Shameless Plug

220 Million Traveler Records Exposed In Vietnam-Linked APIS Leak Published on 2026-09-14T02:34:00Z A misconfigured Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) database linked to Vietnam exposed more than 220 million passenger and crew travel records spanning 2017 to 2026, including names, passport numbers, nationalities, flight details, seat assignments, and baggage references. Researchers said the database was reachable through a chain of security mistakes and default credentials. It was later secured after the disclosure, but it's unclear whether the data had already been copied or abused. BleepingComputer reports: Kinryu Labs discovered the Elasticsearch cluster on June 3 while surveying exposed databases as part of research into ransomware activity. The cluster, named 'pax-info', contained 29 indices and roughly 107 GB of data. Its two principal indices held 210,318,069 passenger records and 10,465,631 crew records, for a combined 220,783,700 entries. According to Kin...

NASA and IBM Open Source Lunar Mapping Tools Published on 2026-09-13T22:04:00Z NASA and IBM have released an open-source AI model trained on a large collection of lunar observations to help scientists analyze the Moon at scale. "The NASA-IBM Lunar Foundation Model gives scientists a foundation to explore the Moon at scale, connecting observations across instruments, revealing patterns that are difficult to see in isolation, and providing an open platform the global research community can build on," said IBM director of research for Europe, Juan Bernabe-Moreno. The Register reports: It is claimed as the first AI model to integrate observations captured in a range of modalities (data formats), and at different viewing angles and spatial scales. Instead of sifting through maps and images by hand or using low resolution machine learning models, scientists can use this to analyze geographic features, the pair say. In particular, NASA and IBM hope researchers will be able to disc...

Malicious OpenAI Agents Linked to RubyGems Campaign That Gained RCE on RubyDoc Servers in May Published on 2026-09-13T09:00:00Z A swarm of OpenAI agents launched a "major malicious attack" against RubyGems last May, according to a new report. That coordinated attack hit Ruby's package manager "with hundreds of junk gems, prompting the maintainers to suspend new user sign-ups for about four days," writes The Hacker News, citing a senior product manager for software supply chain security at Mend.io: The latest findings, which were first reported by The Wall Street Journal, indicate these events were propelled by a cluster of OpenAI agents, with the earliest package uploaded to RubyGems on May 5, 2026, before more than 2,000 packages were submitted between May 11 and 12, 2026. These efforts were followed by the agents publishing five more packages between May 26 and 27, 2026, and another 83 packages on June 18, 2026... [T]he packages were authored using a large ...

Sam Bankman-Fried, Former Crypto Billionaire, Appeals His Conviction To the US Supreme Court Published on 2026-09-13T05:00:00Z America's highest court heard Sam Bankman-Fried's request for a new trial on Thursday, CNN reports. But they add that "the former crypto mogul who was convicted of defrauding investors by secretly diverting billions of dollars of their money" also asked America's high court "to throw out a court order requiring him to pay $11 billion as part of his sentence." Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2024 after prosecutors said he directed billions of dollars from the crypto exchange FTX to a hedge fund he controlled called Alameda Research, where the funds were used for risky investments, political donations and his own personal benefit. The Supreme Court appeal, which was reviewed by CNN, raises a technical question about evidence that was submitted at his trial, and whether Bankman-Fried should have been permit...

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei Calls For AI Slowdown Published on 2026-09-13T01:00:00Z An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The chief executive of Anthropic called for a global slowdown of artificial intelligence development in a 3,800-word essay on Saturday, just days after one of the company's employees quit over concerns about the safety of the technology. Dario Amodei, who co-founded Anthropic to focus on securely and carefully building A.I., wrote that while he believed the technology could bring many benefits, it was advancing at too quick a pace for researchers to continue safely. "Over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence -- not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up," Mr. Amodei said. "We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of A.I. models. Progress will still s...

Automattic's Matt Mullenweg Claims He's Back 'In Control' Published on 2026-09-12T21:00:00Z Less than 48 hours after Automattic's board placed Matt Mullenweg on leave, Mullenweg told employees he was back "in control" of the company and that the board was again in agreement. 404 Media cited Slack screenshots late Thursday evening where Mullenweg posted "Don't call it a comeback" and linked to LL Cool J's music video for "Mama Said Knock You Out." "Mullenweg's Slack profile picture currently shows him wearing a pirate hat and eyepatch," the report notes. From the report: "Happy to announce the board is back in agreement, and I'm in control of Automattic," Mullenweg wrote in the company-wide Announcements channel on Slack. "A lot happened in the past 48 hours that we need to sort out, and I hope much of it was a misunderstanding, because I have huge respect and regard for those involved." ...

Little Mercury May Be Shrinking Faster Than Scientists Expected Published on 2026-09-12T09:00:00Z A new study suggests Mercury may have shrunk about 30% more than scientists previously thought, losing as much as 14 miles in diameter as its interior cooled and contracted over billions of years. "That's significant for a planet barely 3,000 miles (4,900 kilometers) across," reports the Associated Press. From the report: Mercury's rough surface, continually reshaped by debris hurled from impact craters, may have hidden the true extent of the loss, according to the researchers whose findings appear in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The news comes one week after a pair of European and Japanese spacecraft shed its cruising platform and advanced toward Mercury. Known as BepiColombo, the linked craft are expected to enter orbit around Mercury in November before splitting up for a fuller survey. BepiColombo's laser instrument should confirm how much Mercury ...