New Specula tool uses Outlook for remote code execution in Windows

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New Specula tool uses Outlook for remote code execution in Windows A new post-exploitation framework called “Specula” was released by cybersecurity firm TrustedSec, which can turn Microsoft Outlook into a command and control (C2) beacon to remotely execute code. The C2 framework works by creating a custom Outlook Home Page using WebView, exploiting CVE-2017-11774, an … Read more

Meta’s AI safety system defeated by space bar

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Meta’s AI safety system defeated by space bar ‘Ignore previous instructions’ thwarts Prompt-Guard model if you just add good ol’ ASCII code 32 Meta’s machine-learning model for detecting prompt injection attacks, Prompt-Guard-86M, is vulnerable to prompt injection attacks. The model was introduced by Meta with its Llama 3.1 generative model last week. It’s meant to … Read more

“Skip’s Powered Pants Bring Soft Exoskeleton Technology to Market”

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Skip, a wearable technology startup that started as a secretive project inside Alphabet, has come out of stealth mode to announce its partnership with outdoor clothing company Arc’teryx. The deal brings Skip’s “powered pants” to market. These special pants have a soft exoskeleton called MO/GO that helps people walk by providing 40% energy assistance and … Read more

Cloud-to-Ground Lightning Strikes May Have Formed Life Building Blocks

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A large team of chemists at Harvard University has found evidence that cloud-to-ground lightning strikes may have played a key role in generating building blocks for life on Earth. In their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers set up an experiment to mimic early Earth conditions and simulated … Read more

Perplexity Launches Ad Revenue Sharing Program for Publishers

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Perplexity is launching a program to share ad revenue with publishing partners, following weeks of plagiarism accusations. The “Publishers’ Program” has recruited its first batch of partners, including prominent names like Time, Der Spiegel, Fortune, and others. Under this program, publishers will receive a share of the ad revenue when Perplexity features their content in … Read more

Microsoft 365 and Azure services experience widespread outage

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Microsoft is investigating a widespread outage affecting some Microsoft 365 and Azure services. Users are reporting issues connecting to the Microsoft 365 admin center, opening the Service Health Status page, and experiencing timeouts while using Azure services. The company says the incident only affects users worldwide and a subset of its services. Multiple engineering teams … Read more

Windows XP’s Vulnerability to Malware in the Modern Era

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Hey, remember Windows XP? That operating system from 2001 that’s still fondly remembered by many. But with no updates since 2014, it’s no longer safe or secure. YouTuber Eric Parker decided to test this by going online with an old Windows XP computer without any protection. He quickly found malware on his system – just … Read more

Sparse Autoencoder Advances: JumpReLU SAEs Outperform Gated SAEs

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The Sparse Autoencoder (SAE) is a type of neural network that efficiently learns sparse representations of data by enforcing sparsity to capture only the most important data characteristics for fast feature learning. This helps reduce dimensionality, simplifying complex datasets while keeping crucial information. Researchers have introduced JumpReLU SAEs, which use a modified ReLU activation function … Read more