Cryptocurrency developers have become the focus of a new macOS-focused cyber campaign that uses fake recruiter approaches, malicious meeting links and compromised software pipelines to steal digital assets and spread malware through trusted internal systems. The activity is being tracked as JINX-0164, a previously unreported financially motivated threat actor active since at least mid-2025. Investigators found that the group has targeted cryptocurrency organisations by approaching developers and […]
Hackers are using GHOSTYNETWORKS and OMEGATECH to sustain a global JavaScript malware operation that has targeted organisations across energy, finance, retail, automotive and government-linked sectors, underlining the expanding role of bulletproof hosting in large-scale email fraud. The campaign, tracked across March 2026 activity, used malicious ZIP and RAR attachments to deliver an obfuscated JavaScript backdoor through malspam waves sent to victims in multiple regions. Targets included energy […]
Cybercriminals behind the ClearFake campaign have shifted deeper into blockchain-based command infrastructure, using BNB Smart Chain testnet contracts to deliver malicious code and frustrate conventional takedown efforts. The campaign marks an escalation in the abuse of decentralised infrastructure for malware operations. Instead of relying on domains, hosting providers or disposable servers that can be suspended, the operators are storing payload logic and routing instructions inside smart contracts […]
Google Cloud has moved deeper into AI-native cybersecurity with Google AI Threat Defence, an autonomous security platform aimed at helping enterprises detect, prioritise and remediate attacks at machine speed as rivals Anthropic and OpenAI push frontier models into vulnerability discovery and code defence. The launch marks a sharper contest in enterprise security, where artificial intelligence is shifting the centre of gravity from manual patching and alert handling […]
Arabian Post Staff -Dubai Deloitte has expanded its alliance with Netskope to deliver managed Secure Access Service Edge services across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, targeting large enterprises reshaping networks for cloud workloads, hybrid work and AI adoption. The offering brings together Deloitte’s cyber operations, advisory and managed security capabilities with Netskope’s cloud security platform, giving clients a single service model for network transformation, access control, […]
Cybersecurity researchers have warned that BTMOB, an Android remote access trojan, has developed into a potent tool for criminals seeking to hijack smartphones, steal data and run fraud from compromised devices. The malware, first identified in early 2025, has moved beyond the narrower behaviour associated with many banking trojans. It can capture screens, record activity, manage files, intercept credentials, control device functions and give an attacker near-live […]
UAE residents can expect generally fair skies on Thursday as temperatures climb across much of the country, with low clouds forming over the eastern coast during the morning and humidity returning overnight into Friday. The National Centre of Meteorology’s outlook points to a stable early-summer pattern, shaped by weak surface pressure systems and an upper-air high-pressure extension. The combination is expected to keep conditions largely dry and […]
A newly disclosed flaw in Starlette has put Python-based AI services under pressure to patch systems that may expose protected endpoints through manipulated HTTP Host headers. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-48710 and dubbed BadHost, affects Starlette versions up to 1.0.0 and has drawn attention because of Starlette’s role in modern application stacks built around FastAPI, API gateways, model-serving tools and agent frameworks. Starlette 1.0.1 contains the fix, […]
Arabian Post Staff -Dubai MarsLab Pte Ltd has introduced a Singapore-based roadmap for AI inference infrastructure, positioning the company around enterprise and edge deployment at a time when organisations are shifting from model experimentation to production-scale artificial intelligence systems. The roadmap, announced on 28 May, centres on what MarsLab describes as a system-first approach to inference, the stage at which trained AI models generate outputs in live […]
Cybersecurity teams across India face a compressed response window after CERT-In urged organisations to fix actively exploited internet-facing vulnerabilities within 12 hours wherever feasible, marking a sharper regulatory push as artificial intelligence accelerates cyber-attack cycles.
The guidance, issued on May 25 in a 38-page blueprint, reflects growing official concern that attackers are using generative AI, large language models and autonomous tools to discover exposed systems, weaponise flaws, craft phishing lures and scale malware operations faster than conventional security programmes can respond. The document places rapid remediation, continuous monitoring and exposure reduction at the centre of enterprise cyber defence.
CERT-In’s most stringent timeline applies to known exploited vulnerabilities affecting internet-facing and critical systems, including applications, identity platforms, cloud assets, APIs, operational technology and systems supporting essential business functions. Organisations are advised to patch, mitigate or isolate such weaknesses within 12 hours where feasible. Critical externally exposed vulnerabilities should be addressed within one day, while known exploited flaws inside internal systems should be fixed within one day unless compensating controls are implemented and documented.
The blueprint also recommends that critical internal vulnerabilities affecting high-value systems be remediated within three days, and high-severity vulnerabilities within five days based on risk prioritisation. Where patches are unavailable, organisations are expected to use temporary protections such as isolation, access restrictions, web application firewalls, API shields, feature disabling and enhanced monitoring until permanent fixes are deployed.
The directive signals a shift from audit-driven cybersecurity to continuous exposure management. CERT-In has warned that organisations can no longer depend on periodic assessments or reactive incident response when automated tools can identify weak credentials, misconfigured systems, insecure APIs and vulnerable internet-facing services at machine speed. The approach requires security teams to maintain live inventories of assets, prioritise exposed systems and test whether controls work under attack conditions.
AI is changing both sides of the cyber equation. Attackers can use it to automate reconnaissance, write exploit code, refine phishing messages, generate synthetic identities and adapt malicious software. Defenders are being pushed to use similar capabilities for anomaly detection, threat hunting, automated triage and faster containment. The risk, however, is that poorly governed AI systems can themselves become attack surfaces through prompt injection, data leakage, model manipulation, poisoned training data, model theft and compromised orchestration pipelines.
The guidance gives particular weight to organisations operating in banking, financial services, telecom, healthcare, government, energy, transport, cloud services and other critical infrastructure-linked sectors. These environments often rely on interconnected digital systems, third-party software, outsourced technology providers and legacy platforms, creating wider exposure when a single flaw is weaponised quickly.
Global breach data has reinforced the urgency behind faster patching. Software vulnerability exploitation has overtaken stolen credentials as a leading breach entry point in major datasets, while ransomware remains a high-impact threat. Security teams also face growing pressure from supply-chain compromise, shadow AI usage, cloud misconfiguration and business email compromise. Unauthorised use of public AI tools has become a data governance issue as employees may upload source code, business documents, credentials or customer information into platforms outside corporate oversight.
CERT-In’s blueprint calls for a zero-trust approach, least-privilege access, layered controls and secure-by-design practices across applications, infrastructure and AI workflows. It urges organisations to maintain visibility into AI deployments, restrict sensitive data uploads to public AI platforms, log AI activity, conduct adversarial testing and keep human approval for critical autonomous actions.
Software supply-chain visibility is another major focus. Organisations are encouraged to use software bills of materials and related inventories for AI models, cryptographic assets and hardware components to understand dependencies, validate provenance and coordinate remediation when vulnerabilities emerge in third-party products.
The new expectations build on India’s existing cyber incident reporting framework, under which specified cyber incidents must be reported to CERT-In within six hours. The latest blueprint does not merely extend compliance obligations; it raises operational expectations for boards, chief information security officers and technology vendors by linking resilience to the speed of response.
Smaller organisations may struggle with the 12-hour benchmark because patch testing, downtime concerns, legacy dependencies and staffing shortages often slow remediation. The guidance therefore recognises feasible mitigation as part of the response, but it also makes clear that unmanaged exposure is no longer acceptable when attackers can exploit public-facing weaknesses within hours.
Cisco researchers have warned that leading open-weight large language models can be manipulated through sustained conversations that gradually push them past safety controls, exposing a weakness in systems now being adopted across business, public services and consumer applications. The assessment tested eight widely used open-weight models from Alibaba, DeepSeek, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral, OpenAI and Zhipu AI. The models were examined through automated adversarial testing designed to […]
Brussels faces resistance from Germany and Spain over a proposed EU-wide move to force telecom operators to remove Huawei and ZTE equipment from critical networks, exposing a rift between the European Commission’s security agenda and national concerns over cost, timing and market disruption. Officials in Berlin and Madrid are pushing back against plans that would turn the EU’s existing 5G security guidance into binding law, arguing that […]
ByteDance is weighing capital expenditure of as much as $70 billion this year as the TikTok owner accelerates an artificial intelligence push aimed at strengthening its position in China’s intensifying technology contest. The Beijing-based group is discussing one of the largest spending programmes by a private technology company outside the United States, with funds expected to go into data centres, AI chips, networking equipment and model development. […]
Microsoft has issued fixes for a high-severity SharePoint Server vulnerability that could allow authenticated attackers to run code remotely on affected on-premises systems, sharpening security concerns for organisations that continue to rely on self-managed collaboration platforms. Tracked as CVE-2026-45659, the flaw affects SharePoint Server Subscription Edition, SharePoint Server 2019 and SharePoint Enterprise Server 2016. The vulnerability has been assigned a CVSS score of 8.8, placing it in […]
Britain’s May temperature record has been broken for the second time in 24 hours as a powerful spring heatwave tightened its grip on Western Europe, pushing authorities to issue health warnings, restrict outdoor activity in some areas and urge vulnerable people to avoid prolonged exposure. The temperature reached 35.1C at Kew Gardens in London and Heathrow on Tuesday, surpassing the 34.8C recorded at Kew Gardens a day […]
Qualcomm has secured a major opening in artificial intelligence infrastructure through a deal to supply ByteDance with chips for AI data centres, giving the San Diego-based group a high-profile customer as it pushes beyond its traditional smartphone processor business. The agreement covers application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, designed to support AI workloads in ByteDance’s expanding data-centre operations. The chips are expected to be used for AI agent […]
Developers using Angular’s official Visual Studio Code extension have been urged to update their systems after multiple high-severity flaws were found to expose workstations to remote code execution through malicious project files and dependencies. The vulnerabilities affect Angular Language Service, published as Angular. ng-template on the Visual Studio Marketplace, in all versions before 21.2.4. The patched release closes weaknesses that could allow an attacker to execute commands […]
China-linked cyber operators have targeted edge routers across Southeast Asia with a custom Linux implant, widening concern that network infrastructure has become a prime entry point for long-term espionage rather than a peripheral security risk. The campaign centres on Linux-based border and edge routers used by organisations to manage traffic entering and leaving enterprise networks. By compromising these devices, the attackers place themselves at a strategic point […]
Code4Mzansi highlights the growing strength of South Africa’s developer ecosystem and the role of youth-led innovation in shaping the country’s digital future
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – Media OutReach Newswire – 26 May 2026 – South Africa’s emerging developers are building close to the ground, with many of the strongest solutions at the inaugural Huawei Code4Mzansi finals focused on systems people use every day: township retail, healthcare, energy, agriculture, payments and the creative economy.
The winners at the Huawei Developer Competition, Code4Mzansi
The competition was held in partnership with the Department of Small Business Development. “The Code4Mzansi competition is not just a celebration of achievement, it is a launchpad for the future,” said Minister Stella Ndabeni, whose department co-hosted the event and delivered the closing address.
The finals revealed a clear shift from building abstract digital products to practical tools that help small businesses trade better, communities access services more easily, and local industries solve problems faster.
Four finalist teams focused directly on the township economy, with solutions covering food safety verification for spaza shops, offline point-of-sale systems built for load-shedding, WhatsApp-native marketplaces for informal retailers, and community credit systems for SASSA grant recipients.
Others addressed AI-driven healthcare access, electricity theft detection, smart agriculture, financial infrastructure for the creator economy, and AI-generated African music.
Held at Huawei Office Park in Woodmead, the finals brought together more than 100 attendees, including government representatives, academic partners, industry leaders and media.
“The quality of the finalist solutions demonstrated the potential of local innovation to respond to real market needs,” said Steven Chen, Cloud CEO of Huawei Technologies South Africa.
Academic partners included the University of Pretoria, the University of Johannesburg, the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Cape Town.
“Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, and technology is their greatest accelerator. The participants here today are future entrepreneurs who will drive South Africa’s digital economy forward,” said Professor Thokozani Shongwe, Vice Dean of Postgraduate Studies, Research and Internationalisation at the University of Johannesburg’s Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment.
Industry partner rain also attended. Leon Nortje, Principal and Senior Architect at rain, said the competition offered a strong view of the country’s emerging technology pipeline.
“It is always good to see new projects and new teams working on solutions that are valuable and industry-related. We will be looking out for potential new employees,” said Nortje.
The winners
The finalists competed for a prize pool of R800,000. MAAT by SIMVAK was named the overall grand winner and received the Business Value Award, taking home R300,000. The platform addresses food safety and regulatory compliance in South Africa’s informal retail sector through AI agents, real-time product recall alerts, and counterfeit detection for the spaza shop ecosystem.
“The spaza network is the supply chain for most South African households,” said SIMVAK founder Shingirayi Mandebvu.
HealthHive by FTCK received second prize in the Business Value Award category, taking home R200,000, for its AI telemedicine platform that matches patients with the right medical practitioners based on their symptoms.
Auraa received the Grand Innovation Award for its AI music engine built to generate authentic African sound. The platform has been associated with an album that has crossed one million streams.
The Future Star Award went to e-Khadi, a community credit and stokvel platform giving SASSA grant recipients access to essentials at their local spaza shops, supported by AI-assisted credit scoring and fraud detection.
The People’s Choice Award, voted by the public on Huawei’s social media channels, went to DevRift, a semi-finalist in the competition, who took home R100,000.
Minister Ndabeni delivered the closing address, positioning Code4Mzansi within the government’s agenda for youth entrepreneurship, small business development and digital inclusion.
“Our task is to ensure that innovation does not remain a moment of applause, but becomes a pathway to enterprise creation, digital inclusion, and sustainable growth,” she said.
“Thank you to Huawei for being a perfect partner on the journey that we are travelling, and of course, those that matter most, the developers who dared to compete,” she said.
Code4Mzansi forms part of the global Huawei Cloud Developer Competition. In its inaugural edition, South Africa attracted more participants than any other country: 1,041 across 353 teams, including 176 enterprise teams, resulting in the highest enterprise participation rate among all competing markets. Twenty semi-finalists were selected before the top nine advanced to the final.
For the finalists, the work is just beginning. As Minister Ndabeni said, “Go home today proud. But tomorrow, wake up, build again.”
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
About Huawei
Founded in 1987, Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. With 213,000 employees operating in over 170 countries, we serve more than three billion people worldwide.
Huawei is committed to bringing digital to every person, home, and organisation for a fully connected, intelligent world. In 2025, Huawei generated CNY880.9 billion in revenue, reinvesting 21.8% (CNY192.3 billion) into R&D, with about 53.7% of its employees working in R&D. As a private company fully owned by its employees, Huawei focuses on customer-centric innovation and open collaboration to create lasting value and drive technological breakthroughs globally.
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China’s artificial intelligence market is entering a faster and more expensive phase, with enterprise spending forecasts pointing to a surge that could reshape global competition in cloud computing, semiconductors, robotics and industrial automation.
Global enterprise AI expenditure is expected to reach about $940 billion in 2026 and climb to roughly $2.1 trillion by 2029, reflecting a shift from experimental deployments to large-scale use across manufacturing, finance, logistics, health care, energy and public services. China is emerging as one of the fastest-expanding markets within that cycle, helped by heavy infrastructure spending, state-backed industrial policy and a corporate race to build domestic alternatives to foreign chips, models and cloud platforms.
The acceleration is no longer confined to model development. China’s AI buildout is moving across the full technology stack, from data centres and accelerators to enterprise software, robotics and agentic systems capable of handling complex workflow tasks. The first phase of the investment wave was dominated by computing power, foundational models and large infrastructure projects. The next phase is being shaped by applied AI, intelligent services and automation across production lines, offices and consumer platforms.
That transition is putting pressure on global rivals. US technology groups still lead in advanced chips, frontier models and hyperscale cloud capacity, but China’s market has advantages in deployment speed, manufacturing depth and policy coordination. Companies including Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Huawei and ByteDance are expanding AI services while also trying to reduce dependence on restricted US semiconductor supplies. Alibaba has unveiled a new AI chip through its T-Head unit and is directing tens of billions of dollars into cloud and AI infrastructure over several years. Huawei’s Ascend processors have become central to China’s domestic accelerator strategy as export controls limit access to top-tier Nvidia products.
Infrastructure remains the foundation of the race. Worldwide AI infrastructure spending is on course to exceed $1 trillion by 2029, with accelerated servers accounting for the overwhelming share. China remains the second-largest AI infrastructure market after the US, even though export restrictions have created supply constraints for high-end accelerators. Those restrictions have encouraged domestic chip design, local server ecosystems and more efficient deployment models for inference, where many commercial AI applications run after models have been trained.
China’s data centre expansion is also moving into more specialised formats. AI workloads demand dense computing power, stable electricity supply and advanced cooling, all of which are raising costs and straining grids. Projects near Shanghai and other technology hubs are testing alternative energy and cooling systems, including offshore and renewable-powered facilities. These efforts reflect a broader attempt to manage the energy burden of AI while supporting national ambitions in cloud services, industrial software and smart manufacturing.
Robotics is becoming a central pillar of the spending wave. China already has the world’s largest industrial robot base and is pushing into embodied intelligence, where AI systems are integrated into machines that operate in factories, warehouses, homes and public spaces. Forecasts for China’s robotics market point to rapid expansion over the next five years, with demand coming from electric vehicles, electronics, logistics and elder care. The combination of AI models, sensors, batteries and manufacturing scale gives domestic firms a route to compete internationally beyond software alone.
Policy support is reinforcing corporate investment. Beijing’s “AI Plus” strategy, issued in 2025, aims to embed artificial intelligence across the economy by expanding access to data, compute and talent while promoting open-source ecosystems and industrial adoption. Local governments have added funding programmes, innovation parks and procurement support, creating competition among cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hangzhou. That model can accelerate deployment, though it also raises the risk of duplicated capacity, uneven standards and projects driven more by subsidy incentives than commercial demand.
The competitive picture remains mixed. China leads in AI publication volume, citations, patent output and industrial robot installations, while the US continues to produce more frontier models and higher-impact patents. The performance gap between leading US and Chinese models has narrowed, aided by open-source releases and engineering efficiency from Chinese labs. DeepSeek’s breakthrough earlier in the cycle demonstrated that capable systems could be produced with fewer resources than previously assumed, intensifying debate over whether raw spending alone will determine leadership.
NightSpire has moved from an emerging ransomware operation to a fast-scaling cyber-extortion threat, using exposed Remote Desktop Protocol access, legitimate administration tools and a Tor-based leak site to pressure victims across multiple sectors. First observed in early 2025, the group has built its campaign around double extortion, stealing sensitive files before encrypting systems and then threatening public exposure if victims refuse to pay. Its operations show a […]
A targeted cyber-espionage campaign has struck China’s higher education sector, using deceptive PDF-style shortcut files to install Cobalt Strike beacons on victim machines and open a path for remote control. The operation, labelled Dragon Whistle, has focused on Changzhou University and related academic users by exploiting a familiar administrative pressure point: compulsory student fitness testing tied to the 2026 National Student Physical Fitness and Health Standards. The […]
Hong Kong’s artificial intelligence market gained a locally built workplace automation product on Tuesday as Sentimento Technologies launched MonoClaw, a Mac-based AI secretary aimed at professionals and small and medium-sized businesses seeking tighter control over data, costs and daily administrative work.
The product, built around a personal AI assistant called Mona, is being positioned as a “local-first” alternative to cloud-based generative AI tools. Rather than routing most tasks through remote servers, MonoClaw runs large language models on a user’s own Apple hardware, with the company saying the approach is designed to keep sensitive memory, session history and credentials under the user’s direct control.
Sentimento Technologies Limited, the Hong Kong engineering studio behind the product, describes MonoClaw as the city’s first managed local AI runtime environment for professional users. Its launch comes as businesses move from experimental chatbot use towards agentic AI systems that can monitor workflows, draft responses, prepare reminders and act on user-approved instructions across multiple workplace channels.
Mona is designed to work as a digital secretary across email, WhatsApp, Telegram and calendar-linked tasks. The system can identify action items in messages, prepare reply drafts, generate morning briefings, track pending approvals, surface relevant documents before meetings and flag deadlines. The company says the product ships with 160 pre-bundled professional skills, covering both business administration and personal task management.
Billy Zuo, co-founder and chief executive of Sentimento Technologies, said the shift from manual software operation to autonomous AI execution marked a wider change in workplace computing. He said many businesses adopting cloud AI still face concerns over data leakage and unpredictable subscription costs, arguing that a local-first model gives companies greater control over sensitive information and spending.
MonoClaw’s pricing reflects that positioning. The permanent software licence is priced at HK$28,888, with an early-bird offer of HK$25,888. Users must also provide compatible Apple hardware, such as a Mac mini M4 or iMac M4, with the Mac mini starting at about HK$6,099. The company handles installation, workflow configuration and validation, with payment structured through a 40 per cent deposit and 60 per cent balance after final delivery and verification.
That model differs from many AI software products that rely on monthly subscriptions, metered token use or cloud-service plans. Sentimento is pitching MonoClaw as a capital investment rather than an operating expense, a message likely to appeal to smaller firms that want clearer budgeting and lower recurring software exposure. The trade-off is a higher upfront cost and a hardware dependency that may limit adoption among users who prefer device-neutral or fully cloud-hosted systems.
Privacy and auditability are central to the product’s commercial pitch. MonoClaw uses local contextual memory, local runtime profiles, secret redaction and explicit approval gates for higher-risk actions. Mona is designed to request confirmation through messaging channels before executing sensitive commands, data changes or external actions. That “human-in-the-loop” structure reflects a broader concern in the AI sector: agents that are powerful enough to automate work also need firm boundaries, logs and user control.
Hong Kong’s technology ecosystem has been moving in the same direction. AI agents, local foundation models and governed automation have become more prominent in policy, research and enterprise discussions, with public and academic initiatives focusing on authorisation, traceability and risk controls. MonoClaw enters this environment as a commercial product for office users rather than a research platform, but its design mirrors the same debate over whether AI agents can be useful without creating new privacy and operational risks.
The launch also underscores a changing competitive field for productivity software. Major global platforms are embedding AI assistants into office suites, browsers, customer-service tools and enterprise resource systems. MonoClaw’s advantage, if it gains traction, will lie in its local deployment, Hong Kong-specific setup and promise of cost predictability. Its challenge will be proving that a local Mac-based assistant can match the reliability, integrations and performance of cloud-backed rivals while remaining simple enough for non-technical users.
Energy and infrastructure concerns add another layer to the product’s appeal. Cloud AI workloads have intensified scrutiny of data-centre electricity demand, cooling requirements and network dependence. MonoClaw argues that routine tasks such as inbox triage, drafting, reminders and meeting preparation can be handled on Apple Silicon at desk level, reducing reliance on remote inference for every interaction. The system can still use filtered cloud subprocesses for selected workloads, meaning its privacy and cost benefits will depend on how users configure and supervise each workflow.
Microsoft’s early lead in AI-assisted software development is coming under pressure as outages at GitHub, leadership changes, security incidents and fast-moving rivals reshape one of the most important contests in enterprise technology. GitHub Copilot gave Microsoft a commanding start in the AI coding race. It was launched before many competitors had mature developer products, and it benefited from GitHub’s position at the centre of global software collaboration. […]
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