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Microsoft has begun automatically replacing the original Secure Boot security certificates on Windows devices through regular monthly updates, a necessary move given that the 15-year-old certificates first issued in 2011 are set to expire between late June and October 2026. Secure Boot, which verifies that only trusted and digitally signed software runs before Windows loads, became a hardware requirement for Windows 11. A new batch of certificates was issued in 2023 and already ships on most PCs built since 2024; nearly all devices shipped in 2025 include them by default. Older hardware is now receiving the updated certificates through Windows Update, starting last month's KB5074109 release for Windows 11. Devices that don't receive the new certificates before expiration will still function but enter what Microsoft calls a "degraded security state," unable to receive future boot-level protections and potentially facing compatibility issues down the line. Windows 10 users must enroll in Microsoft's paid Extended Security Updates program to get the new certificates. A small number of devices may also need a separate firmware update from their manufacturer before the Windows-delivered certificates can be applied.

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Zero-click prompt injection can leak data when AI agents meet messaging apps, researchers warn

AI agents can shop for you, program for you, and, if you're feeling bold, chat for you in a messaging app. But beware: attackers can use malicious prompts in chat to trick an AI agent into generating a data-leaking URL, which link previews may fetch automatically.…

CFO and general counsel both step down

IBM services spin-out Kyndryl said it was reviewing its accounting practices after it announced revenue below market expectations and the departure of its CFO.…

An anonymous reader shares a report: The hundreds of prize payouts were mostly just a few bucks each, part of a promotional campaign by a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange. The total reward pot: 620,000 Korean won, or about $425. Then came a colossal mistake. A staffer for Bithumb, South Korea's No. 2 crypto exchange, didn't distribute 620,000 Korean won. Rather, the prizes, due to an input error, emerged in a different currency: 620,000 bitcoins, valued at more than $40 billion. That meant a winner who should have received a sum of 2,000 won -- enough to buy a cheap cup of coffee -- reaped, at least momentarily, more than $120 million in bitcoins. Enough recipients sought to sell or withdraw bitcoin that the market sank 17%, before Bithumb halted transactions after roughly 30 minutes. Those affected included investors who had held bitcoin before the botched giveaway. The losses totaled about $685,000, Bithumb says. The company has since said it has reversed the transactions or had recipients voluntarily return more than 99% of the misdistributed bitcoins. But Bithumb is still trying to convince users who during the brief window of trading managed to offload more than 100 bitcoins, valued at roughly $9 million, to give back the equivalent funds.

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As the governance policy designed to protect regional internet registries nears completion

APRICOT 2026 After years of strife, the African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC) is weeks away from signing off on a budget and action plan, activity that one of the organization’s newly appointed executives believes demonstrates it is back on track.…

Apple and Google have agreed to a set of commitments to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority that will prevent them from giving preferential treatment to their own apps and require greater transparency around how third-party apps are approved for sale. The CMA announced the measures on Tuesday, seven months after it declared that the two companies held an "effective duopoly" over the UK's mobile app ecosystem. Both companies also committed to not using data gathered from third-party developers in ways the regulator deems unfair. The CMA granted both app stores "strategic market status" in October 2025, a designation that gave it the authority to demand changes. CMA head Sarah Cardell called the commitments "important first steps" and said the regulator would "closely monitor" implementation. Technology analyst Paolo Pescatore described the announcement as a "pragmatic first step" but noted some may see it as "addressing the low-hanging fruit." The UK's app economy is the largest in Europe by revenue and number of developers, generating an estimated 1.5% of the country's GDP.

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As communities push back on utility costs, White House tells Big Tech to fund their own AI expansion

The Trump administration continues its AI push, working to defuse public opposition to datacenter energy and water consumption - while dangling a promise to exempt hyperscalers from chip tariffs to help them stock their facilities with GPUs and accelerators.…

More prompts when apps and agents roam around a user's system

Microsoft is introducing a raft of Windows security features that users and administrators alike might assume are already part of the operating system.…

The American economy's most valuable companies are now worth trillions of dollars more than their predecessors were a generation ago, yet they employ a fraction of the workers -- and a new analysis by the Wall Street Journal argues that this widening gap between capital and labor is the defining economic story of our time. Labor received 58% of gross domestic income in 1980; by the third quarter of 2025, that figure had fallen to 51.4%. Corporate profits' share rose from 7% to 11.7% over the same period. Nvidia, the most valuable US company in 2026, is nearly 20 times as valuable as IBM was in 1985 in inflation-adjusted terms and employs roughly a tenth as many people. Since the end of 2019, real average hourly wages have risen 3% while corporate profits have climbed 43%. Household stock wealth now equals almost 300% of annual disposable income, up from 200% in 2019. Yale economist Pascual Restrepo predicted that AI integration will shrink labor's share of revenue further, just as factory automation did for blue-collar workers in decades past.

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Survey finds nine in ten customers concerned as pricing changes push many toward open source alternatives

Concerns over changes to Oracle's Java licensing strategy are hitting more than nine out of ten users as businesses struggle to adapt to the regime, according to research.…

The top private schools in New York City plan to charge more than $70,000 this year for tuition, an amount exceeding that of many elite colleges, as they pass on the costs of soaring expenses including teacher salaries. From a report: Spence School, Dalton School and Nightingale-Bamford School on Manhattan's Upper East Side are among at least seven schools where the fees now exceed that threshold, according to school disclosures and Bloomberg reporting Fees among 15 private schools across the city rose a median of 4.7%, outpacing inflation. Sending a kid to New York private school has always been expensive, but the cost now is so high that even those with well-above-average salaries are feeling squeezed. Prices have risen dramatically in the past decade, up from a median of $39,900 in 2014.

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Operation Cyber Guardian involved 100-plus staff across government and industry

Singapore spent almost a year flushing a suspected China-linked espionage crew out of its telecom networks in what officials describe as the country's largest cyber defense operation to date.…

Slowdowns, outages, and Copilot problems afflict code shack

Scarcely a day goes by without an outage at a cloud service. Forget five nines – the way things are going, one nine is looking like an ambitious goal.…

Competition watchdog secures promises on approvals, rankings, and platform access

Apple and Google have pledged to change how their app stores operate in the UK following scrutiny from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which is trying to curb their control over the app distribution pipelines feeding UK phones.…

The software and technology sectors pose one of the all-time great concentration risks to the speculative-grade credit market, according to Deutsche Bank AG analysts. Bloomberg: They comprise $597 billion and $681 billion of the speculative-grade credit universe, or about 14% and 16% respectively, analysts led by Steve Caprio wrote in a Monday note. Speculative debt spans high-yield debt, leveraged loans and US private credit. That's "a meaningful chunk of debt outstanding that risks souring broader sentiment, if software defaults increase," the analysts wrote, with "a potential impact that would rival that of the Energy sector in 2016." Unlike in 2016, pressures would likely first emerge in private credit, business development companies and leveraged loans, with the high-yield market weakening later, the analysts added. The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence tools risks further weighing down multiples and revenues for software-as-a-service firms, while the US Federal Reserve's hawkish stance since 2022 has pressured cash flows, the analysts wrote. For instance, software payment-in-kind loan usage has risen to 11.3% in BDC portfolios, over 2.5 percentage points higher than the already elevated index average of 8.7%, according to Deutsche. PIK deals typically allow borrowers to pay interest in more debt rather than cash.

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Leaving you to worry about the effects on your team, vendor lock-in, tokenomics, and more

APRICOT 2026 Indonesia's Universitas Islam conducted experiments that found using generative AI vastly reduces the cognitive load on network pros during IPv4 to IPv6 migrations, but that organizations may not be ready for both AI and the new network protocol.…

HR outsourcer Conduent confirms intruders accessed benefits-related records tied to US personnel

Nearly 17,000 Volvo employees had their personal data exposed after cybercriminals breached Conduent, an outsourcing giant that handles workforce benefits and back-office services.…

AI, sovereignty drives continental drift of datacenter capacity

London will lose its dominance in colocation datacenters this decade with Frankfurt claiming the top spot by 2031, according to the EU Data Centre Association (EUDCA).…

Troops fitted with new comms kit as part of Project ASGARD

British soldiers are to get an array of AI-ready kit that should mean they don't have to wait to see the "whites of their eyes" before pulling the trigger.…

Planners backed it, campaigners blasted it, and officials sided with emissions fears

Edinburgh councillors have torpedoed plans for a massive "green" AI datacenter, voting it down despite city planners recommending approval.…