News
- So-called signal sharing between Microsoft and Google uncovered the RedVDS marketplace was behind large-scale cyber fraud
- RedVDS sold access to virtual machines running unlicensed software from which cybercriminals launched scams and directed attacks
- Threat data was shared securely via the Global Signal Exchange (GSE), a non-profit organization
A major cybercrime marketplace has been taken out of action thanks to cooperation between Microsoft and Google via a secure threat data sharing platform.
Known as the Global Signal Exchange, the collaboration led to the take-down of the RedVDS, an online cybercrime mall supplying virtual machines for launching phishing, business email compromise attacks, and more.
The marketplace – which provided quickly-deleted and therefore virtually untraceable VMs – was meticulously monitored by Microsoft’s security team, Digital Crimes Unit, with both Microsoft and Google suspending the operation and action taken to seize domains and servers.
A secondary case featuring the GSE identified a Microsoft-impersonating tech support scam, resulting, highlighting the importance of secure thread data collaboration platforms.
Digital Crimes UnitFinding massive scams is not easy. Even with its own Digital Crimes Unit, Microsoft has to rely on information sharing with third party organizations. In this case, the RedVDS marketplace was identified ahead of disruptive action taken by Microsoft in January 2026, which applied to courts in the UK and US to have the RedVDS web domains seized.
Data shared via the GSE enabled Google to follow suit, identifying related accounts on its networks and suspending them. Meanwhile, servers were impounded in Germany, and Europol took action against Europe-based RedVDS servers.
It’s an impressive account of cooperative, decisive action against cybercrime, a collaborative response to what has been described as a “$66 million fraud marketplace.”
An incredible 130,000 organizations were targeted by RedVDS-provided virtual machines between September and December 2025, with 191,000 Microsoft email accounts compromised during this period. All of this access to cybercrime was available from just $24 a month for a basic scam-ready virtual machine.
The importance of collaborationThe Global Signal Exchange is a UK-based non-profit, co-founded with Google in 2025 with the aim of providing real-time monitoring of the cybercrime supply chain.
"Fraud does not respect company boundaries, and no single organization ever sees the whole picture," noted Emily Taylor, CEO at Oxford Information Labs and Co-Founder of the Global Signal Exchange.
"That is exactly why we built GSE: to give trusted partners a secure way to share what they know, quickly. These two cases are a good example of GSE doing exactly what it was designed to do."
The Global Signal Exchange’s role in the sharing of information between Google and Microsoft has highlighted the importance in such collaborations. Both organizations have stated they plan to continue sharing information through the GSE, whose other partners include Meta, Amazon, Google, among many others.
My two sons are obsessed with 3D-printed toys, so a 3D printer is on their Christmas wish list, which makes this Amazon deal very appealing.
The Bambu Lab P1S is Amazon's number one best-selling 3D printer, and it just dropped to $499.99 (was $549.99). That's a $50 discount and the lowest price we've ever seen for the 3D printer.
• Shop more 3D printer deals at Amazon
The Bambu Lab P1S is a great introduction to 3D printing, with claims that it can be set up in just 15 minutes and offers hassle-free assembly for all skill levels. It supports up to 16 colors, so you can print endless, colorful creations, and it's fast too, with a max speed of 500 mm/s. It also includes a handy remote control and comes in an enclosed-body design with an activated carbon filter for improved performance.
Lab P1S Combo 3D Printer: was $549 now $499.99
The Bambu Lab P1S is Amazon's number 1 best-selling 3D printer, and it's on sale for $499.99 - a record-low price. The Bambu Lab S1S takes just 15 minutes to set up, offers 16 colors for endless creations, and prints at lightning speed.View Deal
Keep in mind that today's discount on the Bambu Lab S1S is a limited-time offer and a record-low price. That $499.99 price tag is also an incredible deal for a high-quality 3D printer, as other models retail in the $600 to $800 price range.
- AWS deal with Nvidia adds 2 million Blackwell Ultra, Rubin, and Rubin Ultra GPUs, on top of more than 1 million committed in March 2026
- Totals more than 3 million Nvidia GPUs due before 2029, a ~1.9x multiple for each of Amazon's roughly 1.58 million employees
- Nvidia's CFO has said deliveries start this quarter, not in 2027, but neither company says what it counts as a GPU or what the deal costs
Amazon ended 2025 with about 1.58 million full- and part-time employees, most in fulfillment centers and delivery operations, with a much smaller share working in its AWS data center division (estimated at around 246,000).
By mid-2028, Amazon Web Services expects to have taken delivery of roughly twice that many new Nvidia GPUs, based on a recent deal it made with Nvidia.
The latest deal was announced on August 26, the same afternoon Nvidia reported quarterly earnings, and will see AWS plan to deploy two million additional Blackwell Ultra, Rubin, and Rubin Ultra GPUs across its global infrastructure in 2027 and 2028. This is on top of over a million Nvidia GPUs that AWS committed to at Nvidia GTC 2026 in March, and which Nvidia's Ian Buck told Reuters would ship from 2026 through 2027.
A mammoth deal that dwarf's Amazon's entire payrollTogether, this all amounts to over three million GPUs in play between the data center giant and the chip designer, which is also the world's most valuable company at the time of writing. At 3 million GPUs against a workforce of 1.58 million, that's nearly 1.9 Nvidia GPUs per employee.
This is only Amazon's commitment to Nvidia; it also has its own custom Tranium3 GPUs, which the company says are "nearly fully subscribed" or "almost fully booked" as of mid-2026.
At the same time, Amazon is not increasing job roles on its end; it cut around 30,000 corporate roles between October 2025 and January 2026, a restructuring its top HR executive, Beth Galetti, described as "reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy."
Building on an already solid baseWhile AWS's current GPU base from Nvidia, consisting mainly of H100 and H200 GPUs, is smaller than Microsoft's 485,000 count, it is hardly a rounding error, with Omdia estimating that Amazon bought 196,000 Hopper GPUs in 2024 alone.
The interesting part is determining what counts as a GPU: Nvidia and Amazon's joint statement about 2 million GPUs across calendar years 2027 and 2028 might mean two very different things depending on how you count GPUs.
At GTC 2025, Nvidia said it would count Rubin-generation GPUs by compute die rather than by package, which is why the Vera Rubin rack was first unveiled as NVL144. It reversed course before CES 2026, and the flagship now ships as Vera Rubin NVL72, counting 72 two-die packages. To make matters a bit more complicated, Rubin Ultra, due in 2027, puts four compute dies in each package.
Whether the companies count each die as a separate GPU or the whole package as a GPU could make the numbers skew heavily in either direction. The deal also includes a national security element: approximately 100,000 GPUs are earmarked for US government AI workloads at Impact Level 6.
Amazon's limitation here is supply, not demand; AWS revenue rose 37% year over year to $42.2 billion in the second quarter, and its contracted backlog reached $496 billion, up from $364 billion three months earlier, as CloudTech News reported.
On Amazon's July earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy said capacity would fall short of demand this year and likely next, adding: "In fact, the demand we already have for 2028 is striking."
In addition to its own custom ASICs, including Tranium3, Amazon is gearing up for a few fiscal years of eye-watering AI infrastructure spend and AI demand combined, and it better be right: Amazon's free cash flow has already turned negative as it looks to fund its bid to be one of, if not the largest hyperscaler in play for the foreseeable future.
- Researchers report a new upgrade for lithium-ion
- Added graphitic carbon nitride can boost capacity
- It would mean higher power delivery for longer
With so many modern-day devices dependent on rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, scientists are hard at work trying to figure out ways of improving the tech — and a team from the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT) has just announced a significant breakthrough.
As reported by The Korea Times, the KRICT researchers have succeeded in boosting the power delivery capacity of lithium-ion battery chemistry by adding a small amount of a material called graphitic carbon nitride to the cathode end of the battery.
When a battery is charging, the lithium ions get pushed out of the cathode, through an electrolyte material, to the anode at the other end. When the battery is in use, the ions flow back in the other direction.
One potential way of storing more energy in a battery of the same physical size and weight is to make the cathode thicker, but there's a problem: this also makes it harder for the lithium ions to move and deliver all of the energy held in the battery. The new innovation that was successfully tested here could solve that problem.
Capacity boostingMicroscopic imagery showing the cathode mix (Image credit: Eun et al., Exploration, 2026)The researchers have reported some impressive numbers from their tests, though the tech is still at an early stage. Adding the graphitic carbon nitride to the cathode resulted in a 166% increase in capacity during high-rate discharge, and an increase in power density of up to 2.85 times.
Those figures don't mean a bigger capacity in mAh terms, but delivering more of a charge under heavy load, and for longer. In lithium-ion batteries, using a lot of energy quickly reduces how much total capacity you'll get from the battery compared to if you used the same amount of energy but more slowly.
In an EV, for example, this would mean that the vehicle could accelerate harder and sustain that high performance for longer without impacting total range as much. It would allow home batteries to better sustain their capacity if you use them with appliances that drain a lot of energy quickly, such as washing machines.
But smaller applications can benefit from it as well — drones can draw a lot of power suddenly to life themselves, or gaming and workstation laptops might suddenly draw a lot of power depending on the workload — they'd all benefit from tech that handles the power flow's effect on capacity better.
The tech could, in turn, result in batteries with thicker cathodes that do give you more mAh capacity in the same space, the researchers say — but that wasn't tested in this study. The next challenge is to try and scale up and expand the technology.
According to KRICT President Shin Seok-min, this alternative approach to lithium-ion batteries could potentially be used across electric vehicles, energy storage systems, and robotics — so it's very broadly applicable, especially for devices and systems that can take batteries that are physically larger.
- Scaleout's onboard AI let a BAE Systems ALMA drone rank, select, and strike an armored engineering vehicle in a January 2026 demo
- Humans set the mission, started the system, and kept a pilot in reserve, but did not ultimately use them during the test
- The test underscores how small AI models can essentially take over not only the target-selection part of the equation, but also perform the actual mission end-to-end without human intervention needed
A small drone flying over a snow-covered Swedish test range in January 2026 found several objects, ranked an armored engineering vehicle as the most valuable, and made a beeline for it before dropping an explosive.
There was no human involvement in the entire process, which included selection, targeting, and then neutralization by the drone, making it a considerably more autonomous approach than what the current battlefield uses.
The flight, part of BAE Systems Bofors' Affordable Loitering Modular Ammunition (ALMA) program with onboard AI supplied by Uppsala-based Scaleout Systems, resurfaced this month as AI safety became a key topic among industry and government stakeholders alike.
A growing threat and capability for modern militariesScaleout Systems tested the AI in question with a pilot on standby and a continuous connection throughout the exercise, during which the drone used AI to detect, identify, and geolocate potential threats.
Depending on how you frame it, you can argue that this is both a threat to modern militaries and a boon: an autonomous drone that can select targets without oversight or a backlink is essentially immune to jamming, offering a much higher likelihood of completing its mission than alternatives.
At the same time, it becomes riskier when it is completely cut off from communications, malfunctions, or fails to select the correct target without human oversight.
Interestingly, BAE Systems Bofors' own release on Winter Demo 2026 does not mention the strike at all. It frames the three-day Karlskoga event around roughly 20 startups and technology companies, with Swedish Defense Minister Pål Jonson joining a panel and saying, "We need more actors and entrepreneurs in the defense industry."
The test, despite lacking human interaction in its end-game, still relied on human input to some degree: a user pushed a button to start the exercise, and humans set the parameters overseeing the entire exercise.
This isn't the first machine to choose its own target, however; Israel's Harpy loitering munition, fielded since the 1990s, can autonomously detect and attack radar emitters whose locations were unknown at launch.
This is awkward timing for regulators, to say the least: on September 5, the 128 states party to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons agreed on a non-binding text on lethal autonomous weapons, after the United States and Russia pushed late changes, including to a section on human judgment and control.
As a result, Nicole van Rooijen of Stop Killer Robots told Reuters that three years of work had been "substantially diluted in the last hours." For now, Scaleout has shown that detection, ranking, and targeting can run on a small airframe without a data link, within parameters that people set.
Whether this makes it to a modern battlefield is increasingly likely, even as the Russia-Ukraine conflict becomes more reliant on autonomous machines. The more pressing question is one that will be answered sooner or later: how does such a drone make decisions if it is jammed from its source without any human oversight?
- Huawei’s Ascend 960 roadmap depends on scale, memory, and faster interconnects
- UnifiedBus connects thousands of processors while reducing communication bottlenecks inside AI systems
- The Atlas 960 roadmap reaches 15,488 processors with 34 PB/s bandwidth
Huawei is expanding its Ascend platform with larger systems designed to handle AI models containing up to 10 trillion parameters.
The company is advancing UnifiedBus, an interconnect architecture intended to connect processors, memory, and storage with lower communication overhead.
That approach gives Huawei another way to compensate for hardware limitations that have constrained individual Ascend accelerators against Nvidia's products.
Huawei expands the Ascend 960 systemHuawei's Atlas 960 SuperPoD roadmap calls for systems containing as many as 15,488 Ascend 960 processors, up from its earlier 8,192 processor configuration.
The company says the system can deliver 30 EFLOPS of FP8 computing and 60 EFLOPS using FP4, alongside 4,460 TB of memory capacity.
Its interconnect bandwidth is specified at 34 PB/s, while Huawei expects training performance to reach 15.9 million tokens per second.
Huawei has also accelerated development of the Ascend 960 family, with the 960DT scheduled for Q1 2027 and the 960PR planned for Q3 2027.
The company says both versions will arrive earlier than previously expected, while Huawei says performance improvements have exceeded the original roadmap.
"We're evolving our Ascend chip series on a one-generation-a-year cycle," said David Wang, deputy chairman and rotating chairman of Huawei.
"In 2028 and 2029, we will roll out the Ascend 970 and 980 chips, respectively. Thanks to the Tau (τ) Scaling Law, not only will their compute specifications continue to double, but you can also expect to see huge improvements..."
UnifiedBus connects 4,096 NPUs inside the Atlas 960EUnifiedBus is Huawei’s interconnect architecture for linking processors, memory, and other components within large AI computing systems.
Huawei applies UnifiedBus in the Atlas 960E, a 960 variant that ties up to 4,096 NPUs and gives them access to shared memory across the SuperPoD.
It combines UnifiedBus with Hi-ONE optical technology, extending high-speed optical connections deeper into the computing system.
The approach uses near-packaged optics, or NPOs, placing optical components closer to processors to improve transmission speeds and reduce energy consumption.
Huawei says this design helps the SuperPoD move data between thousands of processors without relying entirely on conventional optical connections outside the computing system.
The Atlas 960E can use approximately 5,500 Hi-ONE units instead of about 48,000 conventional 800G optical modules.
This configuration can reduce power consumption by more than 550 kilowatts across the processor interconnection system.
The architecture also gives the Atlas 960E 8 EFLOPS of FP8 computing performance while Huawei says it supports models containing up to 10 trillion parameters.
Atlas 960E systems can also connect into SuperClusters containing 512,000 NPUs, with the architecture ultimately supporting million-processor configurations.
The larger systems are important because Huawei cannot rely solely on individual accelerator performance to narrow the gap with Nvidia.
Its strategy combines more processors with faster communication, allowing thousands of chips to operate within a shared computing environment.
UnifiedBus therefore becomes important because thousands of processors must exchange data continuously during demanding AI training and inference workloads.
- Hackers are using blockchains to keep malware instructions available after servers disappear
- AI is making blockchain-based malware infrastructure easier for less experienced hackers
- Blockchain traffic is difficult to block without disrupting legitimate cryptocurrency services worldwide
Hackers are increasingly hiding malware instructions inside public blockchains, creating communication channels that can survive the removal of conventional infrastructure.
New figures from Chainalysis claim malicious blockchain activity increased 440%, with daily entries rising from 2.06 to 11.1 after newer AI systems emerged.
The technique gives attackers another way to maintain communication with compromised computers without relying entirely on conventional servers controlled by hosting providers.
Blockchain networks become malware dead dropsBlockchain dead drops use transaction data or smart contracts as lookup points, allowing infected computers to retrieve commands, addresses, or configuration information.
Because blockchain records are distributed across networks, removing a conventional server does not erase information already stored on the ledger.
A North Korean-linked operation associated with UNC5342 uses TRON and Aptos as alternate routes before retrieving encrypted instructions through the BNB Chain.
Its malware can check one network, switch to another when necessary, and retrieve updated addresses without receiving another malware package.
Iranian actors suspected of links to the country's intelligence ministry have embedded encoded routing information inside Bitcoin transactions used for malware retrieval.
Russian-speaking cybercriminals have also commercialized the technique, using Polygon contracts to provide blockchain-backed infrastructure for malware campaigns operated by different customers.
One related operator controls more than 50 BNB Chain resolver contracts while also conducting activity involving fraudulent tokens and clipboard-monitoring malware.
These operations show how blockchain records can function as persistent lookup infrastructure rather than merely serving their conventional financial and transactional purposes.
AI lowers the technical barrierChainalysis said the sharp increase in this malicious activity followed the arrival of high-capacity Chinese open models, which placed fewer restrictions on malware development requests.
Before those systems appeared, building reliable blockchain-based malware infrastructure required expertise across malicious software, cryptocurrency networks, and distributed communication systems.
AI tools can reduce that knowledge barrier by helping less experienced operators understand unfamiliar technologies and produce components needed for blockchain communication.
In the second quarter of 2026, state-linked groups accounted for roughly two-thirds of newly observed activity.
Those groups also represent about half of overall observed activity, indicating that blockchain-based malware infrastructure extends beyond conventional cybercriminal operations.
Defenders face difficulties because blocking blockchain traffic could also disrupt legitimate wallets, decentralized applications, exchanges, and decentralized finance services used worldwide.
Attackers can further complicate disruption by operating their own blockchain nodes, reducing dependence on external providers that defenders might otherwise pressure or disable.
Some operators have hidden server addresses inside wallet identifiers without usable private keys, then used zero-value transfers to trigger malware retrieval.
Those transactions leave public records that investigators can examine, potentially providing useful clues even when attackers attempt to conceal their infrastructure.
"While the exploitation of blockchain by state-linked organizations such as North Korea is becoming more sophisticated, on-chain records left by attackers can actually serve as important clues to track them," said Kwon Jun-hyeok, General Manager of Chainalysis Korea.
"Tracking these traces and identifying attackers and related infrastructure through blockchain intelligence will become increasingly important in responding to new cyber threats."
A new NYT Strands puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Monday's puzzle instead then click here: NYT Strands hints and answers for Monday, September 21 (game #932).
Strands is the NYT's latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it's great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.
Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc's Wordle today page for the original viral word game.
SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.
NYT Strands today (game #933) - hint #1 - today's themeWhat is the theme of today's NYT Strands?• Today's NYT Strands theme is… Day and night shift
NYT Strands today (game #933) - hint #2 - clue wordsPlay any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.
- FAIL
- SAVERS
- TWIN
- CHAIN
- VOTES
- SOIL
• Spangram has 11 letters
NYT Strands today (game #933) - hint #4 - spangram positionWhat are two sides of the board that today's spangram touches?• First side: top, 1st column
• Last side: bottom, 4th column
Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.
NYT Strands today (game #933) - the answers(Image credit: New York Times)The answers to today's Strands, game #933, are…
- SWITCH
- CHANGEOVER
- TRANSITION
- PROGRESSION
- SPANGRAM: FALLEQUINOX
- My rating: Hard
- My score: 1 hint
Even as I was collecting the words I still thought that the theme was about work and the moment when the day shift and the night shift swap over.
It wasn’t until I got the spangram — I had been ignoring the game’s two rare letters until then — that the penny finally dropped and I understood that the words were connected to what AI tells me is “the precise astronomical moment when the center of the Sun crosses Earth's equator, marking the official astronomical start of autumn”.
Every day’s a school day with Strands!
Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Monday, September 21, game #932)- NEON
- LYCRA
- GRUNGE
- SCRUNCHIES
- TRACKSUITS
- SPANGRAM: NINETIESTREND
Strands is the NYT's not-so-new-any-more word game, following Wordle and Connections. It's now a fully fledged member of the NYT's games stable that has been running for a year and which can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.
I've got a full guide to how to play NYT Strands, complete with tips for solving it, so check that out if you're struggling to beat it each day.
A new NYT Connections puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Monday's puzzle instead then click here: NYT Connections hints and answers for Monday, September 21 (game #1198).
Good morning! Let's play Connections, the NYT's clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need Connections hints.
What should you do once you've finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I've also got daily Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too, while Marc's Wordle today page covers the original viral word game.
SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Connections today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.
NYT Connections today (game #1199) - today's words(Image credit: New York Times)Today's NYT Connections words are…
- THIS
- THAT
- THE
- OTHER
- CAFE
- PATRON
- AGREE
- ACCENT
- TOUCH
- THOSE
- ROSE
- NEUTRAL
- DETAIL
- DISAGREE
- THESE
- FLOURISH
What are some clues for today's NYT Connections groups?
- YELLOW: Determiners
- GREEN: Adornment
- BLUE: A quiz with choices
- PURPLE: Fancy drinks
Need more clues?
We're firmly in spoiler territory now, but read on if you want to know what the four theme answers are for today's NYT Connections puzzles…
NYT Connections today (game #1199) - hint #2 - group answersWhat are the answers for today's NYT Connections groups?
- YELLOW: DEMONSTRATIVES
- GREEN: EMBELLISHMENT
- BLUE: OPTIONS ON A MULTIPLE CHOICE SURVEY
- PURPLE: BEVERAGES WITH ACUTE ACCENTS REMOVED
Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.
NYT Connections today (game #1199) - the answers(Image credit: New York Times)The answers to today's Connections, game #1199, are…
- YELLOW: DEMONSTRATIVES: THAT, THESE, THIS, THOSE
- GREEN: EMBELLISHMENT: ACCENT, DETAIL, FLOURISH, TOUCH
- BLUE: OPTIONS ON A MULTIPLE CHOICE SURVEY: AGREE, DISAGREE, NEUTRAL, OTHER
- PURPLE: BEVERAGES WITH ACUTE ACCENTS REMOVED: CAFE, PATRON, ROSE, THE
- My rating: Easy
- My score: Perfect
Connections loves to hide a clue to another group on one of the tiles and today it was ACCENT.
This tile featured in the green group for EMBELLISHMENT but may also have tipped some crafty players off to the fact that we were searching for a group featuring accents or, as it happened, BEVERAGES WITH ACUTE ACCENTS REMOVED.
Before linking the fancy drinks I took a bit of a risk with the yellow group, having to choose between THE and THIS. Had I paid attention more at school I may have found this task easier — demonstratively easier, even. Yet somehow I scraped through without a single error.
Yesterday's NYT Connections answers (Monday, September 21, 2026, game #1198)- YELLOW: EMAIL BUTTONS: COMPOSE, DRAFTS, SENT, SPAM
- GREEN: WAYS TO ATTRACT FISH: CHUM, FLY, SPINNER, WORM
- BLUE: CHESS VERBS: CAPTURE, CASTLE, CHECK, MATE
- PURPLE: STARTS OF COMPOSERS' NAMES: BEET, BRAH, CHOP, VIVA
NYT Connections is one of several increasingly popular word games made by the New York Times. It challenges you to find groups of four items that share something in common, and each group has a different difficulty level: green is easy, yellow a little harder, blue often quite tough and purple usually very difficult.
On the plus side, you don't technically need to solve the final one, as you'll be able to answer that one by a process of elimination. What's more, you can make up to four mistakes, which gives you a little bit of breathing room.
It's a little more involved than something like Wordle, however, and there are plenty of opportunities for the game to trip you up with tricks. For instance, watch out for homophones and other word games that could disguise the answers.
It's playable for free via the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.
A new Quordle puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Monday's puzzle instead then click here: Quordle hints and answers for Monday, September 21 (game #1701).
Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,500 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today — or scroll down further for the answers.
Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc's Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.
SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.
Quordle today (game #1702) — hint #1 — VowelsHow many different vowels are in Quordle today?• The number of different vowels in Quordle today is 3*.
* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).
Quordle today (game #1702) — hint #2 — repeated lettersDo any of today's Quordle answers contain repeated letters?• The number of Quordle answers containing a repeated letter today is 2.
Quordle today (game #1702) — hint #3 — uncommon lettersDo the letters Q, Z, X or J appear in Quordle today?• No. None of Q, Z, X or J appear among today's Quordle answers.
Quordle today (game #1702) — hint #4 — starting letters (1)Do any of today's Quordle puzzles start with the same letter?• The number of today's Quordle answers starting with the same letter is 0.
If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:
Quordle today (game #1702) — hint #5 — starting letters (2)What letters do today's Quordle answers start with?• C
• L
• D
• P
Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.
Quordle today (game #1702) — the answers(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)The answers to today's Quordle, game #1702, are…
- COMFY
- LOBBY
- DRESS
- PANEL
After making a speedy start I ground to a halt trying to get my last word.
Fortunately, it only took me two guesses to find COMFY, but I wasted lots of time thinking I was looking for another double-letter word.
Daily Sequence today (game #1702) — the answers(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #1702, are…
- SPOOL
- LUPUS
- SHELL
- HAIRY
- Quordle #1701, Monday, 21 September: WAXEN, HIPPO, PETAL, LEASH
- Quordle #1700, Sunday, 20 September: DERBY, LIMBO, GAWKY, REIGN
- Quordle #1699, Saturday, 19 September: SCOPE, HEIST, PULSE, CHAMP
- Quordle #1698, Friday, 18 September: MUCUS, MIRTH, APPLE, TILDE
- Quordle #1697, Thursday, 17 September: CRIER, CHIRP, NEIGH, FREER
- Quordle #1696, Wednesday, 16 September: SPEAR, PRICE, BLUNT, FISHY
- Quordle #1695, Tuesday, 15 September: SHUSH, LITHE, DELTA, BUGLE
- Quordle #1694, Monday, 14 September: ZEBRA, LEGAL, RATIO, TROLL
- Quordle #1693, Sunday, 13 September: LUCID, SPRAY, MANGE, EMAIL
- Quordle #1692, Saturday, 12 September: SUPER, BRUSH, RESET, SOWER
- Quordle #1691, Friday, 11 September: PLUSH, PAINT, RIVAL, AFOUL
- Quordle #1690, Thursday, 10 September: AGENT, EXILE, TITAN, PUREE
- Quordle #1689, Wednesday, 9 September: HAPPY, GONER, SMACK, MOTIF
- Quordle #1688, Tuesday, 8 September: FLUNG, DIARY, HALVE, BERTH
- Quordle #1687, Monday, 7 September: VISIT, CLANK, FEVER, OCEAN
- Quordle #1686, Sunday, 6 September: PILOT, HONOR, BOWEL, TAUNT
- Quordle #1685, Saturday, 5 September: GNASH, GEEKY, WHELP, PUTTY
- Quordle #1684, Friday, 4 September: QUICK, BEEFY, TRUCK, SNAIL
- Quordle #1683, Thursday, 3 September: SIGMA, ESSAY, MERRY, LLAMA
- Quordle #1682, Wednesday, 2 September: INCUR, FELLA, TITAN, FROZE
- HKUST (Guangzhou) and HK PolyU researchers' InjectEave beams a radio carrier at devices so their own circuits leak analog audio
- The leaked audio has already been decrypted by the device itself, making encryption offer no protection against such an approach
- The 30m headline needed a pricey amplifier pushing output to 10 W, while standard ranges of 1 to 6m were measured by detecting a test tone
Researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University have shown that everyday headphones, a desk phone, and a handful of smart-home gadgets can broadcast what they are doing simply by using a radio signal.
The technique, called InjectEave, was presented at USENIX Security 2026 in Baltimore, and multiple outlets have since covered the researcher's claim that the attack "can recover headphone audio from up to 30 meters away, including through walls".
The claim may be accurate, but it has limitations, including the need for specialized equipment that is often very noticeable in most settings.
An impressive technical show with plenty of limitations in towConventional electromagnetic eavesdropping waits for a device to leak. That works poorly for audio, because speech sits below 20 kHz while a device's wiring radiates efficiently only at megahertz or gigahertz frequencies.
InjectEave chooses to close the gap by transmitting a carrier signal at the target. According to the paper, nonlinear components such as amplifiers, analog-to-digital converters, switching MOSFETs, and power converters mix the secret signal onto that carrier, and the device's own traces and cables radiate the result back to a receiver.
Because the leak happens in the analog path, after audio has been decoded, the project page states that "InjectEave is immune to digital defenses such as encryption, masking, and randomization." Encryption in any form on a wireless headset is irrelevant, since the attack directly targets the signal driving the speaker, not the radio link.
The team demonstrating this used a USRP B210 software-defined radio, two antennas, a Siglent spectrum analyzer, and a laptop to set up their proof of concept, which could, as they noted, "eavesdrop on the majority of these devices from over 2m away and through walls, with a maximum distance of 30m for recovering intelligible headphone audio".
This isn't the first time the technique has been used, even as the researchers have built on it considerably; the idea originates from "The Thing," a Soviet bug given as a gift to the US ambassador in Moscow in 1945, which was passively powered remotely as a listening device.
InjectEve, however, does not involve planting anything; instead, it leverages existing work on interference-induced leakage and impedance-based backscatter, and distinguishes itself by recovering coarse digital data rather than continuous analog waveforms, allowing users to 'listen in' without added steps.
The same approach applies to wired headphones, which are also prone to leaking microphone audio; researchers concluded that their sound cards were the primary source of the leaks, which were being sent back over very short distances.
The threat is somewhat tempered by the fact that it can capture what users hear but, with wireless headphones, cannot hear what the user is saying. The attacker also has to transmit continuously and use a high-powered (10W) transmitter to reach the full 30-meter range, even though capturing and rendering speech is harder than the tones the test used to prove the approach worked.
The attacker also needs to know the target model and profile a matching unit first, although they managed to get a profile to transfer cleanly across three identical UGreen headsets, suggesting this might be easier than one would assume.
The researchers say they reported the findings to the affected manufacturers but, "as we have not yet received a response," withheld the table's frequencies and stripped injection control logic from their released code. One shouldn't be too hopeful, however, as no software update can fix an analog leak, and it is relatively limited in practical abuse cases.
For Stuart Fails to Save the Universe viewers who have been waiting for things to feel exactly like The Big Bang Theory... your moment has arrived.
Sure, we've had a whole host of cameos from the original show (though three notable faces have yet to turn up), but zipping from unhinged universe to unhinged universe has been a world away from the science sitcom we know and love.
But what if I said that there's a key reason why this week's episode could be straight out of 2007? And when does Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 9 arrive on HBO Max?
What time can I watch Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 10 on HBO Max?For US viewers, Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 10 will drop on Thursday, September 24 at 6pm PT/9pm ET.
Internationally, you're looking out for these times:
- US – Thursday, September 24 at 6pm PT / 9pm ET
- Canada – Thursday, September 24 at 6pm PT / 9pm ET
- UK – Friday, September 25 at 2am BST
- India – Friday, September 25 at 6:30am IST
- Singapore – Friday, September 25 at 9am SGT
- Australia – Friday, September 25 at 11am AEST
- New Zealand – Friday, September 25 at 1pm NZST
New episodes of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe will make landfall every Thursday in the US and on Fridays everywhere else. Here are the all-important dates you need to know about:
- Episode 1: out now
- Episode 2: out now
- Episode 3: out now
- Episode 4: out now
- Episode 5: out now
- Episode 6: out now
- Episode 7: out now
- Episode 8: out now
- Episode 9: out now
- Episode 10: September 24
- CISA added three Linux kernel flaws (CVE‑2025‑39682, CVE‑2026‑53266, CVE‑2025‑39964) to KEV catalog
- Red Hat confirmed active exploitation; agencies given rare three‑day patch deadline expiring Sept 21, 2026
- Bugs enable DoS, privilege escalation, or data corruption; patches available, limited mitigations for two flaws
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added three Linux flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, signaling abuse in the wild and giving government agencies a deadline to patch or stop using the flawed product entirely.
The three bugs in question are tracked as CVE-2025-39682 (severity score 9.8/10 - critical), CVE-2026-53266 (severity score 8.8/10 - high), and CVE-2025-39964 (severity score 7.8/10 - high). All three have already been patched in the Linux kernel. CVE-2025-39682 was fixed in stable releases 6.1.149, 6.6.103, 6.12.44 and 6.16.4, while CVE-2025-39964 was fixed in 5.10.245, 5.15.194, 6.1.154, 6.6.108, 6.12.49 and 6.16.9. CVE-2026-53266 has been fixed upstream and backported to supported stable/distribution kernel branches, including 5.10.259, 6.1.176 and 6.12.94.
The first issue is an improper check for unusual or exceptional conditions vulnerability in the TLS receive patch which could allow unauthenticated threat actors to launch memory disclosure or denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. The second one (CVE-2026-53266) is an out-of-bounds write vulnerability in the ebtables Source Network Address Translation (SNAT) Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) rewrite patch which allows local attackers to escalate privileges or mount DoS attacks.
The last one (CVE-2025-39964) is a race condition flaw that allows concurrent writes to the same AF_ALG socket, which allows local malicious actors to crash the system or corrupt cryptographic operation results, leading to data integrity issues and possible DoS states.
Attacks in the wildRed Hat acknowledged that all three are being abused in real-life attacks. “This CVE is high risk and there are known public exploits leveraging this vulnerability. Address this vulnerability with high priority,” it said in all three advisories.
However, there are no details as to who is currently using these exploits, against whom, and to what cause. There are currently no separate reports of cyberattacks referencing any of the abovementioned vulnerabilities.
However, CISA still reacted. All three flaws were added on September 18, 2026, and all three have a small three-day deadline for patching that expires on September 21. Usually, CISA would grant Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies a three-week deadline to patch up, with just exceptionally dangerous flaws getting a shorter window. That being said, these flaws are likely extremely dangerous.
In theory...In a hypothetical scenario, a threat actor could target a Linux system using kernel TLS (kTLS) by sending a specially-crafted TLS record that triggers CVE-2025-39682 and causing either a crash, or even arbitrary code execution. Attackers that already have a low privilege foothold on the target endpoint could use CVE_2025-39964 to escalate privileges, while on systems using the affected bridge/netfilter configuration, CVE-2026-53266 could be used for privilege escalation, as well.
According to the Red Hat advisory, there is a chance that CVE-2025-39682 is remotely triggerable, but only when the system is using the affected kTLS receive path. The other two flaws are exclusively local vulnerabilities.
Besides fixes, two out of the three flaws also have possible mitigations. For the improper check one, users should prevent module tls from being loaded. For the out-of-bounds write one, users are advised to disable ARP hardware address rewriting in ebtables SNAT rules, or remove ebtables SNAT rules that operate on ARP traffic on bridge interfaces. The final vulnerability, currently does not have a working mitigation, and the only way to stay secure is to apply the provided patches.
Linux kernel vulnerabilities are generally considered serious, but the severity still depends on the flaw and how the affected kernel is deployed. Earlier this year, security researchers disclosed four local privilege escalation flaws, called DirtyAH6 (CVE-2026-80844), TUNderflow (CVE-2026-81000), PPPoEject (CVE-2026-68121), and DiagSpill (CVE-2026-74469).
Via The Hacker News