The Big Four, tracked.
The live wire from the labs, refreshed every 15 minutes. Our verified read on the big launches lives in Phantom Notes.
§ Lab spotlight
AnthropicAUG 29, 2026 ↗Sony Music, Warner sue Anthropic, alleging a “brazen campaign” of intellectual property theftThis latest lawsuit is particularly broad and homes in on accusations of illegal piracy.OpenAIAUG 28, 2026 ↗Our decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceXOur decision to wind down our contract providing OpenAI models to Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceX.Google DeepMindAUG 27, 2026 ↗Piloting the world's first double-blind AI evaluationsPiloting the world's first double-blind AI evaluationsxAIJUL 08, 2026 ↗xAI Releases Grok 4.5, an "Opus-Class" Flagship at Half the PriceGrok 4.5 launches at $2/$6 per million tokens with a 500K context window, ranking 4th on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. Trained alongside Cursor, it wins Snorkel's GDPVal+ professional-work benchmark and ships day one in Cursor and Grok Build.
§ Our verified coverageAll of Phantom Notes →
AUG 15, 2026Gemini 3.7 Flash Is Smarter and Half Price. Read the Fine Print on Both.→JUL 24, 2026Kimi K3: The Largest Open Model Ever Does Not Exist Yet. It Is Due Monday.→JUL 22, 2026Meta Killed Llama in April. Now It Wants You to Rent Muse Spark Instead.→JUL 21, 2026Gemini 3.6 Flash Is Not Smarter Than 3.5. Google Says That Is the Point.→JUN 27, 2026OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol Is Its Best Model Yet. You Cannot Use It Yet, and That Is the Story.→
§ The full wire· 18 items
AUG 30, 2026TerminalFix Uses Fake Cloudflare CAPTCHAs to Deploy Reverse-Tunnel BackdoorMicrosoft has disclosed details of a new ClickFix variant, dubbed TerminalFix, that aims to trick users into running a malicious command in Windows Terminal or PowerShell.
"While traditional ClickFix...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 29, 2026Five Critical WordPress Plugin and Theme Flaws Enable Site Takeover or RCEMultiple critical security flaws have been disclosed in WordPress plugins and themes, including WPMU DEV Dashboard, Avada, TranslatePress, Pods, and GiveWP, that could lead to authentication bypass, a...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 28, 2026China-Made ZBT Routers Ship With Two Implants Giving Unauthenticated Attackers Root AccessVulnCheck has disclosed two previously undocumented factory implants in firmware for routers built by Shenzhen Zhibotong Electronics (ZBT), each of which gives an unauthenticated remote attacker the a...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 28, 2026PaperCut Zero-Day Exploited in Attacks, Affecting All NG and MF VersionsPaperCut has alerted customers that bad actors are actively exploiting a vulnerability impacting all versions of its PaperCut NG and PaperCut MF print management software in zero-day attacks.
The com...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 28, 2026APT28-Linked HOOKEDGE Backdoor Targets European Government and Diplomatic OrganizationsCybersecurity researchers have flagged a fresh set of campaigns targeting government and diplomatic organizations in Romania, Spain, and Türkiye between late September 2025 and early April 2026.
Thes...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 28, 2026ownCloud Flaw Exploited to Steal Nuclear Records From Philippine Research BodyThe U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday added a critical security flaw impacting ownCloud to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog following reports th...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 28, 2026Berlin Refuses to Pay Hackers Who Stole Data From the City's State NetworkBerlin's state government has confirmed that it is the target of an extortion attempt following the August compromise of the city's state administrative network, and said it will not meet the extortio...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 28, 2026Cosmos EVM Flaw Exploited After Cosmos Labs Knew Every Blockchain Running It Was VulnerableCosmos Labs has warned that a critical balance-handling flaw in the shared Cosmos EVM module was exploited to drain funds from six blockchains between August 20 and August 25, 2026.
The vulnerability...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 28, 2026Just a rumour of a bug is enough to find a security exploit these daysJust a rumour of a bug is enough to find a security exploit these days
Anil Madhavapeddy is a professor of computer science at Cambridge and a core maintainer of the OCaml compiler. In this somewhat a...Simon Willison · security↗AUG 27, 2026Learn How to Build Security Operations Ready for AI-Powered AttacksSecurity teams have spent years trying to detect threats faster. AI is changing the harder part: how much time defenders have left to act.
Advanced AI models can now help attackers discover vulnerabi...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 27, 2026Alleged TeamPCP Hackers Charged in Australia Over Major Supply Chain AttacksThe Australian Federal Police (AFP) has charged two Western Australian men with a combined total of 14 offences over their alleged role in TeamPCP, the cybercrime group behind the March 2026 compromis...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 27, 2026What the Data Says About AI in Security Operations in 2026AI is officially mainstream in security operations. According to Prophet Security's State of AI in Security Operations 2026 report (produced from ViB’s survey of 250+ cybersecurity pros), 40% of secur...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 27, 2026Viral AI startup Instinct has raised $350 million at a $2.5 billion valuationThe startup is only a year old but it has already generated a massive amount of hype (and money) while also spurring privacy concerns.TechCrunch · security↗AUG 27, 2026ThreatsDay: 296K IoT Botnet, 100+ Water Systems Targeted, SharePoint RCE Chain + 27 New StoriesA fake login page. A fake security scan. A fake productivity app. Apparently, pretending to be useful is still one of the easier ways into a machine.
The rest of the week gets stranger: botnets borro...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 27, 2026CISA Adds Six Exploited Flaws to KEV, Including NetScaler, Linux, and SQL Server BugsThe U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Wednesday added six flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, including a high-severity security vulnerability imp...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 27, 2026Spark RAT Targets Cambodia, Abuses Vulnerable OPSWAT Driver to Disable Security ToolsIndividuals and organizations in Cambodia have emerged as the target of a new campaign that delivers an open-source remote access trojan (RAT) called Spark RAT.
"The samples employ diverse lure theme...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 26, 2026Critical Gitea RCE Actively Exploited as Reported Attack Drops Miner-Like PayloadThe U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday warned of active exploitation efforts targeting a recently patched critical security flaw impacting Gitea.
The vulnerabilit...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 26, 2026Imagine the SOC Without a Queue: From Alert Backlog to AI Hypothesis EngineThe SOC we've always known was built around a model that guarantees most of the alert queue will never receive analyst review. There's never time. In a traditional SOC, the typical progression follows...The Hacker News · security↗