KrebsOnSecurity was hit with a near-record 6.3 Tbps DDoS attack, believed to be a test of the powerful new Aisuru IoT botnet. The attack, lasting under a minute, was the largest Google has ever mitigated and is linked to a DDoS-for-hire operation run by a 21-year-old Brazilian known as "Forky." Brian Krebs writes: [Google Security Engineer Damian Menscher] said the attack on KrebsOnSecurity lasted less than a minute, hurling large UDP data packets at random ports at a rate of approximately 585 million data packets per second. "It was the type of attack normally designed to overwhelm network links," Menscher said, referring to the throughput connections between and among various Internet service providers (ISPs). "For most companies, this size of attack would kill them." [...] The 6.3 Tbps attack last week caused no visible disruption to this site, in part because it was so brief -- lasting approximately 45 seconds. DDoS attacks of such magnitude and brevity typically are produced when botnet operators wish to test or demonstrate their firepower for the benefit of potential buyers. Indeed, Google's Menscher said it is likely that both the May 12 attack and the slightly larger 6.5 Tbps attack against Cloudflare last month were simply tests of the same botnet's capabilities. In many ways, the threat posed by the Aisuru/Airashi botnet is reminiscent of Mirai, an innovative IoT malware strain that emerged in the summer of 2016 and successfully out-competed virtually all other IoT malware strains in existence at the time.

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The Texas Republican is leading the conservative revolt against what his party calls its “big, beautiful bill.” Whether he will dig in or relent could determine the measure’s fate.

Britain, France and Canada called the Israeli plans for escalation “disproportionate” and “egregious” at a time when the U.N. is warning the population is at risk of famine.

If Republicans pass their tax and spending megabill, the record will arrive even sooner — putting America’s debt at more than 113 percent of the size of its entire economy.

Spain has ordered Airbnb to remove over 65,000 listings that violate rental regulations, citing missing license numbers and unclear ownership details. The crackdown is part of a broader government effort to address the country's housing crisis, which many blame on unregulated short-term rentals reducing long-term housing supply. Reuters reports: Most of the Airbnb listings to be blocked do not include their licence number, while others do not specify whether the owner was an individual or a corporation, the Consumer Rights Ministry said in a statement on Monday. Consumer Rights Minister Pablo Bustinduy said his goal was to end the general "lack of control" and "illegality" in the holiday rental business. "No more excuses. Enough with protecting those who make a business out of the right to housing in our country," he told reporters. Bustinduy said Madrid's high court is backing the request to withdraw as many as 5,800 listings. Airbnb will appeal the decision, a spokesperson said on Monday. The company believes the ministry does not have the authority to make rulings over short-term rentals and failed to provide an evidence-based list of non-compliant accommodation. Some of the incriminated listings are non-touristic seasonal ones, the spokesperson said.

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Trump’s wanton attacks on institutions and individuals have a specific purpose.

Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s office pushed back on speculation that there had been a coverup around the illness.

Guidelines advise no screening after age 70, and doctors say that even men who test diligently may develop an aggressive cancer after none was found at a recent checkup.

After a New York Times report found five deaths and several injuries among prisoners who walked along a remote highway after their release, county officials are weighing a range of safety options.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Decrypt: The founder of online news publication TechCrunch has claimed that Coinbase's recent data breach "will lead to people dying," amid a wave of kidnap attempts targeting high-net-worth crypto holders. TechCrunch founder and venture capitalist Michael Arrington added that this should be a point of reflection for regulators to re-think the importance of know-your-customer (KYC), a process that requires users to confirm their identity to a platform. He also called for prison time for executives that fail to "adequately protect" customer information. "This hack -- which includes home addresses and account balances -- will lead to people dying. It probably has already," he tweeted. "The human cost, denominated in misery, is much larger than the $400 million or so they think it will actually cost the company to reimburse people." [...] He believes that people are in immediate physical danger following the breach, which exposed data including names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, government-ID images, and more. Arrington believes that in the wake of these attacks, crypto companies that handle user data need to be much more careful than they currently are. "Combining these KYC laws with corporate profit maximization and lax laws on penalties for hacks like these means these issues will continue to happen," he tweeted. "Both governments and corporations need to step up to stop this. As I said, the cost can only be measured in human suffering." Former Coinbase chief technology officer Balaji Srinivasan pushed back on Arrington's position that executives should be punished, arguing that regulators are forcing KYC onto unwilling companies. "When enough people die, the laws may change," Arrington hit back.

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In a reversal, President Trump appears to have backed off joining a European push for new sanctions on Russia, seemingly eager to move on to doing business deals with it.

George Wendt of “Cheers,” who died on Tuesday, could walk into a bar and imply his character’s entire life outside it.

Banu Mushtaq’s “Heart Lamp,” translated by Deepa Bhasthi, had received little notice in Britain or the United States before Tuesday. Now, it’s won the major award for translated fiction.

Google on Tuesday unveiled Veo 3, an AI video generator that includes synchronized audio -- such as dialogue and animal sounds -- setting it apart from rivals like OpenAI's Sora. The company also launched Imagen 4 for high-quality image generation, Flow for cinematic video creation, and made updates to its Veo 2 and Lyria 2 tools. CNBC reports: "Veo 3 excels from text and image prompting to real-world physics and accurate lip syncing," Eli Collins, Google DeepMind product vice president, said in a blog Tuesday. The video-audio AI tool is available Tuesday to U.S. subscribers of Google's new $249.99 per month Ultra subscription plan, which is geared toward hardcore AI enthusiasts. Veo 3 will also be available for users of Google's Vertex AI enterprise platform. Google also announced Imagen 4, its latest image-generation tool, which the company said produces higher-quality images through user prompts. Additionally, Google unveiled Flow, a new filmmaking tool that allows users to create cinematic videos by describing locations, shots and style preferences. Users can access the tool through Gemini, Whisk, Vertex AI and Workspace.

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Administration officials have suggested suspending a legal principle that protects against unlawful detention, and struggled to accurately define it.

Google has unveiled a major overhaul of its search engine with the introduction of A.I. Mode -- a new feature that works like a chatbot, enabling users to ask follow-up questions and receive detailed, conversational answers. Announced at the I/O 2025 conference, the feature is now being rolled out to all Search users in the U.S. Engadget reports: Google first began previewing AI Mode with testers in its Labs program at the start of March. Since then, it has been gradually rolling out the feature to more people, including in recent weeks regular Search users. At its keynote today, Google shared a number of updates coming to AI Mode as well, including some new tools for shopping, as well as the ability to compare ticket prices for you and create custom charts and graphs for queries on finance and sports. For the uninitiated, AI Mode is a chatbot built directly into Google Search. It lives in a separate tab, and was designed by the company to tackle more complicated queries than people have historically used its search engine to answer. For instance, you can use AI Mode to generate a comparison between different fitness trackers. Before today, the chatbot was powered by Gemini 2.0. Now it's running a custom version of Gemini 2.5. What's more, Google plans to bring many of AI Mode's capabilities to other parts of the Search experience. Looking to the future, Google plans to bring Deep Search, an offshoot of its Deep Research mode, to AI Mode. [...] Another new feature that's coming to AI Mode builds on the work Google did with Project Mariner, the web-surfing AI agent the company began previewing with "trusted testers" at the end of last year. This addition gives AI Mode the ability to complete tasks for you on the web. For example, you can ask it to find two affordable tickets for the next MLB game in your city. AI Mode will compare "hundreds of potential" tickets for you and return with a few of the best options. From there, you can complete a purchase without having done the comparison work yourself. [...] All of the new AI Mode features Google previewed today will be available to Labs users first before they roll out more broadly.

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Economists say companies generally have to pass along the cost of tariffs. But populists on the left and right say the president may have a point.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Sunday, the Chicago Sun-Times published an advertorial summer reading list containing at least 10 fake books attributed to real authors, according to multiple reports on social media. The newspaper's uncredited "Summer reading list for 2025" supplement recommended titles including "Tidewater Dreams" by Isabel Allende and "The Last Algorithm" by Andy Weir -- books that don't exist and were created out of thin air by an AI system. The creator of the list, Marco Buscaglia, confirmed to 404 Media (paywalled) that he used AI to generate the content. "I do use AI for background at times but always check out the material first. This time, I did not and I can't believe I missed it because it's so obvious. No excuses," Buscaglia said. "On me 100 percent and I'm completely embarrassed." A check by Ars Technica shows that only five of the fifteen recommended books in the list actually exist, with the remainder being fabricated titles falsely attributed to well-known authors. [...] On Tuesday morning, the Chicago Sun-Times addressed the controversy on Bluesky. "We are looking into how this made it into print as we speak," the official publication account wrote. "It is not editorial content and was not created by, or approved by, the Sun-Times newsroom. We value your trust in our reporting and take this very seriously. More info will be provided soon." In the supplement, the books listed by authors Isabel Allende, Andy Weir, Brit Bennett, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Min Jin Lee, Percival Everett, Delia Owens, Rumaan Alam, Rebecca Makkai, and Maggie O'Farrell are confabulated, while books listed by authors Francoise Sagan, Ray Bradbury, Jess Walter, Andre Aciman, and Ian McEwan are real. All of the authors are real people. "The Chicago Sun-Times obviously gets ChatGPT to write a 'summer reads' feature almost entirely made up of real authors but completely fake books. What are we coming to?" wrote novelist Rachael King. A Reddit user also expressed disapproval of the incident. "As a subscriber, I am livid! What is the point of subscribing to a hard copy paper if they are just going to include AI slop too!? The Sun Times needs to answer for this, and there should be a reporter fired."

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European Union foreign ministers on Tuesday agreed to lift the remaining economic curbs on the war-torn country, amid concerns it could slip back into conflict.

Delta can pursue much of its lawsuit seeking to hold cybersecurity company CrowdStrike liable for a massive computer outage last July that caused the carrier to cancel 7,000 flights, a Georgia state judge ruled. From a report: In a decision on Friday, Judge Kelly Lee Ellerbe of the Fulton County Superior Court said Delta can try to prove CrowdStrike was grossly negligent in pushing a defective update of its Falcon software to customers, crashing more than 8 million Microsoft Windows-based computers worldwide.

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