Tootfinder

So much infosec news, so little time. Check out today's Metacurity for the most critical cybersecurity developments you need to know, including
--ID documents for billionaires and top pols at Abu Dhabi conference were exposed online,
--Angola journalist was hacked with Intellexa spyware,
--Poland arrests Phobos ransomware affiliate,
--Severe flaw found in Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machine,
--Hacker who paid only a penny for a luxury hotel room was busted …

ID documents for billionaires and top politicians at Abu Dhabi conference were exposed online
Angola journalist was hacked with Intellexa spyware, Poland arrests Phobos ransomware affiliate, Severe flaw found in Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machine, Hacker who paid only a penny for a luxury hotel room busted in Spain, Oz financial technology company YouX suffered a massive breach, much more

Sources: SpaceX and xAI are competing in a $100M DoD contest to make voice-controlled, autonomous drone swarms; OpenAI is helping Applied Intuition's submission (Katrina Manson/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Donnerstag: Alpha-Version neuer Xbox erst 2027, Elon Musks KI-Projekt Marcohard
Microsofts Xbox-Annäherung an Windows Macrohard-System von xAI und Tesla Algorithmen als Internet-Zensur Google-Bremse beim Pixel-Aufladen #heiseshow

Just finished "Song of A Blackbird" by Maria van Lieshout. It's an excellent and extremely timely historical fiction graphic novel about rediscovering a family connection that was severed by war, and the Dutch Resistance figures under Nazi occupation who saved many lives, in some cases at the cost of their own.
Despite being fiction, it's very closely grounded in historical facts, and the inclusion of photographs within the illustrations is really cool.
Now is an interesting time to be thinking about the fates of Nazis, collaborators, their victims, and the resistance, as well as how we remember them all. I especially liked the section at the end about the real historical figures and their fates. So "fascinating" that none of the Nazis were executed or died in prison (mostly they did serve long terms before their release), even those who oversaw mass killings and deportations to concentration camps. I'm a prison abolitionist and not a fan of state capital punishment, so on *some* level this seems like an outcome I should be happy about, but I somehow doubt that the state was this lenient for all prisoners during this time period...
#AmReading #ReadingNow

Methane spiked after 2020 and the cause was unexpected #environment

Methane spiked after 2020 and the cause was unexpected
Methane levels in Earth’s atmosphere surged faster than ever in the early 2020s, and scientists say the reason was a surprising mix of chemistry and climate. A temporary slowdown in the atmosphere’s ability to break down methane allowed the gas to linger, while unusually wet conditions boosted emissions from wetlands, rivers, lakes, and rice fields around the world. Pandemic-related changes in air pollution played a key role, indirectly weakening the atmosphere’s natural “clean-up” pr…

'Limits' to paid customers...
Musk’s xAI limits Grok’s ability to create sexualized images of real people on X after backlash
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/14/musk-xai-blocks-grok-chatbot-from-creating-sexualized-images-of-people.html

Canadian Historical Association president Coates on federal and provincial budget cuts which "have a major impact on our colleagues, on our students who may hope to find work in these fields, and on our abilities to carry out our own research and teaching. The particular historical moment in which we find ourselves, with the threats to Canadian sovereignty... underline the urgency of making available to all citizens the wide knowledge of our past."

The Oscars are streaming on Hulu, but not the Hulu that's part of Disney , so no Oscars for us. This should not be such a mess.
We can watch 30 or so OTA channels but our local ABC affiliate has a shit signal.

Yep. He thought dropping bombs would make it a quick war and quick victory lap. He has no appetite for long conflicts.
Now, no regime change, oil price rising, he’s likely to just change the definition of what a victory is to save face. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/20

Before you head out for the weekend, don't miss today's Metacurity, which delivers developments that go beyond the usual infosec news echo chamber.
Today's items cover
--The imminent DHS shutdown will hamper US ability to respond to cyber threats,
--CISA will hold town halls on cyber incident reporting regs,
--Palo Alto removed China attribution in fear of retaliation,
--Tianfu Cup returns,
--Ring cancels partnership with Flock,
--TX AG lau…

The imminent DHS shutdown will hamper US ability to respond to cyber threats
CISA will hold town halls on cyber incident reporting regs, Palo Alto removed China attribution in fear of retaliation, Tianfu Cup returns, Ring cancels partnership with Flock, TX AG launches probe into Conduent breach, AI vibe coding platform Orchids has an unfixed flaw, much more