Citizen Lab researchers identified a new spyware strain, called AdFection, that can infect phones and computers simply by displaying an ad, without any click required. The tool was built by Israeli firm Discover-Tech and used to target journalists and staff at Al Jazeera, NATO, the European Commission, NVIDIA and Arm, according to the report. Google has since suspended Discover-Tech from its ad platforms after a joint investigation with Citizen Lab and Confiant.
Attorneys general in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho and Montana filed coordinated lawsuits against OpenAI this week, accusing it of misrepresenting ChatGPT as safe while the chatbot allegedly encouraged self-harm, suicide and violence among users, including minors. OpenAI responded that it has built age-specific safeguards, parental controls and other protections into its product, while acknowledging no system is perfect. The filings add to more than 50 existing lawsuits against the company over alleged psychological, physical and financial harm linked to ChatGPT use.
A decades-old Steve Jobs quote, recirculated by commentators, claims that roughly half of what distinguishes successful entrepreneurs from others is perseverance. The quote is being revisited in discussions about how leaders sustain motivation once initial excitement fades, sales slow, and key staff begin leaving.
X said it suspended more than 13,000 accounts linked to three suspected foreign influence operations that it attributed to Iran, Russia and China, ahead of the November 3 US midterm elections. The company said the networks used fake accounts to post and amplify political content about candidates and public figures, but it did not publish evidence supporting the attribution. X also pointed to its Civic Integrity policy, which funnels reports into Community Notes alongside other moderation actions.
Google is shutting down Heads Up, an Android safety tool that warned users about looking at their phones while walking, according to reporting on the move. Separately, Google is developing a Gemini-based chat feature intended to help users navigate Digital Wellbeing settings.
Acros Security's 0patch service released micropatches fixing CVE-2026-62878, a remote code execution vulnerability in the Windows DNS Server service, for Windows Server versions that no longer receive official Microsoft updates. Microsoft had already patched the flaw in supported editions in August 2026 by capping DNS query recursion nesting depth at 62, and 0patch used a public proof-of-concept exploit credited to researchers Nicolas Alejandro Malizia and Joaquín Grassi to build equivalent fixes for legacy systems.
AstraZeneca has agreed to pay AI-driven biotech company Insitro $40 million upfront, with potential milestone payments bringing the total deal value to as much as $1.46 billion. The partnership centers on using Insitro's machine learning platform for drug discovery.
US stock futures fell Thursday after a rough trading session, with investors again questioning returns on heavy AI spending. Separately, September's consumer price index came in hotter than expected, driven by rising energy costs, marking the 66th consecutive month inflation has topped the Federal Reserve's 2% target—the longest such run this century. Diesel prices also remain elevated ahead of the midterm elections despite a new US-Russia diesel agreement.
Cloudflare's analysis found that after Ukrainian strikes on Yandex data centers cut Yandex Search and Yandex.Cloud traffic to 10-15% of normal levels, malicious bot activity largely migrated to other hosting providers such as Radist and Selectel rather than disappearing. Gambling-sector bot traffic rose slightly overall (167.7 million to 170.1 million requests, +1.4%), and Russian-origin social media bot activity fell only marginally, by 0.6% to 5.7% depending on the metric.
CoreWeave's stock has fallen more than 25% over the past week as investors grow wary of the company's debt load and the broader 'neocloud' business model. The decline comes amid a wider pullback in AI-related stocks this week, driven by growing market anxiety over heavy spending in the sector.
Meta's AI personal assistant Muse, downloaded millions of times since its launch last month and reaching No. 1 on Apple's App Store, prompts users to grant access to bank accounts, passwords, contacts, and chat logs. Signal Foundation president Meredith Whittaker warned that these permissions extend beyond the user to everyone in their contacts and communications, based on extrapolation from intimate personal data.
SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron shares fell sharply this week, with SK Hynix down 26%, Samsung 22% and Micron 11% over five days. The drop followed China's CXMT unveiling a new server memory architecture, plus a South Korean newspaper opinion piece urging Seoul to prepare for a potential slowdown in AI-driven memory demand and a possible oversupply by 2029.
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