A Yale-led study uncovered unexpected communication between retinal visual pathways that were thought to operate separately.
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Unpatchable ‘usbliter8’ Exploit Breaks Apple A12 and A13 SecureROM Boot Chain
Security researchers at Paradigm Shift have published a working exploit, dubbed usbliter8, that achieves arbitrary code execution inside the SecureROM of Apple’s A12 and A13 chips.
That code is burned into the silicon at manufacture. No software update can reach it. Affected devices will carry this flaw for as long as they stay in use.
This is not a remote attack. It requires physical possession of the device, which must be in DFU mode and connected via USB to a dedicated RP2350-based microcontroller board. With that setup, the exploit finishes in under two seconds, before Apple’s signed boot chain loads.
Klue OAuth breach victim list grows as Icarus hackers claim attack
Market intelligence platform Klue has publicly confirmed a recent security incident that allowed threat actors to steal OAuth tokens used to connect to customers’ Salesforce environments, as the new “Icarus” extortion group publicly claims the attack.
The disclosure comes after cybersecurity firms Huntress and ReliaQuest detailed how attackers abused compromised Klue Battlecards integrations to steal Salesforce CRM data from multiple organizations.
In a statement published this week, Klue CEO Jason Smith confirmed that the company discovered unauthorized activity on June 12 affecting part of Klue’s integration infrastructure.
Hackers exploit info disclosure bug in Gravity SMTP WordPress plugin
Threat actors are exploiting an unauthenticated information disclosure vulnerability in the WordPress plugin Gravity SMTP, active on 100,000 sites.
The flaw is tracked as CVE-2026–4020 and received a medium severity rating. It affects all versions of the plugin from 2.1.4 and older and has been addressed in version 2.1.5, released on March 17.
WordPress security company Defiant is warning that hackers are actively exploiting the vulnerability. The company’s Wordfence firewall has blocked more than 17 million attempts against protected customers.
Targeting enzyme could block cancer spread to brain with fewer side effects
A new study has identified a more precise and effective way to prevent cancer from spreading to the brain. The paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, details the development of novel drug candidates that target a key enzyme implicated in the spread of lung, breast, skin and other cancers to the brain. The work builds on a promising new therapeutic strategy first reported by the same group of researchers last year.
The new drug candidates are designed to intercept rogue cancer cells before they depart from primary tumors and ultimately travel to the brain.
Lead author Sheila Singh, based at both King’s College London and McMaster University, says this type of cancer—called metastatic brain cancer—is the most common type of brain tumor in adults and comes with an extremely grim outlook, with 90% of patients dying within one year of diagnosis.
These tiny genetic fragments may be critical for telling a brain when to rest
The altered presence of tiny fragments of neuronal genes, called microexons, causes hyperarousal in zebrafish. This is the main conclusion of an international study led by Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) and the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG). An abnormal pattern of neural microexon presence leads to a hyperarousal state characterized by heightened neural activity and insomnia, commonly associated with stress but also with neurodevelopmental disorders.
Arousal regulation is highly conserved in evolution. Therefore, this finding could help researchers understand the mechanism underlying some human neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia, conditions associated with microexon mutations.
To survive, animals need to be ready to react to external and internal stimuli. This activation of the central nervous system, arousal, is highly conserved throughout the animal kingdom.