Author: TechBrunch

More than a decade ago, researchers at antivirus company Kaspersky identified suspicious internet traffic of what they thought was a known government-backed group, based on similar targeting and its phishing techniques. Soon, the researchers realized they had found a much more advanced hacking operation that was targeting the Cuban government, among others. Eventually the researchers were able to attribute the network activity to a mysterious — and at the time completely unknown — Spanish-speaking hacking group that they called Careto, after the Spanish slang word (“ugly face” or “mask” in English), which they found buried within the malware’s code.  Careto…

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski posted an astonishing message to X after Sam Altman and Jony Ive announced Wednesday that Openai was buying Ive's company IO in all-stock deals worth $6.5 billion. Flat Capital, the family investment office at Siemiatkowski, had bought stocks at IO six months ago, he said. As this is a total storage agreement, these IO shares will be converted into shares of Openai's for-profit stock. “I was excited that @flatcapital is an investor in IO and will receive more shares at Openai for an investment he made six months ago,” tweeted Siemiatkowski. This post generated so much…

On Thursday, Blueski quietly opened the door to those who want to be verified with social networking services. In a post published by the Bluesky Safety account, the company announced that “prominent and authentic” accounts will be able to apply for verification through a new online form. Additionally, organizations can request that they become trusted verifiers in order to receive access to tools that can validate others. Bluesky began testing the feature last month, starting testing in a small number of organizations, including The New York Times, Wired and The Athletic. For some on Bluesky, the blue verification badge is…

Microsoft and law enforcement have announced the court-authorized Takedown of Lumma, a manipulation of prolific information steeler malware found in more than 394,000 Windows PCS worldwide, primarily in Brazil, Europe and the United States. The tech giant has filed a civil lawsuit and asked federal court to seize 2,300 domains that serve as networks of malware command and control servers. The Department of Justice has also seized five domains used to operate the Lumma infrastructure. Lumma Password Stealer is found in dangerous games and cracked apps downloaded from the internet. Once infected, the malware steals logins, passwords, credit cards and…

Mozilla announced on Thursday that it had closed its Pocket, a reading app that it acquired in 2017, on July 8th. The company is also shutting down Fakespot, a browser extension that helps identify unreliable reviews. “Pocket helped millions of people save articles and discover stories worth reading,” Mozilla said in a blog post. “But as the way people use the web has evolved, we are directing resources to projects tailored to browsing habits and online needs.” Users will continue to use the app and browser extensions for their pocket until July 8th. From that day onwards, your pocket will…

Surf is Surf, the new Flipboard app for browsing the Open Social Web, making it easier for people to create their own custom feeds that focus on their interests and discover them. Instead of getting stuck in an algorithmically generated timeline designed by social network owners, custom feeds allow you to build experiences that focus on what you actually care about, such as your favorite hobby, sports, community, or other topics. With the introduction of the starter set on Thursday, Surf simplifies the process of building, personalizing these custom feeds and publishing the platform off if selected. By making feed…

At the first developer meeting on Thursday, humanity launched two new AI models with the best startup claims in the industry, at least in terms of how they score on popular benchmarks. Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4 are part of humanity's new Claude 4 family model, allowing you to analyze large datasets, perform long-term challenges, and perform complex actions. Both models were tuned to work well in programming tasks, and humanity states they are suitable for writing and editing code. Both users and users of the company's free chatbot app can access Sonnet 4, but only users can…

The story of how smart toilet startup Sloan landed the seed round was packed with coincidence and could be believed to have been organized by the hands of Fortuna, the Roman goddess of Providence. Throne is an Austin-based company that works on AI-powered toilet devices for consumers. Monitor your gut health using computer vision (a camera pointing to bowls and AI software). It raised $4 million in seed finance, led by Moxxie Ventures founder Katie Jacobs Stanton. The throne is not a toilet, but a device that can be attached to the bowl of a bowl. The device, combined with…

The transaction is as follows: With just four days remaining, TechCrunch will destroy 2025 tickets and get 90% off for +1. From October 27th to 29th, San Francisco's Moscon West will be transformed into the epicenter of technology innovation as 10,000 technologies, startups and VC leaders gather to mark the 20th anniversary of Tech Crunch. The clock is ticking every moment. Lock your tickets here before prices rise at 11:59pm on May 25th. What's confusing the 20th TechCrunch Confusion is not just a meeting, it's a catalyst. Big ideas come across at unexpected moments. In the middle of thousands of…

The social fitness app Strava made two acquisitions last month and changed it. On Thursday, Strava's acquisition of cycling app The Breakay followed the acquisition of Runna last month. Incubated in Y Combinator's Summer 2021 class, this breakaway uses AI to create a personalized training plan for cyclists working towards specific goals. Runna, a UK-based Jamjar app, works similarly, but is built for runners rather than cyclists. Needless to say, Strava has shown a very strong interest in selling training planning tools to its users. STRAVA is one of the best-selling and most popular fitness apps, so users can track…