Search

• IBM Announcement;
• The Paper;
• Video.

  Experiment delivered up to 34% improvement in predicting the probability of winning customer inquiries in the European corporate bond market

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/37833075

When German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays in the late 1800s while experimenting with cathode ray tubes, it was a breakthrough that transformed science and medicine. So much so that the basic concept remains in use today. But a team of researchers at Sandia National Laboratories believes they’ve found a better way, harnessing different metals and the colors of light they emit.

“It’s called colorized hyperspectral X-ray imaging with multi-metal targets, or CHXI MMT for short,” said project lead Edward Jimenez, an optical engineer. Jimenez has been working with materials scientist Noelle Collins and electronics engineer Courtney Sovinec to create X-rays of the future.

“With this new technology, we are essentially going from the old way, which is black and white, to a whole new colored world where we can better identify materials and defects of interest,” Collins said.

When German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays in the late 1800s while experimenting with cathode ray tubes, it was a breakthrough that transformed science and medicine. So much so that the basic concept remains in use today. But a team of researchers at Sandia National Laboratories believes they’ve found a better way, harnessing different metals and the colors of light they emit.

“It’s called colorized hyperspectral X-ray imaging with multi-metal targets, or CHXI MMT for short,” said project lead Edward Jimenez, an optical engineer. Jimenez has been working with materials scientist Noelle Collins and electronics engineer Courtney Sovinec to create X-rays of the future.

“With this new technology, we are essentially going from the old way, which is black and white, to a whole new colored world where we can better identify materials and defects of interest,” Collins said.

Report in PDF.

::: spoiler Key Findings

• To date, in 2025, CopyCop has widened its target languages to include Turkish, Ukrainian, and Swahili, and its geographic scope to include Moldova, Canada, and Armenia while sustaining influence operations targeting the US and France. The network is also leveraging new infrastructure to publish content, marking a significant expansion of its activities targeting new audiences.
• CopyCop’s core influence objectives remain eroding public support for Ukraine and undermining democratic processes and political leaders in Western countries supporting Ukraine.
• CopyCop’s TTPs are broadly unchanged from previous assessments, with only marginal improvements to increase the network’s reach, resilience, and credibility. Newly observed TTPs include evidence of CopyCop using self-hosted LLMs for content generation, employing subdomains as mirrors, and impersonating med

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/37308210

::: spoiler Key Takeaways

• Trusted‑source Illusion: Even when a link seems to point to a reputable platform such as GitHub, the underlying URL can be manipulated to resolve to a counterfeit site.
• Ad‑driven Redirection: Paid search and display ads can be weaponized by bad actors to distribute malicious payloads at scale, misleading users who rely on search engines for discovery.
• Privilege Escalation: Once the malicious payload is executed by the user, it gains administrative rights, enabling further lateral movement and persistence.
• Malware Uniqueness:

1. The initial installer is a 128 MB MSI file that mimics the legitimate GitHub Desktop installer but contains over 100 dummy executables to inflate size and evade sandbox limits.
2. The installer employs a GPU‑gated decryption routine: an OpenCL™ kernel derives the AES key only on machines with a real GPU, whose device name is at least ten characters long, causing the payload to remain encrypted in head