Russian-state hackers are targeting foreign embassies in Moscow with custom malware that gets installed using adversary-in-the-middle attacks that operate at the ISP level, Microsoft warned Thursday.

The campaign has been ongoing since last year. It leverages ISPs in that country, which are obligated to work on behalf of the Russian government. With the ability to control the ISP network, the threat group—which Microsoft tracks under the name Secret Blizzard—positions itself between a targeted embassy and the end points they connect to, a form of attack known as an adversary in the middle , or AitM. The position allows Secret Blizzard to send targets to malicious websites that appear to be known and trusted.

Objective: Install ApolloShadow

“While we previously assessed with low confidence that the actor conducts cyberespionage activities within Russian borders against foreign and domestic entities, this is the first time we can confirm that they have the capability to do so at the Internet Service Provider (ISP) level,” members of the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team wrote . “This means that diplomatic personnel using local ISP or telecommunications services in Russia are highly likely targets of Secret Blizzard’s AiTM position within those services.”

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Privacy experts are demanding transparency after YouTube announced it would test using AI to estimate user ages in the US ahead of a wider rollout of the age check system.

Throughout the first half of August, YouTube will begin interpreting "a variety of signals" to determine if certain users are under 18. No new user data will be collected, but those signals could include things like "the types of videos a user is searching for, the categories of videos they have watched, or the longevity of the account," YouTube said.

Anyone determined to be too young will automatically be hit with protections, with YouTube disabling their personalized advertising, "turning on digital wellbeing tools," and "limiting repetitive views of some kinds of content" determined to be harmful or too mature.

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Google has lost its appeal in the long-running app store antitrust case, which marks another major victory for Epic Games. Google lost the original case in 2023 when a jury found it abused its market position in smartphones to block competition from Epic and others. Google was able to get the penalties suspended while it pursued its appeal, but now it may need to make plans for a more open future on Android.

Since the dawn of the mobile app era, it was customary for both Apple and Google to take a sizable cut of developer revenue, but no one had the resources to challenge the status quo until Fortnite took off. The success of Epic's battle royale title gave it an opening to go after both Apple and Google in 2020 . The developer added external payment options to the free-to-play game, causing it to be pulled from both stores. The lawsuit followed soon after.

Epic was unable to secure a victory against Apple , which has an undeniably more restrictive app store than Google. However, the 2023 trial overseen by US District Judge James Donato revealed a pattern of scheming on Google's part to prevent the distribution of alternative app stores on Android phones. While Android devices do allow sideloading of apps, and the platform is open source, Google's scale and partnerships with OEMs made it a de facto monopoly. This led the court to impose extensive remedies that could remake the mobile app ecosystem.

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LONDON, ENGLAND—Formula E’s 11th season came to a close in its now-traditional London home this past weekend. In its first two seasons, it tried to make a go of racing in Battersea Park , a race that local residents rejected as too disruptive. After a five-year gap, the sport found a more receptive home at Excel London in the city’s Docklands, racing around and then through the cavernous exhibition center—something that’s only really possible with electric racing cars (or very fume-tolerant authorities).

As a location for an ePrix, Excel London is nigh-perfect. It’s fed by a pair of light rail stations just minutes from the center of town and comes preinstalled with concessions and restrooms and much of the other infrastructure that normally has to be brought in for a temporary circuit, with hotels literally walking distance. But like with most Formula E races, the few thousand fans in attendance, while not exactly an afterthought, aren’t really why the series shows up—this is a sport for an audience watching behind a screen.

It’s going to be the speed of the cars, rather than the size of the crowds, that causes Formula E to outgrow the 20-turn, 1.3-mile (2.09 km) circuit. Next year will be the final visit, before a possible Silverstone ePrix in 2027, once Gen 4 gets going.

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Only a week has passed since two Oklahoma Board of Education members complained about seeing nude women appear on a TV set during an official board meeting. And yet we've already reached the "just asking questions" stage of the scandal lifecycle, with the state's hard-right education boss wondering aloud if Oklahoma's governor might not be behind the whole thing.

On the surface, this appears an odd reaction. One might have expected Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters to agree with his outraged board members. You know, a sort of "Together we will unmask the degenerates who are making a mockery of our meetings with their streaming retro pornography!"

But no. Walters first put out a press release, titled "Response to the Most Absurd, False, and Gutter Political Attack from a Desperate, Failing Establishment," in which he said that "any suggestion that a device of mine was used to stream inappropriate content on the television set is categorically false."

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Canceling a subscription should be easy, Democratic lawmakers insisted Wednesday, introducing a bill to revive the Federal Trade Commission's so-called "Click-to-Cancel" rule.

The FTC hoped to enforce the rule due to "increasing reports of consumers losing time and money from intentionally difficult subscription cancellation processes," lawmakers said. But cable companies sued to block the FTC rule last year, arguing that the FTC failed to conduct an economic impact study before making it easier to cancel over a billion paid subscriptions in the US.

Earlier this month, a federal appeals court nullified the rule , agreeing with an administrative law judge that the FTC skipped a regulatory analysis required to pass the rule since compliance costs would exceed $100 million. That study would have included cost-benefit analyses of alternatives to the rule, in addition to gauging the rule's effectiveness in comparison to those alternatives.

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E-commerce giants everywhere felt the sting Wednesday when President Donald Trump announced that the US will be "suspending duty-free de minimis treatment for low-value shipments" worth $800 or less from anywhere in the world.

Americans will likely soon feel the crunch, with one recent study estimating that the cost of eliminating the trade loophole overall to US consumers could fall between $10.9 billion and $13 billion while "disproportionately" hurting "lower-income and minority consumers" who buy a higher percentage of cheap imports.

Price hikes will likely come this fall, as the trade loophole will be closed starting on August 29, with Amazon emerging as perhaps the biggest question mark for US consumers wondering how hard their wallets may be hit by the major trade policy change ahead of the holiday shopping season.

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If you last updated your gaming PC in late 2016, Nvidia has two pieces of bad news to share with you today. First, it will no longer support the Maxwell, Pascal, or Volta GPU architectures with new Game Ready graphics driver updates after October 2025. That means GeForce GPUs from the GTX 900 and 10-series, including aging but enduringly popular cards like the GeForce GTX 1060, will no longer get optimized driver releases for new games starting this fall.

Second, Nvidia says it will wind down all driver support for Windows 10 in October of 2026. This is one year past Microsoft's officially announced end-of-support date for Windows 10, but it will cover users who choose to take advantage of the year of free extended security updates (ESUs) that Microsoft is offering to home users (we have a guide on how to get those updates if you want them). After that, people who want to continue getting graphics drivers for their Nvidia GPUs, including newer models in the RTX 40- and 50-series, will need to upgrade to Windows 11.

The Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPUs won't be totally abandoned after 2025; Nvidia says it will release quarterly security updates for these cards through October 2028. These updates won't optimize performance or fix bugs in any new games, but if you still have an older or hand-me-down PC using one of these cards to play Minecraft or Roblox , you won't be leaving yourself open to GPU-related security exploits.

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Beijing has summoned Nvidia over alleged security issues with its chips, in a blow to the US company’s push to revive sales in the country after Washington granted approval for the export of a made-for-China chip.

China’s cyber regulator on Thursday said it had held a meeting with Nvidia over what it called “serious security issues” with the company’s artificial intelligence chips. It said US AI experts had “revealed that Nvidia’s computing chips have location tracking and can remotely shut down the technology.”

The Cyberspace Administration of China requested that Nvidia explain the security problems associated with the H20 chip, which was designed for the Chinese market to comply with US export restrictions, and submit documentation to support their case. The announcement comes as Nvidia is rebuilding its China business after Washington this month lifted a ban on H20 sales to the country.

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