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Two vulnerabilities in the Avada Builder plugin for WordPress, with an estimated one million active installations, allow hackers to read arbitrary files and extract sensitive information from the database. [...]

Aktualizace pro Windows 11 odložíte až o 35 dní. • Odložení můžete následně neomezeně opakovat. • Novinky pro snížení frustrace z aktualizování ukazuje program Insider.

Microsoft is updating the Edge web browser to ensure it no longer loads saved passwords into process memory in clear text at startup after previously stating it was "by design." [...]

Stolen browser sessions and authentication tokens are becoming more valuable than stolen passwords. Flare explains how the REMUS infostealer evolved around session theft and operational scalability. [...]

Self-assembling swarms of microrobots could someday deliver drugs and pull toxins from water.

For most of us, a locust swarm sounds like an utter nightmare. For roboticists, it’s inspiration.

Nature abounds with creatures that cooperate with a “hive mind.” From bees gathering pollen to schools of sardines grouping to avoid predators, individuals seamlessly move together in ever-changing configurations. Roboticists inspired by these dynamics have designed microrobots—often no more than the width of a human hair—to mimic their behavior.

These tiny machines show promise in medicine and environmental cleanup. They easily sail through blood vessels to remove blood clots, deliver chemotherapy to tumors, and bring medicines to the eye and gut. In the wild, they remove plastics and heavy metals from water.

Researchers usually steer microbots with sound, magnets, or light. But few systems are able to assemble into swarms and disassemble on command. A University of San Diego team has now engineered a part-biological microbot swarm controlled by shifting colors of light. The swarm is made of living algae and nanoparticles and can coalesce into various shapes on demand.

In one test, the researchers shaped the living robots to match damaged tissue in a simulated wound. They then assembled the robots on a smart “Band-Aid” and released them into the wound, concentrating treatment exactly where it was needed.

Living Machines

Microbots that deliver drugs, perform surgery, or act as environmental sentinels are no longer science fiction. Swarms of these robots have especially captured the imagination of roboticists. Tweaking a swarm’s shape and size can allow it to tunnel into small spaces and do work that would thwart any single sophisticated robot.

Early versions use a variety of synthetic materials to mimic natural swarms. Some made of tiny iron-based particles shapeshift from chains to vortexes and ribbons after scientists strategically apply magnetic forces. Certain configurations offer strength and stability; others are more steerable, like robotic sentinels from the Matrix movies. Another class of nanomachines respond to light or sound waves for navigation.

Synthetic microbots can mimic swarm behavior, but they’re limited by a material’s physics. So researchers are turning to nature too, building biohybrid bots powered by living cells.

Swimming bacteria are a popular choice. Tethered to nanoparticles carrying drugs, these robots can navigate liquid environments to kill pathogens, trap microplastics, or deliver antibiotics. But their relatively large size makes it hard to access tight or delicate spaces.

Algae could be an alternative. These single-celled organisms swim using long, whip-like arms called flagella that act as microscopic propellers. Roughly 10 micrometers across—about the size of an average skin cell—they’re small enough to thread their way through tiny spaces.

Researchers can coat nanoparticles with drugs or chemical sensors and attach them to the algae. These bots have already been used to deliver antibiotics for bacterial pneumonia in mice. Other designs have been tested as a treatment for inflammatory bowel disease, a chronic disorder that affects millions worldwide. Here, scientists engineered nanoparticles to absorb and neutralize inflammatory chemicals in the gut. Packed into a pill, the algae-powered bots dispersed throughout the treatment area while largely avoiding other organs.

But the microbots are still hard to control. Researchers don’t understand their collective behavior and how they form assemblies, wrote the authors of the new study.

Blue Light, Red Light

The team picked Chlamydomonas reinhardtii for their robots. Commonly found in freshwater puddles and soil, these single-celled algae are a staple of lab research. They have two powerful arms and are sensitive to various colors of light, making them easy to control.

In a test, the team projected blue or red light onto petri dishes crowded with the algae. They shaped the swarms with masks—basically, stencils—patterned to look like different continents. Blue light caused the algae to cluster in swarms matching the mask . Red light dispersed them. The team shaped the living swarm to resemble the Americas and Afro-Eurasia within minutes.

Using a mask shaped like an arrow, the team moved the swarm several millimeters while maintaining its shape. Other masks transformed the swarm into stars, letters, and triangles. By further tuning the duration and intensity of red and blue light, the researchers coaxed the swarm to double its size while maintaining a circular shape or split into four smaller parts. They used the results to write an algorithm predicting how light alters swarm activity.

The team next attached the algae to nanoparticles to see if they could target a simulated wound on a dummy hand coated in lifelike “phantom skin.” A thin coat of artificial wound fluid, made up of proteins and chemicals usually found after a scrape, made the test more realistic.

They used an AI system to analyze images of the wound, segmenting regions into healthy, inflamed, or potentially infected tissue, and then laser-printed a custom mask matching the infected area. Under blue light, the microbots assembled on a piece of medical tape in the exact geometry of the wound. After applying the custom Band-Aid, a burst of red light released over 90 percent of the bots to the target area in less than two minutes.

The work is still early though. In future studies, researchers will have to load nanoparticles with medication and test how the swarms behave in real wounds and living tissue. And because the system relies on light for control, it’s currently limited to surface-level applications.

That said, because they can now more reliably control the swarms’ shape, size, and position, the technology could prove quite useful in medical applications, wrote the team.

The post New Algae Robots Swarm Like Locusts at the Flick of a Switch appeared first on SingularityHub.

Eurostat spočítal osobní železniční dopravu na starém kontinentu za rok 2024. Za všech dvanáct měsíců Evropané a turisté absolvovali 8,7 miliard cest a dohromady dosáhli 444,5 miliard osobokilometrů. Tahouny byly samozřejmě ty nejlidnatější země jako Německo (109 miliard), Francie (107 miliard) ...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a set of four security flaws in OpenClaw that could be chained to achieve data theft, privilege escalation, and persistence. The vulnerabilities, collectively dubbed Claw Chain by Cyera, can permit an attacker to establish a foothold, expose sensitive data, and plant backdoors. A brief description of the flaws is below -

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a set of four security flaws in OpenClaw that could be chained to achieve data theft, privilege escalation, and persistence. The vulnerabilities, collectively dubbed Claw Chain by Cyera, can permit an attacker to establish a foothold, expose sensitive data, and plant backdoors. A brief description of the flaws is below - Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

The UK’s competition regulator has launched a broad antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s business software ecosystem, opening a new front in growing regulatory scrutiny of how cloud platforms, productivity software, and embedded AI capabilities may affect competition in enterprise technology markets.

UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said in a statement that it had opened a Strategic Market Status (SMS) investigation into Microsoft’s business software operations under the country’s new digital markets regime.

The regulator said it will assess whether Microsoft has “substantial and entrenched market power” and a “position of strategic significance” in business software markets.

“The investigation will assess whether Microsoft is using its position in business software to limit competition in cloud services, cybersecurity, communications, and AI,” the regulator said in a statement.

The case is the fourth strategic market status (SMS) investigation the regulator has opened since the UK’s digital markets competition regime came into force in January 2025, following earlier SMS cases into Google search, Apple’s mobile platform, and Google’s mobile platform.

A designation decision is due by February 2027, the statement added.

“Our aim is to understand how these markets are developing, Microsoft’s position within them and to consider what, if any, targeted action may be needed to ensure UK organisations can benefit from choice, innovation and competitive prices,” CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell said in the statement.

The scope covers productivity software, PC and server operating systems, database management, and security software, the CMA said, naming Windows, Word, Excel, Teams, and Copilot. Microsoft has more than 15 million commercial users across its UK ecosystem.

AI integration central to the case

The CMA will examine how AI competitors integrate with Microsoft’s business software and whether customers can mix AI tools from rival suppliers within Microsoft environments, the regulator said, citing the rapid embedding of AI functionality and a shift towards agentic AI in workplace tools.

Microsoft has pushed Copilot across Microsoft 365 tiers and expanded agentic features inside Office and Teams over the past year.

That AI overlay has not yet reset the lock-in question, but soon will, said Dario Maisto, senior analyst at Forrester. “Copilots have the potential to make employees and organizations more dependent on existing vendors, as any other feature embedded in the suites,” Maisto said. “At this stage, they do not change the enterprise lock-in conversation but will in the near future as adoption scales.”

For CIOs, switching away is no easier than swapping any other layer of the stack, Maisto added, describing diversification as as difficult as finding enterprise-grade alternatives to other Microsoft products.

What the CMA will examine

The investigation will assess whether Microsoft has SMS in business software and whether it uses that position to limit customer choice, the CMA statement added. It will look at product bundling, interoperability limits, and default settings that may stop customers from switching or weaken competitive pressure from rivals.

UK customers may not always be able to combine Microsoft software with products from other providers, the regulator said, limiting access to the best products at competitive prices.

An SMS finding would also let the CMA act on an unresolved concern from its earlier cloud market investigation, which found that Microsoft’s software licensing was reducing competition in cloud services. AWS previously told the regulator that Microsoft’s 2019 and 2022 licensing changes made it harder to run Microsoft products on Google Cloud, AWS, and Alibaba.

Wider scope than previous SMS cases

The case is wider in scope than any previous SMS investigation, covering productivity tools, operating systems, database management, and security software in a single ecosystem-level review. The previous three designations each targeted a narrower set of activities.

The SMS status does not assume wrongdoing, the CMA said. If Microsoft is designated, the regulator can impose conduct requirements or pro-competition interventions, subject to the relevant legal tests.

The probe runs alongside the CMA’s ongoing engagement with AWS and Microsoft on cloud egress fees and product interoperability, announced in March after the regulator decided not to pursue SMS designation on cloud services.

Sovereignty push runs in parallel

For enterprise customers, the investigation comes as many organizations pursue multi-cloud strategies while simultaneously consolidating technology stacks around a smaller number of strategic vendors.

Maisto said interoperability is likely to become an increasingly important — and difficult issue for regulators and enterprise buyers.

“Interoperability is a big topic these days, but it is easier said than done,” he said. “What works on paper in a policy may not work in reality.”

Maisto also pointed to growing European discussions around “tech sovereignty”.

“The European Commission is considering rules to restrict use of US cloud platforms to process sensitive government data,” he said. “The Commission is expected to present its ‘Tech Sovereignty Package’ on May 27 to define sectors that have to be hosted on European cloud capacity.”

At the same time, Maisto said he does not expect regulatory intervention alone to significantly alter market concentration trends.

“We do not foresee a massive decrease in market concentration,” he said.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Přesnou lidarovou navigaci mají i robotické vysavače pod pět tisíc. • Většina robotů nabízí velkou dokovací stanici se soběstačným režimem. • Praní a sušení mopů je standardem i v nižší třídě.

Microsoft is introducing a new capability that will allow it to remotely roll back problematic Windows drivers delivered through Windows Update. [...]

In Your Biggest Security Risk Isn't Malware — It's What You Already Trust, we made a simple argument: the most dangerous activity inside most organizations no longer looks like an attack. It looks like administration. PowerShell, WMIC, netsh, Certutil, MSBuild — the same trusted utilities your IT team uses every day are also the preferred toolkit of modern threat actors. Bitdefender's analysis

In Your Biggest Security Risk Isn't Malware — It's What You Already Trust, we made a simple argument: the most dangerous activity inside most organizations no longer looks like an attack. It looks like administration. PowerShell, WMIC, netsh, Certutil, MSBuild — the same trusted utilities your IT team uses every day are also the preferred toolkit of modern threat actors. Bitdefender's analysis [email protected]

CiviCRM (Wikipedie) bylo vydáno v nové verzi 6.14.0. Podrobnosti o nových funkcích a opravách najdete na release stránce. CiviCRM je robustní open-source CRM systém navržený speciálně pro neziskové organizace, spolky a občanské iniciativy. Projekt je napsán v jazyce PHP a licencován pod GNU Affero General Public License (AGPLv3). Český překlad má nyní 45 % přeložených řetězců a přibližuje se milníku 50 %. Potřebujeme vaši pomoc, abychom se dostali dál. Pokud máte chuť přispět překladem nebo korekturou, přidejte se na platformu Transifex.

OpenAI has disclosed that two of its employee devices in its corporate environment were impacted via the Mini Shai-Hulud supply chain attack on TanStack, but noted that no user data, production systems, or intellectual property were compromised or modified in an unauthorized manner. "Upon identification of the malicious activity, we worked quickly to investigate, contain, and take steps to

OpenAI has disclosed that two of its employee devices in its corporate environment were impacted via the Mini Shai-Hulud supply chain attack on TanStack, but noted that no user data, production systems, or intellectual property were compromised or modified in an unauthorized manner. "Upon identification of the malicious activity, we worked quickly to investigate, contain, and take steps to Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

Upscalovací technologie FSR 4.1 zamíří i na Radeony RX 6000 a 7000. • Čtvrtá generace FSR se už kvalitativně téměř dotáhla na konkurenční DLSS 4. • Hráči si však ještě pár měsíců počkají.