Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 20

The threat actor known as Paper Werewolf has been observed exclusively targeting Russian entities with a new implant called PowerModul.

The activity, which took place between July and December 2024, singled out organizations in the mass media, telecommunications, construction, government entities, and energy sectors, Kaspersky said in a new report published Thursday.

Paper Werewolf, also known as GOFFEE, is assessed to have conducted at least seven campaigns since 2022, according to BI.ZONE, with the attacks mainly aimed at government, energy, financial, media, and other organizations.

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The clone websites identified by DTI include a carousel of images that, when clicked, download a malicious APK file onto the user’s device. The package file acts as a dropper to install a second embedded APK payload via the DialogInterface. OnClickListener interface that allows for the execution of the SpyNote malware when an item in a dialog box is clicked.

“Upon installation, it aggressively requests numerous intrusive permissions, gaining extensive control over the compromised device,” DTI said.

“This control allows for the theft of sensitive data such as SMS messages, contacts, call logs, location information, and files. SpyNote also boasts significant remote access capabilities, including camera and microphone activation, call manipulation, and arbitrary command execution.”

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Microsoft is testing a new Defender for Endpoint capability that will block traffic to and from undiscovered endpoints to thwart attackers’ lateral network movement attempts.

As the company revealed earlier this week, this is achieved by containing the IP addresses of devices that have yet to be discovered or onboarded to Defender for Endpoint.

Redmond says the new feature will prevent threat actors from spreading to other non-compromised devices by blocking incoming and outgoing communication with devices using contained IP addresses.

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Large Reasoning Models like DeepSeek-R1 mark a fundamental shift in how LLMs approach complex problems. Instead of directly producing an answer for a given input, DeepSeek-R1 creates detailed multi-step reasoning chains, seemingly ‘thinking’ about a problem before providing an answer. This reasoning process is publicly available to the user, creating endless opportunities for studying the reasoning behaviour of the model and opening up the field of Starting from a taxonomy of DeepSeek-R1’s basic building blocks of reasoning, our analyses on DeepSeek-R1 investigate the impact and controllability of thought length, management of long or confusing contexts, cultural and safety concerns, and the status of DeepSeek-R1 vis-à-vis cognitive phenomena, such as human-like language processing and world modelling. Our findings paint a nuanced picture. Notably, we show DeepSeek-R1 has a ‘sweet spot’ of reasoning, where extra inference time can impair model performance. Furthermore, we find a tendency for DeepSeek-R1 to persistently ruminate on previously explored problem formulations, obstructing further exploration. We also note strong safety vulnerabilities of DeepSeek-R1 compared to its non-reasoning counterpart, which can also compromise safety-aligned LLMs.

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Artificial Intelligence, particularly Generative AI, is making a significant impact on India’s insurance industry in 2025, delivering productivity improvements of over 30 per cent, according to a new report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) released on Friday.

The report highlights that insurers leveraging AI in underwriting are witnessing efficiency gains of up to 36 per cent, driven by improved use of both structured and unstructured data. In customer service, AI-enabled knowledge assistants have enhanced productivity by more than 30 per cent, while simultaneously raising service quality standards.

AI is also strengthening claims processing. The report notes that up to 70 per cent of straightforward claims are now being resolved in real-time using AI, reducing processing costs by 30–50 per cent and significantly improving the customer experience.

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Pediatric neuroimmune disorders comprise a heterogeneous group of immune-mediated CNS inflammatory conditions. Some, such as multiple sclerosis, are well defined by validated diagnostic criteria. Others, such as anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, can be diagnosed with detection of specific autoantibodies. This review addresses neuroimmune disorders that neither feature a diagnosis-defining autoantibody nor meet criteria for a distinct clinicopathologic entity. A broad differential in these cases should include CNS infection, noninflammatory genetic disorders, toxic exposures, metabolic disturbances, and primary psychiatric disorders. Neuroimmune considerations addressed in this review include seronegative autoimmune encephalitis, seronegative demyelinating disorders such as neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder, and genetic disorders of immune dysregulation or secondary neuroinflammation.

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Depression among young people (aged 18–29 years) transitioning to adulthood is becoming more widespread. Knowing which factors in which systems co-enable resilience to depression is crucial, but there is no comprehensive synthesis of the physiological, psychological, social, economic, institutional, cultural, and environmental system factors associated with no or minimal emerging adult depression, or combinations of these factors. We have therefore conducted a preregistered systematic review (Prospero, CRD42023440153).

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STROKE: Hypoxia induces neuronal release of CircOGDH in small extracellular vesicles to interact with endothelial cells for enhancing blood-brain barrier repair during acute ischemic stroke.

BACKGROUND: Acute ischemic stroke disrupts communication between neurons and blood vessels in penumbral areas. How neurons and blood vessels cooperate to achieve blood-brain barrier repair remains unclear. Here, we reveal crosstalk between ischemic penumbral neurons and endothelial cells (ECs) mediated by circular RNA originating from oxoglutarate dehydrogenase (CircOGDH). METHODS: We analyzed clinical data from patients with acute ischemic stroke to explore the relationship between CircOGDH levels and hemorrhagic transformation events. In addition, a middle cerebral artery occlusion and reperfusion mouse model with neuronal CircOGDH suppression was used to assess endothelial permeability.

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The study, as reported by the Independent, outlines that rural areas can often provide roadblocks for researchers:

“Communities in remote locations or impacted by conflict and violence are difficult to access, and census enumerators often face language barriers and resistance to participation.”

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