Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Ravie LakshmananAug 07, 2026Malware / Social Engineering ClickFix-style attacks are being used to deliver a Go-based malware capable of stealing cryptocurrency assets, as well as browser-stored passwords, Apple iCloud Keychain data, and cached credentials. The macOS-focused infection chain is designed to deliver a shell script that profiles the host and then fetches a macOS malware payload that’s compatible with the computer’s CPU architecture. “While the malware payload is capable of stealing passwords, its most interesting function is its capability to slowly deplete cryptocurrency accounts, siphoning their contents into accounts under the threat actor’s control,” Huntress security researcher Andrew Brandt said.…

United States court records unsealed on Thursday show that a federal judge backed crypto exchange Bybit’s effort to trace assets stolen in the $1.5 billion North Korea-linked hack by granting the company expedited discovery. According to the records,  Bybit filed the lawsuit under seal on June 18 against North Korea, its Reconnaissance General Bureau, the Lazarus Group and 20 unidentified defendants. The court granted Bybit’s request for expedited discovery on June 19.The discovery authority gives Bybit a practical route to identify alleged intermediaries and pursue a small portion of stolen assets that remains traceable, rather than relying solely on a judgment…

Mehvish says nothing could have prepared her for what she was told after her full body scan. She left Birmingham’s Neko Health clinic with a life-changing diagnosis.”I expected to feel relief,” the 33-year-old says. “Instead, I was told that I had a rare form of diabetes.”After her long-term blood sugar levels came back very high, she had another blood test which confirmed she had suspected diabetes.She was referred back to her GP, who sent her for an urgent hospital appointment the same day, and was diagnosed with Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults (LADA), a type of diabetes which bridges both…

Claim: In August 2026, New York City’s government-run grocery stores announced they would allow anyone to buy groceries as long as they have “a special mark on hand or forehead.” Rating: A rumor that New York City’s government-run grocery stores announced they would allow anyone to buy groceries as long as they have “a special mark on hand or forehead” spread in August 2026. For example, a Facebook user claimed on Aug. 4, 2026 (archived), “Government-run stores to allow anyone to buy groceries as long as they have special mark on hand or forehead.” The caption of the post read, “We strongly urge everyone to participate.”…

Germans are sunlounger hoggers, or so the longstanding stereotype goes. But not only is that cultural trope mostly confined to British – and, even more so, German – perceptions, surprising new data reveals that in fact Italian and French holidaymakers are the ones most likely to use their towel to stake their claim to a sunlounger.A poll by YouGov of Europeans holidaymakers found that while many Germans (51%) and Britons (46%) associate Germans with the ritual of waking up at the crack of dawn to mark their spot, the perception barely exists elsewhere in Europe, with just 5-17% of those…

OpenAI said Friday it has suspended work on some aspects of its upcoming model Astra after an internal review found it had made significant advancements in agentic coding and cybersecurity — enough to warrant concern over its capabilities. OpenAI said in a blog post Friday that this model, which is still in development, reached its “critical cybersecurity threshold,” meaning it could independently identify and carry out cyberattacks against traditionally well-protected real-world systems. Under the company’s “Preparedness Framework,” which it created in 2023, this triggered additional safeguards. “While we continue to benchmark and assess this model, our preliminary evaluations indicate strong…

Alibaba has launched Qwen3.8-Max, its largest AI model to date, as DeepSeek’s latest V4-Flash model draws attention for inference pricing that is lower than several competing systems.Qwen3.8-Max has 2.4 trillion parameters and uses a mixture-of-experts architecture, which activates only part of the model for each request. Alibaba said around 95 billion parameters are active at a time, reducing costs and response delays compared with activating the full model.DeepSeek uses a similar sparse architecture at a smaller scale. Artificial Analysis lists V4-Flash at 284 billion total parameters, with 13 billion active during inference, while Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 has 2.8 trillion…

A critical Metabase SQL injection vulnerability was exploited in zero-day attacks to breach customer instances in data theft attacks, known to impact Framework and Tally. Metabase disclosed the attacks on Thursday, warning that its Metabase Cloud SaaS platform was compromised through a previously unknown vulnerability affecting versions 1.58 and above. The company warns that self-hosted installations are also vulnerable. “We recently identified that Metabase Cloud was attacked by someone utilizing an unknown (“0-day”) security vulnerability in versions 1.58 and above,” Metabase CEO Sameer Al-Sakran warned in a blog post.  Metabase confirmed it blocked the endpoints used for the attack and immediately rolled out…

In brief OFAC designated Shelbit Exchange and Aban Tether, accusing both of moving funds for the Iranian armed forces and previously sanctioned Iranian exchanges. Treasury says Iran-linked wallets sent over $1 million to Shelbit, which sent more than $2 million back. The State Department is offering up to $15 million for tips disrupting the Iranian military’s financial machinery. The U.S. Treasury just sanctioned two crypto exchanges it says laundered millions for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard—naming one operator who ran the scheme from Georgia and the UAE, and a second platform based in Iran.OFAC announced the action on August 7 under its…

A study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has uncovered a major shift in the immune environment of the hippocampus, the part of the brain that plays a central role in learning and memory. The findings suggest that this immune remodeling begins in midlife and may help explain how aging contributes to the long lasting brain inflammation often seen in neurodegenerative diseases. “Aging is the single largest risk factor for dementia, but our understanding of how it drives disease is still incomplete,” said Richard Hodes, M.D., director of NIH’s National Institute on Aging (NIA). “This previously hidden microglial…