Source: The Register
https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/21/nist_ntp_outage_warning/
A staffer at the USA’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) tried to disable backup generators powering some of its Network Time Protocol infrastructure, after a power outage around Boulder, Colorado, led to errors.
As explained in a mailing list post by Jeffrey Sherman, a NIST supervisory physicist who maintains the institute’s atomic clocks, “The atomic ensemble time scale at our Boulder campus has failed due to a prolonged utility power outage.”
Sherman, whose LinkedIn bio proclaims he is “One of the few federal employee actually paid to watch the clocks all day,” says one impact of the incident “is that the Boulder Internet Time Services no longer have an accurate time reference.”
[…]
Filed: https://www.theregister.com/security/
Subject: Kimwolf Exposed: The Massive Android Botnet with 1.8 Million Infected Devices
Source: blog.xlab.qianxin.com
https://blog.xlab.qianxin.com/kimwolf-botnet-en/
On October 24, 2025, a trusted partner in the security community provided us with a brand-new botnet sample. The most distinctive feature of this sample was its C2 domain, 14emeliaterracewestroxburyma02132[.]su, which at the time ranked 2nd in the Cloudflare Domain Rankings.
A week later, it even surpassed Google to claim the number one spot in Cloudflare’s global domain popularity rankings. There is no doubt that this is a hyper-scale botnet. Based on the information output during runtime and its use of the wolfSSL library, we have named it Kimwolf….We sincerely welcome CERTs from all countries to contact us, share intelligence and vision, join hands to combat cybercrime, and jointly maintain global cybersecurity. If you are interested in our research, or know inside information, feel free to contact us via X platform.
Source: Android Headlines
https://www.androidheadlines.com/2025/12/judge-blocks-texas-law-that-would-force-app-store-age-verification.html
A federal judge has temporarily blocked Texas’ app store age verification law, delaying requirements that would force Apple and Google to verify users’ ages. While the ruling pauses enforcement for now, Texas could appeal, meaning similar age verification rules may still take effect in the future.App stores contain all kinds of apps. There are games designed for kids, and then apps catered towards adults. This means that there’s always a possibility that a child could stumble across an app designed for grown ups. This is why states like Texas wanted to introduce age verification to the app store. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen just yet.
Texas app store age verification put on hold (for now)
[…]
Filed: https://www.androidheadlines.com/category/apps
Source: Newser
https://www.newser.com/story/380915/online-sleuths-expose-epstein-file-redactions.html
Some of what the Justice Department tried to hide in newly released Jeffrey Epstein records apparently wasn’t hidden very well. Online sleuths poring over the files say they’ve been able to overcome redactions using simple tricks—like copying and pasting the “redacted” lines into a document or tweaking the files in Photoshop, the Guardian reports. Essentially the files “were not properly redacted digitally,” per the New York Times. Uncovered passages from an exhibit in the US Virgin Islands’ civil case against Epstein estate executors Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn began spreading on social media Monday. The exhibit lays out accusations about how Epstein and his associates allegedly arranged and concealed child sexual abuse….
Source: Business Insider
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-eu-official-visa-ban-big-tech-regulation-digital-service-2025-12
- The US announced visa bans on five Europeans over tech rules it says censor American speech.
- Marco Rubio accused Europe of coercing US platforms to silence views it opposes online.
- France’s Emmanuel Macron condemned the move and vowed to defend Europe’s digital sovereignty.
The US just escalated its clash with Europe over tech regulation. The State Department said it has barred five Europeans, including the EU’s former Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton and four members of digital campaign groups, from entering the country over what it called “censorship” of tech platforms.
The visa bans were met with backlash from European leaders on X, who accused Washington of intimidation and political overreach.
In a post on X late Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department would block leading figures of what he called “the global censorship-industrial complex” from entering the US.
Source: AP via WTAE
https://www.wtae.com/article/starlink-in-the-crosshairs-how-russia-could-attack-elon-musks-conquering-space/69860985
Two NATO-nation intelligence services suspect Russia is developing a new anti-satellite weapon to target Elon Musk’s Starlink constellation with destructive orbiting clouds of shrapnel, with the aim of reining in Western space superiority that has helped Ukraine on the battlefield.Intelligence findings seen by The Associated Press say the so-called “zone-effect” weapon would seek to flood Starlink orbits with hundreds of thousands of high-density pellets, potentially disabling multiple satellites at once but also risking catastrophic collateral damage to other orbiting systems….
Source: Gizmodo
https://gizmodo.com/prominent-canadian-musician-says-gig-was-cancelled-after-google-ai-overview-wrongly-branded-him-sex-pest-2000703286What he describes is an ugly case of AI-generated mistaken identity.
Prominent Canadian fiddler Ashley MacIsaac says he was wrongly branded a convicted sex offender by Google’s AI Overview feature, leading concert organizers to cancel a gig last week.
Anyway, according to an article in The Globe and Mail on Tuesday, the guy in that video with the fiddle, Ashley MacIsaac, was preparing to perform at the Sipekne’katik First Nation community in central Nova Scotia when organizers suddenly backed out, apparently having read that MacIsaac had ghastly sounding convictions on his record for sexual assault and “internet luring.”
It later emerged, MacIsaac says, that these organizers had seen a Google AI Overview result that had mixed up MacIsaac’s biography with some other, much more horrible, MacIsaac, also from eastern Canada.
If MacIsaac’s characterization is right, it still does, and it really needs to not make mistakes like the one alleged here. There’s a choice quote in the Globe and Mail from Clifton van der Linden, an assistant professor at McMaster University who has researched AI misinformation. “We’re seeing a transition in search engines from information navigators to narrators,” he told the newspaper.
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Explore more on these topics
Source: BleepingComputer
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-teams-to-let-admins-block-external-users-via-defender-portal/
Microsoft announced that security administrators will soon be able to block external users from sending messages, calls, or meeting invitations to members of their organization via Teams.The new feature will start rolling out in early January, integrating Microsoft Teams with Defender for Office 365, and enabling admins to manage blocked external contacts through the Tenant Allow/Block List in the Microsoft Defender portal.
It will work across the Defender XDR web portal, and all Teams clients, and the update will not change existing domain blocks or federation configurations in the Teams admin center.
Source: Bleeping Computer.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-will-finally-allow-you-to-change-your-gmailcom-address/
Google wants to fix this behaviour and give you greater control over your emails.”The email address associated with your Google Account is the address you use to sign in to Google services. This email address helps you and others identify your account,” Google explained.
“If you’d like, you can change your Google Account email address that ends in gmail.com to a new email address that ends in gmail.com.”
Google hasn’t announced the feature officially yet, but it’s fair to assume that it’s actually rolling out, given there’s a support document.
Limited rollout – This support document only appears in Hindi (Indian language), so it’s possible it’s being tested in India before wider rollout.
If you have access to the feature, you’ll find it in the Settings, and the Settings page will include a link to the above support.