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January 9, 2026Ravi LakshmananMobile Security / Email Security The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Thursday issued an advisory warning that North Korean state-sponsored attackers are using malicious QR codes in spear-phishing campaigns targeting organizations in the country. “As of 2025, Kimsuky threat actors have embedded malicious Quick Response (QR) codes in spear-phishing campaigns targeting think tanks, academic institutions, and U.S. and foreign government agencies,” the FBI said in a bulletin. “This type of spear-phishing attack is called quissing.” The use of QR codes in phishing is a tactic that forces victims to move from machines protected by corporate…
Over the past two weeks, X has been flooded with AI-manipulated nude images created by the Grok AI chatbot. An astonishing range of women have been affected by non-consensual nudity, from famous models and actresses to members of the press, crime victims and even world leaders. Copyleaks’ Dec. 31 research paper estimated that roughly one image was posted per minute, but subsequent tests found that many more images were being posted. Samples collected from January 5th to 6th detected 6,700 cases per hour over a 24-hour period. But while celebrities around the world have condemned the choice to release the…
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a new type of celestial object. Cloud 9 was a starless, gas-rich cloud of dark matter that was slightly too light to become a full-fledged galaxy.The strange object is located near the spiral galaxy Messier 94 (M94), more than 14 million light-years from Earth, as detailed in a study published Nov. 10 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and presented this week at the 247th Annual Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Phoenix. Cloud-9 is a cosmic relic and a primordial building block of galaxies, supporting the critical mass threshold required for…
NSO Group, one of the most famous and controversial makers of government spyware, released a new transparency report on Wednesday as the company enters a “new phase of accountability.” But the report, unlike NSO’s previous annual disclosures, lacks details about how many customers the company has rejected, investigated, suspended or fired for human rights violations involving its surveillance tools. The report includes promises to respect human rights and put controls in place to require customers to do the same, but provides no concrete evidence to support either. Experts and commentators who have been tracking NSO and the spyware market for…
XBrew Lab debuted its tabletop nitro beverage machine EverNitro at CES this week, giving nitro coffee lovers a more accessible way to enjoy nitro coffee without the waste and expense of traditional cartridge-based machines. For those unfamiliar with nitro coffee, it is cold brew coffee infused with nitrogen gas. This process creates tiny bubbles that give the drink a smooth, naturally sweet taste similar to drinking Guinness. Many people point out that nitro coffee is less bitter. EverNitro is positioning itself as a more affordable all-in-one solution in the long run versus competitors such as NitroBrew. “We offer the quality…
CES is always packed with robots, and this year consumer electronics giant LG announced a new bot called CLOid that it claims will revolutionize housework (or eliminate the need to do it). CLOid is said to be an AI-powered home robot designed to assist users with a variety of household chores, from folding laundry to preparing breakfast to patrolling the home for signs of trouble. The company says it envisions the device to eventually “evolve into an environmental care agent that supports daily life.” The bot was announced during LG’s keynote earlier this week, but was also available for inspection…
Internet connectivity collapsed across Iran on Thursday amid nationwide protests, according to a web monitoring company. “I think we are almost completely cut off from the outside world right now,” Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity researcher at the nonprofit Mian Group, told TechCrunch. Doug Madry, director of internet analytics at Kentik, a company that monitors internet traffic around the world, agreed, telling TechCrunch that Iran’s internet has been in a “nearly complete blackout” since around 11:30 a.m. Thursday on the U.S. East Coast, or 8 p.m. local time in Tehran. A graph showing how internet traffic dropped in Iran around…
OpenAI begins the new year with a new acquisition. The AI giant is acquiring the team behind Convogo, a business software platform that helps executive coaches, consultants, talent leaders, and human resources teams automate and improve leadership assessments and feedback reporting. An OpenAI spokesperson said the company will not acquire Convogo’s IP or technology, but instead will hire a team to work on its “AI cloud efforts.” The three co-founders Matt Cooper, Evan Cater and Mike Gillette will join OpenAI as part of what people familiar with the matter say is an all-stock deal. Convogo’s products will be discontinued. The…
You might think it’s pretty strange to hear the founders of VR companies and social media platforms complaining publicly that things were better in the dial-up era. Nevertheless, that’s what happened at CES on Wednesday, when Oculus developer Palmer Lackey and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian gave a joint talk on the joys of “technostalgia.” Luckey and Ohanian, who first made their fortune in VR and now run defense contractor Anduril, both seem to agree that “things were better in the old days.” The problem, however, is that Lucky and Ohanian weren’t actually criticizing the technology itself (Lucky said in his…
NASA announced on Wednesday (January 7) that an extravehicular activity outside the International Space Station (ISS) was postponed and the crew returned early due to a medical issue in an astronaut.The spacewalk was scheduled for 8 a.m. ET on Thursday (January 8) to complete preparations for the power channel where a new solar array will be installed on the ISS. American astronauts Mike Finke and Zena Cardman were scheduled to leave the space station in six-and-a-half hours on what would be Cardman’s first spacewalk. (Finke has already performed nine spacewalks.)NASA did not release the name of the crew member with…