Tech News

1. Economic Impact of Tariffs:

   • Technology stocks experienced volatile trading due to President Trump's tariff policies. 👉 cnbc.com
   • Taiwan stocks, including TSMC and Foxconn, plummeted due to U.S. tariffs, impacting global supply chains. 👉 reuters.com
   • Nintendo and Sony stocks dropped amid Japan selloff driven by US tariffs, as most Switches are assembled in China and Vietnam. 👉 bloomberg.com^$
   • Chip stocks reacted mixed with some declining like Tokyo Electron, SK Hynix, Infineon, and Intel, while STMicro and Qualcomm posted gains reflecting investor concerns over higher prices and subdued demand due to tariffs. 👉 wsj.com^$
   • Bitcoin's price has fallen nearly 10% following Trump's tariff announcements. 👉 nytimes.com^$
   • Stock market futures plunged following the start of the new U.S. tariff policy. 👉 finance.yahoo.com
   • Apple is planning to import more iPhones from India to offset the costs of China tariffs. 👉 wsj.com^$
   • Apple rushed five planeloads of iPhones from India to the U.S. to beat new tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. 👉 timesofindia.indiatimes.com
   • Apple store employees report a surge in customers buying iPhones to avoid potential price increases. 👉 bloomberg.com^$
   • Nintendo is assessing the impact of US tariffs on its Switch 2 pricing strategy. 👉 wired.com
   • Framework pauses sales of its lowest-priced laptops in the US due to tariffs. 👉 404media.co

2. Data Breaches and Extortion:

   • The Port of Seattle announced that a ransomware breach in August 2024 impacted the personal information of approximately 90,000 people. 👉 bleepingcomputer.com
   • Europcar GitLab was breached, exposing data of up to 200,000 customers. 👉 bleepingcomputer.com
   • A student loan breach exposed 2.5 million records, posing potential long-term risks. 👉 threatpost.com
   • WK Kellogg disclosed a data breach linked to the Clop ransomware. 👉 bleepingcomputer.com
   • Hunters International ransomware shifts to pure data extortion, rebranding as World Leaks. 👉 bleepingcomputer.com

3. Vulnerabilities and Exploits:

   • Google has released patches for 62 vulnerabilities in Android, including two zero-days exploited in targeted attacks. 👉 bleepingcomputer.com
   • Nine malicious VSCode extensions were found infecting Windows systems with cryptominers. 👉 bleepingcomputer.com
   • Ivanti patches Connect Secure zero-day exploited since mid-March. 👉 bleepingcomputer.com
   • A vulnerability in WinRAR can be exploited to bypass the Mark of the Web (MotW) security warning. 👉 bleepingcomputer.com
   • CISA and FBI warn about fast flux technique being used by threat actors to obfuscate malicious servers. 👉 thehackernews.com
   • UK Investigatory Powers Tribunal confirms Apple is appealing against a UK order to create an encryption backdoor. 👉 reuters.com
   • Chinese outlet Caijing reports Microsoft's joint venture Wicresoft will cease China operations. 👉 reuters.com

4. AI and Security:

   • Spain's police arrested six individuals behind cryptocurrency investment scams using AI-generated deepfake ads. 👉 bleepingcomputer.com
   • Waymo is considering using interior camera data to train generative AI models and sell ads. 👉 techcrunch.com
   • Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman says an “off-frontier” strategy of building models “three or six months behind” cuts costs and helps focus on some use cases. 👉 cnbc.com
   • A new share buyback program of up to $10B was announced by Broadcom. 👉 reuters.com
   • Google rolls out Search's AI Mode feature to millions more Labs users in the US with multimodal capabilities. 👉 arstechnica.com
   • OpenAI discussed acquiring io Products, a startup Sam Altman has been working on with Jony Ive to develop an AI device. 👉 theinformation.com
   • Google tells staff they can discuss the US DOJ's antitrust case, rescinding an earlier command, as part of a settlement with the Alphabet Workers Union. 👉 nytimes.com^$
   • White House orders federal agencies to name chief AI officers and expand the use of AI, rescinding Biden-era orders intended to place AI safeguards. 👉 reuters.com

5. Phishing and Scams:

   • An E-ZPass toll payment text scam is back in a massive phishing wave. 👉 bleepingcomputer.com
   • A large-scale phishing campaign called 'PoisonSeed' compromises corporate email marketing accounts to distribute emails containing crypto seed phrases to drain cryptocurrency wallets. 👉 bleepingcomputer.com
   • Six individuals were arrested for AI-powered investment scams that stole $20 million. 👉 bleepingcomputer.com
   • Fake travel reservations are exacting more pain from the travel weary, already dealing with the misery of canceled flights and overbooked hotels. 👉 threatpost.com

6. Social Media and Security:

   • A false X post about pausing tariffs led to multi-trillion-dollar market swings. 👉 npr.org
   • Twitter is blasted for security and privacy lapses by the company’s former head of security who alleges the social media giant’s actions amount to a national security risk. 👉 threatpost.com
   • PoisonSeed is leveraging compromised credentials associated with customer relationship management (CRM) tools and bulk email providers to send spam messages containing cryptocurrency seed phrases to steal victims' digital wallets. 👉 thehackernews.com

7. Software and Hardware Security:

   • New versions of Meta Llama models show promise on standard tests, but struggle with long-context tasks. 👉 the-decoder.com
   • A carding tool abusing WooCommerce API downloaded 34K times on PyPI. 👉 bleepingcomputer.com
   • Nintendo confirmed the Switch 2's Joy-Cons don't use Hall effect joysticks. 👉 theverge.com
   • Security researchers uncover a watering hole attack likely carried out by APT TA423, which attempts to plant the ScanBox JavaScript-based reconnaissance tool. 👉 threatpost.com
   • A new security vulnerability with Microsoft’s code-signing practices has been found dubbed 'SigFlip'.

8. Emerging Tech Trends:

   • Nuclear fusion could theoretically happen sooner in space than on earth, potentially enabling spacecraft to reach very high speeds. 👉 cnn.com
   • The Shenzhen 8K UHD Video Industry Cooperation Alliance released a new wired media communication standard called the General Purpose Media Interface (GPMI). 👉 tomshardware.com
   • Gen Z is rediscovering Tumblr as a refuge from an internet saturated with influencers and algorithm fatigue. 👉 fastcompany.com
   • Microsoft's AI chief Mustafa Suleyman says the company has deliberately chosen to build AI models "three or six months behind" cutting-edge developments. 👉 cnbc.com

9. Political and Legal Issues:

   • President Trump posts that the US “will impose additional tariffs on China of 50%” if China does not withdraw its 34% retaliatory tariffs. 👉 axios.com
   • EU will vote on $28 billion in retaliatory tariffs. 👉 reuters.com
   • A court has blocked a British government attempt to keep secret a legal case over its demand to access Apple user data. 👉 msn.com
   • President Donald Trump signaled a potential diplomatic opening, threatening China with additional tariff but offering other nations a path to negotiate lower trade barriers. 👉 axios.com

10. Healthcare and Research:

    • Scientists at NIH have demonstrated a promising step toward using a person's own immune cells to fight gastrointestinal cancers, but layoffs are delaying it. 👉 msn.com

11. Malware and Threat Actors:

    • A malicious campaign dubbed PoisonSeed is leveraging compromised credentials associated with customer relationship management (CRM) tools. 👉 thehackernews.com
    • Microsoft credited EncryptHub, a hacker behind 618+ breaches, for disclosing Windows flaws. 👉 thehackernews.com
    • North Korean hackers deploy BeaverTail malware via 11 malicious npm Packages. 👉 thehackernews.com
    • Hackers posed as aerobics instructors for years to target aerospace employees. 👉 thehackernews.com

12. Entertainment and Media:

    • The Minecraft Movie earned $157 million in its first weekend in the U.S., with a worldwide total of $301 million. 👉 hollywoodreporter.com

13. Microsoft News:

    • Microsoft is delaying WSUS driver sync deprecation indefinitely. 👉 bleepingcomputer.com
    • Microsoft's joint venture Wicresoft will halt China operations, lay off staff. 👉 reuters.com

14. Google News:

    • Google is allegedly paying some AI staff to do nothing for a year rather than join rivals. 👉 techcrunch.com
    • Publishers say traffic to their sites has plummeted since Google rolled out AI Overviews; Google acknowledged the drop in a meeting with publishers. 👉 bloomberg.com^$

15. Employee Relations and AI integration:

    • Shopify CEO says using AI is now a “fundamental expectation” and that teams asking for more resources must first show why AI can't do the job. 👉 cnbc.com
    • Microsoft reportedly fires staff whose protest interrupted its Copilot event. 👉 techcrunch.com

16. Finance and Investment:

    • Rescale raised a $115M Series D, bringing its total funding to over $260M. 👉 reuters.com
    • SignalFire raised a $1B+ fund to bet on early-stage AI startups, taking its AUM to $3B, and plans to use AI to spot market trends to help portfolio companies. 👉 bloomberg.com^$
    • OpenAI is considering to acquire ‘io Products,’ the venture that Sam Altman and Jony Ive created to develop AI Hardware. 👉 patentlyapple.com
    • Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino says the company may offer a US-only coin depending on new US regulations. 👉 t.co

17. Android security:

    • Google fixes Android zero-days exploited in attacks, 60 other flaws. 👉 bleepingcomputer.com

18. Ad Blocking:

    • AdGuard plan protects your whole family from malicious ads. 👉 bleepingcomputer.com

19. Framework Laptop

• The Framework Laptops 13 sales have been suspended in the U.S. due to Trump's tariffs. 👉 betanews.com

20. Supply Chain Attacks
    • SpotBugs Access Token Theft Identified as Root Cause of GitHub Supply Chain Attack. 👉 thehackernews.com
    • Malicious Python Packages on PyPI Downloaded 39,000+ Times, Steal Sensitive Data. 👉 thehackernews.com

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