Researchers say that mercenary hackers laced ads with zero-click exploits that installed sophisticated malware on the devices of targeted individuals when they did nothing other than load a website or open an installed app.
The finding, published Thursday by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, said the incident is likely to be the first confirmation of zero-click mercenary spyware delivered through targeted ads. The attacks, which worked on iOS and Android devices, are particularly pernicious because they work without requiring any interaction from the target and are invisible unless users run special forensic hardware or software. Citizen Lab said it confirmed that AdFection, as it named the campaign, infected 45 devices at international media organization Al Jazeera in 2024 and 2025.
A clear warning signal
“This investigation should … serve as a clear warning signal to news organizations around the world that they may be being actively targeted via this new threat,” Citizen Lab researchers wrote. “This targeting may happen both in newsrooms and to individual journalists, editors, and other staff members.” Their report went on to say: “The distribution of spyware via targeted ads represents a security risk not only for potential victims but also for states and civil society at large.”
The ads were provided by Discover-Tech, an Israeli company that brands itself as a legitimate advertising company, but Citizen Lab said it operates as a facilitator for multiple mercenary spyware partners. The company acts as a broker between parties that want to display their ads and publishers or app makers that seek revenue in return for showing them. In this capacity, Discover-Tech acts as a “bridge between ad vendors and the mercenary spyware ecosystem,” a role that appears to be “Discover-Tech’s primary purpose,” Citizen Lab said.
The brokering involves a bidding process in which advertisers offer a fee in exchange for their ads appearing on the devices of individuals in particular demographics. Using users’ unique mobile ID, location, IP address, and other breadcrumbs, the brokers are able to assemble detailed profiles of millions of people. Citizen Lab said it obtained more than 4 billion bidding records handled by Discover-Tech. They revealed that Discover-Tech ads were displayed in over 70,000 mobile apps and more than 120,000 websites between March and June 2026.
Among the major vendors that listed Discover-Tech as a “certified” or “verified” vendor were Google and the advertising industry association IAB Europe. The Israeli firm also used European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) consent frameworks to target users within the European Union. Discover-Tech has served ads through major networks such as Google, Yandex, and Beeswax.
Google and IAB Europe have since removed Discover-Tech from their ad vendor registries, and Google further terminated Discover-Tech’s access to its ad exchange platforms. Beeswax has removed Discover-Tech from its ad buying platform. Fellow ad platform Vungle (Liftoff) paused Discover-Tech’s access while conducting a review, and Eskimi blocked Discover-Tech’s accounts and domains.
Thursday’s report said that Discover-Tech ad impressions have appeared on government and national-security-linked networks throughout the world: NATO, United Nations networks, European lawmaking bodies, critical infrastructure providers in Australia, and armed forces and government agencies in Norway and Sweden.
“Discover-Tech’s mass abuse, privacy invasion, and facilitation for mercenary spyware attacks illustrates structural flaws with the online advertising system, which failed to detect or prevent the abuse documented in this report,” Citizen Lab said.
The research lab said that the mercenary malware installed through AdFection was developed and distributed by Candiru (rebranded as “Integrity Labs”). Under the arrangement with Discover-Tech, targets with specific profiles of interest to the Candiru customers received ads that carried JavaScript or other code that connected to Candiru’s control servers. In response, those servers delivered an exploit that served the zero-click payload when the ad appeared on an individual’s device.
The research doesn’t describe the vulnerabilities exploited in the zero-click attacks or the final malware that was installed in them. It’s likely they were zero-days that have been fixed after Citizen Lab discovered the campaign. Citizen Lab didn’t immediately respond to questions.
Messages sent to Discover-Tech and Candiru went unanswered.
Citizen Lab called on advertisers and government officials to take concrete action to proactively prevent campaigns like AdFection. Beyond that, users can reduce the risk of being infected by installing ad blockers, resetting mobile advertising ID in iOS and Android settings (it’s unclear why the researchers didn’t advise turning off personalized ads altogether), and installing ad-blocking software on home or office networks. As always, installing updates in a timely manner is also a must.

When Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh strides onstage in Bangkok on Friday morning, it will be after 11 p.m. on Thursday in New York. But investors, economists and politicians in the United States will be awake and hanging on his every word.
Any speech by a Fed chair is closely scrutinized. This week’s talk has an extra dose of urgency, though, after two government reports showed inflation heating up for consumers and businesses — spurring speculation about how soon the Fed will raise interest rates to handle soaring prices.
Warsh will be speaking at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, where he will be interviewed by IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva. The Fed chairman has repeatedly said he will not use public speaking engagements to intentionally steer the expectations of investors and markets, but his comments could nevertheless signal whether the central bank will hike rates before, or after, the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
It will also be the last speech from a Fed official before policymakers enter a “blackout” period on Saturday that lasts through their next interest rate meeting, which is scheduled for Oct. 27 and 28.
“Broad based” inflation “strengthens the case for an October hike,” Bank of America analysts wrote on Wednesday. “The data continue to underscore two key sources of inflation pressure: AI and Iran.”
Those two factors aren’t likely to be going anywhere soon, either.
The price of politics
Already hammered by soaring interest rates, rising energy prices and stagnant wage growth, American consumers could get an extra dose of financial strain if the Fed raises rates again this month.
Voters are already dissatisfied with President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy, polls show, so another rate hike could add to Republicans’ headaches as they face potentially losing their congressional majorities in the midterms.
In recent weeks, Trump has tried to pull multiple policy levers to lower gas and diesel prices, which have pushed inflation higher in recent months. But none of them have yet slowed prices meaningfully.
“Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again,” Trump said on the campaign trail in 2024. Inflation as measured by the consumer price index declined to as low as 2.3% four months into Trump’s term.
But that same month, Trump unleashed a wave of tariffs across the globe, dramatically changing the economic story.
By September, inflation breached the 3% threshold again. In February, Trump launched the war against Iran, causing one of the worst energy supply shocks in history. Inflation jumped as high as 4.1% in May, and looks to be headed back in that direction again.
Another Fed rate hike would also further undermine Trump’s yearslong pressure campaign to push the central bank to cut rates. Since Warsh took his post in May, the central bank has either held rates steady or increased them.
Trump hasn’t attacked Warsh after years of hammering former Chair Jerome Powell. But the president has started saying that the other members of the Fed’s board are “very hostile.”
“I’m relying on Kevin,” Trump told reporters in September, “but he’s got, you know, a very tough board. He’s got a board that was put there by a lot of other people, and the interest rates are too high.”
“They’re very political,” Trump said. Four of the Fed’s seven board members were appointed by Trump.
Asked what the president’s expectations are for Warsh’s appearance, the White House pointed to a Truth Social post from September in which Trump had written, “Interest rates in the United States should be 1% or less.”
Diesel and the damage done
Economists and investors are paying close attention to so-called core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices. Both reports this week showed that even this adjusted measure of price growth is running hotter than hoped for.
“Core CPI was the more significant surprise,” wrote analysts at Bank of America.
The core readings showed that skyrocketing fuel prices, particularly diesel, are trickling down. Farmers, truckers and others who keep commerce humming in the United States have to raise their prices in order to digest higher diesel costs. That, in turn, leads to price increases for consumer goods.
“The cost of diesel gets into just about everything,” KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk told NBC News in an August interview. “Everything from … running a farm … cost of food, but also everything across the economy that’s shipped gets that extra fee tacked onto it.” At the time, she described the surge in diesel fuel prices as likely “an inflationary problem for the next several months.”
Her warning came to fruition in September, according to the consumer price index and producer price index reports this week. With diesel prices remaining solidly above $6 per gallon so far in October, and with no sign that the Iran war is near an end or that attacks on energy assets in the Ukraine-Russia war will be paused, it could keep fueling overall inflation for months.
Big Tech is also fueling inflation. Trillion-dollar companies are spending, and borrowing, big sums for servers, memory and other components that will be used in data centers. That’s caused price spikes across the economy.
Companies including Apple and Nintendo have raised prices as a result. “We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly,” Apple told NBC News in June.
Companies are also tapping the public debt markets in an unprecedented way. Data center companies and associated utility firms, chipmakers and cloud providers are expected to raise between $300 billion and $570 billion from the debt market this year, according to Vanguard. Those firms are also offering highly attractive interest rates, sometimes better than U.S. Treasury bonds.
A consequence of that, Warsh noted recently, is that there’s a “competition for capital” driving up interest rates on government debt, too.
“This is a complicated set of things that are affecting the most important asset anywhere in the world, the 10-year Treasury,” Warsh said. “It’s the risk-free asset upon which every price of virtually every asset in the world is related to.”
Without referencing the Iran war, he also said yields were being driven by “geopolitics” and the strength of the economy.

Meta has launched what it calls the “most capable” open-weight model in the United States. Dubbed Muse Spark Open, the model also has the distinction of having been designed to work with Macs.
The new model, which leverages 816 billion parameters and a 1 million token context window, claims to offer superior performance to other popular open-weight models, according to evaluation results released by Meta on Thursday.
Muse Spark Open is natively multimodal and built for complex coding tasks and agentic labor. It has also been designed to run locally on Apple’s computers. However, you will still need a lot of power to run the model locally, with a requirement of at least 1 terabyte of RAM, per Engadget. The model will run best via the Mac Studio that comes equipped with the M5 Ultra chip.
Still, if you can muster the memory, Muse Spark Open may prove a significant work horse for coding and other desktop tasks. Meta says that it paired the model with Muse Code, its AI coding terminal, and deployed it to various agentic workflows, including coding fixes for a Mastodon client that included “bug fixes, new features, [and] full build.”
The company says it also deployed it in the service of running DaVinci Resolve, the high-end video editing software, revealing that the model was capable of reviewing and cropping footage.
Open-weight models provide a number of distinct industry advantages that aren’t afforded by closed and proprietary models. Open-weight models can be significantly more cost-efficient and can also offer transparency and flexibility that closed source models don’t allow.
Meta is making the new model available now through a number of different API platforms.

Tesla is planning to show off its long-delayed next-generation Roadster on Thursday, almost a decade after Elon Musk’s company started taking deposits for the electric sports car.
The event will be livestreamed from a SpaceX test site in McGregor, Texas, near Waco. It’s expected to begin at 7:55 local time (8:55 ET).
Tesla’s original Roadster, designed and engineered by a team led by founding CEO Martin Eberhard, used a Lotus Elise chassis and was first delivered in 2008, selling for roughly $100,000 in small volumes until 2012.
The next-generation Roadster is expected to be a high-end, low-volume model that relies on SpaceX technology, such as cold gas thrusters, to enable it to hover. Musk fanatics have been gearing up for the demonstration, expressing their excitement on social media, but the Roadster isn’t likely to have any material financial impact on the company.
Tesla reopened reservations for the refreshed Roadster in recent weeks, accepting $50,000 deposits from prospective buyers in the U.S., Canada and China. Executives are expected to disclose specific pricing, details and production targets.
Musk first promoted the refreshed Roadster concept at an event in November 2017, and the following June in a series of tweets. He wrote at that time, “SpaceX option package for new Tesla Roadster will include ~10 small rocket thrusters arranged seamlessly around car.” The engines would improve speed and braking, and may “even allow a Tesla to fly.”
Tesla started taking $50,000 deposits in 2017, but has since missed every targeted delivery date. As recently as last October, Musk was hyping a Roadster demo that he hoped would happen before the end of 2025. That didn’t take place either.
Musk’s former friend and OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman mocked the Tesla CEO in posts on X last year over the extreme delays, showing screenshots of his own reservation and refund requests.
“I really was excited for the car! And I understand delays,” Altman wrote. “But 7.5 years has felt like a long time to wait.”
Altman got his refund, and the two ended up in court over a separate matter earlier this year related to OpenAI’s governance and ownership structure.
According to filings with the Federal Aviation Administration, Tesla established a no-fly zone around the SpaceX facility where it plans to show off the vehicle. The company had to scrap a demo on Oct. 1 due to weather issues.
Tesla is scheduled to report third-quarter results after the bell on Wednesday.

VAN BUREN TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WXYZ) — Despite months of opposition from residents, Van Buren Township officials approved plans Wednesday for a controversial Google data center campus, clearing the way for a project that is already under construction and expected to bring years of development activity to the area.
The hyperscale data center campus will span 282 acres north of I-94 between Haggerty Road and I-275.
See the full story in the video below
Van Buren approves Google data center, other communities move to slow similar projects
Residents packed public meetings leading up to the decision, raising concerns about everything from noise and dust to environmental impacts, property values and water usage.
“I have repeatedly expressed concern about the potential effects of continuous low frequency humming and total noise,” one resident told officials.
Another resident argued that “noise and nuisance do not belong in residential neighborhoods.”
Many residents said they felt their concerns were being ignored throughout the approval process.
Developers, however, said the project has been significantly modified in response to community feedback.
“We’ve worked hard over the last three years to take as much community feedback into the site plan and the design,” said Adam Kramer, president of Panattoni Data Centers.
Kramer said the company has invested tens of millions of dollars into changes aimed at reducing impacts on nearby neighborhoods.
“Most residents won’t even know that the data center is there just because visually you’re not going to see it. Out of sight, out of mind. But you will feel the benefits from this,” Kramer said.
Developers say the development will create jobs and generate substantial tax revenue. Township officials said that state law limits their ability to reject projects that meet zoning requirements.
“The planning commission, per Michigan state law, is required to approve site plans that satisfy the ordinance standards,” one township official said during the meeting.
Construction Timeline
While debate over the project continues, construction activity is already underway.
According to project documents, underground utility work associated with the development will be completed in eight phases. Most of the work will require temporary road closures near the I-94 Service Drive, Van Buren Street and Old Haggerty Road.
The early phases of construction are expected to continue through the end of 2026, with additional work planned into early 2027.
The final phases are scheduled for March 2027 and will affect Haggerty Road traffic. Rather than full closures, drivers can expect alternating one-way traffic controlled by flaggers while work is underway.
A Growing Statewide Debate
According to reporting by GovTech, Springfield Township in Oakland County approved a 180-day moratorium on new data center applications while officials rewrite zoning regulations and study potential impacts on utilities, public safety and natural resources. Township leaders said they were not prepared to evaluate a large-scale data center proposal without additional rules in place.
Detroit is also weighing restrictions. According to Planet Detroit, the Detroit City Council approved a resolution urging a two-year pause on new data center permits while the city studies issues including power demand, water usage, noise and land-use impacts.
Oxford Township has gone a step further. According to Hoodline, township officials enacted a one-year moratorium while developing regulations related to noise, cooling systems, power demand, generators, water usage and eventual decommissioning requirements. Public interest has been high, with hundreds of residents attending meetings on the issue.
Similar conversations have also taken place in Washington Township and Wixom. According to DataCenterBans.com, Wixom previously adopted a temporary moratorium before implementing stricter zoning requirements, including setbacks from homes, sound studies and water protection measures.
The trend suggests local governments are no longer debating only whether to allow data centers. Instead, many communities are focusing on whether they have regulations in place before major proposals arrive.
For some Van Buren Township residents, that conversation is happening after the fact.
Township officials have maintained that the Google data center met existing zoning requirements, leaving them with no legal basis to deny the project. As construction moves forward, the development is expected to remain a focal point in the broader discussion over how Michigan communities should prepare for future data center proposals.