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Mozilla's new Smart Window assistant runs on Mistral's models

Mozilla's Firefox Smart Window beta AI browsing assistant, powered by Mistral's models, launches in France and North America with no conversation storage.

Mozilla and Mistral partnered to power the Firefox Smart Window beta, an AI browsing assistant for complex searches, content recall, and tab summarization. The feature is available first in France and North America, with the UK and Germany to follow later this year. Mistral commits to storing no conversation data, and chats are not kept on Mozilla's servers by default.

The Decoder · 8h agoAI industry 2 sources1

Hackers Disguise CHOSEN BRICK Malware as AI Apps, Antivirus Software and MRI Results

NCSC, FBI, and AIVD warn Iranian state-linked actors deliver CHOSEN BRICK Windows spyware via fake AI apps, antivirus installers, and MRI-result lures.

A joint advisory from the UK NCSC, FBI, and Dutch AIVD details CHOSEN BRICK (FBI tracking name: HEAVYGRAM), Iranian state-linked Windows spyware targeting dissidents, activists, and journalists worldwide since at least 2025. Lures impersonate Pictory, RunwayML, Norton Antivirus, Telegram, Adobe Flash Player, and KeePass, and operators pivot conversations from corporate to personal devices to bypass enterprise controls. The spyware persists via Registry Run keys, adds Microsoft Defender exclusions, uses per-victim Telegram bots for command-and-control, and exfiltrates screenshots, audio, email, and chat data via Telegram and cloud services, with some victim data appearing on pro-Iranian leak sites.

GBHackersupdated · 3h agofirst · 16h agoMalware in the wild 6 sources

PhysStream: Streaming Physics-Grounded Video Generation with Structured Scene Memory and Fine-Grained Motion Control

PhysStream autoregressive video model enables physics-grounded mid-generation motion control, cutting trajectory error 12% and FVMD 33% versus strongest baselines.

PhysStream is an autoregressive image-to-video model that incorporates structured scene memory—positional maps and object tracking maps derived online from previously generated frames—and supports fine-grained motion control via sparse velocity-increment signals encoding physical quantities. Training proceeds in two stages: a bidirectional model finetuned with motion-control conditioning, then a causal autoregressive model with scene memory. It reduces motion distribution distance (FVMD) by 33% and trajectory error by 12% over the strongest baselines, and human evaluators prefer it in over 85% of in-the-wild comparisons.

Exploring the Latest Mispadu Stealer Variant

Unit 42 found a new Mispadu infostealer variant targeting Mexican users via malicious .url files exploiting the SmartScreen CVE-2023-36025 bypass.

Unit 42 discovered a new variant of Mispadu Stealer, a Delphi-based banking trojan first reported in 2019, found while hunting for the Windows SmartScreen bypass CVE-2023-36025. The campaign uses crafted .url files referencing UNC network-share paths with an HTTP port (@80) that forces payload retrieval over WebDAV via rundll32.exe, avoiding SmartScreen warnings. Analyzed samples (~4 KB, compiled 2023-11-12) predate the CVE publication, and ZIP payloads were likely distributed as email attachments, primarily targeting users in Mexico.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 17, 2026Malware in the wildCVE-2023-360251

LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices

Gamers Nexus found LG smart TVs record microphone audio in standby, scan home networks, and feed LG Ad Solutions ad targeting.

A 135-minute Gamers Nexus investigation with Level1Techs and independent researchers found retail LG OLED TVs running webOS sweep local networks, gather device names and Wi-Fi metadata, and run Automated Content Recognition. Tests showed the TVs capture clean microphone audio while appearing powered down and store it offline, uploading once reconnected. The team also found RCE vulnerabilities in webOS now moving through responsible disclosure; LG claims 216 million smart TV sales, and its ad unit claims access to 363 million addressable devices in the US.

Stopping the smart TV from being used against you

Guide describes practical hardening steps to prevent smart TVs from spying on their owners or being used against them.

A tutorial-style post walks through defensive measures to keep a smart TV from collecting user data or being leveraged against its owner. The piece is a consumer IoT privacy and hardening guide rather than a disclosure of a specific vulnerability.

Lobsters · security · 19d agoResearch

HVNC Backdoor Targets LATAM Organizations with Fake Tax and DocuSign Lures

A custom HVNC backdoor is targeting Latin American financial organizations via fake DocuSign and NFe tax-document lures, giving attackers hidden persistent remote access.

ANY.RUN researchers analyzed a multi-stage phishing campaign delivering a custom HVNC backdoor to banking and financial organizations in Latin America. The chain starts with fake DocuSign and NFe tax-document pages that serve per-visitor ZIP archives, followed by an LNK dropper, an NSIS loader, and a 64-bit backdoor masquerading as Windows Update Assistant. The implant provides hidden remote desktop control, keystroke monitoring, Firefox data theft, Startup-folder persistence, and EDR-aware behavior, communicating over TCP/27015.

ANY.RUN · 8d agoMalware in the wild

Researchers found a way to hijack devices through Zoom screen sharing

Researchers used a public AI tool to find a Zoom flaw enabling device hijacking via screen sharing in under 20 prompts.

Security researchers discovered a serious vulnerability in Zoom that can be used to hijack devices through the screen-sharing feature. The flaw was reportedly found by a publicly available AI tool in fewer than 20 prompts, highlighting the role of agentic AI in vulnerability discovery. The article does not report active exploitation or assign a CVE in the provided text.

Ars Technica · Security · Aug 12, 2026Vulnerability

Iranian Hackers Use Telegram-Controlled Malware to Spy on Dissidents and Journalists

FBI, NCSC, and AIVD detail Iran MOIS spyware CHOSEN BRICK/HEAVYGRAM, Telegram-controlled Windows malware spying on dissidents since 2023.

A September 15 joint advisory from the FBI, UK NCSC, and Dutch AIVD attributes the Windows spyware HEAVYGRAM (NCSC name CHOSEN BRICK) to Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, with the campaign dating to autumn 2023 and targeting dissidents, journalists, and activists in the UK, US, Netherlands, and worldwide. Delivered via messages impersonating known contacts or tech support, the malware assigns each victim a dedicated Telegram bot for command-and-control and exfiltration, and can take screenshots, record microphone audio, steal Telegram/WhatsApp data, saved passwords, and emails, download more malware, and wipe the computer. Persistence uses a registry Run key (SMQDService or winappx) plus Microsoft Defender exclusions, with stolen data exiting via Telegram and cloud storage services like Vultr and Storj. The US Justice Department seized four pro-Iranian leak sites in March that had published stolen victim data.

The Hacker News · 1d agoMalware in the wild1

LG TV flaws could let attackers listen in, even in standby mode

Researchers found LG smart TVs collect network data and ACR viewing profiles, and demonstrated microphone audio capture plus undisclosed RCE vulnerabilities.

An investigation by Gamers Nexus with Level1Techs and independent researchers found LG TVs performing network discovery, collecting nearby Wi-Fi names and device identifiers, and conducting Automated Content Recognition (ACR) tracking. They demonstrated microphone audio capture even when the TV appeared off, and audio buffering while the TV was unplugged from the internet. Remote-code-execution vulnerabilities were reported to LG under ongoing responsible disclosure, with full details not yet public.

Malwarebytes Labs · 9d agoVulnerability

PAPERMILL Malware Campaign Abuses Signed Notepad++ to Deliver VenomRAT to Windows Users

JUMPSEC tracks PAPERMILL, a China-nexus phishing campaign using a signed Notepad++ binary, libcurl.dll sideloading, and Donut loaders to deploy VenomRAT against Indian tax-audit targets.

PAPERMILL delivers ISO disk images via tax-audit phishing emails that passed SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, containing a renamed Authenticode-signed Notepad++ executable and a malicious libcurl.dll that proxies curl functions while executing loader logic in DllMain. The chain uses Mark-of-the-Web bypasses, anti-sandbox sleeps, UAC elevation prompts, Registry persistence, and a Donut shellcode loader to reflectively load .NET VenomRAT v6.0.3 with HVNC and credential-stealing capability, with C2 at 154.36.188.201:4449. JUMPSEC assesses the campaign as China-nexus, financially motivated, and Silver Fox-adjacent rather than definitively Silver Fox-operated.

GBHackersupdated · 11h agofirst · 13h agoMalware in the wild 2 sources

LG TV shown scanning LAN for third-party phones and other devices

Security researchers showed LG OLED TVs scan local networks and collect nearby device details, raising privacy concerns for TV owners.

Gamers Nexus, working with Level1Techs and security researchers, used packet captures and Wireshark to show that LG TVs, including the $2,500 OLED65G3PUA and the G5 OLED, scan the local network for phones, smartwatches, and other unconnected devices. The TV's firmware can identify the user's IP address, nearby Wi-Fi network names and signal strength, neighboring channel numbers, and internal IP addresses of other devices. LG Ad Solutions marketing claims reach of 363 million 'addressable secondary devices' in the US, and LG says the scanning supports device connectivity and smart home features. It remains unclear whether the collected data is transmitted to LG for purposes beyond advertising.

Counterfeit installers to system compromise: Tracking a deceptive software download campaign

Microsoft tracks a counterfeit software-installer campaign compromising multinationals' China operations, moderately linked to the Silver Fox (Yinhu) actor.

Microsoft Defender Experts is tracking an active campaign using spoofed software download sites for brands such as Razer, Kaspersky, Microsoft Edge, Calibre, and Baidu Netdisk on .com.cn and .hl.cn domains, delivering installer archives whose hashes change per download, indicating server-side payload generation. The implants establish persistence, weaken security protections, and communicate with attacker-controlled infrastructure, with confirmed compromises across healthcare, manufacturing, gaming, technology, logistics, government, and education. Microsoft assesses with moderate confidence that the activity matches the publicly reported Silver Fox (Yinhu) fake software campaign; it has not attributed it to a nation-state actor.

Microsoft Security Blog · 15d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Canadian Start-up smartARM Uses AI to Create Intuitive Bionic Prosthetics

Toronto startup smartARM built a bionic prosthetic arm using Meta's DINOv2 vision model and AI glasses to automatically select grips for objects.

Toronto-based smartARM developed a vision-first bionic arm that uses a palm-embedded camera and Meta's open-source DINOv2 model to recognize objects from a few reference photos and automatically select suitable grips. It integrates Meta AI Glasses and the Meta Wearables Device Access Toolkit for additional egocentric context, letting users add new objects via a phone app. The arm adapts to new objects almost instantly instead of the weeks previously required, and is used by former NFL player Shaquem Griffin.

Meta Newsroomupdated · 6h agofirst · 7h agoAI industry 2 sources

Can We Stop The Ads? Taxonomy and Characterization of Smartphone Splash Ads and Existing Countermeasures

Study of 108 ad-defense implementations finds only one tool blocked splash-ad navigation across ten popular apps, and it required Accessibility permission.

The paper taxonomizes smartphone splash ads — full-screen ads at app launch that trick users into trigger mechanisms such as moving the phone — and analyzes 108 documented advertising defenses for deployment barriers. Many defenses require device rooting, jailbreaking, runtime code injection, or application modification; others need extra permissions, rule maintenance, compilation, or payment. In evaluating 13 configurations of 11 tools across 10 popular apps, only one prevented ad-triggered navigation across all ten apps, requiring Accessibility permission and leaving ads visible roughly one second before dismissal. Documented harms include delayed emergency response, driver distraction, and degraded accessibility for vision-impaired users.

arXiv cs.CR · 1d agoResearch

SlipSense: Multimodal Tactile Learning for Low-Latency and Generalized Slip Detection

SlipSense fuses a 32x32 piezoresistive array and MEMS accelerometer to detect robotic grip slips within 23.1 ms, generalizing zero-shot across platforms.

SlipSense is a multimodal tactile slip-detection framework built on TacV5, a sensor combining a 32x32 piezoresistive array at 240 Hz and a 3-axis MEMS accelerometer at 8 kHz. It performs modality-specific encoding, intra-sensor fusion, and cross-modal attention with causal temporal prediction at 240 Hz. On a 1.4-million-frame dataset spanning 37 objects it achieves 96.7% Macro F1 with a false-positive rate below 1.6%, detecting 76% of slip events within 23.1 ms. Trained solely on UMI data, it transfers zero-shot to a Tesollo dexterous hand across unseen objects, sensor units, and platforms.

arXiv cs.AI / cs.LG / cs.CL · 2d agoAI research

Researchers Show How Meta's 'Pervert Glasses' Are Used to Harass Women

University of Sydney researchers detail how pickup artists use Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses to covertly film and harass women, then post the videos on Instagram.

Researchers Joanne Gray, Milica Stilinovic, Marcus Carter, and Ben Egliston analyzed 350 Instagram videos posted between September 2023 and March 2026 showing unsolicited approaches to women filmed with smart glasses. They found a clear correlation between covert filming and harassment severity, arguing ambient capture creates 'borderline' harassment that evades platform moderation mechanisms. Instagram head Adam Mosseri said the platform would remove harassing pickup-line content, though similar videos remain widespread a month later. Meta's safeguards, such as the recording light, were previously criticized as insufficient, and users have modded glasses to disable the light.

404 Media · Aug 12, 2026AI safety & security

New Android Ransomware Records Screens, Steals OTPs and Secretly Takes Photos of Victims

Zimperium uncovered Mantax Otax, an Android ransomware that encrypts files, records screens, steals OTPs, and secretly photographs victims.

Zimperium reported a new Android threat, Mantax Otax, that combines ransomware with surveillance: it encrypts files with AES and adds a .enc extension on Android 9 and older, while abusing MediaProjection for screenshots and MP4 screen recording and using hidden camera previews to photograph victims. The malware intercepts SMS one-time passwords, WhatsApp and Telegram data, and lock-screen PINs through Accessibility abuse and a fake system-lock overlay, and can negotiate ransoms via an on-screen chat. Malicious APKs are hosted on third-party file-sharing services, and researchers linked the activity to Indonesian threat actors, with C2 dynamically retrieved from a GitHub repository (apimantax[.]otax[.]fun). A second variant adds WebSocket communications, app blocking, full-screen overlays, and remote text-to-speech messages.

Cyber Security News · 5d agoRansomware 6 sources

SenseNova-U1.5: Towards Native Unified Visual Intelligence

SenseTime releases SenseNova-U1.5, an 8B-MoT encoder-free multimodal model unifying visual understanding, reasoning, and generation with native 4K resolution.

SenseNova-U1.5 is an 8B mixture-of-transformers multimodal model with an encoder-free, VAE-free architecture that understands, reasons about, and generates visual content at native resolutions up to 4K. Post-training optimizes specialized experts for visual aesthetics, bilingual text rendering, infographic generation, and image editing, consolidated through multi-expert on-policy distillation. Evaluations report gains in image fidelity, text rendering, multi-reference editing, and instruction following. The team plans to open-source training code including supervised fine-tuning, reinforcement learning, and on-policy distillation.

Hugging Face daily papers · 7d agoModel release

After accusations of selling ‘perv glasses,’ Meta prepares to sell a pair without a camera

Meta is preparing camera-less Luna smart glasses with microphones and an AI button to access its chatbot and Muse agent, per reports.

The Information reports Meta is developing Luna, a camera-free smart glasses model with six built-in microphones and a side button that activates Meta's AI chatbot and its Muse consumer agent, possibly unveiled at next week's Meta Connect event. The move follows consumer backlash over camera-equipped glasses that critics called 'perv glasses.' Meta's Reality Labs continues to post large losses despite the smart glasses line's relative market success.

TechCrunch · AI · 3h agoAI industry

sk185169 - CVE-2026-16232 - Authentication bypass with SmartConsole ...

Check Point issued a high-severity alert for CVE-2026-16232, an authentication bypass in the SmartConsole login process via application token.

Check Point published support article sk185169 describing CVE-2026-16232, an authentication bypass affecting the SmartConsole login process when using application tokens. The vendor rates the issue High. The brief advisory text provides no exploitation details, CVSS score, or affected-version list.

LG accused of 'egregious invasion of privacy' over TV data collection

Gamers Nexus alleges LG smart TVs record audio and generate transcripts in standby while harvesting location, network, and device data for LG's ads business.

Researchers at Gamers Nexus claim LG smart TVs continued capturing audio after voice recognition activated, including in standby, producing plaintext transcripts, some stored locally and sent after reconnection. Testing reportedly found collection of IP addresses, location data, nearby Wi-Fi network details, and enumeration of unpaired local devices such as phones, routers, and PCs, with data flowing to LG Ads Solutions. The team is coordinating responsible disclosure of vulnerabilities including an alleged remote code execution flaw. LG says its TVs do not collect, record, or store ambient conversations and that voice recognition is optional.

The Register · Security · 8d agoIndustry1

Iranian cyber targeting of dissidents, activists and journalists

UK NCSC, FBI, and Dutch AIVD expose CHOSEN BRICK spyware used by Iranian state actors against dissidents, activists, and journalists worldwide.

A joint advisory from the UK NCSC, FBI, and Dutch AIVD details CHOSEN BRICK, a Windows spyware family used by Iranian state cyber actors since at least 2025 against dissidents, activists, and journalists in the UK, US, and Netherlands. Actors build rapport on WhatsApp and Telegram impersonating known contacts or platform support, then deliver disguised payloads resembling apps such as Telegram, Norton, RunwayML, or fake MRI results. The malware persists via HKCU Run registry keys, adds Microsoft Defender exclusions, and uses a unique Telegram bot C2 per victim. Capabilities include screen capture, microphone recording, process enumeration, email and messaging data theft, file deletion, and system wiping; victim data has appeared on pro-Iranian leak sites.

NCSC UK · 1d agoThreat actor in the wild2

Diffusion TV: Experiencing Diffusion Models through Tangible, Embodied Interaction

Researchers present Diffusion TV, a CRT-based installation where antenna manipulation lets audiences physically experience diffusion model denoising.

Diffusion TV is an interactive installation built around a modified CRT television where turning the antenna controls the clarity of AI-generated images and sounds, mirroring the denoising process of diffusion models. Three channels present AI-generated animals from the past, present, and future within a temporal and ecological narrative. The authors frame the work as an embodied, non-verbal alternative to explainable AI that highlights intermediate generative states rather than final outputs.

arXiv cs.AI / cs.LG / cs.CL · 12d agoAI research

Get closer to the game with Gemini and Pixel

Google's Gemini and Pixel partner with five global football clubs to add AI-powered features to the matchday fan experience.

Google announced partnerships between its Gemini AI and Pixel smartphone lines and five global football clubs. The collaboration aims to elevate the fan matchday experience through AI and smartphone technology. The announcement is primarily a consumer marketing effort rather than a security-relevant development.

Google · AI · Aug 17, 2026AI industry

Watch out: Apple timepiece can grab snippets of conversation without both speakers' consent

Apple's Watch Series 12 Live Rewind and Siri Recap transcribe nearby conversations without bystander consent, drawing EFF criticism over all-party-consent laws.

Apple Watch Series 12's Audio Intelligence features on the S11 chip include Live Rewind, which transcribes the last 15 seconds of a conversation after a Digital Crown double-press, processing audio in a Secure Exclave and routing it to a nearby iPhone. Siri Recap generates AI summaries of daily conversations without retaining raw audio or attributing speakers. Apple says an audible chime and visual cue alert bystanders, but privacy advocates including the EFF note that 11 US states require all-party consent for recording and that bystanders have no practical way to opt in or decline.