Play for the final it’s bad enough without the platform you use to do your schoolwork suddenly shutting down. Unfortunately for many students across America, that’s what they faced on Thursday Canvas went into “maintenance mode” following a ransomware attack on education technology company Instructure. Hackers using the name ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach, and experts say the chaos they caused shows how these criminals will go about extorting their victims.
Did you know that Google Chrome includes an automatic download of the Gemini Nano AI build? If not, you wouldn’t be alone. People using Google’s popular browser discovered this week that the Gemini Nano has been taking up 4GB of space on their desktop computers since 2024, sparking outrage and privacy concerns. Fortunately, you can disable the AI model-but without losing some important safety features. Obviously, you can too download a different browser for free.
Researchers this week revealed that thousands of apps with vibe code were left open on the open internet, exposing sensitive corporate and personal data. Security flaws are a reminder: Just because you can vibe code something it doesn’t mean necessarily.
The Department of Homeland Security called Google in an attempt to find location data and account activity of a Canadian man who criticized US immigration enforcement practices following the murder of Beautiful Renee and Alex Pretty in Minneapolis earlier this year. The American Civil Liberties Union this week filed a complaint against DHS on behalf of the man, who has not visited the United States in more than 10 years.
Fraudsters, low-level hackers, and other cybercriminals have joined the ranks of humanity. wish there was no AI slopeaccording to new research. Meanwhile, Meta is promoting its age-verification technology after research found that kids are faking their age online using simple tricks—including one brave kid who. evaded online age verification by drawing on fake moustaches. Finally, we explained in detail Russia’s efforts to create a domestic competitor to Starlink satellite Internet service—with all the privacy and security issues involved.
And there is more. Each week, we round up security and privacy news that we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click on the headlines to read the full story. And stay safe out there.
Most people hope that 200-pound robot with a blade in their backyard can’t be easily hacked. Unfortunately for the owners of the Yarbo, a $5,000 robotic lawnmower that can also function as a leaf blower, snow blower and edger, that was not the case. The Verge reports that a security researcher found multiple vulnerabilities in lawn robots that could allow hackers to remotely take over machines (including their camera feeds,) and also provide owners’ email addresses, Wi-Fi passwords and home locations.
After Yarbo’s spokesperson told The Verge that “the robot’s surveillance environment is not accessible to the public,” the reporter and researcher pointed out the security flaws and their potential consequences by nearly running away from the reporter and the hijacked robot. The company has since reported that it is developing a fix for at least one of the flaws the researcher discovered.
Mark Zuckerberg’s meter has pulled support for end-to-end encrypted messages on Instagram, rolling back its plans to protect people’s privacy by sending messages the company couldn’t inspect. The company stopped providing encryption on Instagram on May 8, making it easier than ever for the company to professionally access phone messages.
After using years of building encryption systems needed to protect its chat apps, Meta said in 2023 that it had provided default encryption for Messenger. It also said it was bringing an opt-in version to Instagram, which it had planned to do eventually become the default setting. However, that day never came and Meta decided in March of this year that not enough people had opted in and would remove the option to encrypt Instagram chats. The U-turn has angered privacy and security experts who fear it rollback can destroy end-to-end encryption efforts around the world.
The Trump administration launched a new counter-terrorism strategywhich President Donald Trump describes as “a return to common sense and Peace through Strength” in the preamble included in the document. The three main types of terrorist groups, according to the document, are terrorist groups, Islamist terrorist groups, and “radical leftist militants,” which the memo says include anarchists and anti-fascists and ideologues who are “anti-American” and “radical pro-transgender.”
The document promises, “We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to target them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to effectively disable them before they maim or kill innocents.”
