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Astaroth Banking Trojan Abuses GitHub to Remain Operational After Takedowns

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a new campaign that delivers the Astaroth banking trojan that employs GitHub as a backbone for its operations to stay resilient in the face of infrastructure takedowns.

“Instead of relying solely on traditional command-and-control (C2) servers that can be taken down, these attackers are leveraging GitHub repositories to host malware configurations,” McAfee Labs researchers Harshil Patel and Prabudh Chakravorty said in a report.

“When law enforcement or security researchers shut down their C2 infrastructure, Astaroth simply pulls fresh configurations from GitHub and keeps running.”

Massive multi-country botnet targets RDP services in the US

A large-scale botnet is targeting Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) services in the United States from more than 100,000 IP addresses.

The campaign started on October 8 and based on the source of the IPs, researchers believe the attacks are launched by a multi-country botnet.

RDP is a network protocol that enables remote connection and control of Windows systems. It is typically used by administrators, helpdesk staff, and remote workers.

Google Chrome to revoke browser notifications for inactive sites

Google is updating the Chrome web browser to automatically revoke notification permissions for websites that haven’t been visited recently, to reduce alert overload.

While Google Chrome’s Safety Check tool already removes access to other permissions, such as location and camera, this new feature will extend this functionality to notifications on both desktop and Android versions of the browser.

The company said the new feature is designed to target sites that send frequent notifications that get little to no user interaction. According to Chrome product manager Archit Agarwal, although users receive a high volume of alerts, fewer than 1% of these notifications actually generate any engagement.

Microsoft investigates outage affecting Microsoft 365 apps

Microsoft is investigating an ongoing incident that is preventing some customers from accessing Microsoft 365 applications.

While the company has yet to share which regions are currently affected by this ongoing issue, it has been tagged as an incident in the admin center, a designation typically used for service issues with noticeable user impact.

According to a service alert seen by BleepingComputer, Redmond is currently reviewing telemetry data to discover the root cause and develop a fix.

Former Scripps Research assistant professor awarded 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

How very cool!

Shimon Sakaguchi is honored for his revolutionary discovery of regulatory T cells—revealing how “immune tolerance” impacts autoimmune diseases, cancer and more.

LA JOLLA, CA— Former Scripps Research assistant professor Shimon Sakaguchi has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his groundbreaking discovery of peripheral immune tolerance, a mechanism of the immune system that prevents autoimmune diseases and sheds light on how cancer escapes immune detection.

Sakaguchi, who was an assistant professor at Scripps Research from 1989 to the prize with Mary E. Brunkow of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle and Fred Ramsdell of Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco. They are being recognized for their contributions to uncovering several key functions of the immune system, according to the Nobel Prize committee.

Drip by drip: Research provides first complete mathematical description of stalagmite shapes

Deep inside caves, water dripping from the ceiling creates one of nature’s most iconic formations: stalagmites. These pillars of calcite, ranging from centimeters to many meters in height, rise from the cave floor as drip after drip of mineral-rich water deposits a tiny layer of stone.

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