Technology

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• AMD’s Frank Azor was interviewed by a Spanish YouTuber about RDNA 4
• The exec told us that the RX 9070 will be a ‘very competitive product’
• Pricing was also mentioned, in a vague way, and some gamers are taking it as a bad sign – but that’s jumping the GPU gun

AMD has given us some clues as to the price points RDNA 4 graphics cards will land at, albeit some very vague hints, courtesy of one of Team Red’s execs – and a good deal more interesting info on the next-gen GPUs besides.

All this comes from Frank Azor, AMD’s head of consumer and gaming marketing, who has been busy this week, firing some weighty flak at Intel’s Arrow Lake in the CPU world, and then sharing these fresh GPU details in another interview.

This chat was with Michael Quesada, a Spanish YouTuber who has a PC gaming channel. We should note that the conversation is in Spanish, and so the quotes we have here (courtesy of VideoCardz) are a translation (made with help from Spanish tech site El Chapuzas Informatico).

Quesada kicked off by questioning Azor on the flimsy RDNA 4 announcement at CES 2025, which provided very scant details, besides the names and existence of the RX 9070 and 9070 XT – why was this so light on information?

Azor repeated the assertion already made by AMD that there simply wasn’t time in the 45-minute CES 2025 keynote to fit in RDNA 4 and properly do it justice.

The marketing chief told us: “What are we announcing here? With the announcements of RDNA 2 and RDNA 3, we had dedicated events to present the architecture and performance improvements. We can’t cover that in five minutes. If we had, everyone would be angry with us for not giving the new graphics cards the attention they deserve.

“That’s why we decided to reserve the announcement of the new graphics cards for a separate event where we can give them proper focus.”

Azor also poured cold water on any idea that the next-gen Radeon graphics cards might be delayed (as some theorized as to why AMD kept its 9070 revelations very bare).

Everything remains on track, we’re assured, and here’s where Azor made a very interesting statement. The translation in this case is direct from YouTube (and what I could make of it), so take this with a large dollop of caution, but the AMD exec appears to admit that the other reason Team Red didn’t reveal specs and pricing for the RX 9070 is that the firm wanted to look at what Nvidia was announcing and react to that.

In other words, AMD needed to ensure that RDNA 4 is competitive with what Nvidia was doing with RTX 5000, a theory I put forward earlier this week. (Not just me of course – it’s an obvious enough thought, really, but Azor is, translation wobbles aside, saying this was indeed what AMD was up to).

The most interesting part of the interview, though, is the clues about pricing I mentioned at the outset, which cropped up later.

Azor observed: “We’re going to bring a very competitive product [with RDNA 4]. Everyone will benefit from this launch. It will be worth the wait.

“The Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7900 GRE offered aggressive pricing for their performance. The market responded well, especially in a landscape where prices are constantly rising.”

“AMD remains focused on delivering value for money. When we announce RDNA 4, we’ll introduce a powerful graphics card – not a $300 card, but also not a $1,000 card.”

(Image credit: YouTube / Michael Quesada) Analysis: Careful with that pitchfork, Eugene

There’s some refreshing plain speaking here, then, from Azor, regarding why AMD’s reveal was tissue-thin for details on the RX 9070 models, and the lack of any pricing. It was to better pitch RDNA 4 to be competitive with what Nvidia has cooked up with the RTX 5000 series.

The part of the interview relating to RDNA 4 pricing has predictably got every forum and social media outlet buzzing. Does this mean AMD is thinking about a $650 price tag for the RX 9070 XT, some folks are asking – as that’s the average of the two mentioned low and high prices (a total $1,300, divided by two).

Of course, it’s never going to be as simple as that. But whatever the RX 9070 XT and its vanilla sibling end up costing, AMD is going to make the price to performance ratio stand up and compete with Nvidia’s RTX 5070 in the mid-range.

Simply given AMD’s chosen name change – to the RX 9070, versus the RTX 5070 – the pricing has to make sense in terms of that showdown. The MSRPs will be “very competitive” as Azor puts it, based on the relative performance provided by RDNA 4 – and as we don’t know how peppy the RX 9070 XT will be yet, trying to work out pricing averages doesn’t make any sense. Neither does running down to cellars, looking for pitchforks and torches, while muttering about a $650 Radeon flagship being a rip-off based on past performance rumors for Navi 48.

Let’s not engage with that kind of nonsense. The main point to focus on here is not the dollar amounts Azor chose to mention – and the exec used such a huge spread, of course, to make them kind of meaningless – but what he said about the RX 9070 GPUs being very competitive with Nvidia. And that these next-gen offerings will match the RX 7900 GRE for price/performance, this is the other key point to home in on. That’s an excellent value graphics card and one that remains top of our list of best GPUs, in fact, where it has sat for some time.

AMD could well be waiting to test the RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti itself before finalizing pricing for RDNA 4 here. If I had to call a most likely price point, the recently aired rumor of $479, or around the $500 mark, seems more likely than anything higher than the RTX 5070’s MSRP ($549). But again, whatever it turns out to be, that price needs to be viewed through the lens of the card’s performance.

Roll on that incoming full RX 9070 launch event, then, so we can finally find out where price and performance will shake out. The rumor mill believes that an announcement is likely coming in just a couple of weeks (RDNA 4 pre-orders might kick off on January 23 based on one retailer leak). If true, that means the RX 9070 variants could be on sale at the end of January, ahead of the RTX 5070 models which aren’t out until February.

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• Trend Micro spots piece of malware being advertised as PoC fork for a major Windows vulnerability
• The malware acts as an infostealer, grabbing vital system information
• These types of attacks are often conducted by nation-states

Cybercriminals are targeting security researchers with fake proof-of-concept (PoC) solutions, trying to infect their computers with infostealing malware, experts have warned.

Cybersecurity researchers Trend Micro, who spotted the new campaign in January 2025, noted how the crooks would publish a PoC for a popular, critical-severity vulnerability, to draw the attention of the cybersecurity crowd.

The researchers would then grab the PoC for analysis, and would end up installing a piece of malware, instead.

Stealing vital PC information

In this particular case, the crooks were advertising a fork of a legitimate, existing PoC for LDAPNightmare, a vulnerability discovered earlier in January, and consisting of two flaws, CVE-2024-49112, and CVE-2024-49113.

The former serves as bait here, since it is a 9.8/10 severity flaw, affecting Windows Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), and allowing for remote code execution (RCE).

In its writeup, Trend Micro researcher Sarah Pearl Camiling said “both vulnerabilities were deemed as highly significant due to the widespread use of LDAP in Windows environments.” Both flaws were patched in December 2024, through the Patch Tuesday cumulative update.

In the fake PoC, the crooks replaced some of the legitimate files with an executable named “poc.exe”. This would deploy a PowerShell script which would, in turn, deploy another script that steals data from the computer.

Here is what the infostealer goes for:

- PC information
- Process list
- Directory lists (Downloads, Recent, Documents, and Desktop)
- Network IPs
- Network adapters
- Installed updates

This type of attack is nothing new - criminals have regularly been observed applying the same tactics in the past.

Although this was not hinted at in the report, these types of attacks are often conducted by nation-state actors, in an attempt to gather vital intelligence regarding the cybersecurity practices of large tech organizations, government firms, critical infrastructure players, and more.

Via The Register

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• 2.9 million files from fintech firm Miio have been found exposed online
• Researchers say the information has been unguarded for months
• The company is yet to respond to the disclosure notice

Cybersecurity researchers have claimed financial technology firm Miio, which offers mobile telecoms and financial services to customers in Mexico, has suffered a huge data leak, exposing up to three million Know Your Customer (KYC) files.

Findings from Cybernews say the files were reportedly unguarded for at least several months, and contained files dating back to 2017, when the company was started. This strongly suggests that all Miio customers were impacted, with 2.9 million scans of various KYC documents found, including passports and IDs, driver’s licenses, and customer pictures.

There’s no evidence yet that malicious actors accessed the data, but since researchers were able to access it, it's probable others have too. Government issued identifications are incredibly valuable to attackers, since they can facilitate identity theft and fraud.

Unaware or unwilling

The researchers discovered the leak on September 12, 2024, and initial disclosure notice was sent on October 2, and the storage bucket has now been open for at least three months. Researcher’s attempts to reach out have been ‘met with silence’.

If the KYC documents have fallen into the wrong hands, attackers could open bank accounts, apply for loans, or take out credit cards in the victim’s names.

With the type of ID documents found and the customer selfies for verification, researchers warn that this could enable hackers to take over existing customer accounts, so victims should be ultra-vigilant in the coming months.

“In the context of Miio’s role as a telcobank serving a wide base of customers, such a leak would undermine trust in their ability to safeguard sensitive data, exposing their users to severe financial and personal risks,” the researchers said.

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• Project HEIST wants to mitigate physical sabotaging of underwater cables
• HEIST is expected to use laser optics rather than radio
• Exabytes of data flow in more than 1 million Km of fiber across the globe

NATO is reportedly developing a satellite-based backup for global internet communications to address vulnerabilities exposed by recent undersea cable disruptions.

The project, known as HEIST (hybrid space-submarine architecture ensuring infosec of telecommunications), comes in response to the February 2024 incident when the cargo ship Rubymar, struck by a Houthi missile attack, dragged its anchor across the Red Sea floor, severing three fiber-optic cables.

A report by IEEE Spectrum claims these cables carried about a quarter of all internet traffic between Europe and Asia, forcing data rerouting and highlighting the fragile nature of global internet infrastructure.

Ready for testing

Over 95% of intercontinental internet traffic relies on undersea fiber-optic cables, with more than 1.2 million kilometers of them stretching across the planet. These thin cables lie unburied across deep-sea floors, making them vulnerable to accidental damage and sabotage.

The Rubymar incident was unintentional, but Western officials have evidence of deliberate undersea cable sabotage by state actors, such as Russia and China. NATO has already announced plans to prevent this happening in the future using undersea drones.

HEIST aims to address such threats by ensuring critical internet pathways remain operational even when fiber lines are compromised.

The project has two key objectives: to rapidly detect cable damage and precisely locate breaks, and to expand the capacity to reroute data through alternative channels, including satellites. The focus will be on diverting high-priority data to satellites, reducing reliance on vulnerable seabed cables.

The project will begin testing in 2025 at the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden. Researchers from multiple countries, including the US, Sweden, Iceland, and Switzerland, will work to develop faster break detection systems capable of pinpointing damage with accuracy to within one meter.

The researchers will also explore satellite-based failsafes using higher-bandwidth laser optics, which can transmit far more data than current radio-based satellite systems.

While satellite throughput is limited compared to fiber, the HEIST team is focusing on expanding bandwidth through technologies like infrared lasers, already in use on Starlink satellites.

Although no single solution currently exists, NATO’s goal is to create a diverse and resilient network, ensuring secure global communications in emergencies.

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• A security flaw found in Facebook's ad platform has been fixed by Meta
• The researcher who discovered the flaw was awarded a $100,000 bug bounty
• The flaw allowed the researcher to effectively take control of a Facebook server

Meta has awarded cybersecurity researcher Ben Sadeghipour a bug bounty of $100,000 after he discovered a security vulnerability on Facebook’s ad platform in October 2024.

The flaw allowed Sadeghipour to run commands on the internal Facebook server which housed the platform, giving him control of the server.

According to Sadeghipour, the unpatched bug allowed him to hijack the server using a headless Chrome browser, which is a version of the browser users run from the computer’s terminal, to interact with Facebook’s internal servers directly.

Part of wider researcher

The flaw in the platform was connected to a server that Facebook used to create and deliver ads, which was vulnerable to a previously fixed flaw found in the Chrome browser, which Facebook uses in its ad system.

Sadeghipour told TechCrunch online advertising platforms are attractive targets because “there’s so much that happens in the background of making these ‘ads’ — whether they are video, text, or images.”

“But at the core of it all it’s a bunch of data being processed on the server-side and it opens up the door for a ton of vulnerabilities,” Sadeghipour said.

The researcher confirms he didn’t test out everything he could have once he was inside the server, although “what makes this dangerous is this was probably a part of an internal infrastructure.”

After reporting the vulnerability to Meta, the bug took just an hour to fix, Sadeghipour said, noting his discovery was part of ‘ongoing research on a specific application with a specific purpose’. This flaw in particular took him a few hours to identify, but Meta worked with him to quickly patch the bug and offered a bounty that was ‘way beyond’ expectations, he confirmed in a LinkedIn post.

Bug bounties have been on the rise recently, with Google drastically increasing its rewards for researchers who participate in the program, so security research is getting more lucrative.

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