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GPT-6 Astra, Looped Transformers, and Hidden Reasoning
OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra, its strongest model to date, with standout 3D rendering and computer-use performance and 99.9% on ARC-AGI-3.
Sebastian Raschka reviews OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, calling it the best model he has used, with disproportionate gains in 3D rendering, animation, and computer use through the Codex/ChatGPT harness. The model scores 99.9% on ARC-AGI-3 versus 7.8% for GPT-5.6 Sol and leads the Artificial Analysis Coding Agent Index, though gains on independent aggregate indices are more incremental. The article also explains looped transformer/recurrent depth architecture rumors, speculation that Astra hides its chain-of-thought reasoning, and recent research insights on the topic.
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Your Shredded Visa Card May Still Work at the Checkout
UMass Amherst researchers demonstrated expired Visa contactless cards can complete real purchases via relay attacks exploiting Visa Kernel 3's unsigned expiry date handling.
University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers presented at USENIX Security 2026 that expired Visa contactless cards can be revived for real purchases through an NFC man-in-the-middle attack on Visa's Kernel 3. The attack alters the expiry date the terminal sees (tag 5F24) while leaving the Track 2 Equivalent Data (tag 57) sent to the issuing bank unchanged, and the card's cryptographic signature does not cover the expiry date. Two Android phones emulating card and terminal relayed transactions within Visa's 500-millisecond limit. Mastercard, American Express, and Discover kernels blocked the attack, while Visa Kernel 3 did not; researchers also modified the Consumer Device Cardholder Verification Method flag at five US banks, and attackers can also exploit Terminal Verification Results zero-filling. Visa was notified in May 2025 and December 2025; no CVE has been assigned.
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New DDRop Attack Breaks Intel TDX and AMD SEV-SNP With $159 DDR5 Device
DDRop uses a $159 DDR5 RDIMM interposer to silently drop memory writes and break Intel TDX and AMD SEV-SNP confidential VMs.
Researchers published DDRop, a physical attack built from about $159 in parts that uses a custom DDR5 RDIMM interposer to inject parity errors and silently discard selected cache-line writebacks. Intel TDX, Intel Scalable SGX, and AMD SEV-SNP are affected because they lack per-line cryptographic freshness, so processors can accept stale encrypted data as valid state. The team demonstrated deterministic plaintext copying between pages, malicious Secure EPT entry injection, forcing trust domains into debug mode, and forging attestation measurements. The attack requires privileged host control plus brief physical access, and researchers say no simple software patch exists.
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DDRop Attack Forces Intel TDX Confidential VMs Into Debug Mode and Exposes Memory
KU Leuven and ETH Zurich researchers released DDRop PoC hardware that forces Intel TDX confidential VMs into debug mode and exposes plaintext memory.
Researchers from KU Leuven, ETH Zurich, Google, and Durham University published proof-of-concept code, hardware designs, and firmware for DDRop, a DDR5 interposer that injects parity errors to drop selected cache-line writebacks. Because Intel TDX, Intel Scalable SGX, and AMD SEV-SNP lack per-line cryptographic freshness, processors decrypt and accept stale DRAM contents as current state. The PoC flips a victim's ATTRIBUTES.DEBUG flag to enable TDX debug mode, then copies victim memory in plaintext and can forge attestation reports. Affected environments include Intel 5th- and 6th-generation Xeon Scalable with TDX; Intel says the attack falls outside its cloud-computing threat model.
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Hackers deploy Linux rootkit on F5 BIG-IP APM devices, hiding web shell in memory
Sophos analyzed a Linux rootkit, tracked as PoisonedRefresh, on hacked F5 BIG-IP APM devices hiding an in-memory web shell linked to exploited CVE-2025-53521.
Sophos and ESET analyzed an implant (named PoisonedRefresh by ESET) deployed on compromised F5 BIG-IP APM appliances, which serves enterprise, financial, government, and public sector deployments. The second-stage payload intercepts __libc_start_main, hooks Apache's APR module loader (apr_dso_load), RC4-encodes key strings, and rewrites PHP file reads in memory to embed a web shell inside legitimate scripts like apm_css.php3, full_wt.php3, and webtop_popup_css.php3, leaving on-disk files unchanged. A related installer component infects /usr/sbin/httpd, persists across BIG-IP upgrade images, modifies SELinux configuration, and deploys the payload. The malware also creates a Unix domain socket at /run/bigtlog.pipe that hands authenticated local connections to /bin/bash; F5 links the activity to CVE-2025-53521, an unauthenticated RCE in BIG-IP APM already exploited in the wild.
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