Most Linux distros you'll find are basically a pile of separate programs—a panel, a compositor, a window manager, and so on—all exchanging information and coordinating their behavior to create a cohesive experience.

These bird feeders come with cameras and connected apps to let you see and learn about the birds in your neighborhood.

Grow a backyard’s worth of greens and vegetables in your house with a vertical hydroponic garden. Here are a few that might be worth the investment.

Coway’s new Airmega Halo runs quietly and clears visible smoke quickly, but its air-quality readings weren’t always reassuring.

America's highest court heard Sam Bankman-Fried's request for a new trial on Thursday, CNN reports. But they add that "the former crypto mogul who was convicted of defrauding investors by secretly diverting billions of dollars of their money" also asked America's high court "to throw out a court order requiring him to pay $11 billion as part of his sentence." Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2024 after prosecutors said he directed billions of dollars from the crypto exchange FTX to a hedge fund he controlled called Alameda Research, where the funds were used for risky investments, political donations and his own personal benefit. The Supreme Court appeal, which was reviewed by CNN, raises a technical question about evidence that was submitted at his trial, and whether Bankman-Fried should have been permitted to demonstrate that his investments were ultimately sound and would have covered any losses by FTX customers. He also argues that the $11 billion forfeiture violates the 8th Amendment's prohibition on excessive fines. "Where the government pursues a theory of fraud under which it doesn't matter whether any victims lost money, introducing evidence suggesting that people actually lost money is distracting and prejudicial," veteran Supreme Court attorney Jeffrey Fisher told CNN. "All the more so where the truth is the victims did not lose money, and the defendant is unable to make that clear." The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the arguments earlier this year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As a general rule, don't use the router that comes from your ISP. It's typically overpriced, but that's not all — it may even be causing issues with your smart home, at least with the default settings.

Multiple espionage-motivated threat actors have adopted BlueMoon in opportunistic, rushed deployments.

The post BlueMoon Exploit Kit Chains Recent Chrome, Windows Zero-Days appeared first on SecurityWeek.

As someone who is very fond of my smart home setup, I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of it is surplus to requirements. Rarely would I recommend everyone install color-changing bulbs or relinquish control of the HVAC to just a smartphone app or a Home Assistant integration.

Turns out that the best office chair is also the best gaming chair, now with aesthetics to match.

We ask our smart home devices to do a lot for us, and rarely spare a moment to think about what life might be like for them. I decided to give some smart home devices personalities and let them loose in their own Discord chat to see what they would say if they could.

Bitcoin Magazine

Blockstream Tells Hackers To Return Remaining Bitcoin Stolen in Liquid Theft

Bitcoin infrastructure firm Blockstream has refused to negotiate further with hackers who last week stole 4,000 bitcoins from its Liquid network. 

Writing on X Friday, Blockstream said that the hackers still had time to return the funds before the company would work with law enforcement. 

White-hat hackers on Sunday withdrew about $320 million from the federation wallet that backs Liquid, a sidechain by Blockstream. After negotiating with Blockstream, they returned most of the funds but kept 598.5 coins worth over $46 million — demanding it as ransom. 

“Blockstream will not pay a ransom for the return of stolen funds,” the post read. “Taking assets without authorization and withholding their return is a crime, not responsible disclosure. It is not white-hat activity. It is theft.”

To those responsible for the theft of bitcoin from the Liquid Network:

Blockstream will not pay a ransom for the return of stolen funds. Taking assets without authorization and withholding their return is a crime, not responsible disclosure. It is not white-hat activity. It is…

— Blockstream (@Blockstream) September 11, 2026

It added: “We will work with law enforcement, exchanges, service providers, forensic specialists, and other relevant parties to trace and recover the assets and identify those responsible.”

“We will not pay for the return of stolen property. We will not abandon our users. The Bitcoin community will not stop pursuing the funds.”

Liquid, or L-BTC, is a layer-2 created by Blockstream that allows users to fast move assets backed 1:1 with bitcoin. One of the assets, LBTC, is a token backed by bitcoin that allows for quick settlement — a bit like the Lightning Network. 

Hackers were able to get the funds by exploiting an inflation bug on the Liquid sidechain to create over 4,000 LBTC that did not exist before and cash them out for real, on-chain bitcoins. 

The hackers then had an exchange with Blockstream via messages written into Bitcoin blocks. 

In one message, the white hats wrote: “Please fix the bug first. The chain is under risk at latest commit right now. Make sure every node is patched. Then we will transfer the money back safely after confirming the fix.”

In the latest message, the hackers slammed Blocksteam as “delusional, greedy, and arrogant,” and threatened to reveal all of Blockstream’s encrypted messages in the exchange unless the company allowed thieves to keep 10% of the bitcoins. 

“You SHALL pay 10% using your own money as bug bounty or you will cause all your holders a 15% loss for your irresponsibility and stinginess,” the message read. 

The Bitcoin community is still reeling after hackers in July were able to steal over 1,800 bitcoins worth close to $140 million from Coldcard wallet holders. 

Users of the popular hardware wallet, created by Coinkite, were targeted because the product’s manufacturer did not use a true random number generator, allowing hackers to essentially guess investor seedphrases. 

This post Blockstream Tells Hackers To Return Remaining Bitcoin Stolen in Liquid Theft first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued an advisory warning of a wave of OAuth consent phishing attacks targeting “prominent victims, their family members, and personal acquaintances.”

OAuth phishing is an increasingly popular social engineering tactic that tricks users into granting access to their accounts without handing over their passwords.

A former AT&T retail worker who used his system access to hijack customers' phone numbers for cybercriminals has been sentenced to 16 months in federal prison. Kenneth Carter, 44, carried out the SIM swaps at a store in Portland, Oregon, , allowing the criminals to intercept authentication codes and raid victims' bank accounts. Court documents show that Carter worked with at least three other people in the scheme, which ran between May 2018 and November 2019, and caused nearly $600,000 in intended losses. Co-conspirator One, described in court documents as the operation's main "hacker," identified victims with online bank accounts, gathered their personal data, and sent it to Carter, who could reassign their phone numbers. Carter abused his access to AT&T's systems to transfer victims' phone numbers to devices controlled by the other criminals. His role was described as "instrumental to the scheme." Co-conspirator Two and Co-conspirator Three would walk into the store and impersonate the victim whose number they planned to SIM-swap, and Carter would reassign the number to a phone they controlled – usually a "cheap flip phone." Once the swap was complete, the criminals could use the flip phone to intercept SMS-based 2FA codes and password reset messages, take over the victim's bank account, and steal funds. The intercepted codes were relayed to Co-conspirator One, who used them to access the victims' bank accounts. Court documents also refer to "an unnamed family member" who held a minor role in the scheme. They were described as someone "who occasionally passed along the two-step authentication codes" to Co-conspirator One. According to the Justice Department, three victims incurred combined intended losses of $593,963.77, and Carter admitted carrying out additional unauthorized SIM swaps. Carter's plea agreement [PDF] included details of three SIM swap attacks he helped execute. Only one victim suffered an actual loss: $99,528.33 transferred to a Portuguese bank account. The conspirators attempted to transfer $247,652.74 and $246,782.70 from the other two victims, but the banks' fraud controls blocked both transactions. Prosecutors said Carter was paid between $1,000 and $2,000 per swap, although he maintained that he earned less than $4,000 in total. Law enforcement raided Carter's residence in November 2019, finding copies of the personal data provided to him to carry out the SIM swaps, including the Social Security number of the one victim whose money was successfully stolen. AT&T terminated Carter's employment at an unspecified date in 2019. He pleaded guilty on March 24, 2026, to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud. In a letter to United States District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld, Jr., Carter described his offending as "a one-off situation that truly was a mistake." He explained that he takes care of his mother-in-law, who spends much of her time in a hospital bed located in the family living room, and two daughters, one of whom has schizophrenia. Carter claimed that he was "propositioned by my in-law cousin with an opportunity for me to make a little extra money for my family." "I was told I wouldn't have to do anything but do my job," he added. "So, I was under the impression that this was a harmless act. As far as I knew at the time, I was never a part of a ring, nor was this an out-of-state matter. "My incident was isolated to just Portland, OR, and the incident occurred while I was employed by AT&T. I later learned that what I found myself a part of was criminal, and I also learned after the fact the severity of what my co-conspirators were doing with the flip phones I sold under customer accounts." Federal prosecutors were unmoved by Carter's letter. In their response [PDF], US attorneys argued that Carter had not provided enough evidence to show he was unaware of the criminal activity's scope or nature, or that he was less culpable than the "hacker" who coordinated the operation. In addition to the 16-month sentence, Judge Blumenfeld, Jr. ordered Carter to pay $99,528 in restitution. ®

Smart bulbs are one of the most common entries into the world of smart home devices, but they're not without their problems. If your internet goes down, you may find that you lose features or simply can't control your bulbs at all. There are several ways to stop this from happening.

A recent survey from Experian found that 60% of companies report fraud losses that are “somewhat or significantly higher” than in previous years, with a majority of respondents citing AI-generated phishing attacks as their top AI-related fraud concern.

A Ukrainian lawyer who wound up coding malware for the Conti ransomware gang has been sentenced to four years in a US prison. Oleksii Oleksiyovych Lytvynenko, 44, pleaded guilty in June to conspiracy to commit wire fraud over his role in Conti, the Russia-linked ransomware operation associated with more than 1,000 victims and at least $150 million in ransom payments. Lytvynenko took an unusual route into the ransomware business. The Ukrainian national, who later lived in Cork, Ireland, trained as a lawyer before joining Conti as an intruder and developer. According to his plea agreement [PDF], Lytvynenko operated under the handle "henry" and joined a team run by another Conti conspirator known as "silver" or "buza." He was recruited to help with coding and directed to work on a malware loader – software designed to get other malicious code running on a victim's machine. Prosecutors said his Google account showed he had also been doing some homework. Investigators found books and videos about malware and hacking alongside Conti malware, ransom notes, and stolen victim data. Prosecutors said he also used Google and ZoomInfo to research potential targets. Lytvynenko wasn't confined to writing code, according to the filing. Evidence from his online accounts showed that he possessed data stolen from eight US victims and four overseas, with the eight American victims reporting more than $1.5 million in losses. Court documents identify several Bitcoin transfers tied to his Conti work, including 0.4 BTC worth $25,042 that prosecutors traced back to one of his victims. He has been ordered to forfeit the same amount. Conti disbanded in 2022 after its internal chats and source code were leaked following the gang's public support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Lytvynenko apparently didn't take that as his cue to find another line of work. When Gardaí turned up at his County Cork home in July 2023, they said they found his laptop open, Cobalt Strike running and a Rocket.Chat session connected over Tor. Prosecutors said evidence recovered from the machine showed that his involvement in ransomware activity had continued after Conti disbanded. Lytvynenko was extradited from Ireland to the US in October 2025. The Justice Department says Conti attacked organizations across 47 US states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and 31 foreign countries between 2020 and 2022. By January 2022, the FBI estimated that victim payouts associated with Conti exceeded $150 million. Lytvynenko will now have four years to contemplate a career change. ®

Noteworthy stories that might have slipped under the radar: Invisible Unicode slips past phishing filters, US puts $10 million bounty on Iranian cyber official, military ties of Chinese hacking group QTFY.

The post In Other News: InjectEave Attack, SIM Swapper Sentenced, Glasswing Findings Review appeared first on SecurityWeek.

Wi-Fi 7 routers and network cards are finally becoming affordable and commonplace, but if you're a homelabber or someone who just enjoys any sort of self-hosting, you probably haven't had a pressing reason to upgrade to this latest standard.

Oleksii Oleksiyovych Lytvynenko has been sentenced to 4 years in prison after he was arrested in Ireland in 2023.

The post Ukrainian Conti Ransomware Developer Sentenced to 4 Years in US Prison appeared first on SecurityWeek.

From rhizomes to taproots, learn the weeding strategies that match each weed's survival tactics