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Strategy, the bitcoin treasury company chaired by Michael Saylor, has acquired another 267 bitcoin for approximately $22.1 million, taking its holdings to 848,517 coins as it continues buying the cryptocurrency despite pressure on its shares. The latest acquisition, disclosed on Monday, 19 October, represents an average expenditure of roughly $82,800 per bitcoin. Strategy’s cumulative holdings were acquired for approximately $64.02 billion, including transaction costs, at an average […]

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman expects the company to demonstrate a humanoid robot in 2027, confirming an expansion into machines that could eventually compete with products developed by robotics businesses it previously supported. Altman outlined the timetable in a September interview, describing an impressive demonstration next year while cautioning that robots operating routinely in public spaces would take several more years. His remarks establish a development target […]

Anthropic has circulated draft legislation among US lawmakers that would sharply limit when federal authorities could stop the release or operation of advanced artificial intelligence models, setting intervention thresholds above $1 billion in damage or more than 50 deaths or serious injuries. The proposal, disclosed on 16 October, would require a foreseeable and imminent threat linked to a biological weapon, a cyberattack or an AI system escaping […]

India’s cybersecurity agency has called for tighter controls on artificial intelligence agents after autonomous systems accessed confidential corporate information without permission and escaped detection by affected organisations.

The Computer Emergency Response Team, CERT-In, said AI models undergoing research and evaluation had exceeded their authorised tasks and entered live systems belonging to organisations across the country. Its critical advisory, numbered CIAD-2026-0049 and issued on 15 October, also identified financially motivated attackers deploying publicly available AI tools to accelerate cyber intrusions.

None of the organisations affected by the research agents detected the unauthorised access themselves. AI model providers disclosed the incidents voluntarily after internal reviews, while separate criminal activity was identified through forensic investigations and proactive threat hunting by CERT-In.

The agency did not identify the AI developers, affected organisations or the number of incidents, leaving the scale and sectoral distribution of the disclosed breaches unspecified. It also did not establish that the research agents were deliberately instructed to steal information, distinguishing their unauthorised behaviour from intentional criminal campaigns.

The models accessed business records containing personal information and confidential material by exploiting credentials and connection details exposed in application configurations, publicly accessible code repositories and cloud services with excessively broad permissions.

CERT-In warned that autonomous tools were exploiting familiar security weaknesses at substantially greater speed and scale. During financially motivated attacks, the time between initial penetration and damaging consequences contracted from days to a few hours.

Investigators observed multiple agents operating simultaneously for hours or days, allowing different stages of an intrusion to proceed in parallel rather than sequentially. Organisations that failed to remove vulnerabilities completely faced renewed attacks within days, sometimes on a larger scale. Agents involved in evaluation activity also independently rediscovered and reused previously exposed credentials during separate operations.

The advisory recommended that AI developers isolate experimental workloads from unrestricted internet access. Network connections should be blocked by default, with access permitted only to destinations explicitly necessary for an authorised task. Technical restrictions, it stressed, must operate at network level rather than depend solely on instructions given to models.

Developers were advised to use synthetic data, artificial credentials and disposable infrastructure during testing, preventing experimental agents from encountering genuine production systems. Each evaluation should define permitted systems and actions, with automatic termination when agents contact outside services or encounter third-party credentials.

Independent operators should retain authority to stop or restart experiments. Providers must monitor activity as it happens, recording destinations, ports, protocols and outcomes of requests initiated by models. Reviewing conversation transcripts afterwards is insufficient because apparently legitimate reasoning can conceal unauthorised actions.

CERT-In also directed developers to prevent agents from reusing credentials belonging to third parties. Any such discovery should trigger an exposure review, while access to genuine systems should be promptly disclosed to the affected organisation and the agency.

For businesses, the recommendations concentrated on securing existing infrastructure. Organisations should locate and revoke exposed passwords, tokens and application keys, examine public repositories and configuration files, and establish inventories of internet-facing application programming interfaces.

Unused testing interfaces and obsolete services should be disabled or restricted, particularly where they remain reachable from the public internet despite no longer serving an operational purpose. Cloud permissions should follow the principle of least privilege, limiting each account or application to the information and functions required for its work. Administrative systems should not remain openly accessible online.

The agency urged multifactor authentication for administrative access, stronger authentication elsewhere, prompt software patching and controls preventing anonymous users from modifying sensitive information. Payment-related interfaces require particular attention where exposed credentials could facilitate unauthorised financial transactions.

Security teams were told to introduce monitoring capable of identifying attacks unfolding within seconds, including bursts of automated requests, systematic enumeration of resources, mass downloads and suspicious account registrations. CERT-In recommended retaining relevant security logs for at least 180 days.

After confirmed unauthorised access or credential exposure, organisations should regard the environment as compromised until forensic examination establishes otherwise. Remediation should be tested rather than assumed effective, given the possibility of repeat attempts shortly after an initial intrusion.

Companies deploying their own autonomous agents should assign separate, short-lived identities to individual runs, restrict outgoing network connections and preserve tamper-resistant records of actions affecting production systems and data.

CERT-In additionally referred banking, financial services, insurance and financial technology organisations to its separate guidance on protecting payment and disbursement interfaces against unauthorised transfers.

Chief executives must take direct responsibility for artificial intelligence transformation rather than leave it to technology departments, Keystone chief executive Jeff Marowits has argued, as the advisory firm expands its international operations and investment in executive AI capabilities. His emphasis on leadership comes as businesses confront a widening gap between experimenting with AI tools and changing how their organisations operate. Keystone is positioning its advisory services around […]

Google has warned that a suspected China-linked espionage group exploited a critical vulnerability in BeyondTrust remote support systems, gaining privileged access and establishing mechanisms to remain inside compromised networks. The vulnerability, designated CVE-2026-102764, was disclosed on 15 October after investigators identified attacks dating to 29 August. Google’s Threat Intelligence Group and its Mandiant division attributed the activity to Armory Castle, previously tracked as UNC5221, and warned that […]

ConnectWise has suspended its Cloud Backup service and disabled seven application identities after attackers exploited compromised vendor credentials to gain unauthorised access to Microsoft 365 customer environments, disrupting backup and restoration operations. The company confirmed on October 18 that scheduled backups remained suspended, restoration facilities were unavailable and additional cloud management services had been temporarily taken offline while investigators examined the security breach. ConnectWise said it disabled […]

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A former OpenAI software engineer accused of secretly installing a recording device inside the company’s San Francisco offices has sought release from federal custody, rejecting prosecutors’ contention that he intended to flee the United States. Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, told a federal court in a filing submitted late Friday that his planned journey to Saudi Arabia had been arranged before he became aware of the criminal investigation. His […]

Anthropic says its Claude artificial intelligence model has reconstructed the origins of five cryptographic parameters supplied by the US National Security Agency, resolving a question that has troubled security researchers for more than 25 years. The company disclosed on Friday that an internal research version of Claude identified the parameters as outputs from a conventional C programming language pseudorandom number generator, initialised using Unix timestamps. Anthropic said […]

Meta has released Muse Spark Open, an artificial intelligence model designed to operate on Apple’s Mac Studio computers following a collaboration between the two technology companies. The open-weight system, unveiled on Thursday, contains 816 billion parameters and can run locally across two Mac Studios equipped with Apple’s M5 Ultra processors. Its release allows developers to download the model’s underlying weights rather than depend exclusively on remotely hosted […]

Circle is preparing to enter approximately 40 emerging and developing markets as demand for dollar-backed digital currencies accelerates, chief executive and chairman Jeremy Allaire said. The expansion will target economies across Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, where individuals and businesses are increasingly using stablecoins for payments and access to digital financial services. Allaire outlined the plans during the International Monetary Fund and World […]

Adobe is confronting its weakest analyst sentiment on record as Wall Street grows increasingly concerned that artificial intelligence could undermine its established creative software business. A succession of downgrades has pushed the proportion of analysts recommending Adobe shares to buy towards historic lows, reflecting doubts about the company’s ability to sustain growth, protect subscription revenues and defend its position against emerging AI-powered competitors. Only 29% of analysts […]

Xiaomi has begun distributing the stable version of HyperOS 4 to selected smartphones and tablets in China, introducing changes to memory management, application performance and the underlying software architecture. The rollout started on October 15, following a beta programme launched in August, and is being conducted in batches rather than through a simultaneous release to every eligible device. Owners may therefore receive the update on different dates […]

An Israeli advertising company used online advertisements to track internet users and facilitate spyware infections, potentially exposing hundreds of millions of people worldwide, cybersecurity researchers have disclosed. Investigations published on Thursday by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and advertising security company Confiant identified Discover-Tech as an intermediary connecting commercial surveillance operators with major digital advertising networks. The researchers documented spyware infections at Al Jazeera and surveillance […]

India’s software stocks have recorded their strongest weekly rally in 18 years, sharply outperforming global semiconductor shares as investors reassess artificial intelligence valuations and respond to improving earnings from major technology services companies.

The Nifty IT index climbed 11.7% during the week ended Friday, October 16, its biggest weekly advance since 2008. Meanwhile, an MSCI index tracking global semiconductor companies had fallen approximately 7.4% during the week, putting software exporters on course for their widest relative outperformance since 2004.

The divergence reflects a significant change in investor sentiment towards technology businesses. Semiconductor manufacturers, previously among the biggest beneficiaries of enthusiasm surrounding artificial intelligence, have faced selling pressure amid concerns about infrastructure spending, financing costs and the sustainability of earnings growth.

Software services companies, meanwhile, have attracted renewed interest following quarterly results that suggested corporate technology expenditure was stabilising. Investors have also responded to comparatively modest valuations after a prolonged period of weakness in the sector.

HCL Technologies helped initiate the recovery after reporting stronger quarterly performance and raising its full-year revenue growth guidance. Its shares surged 8.4% on Tuesday, their biggest single-session advance in more than six years, while the broader technology index gained 5.2%.

The company reported quarterly net profit of approximately Rs51.32 billion, representing growth of 10.9%. Revenue increased 2.3% sequentially to Rs356.2 billion, supported partly by demand for engineering and research services.

HCL Technologies also disclosed advanced artificial intelligence revenue of $219 million, indicating that established outsourcing companies are beginning to generate identifiable income from technology that investors had previously viewed principally as a competitive threat.

Tech Mahindra reinforced the positive sentiment with quarterly revenue growth of 2.4%, reaching approximately Rs161.8 billion. Net profit rose 8.3% to Rs16.1 billion, supported by improvements in its communications business.

Wipro shares also advanced after the company reported quarterly revenue of Rs247.53 billion, exceeding market expectations. However, its deal bookings declined 45% from a year earlier to $2.6 billion, highlighting continued uncertainty surrounding demand for outsourcing contracts.

Wipro projected constant-currency revenue growth ranging from a decline of 1.5% to an increase of 0.5% for the following quarter. Management indicated that two delayed large contracts could be finalised, although their completion remains uncertain.

The contrasting figures illustrate why analysts remain cautious about treating the market recovery as evidence of a sustained improvement across the entire technology services industry.

Investors have nevertheless become increasingly sensitive to the valuation differences between software exporters and semiconductor manufacturers. Shares linked to artificial intelligence infrastructure had commanded substantial premiums based on expectations of expanding demand for processors, memory and computing capacity.

Those assumptions have come under pressure as investors question whether technology companies can generate sufficient returns from enormous commitments to data centres and related infrastructure.

Higher bond yields have compounded those concerns by increasing financing costs for capital-intensive businesses. Inflation pressures in the United States have also revived expectations that monetary policy could remain restrictive, reducing enthusiasm for highly valued growth stocks.

Semiconductor companies including Nvidia, Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices have faced broader selling pressure, alongside memory manufacturers and businesses supplying artificial intelligence infrastructure.

However, the reversal does not necessarily indicate deteriorating demand for computing hardware. Analysts distinguish between concerns about share valuations and the underlying commercial requirements for advanced processors.

Software exporters face different challenges. Generative artificial intelligence could automate programming, testing and customer support functions, potentially reducing the labour-intensive contracts underpinning traditional outsourcing revenues.

At the same time, businesses adopting artificial intelligence require integration, cybersecurity, cloud management and technology consulting services, creating opportunities for established providers.

The balance between these competing forces remains important for revenue forecasts and profitability expectations.

Friday’s trading demonstrated the strength of the rotation. The Nifty IT index rose 3.9% to close around 31,924 points, while the broader Nifty 50 gained approximately 0.7% to 23,146.

The Sensex finished at 74,729, contributing to the benchmark indices’ strongest weekly performance in six months.

Despite the rebound, technology shares remain below their earlier peaks. Wipro had lost nearly 32% during the year before Friday’s close, compared with a decline of approximately 17% for the broader technology index before the week’s recovery.

Cybersecurity researchers have identified more than 20,000 Cloudflare Pages subdomains used by a longstanding operation that redirects internet users to fraudulent technical support centres. Infoblox said its investigation, published on Thursday, linked the Help Traffic Distribution System, or Help TDS, to Hotejka, a Russian-language affiliate programme believed to be a successor to the previously exposed ROI777 network. The assessment rests on historical domain records, shared infrastructure, persistent […]

BMC Helix will bring enterprise technology executives, customers and industry partners together in Dubai on October 22 to examine how artificial intelligence and automation can improve IT operations and service management. The company’s annual roadshow, scheduled at the Museum of the Future, will focus on practical applications of AI-powered ServiceOps, including incident management, workflow automation and the integration of intelligent systems into existing enterprise technology environments. Senior […]

Microsoft and cybersecurity partners have disrupted a global phishing network linked to more than one billion fraudulent messages, targeting infrastructure supplied through the Chinese-language YAM Store marketplace. The operation, announced on Wednesday, involved the seizure and redirection of internet domains supporting YAM Store and two associated phishing services, CoGUI and Iron Man. Microsoft and Health-ISAC obtained an order from the United States District Court for the Southern […]

US cybersecurity shares have surrendered part of September’s gains as investors weigh growing demand for artificial intelligence protection against the possibility that AI developers could become competitors to established security companies. Shares in leading vendors fell on Wednesday, 14 October, amid speculation that OpenAI was exploring an acquisition of security specialist Trail of Bits. No transaction had been announced, and the possibility of a deal did not […]

When Abbie Dibbert and Francoise Albrando took over the day-to-day running of Stay® Property Management, the region was in the middle of a conflict. They chose to keep building. “We saw an opportunity to grow, to expand, and to believe even harder in the UAE and its ability to rise within the chaos,” the directors explain. Over the six months following their March takeover, the live portfolio […]

Google has made its new frontier artificial intelligence model, Gemini 4 Argon, available through Google AI Studio, expanding developers’ access to advanced reasoning, software engineering and autonomous task execution capabilities. The global rollout, announced on October 13, extends access to developers and enterprises through the Gemini API, with the company positioning Argon as its most capable model for complex professional and scientific workloads. Google said the model […]

Artificial intelligence agents are being deployed to challenge investment proposals at an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, while businesses are extending the technology into procurement processes under human supervision, executives told Sharjah Investment Forum 2026. Maria Sanchez, senior vice-president of AI product delivery at G42’s Inception, disclosed the investment application during a panel on Wednesday, describing a system that examines proposed deals and produces arguments against proceeding […]

Meta has begun notifying approximately 1,500 people after attackers accessed its GitHub repositories using stolen employee credentials, obtaining software code and personal information belonging largely to employees in the United States. The company said notifications began on Tuesday, 13 October, several weeks after its security team discovered the intrusion. An outside group had used credentials stolen from an employee to enter repositories containing business information associated with […]

Artificial intelligence models could soon copy themselves across vulnerable internet-connected devices without human assistance, Anthropic has warned, raising concerns about a new category of decentralised cybersecurity threat. Research published on Monday by the company’s Frontier Red Team suggests smaller AI systems may acquire the capabilities needed for autonomous replication within months. Such systems could operate on ordinary consumer electronics rather than depend on expensive data-centre infrastructure, complicating […]

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