Technology

Sophos has revealed details of a five year battle with Chinese hackers who targeted networking devices across the globe.

The ‘Pacific RIm’ reports outline clusters of activity that cybersecurity venders and law enforcement can attribute to known threat actors Volt Typhoon, APT31 and APT41/Winnti - with ‘varying degrees of confidence’.

Included in the list of targets were prominent manufacturers such as Fortinet, NetGear, Sophos, Check Point, Cisco, and more. The attacks were aimed at high value targets primarily in the Indo-pacific region, and included nuclear energy suppliers, telecoms, military, and government agencies.

Critical infrastructure attacks

"For more than five years, Sophos has been investigating multiple China-based groups targeting Sophos firewalls, with botnets, novel exploits, and bespoke malware," Sophos explains in the report.

The state actors are not exclusively aiming at high value espionage targets though, as Sophos observed actors using tightly connected digital ecosystems which form part of the critical infrastructure supply chain to disrupt critical services.

“This community is believed to be collaborating on vulnerability research and sharing their findings with both vendors and entities associated with the Chinese government, including contractors conducting offensive operations on behalf of the state. However, the full scope and nature of these activities has not been conclusively verified." said Ross McKerchar, Sophos X-Ops.

Researchers believe that the attacks started in 2018 when they hit the Cyberoam headquarters, which is an India-based Sophos subsidiary.

Critical infrastructure is increasingly at the receiving end of state-sponsored cyberattacks, with some estimates putting this figure at 420 million in 2023, which is 13 attacks per second.

One of the groups, Volt Typhoon, has already been found lurking on US critical infrastructure networks for years, so this news won’t come as much of a surprise. The state sponsored group were positioned to steal sensitive information, monitor activity, and disrupt the infrastructure.

More from TechRadar Pro

• Take a look at some of the best antivirus software
• Businesses expect cyber threats to rise, but aren’t ready for them
• Check out our pick for best firewall software

Sony Interactive Entertainment CEOs Hermen Hulst and Hideaki Nishino have revealed some interesting tidbits about the company’s overall strategy in a newly published interview with Variety.

Responding to an early question about the release timing of the PlayStation 5 Pro, Nishino explained that the company “learned a lot” from the launch of the PS4 Pro. He said “20% of customers actually got the PS4 Pro,” suggesting that there’s quite a lot of interest in high-end PlayStation devices. He also claimed that the company saw new users coming over to PlayStation “to get PS4 Pro, as well.”

As a result, Sony “started working on the PS5 Pro even before [the] PS5 launches.” Nishino goes on to say that “it was another five-year project for us.” 

As for whether a mid generation refresh like the PS5 Pro is truly necessary, the CEO drew parallels to the world of mobile phones and PCs where annual iterations are common. “Phones are updating every year, PCs are updating every year,” he said. “I don’t think we’d go every year updates, but there are things we can package together to bring the great things into [the] game console segment range.” 

Nishino also commented on the early reception to the PS5 Pro, with pre-orders for the console beginning last month. “We’re kind of happy to see, like most engaged gaming users are interested in the PS5 Pro,” he began, “and then I’m pretty sure new users will grab the PS5 Pro as well.”

“We design everything with having one ahead in our mind,” he added. “It’s not like we just make a next step and we don’t know about the two steps ahead.” This last detail might not come as much of a surprise for those who have been keeping up with the latest PS6 rumors, which have already begun to circulate.

You might also like...

• Secretlab announces the Titan Evo NanoGen Edition featuring all-new softer materials
• Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered review: Aloy’s first adventure gets a massive tune-up
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle let me pelt Nazis with bottles, shovels, and various foods - in short, it absolutely rocks

• The One UI 7 beta program is about to launch
• Lots of new features have already leaked
• The full version of the software is arriving in 2025

Android 15 has now been pushed out to Pixel handsets, and a major leak has revealed more about Samsung's own One UI 7 take on the software – with Galaxy owners possibly getting the chance to try it out later this month.

This major leak comes from Android Headlines, and it's a comprehensive rundown of the features in One UI 7. There are redesigned icons for a start, which now look more modern and easy on the eye, as well as a revamped and tidier quick settings panel.

We also get a look at the updated lock screen here, with live widgets showing playback controls, timers, and so on. Notifications are moved to a separate panel as well, making them easier to access and manage.

Other improvements include maths and physics support in Circle to Search, extra health insights in Energy Score, a full suite of parental controls, and a stack of photo-editing upgrades too, such as AI-powered restyling of portrait shots.

One UI 7 availability

It will take another half month before Beta startsNovember 1, 2024

A lot of the leaks mentioned by Android Headlines have been previously rumored, so we've now got a very good idea of what's on the way to Galaxy phones. The next question is, when are we going to get it?

According to well-known tipster Ice Universe, the beta will be available in "another half month", which puts it right in the middle of November. Anyone with a compatible Samsung phone should then be able to try out the early version of the software.

SamMobile has spotted new sub-forums on the Samsung site dedicated to the One UI 7 beta, and speculates that the beta program might be announced at a developer conference in South Korea scheduled for November 21.

As for the final version of One UI 7 that will be pushed out to everyone, Samsung has confirmed that it'll arrive early in 2025 – very probably in January, at the same time as the Galaxy S25 series of flagship phones.

You might also like

• Get an early look at Samsung One UI 7
• The best Samsung phones right now
• How One UI 7 could transform your phone

Upgrade your friends or family's home audio and video experience with a new streaming box or upgraded speakers. Here are some of the best home theater gifts.

Thousands of hidden graves contain the bodies of the disappeared all across Mexico. Using drones, hyperspectral imaging, and other technologies, scientists and members of the public are uncovering them.

AI. It’s AI.

A popular online animation tool was abused to trick people into handing over access to their cryptocurrency wallets, with at least one individual losing close to $700,000.

LottieFiles is a platform that provides tools and a library for creating, editing, and sharing lightweight, scalable animations in the Lottie format. These animations, together with the plugin LottiePlayer, are commonly used in websites and mobile applications with 94,000 weekly downloads and has been downloaded more than 4 million times since its launch.

Recently, an unnamed threat actor somehow obtained a session cookie from one of the developers of LottieFiles, and used that access to push three new versions of LottiePlayer (2.0.5, 2.0.6, and 2.0.7) to npmjs. Websites that use LottiePlayer and were configured to always use the latest version have had the malicious versions downloaded automatically.

New version released

These new versions prompted website visitors to connect their cryptocurrency wallets, which basically gives the site access to the stored funds. We don’t know how many people fell for the trick and connected their wallets, but we do know that at least one person did, and it cost them 10 BTC, which is $696,960 at press time. This information came from Scam Sniffer, a Web3 anti-scam platform.

"On October 30th ~6:20 PM UTC – LottieFiles were notified that our popular open source npm package for the web player @lottiefiles/lottie-player had unauthorized new versions pushed with malicious code," the project’s co-founder and CTO, Nattu Adnan, wrote on GitHub. "This does not impact our dotlottie player and/or SaaS services. Our incident response plans were activated as a result. We apologize for this inconvenience and are committed to ensuring safety and security of our users, customers, their end-users, developers, and our employees."

The attacker was quickly ousted, and a new version - 2.0.8, pushed live. This is a copy of the last safe version, which was 2.0.4.

"We have confirmed that our other open source libraries, open source code, GitHub repositories, and our SaaS were not affected."

Via The Register

More from TechRadar Pro

• Hackers stole billions of dollars of crypto in 2023
• Here's a list of the best firewalls today
• These are the best endpoint protection tools right now

Several important refinance rates increased this week, so it might be worth waiting.

Some notable mortgage rates inched up. Here's what experts say is next for the housing market this year.

OnePlus has spent weeks teasing the OnePlus 13, and at long last, the phone has been fully unveiled at an event in China.

Highlights of this impressive-sounding handset include a huge 6,000mAh battery with 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging. That makes the OnePlus 13's battery both bigger than the 5,400mAh one in the OnePlus 12, and also bigger than the vast majority of other smartphone batteries.

Elsewhere, the OnePlus 13 also has a top-end Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, making this one of the first phones to come equipped with Qualcomm’s latest silicon. We’re expecting to see the same chipset in the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S25 series next year, so it should be a top performer.

That chipset is paired with up to 24GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage – though based on past form, this configuration might just be for China, with other regions perhaps topping out at 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.

(Image credit: OnePlus)

That’s still a lot, though, and the OnePlus 13 also has better water resistance than most phones, with both an IP68 and an IP69 rating – this detail was confirmed ahead of launch, mind.

The phone has a 6.82-inch 1440 x 3168 AMOLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate and a peak brightness of 4,500 nits, and it has an ultrasonic under-display fingerprint sensor, which should perform better than the optical one used by the OnePlus 12.

As for the cameras, the OnePlus 13 has a 50MP f/1.6 main snapper, a 50MP f/2.0 ultra-wide (with a 120-degree field of view), and a 50MP f/2.6 telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom. There’s also a 32MP camera on the front, and of these, the ultra-wide and telephoto sensors are new.

OnePlus had already shown off the design of the OnePlus 13, but you can see that it looks a bit different from the OnePlus 12, with a new camera block design and a much less curved screen. In fact, the display looks almost flat, but in fact it has tiny curves on all four sides.

(Image credit: OnePlus) The global launch could still be months away

There’s a lot to like here, then, but this initial launch was just for China, so you can’t buy the OnePlus 13 just yet. Based on past form, we’d expect the global launch to happen within the next few months, and that’s when we’ll also learn the global pricing. In China, the OnePlus 13 starts at CNY 4,499. That translates to roughly $630 / £490 / AU$960 and gets you a model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

The top model (which, again, may well not be available internationally) costs CNY 5,999, which is around $840 / £650 / AU$1,280, though we wouldn’t expect direct price conversions to be accurate.

For comparison, the OnePlus 12 starts at $799.99 / £849 (around AU$1,215), so in reality, you’ll probably be paying at least that much for the OnePlus 13. Oh, and don’t count on being able to get it in Australia, as the OnePlus 12 isn’t available there.

You might also like...

• Best OnePlus phones: the top flagship, budget, and foldable models ranked
• Best Android phones: from high-performance to highly affordable
• The OnePlus Open 2 could bring some big upgrades

The first official trailer for Squid Game season 2 has debuted online, and it really seems like Seong Gi-hun's got his work cut out to stop the titular fatal games for good.

Unveiled yesterday (October 31) at the Lucca Comics & Games convention, the wildly popular Netflix show's next installment looks like it'll be even more thrilling and blood-soaked than its predecessor. With contestants literally putting their bodies on the line to win the games' $4.56 million cash prize, the latter is par for the course for Squid Game. Where the former is concerned, though, the addition of a new, between-rounds game is going to completely upend the titular gameshow as we and Gi-hun know it.

As the teaser reveals, those participating in this season's edition of the games will need to survive all manner of perils, including Squid Game's iconic 'Red Light, Green Light' trial that'll pit Gi-hun against Young-hee once more. With Gi-hun successfully navigating the games in one of the best Netflix shows' first season, his experience will be invaluable for his fellow contestants as they take on Young-hee and similarly lethal games. Well, if they listen to him, anyway.

It doesn't appear as though many of them will, mind you – and that's where Squid Game 2's new stratagem comes into play. At the end of each round, survivors cast a vote on whether to continue the titular games or not. If the majority vote to walk away, all remaining participants will apparently receive a share of the cash they've won so far. However, should the masses decide to continue playing, they can add to their prize pool by playing more games, but they obviously run the risk of losing their life. Based on what the survival drama series' latest teaser shows, Gi-hun's pleas to end the games go unheeded, though I suspect there'll be some individuals who either take his side or eventually realize the errors of their ways in continuing to play in later episodes. Regardless, Squid Game season 2's new ploy is going to stress me – and, I imagine, many of you – out later this year.

This is far from the only Squid Game 2 footage that's teased huge surprises to come in the hugely popular show's next chapter. In September, another new Squid Game season 2 trailer teased other big plot details, such as contestants being forced to push coffins (likely containing some of their fellow, and likely, deceased players) into an incinerator. One month earlier, a different Squid Game 2 teaser gave us our first look at the contestants, albeit by way of their participant numbers only, who'll play an integral role in this season's plot.

What is the plot of Squid Game season 2?

Extending a heartfelt welcome to all of you. Squid Game Season 2 is arriving December 26th. pic.twitter.com/KYTeoAsVOuOctober 31, 2024

Until now, Netflix hadn't released an official story brief for its most-watched TV Original's second entry. Thankfully, the world's best streaming service has lifted the lid on what to expect from Squid Game season 2, which will be released on Netflix on December 26.

"Season 2 raises the stakes," its official plot synopsis reads, "with Lee Jung-jae reprising his role as Seong Gi-hun, also known as Player 456. With a hardened demeanor and the scars of past games, Gi-hun is on a desperate mission to expose the deadly truth of the competition. Yet, his warnings go unheeded, and tensions rise as fellow players question his intentions."

Elaborating further on what the latest trailer teases, a Netflix press release also added: "The teaser also shows the return of Lee Byung-hun as the mysterious Front Man, whose true motivations remain cloaked in secrecy, while Wi Ha-jun’s Hwang Jun-ho is back, driving the narrative forward as the relentless detective on a mission of his own."

Joining Jung-jae, Byung-hun, and Ha-jun on the season 2 cast list are newcomers Yim Si-wan, Kang Ha-neul, Park Gyu-young, Lee Jin-uk, Park Sung-hoon, Yang Dong-geun, Kang Ae-sim, Lee David, Choi Seung-hyun, Roh Jae-won, Jo Yu-ri, and Won Ji-an. Lastly, Gong Yoo, who plays the enigmatic Recruiter, is also back to, well, recruit more individuals for the life-threatening gameshow.

Hwang Dong-hyuk, Squid Game's creator, has penned season 2's scripts and directed all eight episodes. He's joined on the executive producing team by Kim Ji-yeon, too. Oh, and the pair are already deep in production on Squid Game season 3, which will arrive sometime in 2025 and wrap up Gi-hun's story. At least we know he'll make it out alive in season 2, then!

You might also like

• Netflix Christmas spy thriller Black Doves shows off Keira Knightley as a butt-kicking secret agent and it’s already been renewed for season 2
• Sorry Prime Video subscribers, Universal’s animation and live-action movies will eventually stream on Netflix instead
• Don't Move is a nightmarish Netflix thriller movie, but it didn't leave me crippled with fright like I hoped it would

Apple Intelligence takes things a little bit too far sometimes.

If you can't find your Social Security card, you can get another one. Here's how.

A vulnerability categorized as “critical” in a photo app installed by default on Synology network-attached storage devices could give attackers the ability to steal data and worse.

Unscrupulous online operators are spreading toxic lies to push bitcoin scams and sell MAGA shirts to Facebook users in the run-up to the US presidential election.

Don't sleep on APYs up to 4.75%. They may not stick around much longer.

If you’re not earning a high APY on your savings, you’re missing out.

Save an extra 10% + up to 25% off shoes with Nike promo code for November 2024. Browse the top verified coupons and discounts from WIRED.

Enjoy free expedited shipping on your first order with this Hoka coupon code at checkout and up to 30% off shoes with verified coupons from WIRED.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Nov. 1.