Tech
Anthropic says its AI models hacked 3 organizations
Anthropic said its artificial intelligence models hacked into three other organizations during testing, just days after ChatGPT maker OpenAI raised concerns over AI controls after it disclosed its rogue models hacked another company.
Anthropic, the San Francisco-based AI company behind Claude, posted on its website Thursday that it discovered the three incidents after reviewing more than 141,000 evaluation runs.
It had launched a “large-scale” cybersecurity review which specifically looked for evidence whether its AI models were able to access the internet from within testing environments that should have been sealed off, in response to the OpenAI incident, Anthropic said.
Anthropic said the models involved in the incidents were Claude Opus 4.7, Claude Mythos 5 and an internal research test model. The earliest incidents date to April, the AI company said.
“Claude compromised the impacted organizations’ infrastructure using basic techniques,” Anthropic said, such as exploiting weak passwords.
In all three incidents, the AI models were tasked with a “capture the flag” cybersecurity challenge, which Anthropic said has been one of the ways it assesses a model’s cyber capabilities.
The models were given a fictional scenario and told a piece of secret information, or the “flag,” had been hidden on a different machine on the network with the objective of breaking in and retrieving it, it said.
It added that it had already reached out to the affected organizations, which it did not name. Two of them said they had not previously detected the activity. Anthropic said it was “continuing to reach out to the third.”
Anthropic said it conducted its review with Irregular, which describes itself as the “first frontier security lab.”
“Addressing these risks will require closer cooperation across the AI ecosystem,” Irregular said in a post on X.
Last week, OpenAI said its AI models went rogue during an evaluation of its models, breaking into the servers of AI startup Hugging Face. OpenAI described it as a “significant security incident.”
These incidents have highlighted the vulnerabilities in AI security and controls and raised questions over how AI can be safely kept under human control as the technology’s usage becomes more widespread globally.
Researchers have warned for years about risks from technology and the need for stronger AI defensive engineering.
“Safety testing happens before a model is released precisely because we don’t yet know what it is capable of,” Anthropic said on Thursday on its website.
Kok Tin Gan, co-founder & CEO of cybersecurity firm NyxLab, which specializes in cybersecurity and threat detection, believes there will be more such incidents in the future.
“It is increasingly about governing what agents are available to the AI, what authorities they possess, which actions require approval, and how we ensure they remain within scope,” Gan said.
But the future of AI safety extends beyond just the safety of AI models, he said.
“If we simply give the AI a goal and allow it to decide how to achieve it, we should not be surprised when it takes actions that technically satisfy the objective, but fall outside our intended scope or expectations,” Gan said.
Therefore, stepping up the governance of the organizations and authorities behind these AI models is going to be increasingly important, he said.
Tech
ICE Plans to Give Officers Gloves That Can Deliver Electric Shocks
Trump plans to invest millions in equipping immigration officials with gloves capable of delivering electric shocks.
Department of Homeland Security officials described the gloves in a way that would “deescalate tensions.” However, critics expressed concern about giving immigration agents another tool which they believe could increase their use of violence. Former Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have expressed concern about the plans. They have asked whether gloves should be used against those accused of immigration law violations, which are mainly civil infractions.
ICE’s aggressive tactics have already led to criticism as they carry out the mass deportation program of President Trump. Since Mr. Trump’s return to office, immigration agents have used pepper spray on protesters and dragged them out of their vehicles. They also fatally shot six people.
The Homeland Security Department announced in an announcement published Monday that it would be purchasing the CTG-5 G.L.O.V.E., which is short for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter. The department also stated that it would distribute them to ICE agents and officers who are involved in immigration enforcement, criminal investigations and other related tasks. According to the notice, the contract may be up to $20,000,000 and could be completed by March.
Department officials did not respond to questions regarding the use of gloves, including whether or not they were intended for apprehending individuals in immigration operations and during confrontations with demonstrators.
The department stated that “ICE constantly assesses the needs of its officers on the ground to make sure they have all the equipment and tools necessary to arrest criminal illegal aliens and safely remove them from the country.” Every decision made by ICE is carefully considered and reviewed in order to make sure that the technology it uses is compliant with applicable laws and standards.
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Tech
Trump sued over $100,000-a-month early-access offer to Truth Social posts
Donald Trump was sued for alleged corruption after allegations were made about a service that charged up to $100,000 per month to gain early access to posts on the Truth Social platform.
Intercept, Freedom of the Press Foundation and two of Trump’s aides filed the lawsuit in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York against Trump and the Executive Office of the President.
The complaint targets the “Truth API”, a data feed that was launched by Trump Media & Technology Group on August 1, the same company as Truth Social. In the complaint, it is called “extraordinary”, “corrupt” and “unconstitutional”.
Subscribers can access posts faster than other users. This includes Trump’s account as well as the accounts of JD Vance, the press secretary Karoline Lavitt, and others. Subscribers can pay $100k a year, or $60k a year for three years.
Requests for comments on the case were not responded to immediately by either Trump Media or The White House.
Trump is known to use Truth Social for market-sensitive information, such as posts about tariffs or the Iran war, that have caused swings in oil and stock prices. Kevin McGurn has promoted this service to businesses as a fast way to access the “most important” posts on the platform. It is a high-margin product that will provide “a meaningful, continuous source of income”.
Launched after Democratic Senators Adam Schiff and Elizabeth Warren urged Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to investigate whether service was a form of market manipulation that benefited insiders and hurt ordinary investors.
Trump Media, according to the complaint disclosed that on 10 August it had already more than ten subscribers. These included financial news outlets, high-frequency traders, and prediction markets. It was also exploring the licensing of the data, while working to prevent third-party tools from allowing outside groups to scrape and archive Trump’s posts.
Plaintiffs claim that Trump Media, whose largest shareholder is the president with an estimated $1bn stake, will profit personally from selling information produced in his official capacity.
This suit raises questions about historical records. Subscribers to Truth API have access to a history of all posts dating back as far as 2022. This includes those that were later altered or deleted. McGurn said, “We intend to create friction” for people who don’t come to us directly.
Plaintiffs ask the court to declare this arrangement illegal and bar the administration’s use of Truth Social exclusively for public announcements, while selling preferential access.
Tech
Newly discovered “black hole star” could solve mystery of strange red dots spotted in the early universe
Scientists announced on Wednesday that they have discovered a type of object in astronomy called “black hole stars,” which could solve a mystery about strange red dots seen during the creation of our universe.
It looks just like a large star, and produces more than 100 billion times the energy of any other star. This is a powerful blast that comes close to that of a blackhole.
A team led by the United States of America used the James Webb Space Telescope to detect the black hole. The star dates back 660,000,000 years, and was discovered in a Nature study published on Wednesday.
Scientists have been baffled by the bright objects that it’s spotted in the early Universe. These “little red dot” cosmic objects are extremely bright and were first spotted in 2022.
In a press release, Rohan Naidu of University of Hawaii stated that “What these objects exactly are” has been a hotly debated topic during the JWST period.
It was believed that it would have been premature for galaxies to be so large.
They noticed a tiny red dot while looking at the pictures.
“Pure black hole star light”
Robert Simcoe is the co-author of the study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He said, “We often think that when we see red things in the sky, they are surrounded by soot, or ash.”
He added that astronomical items can appear more red than their natural color when viewed through dust.
When the team went through the data they collected, it was found that the light of the object simply vanished at certain wavelengths.
This surprised them, as it revealed that the object was not red due to dust but hydrogen gas.
The object was colored, but it didn’t explain how much energy the object could pump out.
Naidu said, “The energy that powers all stars is nuclear fusion. You can’t power this with it.”
They determined that the most probable scenario is that it’s powered by a black hole in the center, surrounded by gas to give the appearance of a star.
The object was named MoM-BH*-1 by the team. The black hole and asterisk stand for the star, and number 1 indicates that they think there may be more.
Naidu stated that “every little red dot fits the description of a black-hole star”.
What is unique about MoM-BH*-1, is that the blackhole star completely overshadows its host galaxy. We are seeing only black hole light.
Webb’s discovery of dust and water near Milky Way central black hole
A team of astronomers reported on Tuesday, that dust and water survived in an extreme environment near the Milky Way central black hole. The new mid-infrared observations, say scientists, provide the best view of IRS 3 yet. IRS 3 is just 0.55 light years from Sagittarius a*, Milky Way’s supermassive central black hole.
The team detected oxygen-rich particles in the dust surrounding the star using the Webb Telescope. This was the first detection of water within the envelope. These results demonstrate that even in the extreme conditions of a black hole, evolved stars such as IRS 3 are still capable of producing dust and other important materials for future stars.
Florian Peissker, lead author at the University of Cologne (Germany), said: “Galactic centres are some of the harshest environments. Understanding whether stars will continue to enrich their environment there is important.” Webb allows us to directly monitor how stars react under extreme conditions. We can see dust formation remains resilient.
Tech
Mike Lindell refuses to concede in Minnesota primary despite getting far fewer votes
Mike Lindell has refused to accept defeat in Minnesota’s Republican primary for gubernatorial office, even though he was trailing the day after the polls had closed by double digits.
Late Tuesday evening, The Associated Press announced the winner of the Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth’s race.
Demuth, with almost all the votes in, was over 45,000 votes ahead Lindell. Lindell had Donald Trump’s backing and beat him 43.4% to 32.55%.
Third place was occupied by businessman Kendall Qualls. He is backed up by the Republican State Party.
Lindell was informed by a LindellTV reporter that the AP declared the election over. He dismissed this wire service in utter disbelief. When asked why he didn’t accept this call, Lindell questioned the AP’s authority and claimed that hundreds of thousands more votes were still uncounted.
Lindell stated, “I won’t give up on this race before the results are in.” “That’s nonsense.”
Lindell has not responded to a question about what steps he plans to take to win the elections. He is waiting for the results.
Lindell’s political career was built on his claim that Trump’s defeat in 2020 is the result of a stolen and rigged election. He spent what he said were tens or even hundreds of millions of dollar pursuing this conspiracy theory, through litigation, documentaries, and conferences. Courts repeatedly rejected it. He settled last month with a defamation lawsuit brought against him by the voting technology firm Liberty Vote (formerly Dominion Voting Systems) for $1.3bn regarding his stolen election lies.
Lindell was also questioned about his eligibility to run. For weeks he wasn’t registered to vote for the governorship in which he sought. His registration was still active in Texas and tied to property owned by an Lufkin-based company, while he claimed to reporters that he had established Minnesota residency. Minnesota’s rules for same-day voter registration allowed him to cast his ballot and still run.
Trump has not been able to win Minnesota’s presidential election in the last three elections. He made a personal appeal to Lindell, on Twitter, to give him a decisive victory.
Lindell’s loss extended a series of defeats for Trump-endorsed politicians, such as Andy Ogles in Tennessee and Amir Hassan in Michigan, who was defeated by a former candidate.
Demuth has become the first female Republican nominee for governor in Minnesota. She called it a historic result, but added that her work on the campaign was not yet done.
In the general election in November, she will be facing Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic Senator who won easily her primary to replace Tim Walz, the retiring Governor.
Tech
The MOTHRA Telescope Captured the Faint Aftermath of a Star’s Death
High in the mountains of northern Chile, the MOTHRA telescope may still be under construction, but it is already offering a new look at some of the universe’s most difficult-to-photograph processes. This image shows the Helix Nebula – a stunning example of the ending of a star life cycle.
MOTHRA (Modular Optical telephoto hyperspectral robotic array) is a telescope that captures images of faint but large objects, such as the web of dark matter and diffuse gases between galaxies. The system uses 1,140 cameras that will work together to look both far and wide.
Scientists were surprised to see something when they tested 172 lenses in the system. They observed faint, dissolving bands of debris around the Helix Nebula after turning the telescope towards it. A study in Nature published on Wednesday described the observation.
Helix Nebula is a good example of how a star might look at the end of their lifecycle. It’s eye-shaped shape makes it sometimes known as the “Eye of God”. When a star’s core runs out of fuel, its outer layers begin to shed. The excess material is swirled around the star, and is eventually dissolved in the interstellar media, the dust, gas and energy that exists between stars.
Scientists didn’t have the right equipment to detect the outermost debris bands in this photo, despite the fact that the nebula has been known since 1893 for its size and close proximity to Earth.
Joel Kastner is an imaging scientist at Rochester Institute of Technology. He said, “We rarely see the way the materials that stars lose are mixed in the gas between the star.” This kind of imaging will be helpful for all sorts of things outside our galaxy.
Researchers say the telescope will be able to take photos with nearly six times the number of lenses.
Roberto Abraham is an astronomer from the University of Toronto who is the author of this study. He said, “This is such a powerful device that you can point it anywhere and see cool results.” We didn’t make this just to get pretty pictures. It was built to understand the formation and evolution of galaxies.
Scientists working on MOTHRA project expect that the telescope will be finished in 2027.
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