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A pair of German researchers showed how easy it is

Black Hat Four countries have now tested anti-satellite missiles (the US, China, Russia, and India), but it's much easier and cheaper just to hack them.…

Amazon Web Services has struck a deal with the U.S. government to provide up to $1 billion in cloud service discounts through 2028. CNBC reports: The agreement is expected to speed up migration to the cloud, as well as adoption of artificial intelligence tools, the General Services Administration said. "AWS's partnership with GSA demonstrates a shared public-private commitment to enhancing America's AI leadership," the agency said in a release. Amazon's cloud boss, Matt Garman, hailed the agreement as a "significant milestone in the large-scale digital transformation of government services." The discounts aggregated across federal agencies include credits to use AWS' cloud infrastructure, modernization programs and training services, as well as incentives for "direct partnership." Further reading: OpenAI Offers ChatGPT To US Federal Agencies for $1 a Year

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That totally makes up for the single-digit benchmark gains, right?

OpenAI unveiled its most capable model yet on Thursday with the launch of GPT-5.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Two years ago, researchers in the Netherlands discovered an intentional backdoor in an encryption algorithm baked into radios used by critical infrastructure -- as well as police, intelligence agencies, and military forces around the world -- that made any communication secured with the algorithm vulnerable to eavesdropping. When the researchers publicly disclosed the issue in 2023, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), which developed the algorithm, advised anyone using it for sensitive communication to deploy an end-to-end encryption solution on top of the flawed algorithm to bolster the security of their communications. But now the same researchers have found that at least one implementation of the end-to-end encryption solution endorsed by ETSI has a similar issue that makes it equally vulnerable to eavesdropping. The encryption algorithm used for the device they examined starts with a 128-bit key, but this gets compressed to 56 bits before it encrypts traffic, making it easier to crack. It's not clear who is using this implementation of the end-to-end encryption algorithm, nor if anyone using devices with the end-to-end encryption is aware of the security vulnerability in them. Wired notes that the end-to-end encryption the researchers examined is most commonly used by law enforcement and national security teams. "But ETSI's endorsement of the algorithm two years ago to mitigate flaws found in its lower-level encryption algorithm suggests it may be used more widely now than at the time."

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Warner Bros. Discovery is preparing to crack down on HBO Max password sharing by the end of 2025, with "aggressive" enforcement and messaging starting next month. Deadline reports: JB Perrette, head of streaming and gaming at Warner Bros. Discovery said on the company's second-quarter earnings call that messaging to consumers is about to get more "aggressive." The media company looking to close the loopholes by the end of 2025, with the impact starting to appear in its financials by 2026. Several months of testing has enabled WBD to determine "who's a legitimate user who may not be a legitimate user," Perrette said. Once that is determined, he continued, the next step is to "turn on the more aggressive language around what needs to happen" in order to and make sure that "we are putting the net in the right place, so to speak." Asked about what "inning" the process is in, to use the baseball cliche, Perrette said only the first. By the fourth quarter, he said, the process will be happening "in a much more aggressive fashion." "The message language right now has been a fairly soft, cancel-able message," he said. It will "start to get more fixed and such that people have to take action as opposed to right now, sort of having to be a voluntary process." Once those directives are established, he said, "the real benefit will start probably in the fourth quarter and then kick in in 2026."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: In an interview, Lansweeper, an IT asset discovery and inventory company, revealed to ZDNET that, in its analysis of over 15 million identified consumer desktop operating systems, it found that Linux desktops currently account for just over 6% of PC market share. This news comes after several other studies have shown the Linux desktop is right around the 6% mark. Indeed, according to the US Federal Government Website and App Analytics count, the Linux desktop market share over the last 90 days has reached 6.3%, a new high. In July, according to StatCounter, the Linux desktop also set a record high by its metrics with 5.24%.

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Hello loophole could let a rogue admin, or a pwned one, inject new facial scans

Black Hat Microsoft is pushing hard for Windows users to shift from using passwords to its Hello biometrics system, but researchers sponsored by the German government have found a critical flaw in its business implementation.…

President Trump is set to sign an executive order opening up 401(k) retirements plans to alternative assets, like private equity, real estate, and cryptocurrency. The move has the potential to unlock trillions in new investment for asset managers outside of stocks, bonds, and cash, "though critics say it also could bring too much risk into retirement investments," reports Reuters. From the report: "The order directs the Securities and Exchange Commission to facilitate access to alternative assets for participant-directed defined-contribution retirement savings plans by revising applicable regulations and guidance," the White House official said on condition of anonymity. The order directs the Labor Secretary to consult with her counterparts at the Treasury Department, the SEC, and other federal "regulators to determine whether parallel regulatory changes should be made at those agencies," the official said. [...] The new investment options carry lower disclosure requirements and are generally less easy to sell quickly for cash than the publicly traded stocks and bonds that most retirement funds rely on. Investing in them also tends to carry higher fees. In defined contribution plans, employees make contributions to their own retirement account, frequently with a matching contribution from their employer. The invested funds belong to the employee, but unlike a defined benefit pension plan, there is no guaranteed regular payout upon retirement. Many private equity firms are hungry for the new source of cash that retail investors could offer after three years in which high interest rates shook their time-honored model of buying companies and selling them at a profit. Whatever results may come from Trump's order, it likely will not happen overnight, private equity executives say. Plaintiffs' lawyers are already preparing for lawsuits that could be filed by investors who do not understand the complexity of the new forms of investments.

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What, you don't expect them to keep using Microsoft with its Chinese cloud admins, do you?

The US government is about to get more AWS in more places thanks to a new $1 billion deal between Uncle Sam and Amazon. …

Microsoft's $30 Extended Security Updates license for Windows 10 will cover up to 10 devices under a single Microsoft Account, the company confirmed in updated support documentation. The ESU program, which provides security updates through October 13, 2026, requires a Microsoft Account for all three enrollment options: the $30 one-time purchase, redemption of 1,000 Microsoft Reward points, or free enrollment for users who sync their PC settings to OneDrive. Windows 10's support ends October 14, 2025.

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Google has quietly admitted defeat in selling advertising for its smart TV platform, returning ad inventory to publishers and accepting a revenue share instead of controlling ad spots directly, according to The Verge. The policy reversal comes as Google spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually on Google TV without breaking even, while Amazon outspends the company on retail incentives that have already pushed Google TV sets out of Costco stores in favor of Fire TV models. Amazon pays up to $50 per activated television to retailers and manufacturers, The Verge reported. Google TV has grown to 270 million monthly active devices worldwide since unifying Android TV and Chromecast under a single brand in 2020, but many devices operate in overseas markets that generate little revenue or run customized versions controlled by pay-TV operators. YouTube's success in the living room -- generating $9.8 billion in quarterly ad revenue and accounting for 12.5% of all US television viewing -- has reduced internal support for Google TV, with sales teams prioritizing the video platform and some YouTube executives arguing the smart TV budget should be redirected, the report adds.

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No reported in-the-wild exploits…yet

Microsoft and the feds late Wednesday sounded the alarm on another high-severity bug in Exchange Server hybrid deployments that could allow attackers to escalate privileges from on-premises Exchange to the cloud.…

OpenAI released GPT-5 on Thursday, ending a two-year development cycle that CEO Sam Altman called a "significant leap in intelligence" over previous models. The updated AI system achieved state-of-the-art performance across multiple benchmarks, scoring 94.6% on AIME 2025 mathematics problems and 74.9% on SWE-bench Verified coding tasks. The model operates as a unified system combining a standard response mode with deeper reasoning capabilities that activate automatically based on query complexity. OpenAI reduced hallucinations by approximately 45% compared to GPT-4o and 80% compared to its previous reasoning model when using extended thinking modes. GPT-5 becomes available immediately to all ChatGPT users at no cost, with paid subscribers receiving higher usage limits and access to GPT-5 pro for more complex reasoning tasks.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI is paying bonuses to around 1,000 employees on its technical research and engineering teams, or about a third of the company, ranging from the low hundreds of thousands to millions, as the company gears up to release its latest flagship GPT-5 model and faces an ever-rising battle for AI talent, according to a person with knowledge of the bonuses.

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Aiming to shrink the post-ISS gap, but less orbit time for NASA astronauts?

NASA has moved the goalposts for companies seeking to replace the aging International Space Station (ISS) and changed the minimum capability required to four crew for one-month "increments." The change means that the permanent occupation of the ISS will be a thing of the past, at least as far as the US space agency is concerned.…

Nothing to see here - just removing that old Emoluments Clause and habeas corpus

Several sections of the online annotated US Constitution maintained by the Library of Congress vanished recently due to what the Library maintains was a coding error. However, the content of the now-restored sections has raised suspicions that the move was political. …

schwit1 shares a report: China's biggest solar firms shed nearly one-third of their workforces last year, company filings show, as one of the industries hand-picked by Beijing to drive economic growth grapples with falling prices and steep losses. The job cuts illustrate the pain from the vicious price wars being fought across Chinese industries, including solar and electric vehicles, as they grapple with overcapacity and tepid demand. The world produces twice as many solar panels each year as it uses, with most of them manufactured in China. Longi Green Energy, Trina Solar, Jinko Solar, JA Solar, and Tongwei, collectively shed some 87,000 staff, or 31% of their workforces on average last year, according to a Reuters review of employment figures in public filings.

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Tells The Reg they never were ... 'and this will not change'

The second Trump administration has repeatedly complained about Europe's tech laws targeting Silicon Valley's finest, but now its antipathy is going into overdrive.…

Digital Foundry, the gaming hardware analysis publication known for its technical console breakdowns, has separated from IGN ownership as of today, with founder Richard Leadbetter purchasing the outlet and its complete archives. Leadbetter, who retained 50% ownership since selling half to Eurogamer in 2015, acquired an additional 25 percent from IGN while investor Rupert Loman, Eurogamer's original co-founder, purchased the remaining quarter. The five-person team will operate independently, maintaining its YouTube channel with 1.5 million subscribers and Patreon support generating approximately $200,000 annually. The publication plans to develop a full website for its written content and expand coverage while keeping most content free.

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The Reg goes behind the scenes of the conference NOC, where volunteers 'look for a needle in a needle stack'

Black Hat Neil "Grifter" Wyler is spending the week "looking for a needle in a needle stack," a task he'll perform from the network operations center (NOC) that powers the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.…