Europol dismantled a crypto fraud syndicate laundering $540M from 5,000 victims worldwide.
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Hikvision Canada ordered to cease operations over security risks
The Canadian government has ordered Hikvision’s subsidiary in the country to cease all operations following a review that determined them to pose a national security risk.
The order was forwarded to Hikvision last Friday, and the matter was made public over the weekend by Mélanie Joly, Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry.
“Following a National Security Review under the Investment Canada Act, the Government of Canada has ordered Hikvision Canada Inc. to cease all operations in Canada and close its Canadian business,” reads the announcement.
Microsoft warns of Windows update delays due to wrong timestamp
Microsoft has confirmed a new known issue causing delivery delays for June 2025 Windows security updates due to an incorrect metadata timestamp.
As Redmond explains in recent advisory updates, this bug affects Windows 10 and Windows 11 systems in environments with quality update deferral policies that enable admins to delay update installation on managed devices.
While update deployment delays are an expected result when using such policies, the wrong timestamp for the June security updates will postpone them beyond the period specified by administrators, potentially exposing unpatched systems to attacks.
Switzerland says government data stolen in ransomware attack
The government in Switzerland is informing that sensitive information from various federal offices has been impacted by a ransomware attack at the third-party organization Radix.
The hackers have stolen data from Radix systems and later leaked it on the dark web, the Swiss government says.
The exposed data is being analyzed with the help of the country’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to determine which government agencies are impacted and to what effect.
Low-intensity brain stimulation may restore neuron health in Alzheimer’s disease
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a debilitating neurodegenerative condition that affects a significant proportion of older people worldwide. Synapses are points of communication between neural cells that are malleable to change based on our experiences. By adding, removing, strengthening, or weakening synaptic contacts, our brain encodes new events or forgets previous ones.
In AD, synaptic plasticity, the brain’s ability to regulate the strength of synaptic connections between neurons, is significantly disrupted. This worsens over time, reducing cognitive and memory functions and leading to reduced quality of life. To date, there is no effective cure for AD, and only limited treatments for managing the symptoms.
Studies have shown that repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), a noninvasive brain stimulation technique that uses electromagnetic pulses to target specific brain regions, has therapeutic potential to manage dementia and related diseases. From previous studies, we know that rTMS can promote synaptic plasticity in healthy nervous systems. Moreover, it is already used to treat certain neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric conditions. However, individual responses to rTMS for AD management are variable, and the underlying mechanisms are not clearly understood.
How efficient, multi-pathogen PCR testing could transform diagnostics
“We need diagnostic methods that are more rapid, reliable and capable of detecting multiple pathogens simultaneously,” explains Thai, who is one of the grant recipients of the 2023–24 Seegene Open Innovation Programme. “We also need to ensure that these tools are widely accessible and effectively integrated into clinical and laboratory workflows.”
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, which rose to worldwide fame during the COVID-19 pandemic, amplify tiny snippets of genetic material from pathogens in samples to levels that can be easily detected.
Seegene, a molecular diagnostics company based in Seoul, South Korea, has developed ‘syndromic multiplex PCR’ technology capable of detecting up to 14 pathogens in a single test.
Southern Ocean saltier, hotter and losing ice fast as decades-long trend unexpectedly reverses
Researchers have discovered a dramatic and unexpected shift in the Southern Ocean, with surface water salinity rising and sea ice in steep decline.
Since 2015, Antarctica has lost sea ice equal to the size of Greenland—the largest environmental shift seen anywhere on Earth in the last decades. The Southern Ocean is also getting saltier, and this unexpected change is making the problem worse.
For decades, the ocean’s surface freshened (becoming less salty), helping sea ice grow. Now, scientists say that trend has sharply reversed.