Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Ravie LakshmananAug 25, 2026Vulnerability / Enterprise Security The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday added a maximum-severity security flaw impacting Oracle HTTP Server and Oracle WebLogic Server to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-21962 (CVSS score: 10.0), allows an unauthenticated attacker with network access via HTTP to compromise Oracle HTTP Server and Oracle WebLogic Server Proxy Plug-in. Successful exploitation of the flaw can lead to unauthorized access to the instances or modification of critical data. “Oracle HTTP Server and Oracle WebLogic Server Proxy Plug-in contain an improper…

In brief Ox Alpha, a free “stealth model,” launched August 20 on OpenRouter, OpenCode, Cline, and Nous Research’s portal+. A viral claim that Ox Alpha beats Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol on DeepSWE came from a 10-task sample; two separate full 113-task runs landed near 63%, roughly level with GPT-5.6 Sol. Google, Xiaomi, DeepSeek, and Microsoft’s MAI were all floated as the model behind it; but the most popular theory points to Zhipu AI’s GLM-5.3 family. AI enthusiasts are getting very excited about an AI model called Ox Alpha, which appeared on OpenRouter on August 20 with no company…

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has passed an important milestone ahead of its trip to space. Mission leaders from NASA, the Roman Space Telescope team, and SpaceX met Friday at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a Flight Readiness Review. During this formal assessment, teams examined the spacecraft, rocket, launch site, and overall mission status to determine whether preparations could move into their final phase. Roman Telescope Cleared for Final Launch Preparations Following the review, mission managers certified that Roman is ready to proceed with the remaining work before launch. NASA and SpaceX are targeting liftoff no earlier than…

Your editorial on London’s social housing (16 August) makes a persuasive case for treating social housing as economic infrastructure. However, infrastructure is normally monitored and social housing is not, either when it is delivered or across the years in which it is meant to remain affordable. A home is counted as affordable on the day that planning permission is granted and is rarely examined again, through completion, tenure change and the service charges that can make it unaffordable within months of occupation, as your reporting on shared ownership has shown.Southwark, like almost every local authority, publishes every pound of the…

Songs that are largely or wholly created by AI have been banned from Australia’s music charts.From this week, all releases must be “substantially human made” to be eligible.The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) said the new code would help “promote the human nature of artistry”.It follows a controversy around a cover of Madonna’s Like A Prayer by Australian DJ Josh Fawaz which recently topped the ARIA dance singles chart and peaked at number 2 on the country’s overall chart.The song has become a staple of commercial radio station playlists and been streamed more than 48 million times on Spotify alone.Fawaz…

Andrei Fedorov, an adviser to the Kremlin, says there might be a “semi-military” response against UK drone factories by “unknown sources” over the sharing of blueprints for British-made cruise missile components.His comments on BBC Newsnight come as UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham says he plans to travel to the US next month with European leaders to lobby US President Trump on Ukraine’s defence needs. He said that while the details were not “fully confirmed”, it is “likely” he will go. The trip would be his first to the US since becoming prime minister in July. “Leaving today, I’m quite clear…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The Securities and Exchange Commission has subpoenaed some of the largest Wall Street banks that helped fund trading bets at Situational Awareness before the hedge fund was nearly toppled in the recent tech sell-off.The US financial markets regulator requested detailed information about Situational Awareness’s trades and its communication with the lenders that provided it with leverage, according to two people familiar with the probe. The hedge fund was a client of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citigroup and Bank of America, according to regulatory…

Airbound, an Indian startup building autonomous drones, has raised $37 million in fresh capital as it pushes to make moving goods through the air as cheap as trucking them by road. The Series A round, led by Greenoaks with participation from DoorDash, Lachy Groom, Lightspeed, and Humba Ventures, comes less than a year after Airbound raised an $8.65 million seed round. With this funding, the three-year-old startup has raised nearly $50 million. Airbound, and other startups in this nascent sector, argue that drones can move certain goods faster and cheaper than vehicles on the road. And while there have been…

Ledger users should update the Ethereum app to version 1.22.2 after official code changes showed that a malicious dApp or other connected host could start a second signing command while a transaction was still under review.In the path described by security company TestMachine, pressing approve could return a signature for substituted data instead of the transaction shown on the device.TestMachine said on Aug. 22 that the attack required a dApp with WebHID access. The group said a second command could replace the transaction held in memory without opening a new review, leaving the original details on screen while the device…

Quantum mechanics has long challenged the familiar idea that an object must occupy one precise place at a given moment. Fundamental particles such as electrons are instead described by a “wavefunction,” a mathematical representation that researchers can use to calculate the probabilities of properties such as position and momentum. Inside molecules, electron wavefunctions are known as “molecular orbitals.” These orbitals contain valuable information about how a molecule behaves and interacts with its environment, including how it absorbs light and how chemical reactions may unfold. Obtaining a complete three-dimensional picture of a wavefunction would therefore give scientists a powerful view of…