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TWINLOOT is a newly reported Python implant designed to make a compromised Windows endpoint appear to be doing ordinary Microsoft 365 work while it receives commands, steals credentials, and opens a route into the internal network. SC Media, reporting on an Ontinue analysis published August 19, says the malware combines SharePoint Online tasking, Microsoft Edge browser automation, and Microsoft Teams relay infrastructure so that much of its external traffic terminates at legitimate Microsoft...

PCWorld’s new warning about Windows 11 sending Desktop, Documents, and Pictures to OneDrive points to a real configuration that deserves more scrutiny than the operating system gives it. But Microsoft’s own documentation makes an important distinction: OneDrive folder backup is not a universal Windows 11 default in the sense that every PC silently begins uploading those folders on first boot. It is a OneDrive setting that can be enabled during setup, through backup prompts, or by a previous...

Kaspersky’s warning about workplace-app impersonation deserves attention for one reason beyond the headline number: some of the campaigns do not need a counterfeit Microsoft sign-in page at all. A user can be sent to a genuine Microsoft authentication page, complete a normal sign-in and multi-factor authentication prompt, and still hand an attacker a usable Microsoft 365 session token. TechTrendsKE reports that Kaspersky logged 4,781,846 attempted attacks using content associated with...

Microsoft has assigned CVE-2026-69414 to the Microsoft Defender elevation-of-privilege vulnerability publicly called ShieldBreak, but has not yet published a security update or a supported list of affected builds. The immediate implication for Windows administrators is more precise than the initial “RoguePlanet patch bypass” framing: machines that received July’s Defender engine update for RoguePlanet should not be considered protected from ShieldBreak, because the available technical...

Portnox Cloud’s August 2026 update can turn Microsoft Defender-related endpoint risk into a network-access decision, giving administrators a way to deny or restrict connectivity when a managed device falls below policy. The practical limitation is important: despite Portnox’s new AI-agent branding, the documented Microsoft integration is built around device risk and Intune Mobile Threat Defense status, not a newly disclosed direct control plane for every AI agent an organization runs...

Microsoft Teams is changing its live-caption profanity filter so that users who have never chosen a setting will see spoken words as they were recognized, rather than automatically replacing profanities with asterisks. The practical impact is narrower than the headline suggests: this is a default-setting change for live captions, not a new ability to swear on calls, and it does not override preferences people have already set. TechRadar reported on August 19 that Microsoft had switched the...

Microsoft Defender Antivirus scan failures reported on August 18 are consistent with a faulty security-intelligence rollout, not evidence by themselves that affected Windows PCs have been compromised. CyberInsider first collected reports of Quick and Full scans terminating with the “Threat service has stopped. Restart it now” message; separate reports in the r/sysadmin and r/antivirus communities show the same failure on clean Windows installations and managed Defender for Endpoint devices...

Queensland’s Department of Transport and Main Roads says it has put AI-powered résumé ranking into production and intends to run 15 AI projects by Christmas 2026, followed by another 15. For an agency already using Microsoft 365 Copilot and operating a transport portfolio with thousands of staff, the significant development is not the number of pilots: it is that TMR is moving AI into processes that can affect employment decisions while still rebuilding the governance controls an independent...

OpenAI has paused a significant portion of frontier post-training work while it imposes tighter controls on its forthcoming Astra model, after concluding that Astra may have reached the company’s highest cybersecurity-risk tier. The important qualification, missing from the broadest headlines: this is not a blanket halt to all OpenAI model development, nor an announced change to the ChatGPT or API products enterprises use today. The reports from Latest news from Azerbaijan and Ukraine’s...

Microsoft’s current “Fix USB-C problems in Windows” guidance points to a diagnosis many Windows laptop owners still miss: a USB-C connection can fail at charging, video, data, Thunderbolt, USB4, or audio while the port and cable appear physically fine. The connector fits, Windows sees something, and yet a dock loses displays or a charger slowly drains the battery because the hardware has negotiated a lower-capability connection. The Microsoft Support page applies to Windows 11 and still...

Microsoft’s updated Windows Hello support guidance makes a useful point for anyone staring at a “Couldn’t recognize you” message: a face-sign-in failure is often the biometric system refusing a marginal match, not proof that Windows Hello has forgotten its owner. The immediate workaround remains the Windows Hello PIN or another configured sign-in method, but the underlying cause can range from side lighting and changed appearance to a stricter corporate anti-spoofing policy or a failing...

Microsoft has documented a Windows 11 behavior that can make Windows Hello face sign-in work in dark rooms: when the system decides there is too little ambient light, it can temporarily raise the display brightness and use the screen itself to illuminate the user’s face. The setting, published in a Microsoft Support article on August 13, is enabled by default and appears under Settings > Accounts > Sign-in options > Facial recognition (Windows Hello) as “automatically adjust screen...

Cadence’s claims that AI agents can compress chip-design work from weeks to days deserve attention from engineers and IT teams supporting semiconductor development—but the company’s own product record shows that the technology remains an engineer-supervised automation layer, not an autonomous replacement for sign-off tools or design accountability. In an August 18 interview with The Economic Times, Paul Cunningham, Cadence’s senior vice president and general manager of the System...

Custom AI silicon is becoming a real part of the inference market, but the most important lesson for enterprise buyers is not that GPUs are about to disappear. It is that the hardware stack is splitting by workload: flexible accelerators for changing models and large mixed deployments, and purpose-built ASICs for stable, high-volume services where every millisecond and watt can be priced into the business. HPCwire’s survey of the trend lands on genuine movement: AMD has agreed to buy Toronto...

Google has agreed to pay $10 million for a de-identified archive of Spirit Airlines’ internal data that includes roughly 500 million Microsoft Teams items, 100 million emails, 17 million OneDrive files and 20 million SharePoint items. The bankruptcy auction is not a completed transfer: the sale is scheduled for a hearing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York at 11 a.m. Eastern on August 19, 2026, and delivery depends on court approval and a separate...

AnywhereNow’s Tendfor contact-center product is now listed by Microsoft as certified for the Teams Unify integration model, giving customers a verified path to run its customer-service workload on Teams Phone infrastructure rather than treating Teams as a bolt-on collaboration client. ChannelLife UK reported the certification announcement on August 19, but Microsoft’s own certification page shows an important wrinkle: Tendfor was already present in the Unify-certified column when that page...

ARC Raiders’ Live Update 1.42.0 adds Phantom Targets content, region-based Map Condition scheduling, anti-cheat changes and a substantial batch of gameplay fixes. For Windows players, though, the release also renews a more urgent warning: Embark says some PC crashes are tied to the August 11 Windows 11 cumulative update KB5121003, a security update Microsoft’s own documentation still lists as having no known issues. Embark published 1.42.0 on August 18 with the usual live-service mix—event...

Massachusetts’ free Google AI training program has drawn more than 38,300 signups in its first months, but the early results show a sharper story than a statewide rush toward AI literacy. MassLive’s review of Massachusetts Technology Collaborative data found that enrollees skew older, employed and highly educated—nearly one-third reported graduate degrees—while many communities that state workforce policy routinely identifies as high-need are participating at far lower rates. The state and...

Meta’s AI crawlers generated more than half of the AI-agent traffic seen across DataDome’s customer network in the second quarter of 2026, yet delivered negligible referral traffic in return. For Windows admins, developers, and the people operating public-facing Microsoft IIS, ASP.NET, SharePoint, and Azure-hosted sites, the immediate lesson is less about Meta’s business model than about a basic control failure: most organizations still do not know which automated clients they are permitting...

Keeper Security has launched a Microsoft Power Platform connector for Keeper Secrets Manager, giving Azure Logic Apps and Power Automate workflows a way to retrieve and manage vault-held credentials during execution rather than embedding them in workflow definitions. IT Brief Asia first reported the launch, saying the connector is available through the Microsoft Power Platform marketplace and provides five actions: List Secrets, Get Secret, Create Secret, Update Secret and List Folders. For...