• The Bing Wallpaper app is serving an ad in Windows 11
• The advert is for a Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts movie collection
• There's a rebellion against this blatant advertising, with a significant number of users saying they've immediately removed Microsoft's wallpaper app

Some Windows 11 users who've installed the Bing Wallpaper app have been treated to an unpleasantly in-your-face advert for Harry Potter.

To be precise, it's an ad for a collection of 11 Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts movies, and, as Windows Latest reports, this appears as a full-page promotional image that becomes your desktop background.

This isn't happening for every Bing Wallpaper user, and it appears to be a regional rollout; but based on the plentiful Reddit feedback of the negative variety, it's being piped to quite a number of PCs.

For the uninitiated, Bing Wallpaper is an app that serves up daily wallpapers to those who've installed the software — and note that it isn't installed by default; this is something you have to elect to have on your Windows 11 PC.

Nevertheless, it's an over-the-top move by Microsoft to shovel something like this onto the desktops of those who've chosen Bing to pick their backgrounds.

As one annoyed Redditor says, filing the Harry Potter wallpaper under the 'unskippable ad' category in the 'Mildly Infuriating' subreddit: "I had it [Bing Wallpaper] installed since up until this point it was a fairly harmless program that gave a variety of animals, environments or pattern backgrounds that rotate daily. Wtf?"

Replying, another Redditor observes: "Free software from a trillion dollar company means you are the product." Some folks responded to that to say that Windows 11 isn't free, but this Redditor isn't talking about the OS itself, but rather the Bing Wallpaper app, which is a free add-on for Windows, of course.

Analysis: Bing begone

Windows Latest notes that the terms and conditions of the Bing Wallpaper app allow for "promotional offers" from Microsoft, but what's happening here goes well beyond that. Frankly, this isn't acceptable in any way — and Microsoft really should know better than to serve a blatant advert in this manner.

I'd say I was shocked, but ads have always been a problem in Windows 11. On top of that, about a year ago Bing Wallpaper was used to perform another underhand trick with desktops that made me cringe. In that case, an accidental click on the Windows 11 background fired up a Bing search (yes, really), and I called this "a new low" for Microsoft at the time.

This, however, represents Microsoft plumbing fresh depths. A notable number of those complaining on Reddit have said that they've immediately uninstalled Bing Wallpaper due to this incident (generally with a sprinkling of added curse words).

One of the politer comments notes: "Honestly if they cut out text and just left the base [image] with the option to right click to get more info and it took the user there it would be passable. But current state just time to remove Bing Wallpaper."

This is very much representative of Microsoft's different departments not talking to each other. On the one hand, there's a big drive to fix Windows 11 and try to please users with all sorts of nifty changes and long-awaited features. On the other, the Bing Wallpaper team thinks it's fine to deploy what might be the worst example of advertising I've ever seen in the Windows ecosystem — and there's quite some competition for that accolade, sadly.

At any rate, I assume this won't be happening again, Microsoft, given the reaction here… right?

The first Wi-Fi 8 routers were launched by TP-Link at IFA 2026 last week with the devices set to hit the shelves later this year. So, when that happens, is it a good idea to immediately jump on board with this new more performant wireless standard?

Not exactly. There's a bit to unpack here about exactly how Wi-Fi 8 improves on Wi-Fi 7 — it's not any faster in terms of raw performance, in case you weren't aware — as well as when routers and devices that support the new standard will arrive.

All of this will factor in to the decision you'll make about when to upgrade to Wi-Fi 8 in your home. In this article, we'll look at what Wi-Fi 8 offers over and above Wi-Fi 7, and then examine considerations around the upgrade timeline, and when you might want to make a move to benefit from cutting-edge Wi-Fi.

How is Wi-Fi 8 better than Wi-Fi 7?

Wi-Fi 8 doesn't move the needle in terms of raw speed over Wi-Fi 7 — the latter is already beefy in that respect anyway — and instead aims to boost overall wireless performance in different ways.

Wi-Fi 8 seeks to improve the overall stability and reliability of the wireless connection, so you get a smoother and faster experience when you're further away from the router — and it's particularly focused on helping boost speeds at the very edge of the network's signal.

Another key point with Wi-Fi 8 is that it's built to cope with more devices and keep speeds up, as well as dealing with interference better. So, in signal-dense environments, where there are lots of devices competing for bandwidth, all this traffic will be better directed and managed to ensure better performance.

That'll obviously help with larger households where everyone has multiple devices, but it's going to be particularly important for places like apartments or office buildings where there can be a lot of competition from multiple routers and a whole host of devices all packed into a relatively small area.

TP-Link — which unveiled both a traditional Wi-Fi 8 router, the Archer 8 Ultra, and a mesh Wi-Fi system, the Deco 8 Ultra, at IFA 2026 — revealed some clever tricks for these cutting-edge pieces of hardware. They use Dynamic Sub-band Operation (DSO) and Non-Primary Channel Access (NPCA) tech to portion out only the bandwidth any given device needs — so tiny smart home devices, for example, only get the small chunk that they require, leaving more bandwidth to be usable for other hardware. In short, the traffic from all devices is managed in a much smarter manner, and situations where performance gets congested with Wi-Fi 7 are avoided with Wi-Fi 8.

The end result is a considerable leap in performance of wireless devices, even though the core speed and throughput spec of Wi-Fi 8 remains the same as its predecessor. This is particularly evident in environments with lots of competing devices, or when you're at the outer limits of the wireless signal.

When will Wi-Fi 8 routers go on sale — and should I buy one straight away?

As mentioned, TP-Link's initial models are on sale later in 2026, and pre-orders will go live in some regions from the start of October. Asus Wi-Fi 8 routers are also expected to arrive later this year.

In theory, then, you could grab yourself a Wi-Fi 8 router in a couple of months and be up-and-running with the latest wireless standard — but should you?

Here's the thing about being an early adopter of a new Wi-Fi standard: you must remember that when the first routers come out, they're based on a draft version, not the finalized wireless standard. In other words, it's still very early days for Wi-Fi 8 (although when it is finalized, likely in mid-2027, existing routers will be updated appropriately, of course).

So, while you can have a Wi-Fi 8 router later this year, you won't be able to buy any devices which are compatible with the standard. Naturally, both the client device and the router must support the new standard to benefit from its features, and smartphones and laptops that are Wi-Fi 8 capable aren't arriving until next year.

And even then, they will only be available in small numbers, and these will be premium cutting-edge (expensive) devices, as you might expect.

Is it pointless to buy a Wi-Fi 8 router when they first come out?

While you won't get the immediate full benefit of Wi-Fi 8 until you have the supporting devices to go with the router, it's not completely pointless to be an early adopter of something like the TP-Link Archer 8 Ultra. It's backwards compatible with all devices supporting earlier Wi-Fi standards, of course, and that hardware will still get the benefit of some of the Archer's traffic management tricks.

That said, until Wi-Fi 8 laptops, tablets and phones arrive in greater numbers, you're not realistically going to get much mileage out of your shiny new Wi-Fi 8 router. You will, of course, be future-proofed and ready for next year's devices, but the problem is that buying a Wi-Fi 8 router at launch means you'll pay a premium and a high price for the privilege.

This cutting-edge hardware is always expensive when it first comes onto the scene, so on balance, it's much better to wait until the market fills out, and more Wi-Fi 8 hardware — routers and consumer devices — is available, before you pull the trigger on a purchase. Your wallet will be happier if you're patient.

Rest assured, though, that the future of wireless is almost here, and Wi-Fi 8 promises to make a big difference when it fully kicks in.

• AI data centers currently use a huge amount of energy
• Scientists have found a way to cut that energy bill by "orders of magnitude"
• It involves using "ultrafast magnetic-field pulses" in RAM and storage

It’s no secret that the current artificial intelligence (AI) boom is leading to record levels of energy consumption — all that computing power needs to be fueled somehow — and it’s causing much controversy among the communities that are impacted whenever a new data center lays down its roots in their neighborhoods.

Now, though, scientists think they’ve come across a way that could radically slash the energy requirements of memory and storage, with potentially massive consequences for the future of the computing and AI industries.

In a paper published in the Advanced Materials journal (via a press release in Science Daily), researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland wrote that the breakthrough would fundamentally affect the way magnetic memory operates. Right now, switching its state allows magnetic memory to control digital information, but the current methods of doing so can be costly in terms of energy.

Instead of using standard energy switching techniques, the researchers discovered an alternative that harnessed ultrafast magnetic field pulses that consumed far less energy. In fact, the paper claimed that the authors’ approach could cut energy usage by “up to two orders of magnitude” — in other words, a cut of around 100x, which is a significant reduction.

The data centers of the future

The AI revolution is only a few years old, but data center energy consumption has already become a significant issue. As the authors of the research paper put it, “Without significant improvements in efficiency, [information and communication technologies] could eventually represent a sizable share of worldwide electricity consumption and carbon emissions.” AI is playing a large role in that trend thanks to both its voracious appetite for component production and the sizable emissions it produces.

While the paper focused on magnetic memory, its theories could be applied to other fields, the authors believe. As study writer Dr. Elton J.G. Santos put it, “The same framework can be adapted to electrical currents and even ultrafast laser pulses, which are among the most cutting-edge technologies for future data storage. That means the ideas developed here could have applications far beyond the systems we studied.”

Although the research is still in the realm of theory, the paper’s authors proposed a number of practical steps that could help others build prototypes and conduct experiments.

That said, don’t expect monumental changes any time soon. There is still a long road ahead before these ideas get put into practice, if they ever do. But given the promising results of the scientists’ work, there is hope that the data centers of the future could be far less energy-intensive than those of today.

• Wordfence discloses two critical flaws in Elementor Pro and Super Forms
• Bugs allow unauthenticated arbitrary file uploads, enabling remote code execution; both patched recently
• Exploitation attempts already exceed 440,000

More than six million WordPress users are at risk of website takeover, researchers have claimed after discovering two major vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild.

Security researchers Wordfence disclosed finding two flaws, one in Elementor Pro, and one in Super Forms - two popular WordPress plugins.

Elementor Pro is a commercial plugin that allows users to build websites using drag-and-drop elements instead of code. With it, they can add advanced widgets, templates, different forms, popups, and more. It is quite a popular solution with more than six million websites actively using it.

Two bugs, hundreds of thousands of attacks

According to Wordfence, up until recently, it was vulnerable to an “unrestricted file type upload” bug in all versions up to, and including, 4.2.1. “This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to upload files that may be executable, which makes remote code execution possible,” the researchers explained. “This requires that the targeted site has published a page containing an Elementor Pro Form widget with at least one non-required File Upload field.”

The bug is tracked as CVE-2026-32475, carries a severity score of 9.8/10 (critical), and was patched in mid-August 2026. So far, Wordfence alone blocked more than 190,000 exploit attempts.

At roughly the same time, the researchers also reported finding a flaw in Super Forms, a form builder plugin that lets users create and manage forms using a drag-and-drop interface. This plugin, with some 13,000 active installations, contained a bug that allowed arbitrary file upload in all versions up to, and including, 6.3.313.

“This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to upload files that may be executable, which makes remote code execution possible,” the researchers explained.

This one is tracked as CVE-2026-14894, also carries a severity score of 9.8/10 (critical) and it, too, was patched a few weeks ago. For this flaw, Wordfence observed more than 250,000 exploitation attempts meaning that cumulatively, these two resulted in 440,000 attacks already.

Given the widespread adoption of these plugins, and the fact that the flaws are being actively leveraged, users are advised to apply the fixes without delay.

Via The Hacker News

• G7 urges governments and organizations to begin transitioning to quantum‑resistant encryption
• Warning highlights risk from future quantum computers able to break current standards like AES
• Guidance: inventory cryptographic assets, prioritize critical systems, and adopt phased PQC strategies

The G7, a collection of some of the world’s most powerful economies, is urging organizations to adopt quantum-resistant encryption as soon as possible and minimize the risk of losing sensitive data to technologically advanced threat actors.

Virtually every industry in the world today relies on encryption (the process of converting readable data into scrambled, unreadable data so that only someone with the correct key can decode and access it) to protect sensitive information. Banks, telecommunications providers, defense organizations, and practically everyone else are using some form of encryption - most probably AES (Advanced Encryption Standard).

Decrypting the protected data without the encryption key is considered almost impossible, since the computational effort necessary to pull it off would simply be too large. However, since quantum computers work on a fundamentally different principle, it is believed that once they are mature enough, they will be able to “crack” today’s encryption standards.

G7's advice

Now, the G7 has urged government and organizations to remain ahead of the curve by deploying “quantum-resistant encryption”:

“To protect themselves from the threat brought by CRQCs (cryptographically relevant quantum computers), organizations should begin planning their PQC transition now and should aim to complete their transitions within any the timelines set out by their national cybersecurity authorities,” the warning reads.

“In addition to quantum-related risks, organizations that delay their PQC transition may lose competitive advantage or may be excluded from contracting opportunities, including public procurement.”

The G7 advises governments and organizations to take a number of steps, including identifying critical systems and prioritizing them. They should adopt a phased and risk-based strategy, start their transition early, and inventory their cryptographic assets. They should also map their dependencies and develop a transition plan.

“To limit transition-related costs, they should opt to purchase products that integrate PQC and replace their systems with quantum-safe ones as part of their standard renewal schedule. As such, starting the transition early could result in lower migration costs overall. Planning and conducting their PQC transition properly would enable organizations to prevent insecure implementations and avoid increased exposure to conventional cyber threats.”

• US military branches disable ad tracking on government‑issued devices after warning
• Location data from personal devices still poses risks; past data remains for sale
• Senators urge DoD inspector general to review policies and stop servicemember data exposure

More than 20 years ago, Jason Bourne was smashing mobile phones to prevent being tracked by his adversaries - and the US Department of Defense (DoD) has realized it should probably do something similar.

In May 2026, Senator Ron Wyden mailed the DoD (among others), informing the agency that foreign powers were using commercial location data to target US troops - and now, Wyden has shared the responses he received from the US Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Special Operations Command, all of which have disabled advertising tracking across their government-issued devices, including Apple and Android smartphones, and Windows computers.

Some branches did it earlier this year, while the Air Force allegedly concluded the efforts in July 2026 - and while Wyden praised the move, he also suggested it is not enough, and that further steps must be taken in order to protect US troops stationed abroad.

Evaluating the leaked files

“We commend these service branches for implementing this cybersecurity defensive best practice on government devices,” Wyden and Senator Pat Harrigan wrote. “However, recent reports regarding the continued availability of commercial location data originating from DoD facilities raise troubling questions.”

Apparently, despite disabling these features and placing the troops out of reach of data brokers and similar commercial entities, the data that was gathered earlier remains available for sale, which still presents a risk.

“The members suggested data could continue to be available for several reasons, including that commercial data available originates from personal devices, not government phones, that are carried by servicemembers and government contractors,” a report on Wyden’s website reads.

“Wyden and Harrigan called on the DOD inspector general to examine commercial location data that DOD and other government agencies have already purchased to determine why existing policies have not prevented servicemembers location data from being sold online, and to recommend policy changes to better protect US personnel.”

Via TechCrunch

• Rhysida ransomware group breached Berlin’s state government, stealing 1.44 million files weighing in at around 5.8TB
• Attackers demanded 30 BTC (~$2.3M); Berlin refused, leading to full leak online
• Leaked data reportedly includes water supply info, staff records, and emergency plans

A cybercriminal group known as Rhysida allegedly broke into the network of Berlin's state government and exfiltrated 1.44 million files. They then tried to extort the government entity for money and when that failed, they leaked it all into the dark web.

According to multiple sources, the group first claimed responsibility for the attack on an underground forum, where it shared a small sample of the stolen files and demanded Berlin pay 30 bitcoin (around $2.3 million) in exchange for deleting the files.

Berlin recognized the attack in a press release, and said it would not be negotiating with the attackers, and instead launched a full-scale investigation into the incident, which it described as an “extremely serious crime and an attack on the state of Berlin.”

Evaluating the leaked files

A few days later, Rhysida decided to leak it all online - and Berlin is now reviewing the leaked files and is assessing the damage:

“After the publication of the stolen data from the Berlin administration, these files are being evaluated at full speed,” a press release, published on the Berlin.de website (machine-translated), reads.

“An additional steering unit has been set up in the Senate Chancellery under the leadership of the Chief Digital Officer (CDO), Florian Hauer, which coordinates the review, examination and evaluation of the leaked data and supports the two Senate administrations concerned in informing and advising the affected citizens and companies.”

According to German public broadcaster Tagesschau, the archive counts 1.44 million files and totals 5.8 terabytes. At the same time, the Chaos Computer Club (Germany's largest and best-known hacker organization) claims the archive contains sensitive data on the city’s water supply, personal data of admin staff, various employment references, and emergency plans.

Via Reuters

• Microsoft is working to speed up boot times
• Over at IFA 2026 a Microsoft executive said that 'we've made significant gains' with startup speeds and more
• The exec also underlined Microsoft's commitment to get Windows 11 running more smoothly on 8GB PCs

Microsoft is readying a major boost to the performance of Windows 11 that should speed up boot times.

Windows Latest reports that at IFA 2026 last week a Microsoft exec confirmed improvements to boot speeds are inbound.

This was Mark Linton, who is VP of Windows & Devices at Microsoft, who told the tech site: "We've made significant gains on things like boot time, Windows Hello responsiveness."

Windows Hello is the secure login that's offered with Windows 11 – often facilitated via an infrared-supporting webcam and facial recognition – and that happening more swiftly, alongside a faster boot time, should mean you arrive at the desktop in a far more timely manner.

This work isn't in testing just yet, we're told, but Microsoft is still tinkering with ramping up boot performance in internal builds.

Analysis: performance promises are underlined

The use of the word 'significant' is promising, and Windows Latest talks about getting to the lock screen 'almost immediately'. In fairness, Windows 11 already boots nippily (on my PC certainly), so we could be looking at effectively booting in the blink of an eye – fingers crossed.

As noted, this isn't even in preview builds of Windows 11 yet, but it should be here before too long. It's part of a larger effort and Microsoft's broad promise to make Windows 11 faster in general, ensuring that menus perform more responsively, and that apps load more swiftly (the latter is already rolling out in the form of a CPU boosting feature known as 'Low Latency Profile').

This performance boosting work is all the more important considering that 8GB laptops are making a resurgence – thanks to the RAM crisis pushing up notebook prices – and so Microsoft is also working to ensure that Windows 11 is more performant with that lesser memory configuration. Speaking of which, Windows Latest said that Microsoft also underlined its commitment to make sure that the desktop OS will run better on 8GB over at IFA 2026.

Linton said of Windows 11 that: "We're continuing to improve on the fundamentals," adding that: "We're optimizing so that 8 gig of RAM runs great on machines as well."

However, the exec didn't provide any estimates of what kind of performance jump might be expected – although that's hardly surprising at this early stage of the game.

• Microsoft reports phishing campaign using ASCII smuggling to bypass spam filters
• Attackers insert invisible characters into keywords, tricking filters and AI agents
• Defenders should normalize Unicode tags and flag unexpected invisible code points as suspicious

Cybercriminals are using the “ASCII smuggling” technique to make sure phishing emails pass security filters and land in people’s inboxes, experts have warned.

ASCII is a character encoding standard that turns characters and words humans can read into numeric values that computers can understand. It can also be used to create characters that aren’t even displayed on the screen (essentially “invisible” ones) but can still be read by the machine.

In a new report, security researchers from Microsoft found crooks are abusing this fact to distribute phishing emails. Most email providers offer solutions that filter out spam emails. These filters look for certain keywords and phrases, such as “funding”, “credit”, “loan”, and similar, and automatically send such emails to the spam folder.

Ongoing campaign

By adding a set of invisible characters in the middle of these keywords, the attackers can break them apart and thus “confuse” the filters.

While the human sees the word “funding” in their email, the security solution is seeing something like “fun[a long string of characters]ding”. This technique has been adopted from prompt injection attacks, where crooks would use ASCII smuggling to deliver malicious and invisible prompts in the emails.

Therefore, when a victim asks their AI agent to summarize the email, it ends up working on a prompt that could be anything from extracting sensitive data, to deploying malware.

Microsoft is saying the campaign has been ongoing for months, and while it peaked in February 2026 with more than 2.3 million emails every day, and has been in decline ever since, it remains active to this day. In early February, Microsoft observed a cluster of almost 150 sender domains, all themed around finance. These domains accounted for almost all (96%) of all the spam emails Defender for Office 365 flagged under ASCII smuggling.

Defending sounds relatively simple, though. IT teams should normalize Unicode tag characters and other invisible code points before applying any keyword detection. They should also consider all unexpected tag-block characters as suspicious.

Via BleepingComputer

You probably have tens, if not hundreds of passwords floating around across all the online accounts you use every week. In fact, the average person has over 150 passwords. It's not easy to remember them all, making it more attractive to keep them simple and similar - but that can lead to a serious chain of account theft.

That's why password managers like Keeper exist. They generate strong passwords and store them passwords in a secured vault to keep them safe from hackers and prying eyes. They even autofill your credentials to make logging in to your account faster and easier.

Keeper has cut prices on its personal, family, and business starter plans by up to 50%. Keeper regularly scores highly in our reviews, and includes great features across Personal, Family, and Business plans.

Why we recommend Keeper

Our Keeper review highlights the platform's zero knowledge architecture and device level encryption that helps keep your password vault secured against unwanted intrusions.

Where Keeper really shone was in our usability and convenience testing. We loved how Keeper uses biometric security to access your vault, rather than requiring a master password with each log in. By using a facial scan or fingerprint to verify that its actually you accessing your vault, it adds a fast but secure method of verification to ensure its you, and not a nefarious actor.

For households, the Family Plan includes five private vaults, allowing you to quickly share Wi-Fi or streaming passwords using Keeper's shared vaults.

The Business Starter plan covers 5 users, covering an unlimited devices, shared team folders, user activity reporting for IT admins, and a free Family Plan for every team member.

These discounts apply to the first year only, so the value is highest for new customers or anyone switching from a monthly plan. After that, pricing goes back to standard rates.

• More mods are out for DLSS 5
• They allow for the tech to be easily used with many more PC games
• One of these mods also alters the way in which DLSS 5 is applied to improve performance considerably — at a cost

As you've no doubt seen, modders have been having a field day messing about with Nvidia's DLSS 5, and the latest experiments include a trick to boost performance in a big way, and a method of easily running the tech in a lot more games.

Let's start with the latter, which as TweakTown reports is the DLSS 5 Swapper app which appeared on GitHub courtesy of developer Rakan Alkhaldi.

This takes the pain out of having to manually fudge DLSS 5 to work in unsupported games by automating the process, adding all the required files in the blink of an eye. You just drag and drop the game folder into the app, and it takes care of everything from there.

Swapper can even detect games on the PC it's installed on which can have DLSS 5 modded in. Not every game is supported, of course, but plenty are — and any given title doesn't necessarily have to have DLSS support at all, in any form (this is achieved via another community mod called DLSS 5 Feeder which is included with Swapper).

A similar tool, DLSS 5 Autopilot, published by 'Kizzuwatnaa' and also on Github, offers one-click DLSS 5 setup (via Feeder) along with an additional trick in the form of the 'neural upstream' add-on (from 'matiasLombo'). This runs the neural rendering (AI) process before the DLSS upscaling happens.

Normally, the AI polishing that DLSS 5 applies is performed as the last step of the rendering process to the upscaled final frame, but if you choose this option with Autopilot, it's happening earlier in the chain of events.

Based on experiments detailed on Reddit (posted by ToxicFatee), this makes a major difference to performance. The Redditor has an RTX 4080, and ran Assassin's Creed Shadows at 4K which went from 63 frames per second (fps) to 31fps with DLSS 5, but it was around 50fps with the neural upstream take on DLSS 5. That's a 20% loss, and a far more palatable hit on the frame rate rather than it being cut in half.

Others have aired similar results on Reddit, and there's plenty of excitement about what's being achieved with this mod (and the automated implementation of DLSS 5 across all manner of games). As one Redditor put it: "Absolutely amazing time to be a PC gamer."

Analysis: tread carefully with unofficial mods

All these latest developments with modding are great to see, but for me, it ends at just seeing this progress. By which I mean I wouldn't advise jumping in and installing these kinds of mods – as wonderful as they seem – and I'm content to merely observe, and see the frame rates and visual results, that others are getting. And we aren't short of these observations of late.

Why do I take that view? Well, for starters, I'm not keen on installing third-party software from unknown sources as a rule, because of the concerns around security that this involves. Granted, these are open-source tools (so can be checked over), and I'm sure they're on the proverbial level; but nevertheless, I'd still rather be careful around the risks of viruses and the like.

The second note of caution here pertains to the idea of messing with the rendering pipeline in terms of having DLSS 5 applied earlier in the process (with the Autopilot mod). This will likely involve image degradation or artifacts to some extent — or generally messing with the graphics more than Team Green intended — and I'm sure if this really was a genuinely better way of doing things, Nvidia would've used this route itself. As per observations on Reddit, there does appear to be a quality trade-off for the improved performance here.

All that said, perhaps there will be some kind of official option along these 'performance or quality' lines in the future, as some gamers are already hoping. However, DLSS 5 is, for now, officially designed to work with just one supported title, NBA 2K27, and it does an excellent job with that basketball game.

Following the leak of the tech and a raft of unofficial mods, this week saw Nvidia's official launch of DLSS 5, with the company showing it off in NBA 2K27 at Gamescom 2026 and providing some further illuminating details.

Before, after Nvidia's initial DLSS 5 reveal in March, I was skeptical on some points, but I wasn't tearing holes in the idea like some gamers were. However, this week, we've seen a rapid shift in opinions and the general online sentiment around DLSS 5 — and I'm a good deal more excited about this AI trickery myself.

Indeed, I think there are a number of reasons to be hopeful that DLSS 5 could prove to be a compelling step forward for PC gaming, from Nvidia's clarification on support for GPUs, through to what modders have shown that the tech can achieve since it was leaked — some of which is truly eye-opening.

Here are my five reasons why Nvidia's incoming neural rendering model could turn out to be a very literal game-changer.

1. Nvidia has clarified that DLSS 5 won't just be for RTX 5000 GPUs

While DLSS 5 is currently only supported by RTX 5000 graphics cards — the tech went live this week in NBA 2K27 — Nvidia has confirmed that it will come to older GeForce GPUs. Indeed, we won't have to wait that long before wider support is ushered in, which is good news.

VideoCardz spotted an update from an Nvidia rep on Reddit which stated: "Our current focus is on optimizing performance for the GeForce RTX 50 Series with model updates expected later this fall. Once RTX 50 Series performance is more fully tuned, we plan to work on expanding official support to the GeForce RTX 40 Series."

So, we could be looking at early 2027 for work to begin on bringing DLSS 5 to RTX 4000 models — and possibly previous generations of GPUs will be in line for the same treatment. Modders have already got the tech working on RTX 3000 and 2000 models, after all — although the performance levels could well be the sticking point here.

At any rate, this puts paid to fears that DLSS 5 could remain locked to just the latest Nvidia RTX 5000 graphics cards.

2. Continual optimization should improve performance a good deal

I just touched on performance, and this is the area which has proved to be the biggest downer with the mentioned unofficial experiments that have been conducted with DLSS 5.

As Tom's Hardware observes, the performance hit with DLSS 5 is a nasty one, and it's generally causing a 40% to 50% drop in frame rates. In some reports, it's less than this (more like 30%), and what we have to remember is that all these unofficial figures are based on a pre-release version of DLSS 5 being fudged into play by modders.

The final version of DLSS 5 will likely provide better performance, and in any case, optimization is going to be high on Nvidia's list of priorities. I'd be surprised if there weren't major strides taken in this department as 2027 rolls around and more games are supported.

3. Experimental results with DLSS 5 are pretty incredible

Those modders playing with the leaked version of DLSS 5 have clearly shown us that this tech can be used to produce seriously impressive results. Of course, on the official front, the demo of NBA 2K27 at Gamescom 2026 proved the case that this AI-powered graphics uplift can work wonders, too.

That said, the benefits of DLSS 5 are situational to an extent, and it's not a silver bullet for making all graphics better. It really shines in certain use cases, though. For example, even if you don't want the main character models in a game to have the tech applied because you hate that idea, it can still make a huge difference to background details, and the likes of the faces of NPCs in the lurking atmospheric crowds which are the backdrop for open world games.

As one Redditor points out: "NPC crowd faces are one of the best use cases for it [DLSS 5]. It sometimes takes you out of the game when you're talking to a character model that's clearly been hand crafted with a lot of effort, and as you said then there's some janky smooth skinned ghoul walking by you lol. Watching an LTT [Linus Tech Tips] vid where they showed the difference in random NPCs was actually super impressive."

DLSS 5 can also transform lighting and shadows to make graphics look far more realistic, including character models — some of the results shared by modders in a megathread on Reddit make that crystal clear. I was blown away by some of these examples, frankly. When it works, DLSS 5 works really well — although it doesn't always come off.

That said, some of the wonkier examples that have been aired are down to modders being daft with the sliders and options on offer, which brings me onto my next point.

4. Tuning options are key for DLSS 5

As noted, some of the more stomach-churning moments from the various modders messing around with DLSS 5 have come from those folks ramping up the intensity of the sliders — sometimes intentionally just to provoke an anti-AI reaction.

There's a decent level of granular control over various aspects of what DLSS 5 does (including intensity, tone, and structure), and when a game developer properly tunes the tech for their particular release, the effect is going to be more subtle, appropriate, and in line with the overall art direction. (Well, hopefully — you'd assume this will be the case, anyway).

Used judiciously, it's clear enough that DLSS 5 can really enhance the visuals of a game — modders have proved that in some cases, and NBA 2K27 is a great official example of how this works, too.

Yes, it is very possible to get 'uncanny valley' kind of effects with character models if you're extravagantly flinging sliders up towards their maximum limits — and not every game's art or graphics style suits DLSS 5, by any means. But we come back to the last point — when it works, it really does work.

5. DLSS 5 will probably age like a fine wine (ahem)

My final point is a simple — but important — one. And okay, I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating. Rewind time back to when Nvidia revealed the original DLSS, the very first take on this tech that was purely about upscaling, and it had some quite pronounced flaws. Problems like blurriness, ghosting and artifacts proved a blight on the upscaled graphics, but these were issues that Nvidia resolved with the next iteration of the tech.

I'd expect there will be examples of DLSS 5 which show the visuals going off the rails in a similar kind of way, although it already looks off to a far better start than DLSS 1. The point being that whatever we think now, at launch, may change quite drastically in a year or two, and there's a genuine potential for DLSS 5 to be revolutionary in polishing up gaming graphics — albeit that caveats around its misuse and situational nature aren't going to go away.

Gaming on the go has reached fresh heights over the years, with slim laptops and compact handhelds delivering great performance. AMD and Intel have spearheaded the charge with their mobile processors, but a new player is in town.

Nvidia revealed its RTX Spark at Computex in May, an ARM-based superchip designed for Windows on ARM laptops, with AI capabilities and obvious strong suits for creators – but also gamers, too, with a powerful integrated RTX GPU. It's designed for slim laptops and compact PCs, keeping workspaces less cluttered and making creation alongside gaming much easier when travelling.

I was lucky enough to go hands-on with an RTX Spark laptop at Gamescom 2026, specifically the HP OmniBook Ultra 16, which was running Borderlands 4. Gearbox Interactive's latest entry in the franchise was notorious for its rough performance at launch.

It has significantly improved since then, and the OmniBook Ultra 16 was running the game at an incredible frame rate, one I could tell was above 60 frames per second, with the help of Nvidia's Frame Generation x2.

The mention of Frame Generation may throw some off; after all, it's been frowned upon for a long time with the 'fake frames' nickname (a criticism I disagree with). However, the input delay and overall latency weren't an issue for me on this RTX Spark system.

I didn't get the chance to put the system through its paces other than playing that particular game, but it's worth noting that the other RTX Spark laptops at Nvidia's booth were running games like 007 First Light and Arc Raiders, both of which ran at smooth, solid frame rates.

If it wasn't clear already, I think RTX Spark is great for laptops and compact PCs, and my only concern is the price. I'm hoping for something that isn't too expensive, but that's probably wishful thinking due to the nature of these devices and the ongoing RAM crisis. However, it would be a shame if RTX Spark laptops don't blossom as a result of memory shortages.

Handheld manufacturers could use RTX Spark

Speaking with Nvidia's staff at Gamescom, I asked if the RTX Spark was intended to be used with handheld gaming PCs, and it was made clear that Team Green is completely open to any handheld manufacturer reaching out to use the superchip.

Handheld territory isn't exactly foreign to Nvidia either. The Nintendo Switch 2 uses the Tegra T239 processor, with access to DLSS across multiple games — and the upscaling technology does wonders for image quality and performance.

While AMD and Intel's processors continue to provide fantastic performance on most handheld gaming PCs, especially with Intel's new G3 Extreme CPU, I told Nvidia that DLSS on something like a Legion Go or MSI Claw would be untouchable.

Of course, performance has to be balanced with battery life and power usage, as well as pricing, and I'm very aware that this could be a tricky equation to deal with.

If the RTX Spark (or any similar chip in Nvidia's plans going forward) could be the engine of a handheld gaming PC, using more aggressive upscaling wouldn't be something to avoid in terms of any easy win to boost performance. DLSS Super Resolution is great at maintaining sharp image quality, and it would work even better on the smaller screen of a handheld.

Will this ever happen, though? That's down to the manufacturers of these devices.

OpenAI has unveiled a much anticipated AI model which the firm has dubbed ‘GPT-6 Astra’. While the model has improved significantly across benchmark testing and brings a host of new business features, there is still a dark cloud looming over the new model.

Off the back of OpenAI’s accidental hack of Hugging Face and the company’s subsequent efforts to improve how AI agents behave and interact, numerous cybersecurity experts have raised concerns about the model’s new ‘recurrent depth’ reasoning capabilities.

This new reasoning architecture allows the model to consider a problem multiple times before taking an action, compared to the standard chain-of-thought reasoning used in previous models.

Why the concern about recurrent depth reasoning?

This new level of reasoning apparently offers improved performance. OpenAI also says it has fixed its models' abilities to circumvent boundaries when performing tests by monitoring the models reasoning and ensuring the model stays aligned within the scope of its task.

During Astra’s launch event, OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki said: “We will not accept degradation in our ability to monitor model alignment beyond a certain level. We will withhold scaling until we can regain enough confidence.”

But numerous experts believe that the lessons of the Hugging Face incident have not yet been learned, and the model has been released without adequate testing on Astra’s reasoning and monitoring.

After all, no one thought one of OpenAI’s models could set up a hidden internet-connected messaging board that allowed AI agents to influence each other's behavior.

But with Astra being released into the real world, the lessons may have to be learned on the fly.

Expert perspectives on OpenAI Astra release

• James Blake, VP of Global Cyber Resiliency Strategy at Cohesity:

The launch of Astra is raising questions again around the safety of Frontier AI. Instead of simply asking whether a model is "safe", organisations now need to ask whether it remains safe across millions of different situations, prompts and interactions. Cyber resilience has traditionally assumed that systems and threat actors behave deterministically. AI systems don’t.

Advanced models can and will continue to exhibit behaviours that emerge from their optimisation process rather than from explicit programming. We have to move beyond thinking about AI as just another software tool and find ways to ensure these systems remain observable, auditable and governable throughout their lifecycle.

The most important question we’ll need to answer in future is one of liability. Suppose an AI system autonomously develops a strategy that causes financial loss, leaks confidential information or violates regulation. Who is responsible? The developer that trained the model? The cloud provider operating the infrastructure? Currently the answer is surprisingly unclear. It’s not just about what AI can do: it’s about who is accountable when it does something nobody expected.

• Oleksandr Yaremchuk, Co-Founder & CTO at Manifold Security:

OpenAI is calling Astra its most aligned model yet, even as its chief scientist admits monitorability is getting harder as models get more capable. Evidently, Astra hides its reasoning in the majority of tested cases, and some successful attacks left no reasoning trace at all. That's the tool many organisations still use, including the labs themselves, for auditing what an agent is doing, and it's getting less reliable with every release.

That matters because Astra isn't staying inside OpenAI's test environment. It's going to run as an agent on employee laptops and in the browser, holding real credentials, inside companies that have no way to watch what it does once it's there. A model that explains itself less isn't more aligned, it's just harder to catch when it goes wrong.

Labs can keep debating what these models say or refuse to say. Security teams need to stop relying on that and start monitoring what agents actually do at runtime, with the ability to shut one down mid-action. That's the only oversight left that still works once the reasoning goes quiet.

• Kristin Lowery, Field CISO at Optiv:

For boards and executive leaders, the emergence of OpenAI’s Astra model highlights a broader reality: AI is no longer just a productivity issue; it is a risk management issue.

Just as organizations established governance for cloud adoption and digital transformation, they now need clear policies, strong oversight, and accountability for AI use.

The question is not whether AI will become more capable — it will. The real challenge is whether organizations can strengthen their governance, security controls, and workforce readiness quickly enough to keep pace.

• Patricia Titus, Field CISO at Abnormal AI:

OpenAI crossing this threshold deserves attention. Credit where it's due, they're handling it responsibly by restricting Astra's advanced cyber capability to a small coalition rather than releasing it broadly.But this isn't one company's problem to contain.

Once a model can find and exploit unknown flaws without a human in the loop, that capability doesn't stay exclusive for long. Open-weight and modified models typically trail the frontier by only months, and that's the reality defenders have to plan around now.

Static, signature-based defences were built for attacks that repeat. They weren't built for an adversary that generates a new one every time. Defenders need the same shift, systems that learn what normal looks like for every identity, human, machine, or AI agent, and flag and contain the moment something deviates, at machine speed.

The window to build that is open now. It won't stay that way once this capability is common instead of rare.

• Raghu Nandakumara, VP of Industry Strategy at Illumio:

With the Astra announcement, OpenAI is doubling down on monitoring the model's own behaviour – a response to the model "breakouts" seen over the past few months.

When Anthropic announced Claude Mythos Preview, the core concern was the model falling into the wrong hands. OpenAI's answer goes further adding guardrails around the model's own reasoning and actions, regardless of the user's intent. The goal is to catch a model going rogue mid-task, not just stop it being misused at the outset.

The rest of this announcement can be summarised as ‘we have a new frontier model, and it’s more capable than the last one’.

Razer Huntsman V3 HE Magnetic Tenkeyless 8KHz: One-minute review

The Huntsman line has long been a distinguished marque in the gaming keyboard world, and now this new analog addition seeks to add Hall Effect technology to the formula.

It looks like a high-performing machine. The all-black colorway might be a little drab, but the floating keycaps and subtly brushed metal faceplate add touches of class. The bright RGB backlighting also helps to sell its gaming prowess.

What’s more, it’s built exceptionally well, putting it on a par with the best gaming keyboards. That faceplate feels incredibly smooth and solid, while the keycaps are planted and have a great-feeling texture. At the same time, the V3 HE is also very light and compact — doubly impressive when you consider it includes quite a few navigation keys.

Razer’s Synapse software can be used to customize the inputs of the V3 HE. You’ll find plenty of analog adjustments here, and there’s even a handy visualizer to display key travel in real time, although this isn’t available for every analog setting. The software is easy to use and I didn’t experience any major issues during my time with it.

Once you’ve dialled in your preferred settings, gaming with the V3 HE is a joy. The keys are very tactile and provide plenty of feedback without feeling heavy. However, due to the height of the keycaps and the lack of wrist support, I found typing quite uncomfortable.

This is perhaps the major drawback of the V3 HE, along with its price, which is quite high for a keyboard lacking wireless connectivity. However, its gaming performance and build quality are to be admired, and might just make it worth the outlay.

Razer Huntsman V3 HE Magnetic Tenkeyless 8KHz review: Price and availability

• $139.99 / £139.99 / AU$229.95
• Preorders available now
• Expensive for a wired keyboard

The Razer Huntsman V3 HE Magnetic Tenkeyless 8KHz costs $139.99 / £139.99 / AU$229.95 and will be available later this year, but you can preorder it now. A mini 65% variant will also be available for $20 / £20 / AU$30 less.

It's undeniably expensive for a wired gaming keyboard. However, it’s still cheaper than some of its rivals, such as the SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL, another fantastic analog keyboard. This is easily one of the best analog keyboards I’ve tested. It also features an integrated OLED screen for a visually appealing way to access various settings and adjustments, and it can display certain in-game information as well.

If you’re looking for a decidedly more budget-friendly analog keyboard, you can’t do much better than the MonsGeek FUN60 Ultra. Not only is this much cheaper than the Huntsman, but it also performs very admirably and has multiple wireless connectivity modes to boot.

Razer Huntsman V3 HE Magnetic Tenkeyless 8KHz review: Specs

Razer Huntsman V3 HE Magnetic Tenkeyless 8KHz review: Design and features

• Great build quality
• Bright RGB lighting
• Copious customization options

In line with Razer’s other products, the V3 HE looks like a premium product. I especially liked the floating keycaps and the brushed metal faceplate, which add elements of sophistication. The all-black colorway is a little austere, but the bright and customizable RGB backlighting does well to liven things up, especially since those aforementioned floating keycaps increase the illumination.

Equal to its appearance is the build quality of the V3 HE. Despite the plastic material, the chassis is incredibly solid, while that faceplate feels lusciously smooth. The double-shot PBT keycaps have a gratifying texture to them as well, and are as planted and as stable as you could wish for.

Another nice touch is the recessed USB port. This encloses the jack completely, adding security and creating a neater look. The included cable should prove long enough to accommodate most setups, and what’s more it’s braided, which is more common on the best gaming mice. This improves flexibility, although it’s thicker and seems more durable than those on said mice.

Despite the strong build, the V3 HE is also very light, which pleasantly surprised me. It’s also quite compact, yet still features some useful keys for navigation. And there are plenty of Fn shortcuts dotted around, including those for tweaking certain aspects of the V3 HE, such as the RGB, actuation point (between 0.1mm and 4mm), and Rapid Trigger sensitivity. Thankfully, these shortcuts are also labelled.

For further customizations, you’ll need to download Razer’s Synapse peripheral software. Alongside those mentioned above, you can adjust the Rapid Trigger sensitivity of upstrokes and downstrokes independently, map up to four inputs to a single key, select up to four keys to have a secondary function on their release, and decide which key takes priority when two are pressed at the same time (with numerous options to choose from). There are also a few pre-made profiles catering to certain game types and scenarios, as well as a remapping suite with a large selection of assignments at your disposal, including gamepad buttons, sticks, and triggers.

I was glad to see the inclusion of a visualizer that shows the travel of your presses in real time by filling up a bar. This bar is also marked with your currently set actuation point in millimeters, so you can see when you’ve passed it. It’s a shame there’s no visualizer for the Rapid Trigger function, given this can be a little tricky to comprehend. For the most part, though, Synapse is clearly laid out and easy to use.

Razer Huntsman V3 HE Magnetic Tenkeyless 8KHz review: Performance

• Snappy and tactile
• Comfortable and secure when gaming
• Hard to type with

As with most Razer keyboards, the performance of the V3 HE is exemplary. The analog switches have plenty of tactility, being easy to press yet providing just enough resistance to allow for controlled presses; relative to other analog keyboards, I found it easy to hit certain actuation points. They also have a wonderfully springy response, which makes them feel snappy. But they’re quite clicky, too, with just enough dampening to prevent them feeling harsh.

The keycaps themselves are a boon when gaming, too. Their aforementioned texture not only feels great but should also help to prevent slips when things get sweaty. Prominent indentations improve finger security further, as well as helping you to avoid hitting the wrong key.

However, I found them less amenable to typing. Their sheer height means that even though the base of the V3 HE is reasonably thin, I still found myself having to angle my wrists upwards to an uncomfortable degree. I wish a wrist rest was included in the box like other Razer models, especially as Razer’s are some of the best in class thanks to their exceedingly plush padding.

Should I buy the Razer Huntsman V3 HE Magnetic Tenkeyless 8KHz?

Scorecard

Buy it if…

Don't buy it if…

Razer Huntsman V3 HE Magnetic Tenkeyless 8KHz review: Also consider

How I tested the Razer Huntsman V3 HE Magnetic Tenkeyless 8KHz

• Tested for a few days
• Used for a variety of tasks
• Lots of gaming keyboard experience

I tested the Huntsman V3 HE for a few days, using it for gaming, working, and general browsing. I used it with two different Windows 11 PCs.

I played games such as Counter-Strike 2, which offers a stern test for peripherals given its emphasis on quick and precise inputs. I also played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, which requires a broader use of the layout, so I could test how easy it was to use keys outside of those within the immediate vicinity of the WASD position.

I’ve been PC gaming for over a decade, and have used many different keyboards in that time. I’ve also reviewed a large number of them with various switch types, form factors, and price points.

• First reviewed: September 2026
• Read more about how we test

• Google released Chrome 152.0.7977.82/.83 for Windows, Mac, and Linux
• Patch fixes 12 flaws, including zero‑day CVE‑2026‑85046 (type confusion in V8)
• Sixth Chrome zero‑day this year; Chromium browsers also affected, update urged immediately

Google has released a new version of its Chrome browser for Windows, Mac, and Linux, fixing a dozen of vulnerabilities. Among them is a high-severity flaw that is being actively exploited in the wild.

In a security advisory published on the Google blog on September 3, the search engine company said Chrome’s newest version is now 152.0.7977.82/.83 for Windows and Mac, and 152.0.7977.82 for Linux.

Rollout is expected to be gradual, so make sure to check if you already received it. Most of the time the update is automatic and instant and if you’re not certain, tap the three vertical dots in the top-right corner of the browser and choose Help. Navigate to About Google Chrome and there you will find the version number.

Running malicious code remotely

This patch fixes a total of 12 vulnerabilities, most of which are graded as high severity. Among them is a “type confusion in V8” bug, discovered by security researcher Salvatore Gulizia.

For his effort, Gulizia was awarded $1,000. Apparently, this bug is being actively leveraged in real-life attacks, although Google (as usual) decided not to share the juicy details until the majority of browsers are protected.

The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2026-85046. On the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), it is described as a “type confusion in V8 in Google Chrome [that allows] a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code inside the sandbox via a crafted HTML page.”

V8 is Chrome’s JavaScript engine which allows web apps and interactive websites to run in the browser. Those interested in the technical breakdown of the vulnerability can find it on Guzlia’s blog.

You can find the full list of fixed vulnerabilities on this link.

This is the sixth zero-day Google fixed in Chrome since the start of the year. It also affects other browsers built on Chromium, so if you’re running Edge, Brave, Opera, or Vivaldi, make sure to update to the latest version as soon as possible.

Via The Hacker News

• OpenAI rolled out GPT‑6 Astra, its most advanced AI, with “critical” cyber capabilities
• Astra can autonomously find and exploit unknown flaws; release limited to vetted Daybreak participants
• Staggered rollout sparked user frustration; Altman apologized, promising broader access soon

OpenAI has begun rolling out GPT-6 Astra, its latest and most capable artificial intelligence model.

In an announcement published on its website, OpenAI said Astra represents a “significant step up in cyber capabilities”, meeting the company’s “Critical” threshold.

This threshold, the company explained, means that under the right circumstances, the tool can find “previously unknown security flaws and develop new ways to exploit them across many well-protected systems without a person guiding each step.”

Apologies for a messy rollout

OpenAI also said Astra improves on functions such as computer use, software engineering, and science, and that it should be better at staying oriented, compared to previous versions.

Just like many of the previous models, Astra’s release has been marred with controversy. Roughly a month ago, OpenAI said the model’s “critical” cybersecurity capabilities prompted it to pause some internal development and trigger safety protocols.

In response to early findings, the company scaled up certain security controls and even paused activities that do not meet its newly established security requirements.

It now decided it was time to release the model, but still not to the general public. Instead, it opted for a staggered release, giving it first to a limited group of companies participating in the Daybreak program, a cybersecurity initiative that gives vetted organizations (cybersecurity and otherwise) specialized AI tools for vulnerability research and threat detection.

This did not sit well with many ChatGPT users, especially those paying a monthly subscription. As The Verge reported, CEO Sam Altman was apologizing, mere hours after launch, for the “messy rollout” of Astra.

Initially, all Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise users were supposed to gain access to Astra, as well as those accessing through OpenAI API, Microsoft Azure, and AWS Bedrock.

“We are working towards getting Astra in everyone’s hands as quickly as we can,” Altman said on X. “I know it is frustrating and I appreciate the patience. It should be quick.”

Via CNBC

• The Lexar Muse SSD gets as thin as 1mm (0.04 inches)
• It comes with a proprietary connection mechanism
• 512TB and 1TB storage models of the drive will be available

Every year at the IFA tech expo, there are claims of gadgets being lighter, thinner, faster, and smarter than ever before — but amid the usual crop of claims we've seen in 2026, the Lexar Muse particularly stands out.

This is officially the thinnest portable SSD on the market, measuring a mere 1mm (0.04 inches) at its thinnest points around the edges, and a not-exactly-chunky 3.8mm (0.15 inches) at its thickest point in the middle.

It's not unlike a credit card in terms of its looks and dimensions, and Lexar seems particularly keen to promote the idea of it being used strapped to the back of a MagSafe iPhone to provide some additional storage space on the go.

The unibody metal enclosure around the drive has been formed from a single piece of metal to minimize gaps and seams, while some space saving has gone on inside with custom PCB architecture and high-density NAND stacking.

Speeds and storage

What's a little unusual here is the connectivity, which has to happen via the magnetic pogo-in connector on the back of the drive — there's no traditional USB-C port that you can plug an existing cable into.

You do get a bespoke cable included with the drive, as well as a carry case for easily attaching the drive to the back of something like an iPhone. However, the magnetic connection might not be the most robust.

The Lexar Muse offers some respectable read and write speeds of up to 1,050MB/s and 1,000MB/s respectively (so good enough for 4K 120fps Pro Res video on an iPhone), and there are going to be 512GB and 1TB models available.

As is often the case at IFA, there's no word on pricing yet, but you can expect the Lexar Muse to hit shelves before the end of the year. If you prioritize thinness and lightness over everything else, it may be worth checking out.

• RayNeo launched the GT Max glasses at IFA 2026
• They cost $429 / £399
• They boast Dolby Vision, and new optic engine prisms

Since publishing my review of them, I’ve had one pair of XR glasses at the top of my list: the Xreal One Pro. RayNeo has always been a close second, but here at IFA 2026 they may have just snatched the crown.

That’s thanks to the newly unveiled RayNeo GT Max specs, which boast improved audio and visual performance compared to anything RayNeo has made before. Best of all, the upgrades won’t break the bank at just $429 / £399 (not sold directly in Australia) — notably cheaper than the $599 / £579 Xreals.

Let’s start with audio. The big change is the GT Max houses larger drivers than ever before. This leads to richer and more impactful bass and midtones than I’ve ever seen from previous display glasses, and the audio was already solid on RayNeo’s specs.

The hardware has been tuned by Bang and Olufsen, whose expertise has optimized the EQ with the promise that we’ll get the best performance possible out of RayNeo’s tech.

This can be enhanced further by sound tubes, which direct the sound more directly into your ear, though they’re a paid add-on.

The biggest changes come to visuals, however.

The most obvious is the new optic engine prism, which reflects the microOLED screens into your eyes. They’re now the flatter shape debuted by Xreal in its One Pros, which has two advantages.

First, the design plus anti-reflective coating has greatly reduced the impact of reflections disrupting your vision as you watch your show, film, game, or whatever you’re viewing. Secondly, it allows for a larger 57-degree field of view, meaning the virtual image can be much larger and more immersive.

This upgrade was easily the best the Xreal One Pro has boasted, and the main reason it topped my list for so long. This prism’s arrival on rayNeo specs is greatly appreciated.

The other visual enhancement of the GT Max glasses is that they’re the first XR glasses to support Dolby Vision — a codec that enables great color clarity and contrast. You’ll need to view Dolby Vision content to take advantage of it, but when you do, it’ll make the content look better than it has before.

Better, but not bank breaking

Normally, major upgrades like this would lead to a serious price hike. Sure, they’re pricier than RayNeo’s more budget-friendly specs, but at $429 / £399, the GT Max is decidedly mid-range.

In contrast, the Xreal One Pros will set you back $599 / £579. There are still some reasons to opt for the specs, most notably Xreal’s 3Difying tech, which makes any flat images stereoscopic — including games and movies — but this RayNeo launch makes the full-price One Pros look less appealing.

Of course, my full thoughts will have to wait until I can review the RayNeo specs properly, but the GT Max are ones to watch if you want excellence at a more affordable price, and they’re at the top of my list for specs to check back in on during Black Friday (where sales, even on newer RayNeo tech, are sure to land).

Following the aftermath of the Manchester Airports Group cyberattack - where hackers made off with the data of 8.7 million people - the hackers have now posted the entire database for sale on the dark web.

The group behind the attack, FulcrumSec, attempted to get Manchester Airports Group (MAG) to pay for the security of the database, promising that it wouldn’t be released if the company paid a settlement. But as all companies should do when faced with extortion, MAG didn’t play ball.

Now FulcrumSec wants to try and maximise the damage of the cyberattack, and has listed the database containing email addresses, phone numbers, vehicle registrations and postcodes online in the hopes a fellow hacking group will find value in the data.

What happens when extortion fails, and why didn’t MAG pay?

In the past, when companies faced ransomware attacks or data breaches, they would sometimes quietly pay the hackers for their silence.

Companies feared serious reputational harm and loss of business would cost more in the long run than the perpetrators were asking for. But this created an incentive for hackers to carry out more attacks.

After all, if companies aren’t kicking up a fuss about being hacked or reporting the attack to the authorities, hacking groups can launch more attacks on other companies that are completely unaware of their tactics.

In order to counter this, authorities and cyber experts from around the world issued guidance that under no circumstances should companies pay for the safe return of their data. By removing the incentive from ransomware attacks and data breaches, the hope is that hackers will get bored or not see enough ROI, and therefore stop.

But the 500GB database of data on over 8.7 million people is ripe pickings for other cybercriminals looking to launch highly specific phishing attacks or scam campaigns. While FulcrumSec may not make any money from the attack, they can seriously enhance the damage of the attack by offering the data for free for others to use.

A successful scam or phishing attack can steal banking and financial details, allowing other groups to steal even more money off the back of the attack.

Expert perspectives on MAG extortion and customer data

• Dray Agha, senior manager of security operations at Huntress:

While Manchester Airports Group followed official guidance by refusing to pay the ransom, the release of 8.7 million records creates an immediate risk for passengers.

We expect other criminals to use this freely available database of vehicle registrations, postcodes and contact details to craft highly convincing phishing attacks.

Anyone who has used parking, lounges or Wi-Fi at these airports must treat unexpected messages about their travel with extreme caution.

• Muhammad Yahya Patel, vCISO and cybersecurity advisor for EMEA at Huntress

The "free release" model is deliberately designed to maximise harm and reputational damage as a warning to the next target.

Publishing almost nine million records for free isn't just punishment for MAG it's a marketing campaign aimed at every other organisation watching.

Pay up, or your customers' data gets handed to every fraudster and scammer on the internet at no cost. Refusing to pay a ransom is the right call. But nearly nine million people are now paying a different price for a decision that was never theirs to make.

• Danny Jenkins, Co Founder & CEO at ThreatLocker

Unfortunately, once data is made public, it can’t be hidden again. The most important thing consumers can do is focus on basic cyber hygiene. Use a unique password for every website, learn how to identify phishing scams, and monitor your credit report.

Be highly suspicious of emails that create a sense of urgency, offer something that seems too good to be true, or ask you to reset your password.

When in doubt, look up the phone number for the alleged sender yourself, rather than using a number provided in the email, and call to confirm whether the communication is genuine.

• Brian Higgins, security specialist at Comparitech:

Whilst the airports breached in this attack don't appear to have had any financial data compromised the risk to affected or associated customers is very real. With so much other information freely available in the wild it is vital that airport users stay highly vigilant for some time to come.

Any and all unsolicited contact; whether online, by telephone or even home visit approaches, should be viewed as suspicious. Never engage until you've taken time to check credentials/veracity etc.

Research advice from trusted sources like the NCA or Information Commissioner and share it with your family and friends. Look for ways to increase digital and physical security like two factor authentication on Apps and devices or Smart Home tech.

When this breach was first reported by the Manchester Evening News the comments were quite telling. Affected parties were quick to identify potential vulnerabilities over and above the breach of financial and banking details.

Home addresses, vehicle registrations and time spent away from home all add up to some excellent opportunities for criminal exploitation, not to mention the usual follow-up phishing campaigns common in this type of incident.

As AI makes data aggregation swift and easy consumers are waking up to the fact that criminals can monetise successful breaches in increasingly inventive ways. It’s no longer enough for data owning organisations to advise post-attack vigilance and turn to their backups.

Victim communities rightly expect better protected networks and systems over and above established norms. As the marketplace grows less fearful and more angry when breaches are made public we may see more emphasis on cyber crime prevention which can only be a good thing.

• Denis Calderone, CTO at Suzu Labs:

The 8.7 million number is attention-grabbing, but it deserves some context. MAG has confirmed that the vast majority of those records are email addresses collected through airport WiFi sign-ups.

A much smaller subset includes phone numbers, vehicle registrations, and postcodes from customers who actually completed parking or lounge bookings.

No payment data, no passwords, no passport information. So despite this affecting airports, which is obviously a sensitive subject, the actual data sensitivity for most affected individuals is relatively low.

What's more interesting to us from a technical standpoint is the attack path. MAG told The Register that attackers compromised one of their internal systems and then went on to steal files from a database hosted by a third party. That's a pivot upstream into a data provider, not downstream into operational systems.

What remains unclear is whether the data was exfiltrated directly from that third-party environment or whether it was pulled back through MAG's network first. That distinction matters for understanding where detection controls failed and who was responsible for monitoring the egress.

The UK's Civil Aviation Authority has a Cyber Assessment Framework for Aviation, developed with the NCSC, that mandates strict separation between IT systems and operational technology.

We don't know whether MAG was formally operating under that framework at the time of this incident, but I would be very interested to find out. Because the segmentation appears to have held here. Flight operations, baggage handling, terminal systems, etc., all were unaffected.

The lateral movement went upstream toward a data provider, not downstream toward the systems that keep planes in the air.

• Seemant Sehgal, CEO and Founder at BreachLock:

This data was initially collected because passengers needed a login, and somewhere along the way, the sensitivity of what was accumulating in that database stopped getting the same scrutiny as the network itself.

Vehicle registration details, postcodes, and contact information across three major airports are a profiling dataset, and whoever held it for ransom understood its value better than the organization storing it did.

Here at IFA 2026 I finally got to try the Xreal Aura glasses. They’re the tech you’d get if my Xreal One Pro and Samsung Galaxy XR had a baby, and their Fall 2026 release date can’t come soon enough.

While they can basically do everything an Android XR headset can do (more on that in a moment) the Xreal Aura is importantly a pair of smart glasses, with the lightness and comfort advantages you’d expect of that compared to a bulkier VR wearable.

They do boast some serious tech, despite the light weight. Including see-through 2K displays boasting a 70-degree field-of-view — up from the the 1,080p screens you’ll find from similar smart specs to come before — plus speakers tuned by Bose, a microphone for capturing what you say, and cameras that facilitate hand-tracking and tools like Circle to Search (which lets you Google search things you can see, by drawing a circle around it with your hand).

However the specs don’t include a battery or any processing power. This is instead housed in an external compute puck that also doubles as a track pad — scroll your finger across the surface and you’ll move a digital cursor you can use to interact with apps alongside hand-tracking controls.

This is how the glasses are able to be so comfortable, while still being incredibly capable.

One the Android XR side of things, these specs can — just like the Galaxy XR — access the Google Play Store to download dedicated XR and flat apps, let you enjoy content from your favorite streaming service on a giant virtual screen, engage with Gemini across your apps for assistance with a variety of tasks, and boot up Google Docs if you’re looking to be productive.

You can do these tasks all at the same time too, arranging virtual windows in the space in front of you.

With a USB-C Cable and compatible device — which includes most phones, laptops, tablets, and several consoles and handhelds — you can connect it to the glasses (via the puck) to have its screen appear as a window in front of you too.

In my demo I was watching the latest GTA 6 trailer while playing Hades on a Steam Deck. The windows appeared side-by-side in front of me, and I had Gemini watching me game so it could offer coaching (I’ve played plenty of Hades before so didn’t need the help, though the advice I was offered did seem decent).

When will it land?

It’s all very impressive and I cannot wait for these specs to be in my hand for a full-on review.

Speaking of, unfortunately Xreal hasn’t confirmed a release date or price for Aura. However its official website says it’ll be landing sometime this fall (Northern Hemisphere, so that’s September, October or November) and will cost no more than $1,500.

I hope the price will be as low as possible (even sub $1,000), though Xreal’s promise would still make it cheaper than a Galaxy XR headset, and there’s only so cheap we can expect XR tech to get — especially with the ongoing RAM crisis.

• Cisco patched eight IOS XR flaws, including three critical (CVE‑2026‑20274, CVE‑2026‑20279, CVE‑2026‑20212)
• Vulnerabilities allow unauthenticated exploitation, improper access control, and crafted input execution
• No abuse reported; patches urged, with iACL workarounds for Nexus 9000 devices using Silicon One ASIC

Cisco patched eight vulnerabilities affecting its IOS XR operating system, including three critical-severity ones. It urged its customers to apply the patches as soon as possible, even though it stressed that there is no evidence any of these were abused in the wild.

The company detailed its findings in two advisories published on the same day - September 2.

In the first one, it disclosed seven vulnerabilities, including two critical-severity ones: CVE-2026-20274 and CVE-2026-20279. Both carry a severity rating of 9.8/10 (critical). The former is an improper control of a resource during its lifetime flaw - a network-based, low complexity, vulnerability that requires no authentication or user interaction to be exploited. The latter is described as an improper access control vulnerability that can lead to the same consequences.

Fixes and mitigations

These flaws, along with five others, affect all releases of Cisco IOS XR Software, including Cisco IOS XR7 (LNT) Software, regardless of device configuration, the company explained. There are no available workarounds, and installing the provided patch is the only way to mitigate the risk.

The third flaw, disclosed in a separate advisory, is tracked as CVE-2026-20212. Successfully exploiting this one allows attackers to connect to an affected device and send crafted input that could be executed as code, without root privileges. “The exploitation of this vulnerability could also cause the S1HAL process to crash, which could cause the device to reload,” Cisco explained.

This bug affects Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches if they include a Silicon One ASIC, the company stressed. A possible workaround is to use infrastructure access control lists (iACLs) to allow only required management and control plane traffic that is destined to the affected device. There is also the option of iACLs only being used to explicitly deny all TCP packets that are destined to a locally configured IP address with a destination port of 43210 or 43211.

Via The Register

• Alienware introduces two new monitors to expand its QD-OLED lineup
• The AW3226Q is a new 4K tandem OLED RGB stripe gaming monitor available this fall
• Alienware also has a new esports QD-OLED monitor with a 560Hz refresh rate

The gaming monitor market is heating up with new competition from Alienware, specifically via the new AW3926QW 5K2K ultrawide. However, it's not resting on its laurels.

As reported by Wccftech, Alienware has announced two new gaming monitors, further expanding its QD-OLED lineup: the AW3226Q is a new 32-inch 4K RGB stripe tandem OLED monitor that uses the same technology found in Alienware's flagship 5K2K display. For esports players, the AW2527HX is a 560Hz QD-OLED with great motion clarity and response time.

The highlight among both is clearly the AW3226Q 4K display, which is effectively the closest gamers can get to Alienware's flagship display. The new 4K display also uses the same RGB stripe layout, significantly improving text readability. The only major difference is 5K2K resolution on the AW3926QW, with 33% more pixels than 4K due to its ultrawide aspect ratio.

The AW3226Q will also feature 1,000 nits of peak brightness, alongside DisplayHDR True Black 400 and Dolby Vision. Having used the latter on the Alienware AW3426DW I reviewed, it's one of the standout benefits for consistent brightness levels and minimizing the brightness dimming issues that occur on OLED displays (which is also addressed by the tandem OLED layers).

It's increasingly clear that tandem OLED is quickly becoming the new standard for high-quality OLED displays, and using a four-stack tandem OLED layer should help boost and maintain high brightness levels.

Will it have an affordable price point?

Alienware surprised most consumers by announcing that its flagship 5K2K AW3926QW monitor would retail at $1,099 / £999 / AU$1,999.80. The competition from LG — two 5K2K displays — is significantly pricier, leaving many turning their attention to Alienware to experience higher-quality gaming via sharper images.

If Alienware's flagship monitor is anything to go by, the newly announced AW3226Q should be another affordable option for OLED hunters, and that's great news since OLED is arguably still the best display type for gaming.

There's no release date for the AW3226Q just yet — it's worth noting that Alienware's flagship monitor hasn't launched in all regions. However, gamers can expect this to hit the market in the coming months, with availability scheduled for this fall.

The AW2527HX QD-OLED, designed for esports, is set to launch in the first quarter of 2027, but there is no price confirmation.

IFA, Berlin's huge annual tech expo, is where some of the biggest tech firms unveil their latest innovations — and this year is one of the strongest we've seen in a long time for interesting new releases.

IFA is a great place to find fascinating new gadgets and devices, ranging from next-gen AR glasses to self-driving personal mobility vehicles, and from weird new kitchen appliances to armies of humanoid robots.

We've chosen the top products from those that were nominated for our IFA 2026 'Best in Show' awards to produce this list of our 25 winners, based on how innovative they are, how well they serve their intended use, and the degree to which we think they'll influence their area of the tech market.

There were many more products that we really liked, of course, but we had to be ruthless — here are our top picks from IFA 2026.

Anker Soundcore Sleep Earbuds 4 Pro

The best technology delivers real-world benefits, and what could be more beneficial than a good night's sleep? The Soundcore Sleep Earbuds 4 Pro use in-ear PPG optical sensors to monitor your heartrate, which is more accurate than other optical tracking methods thanks to the rich capillaries and stable position of your ear canal. That monitoring delivers data to the smart-screen, phone-free SleepHub charging case.

The Sleep Earbuds Pro feature passive isolation as well as 30dB active noise cancelling, and the case-based snore monitoring system detects and masks the sound of your partner snoring using its built-in sounds. Despite the addition of multiple new components the housing is thinner than previous generations, and even more comfortable for side sleepers.

Anker's BioSync dynamic audio system monitors relaxation in real time, dynamically adjusting the audio content and structure to help you find the most effective sleep sounds. Sleep earbuds are something that can truly improve your health and happiness by improving your sleep, and these look like a really smart upgrade.

Agibot A3

Agibot is doing some amazing things with humanoid robots, and the full-sized Agibot A3 combines multiple capabilities in a lightweight, extremely dynamic model: if you're assembling a robot dance troupe or planning a big exhibition, the A3's the bot to buy.

The A3 weighs just 55kg, has a power-to-weight ratio of 0.218kW/kg, and delivers up to 12kW of instant peak power, enabling it to somersault. Its battery runs for up to 10 hours and is hot-swappable in seconds, so it's great for applications where it needs to last all day. It'll happily fit in an SUV for travel, too.

In addition to voice and app control, the A3 delivers industry-first touch sensing that adds physical interaction to its controls. It also has a 360-degree multi-array mic system for accurate voice recognition, even in noisy environments.

One of the most exciting features of the A3 is its large-scale swarm co-ordination, which uses precise UWB positioning to enable performances by up to 100 individual robots. That makes it possible to create very complex, high-impact performances for big events, as well as enabling multiple units to work smartly in environments such as factories or warehouses. The awareness and the uptime make this a great new approach to robotics.

Hypershell X Ultra S

The Hypershell X Ultra S exoskeleton helped mountaineer Adriana Brownlee in -30C temperatures on Mount Everest, supported athlete Aurélien Fontenoy's 4,037km Route 66 journey while recovering from injury, and is currently being trialed by search and rescue organizations worldwide.

Before Hypershell, exoskeletons cost $100,000 and above; the same capabilities are now available to consumers for less than $2,000, in a device weighing under 2kg.

The X Ultra S is an end-to-end AI motion-control system that uses an AI model to transform raw sensor data directly into motor torque, enabling faster response, smoother adaptation, and more natural human-machine synchronization.

There are 12 active modes, including walking, cycling and running, and a new Gentle Assist mode for older adults and users with short or shuffling strides. Fitness Mode adds resistance, turning a walk into a workout.

But it's the price that won us over here — this could be a game changer for getting people with limited mobility out and doing more things that they love, from hiking to just visiting the local stores.

JMGO IRIS Ultra Max

The IRIS Ultra Max is one of the world’s first true 4K 120Hz flagship smart projectors, delivering native 4K (rather than pixel-shifted) at 120Hz from input to output, all from its very compact case.

The Ultra Max's dual iris system has 6+9 blades, the highest count in its class, which promises to improve stray light suppression by 11.34% for a more accurate picture, while delivering class-leading contrast, with a quoted ration of 10,000:1. The MALC 6.0 Triple-Laser Engine delivers an impressive 6,500 ISO lumens of brightness, making it more visible in more lighting conditions, and with a promised ability to recreate 110% of the BT.2020 color space, with an astounding color accuracy of delta-E of 0.7, meaning it's truly capable of pro-level color range and accuracy.

The IRIS Ultra Max also introduces an industry-first 3-in-1 Optical System that integrates 0.88–1.7:1 Optical Zoom, Four-Way Lens Shift (V ±130%, H ±53%), and an AI-Powered Gimbal (360° H, 150° V) into a unified projection architecture. This makes it more more flexible than traditional projectors to positioning, because it has so many different options for correcting its picture. It gives small home theater setups top-tier performance without compromise.

DJI Osmo Pocket 4P

Designed for vloggers and movie-makers alike, the Osmo Pocket 4P is the world’s first dual-lens pocket gimbal camera. It delivers cinema-grade imaging in a pocket-friendly form, and features DJI's Academy Award-winning Ronin stabilization.

The main lens is a wide-angle 20mm equivalent with an f/2.0 aperture, and a new 1-inch CMOS sensor that offers 17 stops of dynamic range and over one billion colors via DJI's new 10-bit D-Log 2 color profile.

That's supplemented with a 60mm medium-tele portrait lens, which gives you 3x optical zoom and up to 12x digital zoom. Its f/1.8 aperture is particularly good for creating bokeh effects by compressing the background and pulling it closer to the subject.

The Osmo Pocket 4P also features the latest version of DJI's ActiveTrack, which uses AI algorithms to maintain tracking lock at up to 12x zoom. It can actively track up to eight people, framing groups and centering anyone new who steps into the field of view.

RayNeo GT Max AR Glasses

The RayNeo GT Max AR Glasses are the world's first AR glasses to support Dolby Vision playback as part of creating a virtual cinema experience. They deliver up to 1,200 nits of perceived brightness, a 120Hz refresh rate, and real-time SDR to HDR conversion for super-clear images, too. Their optical system is 29% thinner and lighter than traditional designs, and delivers an industry-leading 59-degree field of view.

One of our favorite features is the adjustable virtual screen sizes, with a choice of 227 inches, 267 inches or 307 inches. That's clever: the tighter size is ideal for spreadsheets and productivity apps if you're using them as a display for a phone or laptop, while the larger sizes deliver immersive gaming and video.

Steady, Pinned and Follow modes enable you to anchor the screen or have it move with you, and 3DoF spatial tracking maintains the screen position without straining your eyes, and keeps subtitles, taskbars and image edges within the viewing area as you move. These look like the most advanced way to take a screen with you everywhere, and they could be indispensable for long flights.

TCL P80 Ultra

If you spend as much time on your phone as we do, you'll be blown away by the screen of the TCL P80 Ultra. It's the first phone to integrate NXTPAPER eye-comfort technology, with a 1.5K sharp AMOLED display for reflection-free reading even in bright sunlight, and a button that instantly turns your P80 Ultra into an e-reader with paper-like viewing.

The P80 Ultra has nano-etched anti-glare glass, eliminating surface reflections without reducing brightness. It also features circular polarized light technology, which changes the light output to more closely replicate the characteristics of natural light, and flicker-free dimming.

The camera's pretty special too. It's a 50MP 3x periscope telephoto lens with a 50MP 1/1.56-inch large-format sensor, capturing more light per pixel than smaller sensors and enabling 6x lossless zoom. Image stabilization eliminates motion blur in photos and video, and TCL's MuseFilm filters promise cinematic-quality images. But it's the groundbreaking display that really won us over — a lot of people will find it much kinder on the eyes.

Lenovo ThinkBook 14x Gen 2

Lenovo's ultra-light laptop makes even ultraportables look positively porky: at just 2.18lbs / 990g and just 12.9mm thick it's one of the lightest and thinnest laptops around, making it ideal for business travelers and students alike — especially if you opt for the backlit keyboard, which is really helpful in dimly lit rooms and airplanes.

Lenovo has somehow managed to give the ThinkBook 14x the super-thin treatment without sacrificing connectivity, so in addition to its Wi-Fi 7 it features two 10Gbps USB-C ports, two 5Gbps USB-A ports and an HDMI 2.1 port, so there's no need to haul a hub around with you. It also has a spare M.2 slot that enables you to expand its storage, which makes this a solid long-term investment.

The ThinkBook 14x Gen 2 is also one of the most customizable ultraportables, powered by Intel Core 7 (Series 3) processors and with display options including vivid OLED and touchscreen LCD. It's good-looking too, with a choice of metallic finishes including Luna Gray, Celestial White, Mystic Violet and Veil Blue.

EarFun Wave Pro X

EarFun's headphones consistently deliver premium performance without the premium price tag, and the Wave Pro X are the brand's best yet. They feature a patented dual-driver system that places a 40mm diamond-like carbon driver and a 10mm liquid crystal polymer driver on a precisely aligned axis, creating a more natural and detailed sound than you typically get from multi-driver designs.

The Wave Pro X feature an 8-mic AI system that continuously optimizes the hybrid ANC system, even in wired AUX mode, and the Qualcomm QCC3095 chipset delivers Bluetooth 6.0, aptX Lossless, LDAC, USB Audio and Auracast. Add AI translation and up to 90 hours of battery life to the mix and you've got a truly excellent pair of headphones — EarFun has been working on these for a long time, and even delayed them in order to get the tuning just right.

Urevo CyberPad 3

The CyberPad 3 is a home/office treadmill that's designed differently to traditional models. Its WalkFree Adaptive Speed Control uses pressure sensors built into the running board, which detect your stepping motion to automatically start and stop operation; when you're walking or running it takes data from the motor to calculate speed adjustments in real time.

Its multi-user support is smart too, capturing raw weight and stride-rate data to generate a structured user profile that's directly linked to the speed-control algorithm.

The support structure is made from Q235 steel with a side frame of die-cast aluminum, and it utilizes a redesigned transmission path to deliver an exceptionally compact construction: the ultra-slim body is under 11cm thick. Despite its small size it features a 15% incline-lift mechanism and a 42cm running belt, with its size based on analysis of human shoulder widths.

Plaud One

Plaud One is a wearable AI companion that combines three key features that are usually separate: wearable conversation capture, context that builds across day-to-day conversations, and AI that can analyze data and take appropriate action. It can capture online meetings, and face-to-face discussions and phone calls, and it has built-in eSIM and 4G LTE for phone-free operation.

What makes Plaud One different is that it understands context. Instead of treating each recording as a standalone transcript, it can retain context across multiple discussions — so a conversation from one meeting can be connected to a later conversation or call.

That understanding enables the Plaud Agent to help you take action, identifying next steps and completing tasks across tools such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Notion, and Slack.

Minisforum MS-S1 Max-P495

The MS-S1 Max-P495 delivers large-model AI computing from an exceptionally small footprint with a very high specification. It combines AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 495 with up to 192GB of unified memory to run 128B+ LLMs locally, delivering up to 126 TOPS, and its unified memory architecture eliminates VRAM bottlenecks while also reducing latency.

That power is cooled by a high-performance thermal solution featuring a copper base, six heat pipes, dual fans and phase-change cooling, and it's encased in a fully scalable design, with a slide-out chassis for easy upgrading and a rack-ready form factor.

With 4x PCIe expansion, dual 10Gb Ethernet, dual 40Gbps USB4 v2, Wi-Fi 7, and a built-in 320W PSU, the MS-S1 Max-P495 delivers future-proof power for desktop systems and scalable AI clusters alike — it's a mind-blowing beast made to meet a new kind of research and development need.

XPPen Magic Pro 13

XPPen's Magic Pro 13 is a mobile drawing pad designed for creative pros, featuring an industry-first hardware-level drawing display mode that delivers low latency, native color output and higher bandwidth video transmission over a simple one-cable connection, giving you a paper-like experience with 16K pressure sensitivity and cursor hover support.

It's the first drawing pad in its category to come with dual-USB support, enabling you to benefit from a high-speed data connection while charging your Magic Pro 13.

The Magic Pro 13 features the new Shelf digital asset management system and XPPen's Canvas software, designed to deliver a simple and intuitive sketching experience for capturing ideas when inspiration strikes. And for creatives on the move it offers two thermal management modes, balancing performance and energy efficiency based on different creative scenarios.

Strutt ev1c

Strutt's ev1c reimagines the power chair with three major advancements: Strutt's evSense sensing array, a quad-drive drivetrain, and a modular, connected design.

eVSense uses two LiDARs, 10 time-of-flight sensors, six ultrasonics and two cameras to create 3D maps in real time, powering the Co-Pilot collision avoidance for people, pets, and edges, and the Auto-Pilot, which enables you to select on-screen destinations, or use LLM-powered voice commands such as "Take me to the kitchen" — basically it's a self-driving personal mobility vehicle.

The drivetrain features four-wheel independent suspension, ABS, active steering, and an integrated electronic stability program (ESP), safely managing 13-degree slopes, cobblestones and rough terrain without slippage or tipping. And when it's time to travel, it breaks down into five modules for easy trunk storage. It looks like a genuine move forward for this kind of mobility device.

xTool M2 Color Craft Laser

The xTool M2 is the first desktop machine to combine full-color CMYK printing, laser engraving and laser cutting into one enclosed Class 1 system, delivering a full print-then-cut workflow. Simply print your full-color design onto a piece of wood, leather or acrylic, and the xTool M2 Color Craft Laser cuts or engraves the exact contour with camera-guided precision. And there's a built-in air-assist pump, an industry first for a semiconductor laser, that keeps cut edges clean by reducing carbonization and yellowing.

Having these three capabilities in a single device is a huge power-up: instead of having to print on one machine and engrave or cut on another, you can turn your raw idea into a finished, professional-looking product in a single operation. It's ideal for stickers, labels, signage, personalized gifts, and small-batch products — you could start a whole business with this one device. And because it's an enclosed system, it's also very safe.

Perlegear AX1 Smart Adaptive Mount

The Perlegear AX1 Smart Adaptive Mount answers an interesting question: what if your TV mount was as smart as your TV? The AX1 is an AI-powered, motorized TV mount that can automatically adjust the height of your TV to different viewing positions, so for example you might have it low for solo TV watching, but raised for watching sports with friends, or for following an on-screen fitness app or motion-based game.

The AX1 is controllable via gesture commands, its mobile app, via remote control, or via Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri. It can distinguish between single- and multi-person viewing, with the latter calculating the best screen height for the group, and it's capable of moving a 200-pound / 90kg TV up to 15.7 inches / 400mm vertically, with real-time obstacle detection that stops and reverses the move if the path is blocked.

Speediance Gym Monster 3

The brilliantly named Gym Monster 3 delivers serious strength training for home workouts, combining the experience of a Smith machine, barbell, dumbbells, cable machine, rowing machine, pulley system, and squat rack into one streamlined setup with up to 200lbs / 90kg of intelligent digital resistance.

Twin 800W direct-drive motors deliver smooth, consistent resistance through every rep, and it's adjustable in one-pound / 0.45kg increments, so you can progress at your own pace, rather than make big jumps you might not be ready for.

The Gym Monster 3 is controlled via a clever Bluetooth Ring Control that enables you to make adjustments without stepping away or breaking your flow, and it features four dedicated training modes: Standard, Chain, Eccentric, and Fixed Speed. It also features a built-in AI coach that can guide you from your first session onwards.

Midea GreenApex Dishwasher

The humble dishwasher hasn't changed much since Josephine Cochrane's 1886 invention went electric in the late 1920s and gained spray arms in the 1950s. But the Midea GreenApex is very different from traditional grease-busters. It's a dual heat-pump system that uses a single coordinated heat pump platform to deliver washing, rapid drying, and dry storage in a single appliance.

The GreenApex is 50% more energy efficient than conventional dishwashers, delivers 30-minute rapid drying and 168 hours of dry storage without continued system operation, and offers gentle heat-pump drying at around 45°C, so you don't need to worry about high temperatures damaging more delicate items. It feels like a major leap forward for an appliance type that doesn't often have the phrase 'cutting-edge' associated with it.

Reolink OMVI 2i Ultra

The Reolink OMVI 2i Ultra Security Camera features an innovative, decoupled dual-lens tracking system in which the individual lenses operate fully independently of one another. Unlike in other dual-lens or hybrid zoom security cameras, the two lenses here are not mechanically linked, so the fixed 130-degree 4K wide-angle lens never moves, while the telephoto camera is free to rotate anywhere, including to cover areas outside the field of view of the main lens.

This means that when the 4K camera's on-device AI spots a person, vehicle or animal, it triggers the pan-tilt camera to lock onto and follow that subject even after they exit the wide camera's field of view — but you don't lose any recording from the wide camera's view during that time.

You can also use the wide-angle view to redirect the pan-tilt camera to a particular location by simply tapping that point in the live camera view, or have the wide camera and the pan-tilt camera monitoring two distinct locations, such as your driveway and a side gate.

Navimow H510 Pro

The Navimow H510 Pro features four key innovations: precise edge finishing, zero-turn steering, adaptive mowing intelligence, and 3D modelling.

Rather than edging with a trimmer line, which can be noisy and cause minor damage, the H510 Pro has an extendable robot arm that performs zero-gap edging quietly and safely — it's the most interesting and smart version of this technology that we've seen.

The all-wheel-drive system protects your turf too, with a zero-steering system that avoids dragging the wheels across the grass during lateral turns. And the Adaptive Mowing Intelligence feature analyzes grass growth patterns to determine the optimal mowing frequency, using the 1/3 cutting rule to preserve lawn health.

With 3D terrain modeling rather than the industry-standard 2D, and a sensor array including infrared as well as LiDAR and vision for low-light reliability, and triple-sensor avoidance to protect wildlife, the H510 is a smart solution for even the most challenging lawns.

DJI Romo 2 Series

The Romo 2 Series is a robot vacuum that won't be defeated by obstacles such as deep rugs, sliding door tracks and other barriers. That's because it has robotic legs that can step over obstacles as high as 4cm, and double-step thresholds up to an impressive 8.5cm.

It also features a built-in LiDAR-guided ultra-wide-swing robotic arm to extend the mop's reach, and its powerful suction system features an automatically lowering plate that forms a semi-seal on carpet for better extraction of dust and allergens.

The Romo 2 Series also benefits from the tech of DJI's flagship drones, with a Structured Light-Speckle projector and dual fish-eye vision sensors for full 3D depth perception. It can detect items such as cables and training pads as thin as 2mm, and its AI can distinguish between debris and liquid, as well as deal with transparent obstacles such as glass doors and mirrors.

Acer Vero 16

With so many laptops sacrificing easy maintenance and repairability for super-skinny styling, the Acer Vero 16 is a breath of fresh air. While it doesn't skimp on style or power — it's highly portable, delivers up to 180 platform TOPS with an Intel Core Ultra X9 processor 388H, and can be configured with a stunning 16-inch 3K OLED display — it's made with longevity in mind.

A tool-free latch provides easy access to the Vero's innards, and the battery and SSD are replaceable, while the system is designed to support the next two generations of processors if you want to upgrade. Fully 70% of the chassis consists of a blend of PCR (post-consumer recycled) and bio-based oyster shell material, and it meets US military standards for toughness. This is a laptop that's built to last, in a way that's rare to see — and very welcome.

Asus ProArt GR1X

The Asus ProArt GR1X is tiny, measuring just 150 x 150 x 51mm. But there's nothing small about its specification. Designed for advanced content creation and local AI workflows, it delivers data center-class compute inside a mini PC, removing the need to run LLMs remotely while eliminating cloud latency, cost, and IP protection concerns for pro creators.

The ProArt GR1X features the groundbreaking Nvidia RTX Spark 'superchip', which means you get a 20-core Grace CPU and a 6,144-core Blackwell GPU, delivering up to one petaflop of FP4 AI inference performance. With up to 128GB of LPDDR5X unified memory at 9,400MHz, it enables you to run up to 120B-parameter LLMs locally, and render entire 3D scenes on-device in Windows 11.

That kind of power demands highly efficient cooling, and Asus has developed an advanced precision-cooling system that delivers 1.6x more efficient thermal coverage than standard compact systems. Asus also solved the challenge of metal-enclosure signal attenuation by embedding the Wi-Fi 7 antennas behind a glass-like signal-transparent material. It's quite the design coup, and an impressive showcase for Nvidia's new elite chip.

EcoFlow STREAM 5000 / STREAM AC 5000

The EcoFlow Stream series is a plug-and-play modular system for residential solar energy generation and storage that's designed to be renter- and apartment-friendly. It can add battery storage and smart power-management to existing solar PV installations, as well as being employed to create a new home system from scratch.

The Stream Series features EcoFlow's Oasis 3.0 home energy management system, which understands dynamic energy tariffs, keeps an eye on the weather forecast, and continuously analyzes your home energy needs to optimize generation, storage and consumption.

That means you can give the EcoBot AI agent instructions such as "I need my car charged by 7am tomorrow at the lowest possible cost" and it will implement the necessary steps, or have your energy schedules reconfigured automatically when you have visitors or other instances of increased demand.

From October the EcoFlow Stream series will also get a new feature: Local Mode, which gives you uninterrupted operation and local app control even if there are cloud or connectivity outages. It's a very powerful (no pun intended) system that's been designed with the real world in mind.

Tapo D260

The Tapo D260 wired/wireless security camera is a video doorbell that delivers all the benefits of high-spec security without the potential downsides: it stores facial recognition data locally to protect privacy, and no features are locked behind a subscription. It's advanced, yet totally cost-free once you buy it.

It has 4K resolution, a wide 180-degree field of view to cover the entire doorway, and delivers sharp detail in subjects up to 30 feet away.

The D260 features multiple intelligent detection and recognition features, including radar as well as the obligatory infrared motion sensor. These enable it to discount false alerts from things such as moving branches or passing headlights, while on-device AI can recognize people, packages, vehicles, and animals.

If you wish, you can opt in to build a library of family and friends using facial recognition, and there's even a voice changer to disguise your voice when speaking to unfamiliar callers. In a world where people are sick of subscriptions, this offers a great security upgrade without the monthly fee.

• OpenAI launched Daybreak for Frontline Defenders, offering $1B in credits for resource‑constrained security orgs
• Priority goes to essential services, governments, banks, nonprofits, and open‑source maintainers
• Initiative includes training, partnerships, and a water‑sector pilot with MS‑ISCA for local defenders

OpenAI is offering a billion dollars in credits to security organizations who want to use its Daybreak initiative but cannot afford it.

Daybreak is a cybersecurity program that provides vetted defenders with specialized AI tools and models. It was introduced in May this year, and later expanded into two tiers - Blue, and Red. Blue is the entry-level tier, providing a general-purpose model with custom-tailored safeguards. Red, on the other hand, offers a more purpose-trained cybersecurity model and almost no safeguards.

According to OpenAI, “thousands of defenders across 2,000 approved organizations and workspaces” already use Daybreak, including cybersecurity companies, defense organizations, and law enforcement agencies.

Who gets priority?

But these models cost money, and to make sure more businesses can access them, OpenAI announced, “Daybreak for Frontline Defenders”, a project where defenders can apply and receive credits for AI tokens. Even though the company announced it as a global initiative, it seems that US businesses will be the first to take advantage of it:

“OpenAI is committing $1 billion in subsidized Daybreak access to help resource-constrained cyber defenders, starting with the United States, put frontier AI to work, targeting it to be consumed over the next six months,” the company said in an announcement blog.

Businesses operating essential services such as water and wastewater systems, and electric grid operators, will get priority, OpenAI said. Then come state and local governments, community and regional banks, nonprofits, open-source maintainers, and then “other organizations with limited security resources.”

The subsidy is not just about using the models, though. OpenAI also said it will be increasing hands-on support for frontline defenders, training, and new partnerships.

On top of all that, OpenAI also announced a public sector, water-focused pilot with the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISCA) to train and support local, tribal, and territorial defenders.

“The pilot will pair Daybreak access with guided training and hands-on assistance for an initial group of public sector and water system defenders, helping them validate and prioritize findings, coordinate remediation, and develop a repeatable approach that can be expanded over time,” the announcement concluded.

Logitech G305 X Superlight: Review

The Logitech G305 X Superlight is a lightweight wireless gaming mouse. Logitech is no stranger to this category, but this addition to its G305 line aims to keep things relatively simple while including some surprisingly advanced features relative to its price point.

It has quite a basic appearance, with a lack of branding or any odd contours. There’s an RGB light strip that looks too small to be effective, but it manages to brighten up the G305 X Superlight to an impressive degree — especially the black model — thanks to its wealth of animation customizations.

The overall build quality is great, too, adhering to Logitech’s typically high standards. Despite how light the unit is (it weighs just 61g), it’s surprisingly solid, lacking any flimsiness or hollowness. The plastic body is smooth with just a hint of texture that feels tactile and just as premium as the best gaming mouse shells. Furthermore, all of its buttons and the scroll wheel are solidly planted without a hint of play.

To customize the inputs (as well as the aforementioned RGB lighting) of the G305 X Superlight, you’ll need to download Logitech’s G HUB software. In one section, you’ll find five configurable DPI sliders that you can set to a range between 100 and 44,000 — you can then cycle through these using the dedicated button on the G305 X Superlight, which is thankfully placed on top rather than underneath, making it easy to access. You can save your five settings as a custom preset or select from several provided by Logitech, catering to various game types and scenarios — something I haven’t seen much in peripheral software.

In another section, you can reassign all of the G305 X Superlight’s buttons. There are a large number of assignments available, ranging from a multitude of system and media commands to keyboard inputs and mouse adjustments. You’ll also find custom actions for Discord, Overwolf, OBS, and Streamlabs Desktop. What’s more, a second mapping layer is available via Logitech’s G-shift feature, which is accessed by holding down a button of your choosing.

However, there aren’t any performance-related tweaks for the G305 X Superlight; you can’t alter the lift-off distance or debounce times, nor can you enable motion sync or angle snapping, for example. About the only feature in this area is what Logitech calls BHOP mode. This is designed to prevent accidental knocks of the scroll wheel from registering by ignoring the first scroll event unless a second is performed within a certain time frame (adjustable between 100ms and 1000ms).

Such omissions didn’t spoil my time gaming with G305 X Superlight, though. Its low profile suited my grip style, and the rear hump was just about prominent enough to sit comfortably in my palm without being obstructive. Also, I could grip the mouse securely with my thumb and ring finger during lift-offs thanks to the sidewalls that narrow as they reach the bottom, making up for the lack of grip tape or embossing.

Maneuvering the G305 X Superlight is easy thanks to that aforementioned lightness, too. And despite the relatively small skates, swipes were smooth and frictionless on my mouse pad. This was the case even when I had the USB cable attached — a surprise given it isn’t braided as many gaming mice cables are. Although it created some noticeable drag, it’s still lighter and more malleable than your average rubber cable.

As for the mouse buttons, I appreciated the ergonomics of their downward slant and subtle indentations. Clicks are solid yet snappy, with a good amount of feedback and a surprisingly deep travel. This means spamming is relatively effortless while accidental taps are unlikely to register. The side buttons are easy to reach and actuate, too.

The scroll wheel is easy to flick thanks to its light notching, yet there’s still just enough feedback to make single scrolls easy to perform. However, there were a few occasions when scrolls triggered when I pressed the middle button. This button can also feel quite firm if you don’t hit it at precisely the right angle, which can make presses awkward, but with practice this became less of an issue.

I had no problems with the connectivity of the G305 X Superlight. It connected to my devices via both Bluetooth and the 2.4GHz dongle without a hitch, and hot-switching between them was quick and easy thanks to the selector button underneath. You’ll also find a handy slot here for storing the dongle.

It is a shame there’s no native 8KHz support, although most PC gamers probably won’t need it. Taking everything into consideration, though, the G305 X Superlight is a great value gaming mouse that offers high performance and has a pleasing amount of features at this price point.

Logitech G305 X Superlight review: Price & availability

• $79.99 / £69.99 / AU$149.95
• Available now in black or white
• Good price for a wireless gaming mouse

The Logitech G305 X Superlight costs $79.99 / £69.99 / AU$149.95 and is available now. Two colorways are available: black and white. A USB cable is included for charging and wired play, but it isn’t braided. There are also no spare skates or optional grip tape to adhere to the sidewalls or mouse buttons.

Nevertheless, the G305 X Superlight is well priced for a gaming wireless mouse that has two wireless modes. It also performs very well and has a generous number of input customizations, although it lacks performance-related adjustments. It’s much cheaper than the Razer Viper V4 Pro, even though that mouse has a similar number of input customizations and no additional Bluetooth support. However, we loved virtually every aspect of its performance when we tested it, and gamers may find its form more ergonomic.

If you’re looking for something even cheaper, the Cooler Master MM311 is one of the best value gaming mice around right now. We were impressed with its light and symmetrical design, as well as its fast performance. Again, it doesn’t feature Bluetooth support, and you also have to supply your battery, but it’s hard to complain too much about such omissions when it’s so cheap.

Should I buy the Logitech G305 X Superlight?

Buy it if…

Don't buy it if…

Logitech G305 X Superlight review: Also consider

How I tested the Logitech G305 X Superlight

• Tested for several days
• Used for gaming and other tasks
• Plentiful gaming mouse experience

I tested the G305 X Superlight for several days, and used it to play several games, including Counter-Strike 2, which is a great test for mice given it requires extremely fast and precise movements. I also used the mouse for general browsing and working.

I’ve been PC gaming for over a decade, so I’ve used plenty of mice in that time. I’ve also reviewed a large number of gaming mice before, including other Logitech models.

• Read more about how we test
• First reviewed: August 2026

• Anker has announced a new eufyMake fabric printer
• It can print straight on to fabrics or on to film surfaces
• We're still waiting on pricing and an exact on-sale date

The product announcements out of IFA 2026 continue apace, and we're very taken by the new eufyMake printer that was just unveiled by Anker. Described as a "personal fabric printer", it's capable of putting designs on a wide variety of materials.

It doesn't have a name or a price yet, and it's not arriving until the first quarter of next year (so either January, February, or March), but we are getting a 'first look' at IFA. It works with both light and dark fabrics, Anker says, with consistent results every time.

There's support for Direct-to-Garment (DTG) and Direct-to-Film (DTF) printing standards, so ink can be pushed right on the fabric itself or a film that's then placed on the fabric. The printer will work with a variety of special-effect films on top of materials too.

"Professional garment customization used to be locked inside expensive industrial machines," explains Anker in its marketing blurb. "Now, we're bringing that magic right to your desk with a printer designed specifically for fabric printing."

More updates

Anker is clearly targeting creators and those with small businesses or side hustles with this: it means you could get some branded goods up for sale without having to take your designs to a third-party printing service.

It doesn't look like you'll need a whole lot of space for it either: the press shots show it fitting comfortably on a table, and it's roughly in the range of a consumer 3D printer. There's a large dashboard on top too, for handling print settings.

More information should emerge soon, including how much this will set you back. At the same time, Anker says it's retiring the eufyMake branding alongside other sub-brands — everything will just be Anker from now on.

Anker has also announced updates for its UV Printer E1 model, the ultraviolet texture printer that was a crowdfunding hit last year. The E1 is getting bidirectional printing and faster print speeds via an over-the-air update, at no extra cost.

• A Japanese laptop maker has come up with an innovative stand
• It folds out from underneath the notebook to give the device some clearance off the surface below
• This improves cooling the processor by up to 3C / 5.4F, the maker claims, and it could be a trick that other manufacturers adopt

A PC maker in Japan has produced a laptop with a clever twist under the hood — well, under the chassis to be precise.

VideoCardz spotted Iiyama PC's 15-inch gaming laptop on sale at PC Kobo, a Japanese retailer. It has a small stand that folds out from beneath the body of the device, effectively propping up the Level 15FX167 notebook and raising it slightly (by what looks like just under an inch at the highest point).

That clearance allows for better cooling, with more air free to circulate underneath, and Iiyama PC claims that the stand "can lower the CPU operating temperature by up to 3C" compared to when the device is flat on a surface.

The specs of the Level 15FX167 include an Intel Core Ultra 9 Processor 185H, 16GB of RAM, and an Nvidia RTX 5060 GPU with a 1TB SSD.

Analysis: every degree counts

A difference of 5.4F / 3C might not sound like a whole lot, but it's a useful bit of extra thermal headroom when it comes to a gaming laptop. Remember that portable devices require all sorts of head-scratching in terms of the design of the cooling system, fans, vents, heatsinks and so forth. Every fraction of a degree that can be eked here or there all adds up to better performance ultimately.

As Iiyama PC points out, the tilted angle that the built-in stand provides is also ergonomically sound for a better typing experience, too.

Of course, the idea of an integrated stand is nothing new in the world of laptops, but this implementation is a novel one, as opposed to the traditional kickstand that you see on the likes of Microsoft's Surface devices.

It's one of those ideas that, when I first set eyes on it, I thought to myself, how has this not been done before? Then I had to check that it hadn't been done before, and indeed it hasn't, as far as I can tell. (Although the Asus Ergolift design is in a similar vein, but it's built directly into the notebook's hinge).

The question is, will other laptop makers take notice, and might we see this on devices outside of Japan eventually? Perhaps, and I'll be interested to see a review of this Iiyama PC notebook. My only concern is whether the stand might be a weak point in terms of the possibility of it breaking, so a reviewer should be able to give us a good idea of any fragility therein.

And in case you were wondering, yes, Iiyama is the same brand that makes the famous monitors, sitting under the same parent company.

• Microsoft warns of Teams‑based campaign where attackers impersonate IT staff
• Victims tricked into granting remote access, leading to malware, lateral movement, and ransomware
• Defenses: verify support contacts, train staff, harden Teams, and use Defender Safe Links/ZAP

Microsoft is warning about an ongoing hacking campaign that starts with a Teams message and ends with a ransomware infection and data theft.

In a new in-depth report published on the Microsoft blog, it was said that unnamed threat actors were reaching out to their targets at various enterprises via a Teams chat, while impersonating IT staff.

They were coercing their victims into granting remote access via screen sharing or remote monitoring and management tools and once received, used their access to install malware loaders and various other implants.

How to defend against Teams-borne phishing

The malware was just the first stage of the attack. Subsequent stages include host reconnaissance, security-product and virtualization discovery, and “periodic desktop screen capture”. In other words - mapping out the landscape and conducting espionage.

The crooks would then enumerate domain accounts, servers, and users, through native tools and Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI) queries and begin moving laterally.

The final step includes identifying and extracting valuable data, followed by a ransomware infection.

Microsoft does not name the perpetrators, and mostly refers to them as “threat actors”. It makes sense, since the “fake IT support via Teams” technique is being used by multiple groups at this moment. Russia’s Cozy Bear, FIN7, and Storm-1811 are probably the most obvious examples.

The world’s biggest extortionists - ShinyHunters - are also known to use Teams to trick victims into granting access, but this group rarely deploys an encryptor and instead just focuses on data exfiltration.

Whoever the attackers are, and whoever they’re after, one thing is for certain - the risk in the enterprise environment has never been greater.

That is why Microsoft advises reinforcing user education by establishing internal helpdesk authentication phrases, and by training employees to recognize external-tenant indicators.

The company also urges enterprises to verify unsolicited support contact, and to harden Microsoft Teams and email against social engineering. “Use Microsoft Defender for Office 365 with Safe Links and Zero-hour auto purge (ZAP) so malicious messages and URLs are neutralized at time of click and removed after delivery,” Microsoft urges.

At IFA 2026, the huge tech show in Berlin, Germany, Nvidia announced that laptops running on its ARM-based RTX Spark chip will be available to buy from October.

The biggest names in the laptop industry, including Microsoft, Lenovo, HP, and Dell, will all have RTX Spark devices, and I got to spend a bit more time with some of them at Nvidia’s launch event.

Having already seen a lot of RTX Spark laptops at Computex 2026 earlier this year, quite a bit of what Nvidia showed at IFA was familiar. There was, again, a big emphasis on local AI performance, which is undoubtedly impressive, but a bit niche for consumers, and I can see how Nvidia tech such as DLSS upscaling and Multi Frame Gen (MFG), which RTX Spark devices can make use of, can help content creators working on complex 3D art speed up their workflows (those technologies have in the past mainly been aimed at improving the performance of PC games).

I also got to play a range of games on RTX Spark laptops, including DOOM The Dark Ages, and 007 First Light, and it remains impressive that these thin and light laptops are able to run such demanding titles with such impressive results. This is especially true when you consider that the games aren't running natively on ARM, instead they are being run via Microsoft's Prism emulation layer, which means games developed for traditional Intel or AMD (x86) hardware can run without devs having to make dedicated ARM versions. According to the Nvidia spokesperson I chatted to, the performance hit of running a game via emulation is negligible, at least with GPU-bound titles.

The spokesperson admitted, however, that CPU-intensive games (such as RTS games) could see bigger dips compared to running the game natively.

What is new at IFA is the announcement that RTX Spark laptops will go on sale in October. But, apart from that, details remain scarce - and that means it's hard to get excited about these laptops just yet.

Keeping their cards close to their chest

Despite being about a month out from going on sale, Nvidia was tightlipped about a lot of things regarding RTX Spark laptops. The biggest question mark, of course, concerns pricing.

These are powerful laptops aimed at creative professionals, and will come with up to 128GB of unified memory, so I can't imagine they are going to be anything other than very, very, expensive. The continued silence about prices doesn't bode well for anyone hoping for vaguely affordable laptops.

One spokesperson I talked to did suggest there will be multiple yet to be announced configurations that will appeal to different consumers and price points, though they looked slightly doubtful when I asked if there would be an RTX Spark laptop that students could afford.

We still don't know more about performance, either, as while there were live demos, raw performance numbers were not available, and I was not allowed to run benchmarks or change settings.

What I can say is that complex AI tools and generative AI features, all run locally on the laptops, and appear fast and smooth. Games also ran well. I was also assured by Nvidia that performance would be roughly the same if the RTX Spark laptop is plugged into a charger, or running on battery.

So, no power-conserving throttling it seems, something that Apple has long boasted about with its M-series chips.

A number of laptops from Nvidia's partners were on display, but were turned off, and journalists were asked not to even pick them up, again an odd request considering these devices are supposed to go on sale next month.

I'm certainly impressed with what I've seen, and the potential of RTX Spark is huge. I'm also glad that Windows laptops look like they could finally give Apple's modern MacBook Pros a run for their money.

But, on the topic of money, I really won't be able to ascertain just how excited we should all be with RTX Spark laptops until we know more about the price - and with an October launch, time is running out.

• FBI warns of rising OAuth consent phishing attacks exploiting legitimate app permissions
• Victims tricked into granting malicious apps access, enabling email reading and sending
• Password changes don’t help; users must revoke tokens in app security settings

Hackers found a way to access your data, read your messages, and even send emails to your contacts, without ever needing your password or other login credentials. All they need from you is a single click on a completely legitimate, well-known platform.

The technique is called “OAuth consent phishing”. It’s been around for more than a year and it’s gotten popular to a point where even the FBI is taking note. Earlier this week, the law enforcement agency issued a new public service announcement, via its Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), warning Americans about the threat.

OAuth (Open Authorization) is an internet standard that allows users to give apps access to their account on another service, without giving the app their password for that service. For example, when users install a new app, they have the “Continue with Google” option. When they click it, they are asked if they allow the app to access their email. If they approve, Google gives that app a special access token, which allows the app to access the user’s Google account without ever seeing the password.

Pulling off an OAuth attack

So, to pull off an OAuth attack, the threat actor must first trick Google (or Microsoft, or any other company providing the service) and get their (malicious) app registered on the platform. Then they would reach out to their target via instant messaging, while impersonating government officials, media, and other publicly known personalities, and sharing a link to what appears to be a document.

The link redirects the victim to a legitimate service (for example, Google), where they are asked to grant permissions to the malicious app. If they approve, the attackers gain access to their email accounts with which they can do almost anything.

To make matters worse, simply changing the password does not fix the issue. The only way to eliminate the threat is to revoke the access token that was given, which can be done in the application security settings.

The FBI did not say who the threat actors were or who they were targeting, other than they were “prominent victims”. Their family members were being targeted, as well.

Via The Record

• Google Pics lets you generate and precisely edit images using simple text prompts
• It will be integrated directly into Google Docs, Slides and Drive
• Pics is rolling out to Google AI Pro, Ultra and eligible Workspace customers

Google has started rolling out Pics, a new AI-powered image creation and editing tool that looks like the company’s answer to Canva and even Adobe Express.

Canva became enormously popular by enabling ordinary people to produce good-looking graphics without needing professional design skills. Google Pics is attempting something similar, but rather than giving you a huge library of templates and asking you to assemble a design yourself, it puts AI at the center of the entire process.

Pics isn’t as fully featured as Canva, at least from what Google has shown so far. However, it’s included with Google AI Pro and Ultra subscriptions and selected Workspace business plans — and that could prove to be its biggest advantage.

All AI, no templates

Pics starts with a prompt. You describe what you want to create, perhaps a child’s birthday invitation, an event poster or a social media graphic, and the AI generates several versions for you to choose from.

You can then select individual objects or pieces of text and ask Pics to change them without regenerating the entire image. Text can be edited, reformatted or translated while preserving the surrounding design, and images can be cropped for different formats or upscaled to 2K or 4K. You can also request several changes at once and return to an earlier version if the results go wrong.

While some people will dislike how heavily Pics relies on generative AI, others may appreciate how much of the traditional design process it removes. Instead of learning how to use layers, masks and selection tools, you can simply describe the change you want.

Google Pics is powered by Nano Banana, Gemini’s image generation and editing model. You can see how it works in this video:

Why Workspace changes the equation

The biggest difference between Pics and Canva is that Pics isn’t being positioned only as a standalone design app. Google is also integrating its editing tools directly into Docs and Slides, with deeper Drive integration arriving over the coming weeks.

That means you’ll be able to select an image in a presentation or document and edit it using Pics without opening another app. If an image in a document is too dark, for example, you could ask Pics to lighten it while remaining inside Google Docs. Creations can also be shared and edited collaboratively in much the same way as other Workspace files.

That integration is what makes Pics potentially significant. Canva remains a much broader and more mature design platform, complete with templates and tools covering everything from presentations to websites and video. Pics doesn’t need to replace all of that, however. It only needs to make Google users wonder whether opening Canva is still necessary for the everyday graphic they’re trying to create.

Google Pics is rolling out over the coming weeks to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers, as well as eligible Workspace business and education customers. I’m still waiting for it to reach my account, but I’ll be putting it through its paces as soon as it does.

• Thomson Reuters confirmed March 2026 breach of its C‑Track court management system
• Incident affected courts in 11 US states, Ontario, and the US Virgin Islands
• No operational disruption; scope of exposed records still under investigation, no misuse reported yet

Thomson Reuters, the IT company behind the Reuters news agency, suffered a cyberattack a few months ago, exposing certain court documents to the attackers. In a brief announcement published earlier this week, it seems Thomson Reuters only noticed the intrusion now, months after it was already over.

Here is what happened: Thomson Reuters operates a court case-management system called C-Track. It is a tool used by different courts to manage things like cases, filings, hearings, and schedules. It is used by courts in several US states, the US Virgin Islands, as well as Ontario, Canada.

On June 30, 2026, Thomson Reuters detected unauthorized activity in one of its cloud environments, prompting an investigation which later determined that an unauthorized threat actor broke in and obtained some C-Track files. This happened in March 2026.

Investigation underway

So far, the incident is confirmed to have taken place across 11 US states (Alabama, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio, New Hampshire, Wyoming), the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Ontario, Canada, exposing court records and personal information. Ontario's three Chief Justices confirmed it, as well, saying Thomson Reuters notified Ontario's Ministry of the Attorney General on July 23.

A more detailed investigation is currently underway, and all relevant authorities have been notified, it was said. At press time, Thomson Reuters did not yet determine exactly what information was accessed, or how many people were affected. The good news, however, is that there is currently no evidence of identity theft resulting from the incident, and there is no indication that systems handling court-related financial transactions were affected.

C-Track itself remains operational, as well. No threat actors have yet claimed responsibility for the attack or threatened to leak the files to the dark web.

"There has been no operational disruption to C-Track as a result of this incident," a Thomson Reuters spokesperson said. "Our products and services remain fully operational and are safe ​to continue to use. Independent ​cybersecurity experts assisted in ⁠the investigation and validated the remediation measures implemented."

• Microsoft is rolling out a new security feature for Windows 11
• Memory integrity provides stronger defenses for a crucial part of the operating system, and it's being automatically enabled
• Some gamers say the feature hampers gaming frame rates considerably, and they're not happy

Windows 11 is getting its security bolstered with a feature that's being automatically enabled, but which comes at a cost that some PC gamers don't want to pay — and this is proving quite the controversy on social media.

The Verge reports that Microsoft has announced that it's rolling out the enablement of memory integrity protection across eligible Windows 11 PCs, and that this is because "security works best when protection is built in, not bolted on".

Microsoft explains: "More devices will soon receive stronger protection by default, with no additional setup required. Windows quality updates will begin enabling memory integrity protection on eligible devices.

"If not already enabled, these updates will also enable VBS [Virtualization Based Security], helping make additional security capabilities available and reflecting our commitment to making Windows secure by design and secure by default."

The idea is to tighten security for Windows 11's kernel-mode drivers, a core aspect of the OS with direct access to the system's hardware, and there can be no argument that this additional protection gives host PCs tougher defenses and makes them more difficult to exploit. So why the controversy? Let's dive into the pros and cons of what's going on here.

Analysis: a divisive move — but we can't ignore that the threat landscape is changing

In Microsoft's view, this is a no-brainer: stronger security is being rolled out to Windows 11 devices, or at least those which are eligible (older PCs may not be). However, PCs configured via group policy not to use memory integrity, or machines where it's been disabled before, won't have the feature forced on them.

Other supported PCs will get memory integrity (and VBS, because it's required for memory integrity) turned on automatically by Windows 11, and this is where some gamers are up in arms. VBS has a long history of being a thorn in the side for gamers, with the feature being linked to frame rate losses.

How much of a headwind does this cause for PC games? Well, therein lies a big part of the issue, because it's difficult to pin that down exactly, and as ever, it's bound to vary depending on your PC's exact hardware and system configuration.

Some gamers observe frame rate hits of approaching 10%, while others say the impact isn't noticeable at all. There's a lot of back-and-forth on Reddit arguing about the extent of any slowdown, and here's a typical exchange:

One Redditor notes: "HVCI [memory integrity] is a great security feature, and the performance impact on newer platforms (to which this automatic switch will apply) is negligible."

Another replies: "It ain't negligible. 9800x3d, 5080, ddr5 6000 cl28 and my 1% lows get wrecked with this feature on. Way smoother disabled."

This isn't just about frames per second performance for some gamers, then, as there are also accusations of it affecting the lowest troughs (bottom 1%) that the frame rate hits (meaning the game suffers more stuttering at times and generally feels jerkier).

As the first comment points out, though, the likelihood should be that a more modern PC won't feel much of a hit (if anything). The gaming rigs that might see more of a spanner in the frame rate works are those which are older, but still modern enough to get the auto-enablement of memory integrity. In other words, a collection of PCs which are on the outer fringes of that compatibility limit (older machines, but not too old to avoid the feature rollout).

Of course, even those PC owners can always turn off memory integrity. The major beef for some is that they remember that Microsoft got into trouble for automatically switching on VBS in the past in a quiet, under-the-radar manner — and the question now will be whether gamers realize that this feature has been enabled alongside memory integrity.

In all honesty, when I saw what Microsoft was doing here and fired up Reddit to test the temperature of the reactions, I was expecting nothing short of a flamethrower being turned on the software giant. However, the feedback is split quite evenly between the haters — or those who disapprove at least — and users who are applauding Microsoft for this deployment.

Here are a couple of further examples from either side of the fence: "Apparently a controversial opinion, but systems that are for everyone should be failsafe, and that includes the most secure option being the default. There should be an option to disable security to get higher performance, but most secure should be the default."

Juxtaposed with this: "Already have memory integrity turned off as this 'feature' already hits gaming, I've used Windows without memory integrity for decades I think I'll be ok."

I must admit I'm inclined to agree with Microsoft's decision here — providing that when it happens, Windows 11 is clear on informing the user, so they can reverse the change if they aren't happy with it.

I think part of what Microsoft is doing here is keeping one eye on the future in terms of the difference AI might make to the security of Windows 11 PCs.

I keep hearing about how AI is already driving new threats and exploits, and so the kernel defenses that are being brought into play here may not have been quite as necessary in the past — as the last Reddit post I highlighted indicates — but they may be very much needed before too long. AI is accelerating the development of new threats considerably, and making it easier for anyone to becoming a peddler of malware, so Microsoft likely feels the pressure to act.

• 22% expect their policy to offer full coverage, 10% expect it to fall short
• Data breaches and reputational damage are major concerns
• Companies should look at finances before considering operational recovery readiness

New research from Cohesity has revealed that many UK businesses could be significantly overestimating the protection they get from cyber insurance policies, with just one in five (22%) British CEOs believing their policy would cover both the additional costs and lost revenue that an attack could lead to.

A third expect it would cover the additional costs only, another third believe their policy is only sufficient for lost revenue, and a further one in 10 did not expect it to cover either of the two categories.

The report's conclusion is that cyber insurance in its current state for many UK businesses is only enough to transfer some of the financial risk – but not enough to restore systems, data or operations.

Cyber insurance policies don't provide enough cover

According to the study of 100 CEOs from large enterprises, businesses expect a cyberattack to reduce their revenue by an average of around 15%, but many businesses lack a detailed understanding of how much an attack could actually end up costing them. As many as one in five (21%) haven't even conducted business impact modelling.

Among CEOs' biggest fears are data breaches (49%), brand and reputational damage (38%), high recovery costs (36%), revenue loss (34%) and production downtime (30%). They're all either financial concerns or incidents that could lead to financial loss, and yet it's clear that policies are unlikely to offer enough cover.

With many totally unaware of the potential impacts and the extent of their policy's cover, Cohesity urges businesses to start off with calculating financial exposure and understanding what their policy covers.

After that, they can go on to prove that critical systems can actually be recovered, because without an insurance payout, this would likely not be possible.

"Organisations must be able to identify the systems and data needed to keep the business operating, assigning clear responsibility for recovery decisions and regularly testing whether critical services can be restored securely," UK&I VP Fraser Hutchison explained.

• Baylor Genetics confirmed a June cyberattack affecting 2.8M patients and employees
• Stolen data includes medical test results, insurance info, and some SSNs/financial details
• Operations continued; no misuse seen yet, but no group has claimed responsibility

Baylor Genetics, a US-based clinical diagnostic laboratory, suffered a cyberattack in which it lost sensitive data on 2.8 million people - both patients and employees.

In a security update posted on its website earlier this week, the company said it spotted the intrusion in a “limited portion” of its IT environment on or around June 15. Subsequent investigation determined that both patients and employees have had their data stolen, including those who are not working at Baylor anymore.

For patients, crooks stole names, dates of birth, medical testing information, laboratory test results, and “potentially health insurance information, as well as Social Security number”. SSNs, Baylor Genetics stressed, were taken from a “very limited subset of patients”.

No attribution yet

Regardless, fraudsters who know the details about medical testing and lab results have more than enough information to launch highly sophisticated, personalized phishing attacks that can lead to ransomware infections, business email compromise, and more.

For certain current and former employees, the attackers nabbed Social Security numbers, government-issued identification numbers, and financial account information, ideal for wire fraud.

In the security update, the company did not discuss the identity of the attackers, or the number of affected individuals. However, in a separate report filed with the US Department of Health and Human Services, Baylor reported the number of victims as 2,810,878. It added that at the time of publication, there was no evidence of confirmed identity theft, fraud, or misuse of personal information stolen in the attack.

It also said the incident did not impact its everyday operations which continued as usual.

Usually, data theft incidents like this one are followed by public disclosure from the perpetrators, who name-and-shame their victims in an attempt to get them to pay a ransom demand. So far, no threat actors claimed responsibility for this incident.

• UK legislators propose “kill switch” laws to halt runaway AI, citing critical infrastructure risks
• Lord Clement‑Jones and MP Alex Sobel push amendments and new bills, backed by ControlAI advocacy group
• Similar efforts emerging in US

Sam Altman’s fear-based marketing for AI seems to have backfired, as now multiple legislators in the UK and elsewhere are calling for a “kill switch” law to be introduced.

According to the BBC, Liberal Democrats’ Lord Tim Clement-Jones proposed an amendment to the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill which would see the UK create a “vital safety net” to provide a “democratically accountable means to ‘halt a runaway system before it can compromise our critical national infrastructure’.” The capability would only be used as a last resort, Clement-Jones stressed.

The bill is currently being worked through in the UK Parliament, the BBC said.

Is there reason to worry?

But that’s not the only effort in the UK to put some reigns on AI. Apparently, Labour MP Alex Sobel plans to introduce an AI Security Bill later this month which, according to the BBC, would “effectively halt the development of superintelligent AI” and make the UK the first G7 country to do so.

The bill is supported by a campaign group called ControlAI, a UK-based nonprofit and advocacy organization focused on the risks posed by advanced AI. Its founder and CEO is Andrea Miotti, who previously worked at the AI safety company called Conjecture. Across the pond, US legislators are currently considering an AI Kill Switch Act as well, but the bill is still in very early stages of development.

Ever since the first ChatGPT model that was introduced in 2021, a debate has been raging whether or not AI will be net positive, or net negative, for humanity. While some argue that the discovery rivals the steam machine and that it will transform our lives beyond our wildest dreams, others are fearful of losing jobs, a collapsing economy, and a dystopian future devoid of humanity and emotion.

Marketing campaigns for ChatGPT and, in some measure, Claude, are not helping, either. Both companies have built models focused on cybersecurity which were advertised as “too dangerous” for the general public and instead were only given to a handful of organizations. Despite partial skepticism, many are worried that these models might severely disrupt the security of banking, critical infrastructure, and communications.

Via BBC

• Acer has revealed two interesting new laptops at IFA 2026
• The Swift Blade 14 is a super-light notebook at just 799g, and it's the lightest mainstream laptop yet
• The Vero 16 is designed to be easily repaired, with a replaceable SSD, battery, USB ports — even the CPU can be upgraded

Acer has revealed a couple of smart new laptops over at IFA 2026, one of which is notable for its repair-friendly credentials and upgrade possibilities, while the other is remarkable because it's the lightest laptop we've seen to date.

That lightweight champ — which is Acer's Swift Blade 14 — requires a caveat, though, as technically there's a lighter notebook model which already exists. However, the Fujitsu LifeBook laptops out there are niche products targeted at the Japanese market (or other parts of Asia in some cases), so in terms of the global consumer market, the new Blade 14 takes the crown, weighing just 799 grams or 1.76lb (which isn't much more than the mentioned LifeBooks).

The Blade 14 has a chassis that's fashioned from a combination of carbon fiber and a magnesium-aluminum alloy, which Acer says means it's durable as well as incredibly light.

The premium trappings continue with a 14-inch OLED screen that has a 3K resolution (and a 16:10 aspect ratio).

The Swift Blade 14 is built around an Intel Core Series 3 CPU — Wildcat Lake models which are power-efficient and easier to keep cool in a super-trim laptop — backed with 12GB of RAM. So, the spec here is slightly pulled back, with that notable compromise of not going for 16GB of system memory to keep the price down.

As for that price, we don't have it yet, and we don't have a launch date either. However, even with a more affordable CPU and 12GB of RAM, I expect this super-slim machine will extract quite a toll on the wallet.

From lightweight hero to Vero

Also at IFA, Acer took the wraps off the new Vero 16, a notebook that majors in repairability and is backed by some substantial eco-friendly credentials.

As Acer makes clear, this is a 16-inch notebook that benefits from a "more serviceable design [that] makes key components easier to access, repair, and replace", with the aim of extending the usable life of the device. In short, avoiding obsolescence (rather than planning for it, as the accusations often run with some notebooks).

To that end, you're given tool-free access to the innards of the Vero 16, and the SSD is replaceable along with the battery. The RAM is soldered to the motherboard, so that can't be upgraded — the one fly in the ointment here — but the ports aren't, so they're removable. That means if a USB connector is broken, you can switch it out, and the hinge between the body and screen is designed so it can be replaced as well.

On top of that, the Vero 16 allows for the processor to be upgraded, as Notebookcheck.net points out, although it isn't clear how this works yet (likely via a motherboard swap, which would also allow for a RAM upgrade at the same time). This is very unusual for a laptop, and we're told upgrades will be good for at least two generations of CPU silicon.

Speaking of the CPU, the Vero 16 is built around Panther Lake, offering up to an Intel Core Ultra X9 388H chip with Arc B390 integrated graphics. When it comes to the display, there's the choice of a 3K OLED or a 2K OLED touchscreen.

In terms of its green-friendly nature, Acer says the Vero's aluminum chassis is made from a "blend of 50% post-industrial recycled aluminum and 50% low-carbon aluminum". The packaging is 100% recyclable, too.

We don't yet have a price for this laptop either, but hopefully we'll get more info on pricing, and the release dates, for both of these notebooks before long. I'm keen to see both models arrive later this year, and to learn the details of how upgrading the Vero's CPU will work.

Here in the US, we're dealing with a President who capriciously tears down historic buildings, paves over rose gardens, insults allies, and regularly renames map landmarks, locations, and even gulfs and lakes like he's picking out names for his often poorly used golf clubs. It would be entertaining if it weren't all so incomprehensible. The only thing that's tougher to swallow is when seemingly rational tech giants fall in line and rename these locations right along with him.

After US President Donald Trump renamed one of the five Great Lakes, Lake Ontario, to "Lake America" over an ongoing trade war (that he started) with Canada, Google rather quickly renamed the 193-mile-wide lake on Google Maps. For a time, Apple Maps appeared to be holding out, only to swap out the name on Tuesday.

As I derided the move, some reminded me that Apple and Google derive their map details and names from a centrally managed USGS, or US Geological Survey. In other words, if the President makes an executive order, the USGS falls into line and changes the map, and those who use it as a source apparently have no choice but to change it.

Maybe, though, I'd argue that Google, and especially Apple, which changed its CEO on Monday, had an opportunity to hold the line. On the other hand, look south and central on Apple Maps and Google Maps, and you'll quickly spot the "Gulf of America.' Trump changed that one from the Gulf of Mexico because, "'Merica!"

One map app stood alone

There is, however, a voice of reason in all this: the upstart online mapping service known as MapQuest. It not only refused to change its map, but also has been quite vocal and cheeky about it. In one X post, the mapping company said not only were they not renaming it (they similarly have not renamed the Gulf of Mexico), but they were letting users have some fun by applying their own silly name to the huge body of water that is literally split across its midsection by the border between the US and Canada.

MapQuest's defiance has paid dividends. It is, as I write this, the number one freely downloadable app in the App Store. I even downloaded it, a sort of return from me after abandoning MapQuest almost 20 years ago.

The long road from nowhere

Like Apple and Google Maps, MapQuest also gets its mapping data from the USGS, along with other data sources, but MapQuest General Manager Doug Berger told me via email, "We focused on maintaining a name that people are familiar with. Millions of people have shown us they agree across social media and by installing our app."

MapQuest's meteoric rise, though, isn't built on a history of, at least recently, market dominance. In fact, I'd argue that, until recently, many consumers had either never heard of it or hadn't used the platform in a very long time. Of course, it wasn't always that way.

Back in the 1990s, MapQuest was not one of many online mapping services; it was THE mapping choice. It was on virtually every top 50 website list, and most of those who've been online for a few decades remember printing out MapQuest routes for all of our trips. Before turn-by-turn navigation on your iPhone, there were pages and pages of turn-by-turn instructions from MapQuest. There was great comfort in sliding into your car for a long or even mid-range trip and knowing you had the MapQuest route on the seat beside you. Berger told me approximately 1 million customers a month still print their directions.

What happened to MapQuest? AOL bought them for over $1 billion in the late 1990s, and then Google Maps arrived in 2005. MapQuest seemed to have no answer for the Google Maps juggernaut, as the world shifted to screen-based routes on their iPhones and Androids.

MapQuest is now owned by a smaller company, System1, and its ambitions mostly seem to lie around being the outlier. It's an effective mapping tool, but with none of the buzz or ubiquity that Google, Apple, and Waze enjoy.

Not without this

Say what you will about Google and Apple making the lake name switch, but they remain world-class mapping platforms. MapQuest feels not exactly quaint, but a little odd.

Still, I bet I could get used to the clunkier interface, but I still can't stick with MapQuest because it's missing what I consider a critical feature: Transit directions. Google Maps has had them since 2007, while the later-arriving and initially terrible Apple Maps finally added them in 2015.

Working in New York City, I rely heavily on the subway to navigate the 13.4-mile-long city. Google Maps and Apple Maps have rich and detailed transit directions filled with options and other details, like which subway exits to use.

When I travel abroad, Google Maps and Apple Maps offer transit directions in virtually any city that has a rail system.

This is not the case with MapQuest

I gave MapQuest a simple test: get me from Penn Station to my midtown office (I also tried the route from my suburban home to my office). It shows walking, biking, and driving directions, but nothing about the subway (there's a 1 train or the N, W, R, or Q lines I could take).

A modern competitive map must cover rail and mass transit options, and MapQuest doesn't.

When I asked MapQuest's Berger about the missing feature, he acknowledged it but added, "To date, we've been focused on providing the best directions and navigation experience. We've heard people loud and clear that they want Transit to be added." There is, Berger admitted, no timeline for adding a transit feature.

I hate that we have someone willy-nilly renaming global landmarks because he thinks he can, and I was thrilled to see MapQuest taking a stand, but I really need transit directions in my map app, and without them, MapQuest still isn't my navigation solution.

• Forescout researchers showed AI can port RCE exploits to PLCs, achieving DoS and shellcode execution
• Effort required heavy researcher input and $500+ in API usage, making attacks impractical for criminals
• Nation‑state actors remain a concern, as seen in Sandworm’s 2025 attack on Poland’s power grid

If you are worried cybercriminals will use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automate the discovery and exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities in Operational Technology (OT) such as Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) you can sleep peacefully, at least for a little longer.

Recently, security researchers from Forescout set off on a simple mission - to understand if crooks can use AI to target the ever-increasing population of exposed industrial devices. The short answer is “yes, but it’s not yet worth the trouble”.

In their mission, they launched an experiment - to port a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability from one PLC to another. These devices were built on closed-source software and thus were not that easy to manipulate, yet the experiment was a success.

Yes, but...

Not only did they manage to trigger a Denial of Service (DoS) state that crashed the device but ended up with a working RCE capable of executing attacker-supplied ARM shellcode.

It is indeed a worrying development, but one that comes with a huge “but”:

“It required significant researcher input. The final RCE development stage consumed more than $500 in API usage. An attempt to extend the exploit beyond the initial RCE ultimately bricked the PLC,” the researchers said in the report.

“These limitations taught us valuable lessons about AI-assisted exploitation in OT. It can be done, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. For now, the difficulty, cost, and specialist expertise required are likely to make this kind of attack less attractive than easier alternatives.”

In other words, cybercriminals still have easier avenues to explore, and as long as that is the case, OT is relatively safe. What the report, unfortunately, does not discuss, is nation-state attackers with significant resources. For such attackers, industrial devices are a prime target, and spending $500+ in API usage is a drop in a bucket. We’ve already seen it back in 2025 when Sandworm struck Poland’s electricity suppliers.

• Hackers exploited Lenovo’s flawed email verification to hijack ~5,000 Dropbox accounts
• Attackers created Lenovo IDs with victims’ emails, bypassing login; 2FA absence worsened impact
• Dropbox ended Lenovo ID logins, expired sessions, and urged password changes plus 2FA setup

Around 5,000 Dropbox user accounts were compromised when hackers found a vulnerability in the Lenovo ID verification process. What does a Lenovo flaw have to do with people’s Dropbox accounts, you might ask? Here is what happened:

Earlier this week, Dropbox started notifying affected individuals about the incident. In the data breach notification email, the company explains:

“Dropbox partners with Lenovo as an identity provider so that users can log in to their Dropbox accounts using verified Lenovo IDs. While you may not have an existing Lenovo ID, our investigation determined that an issue with Lenovo’s email verification process allowed an unauthorized party to register a Lenovo ID using your email address and then use that Lenovo ID to log into the Dropbox account associated with that email address.”

Fixing the flaw

In other words, all criminals needed to have to pull this off was people’s email addresses. Using that information, they created Lenovo IDs and simply waltzed right into Dropbox accounts.

The attack took place between August 4 and 21, the company further said, adding that most of the accounts that were accessed did not have 2FA enabled. In around a third of them, there is evidence stored documents were either viewed or downloaded.

The vulnerability has since been addressed, and further steps taken to protect Dropbox users’ privacy. The company said it “promptly expired all sessions logged in through Lenovo IDs,” and terminated all links between Lenovo and Dropbox accounts. Now, it made it mandatory to submit a password when logging in through a Lenovo ID.

“No one can access your Dropbox account via a Lenovo ID without first entering your Dropbox password,” it said. Still, it urged users to change their passwords, enable two-step verification, and change the password for their email accounts.

“Every single one of the compromised accounts lacked multi-factor authentication. In 2026, for cloud storage accounts holding data, that’s an indefensible gap and it’s one that users could have closed themselves regardless of what Lenovo or Dropbox did or didn’t do with their legacy integration," said Muhammad Yahya Patel, vCISO and cybersecurity advisor for EMEA at Huntress.

"The combination of an unreviewed third-party authentication pathway and accounts without MFA is essentially an open invitation. The practical lesson is straightforward and applies well beyond this specific incident. Every organisation and every individual should periodically audit what third-party services have authentication access to their accounts. OAuth grants, SSO connections, and third-party login integrations accumulate silently and rarely get removed when the relationship that created them ends.”

Via Cybernews

At IFA 2026, Acer announced its upcoming Small Form Factor (SFF) PC, built on Nvidia’s new RTX Spark chip, and from what Acer (and Nvidia) has shown, I should be buzzing with excitement.

After all, it ticks a lot of boxes for me; it’s compact, beautifully designed, and thanks to the RTX Spark, it should also be very, very powerful. And yet, much like the recent announcement of the latest Mac mini with Apple’s new M6 chip, I just don’t feel excited at all.

Despite sharing the same ‘RTX’ branding as Nvidia’s gaming GPUs, it’s clear that early devices using the RTX Spark will be of little interest to consumers like you and me, and are instead aimed at people who need to run heavy-duty local AI tasks.

Even though Acer states that RTX Spark devices are “designed for creators, AI developers and gamers,” the brief information provided focuses solely on the AI capabilities, with Acer saying that its RTX Spark device “is built to deliver up to 1 petaflop of AI performance and up to 128 GB of high-speed unified memory, delivering a combination of compute and data privacy.”

Terms like “1 petaflop of AI performance” are a sure-fire way to make any interest I might have in a device evaporate faster than PC gamer’s tears on a red-hot AI data center. It certainly doesn’t make me feel like the product is aimed at me, despite the RTX branding, brief mention of gamers, and stylish design.

I’ve written a lot in the past about my love of small form factor PCs, mainly when it comes to gaming, as these compact computers can be great alternatives to games consoles, as they can sit in your lounge and plug into your TV without looking out of place. RTX Spark devices, such as Acer’s, could potentially combine Nvidia’s gaming technology with compact designs, something I’ve always wanted. So why am I just not excited?

AI above everything else

There's a simple reason: AI. Now, this isn’t about my general distaste of generative AI, or the fact that things like Google’s AI Overviews are taking written content from websites, such as this one, and featuring them elsewhere without compensation — it’s because from what I’ve seen of RTX Spark hardware so far seems to be lazer-focused on local AI capabilities, which is something that simply doesn’t appeal to mainstream users.

If these were products solely aimed at AI developers, I wouldn’t mind, but it feels like RTX Spark has been teased by Nvidia to be something that consumers, especially gamers, would also be interested in. Hopefully as we get closer to the release of the first batch of RTX Spark devices, we’ll be given some non-AI reasons to be excited.

At the moment, though, I feel the same way about RTX Spark PCs as I do with Apple’s new-announced M6 Mac mini.

Mini heartbreak

Recent Mac minis have been some of my absolute favorite products, and up until a few weeks ago, if anyone was looking for an affordable desktop PC, I would almost always just tell them to buy a Mac mini. They were powerful, well-built, had an impressively small form factor which allowed you to install them almost anywhere, and launching at $599 / £599 / AU$999, you’d be hard pushed to find a better value small form factor PC.

In fact, I awarded a very rare five stars in my Mac mini (M4, 2024) review. So, I should be over the moon with the new model, especially as it’ll be the first device to pack Apple’s M6 chip — quite an achievement for the little PC that could.

And yet, I feel a bit deflated. The latest Mac mini will come with a higher price tag, something that feels all to familiar at the moment, and now starts at $899 / £899 / AU$1,449, a considerable jump up from what the previous model launched at, and instantly makes the Mac mini less of an easy recommendation.

One of the reasons why it’s been hard to get hold of a Mac mini recently is because a lot of people are bulk buying the tiny PCs to run OpenClaw and other local AI tools on them. Apple appears to be leaning into this popularity (I can’t blame them for that, to be honest), with a big focus of the Mac mini, and the M6 chip, being improvements to AI performance (Apple claims four times the AI performance of the previous model).

That’s all well and good, I guess, but that AI focus, along with the price increase, means one of my favorite bits of hardware doesn’t feel like it’s aimed at me any more. I’ll be less likely to recommend it to people as even if it turns out that it’s a great bit of gear, the new price means it won’t be for everyone. And I personally don’t know anyone who is looking for a Mac mini to do heavy AI tasks with it.

It's the same with RTX Spark devices. We’ve not had price announcements, but Acer’s RTX Spark PC not only features cutting-edge Nvidia hardware, but “up to 128 GB of high-speed unified memory.” There’s little doubt that it’ll be very expensive.

So, it leaves me wondering who the RTX Spark PCs and new Mac mini are really for. The Mac mini had a real chance to become a mainstream hit, but its higher price will put a stop to that (the cheaper MacBook Neo now has a better chance), and I can’t imagine anyone except developers who need to run local AI models being interested in RTX Spark, despite the stylish designs.

Bascially, I’d like the likes of Nvidia and Apple to remember us consumers who don’t have a huge amount of cash, have little interest in AI, and are feeling increasingly left behind.

• Microsoft warns Chinese group Silver Fox spoofed download sites for major tech brands
• Victims install backdoored software enabling persistence, disabling Defender/updates, and payload delivery
• Targets span healthcare, manufacturing, gaming, government; Microsoft urges tamper protection and behavior‑based detection

Cybercriminals are spoofing some of the world’s most popular technology and software companies in an attempt to infect their targets with dangerous backdoors. This is according to security researchers from Microsoft, who warned about the ongoing campaign in an in-depth report published earlier this week.

Microsoft said it discovered an ongoing campaign in which Chinese hackers (presumably Silver Fox, AKA Yinhu) were creating fraudulent download pages for some of the world’s most popular tech and software companies, including Razer, Kaspersky, Microsoft, NetEase, Baidu NetDisk, oCam ScreenRecorder, SteelSeries, Calibre, MindMaster, and many others.

Victim organizations looking to download software built by these companies end up downloading a weaponized version that works primarily as a backdoor. This implant allows the attackers a foothold from which they can maintain access and send/receive messages.

How to defend against Silver Fox

Once installed, the backdoor creates scheduled tasks for persistence, injects itself into legitimate processes, and weakens Microsoft Defender and Windows Update by creating a large exclusion folder and disabling a number of update-related services.

It also deletes backups, and allows the attackers to deploy further payloads.

Victims are primarily Chinese organizations, although the attackers do seem to be casting a rather wide net, Microsoft suggests. The majority of victims were found in medical devices and healthcare, manufacturing, gaming, technology, logistics, government, and higher education.

Microsoft says its Defender product “detected and disrupted” the activity across multiple stages of the attack, “including automated containment through attack disruption.”

Still, to defend against Silver Fox’s latest shenanigans, Microsoft advises organizations enforce tamper Protection which blocks exclusion and registry writes to Microsoft Defender even when the payload runs as SYSTEM.

It also suggests defenders hunt for “behavior, not file names”, set up alerts for tamper sequences, and treat look-alike download archives as malicious in web and mail flow. The full list of Indicators of Compromise (IoC) can be found on this link, as well.

• Crowdstrike and law enforcement disrupted Sality, a peer‑to‑peer botnet active since 2003
• Botnet spread malware and clipboard hijacker EggJagger, stealing $150K in cryptocurrency
• Operation sinkholed endpoints and removed payload URLs, coordinated with DOJ, FBI, Europol, and others

Security experts Crowdstrike, together with a handful of national and international law enforcement agencies, finally managed to disrupt Sality, a peer-to-peer botnet that operated unabated for more than two decades.

Sality first emerged in 2003. Unlike classic botnets which receive instructions and report back to a single, central entity, this botnet’s endpoints (some 15,000 of them) communicated among themselves, which made it more difficult to track and destroy.

Throughout its long history, Sality’s key feature was to deploy additional payloads to infected machines. The endpoints were being poisoned with a wide variety of different malware that facilitated credential theft, spam, proxy services, and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. However, between 2018 and today, Sality was primarily used to deploy EggJagger, a clipboard hijacking tool seen in cryptocurrency theft.

Sinkholing the botnet

Cryptocurrency wallet addresses are a long string of random characters, which are almost impossible, and definitely impractical, to remember by heart. Instead, when users want to send their money, they simply copy and paste the recipient’s wallet address into their own. EggJagger monitors this behavior, and when it spots something resembling a wallet address being copied, it replaces the string in the clipboard. Thus, when the victim hits “paste”, they end up adding the attacker’s wallet address instead.

According to Crowdstrike, from this malware alone, Sality’s operators raked in more than $150,000.

The researchers disrupted the botnet by sinkholing the endpoints. They first added a few of their own devices into the botnet and whenever others tried to communicate with them, the researchers would purge their peers list, essentially blinding them.

Crowdstrike also coordinated with international law enforcement to take down the URLs that were hosting the botnet’s payloads. “Disrupting Sality’s ability to download these files ensures that bots still carrying active URL packs cannot retrieve new payloads during the transition period,” they explained.

The operation was carried out in partnership with the US Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), and the Shadowserver Foundation, with support from Europol, Eurojust, and law enforcement agencies in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania.

“We also acknowledge additional unnamed partners whose contributions were essential to the success of this operation,” Crowdstrike concluded.

Via The Register

• CD Projekt Red's joint CEO Michal Nowakowski has confidence in game consoles coping with the RAM crisis
• Nowakowski is convinced consoles will 'weather the storm', as analysts expect shortages to continue through 2027
• Sony isn't just facing the RAM crisis, but also a major backlash over its decision to end physical game discs

The RAM crisis is continuing to cause havoc with the hardware market, affecting component prices, PC makers, and potentially delaying next-gen console launches. However, it's not so bleak as you might think, at least in the eyes of CD Projekt Red's boss.

As reported by IGN, CD Projekt Red's (CDPR) joint CEO Michal Nowakowski was interviewed by The Game Business and voiced his confidence that next-gen consoles will survive the RAM crisis despite the prospect of high pricing.

This comes amid concerns and projections from industry insiders and analysts that RAM shortages are going to get worse in 2027 and beyond. The big three memory chip makers — Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron — are expected to increase combined capital spending to nearly 340% from 2024 to 2027.

It doesn't look like RAM shortages and high hardware prices will die down anytime soon, but this doesn't faze Nowakowski, at least when it comes to ensuring CDPR delivers the best possible content.

"Consoles are still necessary to broaden the audience on the casual or semi-casual level. It's important to have easy to plug in and enjoy gaming," Nowakowski says.

"I'm a big believer that they're [consoles] going to weather the storm. Pricing is the objective challenge. And the rumors... we hear them about the next-gen being delayed. I don't know if they're true."

RAM isn't the only worry for Sony

Besides the RAM crisis pushing up prices and causing potential console launch delays, Sony in particular may have an uphill battle ahead. Its recent decision to end production of physical game discs for PlayStation consoles, starting in January 2028, already has gamers in the ecosystem protesting and planning alternatives to escape the impending doom of discs.

An all-digital future means any form of game ownership will cease to exist, as digital content can theoretically be taken away from gamers at any time, and that has led to a loud (and justified, I think) reaction from the console community.

The Game Business didn't question Nowakowski directly about physical game ownership, but did probe further on the effect that delayed next-gen consoles might have, with Nowakowski making CDPR's stance very clear.

"If the next-gen gets delayed, it could be the case that some ideas [for games] are put on a shelf for the future. We'd have to adjust. We're not worried on the commercial side. Consoles are here to stay."

It's fair to say that Nowakowski's last statement is a realistic assessment. Even given Sony's dismissal of physical game discs, this isn't going to lead to a complete collapse in the popularity of consoles.

However, Sony may not make life easy for itself and publishers such as CDPR, as from 2028, when the discs are dumped with the PlayStation ecosystem, a hit to games sales is far from impossible — especially if the ongoing backlash from gamers is anything to go by.

• Aesto Health reported a December 2025 cyberattack breaching AWS infrastructure, affecting 9.5M patients
• Stolen data includes PII, SSNs, medical histories, billing, and insurance information across 20+ clients
• No dark web leaks confirmed; credit monitoring offered, marking 2nd‑largest healthcare breach of 2026

American healthcare technology company Aesto Health suffered the “second-largest confirmed healthcare data breach” of the year so far, having lost data on more than 9.5 million patients.

In mid-December last year, the company suffered a cyberattack. Now, more than half a year later, it reported the incident to the HHS’ Office for Civil Rights, detailing what was lost, from whom, and what the extent of the incident is.

Aesto Health is an Alabama-based healthcare technology business, whose core service is helping other healthcare firms manage medical data, change electronic health record systems, and similar. As per its announcement, the attack affected parts of its Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure, which unidentified threat actors managed to access between December 2 and December 18.

Losing personally identifiable information

According to a report on HIPAA Journal, the August attack affected more than two dozen of its clients, including Village Practice Management, Everside Health, Together Women’s Health Medical Group, and many others.

In the attack, the company lost personally identifiable information (PII) of its’ clients’ patients, including full names, Social Security numbers (SSN), partial dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, state identification numbers, financial account numbers, taxpayer identification numbers, health records, medical histories, claims/billing information, and health insurance information.

This is more than enough information for cybercriminals to launch highly sophisticated phishing and vishing attacks, which can result in disruptive ransomware and millions of dollars in damages. Luckily, there is still no evidence the data leaked on the dark web, or that it was already used by other criminals.

Aesto Health is now offering credit monitoring and identity theft protection services to everyone affected by the breach.

This is now the second-largest healthcare data breach of the year so far, HIPAA Journal confirmed, the largest one being the hit on DentaQuest that exposed 15 million records.

Via HIPAA Journal

• Dell has unveiled a new 14-inch laptop at IFA 2026
• The Dell 14S is aimed at students and comes in vibrant colors like the MacBook Neo
• Dell has yet to reveal the price tag, which is a crucial missing piece of info with a wallet-friendly laptop like this

Dell has revealed a new 14-inch laptop over at IFA 2026 — and it's clear that this is a Windows 11 take on Apple's MacBook Neo formula.

The Dell 14S is a smart-looking, compact laptop which is aimed at students, and it comes in a selection of vibrant colors. That includes a rather striking green (velvet green as it's dubbed), as well as a light pink (dusty rose), beige (linen) and light blue (washed denim).

It'll be no great surprise to learn that the 14S is powered by Intel's Core Series 3 (Wildcat Lake) CPUs, which are performant but affordable chips that do a good job on the power-efficiency front.

RAM and storage start at 8GB and 256GB, but a higher-tier model offers 16GB and a 512GB or 1TB SSD.

The pitch is essentially a lesser version of Dell's XPS 13 for 2026, so you don't get quite the same thinness or lightweight nature (though the 14S is still 13.5mm thin and 1.15kg, so pretty trim).

The screen on the Dell 14S isn't touch-enabled either — it's a more basic 1920 x 1200 resolution display with a 60Hz refresh rate and 300 nits of brightness (with the XPS 13 you get 120Hz VRR and 500 nits). There is a fancier screen, mind, on the upper-tier model of the Dell 14S, which sharpens the resolution to 2880 x 1800 and gives you 120Hz.

How much is the Dell 14S? Well, that's really the crucial question when it comes to a MacBook Neo rival like this, and the answer is: we don't know because Dell isn't saying yet.

Analysis: a growing no-price-at-launch trend

It makes me a bit nervous that no official price is forthcoming with this IFA unveiling, but we have got a hint behind the scenes of how much the Dell 14S might cost. According to The Verge, Dell reps are saying that this laptop will be "close" to the starting price of the XPS 13 – which is $700 in the US – but "slightly more accessible", which makes sense given the student target market, of course.

Indeed, based on the spec downgrades, I would hope it's cheaper, but the use of the word 'slightly' suggests that there's not going to be much difference. Although to be fair to Dell, the XPS 13 is level with the MacBook Neo's price tag (since Apple hiked the price from the launch MSRP) over in the US. That said, in other regions, the XPS 13 can be a good bit pricier than the Neo – in the UK currently it's 10% more, and it has been a heftier premium than that in the past. We'll likely see a similar scenario with the Dell 14S.

What compounds this concern is the RAM crisis, which is really kicking up a gear, and is expected to make hardware more expensive as 2026 continues (and matters are likely to worsen in 2027). Is Dell keeping quiet on the MSRP of the 14S right now because it's expecting further price pressures to exert themselves by the time it comes to this laptop's launch? I don't think we can rule that out.

Maybe I'm overthinking this, granted, and I like the look of the Dell 14S and the general pitch of this notebook. It just makes me a touch suspicious when we have a product that's built around being wallet-friendly, yet we don't get an MSRP, which, for this category of laptop, is an absolutely key consideration.

Hopefully my fears will prove unfounded, and it's worth noting that Dell isn't alone at being shy about revealing prices, with manufacturers avoiding pinning a recommended price on their offerings at launch being something of a trend of late (one that was noticeable at Computex). This is a symptom of the RAM crisis, of course, and component inflation on various fronts, all of which is predicted to get more severe as this year rolls into next.

• McKesson confirmed ShinyHunters breached its Snowflake and Salesforce, stealing 284M patient records
• Data includes names, contact info, SSNs, and health details; ransom demand was $55.2M
• Boston Scientific removed attackers but faces CRM device activation issues; attribution not confirmed

Last week, two major healthcare organizations suffered highly disruptive cyberattacks: Boston Scientific, and McKesson. We now have more details about both those attacks, and it seems at least one is the work of the infamous ShinyHunters extortion group.

McKesson confirmed having been struck by ShinyHunters, just a few days after the threat actor claimed responsibility. The group told The Register they broke into the company’s Snowflake and Salesforce instances and stole “millions of patients’ data”.

The company later issued a statement, saying the stolen data belonged to its Oncology & Multispecialty and Medical-Surgical business units. A spokesperson told The Register multiple employees were targeted with a vishing attack.

Boston Scientific works on restoring systems

The group told the publication it stole more than 284 million records of patient data and demanded $55.2 million from the victims. They are saying the stolen batch includes patient tames, postal and email addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers (SSN), and details regarding their health condition. Whether the claims are true, and to what extent, remains to be seen after the investigation.

Boston Scientific, on the other hand, said it successfully removed the attackers from its infrastructure, but added that the investigation into the attack remains ongoing. It also said that new Cardiac Rhythm Management (CRM) devices, implanted after August 25, cannot be activated, and the data they generate will not automatically be transmitted to remote patient management systems.

“Newly implanted ICMs (insertable cardiac monitors) must be activated using the Boston Scientific Clinic Assistant app to enable the ICM to properly record episodes,” it explained. “New ICMs are unable to pair to the patient remote monitoring mobile phone, therefore available episode data recorded by the ICM will NOT be transmitted to the remote monitoring system until the ICM can be paired to the patient mobile app. Episodes will continue to be recorded by the ICM and can be transmitted to the remote monitoring system via an in-person interrogation with the Clinic Assistant app by selecting the “Interrogate” button.”

Boston Scientific is yet to name ShinyHunters as the perpetrators, and the group has not yet publicly claimed responsibility for the attack.

Via The Register

• Nvidia's latest graphics driver has a frustrating bug
• Version 616.56 is causing distracting screen flickers and color corruption
• A patch is coming, and there are potential workarounds — but gamers are getting fed up with the prevalence of bugs in GeForce drivers

Nvidia's latest graphics driver is causing chaos for some GeForce GPU owners in the form of a glitch that makes the screen flicker.

Wccftech spotted the bug with Nvidia's Game Ready Driver version 616.56, and as flagged by Renan Maniero on X, Team Green has said it's testing a fix for the issue (as revealed on the GeForce forums).

The screen is reportedly flickering white or black and exhibiting other brief flashes of color corruption, and this is happening in certain games (The Last of Us and Minecraft are mentioned, among others) or on the Windows desktop. It's also occurring in web browser sessions and while playing YouTube videos, based on Reddit reports — of which there are plenty.

There's no shortage of gamers losing their temper with Nvidia, too, and blasting Team Green for the quality of its graphics drivers. Many are venting with an observation that GeForce drivers just haven't been the same since the launch of the RTX 5000 series.

For example, this Redditor says: "It's been particularly bad since Blackwell [RTX 5000] release. Just on Blackwell alone, between the whole DisplayPort 2.1 not working with HDR, screen flickering, and black screens on the initial release, it's been a complete mess."

Another gamer complains: "It is pretty shocking seeing this from a trillionaire company on a stable build. Nothing about this driver is stable."

Yet another Redditor grumbles: "It's crazy how things are now. You used to be able to update each time or be one driver behind at worst. Now I'm half a year outdated and thinking I'll just leave it."

Analysis: more drivers, more problems? There are possible workarounds though

This seems like quite a widespread issue and one that affects modern Nvidia graphics cards all the way back to RTX 2000 models.

If you're getting frustrated by this bug — random screen flickering gets pretty old, pretty fast, if it's happening regularly — Maniero also shared an apparent potential workaround on X that you can try while waiting for the official fix.

Seemingly, this is a bug that mostly affects monitors in 8-bit mode, and if you switch to 10-bit color (assuming your display supports this), the problem may disappear. Maniero also suggests that you try turning on Windows Auto Color Management (ACM).

Other folks on Reddit have shared various possible remedies, including switching from DisplayPort to an HDMI connector instead, and disabling Multi-Plane Overlay (MPO) in Windows 11, as one Redditor suggested. Nvidia provides a Registry file for turning off MPO (and enabling it again), but as ever with anything in this area of Windows, proceed at your own risk. (Although this method should be much safer than trying to edit the Registry directly yourself).

Your other choice is simply to roll back driver 616.56 to an earlier version, and there's no shortage of gamers who've done exactly that and report that the problem vanishes.

Hopefully Nvidia's official flicker-begone patch will be coming soon enough in the form of a hotfix, because this is an unduly annoying gremlin in the GeForce works that needs to be sorted out promptly.

• Sygnia reports China‑linked Fire Ant expanding beyond virtualization to routers, TACACS, and Linux hosts
• Compromised routers act as operational platforms
• Campaign aims at “target behind the target,” leveraging trust relationships for broader espionage reach

Fire Ant, a China-nexus cyberespionage group, is no longer targeting just virtualization platforms, it’s also going for routers, authentication systems, and Linux management hosts. This is according to cybersecurity researchers Sygnia, who recently saw the group target Cisco IOS XR Routers.

Once they compromise a router, they don’t just use it to move around the network, the researchers explained. Instead, they turn them into full-blown operational platforms, collecting traffic, establishing connections, manipulating command output, and even suppressing logging so that they fly under the defenders’ radars.

For authentication systems, Fire Ant was seen taking aim at TACACS servers. Admins use them to authenticate when accessing network hardware, and crooks use them to harvest valuable credentials and weaken the reliability of audit logs, as well. Finally, Sygnia says Fire Ant also targets Linux management hosts. The researchers saw multiple persistent implants and backdoors, including a custom SSH backdoor and a piece of malware spoofing legitimate software.

Target behind the target

The goal of the campaign seems to be to establish a foothold that allows crooks to reach other environments. Sygnia describes it as a “target behind the target” scenario:

“This reinforces the “target behind the target” concept introduced earlier in this report. Fire Ant’s interest in the compromised organization should be understood not only as an attempt to compromise a single environment, but as an effort to control infrastructure that may enable visibility, collection, and potential access beyond the immediate victim. The strategic value lies in the trust relationships the organization maintains with connected environments,” Sygnia explained.

Very little is known about Fire Ant, besides the fact that it was first observed in 2025. Some researchers claim it has significant overlaps with a threat actor tracked as UNC3886, a Chinese espionage group previously observed by Google. However, there are also significant differences which make attribution inconclusive.

Via BleepingComputer