This Week In Techdirt History: August 3rd – 9th
Five Years Ago This week in 2020, we looked at how the DHS was surveilling journalists who published leaked documents and how they obtained the encrypted messages of protestors. The…
Researchers Uncover GPT-5 Jailbreak and Zero-Click AI Agent Attacks Exposing Cloud and IoT Systems
Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a jailbreak technique to bypass ethical guardrails erected by OpenAI in its latest large language model (LLM) GPT-5 and produce illicit instructions. Generative artificial intelligence (AI)…
New adhesive surface modeled on a remora works underwater
Most adhesives can’t stick to wet surfaces because water and other fluids disrupt the adhesive’s bonding mechanisms. This problem, though, has been beautifully solved by evolution in remora suckerfish, which…
Encryption made for police and military radios may be easily cracked
Two years ago, researchers in the Netherlands discovered an intentional backdoor in an encryption algorithm baked into radios used by critical infrastructure–as well as police, intelligence agencies, and military forces…
CyberArk and HashiCorp Flaws Enable Remote Vault Takeover Without Credentials
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered over a dozen vulnerabilities in enterprise secure vaults from CyberArk and HashiCorp that, if successfully exploited, can allow remote attackers to crack open corporate identity systems…
James Lovell, the steady astronaut who brought Apollo 13 home safely, has died
James Lovell, a member of humanity’s first trip to the moon and commander of NASA’s ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, has died at the age of 97. Lovell’s death on Thursday…
Disney Scraps Deepfake Dwayne Johnson After Lawyers Panic About The Public Domain
Disney spent 18 months negotiating to create a digital version of Dwayne Johnson for the live-action Moana film. Johnson agreed. The technology was ready. Then Disney’s lawyers killed the whole…
For giant carnivorous dinosaurs, big size didn’t mean a big bite
When a Spinosaurus attacked a T. rex in Jurassic Park III, both giant carnivores tried to finish the fight with one powerful bite of their bone-crushing jaws. The Spinosaurus won,…
Russia Expands Internet Censorship: Site Blackouts, YouTube Throttling, WhatsApp Replacement
It’s funny just how often the actions of so-called “strong men” actually show just how scared and fragile they are. And if you want a more specific example of what…
Net neutrality advocates won’t appeal loss, say they don’t trust Supreme Court
Advocacy groups that tried to defend federal net neutrality rules in court won’t file an appeal, saying they don’t trust the Supreme Court to rule fairly on the issue. Net…