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Malicious Android apps on Google Play downloaded 42 million times

Hundreds of malicious Android apps on Google Play were downloaded more than 40 million times between June 2024 and May 2025, notes a report from cloud security company Zscaler.

During the same period, the company observed a 67% year-over-year growth in malware targeting mobile devices, with spyware and banking trojans being a prevalent risk.

Telemetry data shows that threat actors are shifting from traditional card fraud to exploiting mobile payments using phishing, smishing, SIM-swapping, and payment scams.

Russian hackers abuse Hyper-V to hide malware in Linux VMs

The Russian hacker group Curly COMrades is abusing Microsoft Hyper-V in Windows to bypass endpoint detection and response solutions by creating a hidden Alpine Linux-based virtual machine to run malware.

Inside the virtual environment, the threat actor hosted its custom tools, the CurlyShell reverse shell and the CurlCat reverse proxy, which enabled operational stealth and communication.

Curly COMrades is a cyber-espionage threat group believed to be active since mid-2024. Its activities are closely aligned with Russian geopolitical interests.

Data breach at major Swedish software supplier impacts 1.5 million

The Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection (IMY) is investigating a cyberattack on IT systems supplier Miljödata that exposed data belonging to 1.5 million people.

Miljödata is an IT systems supplier for roughly 80% of Sweden’s municipalities. The company disclosed the incident on August 25, saying that the attackers stole data and demanded 1.5 Bitcoin to not leak it.

The attack caused operational disruptions that affected citizens in multiple regions in the country, including Halland, Gotland, Skellefteå, Kalmar, Karlstad, and Mönsterås.

PEGATRON Chooses Georgetown, Texas for First U.S. Manufacturing Facility

PEGATRON’s arrival marks a turning point not only for Georgetown, but for the broader Central Texas innovation corridor. The Taiwan-based technology giant, known for designing and manufacturing everything from laptops to automotive electronics, already plays a quiet but massive role in powering many of the world’s best-known tech brands.

According to PEGATRON Corporation, their focus on smart manufacturing and artificial intelligence solutions has made them one of the world’s top players in electronics and computing systems.

When Hello Georgetown first reported PEGATRON’s interest in a U.S. facility earlier this year, the discussion centered on shifting global supply chains and the growing desire to bring advanced production closer to U.S. customers. That conversation has now become reality.

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LLM-Based Multi-Agent System for Simulating and Analyzing Marketing and Consumer Behavior

Simulating consumer decision-making is vital for designing and evaluating marketing strategies before costly real-world deployment. However, post-event analyses and rule-based agent-based models (ABMs) struggle to capture the complexity of human behavior and social interaction. We introduce an LLM-powered multi-agent simulation framework that models consumer decisions and social dynamics. Building on recent advances in large language model simulation in a sandbox environment, our framework enables generative agents to interact, express internal reasoning, form habits, and make purchasing decisions without predefined rules. In a price-discount marketing scenario, the system delivers actionable strategy-testing outcomes and reveals emergent social patterns beyond the reach of conventional methods.

Engineers achieve record 31% efficiency in red quantum LEDs for enhanced display color and brightness

A research team led by the School of Engineering of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has made significant advances in quantum rod light-emitting diodes (QR-LEDs), setting record-high efficiency level for red QR-LEDs. This innovation is poised to revolutionize next-generation display and lighting technologies, offering smartphone and television users a vibrant and enhanced visual experience. The research is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

LEDs have been widely used in for decades. Recent developments in have given rise to quantum dot LEDs (QD-LEDs) and QR-LEDs. QD-LEDs offer superior color purity (color vividness) and higher brightness compared to current mainstream LEDs. However, outcoupling efficiency has now become the primary obstacle, as it sets a fundamental ceiling for external quantum efficiency (EQE), thereby hindering any further performance improvements.

Quantum rods, on which QR-LEDs are based, are a type of elongated anisotropic nanocrystals with unique optical properties that can be engineered to optimize the light emission direction and ultimately improve outcoupling efficiency. However, QR-LEDs encounter two significant technical challenges: first, the ratio of emitted to absorbed photons (photoluminescence quantum yield) is relatively low after the material absorbs photons; second, there is a substantial leakage current due to poor thin-film quality.

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