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The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday added a medium-severity security flaw impacting Microsoft Windows to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, following reports of active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability, assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2025-24054 (CVSS score: 6.5), is a Windows New Technology LAN Manager (NTLM) hash disclosure Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

In a landmark decision, a US District Judge has ruled that Google illegally monopolized the ad tech market.

A federal judge in Virginia has found that the tech giant established “monopoly power” for two online advertising markets: publisher ad servers and ad exchanges that sit between buyers and sellers.

The ruling in the second-largest antitrust case of the century could mean that Google will have to break up its advertising products or change its business practices.

Google is said to have earned nearly $265 billion in 2024 alone through ad placement and sales. The company has said it will appeal the decision.

Google was previously the center of the century’s largest antitrust case, and was found guilty of being a “monopolist” with its search business. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has made it clear that it wants the company to sell off its Chrome browser. That issue goes to trial next week.

Thursday’s ruling will likely have a significant impact on the ad tech market, not to mention on Google’s business model and structure. That being said, the lengthy appeals process means the market isn’t going to feel seismic changes anytime soon.

“Google’s integration across ad serving, exchange, and buying platforms created efficiency, but it also limited competition and transparency,” said Julie Geller, principal research director at Info-Tech Research Group. “This decision forces a closer look at how market power is exercised through vertical control.”

Decision: monopoly in two of the three areas

The core of the case was Google’s alleged monopoly over three markets in the ad tech space — one for publishers, one for advertisers, and one that connects the two.

US District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled today that Google had a monopoly on two of those markets (the publisher market and the ad exchange market), but sided with Google in finding that there is no separate advertiser market for online ads. She also ruled that the company’s acquisition of  advertising company DoubleClick in 2008 was not anticompetitive.

Google took this as a partial win, with the company’s VP for regulatory affairs, Lee-Anne Mulholland, stating: “We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half. The Court found that our advertiser tools and our acquisitions, such as DoubleClick, don’t harm competition. We disagree with the Court’s decision regarding our publisher tools. Publishers have many options and they choose Google because our ad tech tools are simple, affordable, and effective.”

Geller called the ruling a “major inflection point” for digital advertising, as it confirms that Google’s dominance wasn’t just about market share: It was reinforced by unlawful practices like tying DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) with Google Ad Exchange.

“Structural separation is no longer theoretical, it’s moving forward,” she said. “For advertisers and publishers, the implications are real.”

She pointed out that a breakup would reshape how media is bought, how value flows, and how trust is built across the ad ecosystem, and potentially, search as well.

“It’s not just about Google,” said Geller. “It’s about whether the digital market can evolve toward something more open, accountable, and competitive.”

Bid to ‘restore competition’ to the web

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) and a coalition of eight states initially brought the case against Google in 2023, saying the tech giant engaged in monopolistic behavior, strategically acquiring particular companies and controlling the industry’s most popular tools and exchanges. The lawsuit sought to “restore competition” to the web.

The company avoided a jury trial, instead going before a judge only in a “bench trial,” by making a roughly $2.3 million payment to the DOJ that covered a portion of damages to the plaintiffs.

The trial took place last fall, with lawyers for the government arguing that Google has been looking to monopolize control of the ad network, server, and exchange markets since its DoubleClick purchase. This and other moves gave Google a monopoly over the three markets in the ad tech space, the DOJ alleged.

Google, for its part, argued that the feds didn’t understand advertising market economics and were just focusing on a narrow sliver of it (banner ads at the top and sides of web pages). The company described the industry as “intensively competitive” and claimed that its share in the market has decreased even as its revenues have increased.

A critical vulnerability in the Erlang/OTP SSH, tracked as CVE-2025-32433, has been disclosed that allows for unauthenticated remote code execution on vulnerable devices. [...]

Entertainment venue management firm Legends International warns it suffered a data breach in November 2024, which has impacted employees and people who visited venues under its management. [...]

There’s a lot of finger-pointing going on between providers trying to explain this week’s two-hour outage of Zoom’s American service.

On its website, Zoom says its zoom.us domain wasn’t available on Wednesday because of a “communications error” between Zoom’s domain registrar, Markmonitor, and GoDaddy Registry, “which resulted in GoDaddy Registry mistakenly shutting down zoom.us domain.”

For its part, a spokesperson for GoDaddy said the problem was between Markmonitor and Zoom.

“The GoDaddy registry team notified an account person at Markmonitor of an inquiry, and Markmonitor failed to notify Zoom that we had made the contact about the inquiry,” Kristy Nicholas told Computerworld. “[It was] something that we noticed and wanted to bring their [Markmonitor’s] attention to.”

She couldn’t clarify whether the communication was by phone or email. But, she said, GoDaddy waited several days to get a reply from Zoom.

“MarkMonitor acknowledged our communication,” Nicholas said, “and so we presumed information had been relayed to Zoom. That presumption was incorrect, that information had not been relayed to Zoom.”

She wouldn’t detail what the issue was, only that “we noticed something, we made contact with Markmonitor and Markmonitor failed to pass that information on to Zoom.”

“GoDaddy followed its protocol for ‘if it makes contact and no action is taken’, and put the server block in place.”

 This sort of communications problem is “not uncommon” with many customers, she added..

Asked for comment, Markmonitor’s parent company, Newfold Digital, which owns diverse providers offering web hosting, web design, and online marketing, sent this statement: “Markmonitor did include the client on our communications with GoDaddy Registry. That said, we believe there are opportunities to improve co-ordination and communication between GoDaddy Registry and Markmonitor, and we are committed to making that happen.”

Computerworld emailed Zoom for a response to Nicholas’ statement that Markmonitor allegedly hadn’t passed its message to them. No answer was received by press time.

“I think the lesson GoDaddy learned,” said Nicholas, “particularly with a customer the size of Zoom, is if we made contact with a registrar and we don’t know if that contact has been passed along to their customer, then we would go directly to Zoom and make contact with them before we put a server block in place.

“We’ll definitely analyze this situation for opportunities to improve the process, to try to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

Communication issues are somewhat common but usually do not lead to service outages, said Johannes Ullrich, dean of research at the SANS Institute.

“Initially, the ‘whois’ system was intended to provide up-to-date contact information for technical and business contacts associated with a particular domain,” he said. “However, this system never worked well and was often flooded with spam, or the information was out of date. More recently, most domains use “privacy protected” whois records that no longer list actual contact information. In the case of Zoom, they elected to have Markmonitor manage any communications. Sadly, it looks like somewhere along the line, the ball was dropped, and the message from GoDaddy did not reach Zoom.”

A Windows vulnerability that exposes NTLM hashes using .library-ms files is now actively exploited by hackers in phishing campaigns targeting government entities and private companies. [...]

OpenAI has released o3 and 04-mini, two reasoning AI models designed to be extra good at programming, math, and science and that can use images to “think,” according to Engadget, This means that users can upload sketches or diagrams, for example, and even if they are of low quality, o3 and 04-mini will understand what is meant.

The new models are also capable of generating images and browsing on their own.

A Chat GPT Plus, Pro or Team subscription is required to use the o3- and 04-mini models. And OpenAI said a more powerful o3-pro variant will be released in a few weeks. The company first released o3-mini in January.

Things are getting serious regarding Apple security. This shouldn’t really surprise you, given the normalization of chaos we’re enduring, as confusion always makes people more vulnerable. It’s easier to be hoodwinked into clicking that particular malware link when your head’s all over the place, you can’t think, and you don’t know whether you’ll still be in business tomorrow.

That’s because threats don’t need to be aligned or even harmonized to work together. Insecurity in one space breeds less security elsewhere, and then the whole house of dominoes falls on the strength of a single malicious whisper. Just last week, Ric Derbyshire, principal cybersecurity researcher at Orange Cyberdefense, warned that the digital world is at risk. 

Apple fixes two zero-days

Then, as if on cue, Apple rushes out its iOS 18.4.1 security patch to fix a pair of zero-day attacks it thinks are being actively used. The patch has also been made available to Macs, iPads, and other Apple devices.

More importantly – and in a sign of the severity with which the normally secure company views this attack — the update has also been made available to older devices, including macOS Sequoia, the iPhone XS, Apple TV HD, and other devices the company doesn’t usually patch. The fact that it has patched these devices should be seen as a red flag, upon which you’ll see written in VERY BIGLY WORDS: “Install these security patches today”.

You should heed that advice immediately for your fleet of Apple devices.

Apple rushed out a security bulletin to explain that the patches were released in response to an “extremely sophisticated attack” that took place against “specific targeted individuals.”

These attacks exploited a flaw in CoreAudio that could be used to execute remote code on vulnerable devices. They also used a flaw in Apple’s Remote Participant Audio Control framework. This let hackers with read and write access bypass iOS security protections that help protect memory. These two flaws also let attackers figure a way into your devices so they could steal data and spy on what you do.

These are just the latest zero-day attacks to have been identified and protected against on Apple’s platforms. But the growing frequency of these exploits should act as a visible barometric measure reflecting intense heat in the battle between white, black, and occasionally grey hat hackers.

Vast resources are being piled into attempts to undermine digital security, and the highest value attacks aren’t aimed at the contents of Aunt Bessie’s bank account – state secrets, military plans, intelligence in various forms, all are now up for grabs. 

A fragile peace

The threat environment is now so febrile that many of the top brass in business already travel with single-use devices, as they recognize the inherent risk when visiting some nations. That big picture of risk is intensifying, as the UK, EU and other governments take steps that, bit by bit, further undermine notions of digital security.

We’re in a race against the clock to protect what we’ve got, while waiting in the wings you can now see a future of attackers armed with quantum computers, ready to exploit every single vulnerability that exists and hasn’t yet been identified. 

Given this is the true security environment, it’s laughable that the most popular passcode used in the world continues to be 123456 — it’s as if people really don’t want to understand that to protect other people you’ve got to protect yourself. Because if these exploits are being used against targeted, high-value individuals today, I’d bet my last dollar (if I still had a last dollar) they will be weaponized for use against ordinary Joes and Joelles tomorrow.

There’s always going to be someone who doesn’t get the memo and doesn’t protect themselves – and if that is you, then rest assured, these attacks are coming for you.

Update your Apple devices now.

You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, and Mastodon.

A set of 57 Chrome extensions with 6,000,000 users have been discovered with very risky capabilities, such as monitoring browsing behavior, accessing cookies for domains, and potentially executing remote scripts. [...]

The China-linked threat actor known as Mustang Panda has been attributed to a cyber attack targeting an unspecified organization in Myanmar with previously unreported tooling, highlighting continued effort by the threat actors to increase the sophistication and effectiveness of their malware. This includes updated versions of a known backdoor called TONESHELL, as well as a new lateral movement Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

Food retail giant Ahold Delhaize confirms that data was stolen from its U.S. business systems during a November 2024 cyberattack. [...]

AI agents are more than a productivity boost; they’re fundamentally reshaping customer interactions and business operations. And while there’s still work to do on trust and accuracy, the world is beginning a new tech era — one that might finally deliver on the promises seen in movies like Minority Report and Iron Man, according to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.

Benioff, who recently spoke with Foundry’s “Today In Tech” host Keith Shaw on a variety of IT topics, differentiates AI agents from just generative AI (genAI), calling agents “the magical layer” that turns raw AI potential into real business value. He emphasized their ability to handle tasks with context, personality, and deep data awareness — something earlier AI tools lacked.

Much of the Today in Tech conversation focused on AI agents, the software programs powered by AI that can make decisions, take actions, and interact with people or systems — often autonomously — to complete a business task or goal.

“When a lot of people think of [AI] agents, they think of Jarvis in the Iron Man movies, and that’s what we want. We want a personal assistant who can go and do all of these things for us.” — Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

Benioff mentioned a scene from Minority Report where customers walk into a futuristic Gap store and a hologram greets them by name and recommends products based on what they’ve bought before. He said current AI technology isn’t that advanced yet, but it’s definitely heading in that direction.

“I know what the Gap store is going to look like in the future,” Benioff said. “When a lot of people think of [AI] agents, they think of Jarvis in the Iron Man movies, and that’s what we want. We want a personal assistant who can go and do all of these things for us.”

GenAI tools like ChatGPT, Grok, or Gemini “are impressive,” but they still make mistakes. With more data and context, they’ll keep getting better, he said.

Salesforce’s take on genAI and AI agents

Salesforce has deeply embedded AI into its CRM product ecosystem through a strategy it calls the “Einstein 1 Platform.” It also offers Agentforce, a platform that enables businesses to create and deploy autonomous AI agents across various functions such as sales, service, marketing, and commerce.  

Salesforce has also integrated genAI into its platform through Einstein GPT and Einstein Copilot, which function as intelligent assistants within applications. They can draft emails or customer responses, summarize case histories, auto-fill CRM records, and answer internal questions by leveraging a company’s own knowledge and data.

Using Salesforce clients such as Singapore Airlines as examples, Benioff said when an AI agent is layered atop corporate data, it creates a hybrid customer support service with both humans and AI, offering an overall better experience.

A customer can say, “Book me a flight to New York, and make sure it’s on Delta,” and an AI agent will check the passenger’s calendar, search flights, and book it with their loyalty number. It will then email anitinerary, all without the person ever clicking on a single button.

Benioff also pointed to Lennar Corp., a Florida-based homebuilder that ran a hackathon after Salesforce’s Dreamforce and developed five AI agent use cases to improve customer service and save money. And he noted how Disney uses AI agents to help employees understand its vast ecosystem and personalize customer experiences in real-time — even rerouting guests to other rides if one breaks down.

“Disney is an amazing company but let me tell you a secret about Disney that a lot of people don’t really think about, which is it’s really hard for their employees to understand all their products,” Benioff said. “This idea that an employee has to understand all those products, to talk to the customer, to put together the perfect package, the perfect idea for that customer. That’s pretty complicated.”

Pandora Jewelry, he said, uses Salesforce AI agents to recommend products based on a customer’s existing purchases, enhancing real-time retail interactions.

Data security and trust remain issues

While AI agents are powerful, issues like privacy, data security, and trust still need to be solved.

Though many companies consider AI agents as still in the experimental stage that comes with risk, others are looking to quickly adopt the tech anyway in the hopes of creating new efficiencies. As the adoption of autonomous AI agents explodes, vulnerabilities that allow them to be gamed or even weaponized are already emerging.

Salesforce’s AI agents, Benioiff said, operate within strict security and data-sharing rules, so they only access what each user is allowed to see. Because the genAI tools are built directly into the platform, they understand both data and metadata, ensuring accurate, secure, and compliant responses — essential for sensitive industries like banking or airlines.

The accuracy of Salesforce’s AI tech, Benioff acknowledged, currently stands at about 85%. But while current agentic AI is not perfect, next-gen “multisensory” models could change that.

Benioff admitted that early genAI tools like Microsoft’s Copilot were overhyped in the enterprise, but said newer tools like Cursor and Surf Rider are surpassing earlier models. He also praised open-source AI, cost-saving innovations like Mixture of Experts (MoE), and said he supports emerging alternatives like DeepSeek.

Most current genAI tools based on large language models (LLMs) are little more than next-word predictors based on patterns in text.  However, in the same way humans can draw on past experiences, and everything around them – sight, sound and touch – next-gen AI will be able to consider metadata, past experiences and information shared with AI models or multi-sensory inputs.

The rise of genAI in healthcare

And the technology is expected to improve healthcare by enabling a more complete patient diagnosis through near-instantaneous access to a vast depth of history and diagnostic tests. Patients will also be able to use the tech to be their own best advocates.

Last September, Benioff said he ruptured his Achilles tendon, and his doctor suggested surgery. Taking advice from GPT, Benioff instead told the doctor he was going with a self-regenerative approach inspired by Tony Robbins’ book Life Force. Six months later, he said, his Achilles is fully healed.

“I’m walking around without a boot and it regenerated. My doctor…is like, whoa. How’d you do that?” Benioff said. “It’s not magic.”

“Think about if the agent is really there to help guide you and make help you have those decisions, make the right steps and go forward,” he continued. “You know cancer patients who are dealing with complex treatments like chemotherapy and others, being able to have that  24/7 care, I think, is going to make a huge difference.”

In rural areas with limited access to specialists, genAI could augment orthopedic surgeons and others, helping them make better, data-driven decisions about treatments like surgery or regenerative options. That said, the technology remains limited in its abilities. Until there is a “multi-sensory model,” which is the next generation of AI, it will continue to be good, “but not perfect,” Benioff said.

GenAI and the workforce

One subject that has had the IT industry on edge is in recent years involves workforce reduction brought about by AI. As the technology becomes more competent at automating tasks, the fear is that human employees will be replaced.

In the interview, Shaw referenced an opinion column Benioff wrote for Wall Street Journal in which he said a Morgan Stanley report showed a 20% to 50% cost savings from AI developments, largely from reduced headcount, office space, and overhead.

“I think that we have to deal with reality here,” Benioff said. “So, I think it would be a huge mistake for me to not directly address this issue head on and to really talk about what is happening. That is that, yes, this is doing some of the roles that are being done by human beings. So, we need to start to adjust. We need to look at what is really going on.”

“I think that it’s all about education that we’re going to need to make sure people are well trained, well educated — they can reskill.” — Marc Benioff

Companies, he said, have to invest in reskilling workers, rather than just “making promises” there won’t be layoffs. Salesforce, he said, is investing in reskilling, but he also stressed the importance of corporate responsibility for helping to advance public education. “You can’t just talk about it; you have to fund it,” he said.

“Our biggest grantee is our San Francisco and Oakland public schools, because I think that it’s all about education that we’re going to need to make sure people are well trained, well educated, they can reskill,” he said. “And reskilling is another area that we put a huge amount of money into the last 20 years, and this is important. And yes, we’re all going to have to think about this.”

Despite its size, Benioff sees Salesforce as a startup at heart that’s focused on emerging tech and driven by vision, values, and innovation. He recalled the early days — bootstrapping with angel investors like IDG founder Pat McGovern, and how industry events like IDG’s DEMO shaped the company’s beginnings. Notable products introduced at DEMO include Salesforce.com itself, TiVo, VMware, Evernote, E*Trade, WebEx, and Fusion-io. (Until last month, Foundry was owned by IDG.)

“Salesforce started in a super adverse environment where funding was highly constrained. So, we had to raise all our money — you know, privately. No venture capitalists would even invest in the company, which was amazing,” Benioff said. “And that’s why people like Pat McGovern…[were] angels in technology investing.”

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Thousands tricked by fake reward & toll scam texts. CTM360 exposes PointyPhish & TollShark—SMS phishing campaigns powered by the Darcula PhaaS platform, with 5K+ domains stealing payment info worldwide. [...]

​​Microsoft has reminded customers that Office 2016 and Office 2019 will reach the end of extended support six months from now, on October 14, 2025. [...]

Multiple state-sponsored hacking groups from Iran, North Korea, and Russia have been found leveraging the increasingly popular ClickFix social engineering tactic to deploy malware over a three-month period from late 2024 through the beginning of 2025. The phishing campaigns adopting the strategy have been attributed to clusters tracked as TA427 (aka Kimsuky), TA450 (aka MuddyWater), Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

Talking about AI: Definitions Artificial Intelligence (AI) — AI refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines, enabling them to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as decision-making and problem-solving. AI is the broadest concept in this field, encompassing various technologies and methodologies, including Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning. [email protected]

On Wednesday, CISA warned of heightened breach risks after the compromise of legacy Oracle Cloud servers earlier this year and highlighted the significant threat to enterprise networks. [...]

Microsoft has released emergency Windows Server updates to address a known issue preventing Windows containers from launching. [...]

A critical security vulnerability has been disclosed in the Erlang/Open Telecom Platform (OTP) SSH implementation that could permit an attacker to execute arbitrary code sans any authentication under certain conditions. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-32433, has been given the maximum CVSS score of 10.0. "The vulnerability allows an attacker with network access to an Erlang/OTP SSH Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

Blockchain is best known for its use in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, but it also holds significant applications for online authentication. As businesses in varying sectors increasingly embrace blockchain-based security tools, could the technology one day replace passwords? How blockchain works  Blockchain is a secure way to maintain, encrypt, and exchange digital records of transactions. [email protected]