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North Korean threat actors associated with the long-running Contagion Interview campaign have been observed using malicious Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code) projects as decoys that provide backdoors to compromised endpoints. According to Jamf Threat Labs, the latest findings demonstrate the continued evolution of new tactics first discovered in December 2025. “This activity included the deployment of a backdoor implant that provided remote code execution capabilities on victims’ systems,” security researcher Thijs Xhaflaire said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The attack, first revealed last month by OpenSourceMalware, essentially involves instructing potential targets to clone a repository on…
After receiving official verification on Friday, ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is now the third most blocked account on Bluesky, according to third-party trackers. Bluesky users are understandably angry about government accounts hosted on the platform. Many people recommend that others block their accounts directly or join a blocklist that includes all official US government accounts. The blocklist was introduced last October after the Trump White House and other government agencies signed up to Blue Sky to post messages blaming Democrats for the government shutdown. Participating accounts at the time included the White House itself, as well as the…
Scientists have discovered a distant supernova caused by a collapsing star just a billion years after the universe’s birth.The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) captured images of a Type II supernova on September 1 and October 8, 2025. The supernova, called Eos after Titan, the Greek goddess of the dawn, could help scientists understand how stars and galaxies evolve over billions of years, researchers reported on the preprint server arXiv on January 7.A better understanding of early stars could help astronomers figure out how they formed and distributed heavy elements, including those needed for life, to their surroundings. However, observing…
A “severe” record-breaking geomagnetic storm shook Earth’s magnetic shield shortly after the sun unleashed a powerful X-class solar flare last night. This spectacular event, caused by a stream of ultra-fast solar particles, produced widespread aurora borealis at unusually low latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in Europe.Some news outlets have reported that this storm is the “largest” of its kind since 2003, but this is an exaggeration (the “Mother’s Day Storm” in May 2024 was much stronger). However, the recent explosion broke a 23-year specific solar radiation record.The geomagnetic storm began on Monday (January 19) when a fast-moving solar radiation…
Could being colorblind make you less likely to get bladder cancer? That’s the surprising hypothesis researchers have proposed based on a small study.The study, published Jan. 15 in Nature Health, looked at data from 135 patients with both bladder cancer and color blindness and compared them to 135 patients with bladder cancer alone. Data was obtained from TriNetX, an international registry of electronic medical records of more than 275 million patients.Among these health records, both those with color blindness and those diagnosed with bladder cancer had shorter survival times than bladder cancer patients without visual impairment. Overall, people with color…
One of the most prominent alternative app stores to emerge in the EU as a result of the EU regional digital market law is being shut down. Ukraine-based developer MacPaw’s store Setapp Mobile first launched in September 2024 and offers dozens of apps across categories such as productivity, finance, video, photography, and creativity. Under this model, consumers now have access to all of Setapp’s mobile apps through a $9.99 monthly subscription, provided the user’s Apple ID is associated with an EU member state. The company currently states that all applications will be removed from Setapp Mobile by sunset on February…
Grubhub’s parent company Wonder has announced that it has acquired restaurant rewards app Claims. Founded in 2021, Claim offers cashback rewards to local restaurants that users can redeem against dine-in or pick-up orders. Restaurants partner with Claim to create promotions, increase foot traffic, and track performance insights through the Claim dashboard. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. However, Claim raised a total of $20 million when it raised $12 million in Series A in October 2024, the company said. Pitchbook values the company at $62 million. Grubhub said the acquisition will give restaurants on its platform access to…
Humans&, a startup whose philosophy is that AI should empower humans rather than replace them, has raised $480 million in seed funding at a valuation of $4.48 billion, The New York Times reported. Investors in the round include chipmaker Nvidia, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, venture capital firms SV Angel, GV and Laurene Powell Jobs’ company Emerson Collective. The three-month-old company’s mega deal follows a trend of investors pouring money into startups founded by independents of major AI labs. Humans& founders include Andi Peng, a former human researcher who worked on reinforcement learning and post-training for Claude 3.5-4.5. Georges Halik, Google’s…
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration says SpaceX failed to properly inspect a hydraulic crane that was recently repaired before it collapsed at the company’s Starbase, Texas, facility last June. As a result, the Federal Safety Agency charged SpaceX with seven “serious” violations related to the investigation, which began the day after the crane collapse. OSHA imposed the maximum fines available for six of these “serious” violations, totaling $115,850 in fines for Elon Musk’s spaceflight company. OSHA’s investigation is still ongoing, according to the agency’s website. It is still unclear whether any workers were injured in the accident. SpaceX can…
To enhance the interests of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) shareholders, Netflix is now offering cash for the company’s stock, amending its previous cash and stock deal with the WBD board. However, the streaming giant is still offering WBD’s movie studio and streaming assets the same $27.75 the companies agreed to, leaving the deal valuing the company at $82.7 billion. The companies said in a statement Tuesday that the new proposal would simplify the deal structure, “increase value certainty” and shorten the timeline for shareholder votes. Netflix said it would finance the deal with cash, debt and “committed financing.” The changes…