Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: finance – Page 5

Cybercrime Groups ShinyHunters, Scattered Spider Join Forces in Extortion Attacks on Businesses

An ongoing data extortion campaign targeting Salesforce customers may soon turn its attention to financial services and technology service providers, as ShinyHunters and Scattered Spider appear to be working hand in hand, new findings show.

“This latest wave of ShinyHunters-attributed attacks reveals a dramatic shift in tactics, moving beyond the group’s previous credential theft and database exploitation,” ReliaQuest said in a report shared with The Hacker News.

These include the use of adoption of tactics that mirror those of Scattered Spider, such as highly-targeted vishing (aka voice phishing) and social engineering attacks, leveraging apps that masquerade as legitimate tools, employing Okta-themed phishing pages to trick victims into entering credentials during vishing, and VPN obfuscation for data exfiltration.

How can we strengthen the carbon market?

The global voluntary carbon market (VCM) is a critical tool for mobilizing finance for decarbonization efforts. As the market for carbon credits has grown, however, the value and effectiveness of the market has come under scrutiny.

To restore trust and increase confidence in the market, it is critical that carbon credits represent real, additional, verifiable emission reductions. The credibility and integrity of carbon credits rely heavily on the standards governing their creation and purchase. Strengthening market mechanisms, ensuring rigorous accounting standards, and increasing global cooperation are all essential to ensure that carbon markets contribute towards a low-carbon future.

OpenAI’s GPT-5 Flop, AI’s Unlimited Market, China’s Big Advantage, Rise in Socialism, Housing Crisis

Questions to inspire discussion.

📊 Q: How did GPT-5 perform compared to GPT-4? A: GPT-5 was narrowly ahead of GPT-4 in artificial analysis, but GPT-4 was significantly better in “humanity’s last exam” and RKGI2, which measures tasks relatively easy for humans but hard for AIs.

🌐 Q: What is the key architectural improvement in GPT-5? A: GPT-5 has a multimodal architecture that can self-select the underlying model for a task, providing a simple, clean interface without users needing to understand technical details.

AI industry growth and economic impact.

💰 Q: How much is being invested in the AI industry annually? A: The AI industry is experiencing astronomical growth, with hundreds of billions of dollars being deployed annually, and a projected trillion dollars in the next 5 years on data centers and AI infrastructure.

📈 Q: Are there already economic returns on AI investments? A: Economic returns on AI investments are already evident, with companies like Meta and Microsoft reporting significant revenue growth and productivity gains.

Continue reading “OpenAI’s GPT-5 Flop, AI’s Unlimited Market, China’s Big Advantage, Rise in Socialism, Housing Crisis” | >

Major climate-GDP study under review after facing challenge

A blockbuster study published in top science journal Nature last year warned that unchecked climate change could slash global GDP by a staggering 62% by century’s end, setting off alarm bells among financial institutions worldwide.

But a re-analysis by Stanford University researchers in California, released Wednesday, challenges that conclusion—finding the projected hit to be about three times smaller and broadly in line with earlier estimates, after excluding an anomalous result tied to Uzbekistan.

The saga may culminate in a rare retraction, with Nature telling AFP it will have “further information to share soon”—a move that would almost certainly be seized upon by climate-change skeptics.

Game developers association decries ‘financial censorship’ amidst payment processor crackdown on NSFW games, calls for ‘greater transparency and fairness in how adult games are moderated’

The IGDA says the problem isn’t the rules themselves, but their “vague” enforcement.

Hackers breach Toptal GitHub account, publish malicious npm packages

Hackers compromised Toptal’s GitHub organization account and used their access to publish ten malicious packages on the Node Package Manager (NPM) index.

The packages included data-stealing code that collected GitHub authentication tokens and then wiped the victims’ systems.

Toptal is a freelance talent marketplace that connects companies with software developers, designers, and finance experts. The company also maintains internal developer tools and design systems, most notably Picasso, which they make available through GitHub and NPM.

Brave blocks Windows Recall from screenshotting your browsing activity

Brave Software says its privacy-focused browser will block Microsoft’s Windows Recall from capturing screenshots of Brave windows by default to protect users’ privacy.

Windows Recall is an opt-in Windows feature that takes screenshots of active windows every few seconds, analyzes them, and enables Windows 11 users to search for text within the snapshots using natural language. The goal is to make it easy for users to quickly find information about past activities in Windows.

However, the feature has sparked widespread criticism for potentially exposing sensitive data of Windows users, including passwords, emails, health records, and financial information.

/* */