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By Varun Mirchandani OpenAI has delayed the rollout of ChatGPT’s planned “adult mode,” a feature designed to allow verified adult users to access erotica and other mature content.
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By Moinak Pal Apple is reportedly exploring a new aluminum manufacturing process for future Apple Watch models that could improve durability.
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By Ana-Maria Stanciuc The camera nods, dances to music, and tracks faces. The rest of the specs are a secret. Something unusual happened at Mobile World Congress this year. A device sat in a glass case at the Honor booth in Hall 3,  present, demonstrably functional, performing little robotic gestures for anyone who stopped to watch,  and yet […] This story continues at The Next Web

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By Krittika Owary Usual smartwatches track distance, heart rates and steps but HUAWEI Watch GT Runner 2 is here to change the game. Bridging intelligence with ambition, this series of Watch GT Runner 2 is here to read the runners right through their wrist.
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By Ana-Maria Stanciuc Caitlin Kalinowski spent 16 months building OpenAI’s physical AI programme. On Saturday, she said the company moved too fast on something too important. The week that began with Anthropic being blacklisted by the Pentagon and ended with OpenAI taking its contract has now claimed OpenAI’s most senior hardware executive. Caitlin Kalinowski, who joined OpenAI in […] This story continues at The Next Web

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By Moinak Pal A new system uses smartphone sensors to track body movement and improve VR avatar realism.
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By Moinak Pal Researchers created a liquid-metal artificial pupil that automatically adjusts to light, helping robots and self-driving systems see more accurately in changing environments.
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Threat actors are trying a different tactic to sucker employees into falling for ClickFix phishing attacks that install malware, says Microsoft.

Rather than asking potential victims to copy and paste a (malicious) command into the Run dialog, launched by hitting the Windows button plus the letter R, they are being told to use the Windows + X → I shortcut to launch Windows Terminal (wt.exe) directly.

Once the terminal is opened, victims are prompted to paste in malicious PowerShell commands delivered through fake CAPTCHA pages, troubleshooting prompts, or verification-style lures designed to appear routine and benign.

Why? Going this route evades defenses looking for unusual run commands, and it bypasses security awareness training that tells employees not to do anything that invokes the Run command.

Microsoft described the tactic in a post on X this week, saying what makes this campaign notable are the post-compromise outcomes. In one case, several Windows Terminal/PowerShell instances are opened that ultimately launch another Powershell process responsible for decoding embedded hex commands.

The decoded PowerShell script then downloads a legitimate but renamed 7-Zip binary and saves it with a randomized file name, along with a zipped payload. The renamed archive utility extracts and runs the malware, which executes a multi-stage attack chain that includes retrieval of additional payloads, establishment of persistence through scheduled tasks, defense evasion through Microsoft Defender exclusions, and exfiltration of stolen machine and network data.

In a second attack path, the victim pastes a hex-encoded, XOR-compressed command into Windows Terminal. This command downloads a randomly named batch file to AppDataLocal that is then invoked through cmd.exe to write a VBScript to %Temp%. The batch script is executed via cmd.exe with the /launched command-line argument, and is then executed again through MSBuild.exe, resulting in LOLBin abuse. The script connects to Crypto Blockchain RPC endpoints, indicating etherhiding technique, and also performs QueueUserAPC()-based code injection into chrome.exe and msedge.exe processes to harvest web and login data.

But is this really new?

However, a number of experts quickly added comments to the Microsoft post complaining that the Windows + X tactic isn’t new.

 Roger Grimes, CISO advisor at awareness training provider KnowBe4, agreed.

“ClickFix attacks using Win+X instead of Win+R have been around for at least six months, if not a year or more,” he said in an email. “What they are doing during execution is not new.”

Regardless, he added, the continuing and increasing use of ClickFix attacks means infosec leaders still need to educate employees about them.

“We’ve long had training content around this type of attack. Users need to know that nothing legitimate will ever ask them to do Win+ whatever keys to paste gobblygook to run code. Anything that does that should simply not be performed,” he said.

“And all Windows computers should already be restricted so that random, unsigned (not signed by the organization), PowerShell commands should not be allowed. Every organization and machine should already have the following PowerShell command setting: ‘Set-ExecutionPolicy Restricted -Force‘ enabled. If not, your organization’s cybersecurity risk is far higher than it needs to be.” 

Payload chain ‘built to last’

Joshua Roback, principal security solution architect at Swimlane, noted the campaign outlined by Microsoft pushes the ClickFix playbook into more trusted, everyday workflows by getting users to run pasted command content inside legitimate Windows tooling that feels routine and safe. That matters, he said, because it slips past the usual mental red flags people associate with sketchy popups, and it can also dodge some of the controls and detections that security teams have tuned to the more obvious ClickFix patterns.

The payload chain is also more built to last than previous variants, he added. Instead of a quick one-and-done retrieval trick, it uses a more layered delivery and persistence approach that helps it blend in, stick around longer, and quietly escalate the damage once it lands. One path adds an additional indirection layer that helps the attacker’s infrastructure blend in and stay reachable, which can make takedowns and straightforward blocking a lot less effective.

For CISOs, he said, the message to employees has to be clear. “Use a simple rule of thumb: never run pasted commands, never approve unexpected sign-ins, and report all incidents through official company support channels.”

How ClickFix works

ClickFix phishing campaigns began in 2024, Microsoft noted in a security blog last year that detailed the campaign’s tactics and indicators of compromise. The attack starts with an employee being asked to click on a link or open an attachment, often with a payment or invoice theme, within an email or text. To evade defenses looking to stop employees downloading unapproved files, the user is told in a popup box to “verify the download” by opening a Run dialog and copying and pasting something into it.

The goal is to get the unwitting victim to download malware such as infostealers (usually LummaStealer), remote access tools such as Xworm, AsyncRAT, NetSupport, and SectopRAT; loaders like Latrodectus and MintsLoader; and rootkits.

In the blog, Microsoft provides tips to defenders for fighting ClickFix attacks, including recommending they enable PowerShell script block logging to detect and analyze obfuscated or encoded commands, which would provide visibility into malicious script execution that might otherwise evade traditional logging.

This article originally appeared on CSOonline.

Source:: Computer World

As more European organizations reconsider their reliance on US technology suppliers amid rising geopolitical and trade tensions, public sector organizations are leading the way in a potential shift to local tech providers. 

The German state of Schleswig-Holstein is moving tens of thousands of employees from Microsoft apps Office, Windows and Exchange to open-source alternatives, for example, while Denmarks’ Ministry of Digitalization has begun to phase out Office 365 in favor of LibreOffice. The French government recently announced plans to swap Microsoft Teams and Zoom for its own video conferencing platform for 200,000 employees – potentially saving €2 million a year in licensing costs.

These are exceptions, however, and the European public sector is still heavily reliant on US suppliers. 

The German federal government spends €481 million on Microsoft licenses annually, a figure revealed in a response to a recent written inquiry by Rebecca Lenhard, a member of German Parliament representing the Green Party. That’s only the spending at a federal level, with the total amount across German states “certainly even higher,” said Lenhard, speaking during a roundtable discussion hosted by German open source software vendor, Nextcloud, this week. “It’s a lot of money we are investing in one company that we are completely dependent on.”

The recent surge in interest around European digital sovereignty is driven by a desire to reduce the use of non-European suppliers.  

Not all see it as a positive development. Several tech leaders recently voiced concerns about digital sovereignty strategies, which they claim could increase business costs and slow user adoption of digital technologies in the region, hampering productivity and competitiveness.

Still, the notion of digital sovereignty continues to gain traction among European organizations, a growing number of which plan to increase cloud computing spend with local providers. Sovereign cloud infrastructure-as-a-service revenues are set to triple by the end of 2027, according to Gartner. 

The topic has become a strategic focus at a national government and EU level. Last  November, French and German leaders pledged to increase the use of open-source technologies among government organizations as part of that push. 

Open-source software should be the “default” across Germany’s public sector, said Lenhard, a member of the Bundestag’s Committee on Digital Transformation and Government Modernization.

“Public procurement is one of the critical points where we have to change,” said Kim van Sparrentak, a Dutch member of the European Parliament representing Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance. A “buy European” approach should be favored where possible, said van Sparrentak, “not as prerequisite for all technologies — because it’s maybe not possible yet — but for the critical aspects of government at least.” 

The state can also serve as a “valuable anchor client,” said Lenhard, supporting the growth of a wider ecosystem of European tech and service providers, which is currently dwarfed by the US tech sector. This would give businesses the ability to “plan demand better, [and] invest the money in their products so they become better and better,” she said.

A 2025 report by Cigref — a non-profit that represents French businesses and public administrations — estimates that European organizations spend a total €265 billion on US software and service each year. 

Mirko Boehm, senior director for Community Development at the Linux Foundation Europe, said policy makers should “require that every major IT procurement includes an assessment of strategic dependency.

“If a ministry in one of the member states signs a contract with a hyperscaler, that’s not just an IT decision, it’s an industrial policy decision, a skills development decision, a technology transfer decision, and a digital sovereignty decision,” said Boehm. “These are all costs that are currently not considered in procurement.”

Every euro invested in public sector procurement generates multiples more in subsequent economic activity, said Boeh, a benefit that Europe misses out on by purchasing most of its technologies from US tech companies. 

“When European governments, for example, purchase from non-European hyperscalers, that multiplier effect builds in their innovation ecosystem — not in ours,” said Boehm. “The jobs, the supplier networks, the research and development investments, the tax base — all of that compounds somewhere else.”

Boehm said open-source technologies can provide an alternative for European organizations to “retain this econonic multiplier.

“The dependency that we currently see is basically a choice, a choice we made. It’s not an inevitability,” he said. “We have the options…. We need a political will.”

Source:: Computer World

By Vikhyaat Vivek Researchers developed a super tiny thermometer that sits directly on a chip could monitor temperature changes and potentially improve processor performance.
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By Shikhar Mehrotra Two companies, four earbuds, and a price gap that’s quietly disappeared. Samsung and Apple are closer than they’ve ever been — and further apart in ways that will matter differently depending on who you are.
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By Manisha Priyadarshini Researchers in Japan have built an AI projector system that beams makeup onto your face based on the mood you describe, turning phrases like “night rose” into real color combinations.
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A new iPhone-hacking exploit has exposed the uncomfortable truth that when governments build offensive attacks, they eventually come for all of us.

Revealed by Google’s Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) and iVerify, the Coruna exploit can compromise iPhones running iOS 13 through to iOS 17.2.1, though Apple has secured its systems against this threat in iOS 26.

What Coruna does

Coruna is dangerous and can hijack any iOS device just when a user visits a website. Its existence is a perfect illustration of how weaponized hacking tools do nothing to make us safer, and everything to make people more insecure.

Coruna can steal data and cryptocurrency information, expose personal information, and more. Once hacked, the exploit will install software with root access that can run additional modules and collect text snippets from the device. 

It’s a complex set of tools that includes five exploit chains and 23 vulnerabilities that seem to have been designed to infiltrate devices and exfiltrate sensitive data. Everything about the kit screams of it being built by a highly resourced nation-state hacking organization.

It’s so sophisticated it even recognizes when a device is in Lockdown Mode, at which point it ceases its attack.

Made in the USA?

The code is polished, the tools comprehensive, and it uses exploitation methods and security avoidance tricks the team hadn’t come across before. That’s why it looks like a well-financed exploit, one that first appeared in use by surveillance-as-a-service mercenary firms, later by a Russian espionage group, then by a Chinese group. Wired warns that it “may have been originally created by a US contractor and sold to the American government.” 

In other words, it’s a perfect illustration of how highly sophisticated attacks developed for nation-state use can, do, and indeed already are falling into the hands of criminals. 

The experts at iVerify who also studied the exploit warn: “Coruna is one of the most significant examples we’ve observed of sophisticated spyware-grade capabilities proliferating from commercial surveillance vendors into the hands of nation-state actors and ultimately mass-scale criminal operations. 

The attack really demonstrates that the only way we can effectively protect our digital world is to ensure that everyone in that world is as safe as everybody else. 

There’s no such thing as a safe hack, no such thing as a controllable zero-day attack, no such thing as a safe backdoor.

There are no safe back doors

When it comes to Coruna, experts warn that thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of iPhones might already have fallen victim since it is so effective and already so widely proliferated. That’s a particular threat given that 26% of all iPhones introduced since 2022 are not yet running iOS 26, which means they aren’t yet protected against the attack.

“The mobile threat landscape is not standing still, and the tools once reserved for targeting heads of state are now being deployed against ordinary iPhone users,” iVerify warned.

This was inevitable. Sophisticated attacking tools used by state hackers or those adjacent to those hackers will always slip into wider use eventually; even the NSO Group’s earliest Pegasus software exploits are allegedly now available for sale on the dark web. 

Those high-value attacks were originally used against human rights activists and journalists in the Middle East and Europe. While such exploits are usually described as being so sophisticated and costly to launch most of us need not fear them, the truth is that when those attacks proliferate, they do threaten everyone.

Come together

We know Apple is attempting to stay ahead in the security race. It doubled its available security bounty just last year, and its recently introduced Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE) protection should help secure its platforms against attacks of this kind.

But security protection is never perfect, humans remain the weakest link, and ordinary users seem increasingly likely to be exposed to sophisticated attacks as they reach down the food chain.

Coruna may have been in use for years. But if you care about security, whoever it was who first built these attacks should have decided to report the vulnerability to Apple, not weaponize it to make a buck. If we work together, we make things safer. If we fail to find some way to get along, then no one will be safe — to the detriment of all.

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Source:: Computer World

By Varun Mirchandani Amazon has introduced Amazon Connect Health, an AI platform designed to automate healthcare tasks like appointment scheduling, patient verification, and medical documentation.
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Anthropic is attempting to renegotiate the terms of its AI contract with the US Department of Defense (DoD). CEO Dario Amodei has been in meetings with Emil Michael, the US under-secretary of defense for research and engineering, to iron out contractual disagreements that led the DoD to mark Anthropic as a supply-chain risk, the Financial Times cited sources as saying.

The disagreements were specifically about clauses the DoD wanted in the contract that would allow it to use Anthropic’s systems to carry out mass domestic surveillance and build autonomous weapons systems, both of which are ethical red lines that Anthropic is not prepared to cross.

The latest renegotiation push appears to stem from Amodei’s recent discussions with investors and backers including Amazon, Nvidia, Lightspeed, and Iconiq, to find a path to de-escalate tensions with the DoD, Reuters reported citing sources familiar with the matter.

The sources also told Reuters that some of Anthropic’s investors were also reaching out to their contacts in Washington to lobby in favor of the model provider.

Separately, the Information Technology Industry Council, an industry group representing major technology companies including Amazon, Nvidia, Apple and OpenAI, has also written to US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth expressing concern over the fact that the department would go to the extent of marking a US company with the supply-chain risk label over a procurement dispute.

The letter, Reuters reported, even goes to the extent of suggesting that that the move could restrict the government’s access to best-in-class technologies from American firms serving agencies across the federal government.

Rather, the Council suggested that the department should take a continued negotiation approach to solving the issue or select another vendor as the label of supply-chain risk is usually reserved for companies that have been marked as foreign adversaries.

Contractual and technical compromises could save the deal

While tensions have escalated, analysts and legal experts say Amodei’s latest push to renegotiate the contract could offer a pathway for both sides to find common ground.

“A workable compromise is origin (of the data) and use-based allowing bulk analysis where the inputs are foreign signals intelligence, while contractually barring use of Anthropic’s systems to process commercially acquired data of US citizens without an Article III warrant, backed by clear covenants and oversight mechanisms,” said Anandaday Misshra, managing partner of Amlegals, a law firm specializing in AI regulatory intelligence and data protection.

This could work, Misshra noted, as the core dispute is over acquisition of “bulk” data.

While DoD wants an “all lawful purposes” standard, including “analysis of bulk acquired data,” which in practice covers large volumes of commercially available information (CAI), such as US citizens’ location data purchased without warrants under the Third‑Party Doctrine, Anthropic reasonably views model‑driven processing of such data as de facto domestic surveillance, Misshra added.

Echoing Misshra, Greyhound Research chief analyst Sanchit Vir Gogia said the contract language could include provisions for governing mechanisms that provide measurable oversight in the form of immutable audit logs that capture prompts and outputs and periodic compliance reviews that evaluate how models are being used in operational systems.

Analysts also see a resolution in how Anthropic’s models are ultimately deployed within the DoD.

One possible compromise could involve deploying specialized versions of frontier models in tightly controlled environments for specific national security tasks, Gogia said.

Additionally, other controls could include enforcing policy at a gateway layer where requests are screened through identity checks, role-based permissions, and predefined rules before reaching the model, allowing Anthropic to retain safeguards while governments maintain operational oversight, Gogia added.

Similarly, Pareekh Jain, principal analyst at Pareekh Consulting, said that the technical deployment architecture could include inclusion of third-party Red Teams, which could be used to periodically check whether the implemented polices and safeguards continue to be effective as models evolve.

OpenAI is renegotiating as well

OpenAI, which moved quickly to secure a contract with the DoD after Anthropic was effectively barred last week, is also looking to revise the terms of its agreement.

CEO Sam Altman said in a post on X that the deal had been “rushed” and needed to be reworked following criticism online and reports of users uninstalling ChatGPT.

Earlier, OpenAI had published a blog post suggesting its arrangement with the DoD included contractual provisions preventing the use of its models for weapons systems or mass domestic surveillance in the US, positioning the agreement as more restrictive than the one under discussion with Anthropic.

Continuing its efforts to manage the optics around the entire imbroglio, OpenAI has sought to emphasize that its guardrails align with those of Anthropic.

Its executive, Connie LaRossa, who looks after national policy, told delegates at a conference in California on Wednesday that her company shared the same ethical red lines as Anthropic and was working to support efforts to have Anthropic’s supply-chain risk designation removed, Reuters reported.

Advantage Anthropic?

However, if Anthropic and the DoD fail to reach a deal, the legal advantage may remain firmly with the former, Misshra said.

“Anthropic has meaningful legal leverage. A $200 million engagement of this type is likely structured as an Other Transaction Authority (OTA) agreement, which is designed to preserve commercial terms, including Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policies,” Misshra said.

“The government cannot simply import Federal Acquisition Regulation “Changes” mechanisms to rewrite those terms without courting material breach,” Misshra noted, adding that this can be seen as statutory overreach.

“Under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the government must prove Anthropic actually poses a national security risk. Rejecting a contract clause on domestic surveillance doesn’t meet that bar,” Misshra explained.

Anthropic’s board, as a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation, has a statutory duty to advance its stated AI safety public benefit, he said: “Authorizing effectively unrestricted military use, especially for US citizens’ surveillance, would be difficult to reconcile with that duty”.

Capitulation could set a risky precedent for AI vendors

If Anthropic does give in to the DoD’s demands, especially given Amodei’s public refusal until now to cross his company’s ethical red lines, it could set a risky precedent for the company and its peers, analysts and experts say.

“If Anthropic capitulates, it will set a precedent that commercial Acceptable Use Policies are effectively waivable under government pressure. DoD would be seen as free to accept ethical guardrails to access frontier capabilities, then later use tools like supply‑chain risk designations to strip those limits,” Misshra said.

“That dynamic incentivizes a race to the bottom, favoring contractors willing to abandon internal safety and human‑rights policies. For a company expressly structured around responsible AI, helping to establish that precedent is both strategically and legally risky,” Misshra added.

Capitulation to the US government could also risk the company’s brand image and erode the company’s credibility with independent users and developers who recently migrated from ChatGPT partly because of trust in Anthropic’s stated values, said Jain.

On the commercial side, Jain added, full concession to the US DoD without strong governance provisions could hurt Anthropic’s enterprise positioning, especially with European clients who are increasingly sensitive to military AI entanglement.

In fact, the European Policy Centre, an independent think tank, has already started raising concerns about the implications for European citizens as artificial intelligence becomes more deeply integrated into surveillance systems and military technologies.

In a blog post addressed to policymakers in the European Union, the think tank pointed to a recent resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that calls on states to ensure human oversight and accountability in the development and deployment of military AI systems.

The resolution urges governments to put in place safeguards to ensure that AI-enabled systems used in defense or security contexts remain consistent with international law, including humanitarian and human rights obligations.

Jitse Goutbeek, an AI Fellow at the Europe’s Political Economy team at the EPC, wrote that such international commitments are particularly important as governments begin integrating frontier AI models into intelligence, surveillance, and defense planning.

Further, Goutbeek argued that procurement decisions and defense partnerships should increasingly take these commitments into account, suggesting that European governments may need clearer assurances from technology vendors and defense agencies about how human oversight and operational safeguards will be maintained when AI systems are deployed in sensitive national security environments.

Source:: Computer World

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