Chinese companies are aggressively recruiting foreign tech talent as a key strategy to gain technological supremacy, prompting national security concerns across Western nations and Asia, WSJ reported Wednesday, citing multiple intelligence officials and corporate sources. The campaign focuses particularly on advanced semiconductor expertise, with companies like Huawei offering triple salaries to employees at critical firms like Zeiss SMT and ASML, which produce essential components for cutting-edge chip manufacturing.

These recruitment efforts intensified after Western export controls restricted China's access to advanced technology. While Taiwan and South Korea have implemented strict countermeasures, including criminal penalties for illegal talent transfers, the U.S. and Europe struggle to balance open labor markets with national security concerns.

Chinese firms often obscure their origins through local ventures and persistent recruitment tactics. The strategy has shown results: Former employees have helped Chinese companies advance their technological capabilities, including SMIC's development of 7nm chips with help from ex-TSMC talent.

Nearly 89% of smart device manufacturers fail to disclose how long they will provide software updates for their products, a Federal Trade Commission staff study found this week. The review of 184 connected devices, including hearing aids, security cameras and door locks, revealed that 161 products lacked clear information about software support duration on their websites.

Basic internet searches failed to uncover this information for two-thirds of the devices. "Consumers stand to lose a lot of money if their smart products stop delivering the features they want," said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. The agency warned that manufacturers' failure to provide software update information for warranted products costing over $15 may violate the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act. The FTC also cautioned that companies could violate the FTC Act if they misrepresent product usability periods. The study excluded laptops, personal computers, tablets and automobiles from its review.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Security researchers have uncovered two previously unknown zero-day vulnerabilities that are being actively exploited by RomCom, a Russian-linked hacking group, to target Firefox browser users and Windows device owners across Europe and North America. RomCom is a cybercrime group that is known to carry out cyberattacks and other digital intrusions for the Russian government. The group -- which was last month linked to a ransomware attack targeting Japanese tech giant Casio -- is also known for its aggressive stance against organizations allied with Ukraine, which Russia invaded in 2014.

Researchers with security firm ESET say they found evidence that RomCom combined use of the two zero-day bugs -- described as such because the software makers had no time to roll out fixes before they were used to hack people -- to create a "zero click" exploit, which allows the hackers to remotely plant malware on a target's computer without any user interaction. "This level of sophistication demonstrates the threat actor's capability and intent to develop stealthy attack methods," ESET researchers Damien Schaeffer and Romain Dumont said in a blog post on Monday. [...] Schaeffer told TechCrunch that the number of potential victims from RomCom's "widespread" hacking campaign ranged from a single victim per country to as many as 250 victims, with the majority of targets based in Europe and North America. Mozilla and the Tor Project quickly patched a Firefox-based vulnerability after being alerted by ESET, with no evidence of Tor Browser exploitation. Meanwhile, Microsoft addressed a Windows vulnerability on November 12 following a report by Google's Threat Analysis Group, indicating potential use in government-backed hacking campaigns.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: Virtual- and augmented-reality setups already modify the way users see and hear the world around them. Add in haptic feedback for a sense of touch and a VR version of Smell-O-Vision, and only one major sense remains: taste. To fill the gap, researchers at the City University of Hong Kong have developed a new interface to simulate taste in virtual and other extended reality (XR). The group previously worked on other systems for wearable interfaces, such as haptic and olfactory feedback. To create a more "immersive VR experience," they turned to adding taste sensations, says Yiming Liu, a coauthor of the group's research paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The lollipop-shaped lickable device can produce nine different flavors: sugar, salt, citric acid, cherry, passion fruit, green tea, milk, durian, and grapefruit. Each flavor is produced by food-grade chemicals embedded in a pocket of agarose gel. When a voltage is applied to the gel, the chemicals are transported to the surface in a liquid that then mixes with saliva on the tongue like a real lollipop. Increase the voltage, and get a stronger flavor. Initially, the researchers tested several methods for simulating taste, including electrostimulating the tongue. The other methods each came with limitations, such as being too bulky or less safe, so the researchers opted for chemical delivery through a process called iontophoresis, which moves chemicals and ions through hydrogels and has a low electrical-power requirement. With a 2-volt maximum, the device is well within the human safety limit of 30 V, which is considered enough to deliver a substantial shock in some situations. Some of the possible applications mentioned by the authors include gustation tests, virtual grocery shopping, and immersive environments for exploring food flavors. However, the current system is limited to one hour of use due to gel depletion and it only supports a handful of flavor channels.

Future development aims to extend operation time, increase flavor complexity, and improve usability, marking the beginning of a new frontier for XR interfaces.

American hospitals and healthcare organizations would be required to adopt multi-factor authentication (MFA) and other minimum cybersecurity standards under new legislation proposed by a bipartisan group of US senators. From a report: The Health Care Cybersecurity and Resiliency Act of 2024 [PDF], introduced on Friday by US Senators Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), Mark Warner (D-Virginia), John Cornyn (R-Texas), and Maggie Hassan (D-New Hampshire), would, among other things, require better coordination between the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) around cybersecurity in the healthcare and public health sector.

This includes giving HHS a year to implement a cybersecurity incident response plan and update the types of information displayed publicly via the department's breach reporting portal. Currently, all healthcare orgs that are considered "covered entities" under the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) are required to notify HHS if they are breached. The new law would require breached entities to report how many people were affected by the security incident.

It would also mandate that the portal include details on "any corrective action taken against a covered entity that provided notification of a breach" as well as "recognized security practices that were considered" during the breach investigation, plus any other information that the HHS secretary deems necessary.

Blue Yonder, a Panasonic subsidiary specializing in AI-driven supply chain solutions, experienced a recent ransomware attack that impacted many of its customers. "Among its 3,000 customers are high-profile organizations like DHL, Renault, Bayer, Morrisons, Nestle, 3M, Tesco, Starbucks, Ace Hardware, Procter & Gamble, Sainsbury, and 7-Eleven," reports BleepingComputer. From the report: On Friday, the company warned that it was experiencing disruptions to its managed services hosting environment due to a ransomware incident that occurred the day before, on November 21. "On November 21, 2024, Blue Yonder experienced disruptions to its managed services hosted environment, which was determined to be the result of a ransomware incident," reads the announcement. "Since learning of the incident, the Blue Yonder team has been working diligently together with external cybersecurity firms to make progress in their recovery process. We have implemented several defensive and forensic protocols."

Blue Yonder claims it has detected no suspicious activity in its public cloud environment and is still processing multiple recovery strategies. [...] As expected, this has impacted clients directly, as a spokesperson for UK grocery store chain Morrisons has confirmed to the media they have reverted to a slower backup process. Sainsbury told CNN that it had contingency plans in place to overcome the disruption. A Saturday update informed customers that the restoration of the impacted services continued, but no specific timelines for complete restoration could be shared yet. Another update published on Sunday reiterated the same, urging clients to monitor the customer update page on Blue Yonder's website over the coming days.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet, written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols: At KubeCon North America, SUSE announced a significant rebranding effort, several new product offerings, and the launch of SUSE AI, a secure platform for deploying and running generative AI (gen AI) applications. SUSE has renamed its entire portfolio to make product names more descriptive and customer-friendly. Notable changes include:

- Rancher, SUSE's Kubernetes offering, is now SUSE Rancher.
- Liberty Linux, the company's Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)/CentOS clone and support offering, becomes SUSE Multi Linux Support.
- Harvester is rebranded as SUSE Virtualization
- Longhorn is now SUSE Storage.

[...] Also, like everyone else, SUSE now has an AI offering: SUSE AI. This isn't an AI chatbot, like Red Hat's Lightspeed AI tool. No, it's a secure platform for deploying and running gen AI applications. This new offering addresses key challenges faced by enterprises as they move from AI experimentation to deployment, particularly in areas of security and compliance. These are SUSE AI's top features, as highlighted by Vaughan-Nichols:

1. Security by Design: SUSE AI provides security and certifications at the software infrastructure level, along with zero-trust security tools, templates, and compliance playbooks.
2. Multifaceted Trust: The platform ensures that generated data is correct and private customer and IP data remain secure. It supports deployment across various environments, including on-premise, hybrid, cloud, and air-gapped setups.
3. Choice and Flexibility: SUSE AI allows customers to select and deploy their preferred AI components and LLMs.
4. Simplified Operations: The platform provides simplified cluster operations, persistent storage, and easy access to pre-configured shared tools and services.

Raspberry Pi has announced the Pico 2 W, a wireless version of its Pico 2 microcontroller board built for hobbyists and industrial applications. From a report: At $7, it's a relatively inexpensive way to control electronic devices like smart home gadgets and robots. With the new version, users will be able to securely link to remote sources to send and receive data, either via Bluetooth 5.2 or Wi-Fi 802.11n.

As with the Pico 2, the wireless variant is built around the RP2350 microcontroller built in-house by Raspberry Pi. it offers more speed and memory than the original RP2040 chip, along with a security model built around Arm's TrustZone for Cortex-M. Users can program it using C, C++ and MicroPython, and choose between Arm Cortex-M33 or RISC-V cores.

Palo Alto Networks boasts 70,000 customers in 150 countries, including 85% of the Fortune 500.

But this week "thousands of Palo Alto Networks firewalls were compromised by attackers exploiting two recently patched security bug," reports the Register: The intruders were able to deploy web-accessible backdoors to remotely control the equipment as well as cryptocurrency miners and other malware. Roughly 2,000 devices had been hijacked as of Wednesday — a day after Palo Alto Networks pushed a patch for the holes — according to Shadowserver and Onyphe. As of Thursday, the number of seemingly compromised devices had dropped to about 800. The vendor, however, continues to talk only of a "limited number" of exploited installations... The Register has asked for clarification, including how many compromised devices Palo Alto Networks is aware of, and will update this story if and when we hear back from the vendor.

Rumors started swirling last week about a critical security hole in Palo Alto Networks appliances that allowed remote unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary code on devices. Exploitation requires access to the PAN-OS management interface, either across the internet or via an internal network. The manufacturer did eventually admit that the firewall-busting vulnerability existed, and had been exploited as a zero-day — but it was still working on a patch. On Tuesday, PAN issued a fix, and at that time said there were actually two vulnerabilities. The first is a critical (9.3 CVSS) authentication bypass flaw tracked as CVE-2024-0012. The second, a medium-severity (6.9 CVSS) privilege escalation bug tracked as CVE-2024-9474. The two can be chained together to allow remote code execution (RCE) against the PAN-OS management interface... once the attackers break in, they are using this access to deploy web shells, Sliver implants, and/or crypto miners, according to Wiz threat researchers.

Craig Newmark "is alarmed about potential cybersecurity risks in the U.S.," according to Yahoo Finance. The 71-year-old Craigslist founder says "our country is under attack now" in a new interview with Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sozzi on his Opening Bid podcast.

But Newmark also revealed what he's doing about it: [H]e started Craig Newmark Philanthropies to primarily invest in projects to protect critical American infrastructure from cyberattacks. He told Sozzi he is now spending $200 million more to address the issue, on top of an initial $100 million pledge revealed in September of this year. He encouraged other wealthy people to join him in the fight against cyberattacks. "I tell people, 'Hey, the people who protect us could use some help. The amounts of money comparatively are small, so why not help out,'" he said... The need for municipalities and other government entities to act rather than react remains paramount, warns Newmark. "I think a lot about this," said Newmark.

"I've started to fund networks of smart volunteers who can help people protect infrastructure, particularly [for] the small companies and utilities across the country who are responsible for most of our electrical and power supplies, transportation infrastructure, [and] food distribution.... A lot of these systems have no protection, so an adversary could just compromise them, saying unless you do what we need, we can start shutting off these things," he continued. Should that happen, recovery "could take weeks and weeks without your water supply or electricity."
A web page at Craig Newmark Philanthropies offers more details Craig was part of the whole "duck and cover" thing, in the 50s and 60s, and realizes that we need civil defense in the cyber domain, "cyber civil defense." This is patriotism, for regular people.

He's committed $100 million to form a Cyber Civil Defense network of groups who are starting to protect the country from cyber threats. Attacks on our power grids, our cyber infrastructure and even the internet-connected gadgets and appliances in our homes are real. If people think that's alarmist, tell them to "Blame Craig." The core of Cyber Civil Defense [launched in 2022] includes groups like Aspen Digital, Global Cyber Alliance, and Consumer Reports, focusing on citizen cyber education and literacy, cyber tool development, and cybersecurity workforce programs aimed at diversifying the growing field.
It's already made significant investments in groups like the Ransomware Task Force and threat watchdog group Shadowserver Foundation...

The GitHub Secure Open Source Fund launched this week with an initial commitment of $1.25 million, reports TechCrunch, using "capital from contributors including American Express, 1Password, Shopify, Stripe, and GitHub's own parent company Microsoft." GitHub briefly teased the new initiative at its annual GitHub Universe developer conference last month, but Tuesday it announced full details and formally opened the program for applicants, which will be reviewed "on a rolling basis" through the closing date of January 7, 2025, with programming and funding starting shortly after...

Tuesday's news builds on a number of previous GitHub initiatives designed to support project maintainers that work on key components of critical software, including GitHub Sponsors which landed in 2019 (and which is powering the new fund), but more directly the GitHub Accelerator program that launched its first cohort last year — the GitHub Secure Open Source Fund is essentially an extension of that.

"We're trying to acknowledge the fact that we're the home of open source, ultimately, and we have an obligation to help ensure that open source can continue to thrive and have the support that it needs," GitHub Chief Operating Officer Kyle Daigle told TechCrunch in an interview. Qualifying projects can be pretty much any project that has an open source license, but of course GitHub will be looking at those that need the funds most — so Kubernetes can hold fire with its application. "We're looking for the outsized impact, which tends to be big projects with few maintainers that we all rely on," Daigle said.

The sum of $1.25 million might sound like a reasonable amount, but it will be split across 125 projects, which means just $10,000 each — better than nothing, for sure, but a drop in the ocean on the grand scheme of things. However, Daigle is quick to stress that money is only part of the prize here — as with the initial accelerator program, maintainers embark on a three-week program, which includes mentorship, certification, education workshops, and ongoing access to GitHub tools.
From GitHub's announcement: Since introducing support for organizations through GitHub Sponsors, more than 5,800 organizations, including Microsoft and Stripe, have invested in maintainers and projects on GitHub, up nearly 40% YoY. Cumulatively, the platform has unlocked over $60 million in funding for maintainers to help them spend more time working on their projects.

But we know we're just scratching the surface when it comes to organizations and corporate support of open source. This summer, we partnered with the Linux Foundation and researchers from Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH) to learn more about the state of open source funding today. Diving in, we assessed organizations funding behaviors, potential misalignments, and opportunities to improve. In the report launched today, we found:


- Responding organizations annually invest $1.7 billion in open source, which can be extrapolated to estimate that approximately $7.7 billion is invested across the entire open source ecosystem annually.

- 86% of investment is in the form of contribution labor by employees and contractors working for the funding organization, with the remaining 14% being direct financial contributions.

- Organizations generally know how and where they contribute (65%) but lack specific clarity of their contributions (38%).

- Security efforts focus on bugs and maintenance; only a few (6%) said comprehensive security audits are a priority.


We all stand to benefit from unlocking more funding for open source. By tackling problems like open source security as an ecosystem, we believe we can help create more available funding and resources that are vital to the sustainability of open source. Not every open source project or maintainer has access to funding and training for security. That's why we created a fund that everyone potentially eligible can apply for...

This is the beginning of a journey into helping find ways to secure open source. On its own, it's not the answer, but we are confident it will help. We will be monitoring the impact of these investments and share what we learn as we go.

Longtime Slashdot reader mspohr shares a report from Gizmodo: Hackers for the Chinese government were able to deeply penetrate U.S. telecommunications infrastructure in ways that President Joe Biden's administration hasn't yet acknowledged, according to new reports from the Washington Post and New York Times. The hackers were able to listen to phone calls and read text messages, reportedly exploiting the system U.S. authorities use to wiretap Americans in criminal cases. The worst part? The networks are still compromised and it may take incredibly drastic measures to boot them from U.S. systems.

The hackers behind the infiltration of U.S. telecom infrastructure are known to Western intelligence agencies as Salt Typhoon, and this particular breach of U.S. equipment was first reported in early October by the Wall Street Journal. But Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, spoke with the Washington Post and New York Times this week to warn the public that this is so much worse than we initially thought, dubbing it "the worst telecom hack in our nation's history." And those articles based on Warner's warnings were published late Thursday.

Hackers weren't able to monitor or intercept anything encrypted, according to the Times, which means that conversations over apps like Signal and Apple's iMessage were probably protected. But end-to-end encryption over texts between Apple devices and Android devices, for instance, aren't encrypted in the same way, meaning they were vulnerable to interception by Salt Typhoon, according to the Times. The details about how the hackers were able to push so deeply into U.S. systems are still scarce, but it has something to do with the ways in which U.S. authorities wiretap suspects in this country with a court order.

"Steven Adair, of cybersecurity firm Veloxity, revealed at the Cyberwarcon security conference how Russian hackers were able to daisy-chain as many as three separate Wi-Fi networks in their efforts to attack victims," writes Longtime Slashdot reader smooth wombat. Wired reports: Adair says that Volexity first began investigating the breach of its DC customer's network in the first months of 2022, when the company saw signs of repeated intrusions into the customer's systems by hackers who had carefully covered their tracks. Volexity's analysts eventually traced the compromise to a hijacked user's account connecting to a Wi-Fi access point in a far end of the building, in a conference room with external-facing windows. Adair says he personally scoured the area looking for the source of that connection. "I went there to physically run down what it could be. We looked at smart TVs, looked for devices in closets. Is someone in the parking lot? Is it a printer?" he says. "We came up dry."

Only after the next intrusion, when Volexity managed to get more complete logs of the hackers' traffic, did its analysts solve the mystery: The company found that the hijacked machine which the hackers were using to dig around in its customer's systems was leaking the name of the domain on which it was hosted -- in fact, the name of another organization just across the road. "At that point, it was 100 percent clear where it was coming from," Adair says. "It's not a car in the street. It's the building next door." With the cooperation of that neighbor, Volexity investigated that second organization's network and found that a certain laptop was the source of the street-jumping Wi-Fi intrusion. The hackers had penetrated that device, which was plugged into a dock connected to the local network via Ethernet, and then switched on its Wi-Fi, allowing it to act as a radio-based relay into the target network. Volexity found that, to break into that target's Wi-Fi, the hackers had used credentials they'd somehow obtained online but had apparently been unable to exploit elsewhere, likely due to two-factor authentication.

Volexity eventually tracked the hackers on that second network to two possible points of intrusion. The hackers appeared to have compromised a VPN appliance owned by the other organization. But they had also broken into the organization's Wi-Fi from another network's devices in the same building, suggesting that the hackers may have daisy-chained as many as three networks via Wi-Fi to reach their final target. "Who knows how many devices or networks they compromised and were doing this on," says Adair. Volexity had presumed early on in its investigation that the hackers were Russian in origin due to their targeting of individual staffers at the customer organization focused on Ukraine. Then in April, fully two years after the original intrusion, Microsoft warned of a vulnerability in Windows' print spooler that had been used by Russia's APT28 hacker group -- Microsoft refers to the group as Forest Blizzard -- to gain administrative privileges on target machines. Remnants left behind on the very first computer Volexity had analyzed in the Wi-Fi-based breach of its customer exactly matched that technique. "It was an exact one-to-one match," Adair says.

Microsoft has released a public preview of its redesigned Windows Recall feature, five months after withdrawing the original version due to security concerns. The feature will initially be available only on Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and Plus Copilot+ PCs running Windows Insider Dev channel build 26120.2415.

Recall, which continuously captures and indexes screenshots and text for later search, now includes mandatory encryption, opt-in activation, and Windows Hello authentication. The feature requires Secure Boot, BitLocker encryption, and attempts to automatically mask sensitive data like passwords and credit card numbers. The feature is exclusive to Copilot+ PCs equipped with neural processing units for local AI processing.

Damage to two undersea fiber-optic cables in the Baltic Sea this month points to growing vulnerability of critical submarine infrastructure, with German officials suspecting sabotage and Swedish police investigating a Chinese cargo vessel's involvement.

The incident highlights escalating risks to the global submarine cable network, which carries 99% of international telecommunications traffic through 530 cable systems spanning 850,000 miles. These garden hose-thick cables facilitate trillions in daily financial transactions and vital government communications.

Security experts warn that Russia has increased monitoring of undersea cables amid tensions over Ukraine. Taiwan reported 36 cable damages by foreign vessels since 2019, while Houthi rebels denied targeting Red Sea cables this year. Though most of the 100-plus annual cable faults are accidental, deliberate sabotage remains a concern. Repairs are costly, with new transatlantic cables running up to $250 million.

The Register's Simon Sharwood reports: Japan's National Consumer Affairs Center on Wednesday suggested citizens start "digital end of life planning" and offered tips on how to do it. The Center's somewhat maudlin advice is motivated by recent incidents in which citizens struggled to cancel subscriptions their loved ones signed up for before their demise, because they didn't know their usernames or passwords. The resulting "digital legacy" can be unpleasant to resolve, the agency warns, so suggested four steps to simplify ensure our digital legacies aren't complicated:

- Ensuring family members can unlock your smartphone or computer in case of emergency;
- Maintain a list of your subscriptions, user IDs and passwords;
- Consider putting those details in a document intended to be made available when your life ends;
- Use a service that allows you to designate someone to have access to your smartphone and other accounts once your time on Earth ends.

The Center suggests now is the time for it to make this suggestion because it is aware of struggles to discover and resolve ongoing expenses after death. With smartphones ubiquitous, the org fears more people will find themselves unable to resolve their loved ones' digital affairs -- and powerless to stop their credit cards being charged for services the departed cannot consume.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: The financial technology firm Finastra is investigating the alleged large-scale theft of information from its internal file transfer platform, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. Finastra, which provides software and services to 45 of the world's top 50 banks, notified customers of the security incident after a cybercriminal began selling more than 400 gigabytes of data purportedly stolen from the company. London-based Finastra has offices in 42 countries and reported $1.9 billion in revenues last year. The company employs more than 7,000 people and serves approximately 8,100 financial institutions around the world. A major part of Finastra's day-to-day business involves processing huge volumes of digital files containing instructions for wire and bank transfers on behalf of its clients.

On November 8, 2024, Finastra notified financial institution customers that on Nov. 7 its security team detected suspicious activity on Finastra's internally hosted file transfer platform. Finastra also told customers that someone had begun selling large volumes of files allegedly stolen from its systems. "On November 8, a threat actor communicated on the dark web claiming to have data exfiltrated from this platform," reads Finastra's disclosure, a copy of which was shared by a source at one of the customer firms. "There is no direct impact on customer operations, our customers' systems, or Finastra's ability to serve our customers currently," the notice continued. "We have implemented an alternative secure file sharing platform to ensure continuity, and investigations are ongoing." But its notice to customers does indicate the intruder managed to extract or "exfiltrate" an unspecified volume of customer data.

The Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to propose new rules governing undersea internet cables in the face of growing security concerns, as part of a review of regulations on the links that handle nearly all the world's online traffic. From a report: The FCC voted 5-0 on proposed updates to address the national security concerns over the global network of more than 400 subsea cables that handle more than 98% of international internet traffic. [...]

Baltic nations said this week they are investigating whether the cutting of two fiber-optic undersea telecommunication cables in the Baltic Sea was sabotage. Rosenworcel noted that in 2023 Taiwan accused two Chinese vessels of cutting the only two cables that support internet access on the Matsu Islands and Houthi attacks in the Red Sea may have been responsible for the cutting of three cables providing internet service to Europe and Asia.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Instagram is flooded with hundreds of AI-generated influencers who are stealing videos from real models and adult content creators, giving them AI-generated faces, and monetizing their bodies with links to dating sites, Patreon, OnlyFans competitors, and various AI apps. The practice, first reported by 404 Media in April, has since exploded in popularity, showing that Instagram is unable or unwilling to stop the flood of AI-generated content on its platform and protect the human creators on Instagram who say they are now competing with AI content in a way that is impacting their ability to make a living.

According to our review of more than 1,000 AI-generated Instagram accounts, Discord channels where the people who make this content share tips and discuss strategy, and several guides that explain how to make money by "AI pimping," it is now trivially easy to make these accounts and monetize them using an assortment of off-the-shelf AI tools and apps. Some of these apps are hosted on the Apple App and Google Play Stores. Our investigation shows that what was once a niche problem on the platform has industrialized in scale, and it shows what social media may become in the near future: a space where AI-generated content eclipses that of humans. [...]

Out of more than 1,000 AI-generated Instagram influencer accounts we reviewed, 100 included at least some deepfake content which took existing videos, usually from models and adult entertainment performers, and replaced their face with an AI-generated face to make those videos seem like new, original content consistent with the other AI-generated images and videos shared by the AI-generated influencer. The other 900 accounts shared images that in some cases were trained on real photographs and in some cases made to look like celebrities, but were entirely AI-generated, not edited photographs or videos. Out of those 100 accounts that shared deepfake or face-swapped videos, 60 self-identify as being AI-generated, writing in their bios that they are a "virtual model & influencer" or stating "all photos crafted with AI and apps." The other 40 do not include any disclaimer stating that they are AI-generated. Adult content creators like Elaina St James say they're now directly competing with these AI rip-off accounts that often use stolen content. Since the explosion of AI-generated influencer accounts on Instagram, St James said her "reach went down tremendously," from a typical 1 million to 5 million views a month to not surpassing a million in the last 10 months, and sometimes coming in under 500,000 views. While she said changes to Instagram's algorithm could also be at play, these AI-generated influencer accounts are "probably one of the reasons my views are going down," St James told 404 Media. "It's because I'm competing with something that's unnatural."

Alexios Mantzarlis, the director of the security, trust, and safety initiative at Cornell Tech and formerly principal of trust and safety intelligence at Google, started researching the problem to see where AI-generated content is taking social media and the internet. "It felt like a possible sign of what social media is going to look like in five years," said Mantzarlis. "Because this may be coming to other parts of the internet, not just the attractive-people niche on Instagram. This is probably a sign that it's going to be pretty bad."

Five local privilege escalation (LPE) vulnerabilities in the Linux utility "needrestart" -- widely used on Ubuntu to manage service updates -- allow attackers with local access to escalate privileges to root. The flaws were discovered by Qualys in needrestart version 0.8, and fixed in version 3.8. BleepingComputer reports: Complete information about the flaws was made available in a separate text file, but a summary can be found below:

- CVE-2024-48990: Needrestart executes the Python interpreter with a PYTHONPATH environment variable extracted from running processes. If a local attacker controls this variable, they can execute arbitrary code as root during Python initialization by planting a malicious shared library.
- CVE-2024-48992: The Ruby interpreter used by needrestart is vulnerable when processing an attacker-controlled RUBYLIB environment variable. This allows local attackers to execute arbitrary Ruby code as root by injecting malicious libraries into the process.
- CVE-2024-48991: A race condition in needrestart allows a local attacker to replace the Python interpreter binary being validated with a malicious executable. By timing the replacement carefully, they can trick needrestart into running their code as root.
- CVE-2024-10224: Perl's ScanDeps module, used by needrestart, improperly handles filenames provided by the attacker. An attacker can craft filenames resembling shell commands (e.g., command|) to execute arbitrary commands as root when the file is opened.
- CVE-2024-11003: Needrestart's reliance on Perl's ScanDeps module exposes it to vulnerabilities in ScanDeps itself, where insecure use of eval() functions can lead to arbitrary code execution when processing attacker-controlled input. The report notes that attackers would need to have local access to the operation system through malware or a compromised account in order to exploit these flaws. "Apart from upgrading to version 3.8 or later, which includes patches for all the identified vulnerabilities, it is recommended to modify the needrestart.conf file to disable the interpreter scanning feature, which prevents the vulnerabilities from being exploited," adds BleepingComputer.