to reevaluate whether to continue curl's bug bounty program, which he says has paid out more than $90,000 for 81 awards since its inception in 2019. He said he expects to spend the rest of the year mulling possible responses to the rising tide of AI refuse. Presently, the curl bug bounty program -- outsourced to HackerOne - requires the bug reporter to disclose the use of generative AI. It does not entirely ban AI-assisted submissions, but does discourage them. "You should check and double-check all facts and claims any AI told you before you pass on such reports to us," the program's policy explains. "You are normally much better off avoiding AI."

Two bug submissions per week on average may not seem like a lot, but the curl security team consists of only seven members. As Stenberg explains, three or four reviewers review each submission, a process that takes anywhere from 30 minutes to three hours. "I personally spend an insane amount of time on curl already, wasting three hours still leaves time for other things," Stenberg lamented. "My fellows however are not full time on curl. They might only have three hours per week for curl. Not to mention the emotional toll it takes to deal with these mind-numbing stupidities." [...]

Stenberg says it's not clear what HackerOne should do to reduce reckless use of AI, but insists something needs to be done. His post ponders charging a fee to submit a report or dropping the bug bounty award, while also expressing reservations about both potential remedies. "As a lot of these reporters seem to genuinely think they help out, apparently blatantly tricked by the marketing of the AI hype-machines, it is not certain that removing the money from the table is going to completely stop the flood," he concludes.
AI

AI Creeps Into the Risk Register For America's Biggest Firms (theregister.com) 8

America's largest corporations are increasingly listing AI among the major risks they must disclose in formal financial filings, despite bullish statements in public about the potential business opportunities it offers. The Register: According to a report from research firm The Autonomy Institute, three-quarters of companies listed in the S&P 500 stock market index have updated their official risk disclosures to detail or expand upon mentions of AI-related risk factors during the past year.

The organization drew its findings from an analysis of Form 10-K filings that the top 500 companies submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in which they are required to outline any material risks that could negatively affect their business and its financial health.

United Kingdom

Thousands of Afghans Secretly Moved To Britain After Data Leak (reuters.com) 76

The UK secretly relocated thousands of Afghans to the UK after their personal details were disclosed in one of the country's worst ever data breaches, putting them at risk of Taliban retaliation. The operation cost around $2.7 billion and remained under a court-imposed superinjunction until recently lifted. Reuters reports: The leak by the Ministry of Defence in early 2022, which led to data being published on Facebook the following year, and the secret relocation program, were subject to a so-called superinjunction preventing the media reporting what happened, which was lifted on Tuesday by a court. British defence minister John Healey apologised for the leak, which included details about members of parliament and senior military officers who supported applications to help Afghan soldiers who worked with the British military and their families relocate to the UK. "This serious data incident should never have happened," Healey told lawmakers in the House of Commons. It may have occurred three years ago under the previous government, but to all whose data was compromised I offer a sincere apology."

The incident ranks among the worst security breaches in modern British history because of the cost and risk posed to the lives of thousands of Afghans, some of whom fought alongside British forces until their chaotic withdrawal in 2021. Healey said about 4,500 Afghans and their family members have been relocated or were on their way to Britain under the previously secret scheme. But he added that no-one else from Afghanistan would be offered asylum because of the data leak, citing a government review which found little evidence of intent from the Taliban to seek retribution against former officials.

Slashdot Top Deals