Author: InfoForTech

The White House has barred Microsoft Corp. from further participation in a federal program that enables U.S. companies to apply for green cards for employees holding H-1B visas after accusing it of abusing the system to replace American workers with cheaper foreign workers. Microsoft’s suspension from the Permanent Labor Certification program was announced by Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling during a press conference at the White House today. Under the PERM program, American employers are required to provide evidence that they were unable to hire U.S. nationals for a particular role before they can sponsor a foreign national for a green…

With artificial intelligence capabilities continuing to expand, universities now face complex, urgent questions about how to navigate increasing challenges, as well as new opportunities. Much attention is now directed toward this, including an MIT report on AI and education published this summer. A new essay from MIT Statistics and Data Science Center Director Sasha Rakhlin, the Distinguished Professor in Data, Systems, and Society, IDSS and Brain and Cognitive Sciences, synthesizes recent discussions and readings about how AI is changing academia — particularly mathematics, statistics, machine learning, and engineering. Here, focusing primarily on graduate research and education, he describes key questions that departments and…

Hello Cyber Builders 🖖Your payment platform can be up, patched, and doing exactly what it was built to do while your company is sending money to a criminal. You needn’t go through the Vulnpocalypse (although, if you really want to, you can take a look at Patrick Garrity’s write-up). Cybersecurity is not just about hacking computers and networks.This week I want to focus on that particular idea.In January 2024, an employee in Hong Kong authorized transfers totaling about HK$200 million after a deepfake video conference with criminals. According to the Hong Kong government’s account, the fraudsters used altered video and audio to impersonate executives.…

B2B SEO stats on buyer shortlists, content performance, and AI search, and what they mean for choosing which pages deserve your team’s time. A keyword report can tell you that people search for implementation costs. Getting an honest answer onto the website is another job altogether. Someone has to ask delivery how long the work takes. Product needs to explain the dependencies. Sales may worry that publishing a realistic estimate will put prospects off. By the time the page is ready, the SEO has done considerably more than choose a keyword. There is room to publish answers that competitors have…

There’s a lot to be anxious about as AI agents and bots get more integrated into every aspect of our lives. Meta, which recently agreed to pay over $17 billion to settle a lawsuit related to harming kids, now wants you to hand over all your online accounts to an inexplicably cute “agent” named Muse that might give a stranger your home address. OpenAI just introduced little blobs called Dots that can supposedly automate routine tasks, like planning dinner and ordering it from your favorite neighborhood spot. AI companies don’t just want you to talk to their chatbots; they want…

Once exploitability is understood, security teams need to consider what the affected asset exposes. The same vulnerability may exist on a development server containing test data and, on an authentication, system providing access to sensitive business applications. The technical weakness may be identical, but the risk is not.Effective prioritization therefore requires understanding what an asset does, what data it handles, and what access it provides. Systems supporting critical applications, sensitive data, privileged access, or connections to critical infrastructure may require greater attention than isolated, low-value assets.Security teams should also consider the broader attack path. A moderate vulnerability can become more…

That can be for simple things like summarizing a web page, but it can be used for more complex tasks. Watching a YouTube video about a new product? Ask Alexa whether the product is on Amazon, and if so, add it to your Amazon shopping cart. Perusing an Infatuation article about new restaurants in your area? Ask Alexa to highlight the ones closest to your office.Alexa also supports “live sessions,” just like Gemini Live or ChatGPT’s Voice Mode—it lets you have a free-form back-and-forth conversation with the assistant. Maybe you’re focused on a DIY project and want Alexa to spell…

It’s small enough to attach to a keychain and costs just $30. The quirky Stylophone synthesizer has been around since the 1960s. You’ve probably heard it on tracks like David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” As a matter of fact, he wrote much of the song on one. Now the company has refreshed its cute Stylophone Mini instrument for modern audiences. The Mini was first introduced in 2010, but left production years ago. The new one is still extremely small, thus the name. A full-sized Stylophone can fit in a pants pocket, but the Mini is basically the size of a credit card.…

Phishing kits are no longer limited to copying a familiar login page and waiting for a victim to enter credentials. Attackers are increasingly building filtering, session management, and traffic controls into the infrastructure that delivers the phishing page itself. ANY.RUN has identified Wazza, a new phishkit targeting banking, manufacturing, and government organizations across the US, Europe, and Australia. The campaign uses a multi-stage routing chain to screen visitors and automated traffic before delivering an Adobe-themed Device Code phishing page. For security teams, that makes Wazza more than another malicious URL. The campaign shows how attackers can control the path to…

Giant artificial intelligence rounds have pushed U.S. venture capital deal value about 44% past its previous annual record with a quarter still to go, according to the quarterly PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor report released today, but the exits needed to return that money to investors have not kept pace. Much of the $515.8 billion invested in the first nine months of the year went to OpenAI Group PBC and Anthropic PBC, which between them raised more than $200 billion in the first half. Without those rounds, PitchBook’s analysts said, the dollar totals have held to much the same trend since late…