Quote:AMD Instinct MI350P launches with 4.6 PFLOPS MXFP4 compute



AMD has launched the Instinct MI350P, a new PCIe accelerator based on the CDNA 4 architecture. The card is designed for air-cooled servers and targets AI inference deployments that do not require a full OAM platform.

The MI350P is the PCIe version of AMD’s MI350 series. It has 128 Compute Units, 8,192 Stream Processors and 512 Matrix Cores. AMD lists the peak engine clock at 2.2 GHz. Basically half of the MI350X/355X specs.

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Quote:Executive summary

• A suspicious website is a web resource that cannot be definitively classified as phishing, but whose activities are unsafe. Such sites manipulate users, tricking them into voluntarily transferring money for non-existent services, signing up for hidden subscriptions, or disclosing personal data through carefully crafted terms of service. These include fake online stores, dubious crypto exchanges, investment platforms, and services with paid subscriptions.
  
• Kaspersky has introduced a new web filtering category, “Sites with an undefined trust level,” into its security products (Kaspersky Premium, Android and iOS apps, etc.). The system analyzes the domain name and age, IP address reputation, DNS configuration, HTTP security headers, and SSL certificate to automatically detect suspicious resources.
  
• According to Kaspersky data for January 2026, the most widespread global threat is fake browser extensions that mimic security products — they were detected in 9 out of 10 regions analyzed worldwide. Such extensions intercept browser data, track user activity, hijack search queries, and inject ads.
  
• Kaspersky’s regional statistics reveal the specific nature of these threats: in Africa, over 90% of the top 10 suspicious websites are online trading scam platforms; in Latin America, fake betting services predominate; in Russia, fake binary options brokers and “educational platforms” with fraudulent subscriptions lead the way; in CIS countries — crypto scams and bots for inflating engagement.
  
• Key indicators of a suspicious website to check: a strange domain name with numbers or random characters, cheap top-level domains (.xyz, .top, .shop), a recently registered domain (less than 6 months old according to WHOIS data), unrealistic promises (“100% guaranteed income,” “up to 300% profit”), lack of company contact information, and payments only via cryptocurrency or irreversible bank transfers.
  

Introduction

The online landscape is filled with various traps lying in wait for users. One such threat involves websites that can’t be strictly classified as phishing, yet whose activities are inherently unsafe. These sites often operate on the fringes of the law, even if they aren’t directly violating it. Sometimes they use a cleverly crafted Terms of Service document as a loophole. These agreements might include clauses such as no-refund policies or forced automatic subscription renewals.

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Quote:PCI-SIG members now have access to version 0.5 of the PCI Express 8.0 standard

PCI-SIG members have today gained access to version 0.5 of the PCIe 8.0 standard, arriving ahead of schedule to industry partners. This is the official first draft of the PCIe 8.0 specification, incorporating feedback from the standard’s 0.3 release last year. Currently, the standard is on track to be fully released by 2028, delivering a tremendous boost to PCIe performance.

With PCIe 8.0, PCI-SIG aims to deliver a 2x bandwidth boost over PCIe 7.0. PCIe 7.0 is already 2x faster than PCIe 6.0, and 4x faster than PCIe 5.0. In other words, PCIe 8.0 aims to be 8x faster than PCIe 5.0, the fastest PCIe standard available on today’s consumer PCs.

Next-generation CPUs from AMD and Intel are already planning to deliver PCIe 6.0 support to the datacenter market. Furthermore, PCIe 7.0 support is undoubtedly already part of both companies’ CPU, GPU, and AI roadmaps. PCI-SIG is aiming to deliver PCIe 8.0 before the industry needs the bandwidth, allowing the market to plan ahead with PCIe in mind.
 
PCIe 8.0 Specification Objectives:

• Delivering 256.0 GT/s raw bit rate and up to 1.0 TB/s bi-directionally via x16 configuration
  
• Evaluating new connector technology
  
• Ensuring latency, FEC and reliability targets are achieved
  
• Maintaining backwards compatibility with previous generations of PCIe technology
  
• Improving bandwidth through protocol enhancements
  
• Reducing power through additional techniques
  

Why do we need PCIe 8.0?

Most PC users consider PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 to be more than fast enough for their needs. Regardless, the needs of the enterprise market are always changing. The growth of AI and other applications has demonstrated clear demand for higher-bandwidth connections. Furthermore, PCI-SIG doesn’t want innovation to be limited by the performance of its PCI Express standard. If that happens, the industry will seek alternatives.

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Quote:Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 brings Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0 to mid-range phones



Qualcomm has announced two new mobile platforms for lower-cost Android phones, the Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 and Snapdragon 4 Gen 5. Both chips are built for commercial devices launching in the second half of 2026 from OEMs including Honor, OPPO, realme and REDMI. The Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 is expected in Honor and REDMI devices, while Snapdragon 4 Gen 5 will appear first in OPPO, realme and REDMI phones.

Snapdragon 6 Gen 5

Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 is the higher-end of the two. The chip uses a 4nm process and an eight-core Kryo CPU with four performance cores up to 2.6 GHz and four efficiency cores up to 2.0 GHz. Qualcomm claims up to 21% higher Adreno GPU performance, 20% faster app launches, 18% less screen stutter and 8% better power efficiency compared with Snapdragon 6 Gen 4.
 

Source: Qualcomm

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Quote: 
Microsoft is testing Point-in-Time Restore, a new recovery feature for Windows 11 that offers a more comprehensive system snapshot than the traditional System Restore. The feature was first seen in the Windows 11 Insider Experimental preview released on April 24, 2026, and was originally announced in 2025.

Microsoft explains that the goal of Point-in-Time Restore is to "minimize downtime and simplify troubleshooting when disruptions occur." The feature appears in the Windows Recovery Environment troubleshooting window when a PC encounters issues and can also be accessed and configured from the Windows Settings app.

What Point-in-Time Restore Backs Up and How Snapshot Scheduling Works



Unlike System Restore, which backs up system files, registry settings, drivers, and installed applications, Point-in-Time Restore includes user files, applications, settings, passwords, secrets, certificates, and keys. Files stored in OneDrive or other cloud services are not affected by the restore.

Reverting to a Point-in-Time snapshot restores the entire PC, so any local changes made after the snapshot will be lost. This includes local file edits or new files saved outside of cloud storage.

Point-in-Time Restore follows an automated schedule instead of offering the option for manual snapshot creation. Snapshots are kept for up to 72 hours and can be set to retain for shorter periods such as six, twelve, sixteen, or twenty-four hours. Depending on user preferences, new snapshots can be created every four, twelve, sixteen, or twenty-four hours.

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Quote:Android Security Bulletin—May 2026

Published May 4, 2026

This Android Security Bulletin contains details of security vulnerabilities that affect Android devices. Security patch levels of 2026-05-01 or later address all of these issues. To learn how to check a device's security patch level, see Check and update your Android version.

Within 48 hours after the initial publication of this bulletin, we will release the corresponding source code patches to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) repository. We will then revise this bulletin with the AOSP links.

The issue in this bulletin is a critical security vulnerability in the System component that could lead to remote (proximal/adjacent) code execution as the shell user with no additional execution privileges needed. User interaction is not needed for exploitation. The severity assessment is based on the effect that exploiting the vulnerability would possibly have on an affected device, assuming the platform and service mitigations are turned off for development purposes or if successfully bypassed.

For more details on the Android security platform protections and Google Play Protect, which improve the security of the Android platform, refer to the Android and Google Play Protect mitigations section.

We notify our Android partners of all issues at least a month before publishing the bulletin.

Android and Google service mitigations

This is a summary of the mitigations provided by the Android security platform and service protections such as Google Play Protect. These capabilities reduce the likelihood that security vulnerabilities could be successfully exploited on Android.

• Exploitation for many issues on Android is made more difficult by enhancements in newer versions of the Android platform. We encourage all users to update to the latest version of Android where possible.
  
• The Android security team actively monitors for abuse through Google Play Protect and warns users about Potentially Harmful Applications. Google Play Protect is enabled by default on devices with Google Mobile Services, and is especially important for users who install apps from outside of Google Play.
  

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Quote:Google Chrome has been quietly downloading around 4GB of Gemini Nano AI model weights to user devices without their consent, and it automatically re-downloads the files if they are deleted. This behavior has been confirmed on Windows 11, Apple Silicon, and Ubuntu systems, with user reports indicating it has been happening for about a year.

The files are stored in a folder named OptGuideOnDeviceModel. On Windows 11, the path is %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data\OptGuideOnDeviceModel.

What Chrome’s 4GB Gemini Nano Download Is Used For

The 4GB folder isn't used for Chrome's main AI features. The AI Mode that appears in the address bar and in Google Search runs on Google's servers, not from the locally stored weights. The downloaded model is only used for writing assistance and a few other features that are accessible through several menus in the browser.
Users who haven't enabled or looked for those features might have the model stored on their device without realizing it serves any function they use.

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Quote:What happened?

In early May 2026, we identified installers of the DAEMON Tools software, used for mounting disk images, to be compromised with a malicious payload. These installers are distributed from the legitimate website of DAEMON Tools and are signed with digital certificates belonging to DAEMON Tools developers. Our analysis revealed that the software installers have been trojanized starting from April 8, 2026. Specifically, we identified versions of DAEMON Tools ranging from 12.5.0.2421 to 12.5.0.2434 to be compromised. At the time of writing this article, the supply chain attack is still active. Artifacts suggesting that the threat actor behind this attack is Chinese-speaking have been identified in the malicious implants observed. We contacted AVB Disc Soft, the developer company of DAEMON Tools, so that further actions could be taken to remediate the attack consequences.



Starting from early April, we observed several thousands of infection attempts involving DAEMON Tools in our telemetry, with individuals and organizations in more than 100 countries being affected. However, out of all the machines infected, we have observed further-stage payloads being deployed to only a dozen of them. These machines that received further payloads belonged to retail, scientific, government and manufacturing organizations – and this indicates that the supply chain attack has a targeted manner.

Kaspersky solutions protect its users from the malicious payloads deployed through the DAEMON Tools supply chain attack.

Trojanized binaries

Our analysis revealed that for DAEMON Tools versions from 12.5.0.2421 to 12.5.0.2434, attackers have managed to compromise the following binaries inside the software installations:

• DTHelper.exe
  
• DiscSoftBusServiceLite.exe
  
• DTShellHlp.exe
  

These files are located in the directory where DAEMON Tools is installed, for example
 

Code:

C:\Program Files\DAEMON Tools Lite

. Notably, these files are digitally signed by the developer of DAEMON Tools, AVB Disc Soft.

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Quote:Microsoft has confirmed that the security update scheduled for April 2026 will include the psmounterex.sys driver in its Vulnerable Driver Blocklist. This change causes some third-party backup programs that depend on the driver for mounting images and creating VSS snapshots to fail. The block was introduced to fix CVE-2023-43896, a high-severity buffer overflow vulnerability that could allow privilege escalation or arbitrary code execution.

Affected software includes Macrium Reflect, Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, UrBackup Server, and NinjaOne Backup, all running on Windows 11, Windows 10, and Windows Server.

What Fails and What Does Not

Full image backup creation may still succeed on affected systems. The failures happen specifically during image-mount operations, which means browsing backups or restoring from them will not work. Users might see the error message "The backup has failed because Microsoft VSS has timed out during the snapshot creation" or the error code VSS_E_BAD_STATE.

Event Viewer will display Code Integrity errors indicating that psmounterex.sys was blocked from loading. The relevant event to look for is Event ID 3077 with Policy ID {D2BDA982-CCF6-4344-AC5B-0B44427B6816} in the Code Integrity Operational log.

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Quote:Apple has announced that end-to-end encryption for RCS messaging between iPhone and Android devices will be included in iOS 26.5. The feature has been in testing since the beta of iOS 26.4 and is currently available in the release candidate of iOS 26.5. This release candidate is the version Apple plans to release publicly, assuming no last-minute issues arise.

For end-to-end encryption to work in cross-platform RCS conversations, both devices need to meet certain requirements. The iPhone must be running iOS 26.5 or later, and the Android device needs the latest version of Google Messages.

Why End-to-End Encryption for iPhone and Android RCS Matters

RCS has replaced SMS as the default messaging protocol for iPhone-to-Android conversations since Apple added support for it. The update introduced features such as high-quality media sharing, typing indicators, and functioning group chats. The main remaining issue was the lack of end-to-end encryption.

Without E2EE, messages sent between iPhone and Android over RCS are not encrypted, unlike iMessage chats between iPhones or Google Messages conversations on Android. Google Messages shows a small lock icon to indicate when E2EE is active. Once both devices meet the software requirements, this icon will also appear in iPhone-to-Android RCS conversations.

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