Malicious Solidity Pro VS Code extensions steal crypto wallets, API keys, SSH keys, and developer tokens, then exfiltrate the data via Telegram.
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New CSS Attacks Can Break Webmail Defenses to Steal Passwords and Tokens
Outlook CSS techniques can spoof Microsoft sign-in and capture passwords, while Gmail image-set can trigger external requests from malicious email c
Valve notifies Steam hardware customers of a data breach
Video game publisher and digital distribution giant Valve is notifying Steam hardware customers in Europe that hackers stole their data after hacking its shipping partner, CEVA Logistics.
CEVA Logistics (a fully-owned subsidiary of the CMA CGM Group, the world’s third-largest shipping company) operates 1,000 warehouses, handled 15 million shipments last year, and reported $18.3 billion in revenues in 2025.
According to many reports on social media, affected Valve customers began receiving data breach notification emails earlier today.
New StormEncryptor ransomware used by former Medusa affiliate
A financially motivated threat actor previously associated with the Medusa ransomware operation is now deploying a new ransomware strain called StormEncryptor.
Microsoft Threat Intelligence is tracking the actor as Storm-1175 and says the recent attacks were likely preceded by exploitation of an authentication-bypass vulnerability (CVE-2026–18577) in the N-central remote monitoring and management (RMM) tool.
Storm-1175 is believed to be a China-based threat actor. It was previously linked to Medusa ransomware, targeting systems via zero-day and n-day flaws in various products, including GoAnywhere MFT, SmarterTools SmarterMail, Microsoft Exchange, Invanti Connect Secure, and JetBrains TeamCity.
Could we send a spacecraft to a black hole?
Black holes represent some of the most extreme environments in the universe. They are the sources of the strongest gravitational fields, allowing us to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity to an extent impossible with small objects. But we are also reaching the limit of what we can learn about one remotely. So, various authors have put forward ideas for how we might eventually send a probe directly to a black hole to observe it up close. One of the most vocal of those authors is Cosimo Bambi of Fudan University in Shanghai—and he recently released a paper, available as a preprint on arXiv, about what it would take to send a gram-sized probe to a nearby black hole.
Unfortunately, we do not know of any “nearby” ones—at least not yet. The closest known black hole is Gaia BH1, which is roughly 1,560 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. However, we only know Gaia BH1’s position because it has a slight gravitational pull on a nearby companion star. There are likely many more invisible black holes in our galactic neighborhood that do not have such telltale signs.
According to the paper, the Milky Way likely contains about 100 million stellar-mass black holes. That is not a typo—there are most likely hundreds of millions of black holes the size of a star floating around our galaxy. Crucially, 92% of them are isolated, without a companion star to illuminate them—meaning they would be essentially invisible because they suck up all the light directed their way. But, according to Bambi’s paper, there should be one stellar-mass black hole for roughly every 1,500 cubic parsecs (about 52,000 cubic light-years)—keep in mind that the Milky Way has an estimated volume of 150 cubic kiloparsecs.
Stretchable antenna keeps wearable health sensors in tune with human health
Wearable health monitors are designed to move with the body. But for many devices, movement creates a problem: The more a person bends, stretches, reaches or runs, the harder it can be for the device to keep a stable wireless connection. Penn State researchers and international collaborators set out to solve that problem by developing a soft, stretchable antenna that can keep working even when pulled in different directions. The work, published in Nature Communications, could help make wearable health monitors more reliable during everyday activity.
“The medical application is the top priority for us, because we see the great potential for this in monitoring human health,” said Huanyu “Larry” Cheng, the James L. Henderson Jr. Memorial Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Penn State and a corresponding author of the study.
Why stretching disrupts antennas The antenna is designed for radio frequency, or RF, communication, the broad category of wireless technology behind Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and a variety of sensors, including health monitors. Antennas not only transmit information through this wireless technology, but they can also harvest energy via RF to power a sensor or other parts of a monitoring system. Unlike a conventional rigid antenna, the new design can stretch with fabric or skin-like materials while staying close to the frequency it needs to send or receive signals or power.
Coordinating the development of heart muscle and vasculature
During development, regional dips in oxygen levels serve as a signal that triggers the coordinated growth of heart muscle and coronary vessels, according to a new study. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could point toward innovative approaches for treating cardiovascular conditions that lead to heart failure.
“The signaling pathways that direct the development of this remarkable organ are also affected in pathological conditions,” said the senior author. “Interventions that target these signals or the cells that produce them could potentially change the trajectory of disease or slow its progression.”
One of the biggest mysteries was: what drives their growth—and how is that expansion synchronized with that of the muscle tissue they serve? “Initially we thought that there would be direct crosstalk between the two,” the author said. Either the muscle secretes signals that attract developing vessels—or the vessels produce signals that promote muscle growth.
Semaglutide slows blood protein signature linked to future dementia risk
A post hoc analysis of 2,970 older SELECT participants found that semaglutide slowed worsening of a 25-protein blood signature that predicts future dementia risk. Over 104 weeks, semaglutide produced larger effects on modeled 5-year than 20-year dementia risk, but whether these biomarker changes translate into less cognitive decline or dementia remains unknown.
DESI releases biggest 2D map of the universe
Hold on to your telescopes: The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys team has released the largest-ever 2D color map of the universe. The 5.6-trillion-pixel map contains nearly 4 billion celestial objects, primarily stars and galaxies. The data is available for all to use and publicly view through the Legacy Survey Sky Viewer.
Astronomers and citizen scientists can explore the map or combine it with their own observations to better understand our universe. Researchers can search for rare phenomena like gravitational lenses, observe fleeting events like supernovae, and investigate two of physics’ biggest mysteries: dark matter, the invisible substance that accounts for most of the mass in our universe, and dark energy, the force driving our universe’s accelerating expansion.
The new map builds on earlier versions from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys that have already proved invaluable. To date, more than 1,800 science papers that reference the Legacy Surveys data have been published.