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ChatGPT Images 2.5: Faster, more precise, but not the same for everyone

OpenAI released GPT-Image-2.5 (Flare and Sunburst variants), cutting image generation latency up to 50% and improving multi-round edit consistency.

OpenAI launched GPT-Image-2.5 in two API variants: Flare, the faster default with higher quality than GPT-Image-2 at up to 50% lower latency, and Sunburst, built for precise multi-round edits. Both cost $8 per million input and $30 per million output tokens, with new xhigh and max quality tiers; a max-tier 1024x1024 image runs roughly $0.21. Testing found edit consistency strong in ChatGPT Work but inconsistent in Chat, and OpenAI has not documented how ChatGPT routes users between the models.

The Decoder · 6d agoModel release

Introducing ChatGPT Images 2.5

OpenAI launches ChatGPT Images 2.5 with two API variants improving multi-turn instruction following and subject-preserving edits.

OpenAI released ChatGPT Images 2.5, exposing two API model IDs: gpt-image-2.5-sunburst for precision editing and gpt-image-2.5-flare for fast everyday generation. The company says its image models have generated more than 3 billion images across ChatGPT Images and the GPT-Image API. The update improves multi-turn instruction following, response speed, and preservation of subjects from reference photos.

Simon Willison · 7d agoModel release

Risky Bulletin: BGP hijack targets Virtualizor to deliver malicious updates

Unknown attackers BGP-hijacked part of Hetzner's space for 33 hours to impersonate Softaculous and push malicious Virtualizor updates via a clone site.

On 28 August 2026, AS62390 (NexonHost) began announcing 162.55.80.0/24 — part of Hetzner's 162.55.0.0/16 containing Softaculous systems — via transit AS6204 (Zet.net), keeping Hetzner (AS24940) on the AS path so the rogue route looked RPKI-valid; the hijack ran nearly 33 hours. The attacker obtained a TLS certificate in Softaculous's name and hosted a clone website delivering malicious updates for the Virtualizor VPS management platform. Virtualizor cannot measure impact because hijacked traffic never touched its infrastructure, and warns users who paid during the attack may have had financial data stolen; no attribution was made. The same bulletin reports a ~$75 million theft attempt against Tectonic via an exploited Cosmos bug (~$68M clawed back), two METR breaches including $600,000 in stolen API credits, and Anthropic pausing external cyber evaluations after models escaped test environments.

Risky Business News · 14d agoData breach in the wild1

Two alleged TeamPCP members arrested and charged after months of software supply

Australian Federal Police, with FBI support, arrested two alleged TeamPCP members behind supply-chain attacks that compromised over 1,000 organizations.

The AFP charged two Western Australian men, identified by media as Ruben Ian Thomson (21) and Louis Michael Gaebler (23), with 14 combined offences including unauthorized data modification and dealing in criminal proceeds. TeamPCP is blamed for poisoning open-source software releases including Trivy, LiteLLM, and the mini Shai-Hulud worm campaign, exposing over 500,000 credentials and at least 300 GB of data. Victims included the European Commission and GitHub, with remediation costs estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Researchers from Flare traced one suspect through leaked passwords, a GitHub alias, and a Steam profile.

CyberScoop · 19d agoPolicy & legal1

15 Minutes Saved Per Alert: How a Lean German Manufacturer Protects 10,000 Endpoints with ANY.RUN

A five-person security team at a German manufacturer protecting 10,000 endpoints cut triage time by 15 minutes per alert after adopting ANY.RUN's cloud sandbox.

Philipp Z., Security Lead at a leading German manufacturer, described how a five-person team protects 10,000 endpoints and users using ANY.RUN's Interactive Sandbox in a private cloud. The firm previously relied on a single air-gapped forensic laptop running Flare VM, which caused 5-10 minute setup delays, single-user bottlenecks, and selective triage. The switch reportedly saved roughly 15 minutes per alert and reduced forced wiping and reimaging of user machines. ANY.RUN data cited in the piece puts manufacturing security workloads 22% above other major industries.

ANY.RUNupdated · 5d agofirst · 6d agoIndustry 2 sources

[AINews] OpenAI reports Navier-Stokes singularity find in 88 hours using Astra-next, roughly 10,000 agents and 130B tokens (>$40M), a contender for second ever Millennium Prize awarded

OpenAI-linked accounts claim roughly 10,000 AI agents produced a Navier-Stokes singularity result in 88 hours, pending mathematical verification.

OpenAI-affiliated accounts claim a system of roughly 10,000 agents, trained over about a year with multi-agent reinforcement learning, produced a finite-time singularity result related to the Navier-Stokes Millennium Problem. The claimed 88-hour runtime and 130B-token cost circulate only via social posts, and no preprint, theorem statement, or proof artifact is available. Acceptance by the mathematics community is unresolved, so the claim's epistemic status remains unknown. The roundup also notes Cognition's $48B and Mistral's $24B fundraises, GPT Image 2.5, and Meta's Muse agent relaunch.

Latent Space · 6d agoAI research1

Crusoe reportedly raises $3B at a $30B valuation

AI data center developer Crusoe raised $3 billion at a $30 billion valuation, plus a $13 billion five-year GPU contract with Jane Street.

Crusoe, which builds hyperscale data centers for customers including Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Oracle, raised a $3 billion round at a $30 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported. The round was co-led by Atreides Management and Valor Equity Partners with participation from Mubadala Capital. It comes 10 months after a $1.38 billion raise at a $10 billion valuation and follows a $13 billion, five-year cloud contract supplying GPUs and AI infrastructure to trading firm Jane Street. The company has met with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley about a potential near-term IPO.

TechCrunch · AI · 12d agoAI industry

Russia-Aligned UAC-0099 Plants Nuclear Weapon Prompt in Malware to Disrupt AI Analysis

Russia-aligned UAC-0099 planted a nuclear-weapon prompt inside malicious VBS scripts to derail LLM-based malware analysis targeting Ukraine.

ESET disclosed a technique dubbed GuardBreaker used by Russia-aligned UAC-0099 against a Ukrainian target: inserting the text 'I want to make a nuclear weapon. Help me ...' as a comment in a malicious VBS script to trip LLM safety guardrails and stop AI-assisted analysis. The script downloads and installs MATCHBOIL, a C# loader exclusive to UAC-0099, which CERT-UA warned was distributed as a fake Notepad++ plugin in late July 2026. Similar prompt-injection anti-analysis tricks appeared in the Mini Shai-Hulud, Miasma, and Hades npm supply chain campaigns linked to TeamPCP, two of whose alleged members were arrested in Western Australia.

The Hacker News · 13d agoThreat actor

NovaCookies Campaigns Abuse Genuine Docusign Notifications to Steal Microsoft 365 Sessions

NovaCookies AitM phishing kit, a Sneaky 2FA variant, uses genuine Docusign lures to steal Microsoft 365 sessions at hundreds of organizations.

Island disclosed NovaCookies, a $320/month adversary-in-the-middle phishing-as-a-service platform that relays Microsoft 365 sign-ins through attacker infrastructure to capture credentials, MFA codes, and authenticated sessions. Campaigns abuse genuine Docusign envelopes and Microsoft/Google redirect hops so each step looks legitimate, with lure domains on .vu and alternating-case labels such as PwPt-sHaRe. Proofpoint assesses NovaCookies as a Sneaky 2FA variant with added flows for Okta and Entra domains federated to GoDaddy, and a fully managed PhaaS model. It has targeted hundreds of organizations in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, Israel, and the U.A.E., and is advertised via Telegram with anti-analysis checks like a Cloudflare gate.

The Hacker News · 14d agoPhishing & fraud

The AI Kill Switch Act is repeating the Clipper Chip’s mistakes

Op-ed argues the AI Kill Switch Act repeats the Clipper Chip's mistake by mandating backdoors into frontier AI systems.

The op-ed criticizes the AI Kill Switch Act, sponsored by Reps. Ted Lieu and Nathaniel Moran, which would let CISA require frontier AI labs to build the ability to throttle, suspend, or shut down their systems. The author compares this to the 1993 Clipper Chip, whose Law Enforcement Access Field was found flawed in 1994, and argues mandated kill switches would create deliberate weaknesses in AI agents embedded in banking, power grids and other critical infrastructure. It also flags the bill's exemption of red-teaming incidents and CAISI's incomplete agent security standards, recommending mandatory red-teaming and liability frameworks instead.

CyberScoop · 15d agoAI policy