A sophisticated extortion campaign has targeted 110,000 domains by exploiting misconfigured AWS environment files, security firm Cyble reports. The attackers scanned for exposed .env files containing cloud access keys and other sensitive data. Organizations that failed to secure their AWS environments found their S3-stored data replaced with ransom notes. The attackers used a series of API calls to verify data, enumerate IAM users, and locate S3 buckets. Though initial access lacked admin privileges, they created new IAM roles to escalate permissions. Cyble researchers noted the attackers' use of AWS Lambda functions for automated scanning operations.

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A growing body of scientific evidence shows that microplastics are accumulating in critical human organs, including the brain, leading researchers to call for more urgent actions to rein in plastic pollution. From a report: Studies have detected tiny shards and specks of plastics in human lungs, placentas, reproductive organs, livers, kidneys, knee and elbow joints, blood vessels and bone marrow. Given the research findings, "it is now imperative to declare a global emergency" to deal with plastic pollution, said Sedat Gundogdu, who studies microplastics at Cukurova University in Turkey. Humans are exposed to microplastics -- defined as fragments smaller than 5mm in diameter -- and the chemicals used to make plastics from widespread plastic pollution in air, water and even food. The health hazards of microplastics within the human body are not yet well-known. Recent studies are just beginning to suggest they could increase the risk of various conditions such as oxidative stress, which can lead to cell damage and inflammation, as well as cardiovascular disease. Animal studies have also linked microplastics to fertility issues, various cancers, a disrupted endocrine and immune system, and impaired learning and memory.

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bobdevine writes: The Linux operating system has reached a notable milestone in desktop market share, according to the latest data from StatCounter. As of July 2024, Linux has achieved a 4.45% market share for desktop operating systems worldwide. While this percentage might seem small to those unfamiliar with the operating system landscape, it represents a significant milestone for Linux and its dedicated community. What makes this achievement even more thrilling is the upward trajectory of Linux's adoption rate.

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South Africa's telecoms industry body is pushing for digital content and service providers to help pay for the roll out of network infrastructure because they generate a huge part of the internet traffic. From a report: The Association of Comms and Technology (ACT) CEO Nomvuyiso Batyi said that the revenues generated by over-the-top (OTT) platforms and the continued success of the OTT model was dependent on the availability of high-quality, reliable and efficient network infrastructure. So "what we're saying is that the OTTs should contribute towards the network upgrades, the network building," she added. OTT platforms or services deliver digital content such as video, audio and messaging directly to consumers over the internet. "Fair share" arrangements ensure that OTT providers contribute to the costs of building, maintaining, and upgrading the infrastructure that supports their business.

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CrowdStrike's president hit out at "shady" efforts by its cyber security rivals to scare its customers and steal market share in the month since its botched software update sparked a global IT outage. From a report: Michael Sentonas told the Financial Times that attempts by competitors to use the July 19 disruption to promote their own products were "misguided." After criticism from rivals including SentinelOne and Trellix, the CrowdStrike executive said no vendor could "technically" guarantee that their own software would never cause a similar incident. "Our industry is built on trust," Sentonas said. For rivals to take advantage of the meltdown to push their own products "lets themselves down because, ultimately, people know really quickly fact from, possibly, some shady commentary." Texas-based CrowdStrike had a reputation as many major companies' first line of defense against cyber attacks, but the high-profile nature of its clients exacerbated the impact of July's global disruption that shut down 8.5 million Windows devices. Insurers have estimated that losses from the disruption, which grounded flights and shut down hospital systems, could run into billions of dollars. Delta Air Lines, which canceled more than 6,000 flights, has estimated that the outages will cost it $500 million and has threatened litigation.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: U.S. agencies are increasingly accessing parts of a half-billion encrypted chat message haul that has rocked the global organized crime underground, using the chats as part of multiple drug trafficking prosecutions, according to a 404 Media review of U.S. court records. In particular, U.S. authorities are using the chat messages to prosecute alleged maritime drug smugglers who traffic cocaine using speedboats and commercial ships. The court records show the continued fallout of the massive hack of encrypted phone company Sky in 2021, in which European agencies obtained the intelligence goldmine of messages despite Sky being advertised as end-to-end encrypted. European authorities have used those messages as the basis for many prosecutions and drug seizures across the continent. Now, it's clear that the blast radius extends to the United States.

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Slack AI, an add-on assistive service available to users of Salesforce's team messaging service, is vulnerable to prompt injection, according to security firm PromptArmor. From a report: The AI service provides generative tools within Slack for tasks like summarizing long conversations, finding answers to questions, and summarizing rarely visited channels. "Slack AI uses the conversation data already in Slack to create an intuitive and secure AI experience tailored to you and your organization," the messaging app provider explains in its documentation. Except it's not that secure, as PromptArmor tells it. A prompt injection vulnerability in Slack AI makes it possible to fetch data from private Slack channels.

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Microsoft is launching three new Xbox Series S / X console options in October. From a report: There's the $449.99 white discless Xbox Series X, a 2TB "Galaxy Black" special-edition Xbox Series X priced at $599.99, and a $349.99 1TB Xbox Series S. All three models will be available in the US on October 15th, with other markets to follow on October 29th. The white coating on the exterior of this new discless Xbox Series X matches the "robot white" found on the Xbox Series S, Microsoft's smaller $299 console. While leaks of the white Xbox Series X hinted that Microsoft may upgrade the heatsink used to cool the console, the company hasn't detailed any hardware changes beyond the removal of the disc drive here.

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TV manufacturers are shifting their focus from hardware sales to viewer data and advertising revenue. This trend is driven by declining profit margins on TV sets and the growing potential of smart TV operating systems to generate recurring income. Companies like LG, Samsung, and Roku are increasingly prioritizing ad sales and user tracking capabilities in their TVs, ArsTechnica reports. Automatic content recognition (ACR) technology, which analyzes viewing habits, is becoming a key feature for advertisers. TV makers are partnering with data firms to enhance targeting capabilities, with LG recently sharing data with Nielsen and Samsung updating its ACR tech to track streaming ad exposure. This shift raises concerns about privacy and user experience, as TVs become more commercialized and data-driven. Industry experts predict a rise in "shoppable ads" and increased integration between TV viewing and e-commerce platforms. The report adds: With TV sales declining and many shoppers prioritizing pricing, smart TV players will continue developing ads that are harder to avoid and better at targeting. Interestingly, Patrick Horner, practice leader of consumer electronics at analyst Omdia, told Ars that smart TV advertising revenue exceeding smart TV hardware revenue (as well as ad sale margins surpassing those of hardware) is a US-only trend, albeit one that shows no signs of abating. OLED has become a mainstay in the TV marketplace, and until the next big display technology becomes readily available, OEMs are scrambling to make money in a saturated TV market filled with budget options. Selling ads is an obvious way to bridge the gap between today and The Next Big Thing in TVs. Indeed, with companies like Samsung and LG making big deals with analytics firms and other brands building their businesses around ads, the industry's obsession with ads will only intensify. As we've seen before with TV commercials, which have gotten more frequent over time, once the ad genie is out of the bottle, it tends to grow, not go back inside. One side effect we're already seeing, Horner notes, is "a proliferation of more TV operating systems." While choice is often a good thing for consumers, it's important to consider if new options from companies like Amazon, Comcast, and TiVo actually do anything to notably improve the smart TV experience for owners. And OS operators' financial success is tied to the number of hours users spend viewing something on the OS. Roku's senior director of ad innovation, Peter Hamilton, told Digiday in May that his team works closely with Roku's consumer team, "whose goal is to drive total viewing hours." Many smart TV OS operators are therefore focused on making it easier for users to navigate content via AI.

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Nothing, a British startup seeking to challenge Apple's smartphone dominance, is hauling its employees back to the office full-time in the quest for growth. From a report: In a lengthy email disparaging remote work, which had been a tenet of Nothing CEO Carl Pei's workplace policy since its creation four years ago, Pei explained why his 450 employees needed to come to the office five days a week. "Remote work is not compatible with a high ambition level plus high speed," Pei said in an email to staff, which he shared on LinkedIn. Pei gave three reasons for the strict return-to-office mandate. First, he said, the logistics of developing a smartphone, where design, engineering, and manufacturing departments collaborate, weren't conducive to remote working. He added that creativity and innovation worked better in person, allowing the company to do more with fewer resources. Third, Pei said Nothing's ambitions to scale to become a "generation-defining company" wouldn't be achievable with remote work. According to Pei's email, the new mandate will take effect in two months, and he intends to hold a town hall in London to answer employees' questions. In his email, the Nothing CEO also suggested that employees who could not commit to five days in the office look for other employment. "We know it's not the right type of setup for everybody, and that's okay. We should look for a mutual fit. You should find an environment where you thrive, and we need to find people who want to go the full mile with us in the decades ahead."

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Atari has just announced a renewed version of its 7800 home console from 1986. Polygon: Dubbed the 7800 Plus, the new console will launch later this winter but is already available to pre-order from Atari for $129.99. The 7800 Plus is a scaled-down version of the original hardware equipped with an HDMI connection and has the ability to play first and third-party cartridges for the Atari 2600 and 7800. Additionally, you'll have the option to play your games in their original 4:3 aspect ration, or upscale them to widescreen format. While emulators and other options for playing retro Atari games exist, playing the games on their original hardware remains the definitive way to experience many of these classic titles. Along with its new console, Atari also announced a pair of new wireless controllers. The CX40 Plus wireless Joystick and CX78 Plus Wireless gamepad are loving recreations of the original hardware as they shipped with the Atari 2600 and 7800. Both of the new controllers are compatible with either the Atari 2600 Plus (released last year) or the new 7800 Plus consoles but can also be hooked up to your PC by using the included USB-C adapter -- they're even compatible with an original 2600 or 7800 if you have one lying around. Both peripherals are available from Atari now and cost $34.99.

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North Korean hackers exploited a critical Windows vulnerability to deploy advanced malware, security researchers revealed. The zero-day flaw, patched by Microsoft last week, allowed attackers to gain system-level access and install a sophisticated rootkit called FudModule. Gen, the firm that discovered the attacks, identified the threat actors as Lazarus, a hacking group linked to North Korea. The exploit targeted individuals in cryptocurrency and aerospace industries, likely aiming to steal digital assets and infiltrate corporate networks. FudModule, first analyzed in 2022, stands out for its ability to operate deep within Windows, evading detection by security defenses. Earlier versions used vulnerable drivers for installation, while a newer variant exploited a bug in Windows' AppLocker service.

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North America's eight primary data center markets added 515 megawatts (MW) of new supply in the first half of 2024 -- the equivalent of Silicon Valley's entire existing inventory -- according to a new report real-estate services firm CBRE. From a report: All of Silicon Valley has 459 MW of data center supply, while those main markets have a total of 5,689 MW. That's up 10% from a year ago and about double what it was five years ago. Data center space under construction is up nearly 70% from a year ago and is currently at a record high. But the vast majority of that is already leased, and vacancy rates have shrunk to a record low of 2.8%. In other words, developers are building an insane amount of data center capacity, but it's still not enough to meet the growing demands of cloud computing and artificial intelligence providers.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Disney has now agreed that a wrongful death lawsuit should be decided in court following backlash for initially arguing the case belonged in arbitration because the grieving widower had once signed up for a Disney Plus trial. "With such unique circumstances as the ones in this case, we believe this situation warrants a sensitive approach to expedite a resolution for the family who have experienced such a painful loss," chairman of Disney experiences Josh D'Amaro said in a statement to The Verge. "As such, we've decided to waive our right to arbitration and have the matter proceed in court." The lawsuit was filed in February by Jeffrey Piccolo, the husband of a 42-year-old woman who died last year due to an allergic reaction that occurred after eating at a restaurant in the Disney Springs shopping complex in Orlando. The case gained widespread media attention after Piccolo's legal team challenged Disney's motion to dismiss the case, arguing that a forced arbitration agreement Piccolo signed was effectively invisible.

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Maria Branyas, who was the world's oldest person, has died peacefully in a Spanish nursing home at the age of 117. From a report: "Maria Branyas has left us. She has died as she wanted: in her sleep, peacefully and without pain," her official X account said, and a spokesperson at the nursing home confirmed the news without providing details. Branyas had suggested that her demise was imminent on Monday on X, saying: "I feel weak. The time is coming. Don't cry, I don't like tears... You know me, wherever I go, I will be happy." Her X account is handled by her daughter. She had turned 117 on March 4, according to Guinness World Records, and had become the oldest person in the world in January 2023. Born in San Francisco, California, in 1907, she moved with her Spanish family back to the northeastern region of Catalonia when she was seven. She spent the rest of her life there, living through the 1936-39 civil war and two pandemics a century apart - the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and the 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic. In 1931, she married Catalan doctor Joan Moret, with whom she had three children. Her husband passed away in 1976 and she also outlived her son, August, who died in a tractor accident at the age of 86, Guinness World Records said on its website.

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AI company Anthropic has been hit with a class-action lawsuit in California federal court by three authors who say it misused their books and hundreds of thousands of others to train its AI-powered chatbot Claude. From a report: The complaint, filed on Monday, by writers and journalists Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson, said that Anthropic used pirated versions of their works and others to teach Claude to respond to human prompts. The lawsuit joins several other high-stakes complaints filed by copyright holders including visual artists, news outlets and record labels over the material used by tech companies to train their generative artificial intelligence systems. Separate groups of authors have sued OpenAI and Meta over the companies' alleged misuse of their work to train the large-language models underlying their chatbots.

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A new paper on the National Bureau of Economic Research: Using more than 4,900 assessments, we study changes in the characteristics and objectives of CEOs and top executives since 2001. The same four factors explain roughly half of the variation of assessed CEO characteristics in this larger sample of executive assessments as in Kaplan and Sorensen (2021). After the global financial crisis (GFC), the average interviewed CEO candidate has lower overall ability, is more execution oriented / less interpersonal, less charismatic and less creative/strategic than pre-GFC. Except for overall ability and execution oriented/interpersonal, these differences persist in hired CEOs. Interpersonal or "softer" skills do not increase over time, either for CEO candidates or hired CEOs. Pre- and post-GFC, we find a positive correlation between the ability of assessed CEOs and other C-level executives assessed at the same company, suggesting that higher-ability executives complement each other. Finally, we look at the relation between the objectives for which the CEOs are interviewed and CEO characteristics.

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Global technology giants are pushing back against attempts by India's telecom networks to bring internet services under stricter regulation, rejecting arguments that such measures are necessary to create a "level playing field" and address national security concerns. From a report: The Asia Internet Coalition (AIC), a powerful industry body that represents Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Netflix and Spotify, has forcefully argued against inclusion of the so-called over-the-top (OTT) services in the proposed regulatory framework for telecom operators. In a submission to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the AIC said there are fundamental differences in technology, operations and functionality between OTT services and traditional telecom operations. [...] This resistance comes in response to a coordinated push by India's top telecom operators -- Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea -- to bring OTT services under a new authorization framework. Jio, India's largest telecom operator with more than 475 million subscribers, along with other telco operators have recommended that OTT providers contribute to network development costs based on their traffic consumption, turnover and user base.

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Smonster writes: The maker of the Snoo, a popular high-tech bassinet, touched off a firestorm of outrage after requiring a paid subscription to use several key features. Most new parents are looking for a way to reclaim even a hint of the sleep they used to get pre-infant. So a smart bassinet that uses sensors to detect when a crying baby needs pacifying, simulating the sounds and rhythms of the womb, offers an irresistible promise to sleep-strapped parents: another hour or two of shut-eye. The dream doesn't come cheap: One of the more popular models, the Snoo retails for $1,700, though enterprising parents can score one secondhand from friends, neighbors or relatives whose own children have outgrown it. But last month, that hand-me-down network was dealt a blow when Happiest Baby, the company that makes Snoo, began charging for access to some of the bassinet's premium features -- features that used to be available to Snoo users indefinitely, at no extra cost. Now, access to the app needed to lock in the bassinet's rocking level, to track the baby's sleep and to use the so-called weaning mode, among other features, will cost parents $20 a month. The change has angered secondhand users and original buyers alike. On Reddit, the new subscription model has prompted review bombs, group brainstorms for collective action and detailed instructions for outraged parents seeking recourse. Some have taken to filing complaints with the Federal Trade Commission, Better Business Bureau and state-run consumer protection offices.

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