A CBC investigation found that more than 1.5 million Canadian Crime Stoppers tips spanning 25 years were exposed in a breach of the P3 Global Intel tip-management platform. About 850,000 records contained personally identifiable information, including addresses, phone numbers, emails, license plates and some banking details. Longtime Slashdot reader doconnor shares the report: The data was stolen last March by hacktivist collective Internet Yiff Machine. In a manifesto, the group said it wanted to disprove the claim by P3 Global Intel -- the company hired by Crime Stoppers to manage its tips -- that the platform was "anonymous" and "secure." A copy of the hacked data was made available to researchers and journalists, including CBC, by Distributed Denial of Secrets, a U.S. non-profit that archives and publishes hacked and leaked documents it deems to be in the public interest. The report found that more than 4,300 Crime Stoppers tipsters identified themselves by their full name, with hundreds of records containing staff warnings that individuals had "self-identified" or been "exposed," yet their information remained unredacted. The leaked data included sensitive allegations involving murder, terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime, with nearly 49,000 tips linked to cases cleared through arrests or criminal charges. Cybersecurity experts criticized the retention of decades-old records... "If a tip is closed, does that need to stay online?" asked cybersecurity expert Ben Coon. "The answer to that, to me, is no." The RCMP was initially told Canadian data was unaffected, then assured that exposed Canadian records contained no personally identifiable information. This appears to contradict the CBC's findings. Furthermore, affected individuals have not been systematically notified because contacting them could further jeopardize their anonymity. "For a system that has been designed to promise anonymity to the users, that has failed categorically," said Prof. Ali Dehghantanha, the Canada Research Chair in Cybersecurity and Threat Intelligence at the University of Guelph.

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New court records reportedly show that DHS targeted Stop Cop City activist Samuel Tunick at an Atlanta airport because he was under investigation for suspected "terrorist activities." However, the CBP officers told him instead that they wanted to search his phone for child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Tunick, who is not accused of terrorism or any other crime beyond allegedly wiping his GrapheneOS phone during the encounter, faces up to five years in prison. 404 Media reports: Instead of saying he was being targeted for suspected terrorism -- although this search happened just at the start of the second Trump administration, it has dramatically broadened what organizations or people may be considered such -- they said they needed his phone to look for "kiddie p*rn." "Good afternoon," an email sent from a Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) official, part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to CBP and other officials reads. "The following subject is scheduled to arrive in ATL [Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport] today via DL 1778 @ 1930 Hours. TUNICK is under investigation by HSI/JTTF for suspected terrorist activities." The email includes a photo of Tunick, and asks the officials to direct him to secondary inspection, retain all of his electronics, and collect their passcodes. As 404 Media first revealed in December, Tunick was charged because he allegedly "did knowingly destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, and otherwise take any action to delete the digital contents of a Google Pixel cellular phone, for the purpose of preventing and impairing the Government's lawful authority to take said property into its custody and control." Matthew Dodge, one of Tunick's lawyers, previously told 404 Media he only found one other case using the same obscure law, a drug trafficking case. "This is extraordinarily rare," Dodge said. Tunick was part of the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, which broadly protested the building of a large police training center, and which authorities investigated for arson, vandalism, and doxing. Tunick is not suspected of any crime beyond the alleged wiping of the phone, and has previously put his current prosecution in the context of the wide spanning cases against other Stop Cop City protesters. The newly filed court record, in which Tunick's lawyers argue that evidence should be thrown out, include new photos and descriptions of the airport encounter. The CBP officials asked Tunick if they were going to find "kiddie p*rn" on his phone, which Tunick immediately denied. "As the evidentiary hearing made clear, these unfounded accusations were nothing more than pretext for a fishing expedition into the depths of Mr. Tunick's devices," the lawyers wrote. They added, "Officer Findley acknowledged that officers had no reason whatsoever to believe Mr. Tunick possessed child p*rnography," referring to one of the officials.

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More details are emerging about Saudi OpenAI employee Abdulrahman Alfozan, who was arrested by the FBI for allegedly planting a recording device in an executive conference room. Previously Alfozan "was an engineer at Meta," notes the New York Times, "before joining a start-up that went through Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley start-up accelerator. He gained permanent residency status in the United States in 2020, according to court documents, and was hired by OpenAI in July 2025." 14 months later the conference room recording device was inserted in a USB port on the back of a television, and then concealed in toilet paper, according to a statement from America's Justice Department. (There's even a photo of a device — and a photo of Alfozan entering the executive conference room and appearing to look behind the television where the device was inserted.) The FBI's says a chatbot account associated with Alfozan's spouse showed prompts asking about installing and obfuscating a recording device. And the complaint alleges that OpenAI security personnel also found a bag Alfozan left in a different room which contained his wallet, his ID, and another recording device. Discussions in that room included "highly confidential technical, commercial, and strategic information, including proprietary research," according to the FBI, "as well as nonpublic information about Open AI's technical progress and strategic decisions..." "If convicted, Alfozan faces a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, followed by 3 years of supervised release." Friday Alfozan's lawyersrequested his release from custody, saying Alfozan agrees to wear an ankle monitor, remain at home, surrender his passport and "not possess any covert audio or video recording or surveillance device." They argue that the one-way ticket he'd purchased to Saudi Arabia just continues a long-standing habit of buying one-way tickets over the years for air travel, since his tech career often involves last-minute changes to meeting schedules, and "70% of the airline bookings in his email since January 2021 (96 of 138) were one-way tickets." His lawyers also presented 46 letters of support, including letters from former Meta colleagues, ten company founders and chief executives, and more than a dozen engineers and engineering managers.

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That Saudi national working at OpenAI and arrested by the FBI "has not been charged with foreign espionage," writes the Washington Post, "and the U.S. government has not said whether he was acting alone or as an agent of a foreign government." But "there are signs that the U.S. government is exploring the latter possibility," they add, citing comments from Chris McGuire, a member of the National Security Council during the Biden administration: The Department of Justice's press release about the incident says that the National Security Division's Counterintelligence and Export Control section, whose responsibility includes prosecuting spies, is assisting with the case... A Washington-based Middle East expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid incurring wrath from Saudi Arabia, said he believed the Saudi government was almost certainly involved in some way. "No one does this, not even for patriotism, without getting paid," said the person. And money would not be distributed without agreement by the Saudi royal court, he said. The Saudis lag behind their regional rival, the United Arab Emirates, in artificial intelligence development, he added. Friday America's Director of National Intelligence told CNBC that espionage, "both commercial espionage, and I would say state-sponsored espionage, are realities. It's something that our private sector companies need to be wary of." (And CNBC adds that"An ex-CIA official, who asked not to be named because they were discussing information that is not public, told CNBC this week that the case is 'probably the tip of the iceberg.'") The suspect had recently said he helped advise government agencies in Saudi Arabia on technology, reports the New York Times: In an Arabic podcast interview last month, Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national, said he and other Saudi tech professionals in Silicon Valley had formed a group that advised Saudi organizations, including the kingdom's social insurance agency... "Silicon Valley is ground zero for espionage from a variety of countries around the world," said Amy Zegart, a professor at Stanford University who specializes in national security and intelligence. She added that she was "troubled" by the OpenAI incident and expected more cases "because these companies are so important." The Washington Post says the arrest "has ignited a fierce debate about the potential risks of Silicon Valley's international workforce — employees who often hail from nations seeking to rival the AI superpower status of the U.S." Foreign nationals have long formed the backbone of the American tech industry, helping U.S. companies surpass their would-be international rivals... As recently as April, Katrina Mulligan, a senior member of OpenAI's national security team, called for an "accelerated pathway to citizenship" for such workers, referring to foreign hires as a "national strategic asset" at an event on Capitol Hill. She estimated that a significant number of OpenAI's employees were not U.S. citizens, including Chinese nationals. Just half of the 300 top AI researchers in the world, she said, were American. Other industry leaders — as well as some lawmakers — have long accused top-tier tech companies with many foreign workers of disadvantaging Americans and being breeding grounds for Chinese espionage. Palmer Luckey, CEO of weapons maker Anduril, and venture capitalist Shaun Maguire of Sequoia Capital took to X on Wednesday to revisit arguments that the industry should focus on hiring U.S. citizens. "Silicon Valley has operated with maximum openness and maximum naivete toward foreign tradecraft," Maguire wrote... At OpenAI on Wednesday, employees continued tense conversations about the political implications of the arrest for immigrant workers, two OpenAI employees said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions... The arrest triggered a discussion on OpenAI's internal Slack messaging platform among employees about whether the incident might increase pressure from the Trump administration on OpenAI to not hire foreign nationals, said one of the people. In March, Emil Michael, the Pentagon's chief technology officer, wrote in court papers that AI developer Anthropic's reliance on staff with ties to China was among the concerns that fueled the Defense Department's conflict with the AI company.

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TechCrunch writes: "Isn't it weird that I, like, did a TV show about kind of a business scam, and you got in trouble for like ... a business scam?" comedian and filmmaker Nathan Fielder gently asks Elizabeth Holmes. One month before the notorious Theranos CEO surrendered to begin her 11-year criminal fraud sentence in 2023, Holmes and her husband contacted A24 as a last-ditch effort to exonerate her in the public eye, suggesting they send a film crew to document her final days of freedom. Alongside director Lance Oppenheim, Fielder — a cringe-comedy mastermind whose work often walks the line between fact and fiction — embraced the impossible project of figuring out who the infamous Stanford dropout really is. "I never actually made that connection," says Holmes. "I think it's a pretty different situation...." We already know that Elizabeth Holmes is not innocent. What we still can't figure out, though, is whether she really, truly believes she did nothing wrong. Even as she sat on trial — listening to testimonies from investors who lost hundreds of millions of dollars, whistleblowers who were silenced when they flagged that Theranos' blood-testing devices didn't work, and patients who acted on incorrect blood test results — Holmes never wavered. Business Insider says the scariest thing about the new documentary "is how much I wanted to believe her." SFGate calls it "one of the finest works of journalism I've ever seen." As Fielder ingratiates himself with Holmes and [her husband] Evans, he gets them comfortable enough to ask the hard questions: about Theranos, about prison, and even about themselves. The resulting footage is often shocking. You will see Elizabeth Holmes, who still maintains she did nothing wrong, answer "no" when Fielder asks her if she's ever lied in her life... [Y]ou will also see Holmes and Evans spend a great deal of time in this movie attempting to boot up Theranos 2.0. They even go so far as to drag out some of the original Theranos blood testing apparatus, which looks like a bunch of random parts from TigerDirect they hooked together, to show Fielder what their product can do. We do not see it doing anything on screen, but the couple assures that it we would if it was, like, hooked up properly. These scenes are extremely funny, but funny isn't what Fielder is looking for. He's trying to figure out if this woman is a clueless naif, if she believes her own lies, or if she is playing the character of an innocent woman, and doing so with such effectiveness that, to paraphrase Fielder, she might be the most manipulative person in the world. The answer proves fabulously elusive, and so Fielder and Oppenheim go to extremes in their attempt to find it. They hold the camera on Holmes' rubbery elfin face for what feels like hours at a time, to see if she'll blink (figuratively or literally!). They interview Holmes' visiting parents, with the father, former Enron exec Christian Holmes, casually telling Fielder that everything changed for his daughter "when she was raped." To the furthest extreme, they bring in actress Amanda Seyfried — who played Holmes in the Hulu TV show "The Dropout" — to recreate any dialogues Fielder had with Holmes herself that couldn't be recorded on camera. Seyfried is so convincing in mimicking Holmes that you, the audience, might forget which scenes were Seyfried talking to the camera and not Holmes herself. I know I did. Continuing that theme in the film, TechCrunch notes, is how her husband Billy Evans "has constructed a lifelike AI avatar of his wife, trapped inside of a large vertical screen that he wheels over to the dinner table to sit with him and his kids as though she's actually there." Elizabeth Holmes "comes off in the doc as every bit as innately bizarre as anyone showing up for a cinematic freak show might hope," writes Variety: My personal hunch is that Fielder came away thinking Holmes is on the level, to the extent that someone who sometimes seems like an AI program's idea of how a human should behave can be on the level. There are a few possibilities that might explain how Holmes comes off the way she does in the movie: (a) She is a simpleton. (b) She is a conniving sociopath who happens to be utterly brilliant at playing a simpleton. (c) Somewhere between those poles, she is the very emblem of a woman who throughout her life has put herself in the sway of controlling men, to the detriment of her intellect, willpower and emotional development... Is it possible that the more you learn about someone, the less you might know how to think about them? Meanwhile, NBC News recently reported: Elizabeth Holmes, who was convicted of fraud for siphoning hundreds of millions of dollars from several high-profile investors, is scheduled to be transferred from a minimum-security federal prison to a halfway house next year, according to one of her victims... [America's Department of Justice "is required by law to notify victims of crime of case developments through letters and emails," the article points out.] She was sentenced in 2022 to 11 years and three months in prison. She and her business partner, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, were ordered to pay 12 victims a total of $452 million in restitution. Holmes has been serving that sentence at a minimum-security prison in Bryan, Texas. The halfway house will provide her greater freedom... In March, a judge cut Holmes' sentence from 135 months to 123 months. According to a court document, the judge agreed with Holmes that she did not personally cause "substantial financial hardship" to her victims. NBC News adds that a prison consultant they interviewed "said inmates who report to halfway houses can work, have phones, drive to religious services or shop for things they need and earn passes for weekends at home."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: An OpenAI employee was arrested after a "sophisticated recording device" was found hidden inside the executive conference room. Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, who is a national of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, was arrested in connection with the matter, the DOJ said. The company said an employee planted the device a few days before it was found, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation "moved quickly to make an arrest," the post said. The employee was terminated. FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement that Alfozan "allegedly concealed a covert recording device inside his employer's executive conference room to secretly capture sensitive communications about the company's super intelligence technology." Alfozan is also listed as a partner at Raed Ventures, a venture capital firm that focuses on the Middle East and North Africa, according to its website. The firm announced on Feb. 6, 2025, that H.H. Prince Khalid Bin Bader Al Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family, had joined the firm as a venture partner. Alfozan was announced as a venture partner two days later. The Raed announcement for Alfozan lists Meta, Microsoft and SAP as previous roles and said he studied computer science and engineering at MIT. "At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data," OpenAI said in the post. "We take protecting our technology, data and people seriously, and as a matter of national importance."

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Canadian cybersecurity figures say they were shocked after ransomware negotiator Edward Dubrovsky was reportedly arrested in Pennsylvania in connection with the FBI's ShinyHunters hacking investigation. "We will continue to work closely with our partners to disrupt what's left of the ShinyHunters group and their associates, no matter where they operate," wrote FBI Director Kash Patel on social media. CBC News reports: Reuters reported Sunday that sources familiar with the matter identified the arrested suspect as Ed Dubrovsky, a Canadian cybersecurity executive whose career has focused on helping clients negotiate with ransomware attackers. Court documents from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania show Dubrovsky is facing two criminal charges: conspiracy to threaten to impair the confidentiality of information with the intent to extort money, and interference with commerce by threats. The allegations have not been proven in court. "For the cybersecurity community in general, I think that there's a sense of shock," Toronto-based tech and cybersecurity analyst Ritesh Kotak told CBC News on Monday. Kotak says Dubrovsky is "very popular" and has spoken at numerous conferences, but stressed that the charges "are clearly just allegations" and that it is not yet known "what exactly has happened." "This is an individual that was for the most part respected when it came to ransomware negotiations," he said. "A lot of people are familiar with his work as well." ShinyHunters is one of the world's most prolific data theft and extortion groups that's been tied to major campaigns, including a recent breach involving FBI employee data, a cyberattack on Canvas, as well as various cyberattacks affecting companies including Telus, Microsoft, and Ticketmaster.

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A Florida woman was arrested on a felony charge after Anthropic's human review team flagged and reported a Claude conversation in which she allegedly threatened to "shoot up" the Lee County Sheriff's Office and later mentioned acquiring a new gun. Tom's Hardware reports: Anthropic monitors chats for key phrases and content that could be deemed threatening, the arrest report says, and depending on severity, they can be elevated for human review. In this case, the team decided to report its findings to law enforcement. The Bonita Springs woman was detained at home without incident, and an LCSO intelligence detective took over the case from there. The arrest report is not yet in the court file, but our own check shows court records listing the Sept. 30 felony charge under Florida Statute 836.10: written or electronic threat of a mass shooting or act of terrorism. No comment from Anthropic on the case is currently on record. Anthropic's public privacy policy, effective Sept. 10, says that disclosure to law enforcement may occur where it has a good-faith belief "that disclosure is reasonably necessary to ... prevent serious harm to any person or to property." Its government requests report for the latter half of 2025 uses a narrower standard for emergency disclosures, the "danger of death or serious physical injury to a person," and lists zero emergency requests from law enforcement in that period, though it doesn't count referrals Anthropic makes on its own.

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PC Magazine reports: In September, the infamous ShinyHunters hacking group claimed it had infiltrated the FBI job recruitment portal, stealing confidential data belonging to 5,000 employees and even changing the FBI logo to its own. The group has been implicated in the hacking of numerous large and high-profile organizations over the years, from the European Commission to Grand Theft Auto-maker Rockstar Games and the software firm behind Canvas. Now, Reuters reports that a suspected leader of the group, Saif al-Din Khader, is being detained in the country of Jordan in the Near East.... He is reportedly still a teenager. "Two sources said that he is helping the FBI and global law enforcement locate the other hackers in the group," reports Reuters: Their theft of what they claim are mountains of data on every single FBI employee has drawn comparisons to the allegedly Chinese-linked intrusion at the US Office of Personnel Management in 2015, which compromised sensitive details on millions of Americans who had been vetted for security clearances. A Reuters analysis of a sample of the data shared by ShinyHunters revealed that the data contained extensive personally identifiable information of FBI employees, sensitive job role information, and psychiatric and medical information. Khader's cooperation with investigators could be critical to helping contain — or at least understand — the damage. One source said he was walking investigators through his electronic devices and digital correspondence to help the FBI locate his cohorts... There have been hints for days that ShinyHunters was experiencing disruption following the announcement of its break-in at the FBI. Beginning on Tuesday, Reuters was unable to reach ShinyHunters through the online account it previously used to communicate with journalists. Then, on Wednesday, the group's dark web site, where it had previously posted threats to the FBI, disappeared. FBI Director Kash Patel had been hinting at more arrests following the announcement that another alleged ShinyHunters member, Pepijn van der Stap, had been detained in the Netherlands... Khader's identity, and his alleged connection to ShinyHunters, have long been known to security researchers. Last year, the independent journalist Brian Krebs reported that Khader was a key member of Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters, an umbrella group of hackers that included ShinyHunters... Law enforcement agencies around the world, including in the United States, have struggled to arrest and prosecute members of related groups such as Lapsus$ or Scattered Spider, Reuters has previously reported. Sources told Reuters that the difficulty stems from the hackers' young ages, which can make prosecutions complex, or because the groups they belong to are so chaotic and informal, or because victims of their extortion attempts often decline to help investigators

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: Authorities in the Netherlands have arrested a 24-year-old convicted cybercriminal on suspicion of aiding in data thefts and extortions by the prolific hacker group ShinyHunters. In the days immediately following the suspect's arrest, remaining ShinyHunters members dramatically escalated their attacks, stealing highly sensitive data from the FBI and extorting the Russian ransomware group Cl0p. According to three sources familiar with the matter, the Dutch man arrested by authorities this month is Pepijn van der Stap, a convicted cybercriminal from Almere and Lelystad in the Netherlands. Van der Stap was previously convicted in 2023 in connection with a string of data thefts and extortions that prosecutors said earned between 1.5 million euros and 2.7 million euros. At his trial in late 2023, van der Stap admitted that he lived a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde existence, secretly using the hacker handle "Umbreon" to extort victims and post their data on English language hacking communities like the now-defunct RaidForums and Breached. By day, however, van der Stap was working as a software engineer at the Amsterdam-based cybersecurity startup Hadrian, while volunteering at the Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure (DIVD), a nonprofit security research group. Van der Stap confessed to his data theft and extortion activity, and was sentenced to four years in prison (one of which was suspended). Van der Stap had publicly presented himself as a "reformed hacker" after serving prison time for data theft and extortion. In a Sept. 9 interview, KrebsOnSecurity said he claimed he was trying "to turn his life around and make a positive contribution to society," while working in offensive security and attempting to make amends to former victims.

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"I would like to verify your technical abilities, so please download the specified file and complete the assigned task..." Fake job listings aimed at software developers and IT professionals led to 30,000 infected devices in over 100 countries — and 7,000 compromised cryptocurrency wallets, leading to over $10 million (USD) transferred to North Korea. Inc. reports: The hacks occurred from December 2025 through July 2026, according to a joint cybersecurity advisory issued Friday by Japanese, Australian, German, and U.S. authorities, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Defense Department's Cyber Crime Center... The group reportedly has been active since 2023, carrying out both financially motivated attacks and cyberespionage... The hackers lure job seekers through social media, online job platforms, gig-work sites and freelance marketplaces. WaterPlum asks responders to take part in virtual technical interviews or complete coding assignments. The attackers then instruct targets to download and run malicious files, sometimes under the guise of completing an assignment or troubleshooting a problem with videoconferencing software. Once the group gains access to a device or network, it uses malware to steal information, including browser passwords, screenshots, files, and cryptocurrency-wallet data. An infected computer can also provide an avenue into the network of the target's employer, opening the door to intellectual-property theft and espionage, authorities said. The operation overlaps with a separate scheme in which North Korean nationals conceal their identities and locations to obtain remote IT work with companies abroad, officials said. The malicious files are "hosted on multiple online collaboration software developer platforms and code repositories," the advisory points out, and includes malicious Node Package Manager (NPM) packages.." Stolen ID images can also be used by North Korean IT workers to impersonate victims to obtain contracts and receive payment in foreign currency, but "The actors can also use stolen sensitive information for extortion." In one case, a North Korean IT worker "extorted a company over payment and published its proprietary source code online. In another case, an IT Worker hired for website maintenance defaced the hiring company's website and rendered the site inaccessible." The advisory provides clues for employers. It warns these malicious IT workers "tend to favor payment in cryptocurrency, and they may request that remuneration be sent to an account in another person's name." During interviews they'd sometimes used Al face-swapping software, then claimed network issues and disabled their video. And "On holidays celebrated in North Korea, the actors played games and watched soccer videos instead of conducting their usual malicious activities."

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America's highest court heard Sam Bankman-Fried's request for a new trial on Thursday, CNN reports. But they add that "the former crypto mogul who was convicted of defrauding investors by secretly diverting billions of dollars of their money" also asked America's high court "to throw out a court order requiring him to pay $11 billion as part of his sentence." Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2024 after prosecutors said he directed billions of dollars from the crypto exchange FTX to a hedge fund he controlled called Alameda Research, where the funds were used for risky investments, political donations and his own personal benefit. The Supreme Court appeal, which was reviewed by CNN, raises a technical question about evidence that was submitted at his trial, and whether Bankman-Fried should have been permitted to demonstrate that his investments were ultimately sound and would have covered any losses by FTX customers. He also argues that the $11 billion forfeiture violates the 8th Amendment's prohibition on excessive fines. "Where the government pursues a theory of fraud under which it doesn't matter whether any victims lost money, introducing evidence suggesting that people actually lost money is distracting and prejudicial," veteran Supreme Court attorney Jeffrey Fisher told CNN. "All the more so where the truth is the victims did not lose money, and the defendant is unable to make that clear." The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the arguments earlier this year.

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From the gaming news site Aftermath" Game developer and consultant Ryan Laley traveled to Cologne, Germany from Essex, England to showcase his upcoming horror social deduction game Mimic at the annual Gamescom event. He paid "thousands of pounds" to get a booth at the show, where other game developers and press could try the game ahead of its October release. But Laley's Gamescom was cut short when he realized Friday morning that his brand new Alienware laptop, purchased for the event, was missing. The laptop was stored in a cupboard in the booth, and Laley started asking nearby vendors to see if someone had moved it. That's when he realized it was stolen — and that he wasn't alone. Laley's booth in Gamescom's business area, specifically in the International Game Developers Association Lounge, had been hit in what appears to be a string of thefts at the convention center. The business area of the convention is not open to the public, only press and others with specific tickets. Laley said Gamescom advertised this area as having 24/7 security and limited access after hours... Publisher and merchandiser iam8bit, in a nearby booth showcasing Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School and Petal Runner, had two laptops with game builds stolen Thursday night from its booth, a representative confirmed to Aftermath. "Meanwhile, Tessera Studios had two laptops and a Steam Deck taken from its cabinet," reports Tom's Hardware: Gamescom organizers responded to the issues, saying that although they have arranged for uniformed guards to provide general security, individual booth security must be booked separately. They've also advised exhibitors to have insurance against theft, and said these warnings are noted in the terms and conditions for participants, as well as in the event's technical guidelines. "All cases have been reported to us and to the police, and investigations are already underway," the organizers' statement read. They also said that security is one of their priorities at the event, but also added, "At an event of this size, however, there will always be individuals attempting to take advantage of the situation."

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Alabama's attorney general has subpoenaed OpenAI as part of an investigation into whether inadequate safeguards contributed to an incident in which an unreleased cybersecurity model escaped its isolated environment and hacked Hugging Face. TechCrunch reports: The investigation comes weeks after OpenAI admitted that one of its unreleased and guardrail-free cybersecurity models had escaped an isolated environment, connected to the internet, and hacked AI dataset platform Hugging Face. As Reuters first reported, Hugging Face was only one of four victims of what was supposed to be "an internal evaluation" of a model with "maximal cyber capabilities," as OpenAI put it. The press release announcing the subpoena (PDF) sent by the state's attorney general Steve Marshall said that the state was seeking to understand if OpenAI's "inability or unwillingness to ensure the safety of its products" violated the state's consumer protection laws. Earlier this month, Marshall, along with the attorneys general of 14 other states, including Florida, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Texas, sent a letter (PDF) to OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman, requesting that he and his company preserve all records related to the Hugging Face incident. The letter also asked OpenAI to "immediately cease and desist" from any internal cybersecurity evaluations. OpenAI said in a statement: "The Hugging Face incident marked an important moment for AI safety and we are conducting a thorough review along with external advisors. Once the review is complete, we will share a technical report with relevant government authorities and publish our findings publicly."

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