Researchers have found a way to steal data from any router in the most unlikely of ways: observing the LED lights on the front of the router. The paper from Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev describes how the LED functionality can be silently overridden by “xLED,” malware they had developed to infect firmware in the device. ...

The use of the increasingly popular smoking alternative e-cigarettes may be 95 percent safer than smoking a traditional cigarette, but they may not be so safe for your computers, according to two new demonstrated proofs-of-concept. The first comes from security researcher Ross Bevington, who demonstrated at a recent convention how an e-cigarette could be easily used to attack a ...

SONM Pte. Ltd., a startup that is looking to built a cloud supercomputer using blockchain technology, has raised $42 million in an initial coin offering that saw investments from 8,774 participants. The company is attempted to build a “Supercomputer Organized by Network Mining” that uses an Ethereum-based network to create a hybrid “fog computing” platform. That’s a ...

Google Inc. is upping its fight against the spread of extremist content on its YouTube service by rolling out new artificial-intelligence services in conjunction with additional human oversight to stop it faster. The advanced AI platform will use ongoing machine learning research that in theory can automatically flag and remove terrorist videos but at the same ...

Police in Europe have arrested six people and questioned 39 others in relation to a cybercrime ring that involved the distribution of counter-antivirus software and a crypter service, which encrypts and conceals malware. Lead by Germany’s Kriminalinspektion Mayen in conjunction with Europol, operation “Neuland” saw the arrest of people involved in the cybercrime ring in the U.K., Norway, Italy, ...

The Central Intelligence Agency likes to hack Wi-Fi routers. That’s the major takeaway from a new dump from Wikileaks that includes the details of software used by the agency to spy on all and sundry. Called “Cherry Blossom,” the CIA-designed hacking software uses a modified version of a router’s firmware to turn it into a surveillance ...

Conviva Inc., a San Mateo, California-based company that uses artificial intelligence to measure and manage video plays, has raised $40 million in new funding. Founded in 2006, Conviva aims to address the “changing business of television” with a big-data platform that enables online video providers to customize their content for their viewers. The company’s Intelligent ...

Amazon.com Inc. may be interested in acquiring enterprise messaging platform provider Slack Technologies Inc., according to a report published early Thursday morning. Bloomberg, citing people with knowledge of the matter, claims that Slack has received recent inquiries about a potential takeover from Amazon as well as other unnamed companies. The talks are said to be ...

Artificial intelligence software designed by Microsoft Corp. has achieved something that was previously never thought possible: a perfect score in the computer game Ms. Pac-Man. Using computing power and programming power on what would appear to be a frivolous use of AI. But Microsoft claimed in a blog post today that the method used could ...

Leading bitcoin exchange Bitfinex advised customers that they were being targeted by a distributed denial of service attack Wednesday following a similar attack the day before. The attack, which involves a company’s servers being flooded with data in an attempt to take its services offline, did not affect bitcoin and Ethereum trading. “Most users will ...