Existential Risk
AI loss of control is already “in the rearview mirror,” says MIT professor Max Tegmark
But the AI risk expert still believes a "golden age" is ahead for humanity if we build "tools, not beings" and steer clear of superintelligence.
Jasper Hamill
Security
Iranian spyware campaign uses low-tech tricks to ensnare high-value targets
"We love to romanticize nation-state operations as digital wizardry, but it’s often just convincing fake profiles and low-budget spyware payloads."
AI
OpenAI Astra hits “critical” security threshold amid fears its reasoning will soon be “opaque”
Is the AI firm planning a move away from chain-of-thought and into a future where it's harder to understand the motivations of models?
Critical Systems
Nuclear cops: Legacy tech made our Microsoft Teams video call system “insecure”
Police force that protects nuclear sites admits to security failure caused by the end of Windows 10 support.
Crime
Cops bring down ancient million-machine Sality botnet after nine-year battle
Criminal operators used decentralized peer-to-peer infrastructure to keep zombie network alive throughout the 21st century.
AI
The rise and fall of OpenAtlantis: Did rogue AI agents really "build three civilizations"?
"What are they smoking in San Francisco?" asks Hugging Face machine learning engineer.
Critical Infrastructure
FBI smashes "Chinese state-linked botnet platform" targeting US critical infrastructure
"We’re looking at a persistent, organized, and sustained effort to get inside the institutions that keep the country running."
Government
UK builds experimental AI surveillance system using buried fibre-optic cables
Underground listening network will be used to protect military bases from both protesters and "hostile actors trying to gain intelligence".
Critical Infrastructure
"Iranian hackers" shut down a UK power station. The next incident could be much worse
Cyberattack that forced a small generator offline sparks fears about the vulnerability of critical infrastructure.
Security
Security firms hit back at Trump’s call to hack back against international crime gangs
"The United States will use all instruments of national power, including the innovative capabilities of the private sector, to combat cybercrime."
Crime
Criminals hack Police National Legal Database, leak UK cops' private data on the dark web
British law enforcement comes a cropper in an incident which should - but probably won't - force a rethink of dreadful data storage policies.
AI
Anthropic's rogue agents launch "real-world" attacks, join OpenAI's models in the wild
Bots gain access to the open internet in a grim omen of the grave security risks agentic AI poses to enterprises and digital civilisation itself.