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Google discovered a new scam—and also fell victim to it

In June, Google said it unearthed a campaign that was mass-compromising accounts belonging to customers of Salesforce. The means: an attacker pretending to be someone in the customer's IT department feigning some sort of problem that required immediate access to the account. Two months later, Google has disclosed that it, too, was a victim. The series of hacks are being carried out by financially motivated threat actors out to steal data in hopes of selling it back to the targets at sky-high pr

California jury rules Meta violated privacy law in case involving period-tracking app

A California jury ruled against Meta in a privacy-related lawsuit involving the alleged collection of sensitive data from Flo, a period-tracking app. The jury ruled that the plaintiffs proved that Meta violated the California Invasion of Privacy Act, according to a verdict form filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for Northern District of California. The ruling stems from a class-action lawsuit dating back to 2021 against the health-tech company Flo Health and other businesses like Meta, Go

A generic non-invasive neuromotor interface for human-computer interaction

Hardware sEMG-RD The sEMG devices consisted of two primary subcomponents: a digital compute capsule and an analogue wristband (Extended Data Fig. 1). The digital compute capsule comprised the battery, antenna for Bluetooth communication and a printed circuit board that contained a microcontroller, an analogue-to-digital converter and an inertial measurement unit. The analogue wristband comprised discrete links that each housed a multilayer rigid printed circuit board that contained the low-noi

Bouygues Telecom confirms data breach impacting 6.4 million customers

Bouygues Telecom warns it suffered a data breach after the personal information of 6.4 million customers was exposed in a cyberattack. The company is one of the largest telecommunication service providers in France, offering mobile, internet, and IPTV services. Bouygues Telecom has 14.5 million mobile subscribers, 9,000 employees, and an annual revenue of €56.8 billion ($66B). Bouygues Telecom confirmed in a FAQ and a press statement that the attack occurred last Sunday, August 4, 2025. Altho

AI Ethics is being narrowed on purpose, like privacy was

A few days ago, OpenAI released an open-source language model for the first time in a very long time. It had been promised for a while, but the deadline kept being pushed for “safety” concerns. In fact, they’ve put quite a bit of time and effort into discussing safety, because, ostensibly, safety and ethics is at the top of people’s minds. So, the public is worried about AI ethics, and OpenAI is putting efforts into making sure the AI is ethical. Sounds like a match. Not just a match, but a

AWS Restored My Account: The Human Who Made the Difference

The untold story of how one AWS employee turned a 20-day nightmare into a lesson in corporate accountability. Sometimes all it takes is one person who actually gives a damn. Remember my article about AWS deleting my 10-year account? The one where support gaslit me for 20 days while claiming my data was “terminated”? Here’s the plot twist: My data is back. Not because of viral pressure. Not because of bad PR. But because one human being inside AWS decided to give a damn. This is that story. T

Gen AI disillusionment looms, according to Gartner's 2025 Hype Cycle report

JuSun/Getty ZDNET's key takeaways Gartner has released its 2025 Hype Cycle report. AI agents and data are at their most inflated and need precise application to yield results. The report also emphasized trust and safety efforts as critical to the next five years. Research firm Gartner has released its annual Hype Cycle report, which investigates whether new technology is living up to expectations or is still far off from making a meaningful impact. At the top of the list this year? AI agent

Data breach at French telecom giant Bouygues affects millions of customers

Bouygues Telecom, the third-largest phone carrier in France, has confirmed a cyberattack and data breach affecting millions of its customers. In a statement posted to its website, the telecommunications giant said the hack allowed the intruders to access the personal information on 6.4 million customer accounts. Bouygues said it detected the cyberattack on August 4, but did not give a timeframe for when the breach was remediated. In a separate page dedicated to victims of the cyberattack, Bouy

5 carriers you should sign up for instead of Verizon

Joe Maring / Android Authority If you’re a Verizon customer, chances are you probably aren’t thrilled with the current state of the carrier. We recently reported on a host of plan and price changes, none of which are positive. Verizon is eliminating loyalty discounts, increasing the price of activation fees and other bill charges, and removing Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass perks that were previously included in its plans. To put it simply, Verizon isn’t in the best position right now, and

Air France and KLM disclose data breaches impacting customers

Air France and KLM announced on Wednesday that attackers had breached a customer service platform and stolen the data of an undisclosed number of customers. Together with Transavia, Air France and KLM are part of Air France–KLM Group, a French-Dutch multinational airline holding company founded in 2004 and a major player in international air transport. With a fleet of 564 aircraft and 78,000 employees, Air France-KLM provides services to up to 300 destinations in 90 countries. In 2024, the avi

A Single Poisoned Document Could Leak ‘Secret’ Data Via ChatGPT

The latest generative AI models are not just stand-alone text-generating chatbots—instead, they can easily be hooked up to your data to give personalized answers to your questions. OpenAI’s ChatGPT can be linked to your Gmail inbox, allowed to inspect your GitHub code, or find appointments in your Microsoft calendar. But these connections have the potential to be abused—and researchers have shown it can take just a single “poisoned” document to do so. New findings from security researchers Mich

Gartner's AI Hype Cycle reveals which AI tech is peaking - but will it last?

JuSun/Getty ZDNET's key takeaways Gartner has released its 2025 Hype Cycle report. AI agents and data are at their most inflated and need precise application to yield results. The report also emphasized trust and safety efforts as critical to the next five years. Research firm Gartner has released its annual Hype Cycle report, which investigates whether new technology is living up to expectations or is still far off from making a meaningful impact. At the top of the list this year? AI agent

Jury Decides Meta Stole Data from Users of Period-Tracking App. What to Do If You're Worried

A California jury ruled Wednesday that Meta broke state privacy laws by collecting data from the popular period-tracking app Flo, including private health data and pregnancy goals. The case claimed that, among other actions, Meta used the data to create targeted advertising content. As Meta claims it will fight the verdict, the court continues to decide specific financial damages -- and the plaintiffs have asked for billions. A representative for Meta did not immediately respond to a request fo

Topics: app data flo meta privacy

Consistency over Availability: How rqlite Handles the CAP theorem

Consistency Over Availability: How rqlite Handles the CAP Theorem rqlite is a lightweight, user-friendly, open-source, distributed relational database. It’s written in Go and uses SQLite as its storage engine. When it comes to distributed systems the CAP theorem is an essential concept. It states that it’s impossible for a distributed database to simultaneously provide Consistency, Availability, and Partition tolerance. The challenge is in the face of a network partition, a database can only b

Vibe coding the MIT course catalog

I recently left Microsoft to join MIT's Media Arts and Sciences program. The transition brought an immediate problem: how do you navigate course selection when faced with the "unknown unknowns"? You can easily find courses you already know you want learn, i.e. "known unknowns". But discovering courses you never knew existed, courses that might reshape your thinking entirely, requires different tools altogether. MIT's official course catalog runs on what appears to be a CGI script. The technolog

Vibe Coding the MIT Course Catalog

I recently left Microsoft to join MIT's Media Arts and Sciences program. The transition brought an immediate problem: how do you navigate course selection when faced with the "unknown unknowns"? You can easily find courses you already know you want learn, i.e. "known unknowns". But discovering courses you never knew existed, courses that might reshape your thinking entirely, requires different tools altogether. MIT's official course catalog runs on what appears to be a CGI script. The technolog

The 1090 Megahertz Riddle: A Guide to Decoding Mode S and ADS-B Signals

In the last twenty years, aircraft surveillance has moved from controller-based interrogation to automatic broadcast. The Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) is one of the most common methods for aircraft to report their state information like identity, position, and speed. Like other Mode S communications, ADS-B makes use of the 1090 megahertz transponder to transmit data. The protocol for ADS-B is open, and low-cost receivers can easily be used to intercept its signals. Many rec

Google suffers data breach in ongoing Salesforce data theft attacks

Google is the latest company to suffer a data breach in an ongoing wave of Salesforce CRM data theft attacks conducted by the ShinyHunters extortion group. In June, Google warned that a threat actor they classify as 'UNC6040' is targeting companies' employees in voice phishing (vishing) social engineering attacks to breach Salesforce instances and download customer data. This data is then used to extort companies into paying a ransom to prevent the data from being leaked. In a brief update to

Google suffers data breach in ongoing Salesforce data theft attacks

Google is the latest company to suffer a data breach in an ongoing wave of Salesforce CRM data theft attacks conducted by the ShinyHunters extortion group. In June, Google warned that a threat actor they classify as 'UNC6040' is targeting companies' employees in voice phishing (vishing) social engineering attacks to breach Salesforce instances and download customer data. This data is then used to extort companies into paying a ransom to prevent the data from being leaked. In a brief update to

ChatGPT Glossary: 55 AI Terms Everyone Should Know

AI is changing the world around us. It's eliminating jobs and flooding the internet with slop. Thanks to the massive popularity of ChatGPT to Google cramming AI summaries at the top of its search results, AI is completely taking over the internet. With AI, you can get instant answers to pretty much any question. It can feel like talking to someone who has a doctoral degree in everything. But that aspect of AI chatbots is only one part of the AI landscape. Sure, having ChatGPT help do your homew

Cohere’s new AI agent platform, North, promises to keep enterprise data secure

AI agent tools promise to siphon out some of the drudgery from daily workflows, but most organizations are hesitant to adopt them yet, harboring a pressing concern: data security. Large enterprises with trade secrets, companies in highly regulated industries, and government agencies have thought more than twice about bringing in AI tools out of concern that their — or worse, their customers’ — data could inadvertently be compromised, or used to train foundation models. Canadian AI firm Cohere i

Topics: ai cohere data like north

Google says hackers stole its customers’ data by breaching its Salesforce database

Google has confirmed that some customers’ information has been stolen in a recent breach of one of its databases. In a blog post late on Tuesday, Google’s Threat Intelligence Group said one of its Salesforce database systems, used to store contact information and related notes for small and medium businesses, was breached by a hacking group popularly known as ShinyHunters, formally designated as UNC6040. “The data retrieved by the threat actor was confined to basic and largely publicly availab

Google Cloud’s data agents promise to end the 80% toil problem plaguing enterprise data teams

Want smarter insights in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get only what matters to enterprise AI, data, and security leaders. Subscribe Now Data doesn’t just magically appear in the right place for enterprise analytics or AI, it has to be prepared and directed with data pipelines. That’s the domain of data engineering and it has long been one of the most thankless and tedious tasks that enterprises need to deal with. Today, Google Cloud is taking direct aim at the tedium of da

Google embeds AI agents deep into its data stack - here's what they can do for you

Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images ZDNET's key takeaways Google is introducing powerful tech for agents and data. They are also introducing a series of data-centric agents. A new command-line AI coding tool is now available. I am no stranger to hyperbolic claims from tech companies. Anyone who's on the receiving end of a firehose of press announcements related to AI understands. Everything is game-changing, world-changing, the most, the best, yada, yada, yada. And then there's Google. Goo

Pandora confirms data breach amid ongoing Salesforce data theft attacks

Danish jewelry giant Pandora has disclosed a data breach after its customer information was stolen in the ongoing Salesforce data theft attacks. Pandora is one of the largest jewellery brands in the world, with 2,700 locations and over 37,000 employees. "We are writing to inform you that your contact information was accessed by an unauthorized party through a third-party platform we use," reads a Pandora data breach notification sent to customers. "We stopped the access and have further stren

PBS confirms data breach after employee info leaked on Discord servers

PBS has suffered a data breach exposing the corporate contact information of its employees and those of its affiliates, BleepingComputer has learned. Earlier this month, BleepingComputer was alerted to a file circulated on Discord servers that allegedly contained this information. This data was not distributed on dark web sites, hacking forums, or other mediums frequented by threat actors. Instead, it was being shared on Discord servers for fans of "PBS Kids," where young adults, teenagers, an

A new database on police use of force and misconduct in California

For Immediate Release August 4, 2025 Contact: [email protected] A new database on police use of force and misconduct in California makes public 1.5 million pages of once-secret police records Public records about use of force and misconduct by California law enforcement officers — some 1.5 million pages obtained from nearly 500 law enforcement agencies — will now be searchable by the public for the first time thanks to a new database built by UC Berkeley and Stanford University and pub

The Heat Wasn't Just Outside: Cyber Attacks Spiked in Summer 2025

Summer 2025 wasn't just hot; it was relentless. Ransomware hammered hospitals, retail giants suffered data breaches, insurance firms were hit by phishing, and nation-state actors launched disruptive campaigns. From stealthy PowerShell loaders to zero-day SharePoint exploits, attackers kept defenders on their heels. This report breaks down the season's most high-impact incidents and what security teams need to do before the next wave hits. Summer Expose Healthcare's Growing Ransomware Risk H

Tesla co-founder JB Straubel is using old EV batteries to power AI data centers

As demand for energy skyrockets amid the rise of AI, one of Tesla 's co-founders is betting on a new solution: giving old electric vehicle batteries a second-life. JB Straubel, who helped launch Tesla and served as its tech chief until 2019, founded Redwood Materials in 2017 to recycle batteries and build a closed-loop supply chain for EVs. But as Redwood started receiving more EV batteries, the startup noticed that most still had usable capacity. Rather than recycle those batteries, Redwood is

Weather satellites detect 515-mile-long lightning flash

Some areas are more prone to lightning storms than others. It's 2017, and a thunderstorm shoots off a lightning bolt. What's so special about that, you ask? Well, the bolt is an astonishing 515 miles (829 kilometers) long. Using archival satellite data, researchers just officially confirmed the length of this enormous bolt of lightning that stretched from Texas to Missouri. It sets a new world record, besting the previous title holder — a 477-mile (768-km) bolt from 2020 — by 38 miles (61 km).