NCC Group's July threat advisory reports a 22% month-over-month rise in ransomware activity, with 894 victim organization listings recorded across industrial, consumer services, technology, critical infrastructure, finance and healthcare sectors. The Gentlemen and Quilin topped the list of attributed groups, while the US accounted for 41% of incidents; notably, the month also saw the first fully agentic AI-driven ransomware attack chain and a breach at Ernst & Young claimed by ShinyHunters.
Researchers have devised a method to operate two separate genetic codes at once without needing to re-engineer an organism's entire genome to accommodate the change. The approach was tested outside living cells, so it avoids the laborious process of altering every gene, as previous efforts required when adding new amino acids to bacterial proteins.
Researchers demonstrated a new Rowhammer variant called GPUThor that defeats NVIDIA's ECC memory protections on Ampere-class workstation GPUs, including the RTX A4000, A4500, A5000, and A6000. By using a non-uniform hammering pattern tuned to avoid triggering GDDR6's Target Row Refresh defenses, the attack generates far more bit flips than earlier concepts like GPUHammer, enabling denial-of-service conditions and root-level privilege escalation.
Ring is switching its default video encryption to a new scheme called TAKE (Throw Away the Key Encryption), which temporarily decrypts footage in the cloud to power AI features like Smart Alerts before deleting the keys within 24 hours. The standard, built on the IETF's Messaging Layer Security protocol, will roll out globally starting in September, though users can still opt for full end-to-end encryption instead.
In a lengthy essay on Gates Notes, Bill Gates outlined ideas to cushion AI's disruption of the labor market, including taxing companies that replace workers with automation and formally designating certain jobs as off-limits to AI. He also voiced qualified support for the 'Pacing The Frontier' open letter calling for a slowdown in AI development, while doubting such restraint could hold long-term.
CISA disclosed that hackers breached more than 100 internet-exposed water and wastewater systems across the U.S. during July, expanding the known scope of an ongoing campaign already reported in Michigan, Minnesota and other states. The attackers primarily targeted programmable logic controllers from vendors like Rockwell, Schneider Electric and Siemens, in some cases disabling shutdown alarms and safety processes without alerting operators.
A technical writeup walks through the logic behind PageRank, the algorithm Sergey Brin and Larry Page built at Stanford in the 1990s to rank web pages by the links pointing to them rather than just keyword matches. The piece argues the core idea is simple enough that a curious person could reconstruct it themselves, and it includes a short Python implementation showing how reputation flows between pages using a damping factor.
A new beta of iOS 27 quietly adds an 'Apple Intelligence Report' toggle inside the Home app for Apple TV and HomePod devices, according to a post from Apple Home Authority on X. The option only appears when the TV or speaker is running the paired tvOS 27 or HomePod 27 beta, suggesting Apple is laying groundwork for AI features on these products rather than just iPhones. Apple notably left tvOS and HomePod out of its WWDC messaging about a unified Siri experience, fueling speculation about unreleased hardware.
A Farm Action report examines Taylor Farms, the little-known produce supplier linked by the FDA to a 2026 Cyclospora outbreak that has sickened thousands and killed at least two people. The outbreak was traced to shredded iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell, but the report shows Taylor Farms' products appear widely across grocery stores, restaurants, schools, and hospitals, often under different brand names.
Qisutu, a self-hosted, open-source help desk and ticketing platform built with Perl/CGI, MariaDB/MySQL and Template Toolkit, has reached version 1.0.2, marking its first stable, production-ready release. The software includes an agent and customer portal, email handling, directory login, automation, a knowledge base, CMDB, reporting and a REST API, and ships with eleven complete interface languages including English, German, French and Spanish. Installation is done via a shell script that sets up a dedicated system user and lets administrators pick their interface language during setup.
Samsung has started pushing a software update that resolves the red discoloration issue affecting some Galaxy S26 Ultra displays, according to a notice posted on the Samsung Members app. The fix appears bundled with the August 2026 security update rolling out first in South Korea, and unlike the initial workaround, users won't need to visit a service center to get it.
Nintendo will raise the price of its base 256GB Switch 2 console from $449.99 to $499.99 beginning next Tuesday, September 1st. The company had previously announced the increase, and it also recently unveiled two game bundles priced above $500 that include a slight discount.
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