It’s the defining technology of an era. But just how artificial intelligence (AI) will end up shaping our future remains a controversial question.
For techno-optimists, who see the technology improving our lives, it heralds a future of material abundance.
That outcome is far from guaranteed. But even if AI’s technical promise is realised – and with it, once intractable problems are solved – how will that abundance be used?
A rare genetic mutation appears to make people basically invulnerable to viruses – and it could potentially be harnessed as a therapy. Researchers have now shown this surprising viral protection can be replicated in mice and hamsters.
“We have yet to find a virus that can break through the therapy’s defenses [in cell culture tests],” explains Columbia University immunologist Dusan Bogunovic, who first discovered this unusual antiviral superpower 13 years ago.
The mutation, a deficiency in interferon-stimulated gene 15 (ISG15), causes a mild yet persistent inflammation across the body. Examining patients’ immune cells revealed they’d had the usual run of encounters with flu, measles, chickenpox, and mumps, yet they’d never reported feeling particularly ill as a result.
But the latest iteration of the Noodlophile attacks exhibits notable deviation, particularly when it comes to the use of legitimate software vulnerabilities, obfuscated staging via Telegram, and dynamic payload execution.
It all starts with a phishing email that seeks to trick employees into downloading and running malicious payloads by inducing a false sense of urgency, claiming copyright violations on specific Facebook Pages. The messages originate from Gmail accounts in an effort to evade suspicion.
Present within the message is a Dropbox link that drops a ZIP or MSI installer, which, in turn, sideloads a malicious DLL using legitimate binaries associated with Haihaisoft PDF Reader to ultimately launch the obfuscated Noodlophile stealer, but not before running batch scripts to establish persistence using Windows Registry.
A state-sponsored espionage campaign is targeting foreign embassies in South Korea to deploy XenoRAT malware from malicious GitHub repositories.
According to Trellix researchers, the campaign has been running since March and is ongoing, having launched at least 19 spearphishing attacks against high-value targets.
Although infrastructure and techniques match the pllaybook of North Korean actor Kimsuky (APT43), there are signs that better match China-based operatives, the researchers say.
The source code for version 3 of the ERMAC Android banking trojan has been leaked online, exposing the internals of the malware-as-a-service platform and the operator’s infrastructure.
The code base was discovered in an open directory by Hunt.io researchers while scanning for exposed resources in March 2024.
They located an archive named Ermac 3.0.zip, which contained the malware’s code, including backend, frontend (panel), exfiltration server, deployment configurations, and the trojan’s builder and obfuscator.
A recent ruling from Germany’s Federal Supreme Court (BGH) has revived a legal battle over whether browser-based ad blockers infringe copyright, raising fears about a potential ban of the tools in the country.
The case stems from online media company Axel Springer’s lawsuit against Eyeo — the maker of the popular Adblock Plus browser extension.
Axel Springer says that ad blockers threaten its revenue generation model and frames website execution inside web browsers as a copyright violation.
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