$300 a month buys you a backdoor that looks like legit software Researchers at Proofpoint late last month uncovered what they describe as a "weird twist" on the growing trend of criminals abusing remote monitoring and management software (RMM) as their preferred attack tools.

Plenty of blame to go around, says Isaacman NASA has released the findings from its investigation of the ill-fated crewed Boeing Starliner mission of 2024, and while it still isn't sure of the root technical causes, it's admitted that trusting Boeing to do a thorough job appears to have been a mistake.

AI model said to show improved reasoning capabilities If you want an even better AI model, there could be reason to celebrate. Google, on Thursday, announced the release of Gemini 3.1 Pro, characterizing the model's arrival as "a step forward in core reasoning."

Wants SLAs, revamped contracts for cloud ops The US Congress spending watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, has pressed the National Science Foundations CIO to improve how the agency plans, manages, and procures technology.

FBI warns these cyber-physical attacks are on the rise Thieves stole more than $20 million from compromised ATMs last year using a malware-assisted technique that the FBI says is on the uptick across the United States.

From AI conflation to thin evidence, a new report calls many climate claims greenwashing Some AI advocates claim that bots hold the secret to mitigating climate change. But research shows that the reality is far different, as new datacenters cause power utilities to burn even more fossil fuels to meet their insatiable demand for energy.

IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup Job cuts at the IRS's tech arm have gone faster and farther than expected, with 40 percent of IT staff and four-fifths of tech leaders gone, the agency's CIO revealed yesterday.

A hundred days a year in the air doesn't come cheap Opinion Palantir CEO Alex Karp has a singular mission to stand out among tech CEOs. Big talk on sales, profits, and tech potential is not enough. His gift for edgy one-liners takes him to places where execs of the past would have scarcely dared to go. Say hello to allusions to goose-stepping and innate Western superiority that we assume have audiences rolling in the aisles.

Emails show all discussed networking and biz interests with the sex offender throughout the 2010s Cybersecurity conference DEF CON has added three men named in the Epstein files to its list of banned individuals. They are not accused of any criminal wrongdoing.

The real deal or another research project overblown? Cybersecurity researchers say they've spotted the first Android malware strain that uses generative AI to improve performance once installed. But it may be only a proof of concept.

Rush is on to push forward sympathetic candidates from both parties ahead of midterms Meta is among tech giants reportedly funding US politicians friendly to the AI industry, as concerns mount over a huge expansion in datacenter building and the effects of AI on everyday life.

Self-generated skills don't do much for AI agents, study finds, but human- curated skills do Teach an AI agent how to fish for information and it can feed itself with data. Tell an AI agent to figure things out on its own and it may make things worse.

'Why not 12?' says lawyer The UK is bracketing "intimate images shared without a victim's consent" along with terror and child sexual abuse material, and demanding that online platforms remove them within two days.

Co-author Jon Kern says AI coding tools amplify strengths and expose weaknesses Interview Twenty-five years after 17 software developers gathered at a Utah ski resort to draft the Agile Manifesto, artificial intelligence is once again reshaping how code gets written.

You told me not to write it on a Post-it... Bork!Bork!Bork! Today's bork is entirely human-generated and will send a shiver down the spine of security pros. No matter how secure a system is, a user's ability to undo an administrator's best efforts should not be underestimated.

The DECwriter got me hooked in 1975. 'Clawdine' feels like a wonderful new beginning Opinion Fifty years ago this month, I touched a computer for the first time. It was an experience that pegged the meter for me like no other until last week.

Study of 11 LLMs shows they rarely refuse to answer, even when they probably should Artificial intelligence chatbots can be too chatty when answering questions on government services, swamping accurate information and making mistakes if told to be more concise, according to research .

Dell, however, is welcome to help build a local-language LLM Polands Ministry of Defence has banned Chinese cars and any others include tech to record position, images, or sound from entering protected military facilities.

IT services companies are largely immune to AIpocalypse, although the outlook is not good for entry-level jobs Indian think tank the Council for Research on International Economic Relations has found AI is not an immediate threat to the nations IT services sector.

It may have half the capacity of fused silica glass, but is faster and much cheaper Microsoft this week detailed new research aimed at preserving data in borosilicate glass plates for thousands of years longer than conventional media like hard drives or magnetic tape, without needing to worry about bit rot.

'Potential data protection incident' at an 'independent licensing partner,' we're told Adidas has confirmed it is investigating a third-party breach at one of its partner companies after digital thieves claimed they stole information and technical data from the German sportswear giant.

Latest in a rash of grab-and-leak data incidents CarGurus allegedly suffered a data breach with 1.7 million corporate records stolen, according to a notorious cybercrime crew that posted the online vehicle marketplace on itsleak site on Wednesday.

HPE and Cisco are adjusting terms and conditions If you like the price of that server, PC, or storage array, you'd better act fast.

Who needs to express themselves through music when a bot will do it for you with nothing but a prompt? If you've ever wanted to make music but have neither the talent nor the inspiration, Google has the AI tool for you. Gemini will now generate a 30-second song for you directly from a text prompt, photo, or video.

Data Loss Prevention? Yeah, about that... The bot couldn't keep its prying eyes away. Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat has been summarizing emails labeled confidential even when data loss prevention policies were configured to prevent it.

Yo dawg, we heard you like missiles, so we put some missiles in your missile so you can boom while you zoom It's taken about five years, but DARPA's missile-launching missile has become the government's latest experimental X-plane and is advancing toward flight testing.

'First time we have detected a crime using this method,' cops say Spanish police arrested a hacker who allegedly manipulated a hotel booking website, allowing him to pay one cent for luxury hotel stays. He also raided the mini- bars and didn't settle some of those tabs, police say.

Ts'o, Hohndel and the man himself spill beans on how checks in the mail and GPL made it all possible If you know anything about Linux's history, you'll remember it all started with Linus Torvalds posting to the Minix Usenet group on August 25, 1991, that he was working on "a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones." We know that the "hobby" operating system today is Linux, and except for PCs and Macs, it pretty much runs the world.

National rail bookings and timetables disrupted for nearly 24 hours If you wanted to book a train trip in Germany recently, you would have been out of luck. The country's national rail company says that its services were disrupted for hours because of a cyberattack.

Apologizes for 'inaccuracy' Exclusive Microsoft has said one of its leading spokespeople gave testimony to the UK Parliament containing an "inaccuracy" with regard to its dealings with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in response to US sanctions.

Musical instrument digital interface protocol leaves preview for bright lights of General Availability Microsoft has finally ushered in the era of MIDI 2.0 for Windows 11, more than a year after first teasing the functionality for Windows Insiders.

State disputes the company's claim that its routers are made in Vietnam TP- Link is facing legal action from the state of Texas for allegedly misleading consumers with "Made in Vietnam" claims despite China-dominated manufacturing and supply chains, and for marketing its devices as secure despite reported firmware vulnerabilities exploited by Chinese state-sponsored actors.

Survey says 80% of firms see no gains from the tech A survey of almost 6,000 corporate execs across the US, UK, Germany, and Australia found that more than 80 percent detect no discernible impact from AI on either employment or productivity.

Seemingly complex strings are actually highly predictable, crackable within hours Generative AI tools are surprisingly poor at suggesting strong passwords, experts say.

EV maker avoids 30-day license suspension after state ruling on self-driving claims Tesla has complied with an order by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and stopped using the term "Autopilot" in its marketing of electric vehicles, having already modified use of "Full Self-Driving" to clarify that it requires driver supervision.

Starmer orders inquiry after Labour Together commissioned dossier on reporters Josh Simons, the Cabinet Office minister responsible for the UK government's digital identity program, is being probed by the department for his actions running a Labour think tank that commissioned an investigation into journalists.

GitHub itself to blame for AI slop pull requests, say devs Rmi Verschelde, a maintainer of the open source Godot game engine, is the latest to complain about the impact of "AI slop PRs [pull requests]", which he says "are becoming increasingly draining and demoralizing for Godot maintainers."

Miscreants will need to find another avenue for malware shenanigans Notepad++ has continued beefing up security with a release the project's author claims makes the "update process robust and effectively unexploitable."

No worries if the US doesn't want to be friends with Europe anymore Lockheed Martin's F-35 fighter aircraft can be jailbroken "just like an iPhone," the Netherlands' defense secretary has claimed.

Passenger info display takes scenic detour via desktop and pending updates Bork!Bork!Bork! The curse of bork is not limited to obsolete operating systems or obscure hardware. Today's example of railway signage disruption is something bang up to date from the Swiss town of Saint Moritz.