The Trump administration is recruiting private security firms to conduct federal government-authorized operations, including cyberattacks, against overseas-based criminal organizations that commit hacks on US persons, organizations, or government entities. In a National Security Presidential Memorandum issued Thursday, US President Donald Trump directed the National Coordination Center (NCC), which operates under the Homeland Security Task Force, to develop a program for conducting specific cyber operations that combat foreign transnational criminal organizations…

Ukrainian drone teams demolished a brigade of US Army tanks and armored vehicles during a live war game held this year—but the US soldiers were lucky enough to get “respawn” attempts while learning from the experience. The semiannual military exercise, called Combined Resolve, gave the US military a firsthand taste of how modern drone warfare has evolved on the battlefields of Ukraine. The Ukrainian drone operators participating in the exercise…

Smart pet-feeder company Petlibro suffered an outage on Tuesday, giving users a harsh reminder of the risks of relying on smart devices. Petlibro makes pet feeders that connect to Wi-Fi and, for setup with Petlibro’s mobile companion app, Bluetooth. Users can set the feeders to automatically dispense food at scheduled times, which is handy for pet care when the owner is out of the home. In a statement to The…

On Monday, passengers aboard Delta flight 591 going from Las Vegas to Atlanta allegedly spoofed the onboard Wi-Fi, raising the attention of federal law enforcement. The incident came one day after the DEF CON security conference concluded in Las Vegas and was first described on social media accounts that follow publicly available air-to-ground messages, known as ACARS. According to the “ACARS Drama” account, a message sent by pilots from the…

Terabytes worth of credentials, many belonging to the world’s biggest and most sensitive organizations, have been exposed in a supply-chain attack on LiteLLM, an open source tool that streamlines AI-driven software development. Microsoft, Amazon, Cisco, Samsung, and Salesforce are only a handful of the entities whose access secrets were exposed. The revelation was posted on Tuesday and Wednesday by security firms CloudSEK and Hudson Rock. CloudSEK said it found cloud…

Twitch now lets users opt out of Amazon’s use of content from their channels to train Amazon’s “generative AI content models.” The change, announced today, comes more than two years after a company executive confirmed that Amazon was using Twitch content for AI training. In an updated support page, Twitch confirms that users must opt out if they don’t want their “streams, VODs, clips, stream chats, and pictures and text…

Hundreds of US government drones have switched from border surveillance to a different surveillance mission this summer—looking for signs of screwworm infestations in wild animals and livestock herds. The flesh-eating New World Screwworm is the parasitic larva that emerges from eggs laid by flies in the open wounds or body openings of warm-blooded animals and humans, with untreated cases potentially leading to severe injury or death. Since the first screwworm…

Romanian army divers used explosives to destroy two Russian-made drones found floating in the Black Sea near Romania’s largest natural gas project, according to the NATO member country’s defense minister. Defense Minister Radu Miruță posted a Facebook video supposedly showing one of the drones being blown up in the water by explosive ordnance disposal divers of the Romanian army on August 11, as reported by Reuters and other news outlets….

Google’s Chrome browser has added a new feature that could go a long way in preventing a form of account takeover that’s grown increasingly common as users adopt two-factor authentication, passkeys, and similar protections. The new Chrome protection is known as device-bound session credentials (DBSCs). The measure stores a unique encryption key in a silicon-resident fortress that’s built into the device running the browser. On Windows machines, this fortress is…

In 2018, 20,000 Google employees worldwide made headlines when they staged a walkout to protest how the company had handled sexual misconduct allegations against key corporate executives, among other grievances. One of the organizers was Claire Stapleton, a communications specialist whose distinctive voice and ability to channel the corporate ethos had once earned her the internal moniker “Bard of Google.” Six months later, a disillusioned Stapleton resigned, claiming she had…