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Nvidia dismisses "circular financing", says every $1 it invests brings back $100

Nvidia rejects 'circular financing' criticism, claiming every $1 it invests yields $100 in returns amid a falling stock price.

Nvidia publicly dismissed concerns that its AI ecosystem investments amount to 'circular financing', asserting that each $1 it invests generates roughly $100 in value. The statement comes as Nvidia's share price continues to decline. The story drew moderate discussion on Hacker News with 34 points and 25 comments.

Hacker News · security · 3d agoAI industryHN 34↑ · 25 comments

You don’t have to join the hack-back program to inherit its risk

A new US presidential memorandum creates a vetted private hack-back program, leaving participating vendors and their customers with untested legal liability and collateral risks.

The August 12 National Security Presidential Memorandum directs the National Coordination Center, run jointly by DOJ and DHS, to approve covert surveillance and disruptive Cyber Effects Operations by vetted private companies, with a forfeitable bond of at least $1 million required as a contract condition. The analysis argues the criminal shield rests on an untested reading of the CFAA exemption at 18 U.S.C. 1030(f), with no civil safe harbor, no state-law preemption and no foreign-law protection. Non-participating organizations can still inherit risk through shared infrastructure collateral damage, lack of customer disclosure, Lloyd's bulletin Y5381 state-backed attack exclusions, and threat-intelligence pipelines feeding offensive proposals.

CSO Online · 11h agoPolicy & legal

Risky Bulletin: Expired cards can be used for new transactions

Researchers show expired Visa contactless cards can be revived via NFC man-in-the-middle relay to run fraudulent transactions; roundup also covers major breaches.

University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers built an NFC man-in-the-middle rig that updates a card's expiration date in transit and relays the modified payment to POS terminals, reviving expired contactless cards; Visa terminals and the backends of all five banks studied failed to catch the manipulation. The same roundup reports Iranian hackers shut down a small UK power plant for four days, Lazarus breached South Korea's Presidential Office as part of a campaign exceeding 100 victims, and French telecom SFR suffered a breach affecting over 2.1 million customers.

Risky Business News · 23d agoResearch1

Nearly 750k had financial info, SSNs leaked in South Carolina loan company breach

Heights Finance breach of a third-party cloud platform exposed SSNs and banking data of 734,828 loan customers across 11 states.

Attackers breached a third-party cloud platform used by Heights Finance in May, exposing data on 734,828 customers, according to the company's filing with Texas regulators. Stolen data includes contact details, bank account and routing numbers, Social Security numbers, tax IDs and driver's license numbers. The breach, discovered on May 7, was limited to the cloud platform and did not affect loan management systems. No group has claimed the attack and dark web monitoring has found no evidence of the data being leaked.

The Record · Aug 17, 2026Data breach

Hackers Expose Data of 1.2 Million Heights Finance Customers

Heights Finance is notifying over 1.2 million customers that hackers accessed a third-party cloud platform holding contact, bank and government ID data.

Heights Finance, a U.S. consumer lender, discovered unauthorized access on May 7, 2026 to a third-party cloud platform used to store customer data; its internal loan management systems and operations were not affected. Exposed data varies by person and may include contact details, financial and bank account information, government IDs and dates of birth for customers, loan applicants, inquirers, and former borrowers of Curo Management and related brands. The company is offering 24 months of free credit monitoring and identity protection; dark web monitoring found no evidence of publication and no threat actor has claimed responsibility.

Security Affairs · 29d agoData breach in the wild

[AINews] Poolside gets $12B reverse-execuhire to NVIDIA; founders stay for $1B, employees go for $6B, Infraco scaling to 7GW neocloud

NVIDIA struck a $12B deal with AI coding startup Poolside, licensing its Model Factory and hiring 109 of its technical employees.

NVIDIA spent roughly $12B in an unusual reverse-execuhire of Poolside, licensing the company's Model Factory while hiring 109 of its ~115 technical staff; founders retain a $1B stake and employees receive about $6B. Poolside had raced to raise $2B to fund a 40,000 GB300 cluster after missing a six-week funding window, and founders argue frontier-scale training now requires an order of magnitude more compute plus contracted data center space. An infrastructure arm spun out in January 2026 is scaling toward 7GW as a neocloud. The newsletter also recaps OpenAI and Anthropic agent-platform releases.

Latent Space · 26d agoAI industry

What LLM Trading Agents Actually Do in Production: A Six-Month, Population-Scale Record from Two Fleets

Six-month record of 7.5M LLM trading agent invocations shows volatility-blind sizing, minimal upside capture, and no directional edge across two fleets.

The study records autonomous LLM trading agents in production across DX Terminal Pro (3,505 user-funded vaults trading real ETH in Base memecoin markets) and the DXAP fleet (500-599 agents on Hyperliquid perpetuals), spanning roughly six months, 7.5M single-model invocations and about 300K onchain actions. A risk slider explains leverage (+0.425 per level), median leverage is 5.0x in every volatility sextile, and one posture-slider cell holds 62% of liquidations. Agents capture little upside: 43.2% of positions saw +300 bps favorable excursion within 24h yet 49.3% of those closed negative, while the DXAP fleet trails a matched retail benchmark (41% vs 50% roundtrip win rate). A paired-replay league of frontier models finds decision quality statistically indistinguishable at this horizon.

Hugging Face daily papers · 13d agoAI research

What building an AI-native finance function taught me

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar shares five lessons from building an AI-native finance function, covering forecasting, controls, and AI ROI.

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar outlines five lessons learned from building an AI-native finance function at the company. Topics include automated forecasting, stronger financial controls, and measuring AI return on investment. The piece is a first-person account of enterprise AI adoption within a finance organization rather than a product or research announcement.

OpenAI News · Aug 10, 2026AI industry

Show HN: Sunk Cost – How long until a local LLM rig pays for itself?

Show HN tool 'Sunk Cost' calculates when a local LLM rig breaks even versus falling API prices, factoring electricity cost and inference speed.

A Hacker News Show HN project called Sunk Cost models the payback period of buying local LLM hardware instead of paying API prices. Users can adjust assumptions like electricity cost ($/kWh) and API speed (tokens/second), and the model assumes API prices keep falling. Where local speed is unmeasured, it is estimated from memory bandwidth divided by bytes read per token, and labelled as an estimate.

Hacker News · security · 1d agoAI tools & infraHN 30↑ · 31 comments

Large Enterprises Targeted in Fake Merger & Acquisition Scams

'Phantom Deal' campaign uses detailed research on large enterprises to trick midlevel employees into initiating large fraudulent merger-related financial transfers.

Dark Reading reports on the 'Phantom Deal' campaign, in which threat actors study target companies in extreme detail before running fake merger and acquisition scams against large enterprises. The social engineering aims to dupe midlevel employees into initiating large financial transfers. The scheme follows a business email compromise-style fraud pattern targeting enterprise finance workflows.

Dark Reading · 13d agoPhishing & fraud

A $25 template helped scammers build hundreds of phantom bank domains

Allure Security researchers found 838 live phantom bank sites sharing a $25 template, built to lend credibility to investment and romance scams.

Allure Security researchers discovered roughly 2,200 domains presenting invented banks, of which 1,095 returned working pages and 838 contained a shared phrase. 97% of those retained parts of the $25 Cuex front-end template and 94% ran Laravel, with a misspelled 'Curreny Charts' heading on 90% of sites. The sites presented login pages, session cookies, and anti-forgery tokens consistent with a fraud model where scam contacts direct victims to fake financial portals. A leftover 'Remedy bank' title and form submission to remedycodes[.]site linked some sites to already-flagged fraud infrastructure.

Help Net Security · 26d agoPhishing & fraud

NIS2 compliance: Fixing IAM and access control before the 2026 audit

EU NIS2 enforcement deadlines approach; organizations are urged to prioritize service account inventory, lifecycle offboarding, and phishing-resistant MFA before audits.

EU member states are moving from NIS2 transposition into enforcement, with fines up to 10 million euros or 2% of global turnover for essential entities and personal liability for management bodies. The article argues access management is the fastest high-ROI starting point, estimating 2-4 weeks to enforce fine-grained password policy, vault shared credentials, and deploy phishing-resistant MFA versus 6-12 months for supply chain risk management. It flags three common pre-audit failures: unmanaged service accounts and API keys, dormant accounts from broken offboarding, and SMS OTP instead of phishing-resistant MFA under NIST SP 800-63B. The piece promotes Passwork as a single control plane for credential storage, RBAC, and WebAuthn.

Help Net Security · 15d agoIndustry

The EU CRA's Real Question: What Shipped, and When Did You Know?

ActiveState argues the EU CRA's 24-hour ENISA exploit-notification duty, effective September 11, 2026, makes current SBOMs and provenance visibility a legal necessity.

An ActiveState essay warns that the EU Cyber Resilience Act's reporting obligations take effect on September 11, 2026, requiring manufacturers of products with digital elements sold into the EU to notify ENISA within 24 hours of learning a vulnerability is actively exploited, with a fuller report within 72 hours. The law's engineering requirements only apply from December 11, 2027, leaving a visibility-first runway, and Article 13 requires the SBOM to stay current unlike one-time artifacts generated under US Executive Order 14028. The author contrasts the 24-hour notification clock with an industry-average 55 days to remediate high or critical vulnerabilities and recommends automated SBOM regeneration or consuming pre-vetted, attested open source components.

BleepingComputer · 8d agoPolicy & legal

Mistral AI raises 3 billion euros in Europe's largest-ever tech funding round despite lagging behind rivals

Mistral AI closed a €3 billion Series D led by Samsung Electronics, valuing the lab at over €21 billion.

Mistral AI raised €3 billion in what it calls the largest equity round ever by a European tech company, lifting its valuation past €21 billion after ASML valued it near €12 billion in September 2025. Samsung Electronics leads the round with EQT's Scaleup Europe Fund and PSG Equity as co-leads; new investors include Advent, BlackRock-managed funds, and Luxembourg. The company also took an $830 million loan in March to fund its own data centers and serves 125+ enterprise customers including Airbus, ASML, and HSBC. Mistral Medium 3.5 trails open rivals like Qwen and Kimi and doesn't compete with top closed US models.

The Decoder · 8d agoAI industry1

Legora reviewed 41 documents in minutes with GPT-6 Astra

Legal-tech firm Legora says GPT-6 Astra reviewed 41 financial documents in minutes, catching all four planted errors and boosting accuracy about 40%.

Legal technology company Legora reported using OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra to review 41 financial-statement documents in minutes. The workflow found all four planted errors and improved performance by nearly 40% compared to prior processes. The case study highlights AI-assisted financial review adoption in professional services.

OpenAI News · 13d agoAI industry

Model ML completes finance work more efficiently with GPT-5.6 Sol

OpenAI customer Model ML uses GPT-5.6 Sol to turn finance research into editable, traceable decks and workbooks.

OpenAI published a customer story describing how Model ML uses GPT-5.6 Sol for finance work. The model carries tasks from research and analysis through to editable, traceable PowerPoint decks and Excel workbooks. This is a product adoption case rather than a new model release.

OpenAI News · Aug 10, 2026AI industry

House passes bill to equip local law enforcement with scam-fighting tools

The U.S. House passed the GUARD Act, letting local law enforcement use federal grants to investigate financial scams and trace stolen cryptocurrency.

The bipartisan GUARD Act (Reps. Zachary Nunn, Scott Fitzgerald, Josh Gottheimer) passed the House, allowing existing DOJ grant funds to be used for fraud analysts, victim-support training, blockchain tracing software, and financial-information sharing with law enforcement. It addresses scams like pig butchering, often run by transnational criminal groups overseas; Americans lost a record $11.4 billion to crypto-related fraud in 2025, including $8.6 billion in investment fraud. Senators Katie Britt and Kirsten Gillibrand introduced a Senate companion in July 2025, and the House also passed a bill retroactively eliminating the 'scam tax' on stolen funds for 2021-2025 victims.

The Record · 1h agoPolicy & legal

NVIDIA AI Factory Compute Is Becoming an Investable Asset Class

NVIDIA partners with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to mobilize over $500 billion of third-party capital for AI infrastructure financing.

NVIDIA announced partnerships with major financial firms including Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR. The independent financing platforms are designed to mobilize more than $500 billion of third-party capital to support AI infrastructure buildout. NVIDIA frames the move as positioning AI factory compute as an investable asset class.

NVIDIA Blog · Aug 12, 2026AI industry

Mistral raises €3B

Mistral raised a Samsung-led €3B Series D at a €21B+ valuation — the largest European tech equity round — to scale compute and frontier AI research.

Mistral announced a €3 billion Series D at a post-money valuation above €21 billion, the largest equity round ever by a European technology company. Samsung Electronics led the round, with co-leads Scaleup Europe Fund (managed by EQT) and PSG Equity; new investors include Advent, BlackRock, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The company operates across 20 countries, serves 125+ enterprises including Airbus, ASML, and HSBC, and says funds will expand frontier research, compute capacity, and international growth.

Hacker News · AI · 8d agoAI industryHN 648↑ · 468 comments

The Permanent Threat: Analyzing Aeternum’s Blockchain-Based C2 Operations and Communications

Unit 42 analyzes the Aeternum botnet loader, which uses Polygon blockchain smart contracts for resilient decentralized C2 and payload execution.

Palo Alto Unit 42 published a technical analysis of Aeternum, a botnet loader that leverages Polygon blockchain smart contracts as its command-and-control infrastructure. The decentralized C2 design makes takedown difficult, giving the threat a persistent, 'permanent' communication channel for payload delivery and execution. The analysis covers the smart contract mechanics and communication protocol used by the operation.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 10, 2026Malware

Your Expired Visa Card Could Be ‘Zombified’ to Make Contactless Payments

Roundup: expired Visa cards can be revived for contactless payments via NFC relay; plus Apple spyware warnings and Ukraine cyberattacks on Russian e-commerce.

WIRED's weekly security roundup leads with research showing expired Visa contactless cards can be revived to make new payments through an NFC man-in-the-middle attack that alters the card's expiration date. The roundup also covers Apple sending an unprecedented volume of spyware warnings to users and Ukrainian cyber and drone attacks against a major Russian e-commerce company.

WIRED · Security · 25d agoResearch

Stampli cuts launch hours by 68% using ChatGPT Work

AP automation firm Stampli used OpenAI Codex and ChatGPT Work to cut product launch production hours by 68%.

Stampli, an accounts-payable automation company, compressed weeks of launch production into days using Codex and ChatGPT Work. Facing a fixed deadline with design resources committed elsewhere, the team reported a 68% reduction in launch hours. The piece is an OpenAI customer adoption case study.

OpenAI News · 27d agoAI industry

Shadow AI in Financial Services | Risk & Governance

Huntress warns financial services firms that unsanctioned 'Shadow AI' tool use creates data leakage and compliance risks faster than governance controls can keep pace.

Huntress argues Shadow AI — employee use of unapproved AI tools such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot — is spreading across financial services faster than visibility and controls. Uploading regulated customer data into public generative models risks breaches of client confidentiality, data protection rules, and market conduct obligations. The piece recommends secure web gateways, DNS filtering, DLP, application allowlisting, and corporate SSO/MFA for approved tools rather than outright bans, which can push usage onto personal devices.

Huntress · 13d agoIndustry

Launching managed CRA Article 14 reporting for open source maintainers

EU Cyber Resilience Act Article 14 reporting obligations begin, requiring 24-hour exploit and incident reports; Patchstack launches managed compliance for open-source maintainers.

Starting 11 September 2026, EU Cyber Resilience Act Article 14 requires manufacturers and open-source stewards to report actively exploited vulnerabilities and severe security incidents to ENISA via the EU Single Reporting Platform, with a 24-hour early warning, 72-hour notification, and final reports within 14 days or one month. Patchstack launched a free managed compliance service, acting as Assigned Representative for open-source maintainers and providing a managed VDP. The obligations apply retroactively to all products available on the European market. Patchstack, which has coordinated over 50% of known WordPress ecosystem vulnerabilities, already serves more than 1,000 open-source projects.

Patchstack · 5d agoPolicy & legal

Peers ask why UK cyber bill leaves execs off the personal liability hook

UK peers propose amendments to the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill adding personal executive liability and board-level cyber responsibility; government defends fines-only approach.

Baronesses Kidron and Ludford backed amendments to the UK Cyber Security and Resilience Bill that would introduce personal civil liability for senior executives and mandate board-level cybersecurity responsibility, citing NIS2 and financial-sector accountability rules. Cybersecurity minister Baroness Lloyd defended the bill's existing regime of fines up to £17 million or 4% of annual turnover, with governance requirements to come via secondary legislation. Peers also debated the bill's 24-hour and 72-hour incident reporting requirements, with Baroness Harding proposing an additional 14-day intermediate report and a one-month final report.

The Register · Security · 9d agoPolicy & legal

E-Commerce Access, Vedicline Data, Langflow RCE, ASUS Claim, and Energy Shell Access

SOCRadar reports underground posts claiming a Bangladeshi e-commerce database, Vedicline data leak, Langflow RCE, ASUS breach, and energy-sector shell access.

SOCRadar's Dark Web Team identified several new underground posts, including an alleged Bangladeshi e-commerce customer database offered for sale. The roundup also covers a claimed Vedicline data leak, Langflow remote code execution, an ASUS breach claim, and energy-sector shell access sales. Details on record counts and victims were not provided in the excerpt.

SOCRadar · 9d agoData breach