Welcome to today’s edition of the Spiceworks Snap!
It’s your daily dose of security and tech news, in brief, along with a mix of other odd or interesting things that might come up. We’re glad you came.
Now, let’s jump right in…
Image by Suzanne from Spiceworks (AI-generated)
Flashback: June 13, 2016: Microsoft announces acquisition of LinkedIn (Read more HERE.)
Security News:
• TeamFiltration Abused in Entra ID Account Takeover Campaign (Read more HERE.)
• Cloudflare: Outage not caused by security incident, data is safe (Read more HERE.)
• Over 269,000 Websites Infected with JSFireTruck JavaScript Malware in One Month (Read more HERE.)
• Discord flaw lets hackers reuse expired invites in malware campaign (Read more HERE.)
• Ransomware Gang Exploits SimpleHelp RMM (Read more HERE.)
Something Spacy
Dawn Aerospace Sells First Aurora Spaceplane
According to ExtremeTech:
"Just over two weeks on from opening preorders for its Aurora spaceplane, New Zealand-based Dawn Aerospace has secured its first customer. The Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority (OSIDA) will purchase the first Aurora spaceplane to leave production lines sometime in early 2027.
In May, Dawn Aerospace announced it would begin taking orders for its Aurora spaceplane. The Aurora is designed for space-bound materials and device testing without all the associated costs of traditional orbital launch vehicles. With a projected ability to handle up to 1,000 suborbital launches in its lifespan, the Aurora is designed as an affordable way to access the upper atmosphere and near-Earth space beyond."
Learn more HERE.
Something Odd
Generating a truly random number with quantum physics
According to Popular Science:
"Very little in this life is truly random. A coin flip is influenced by the flipper’s force, its surrounding airflow, and gravity. Similar variables dictate rolling a pair of dice or shuffling a deck of cards, while even classical computing’s cryptographic algorithms are theoretically susceptible to outside influence or bias.
“True randomness is something that nothing in the universe can predict in advance,” explained Krister Shalm, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
So how does someone achieve true randomness? For that, you need to peer into the quantum realm. The task once required years of study and access to vast research facilities, but thanks to an ingenious new project from Shalm and his colleagues, now anyone can access a “factory for random numbers.” And it’s free to use.
Designed by NIST in collaboration with the University of Colorado Boulder, the Colorado University Randomness Beacon (CURBy) is a first-of-its-kind system that relies on headspinning quantum mechanics concepts to offer truly random number generation. . . .
[The] initial random results necessitated months of refinement and only ran for a few hours in total. Even then, the physicists and engineers only generated 512 bits of true randomness. Since then, researchers expanded and automated their experiment, thus offering random numbers whenever needed."
Learn more HERE.
Something Interesting
Hirundo Plans to Eliminate AI’s Bad Behavior
According to SecurityWeek:
"Israeli cybersecurity startup Hirundo has raised $8 million in seed funding to eliminate AI hallucinations and bias and help organizations deploy safer AI models. . . . Hirundo has created technology that enables trained AI models to unlearn unwanted data and bad behavior, thus eliminating inaccuracies, biases, and sensitive information leakage, and reducing the risk of prompt injections.
The company’s Machine Unlearning platform, which also tackles jailbreaks, aims to address issues in the AI core without the need to retrain the model. . . . According to the company, it can remove bad behaviors and inaccuracies from AI models without impeding their capabilities, helping organizations save time and money while improving the models’ reliability and performance. . . .
“Hirundo’s solution operates like a form of AI model neurosurgery, pinpointing where in a model’s billions of parameters hallucinations originate or toxic knowledge encoded, and precisely removing it. . . co-founder and CEO Ben Luria said."
Learn more HERE.
What was the most interesting story today? Vote in our poll below.
- Flashback 2016: Microsoft announces acquisition of LinkedIn
- TeamFiltration Abused in Entra ID Account Takeover Campaign
- Cloudflare: Outage not caused by security incident, data is safe
- Over 269,000 Websites Infected with JavaScript Malware in One Month
- Discord flaw lets hackers reuse expired invites in malware campaign
- Ransomware Gang Exploits SimpleHelp RMM
- Dawn Aerospace Sells First Aurora Spaceplane
- Generating a truly random number with quantum physics
- Hirundo Plans to Eliminate AI’s Bad Behavior
- None: leave suggestions below
Missed a day? If so, check out previous editions of Snap! HERE.
