AryStinger malware has infected 4,300 Realtek RTL819X routers, using old CVEs to scan targets, tunnel traffic, and hide attacker activity.
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OpenAI Expands Daybreak With GPT-5.5-Cyber to Help Defenders Patch Security Flaws
OpenAI on Monday said it’s releasing an improved version of its GPT‑5.5‑Cyber model to trusted defenders as part of the Daybreak initiative the artificial intelligence (AI) company announced last month.
Calling GPT‑5.5‑Cyber its “strongest model yet for finding and helping patch software vulnerabilities,” OpenAI said the model can “sustain deeper analysis across large codebases” to identify security issues, validate them in a controlled environment, and develop and test patches.
In tandem, the tech upstart is releasing an update to the Codex Security plugin to speed up the process of discovering and patching vulnerabilities in existing systems, alongside preventing new vulnerabilities from entering production codebases.
WhatsApp phishing attack uses fake business docs to hack PCs
An ongoing malware campaign is targeting WhatsApp users in multiple countries with deceptive messages that push VBScript files, leading to remote system access.
The threat actor is using file names that indicate business and financial documents delivered by the victim’s contacts, whose accounts had been compromised.
By downloading and executing the malicious attachments, the recipient starts an infection chain that leads to installing the legitimate ManageEngine Endpoint Central, which is used by IT administrators to manage systems from a centralized dashboard.
Microsoft fixes AutoGen Studio flaw that enabled code execution
A vulnerability chain dubbed AutoJack in Microsoft’s AutoGen Studio interface for prototyping AI agents could let attackers manipulate an agent into executing arbitrary commands on its host system simply by visiting a malicious webpage.
AutoGen Studio is the graphical component for AutoGen, Microsoft’s open-source framework for building multi-agent AI systems. The framework allows developers to create AI agents that can collaborate with one another, use tools, browse the web, execute code, interact with APIs, and connect to external systems.
The project is very popular, with more than 59,000 stars and nearly 9,000 forks on GitHub. Microsoft notes that AutoJack’s impact was limited because the issue was addressed during development.
The Cost of Intelligence
It is awe-inspiring to reflect on the velocity of this generational shift. In an incredibly compressed timeline, AI has transitioned from a boardroom novelty into the underlying infrastructure of global enterprise labor.
We are living through a historic economic anomaly: even as raw capability scales exponentially, the unit cost of intelligence continues to plummet toward zero. The future of corporate margin expansion will not belong to those who consume the most compute, but to the strategic architects who best optimize this collapsing cost.
Yet, beneath this cognitive abundance lies a stark paradox. While token unit prices have plunged 99.7% over the last 24 months, actual enterprise AI invoices are soaring—with average budgets expanding from $1.2M to over $7M. This is the structural reality of moving from simple, episodic chatbots to multi-step, autonomous agentic workflows that incur heavy context taxes and recursive reasoning loops.
To help technology and financial leaders navigate this landscape, we just released our latest research and report: The Macroeconomics of the Hyperscale AI Market and the New Enterprise Frontier.
Stop projecting AI margins using outdated software frameworks. Read the full report at the link below to master the new rules of token economics. Let us know in the comments: Are your teams experiencing bill shock, or have you already cracked the code on dynamic model routing?
The macroeconomics of the hyperscale AI market and the new enterprise frontier.
3D photothermal design unlocks 8.5-fold higher solar evaporation for desalination and crop irrigation
The global shortage of freshwater has become a critical challenge. Conventional water treatment relies heavily on fossil fuels and associated infrastructure, which can make it unsuitable for remote and harsh regions. In contrast, solar thermal evaporation is a promising alternative, but its application is limited by material performance and production constraints.
Now, researchers from the Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Shenzhen University have developed a new three-dimensional (3D) photothermal structure that greatly improves solar evaporation efficiency.
The new structure tightly integrates polymer chains with hollow multishelled structures (HoMS), yielding a record evaporation rate of 38.14 kg m-2 h-1 —a figure 8.5 times higher than rates previously reported for two-dimensional membrane systems.
Erucamide molecule strengthens the eye’s response to damage in retinal disease
Many conditions that cause vision loss share a common feature: the gradual breakdown of the retina, the light-sensing tissue at the back of the eye. Although scientists know some of the structural changes that ensue as this damage progresses, less is understood about the molecular signals that shape how the retina copes with disease.
Now, a team at Scripps Research, in collaboration with UC San Diego and the Lowy Medical Research Institute, has found that a naturally occurring molecule called erucamide plays a role in how cells communicate in the retina. Their study, published in Nature Neuroscience, found that while erucamide levels drop as light-sensing cells known as photoreceptors begin to die, restoring the molecule activates cellular responses that support retinal stability. These findings suggest that erucamide may be part of a natural protective response in the retina and could offer a new way to slow the progression of diseases that lead to vision loss.
“The retina doesn’t simply deteriorate; in fact, it actively responds to injury,” says senior author Martin Friedlander, a professor at Scripps Research. “Our work identifies erucamide as a signaling molecule that helps coordinate that response.”