Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Eugene Mymrin/ Moment via Getty ImagesFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.ZDNET’s key takeawaysManagers were the prime targets in a single ransomware campaign.Managers often have special privileges, making them tempting targets.Training and network security are key to preventing such attacks.Ransomware attacks don’t just target specific organizations but also specific employees. Those employees are often the ones with special privileges or higher levels of access that attackers can exploit to reach confidential resources. That’s why managers often end up being in the crosshairs of such attacks.In new research, “Ransomware Moves up the Org Chart: Managers Are Prime Targets,”…

Meta has released Muse Glimmer, a 30-billion-parameter multimodal model distilled from Muse Spark. It is tuned for always-on local agent workflows, and ships under Apache 2.0. A 30B model normally needs over 55 GB of memory at full precision. Meta compresses it to roughly 4-bit, then adds block-level speculative decoding so it answers fast enough to sit inside a real agent loop. The result runs on one consumer GPU or a Mac, with no network call. Is it deployable? Yes, the weights are open under Apache 2.0. The Hugging Face collection carries BF16 weights, GGUF k-quants, ExecuTorch builds, and the…

OpenAI has flagged its upcoming AI model, Astra, for potentially reaching a ‘critical’ cybersecurity risk threshold, prompting the company to suspend internal development activities that lack newly mandated security controls. Recent internal evaluations of Astra revealed massive leaps in its agentic coding and cybersecurity abilities.  Under OpenAI’s Preparedness Framework, a model hits the ‘critical’ tier if it can autonomously build zero-day exploits against hardened, real-world systems. It also qualifies if the AI can independently design and execute end-to-end cyberattacks based on nothing but a high-level goal. The AI giant’s assessment pushes Astra past previous frontier models like GPT-5.6-Sol, which peaked…

The Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP)-110 appeared to stall at the weekend, when the nodes that support the proposal broke away from the main network and produced the chain split people had been warning about — a tiny, stalled one. The split came Saturday at block 961,632, when the proposal entered its mandatory signaling window. Nodes running BIP-110 software began rejecting any block that failed to signal support through version bit 4. When the first block at that height arrived without the signal, those nodes rejected it and peeled away onto a separate chain. And it has gone almost nowhere since. …

A new school year brings fresh opportunities to get involved with NASA. Whether you’re curious about space or eager to build real STEM skills, NASA offers a world of experiences putting you close to the action. As we enter a new golden age of exploration, there’s no better time to jump in, try something bold, and see where your curiosity takes you. NASA opens the door to authentic mission experiences through internships and student challenges. As members of the NASA team, interns work on genuine agency projects and gain industry-ready skills, all with the guidance of NASA mentors. Visit NASA’s…

A daily weight-loss pill made by the drug firm behind the Mounjaro jab has been approved for use in the UK – the first country in Europe to do so.Foundayo, made by Eli Lilly, is for treating obesity and type 2 diabetes.But while people will be able to buy it privately with a prescription, the approval by the Medicines and Healthcare productors Regulatory Agency does not automatically mean it will be made available on the NHS.Foundayo is a form of GLP-1 medication that blunts appetite, and comes after the MHRA approved a pill version of a similar weight-loss drug, Wegovy,…

Seadrill, a Bermuda-headquartered offshore drilling contractor, has obtained multimillion-dollar deals and extensions of existing assignments for a semi-submersible rig and two drillships in the Americas and Asia. Sevan Louisiana; Source: Seadrill Seadrill has secured contract awards and extensions in the U.S. Gulf and Malaysia, adding approximately $200 million to its contract backlog, which as of August 10, 2026, was around $2.9 billion. The 2013-built West Vela drillship has won a one-year contract in the U.S. Gulf with Talos Energy, beginning in June 2027 and adding about $161 million to contract backlog, excluding additional services. The 2008-built West Capella drillship has landed a contract…

For resource-rich developing countries, decades of resource extraction have produced income concentration, economic dependency, external vulnerabilities, and the weakening of other productive sectors. Achieving broad-based prosperity requires a new approach, one which leverages South-South cooperation to build green industries. DAKAR/RIO DE JANEIRO—For five centuries, raw materials have flowed out of Africa and Brazil at low cost to be used as inputs elsewhere—often returning to their source countries embedded in expensive finished goods. The energy transition offers a critical opportunity to escape this extractive dynamic. The key for these economies is to leverage their vast resources, as well as mutual…

Claim: In 2026, hikers discovered Dead Sea Scrolls-like artifacts in a cliffside in Tennessee. Rating: In July 2026, posts appeared online claiming that hikers in Tennessee had found new versions of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient documents discovered in a cave near the Dead Sea that contain the oldest known fragments of the Hebrew Bible. The alleged discovery, if real, would upend centuries of historical and archaeological work, given the presence of languages like Aramaic on the supposed scrolls. Snopes readers contacted us looking for more information about the purported finding. The story wasn’t real, however. We found no record…

At least 20 people have been killed after a powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake rocked Colombia and other Latin American countries on Monday, causing damage and injuries and building evacuations in the capital Bogota. In the town of Pereira, 18 people were killed and others trapped in buildings that had collapsed, Mayor Mauricio Salazar told Caracol Radio. “The situation is critical,” Salazar told Caracol Radio after the quake centred in neighbouring Choco province. The Colombian geological service put the magnitude of the quake at 6.6 while its American counterpart USGS put it at 7.4, with an epicenter 100km (62 miles) underground in…