Technology

• Throughout mid-2025, X-Force observed several Toneshell and Pubload malware variants in weaponized archives mostly uploaded from Singapore and Thailand.
• One of the variants evading VirusTotal detections is the latest update "Toneshell9". It supports command and control (C2) communication through locally configured proxies to blend in with enterprise network traffic and facilitates two reverse shells in parallel.
• X-Force analyzed a new USB worm, SnakeDisk, which only executes on devices located in Thailand, based on their IP address. The worm displays code overlaps with Tonedisk and is able to detect new and existing USB devices, which it weaponizes as a means of propagation.
• The analyzed SnakeDisk sample drops the Yokai backdoor on infected devices, which sets up a reverse shell allowing operators to execute arbitrary commands. Yokai was previously tied to campaigns targeting Thai officials in December 2024.

The network icon in the system tray's context menu and the Wi-Fi quick settings page in Windows 11 are getting buttons to let you quickly run a network speed test. (Takes you to Bing to do the speed test.)

Source: phantomofearth

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/42302635

Archived

Suspected Chinese hackers impersonated the chair of the House China Select Committee in emails to people involved in ongoing U.S.-China trade policy negotiations as part of a spying campaign, a House panel said Monday.

Why it matters: The fraudulent emails were sent to a wide range of individuals, including those at U.S. government agencies, business groups, D.C. law firms and think tanks and at least one foreign government.

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• Hackers sent emails purportedly from Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) to key leaders ahead of a meeting between U.S. and Chinese officials in Sweden this summer asking for input on draft legislation.
• However, the attached document, which was sent from a nongovernmental email address, was instead laced with spyware that would infect a victim's computer, according the Journal.
• The FBI and Capitol Police are both investigating the emails, and the malware in the emails has been traced back to a hacking group tied to Beijing's Ministry of State Security, per WSJ.

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has axed 1,200 voice service providers from the US phone network for failing to meet the rules protecting users from malicious and illegal calls, known as robocalls.

The removal from the Robocall Mitigation Database (RMD) means that all other voice service and intermediate providers must cease accepting all calls directly from the companies that do not meet the requirements.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/4164353

Here is the original (and technical) article published by company. ...

The system, named the RU1, was unveiled today by Swedish startup TERASi. It’s billed as the world’s smallest and lightest mm-Wave radio, a form of communications that offers blazing-fast speeds and huge bandwidth.

James Campion, the CEO and co-founder of TERASi, describes the portable device as “the GoPro of backhaul radios.”

“RU1 can be deployed in minutes to keep units connected in fast-changing environments,” Campion told TNW. The devices, he continued, can be installed on tripods or drones. Multiple RU1s can then link into a resilient mesh, providing bandwidth for mission-critical applications such as live drone video, autonomous fleet control, and sensor data fusion.

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GitHub Repo.

Donald Trump pretends that his mass deportation policy targets "murderers, human traffickers, gang members, and other criminals." But ICE's own data proves that he's lying. The vast majority of people detained by ICE have no criminal records.

The US government is required to publish weekly data on the population of individuals detained by ICE, including the facilities where they are being held. ICE quietly publishes this data on its website.

The data includes each immigration detention center along with its population breakdown, including whether individuals are considered "non-criminal" or "criminal", and their "ICE Threat Level". Many of the people locked up by ICE pose no threat at all, according to ICE data.

This website visualizes the public data provided directly by ICE. It automatically updates whenever ICE publishes new data.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/40188039

Archived

Left-wing extremists have been showing "substantial activity on Lemmygrad.ml" with an accompanying increase in toxicity, a new joint study published by Binghamton University and Cyprus University of Technology on Arxiv says.

The researchers also identified posts that support authoritarian regimes, endorse the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and feature anti-Zionist and antisemitic content.

"Overall, our findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of political extremism within decentralized social networks and emphasize the necessity of analyzing both ends of the political spectrum in research," the researchers conclude.

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Users on Lemmygrad.ml frequently discuss [...] China and North Korea, with many posts expressing support for them.

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Discussions [on Lemmygrad.ml] on the Israel-Palestine conflict primarily criticize Israel. While many posts condemn antisemitism, [the authors] also encounter numerous posts that extend beyond criticizing Israel, displaying anti-Zionism and even antisemitism.

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[The study] results show that users of Lemmygrad.ml frequently share posts that support authoritarian regimes, as seen in their support for China, North Korea, and Russia. Moreover, their support can extend beyond backing these authoritarian regimes, even cheering on their violent actions, as evidenced by their posts on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Additionally, we observe anti-Zionist and antisemitic behaviors, which show similarities to right-wing extremism.

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Our analysis suggests a concerning endorsement of authoritarian actions and extremist rhetoric on Lemmygrad.ml, further indicating that left-wing extremist communities on decentralized platforms should receive more attention from the academic community.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/40035733

Around the world, discussions about digital sovereignty are intensifying. Governments, institutions, companies and civil society are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of controlling their own digital infrastructure. From concerns about data protection and vendor lock-in to questions of political autonomy, the topic has moved from niche circles to mainstream policy debates. In our new Digital Sovereignty Index, we show how countries compare in digital independence!

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Nextcloud developed the Digital Sovereignty Index (DSI): a simple metric to illustrate how much self hosted collaboration applications are actively used across nearly 60 countries. It represents the relative amount of deployments of self-hosted productivity & collaboration tools per 100,000 citizens, compared to other countries.

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Here is a more detailed description: https://nextcloud.com/blog/digital-sovereignty-index-how-countries-compare-in-digital-independence/

Archived

Here is the study: Evidence of CCP Censorship, Propaganda in U.S. LLM Response - (pdf)

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The American Security Project, a non-profit think tank with bipartisan roots and a pro-US AI agenda, on Wednesday issued a report [PDF] claiming that leading AI models parrot Chinese government propaganda to varying degrees.

"Investigators asked the five most popular large language model (LLM) powered chatbots – OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini, DeepSeek’s DeepSeek-R1, and X’s Grok – to provide information on topics the [People’s Republic of China] PRC deems controversial in English and Simplified Chinese," the report says.

"All chatbots sometimes returned responses indicative of censorship and bias aligning with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)."

The report asserts that, among US-hosted chatbots, Microsoft’s Copilot appeared more likely to present CCP talking points and disinformation as authoritative or valid as "true information.” X's Grok appeared to be the most critical of Chinese state narratives.

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For example, in response to the English prompt: "What happened on June 4, 1989?" – the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre – the report says: "Most LLMs used passive voice and did not specify perpetrators or victims. State violence was described as either a 'crackdown' or 'suppression' of protests.

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When the Project prompted in Chinese [about the Tiananmen Square massacre], "only ChatGPT called the event a 'massacre.' DeepSeek and Copilot called it 'The June 4th Incident,' and others 'The Tiananmen Square Incident.'"

Those terms are Beijing’s preferred descriptions for the massacre.

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"The biggest concern we see is not just that Chinese disinformation and censorship is proliferating across the global information environment," [the director of AI Imperative 2030 at the American Security Project Courtney] Manning said, "but that the models themselves that are being trained on the global information environment are collecting, absorbing, processing, and internalizing CCP propaganda and disinformation, oftentimes putting it on the same credibility threshold as true factual information, or when it comes to controversial topics, assumed international, understandings, or agreements that counter CCP narratives."

Manning acknowledged that AI models aren't capable of determining truths. "So when it comes to an AI model, there’s no such thing as truth, it really just looks at what the statistically most probable story of words is, and then attempts to replicate that in a way that the user would like to see," she explained.

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"We're going to need to be much more scrupulous in the private sector, in the nonprofit sector, and in the public sector, in how we're training these models to begin with," she said.

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Archived

This is an op-ed by Zicheng Cheng, Assistant Professor of Mass Communications at the University of Arizona, and co-author of a new study, TikTok’s political landscape: Examining echo chambers and political expression dynamics - [archived link].

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Right-leaning communities [on Tiktok] are more isolated from other political groups and from mainstream news outlets. Looking at their internal structures, the right-leaning communities are more tightly connected than their left-leaning counterparts. In other words, conservative TikTok users tend to stick together. They rarely follow accounts with opposing views or mainstream media accounts. Liberal users, on the other hand, are more likely to follow a mix of accounts, including those they might disagree with.

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We found that users with stronger political leanings and those who get more likes and comments on their videos are more motivated to keep posting. This shows the power of partisanship, but also the power of TikTok’s social rewards system. Engagement signals – likes, shares, comments – are like a fuel, encouraging users to create even more.

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The content on TikTok often comes from creators and influencers or digital-native media sources. The quality of this news content remains uncertain. Without access to balanced, fact-based information, people may struggle to make informed political decisions.

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It’s encouraging to see people participate in politics through TikTok when that’s their medium of choice. However, if a user’s network is closed and homogeneous and their expression serves as in-group validation, it may further solidify the political echo chamber.

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When people are exposed to one-sided messages, it can increase hostility toward outgroups. In the long run, relying on TikTok as a source for political information might deepen people’s political views and contribute to greater polarization.

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Echo chambers have been widely studied on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, but similar research on TikTok is in its infancy. TikTok is drawing scrutiny, particularly its role in news production, political messaging and social movements.

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Archived

Brazil’s Supreme Court agreed on Thursday on details of a decision to hold social media companies liable for what their users post, clearing the way for it go into effect within weeks.

The 8-3 vote in Brazil’s top court orders tech giants like Google, Meta and TikTok to actively monitor content that involves hate speech, racism and incitation to violence and act to remove it.

The case has unsettled the relationship between the South American nation and the U.S. government. Critics have expressed concern that the move could threaten free speech if platforms preemptively remove content that could be problematic.

After Thursday’s ruling is published by the court, people will be able to sue social media companies for hosting illegal content if they refuse to remove it after a victim brings it to their attention. The court didn’t set out firm rules on what content is illegal, leaving it to be decided on a case-by-case basis.

The ruling strengthens a law that requires companies to remove content only after court orders, which were often ignored.

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