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Hackers target Microsoft Entra accounts in device code vishing attacks

Threat actors are targeting technology, manufacturing, and financial organizations in campaigns that combine device code phishing and voice phishing (vishing) to abuse the OAuth 2.0 Device Authorization flow and compromise Microsoft Entra accounts.

Unlike previous attacks that utilized malicious OAuth applications to compromise accounts, these campaigns instead leverage legitimate Microsoft OAuth client IDs and the device authorization flow to trick victims into authenticating.

This provides attackers with valid authentication tokens that can be used to access the victim’s account without relying on regular phishing sites that steal passwords or intercept multi-factor authentication codes.

PromptSpy is the first known Android malware to use generative AI at runtime

Researchers have discovered the first known Android malware to use generative AI in its execution flow, using Google’s Gemini model to adapt its persistence across different devices.

In a report today, ESET researcher Lukas Stefanko explains how a new Android malware family named “PromptSpy” is abusing the Google Gemini AI model to help it achieve persistence on infected devices.

“In February 2026, we uncovered two versions of a previously unknown Android malware family,” explains ESET.

Google blocked over 1.75 million Play Store app submissions in 2025

Google says that through 2025, it blocked more than 255,000 Android apps from obtaining excessive access to sensitive user data and rejected over 1.75 million apps from being published on Google Play due to policy violations.

The tech giant’s annual review of Android and Google Play security reveals how effective the implemented protection measures were in maintaining an ecosystem with honest developers and compliant apps.

“We’re constantly improving our policies and protections to encourage safe, high-quality apps on Google Play and stop bad actors before they cause harm,” Google says.

Police arrests 651 suspects in African cybercrime crackdown

African law enforcement agencies arrested 651 suspects and recovered over $4.3 million in a joint operation targeting investment fraud, mobile money scams, and fake loan applications.

As INTERPOL revealed on Wednesday, Operation Red Card 2.0 identified 1,247 victims between December 8 and January 30 while targeting cybercrime operations linked to over $45 million in financial losses.

Authorities across 16 countries also seized 2,341 devices and took down 1,442 malicious websites, domains, and servers during this joint action coordinated by the African Joint Operation against Cybercrime (AFJOC).

Artificial intelligence in medicine: How it works, how it fails

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming healthcare, with large language models emerging as important tools for clinical practice, education, and research. To use it safely and effectively, healthcare professionals need to understand how it works, and how it fails. Using practical clinical examples, the authors explain the subset of AI called large language models, highlighting their capabilities and their limitations.

Key Points

  • AI is trained on vast amounts of data, which can itself be biased, leading to biased results.

Triplet superconductivity—physicists may have found the missing link for quantum computers

Many physicists are searching for a triplet superconductor. Indeed, we could all do with one, although we may not know it yet—or understand why. Triplet superconductors could be the key to achieving the most energy-efficient technology in the future.

“A triplet superconductor is high on the wish list of many physicists working in the field of solid state physics,” said Professor Jacob Linder. He works at NTNU’s Department of Physics, more specifically at QuSpin—a research center where physicists grapple with some of the gnarliest questions you can imagine. “Materials that are triplet superconductors are a kind of ‘holy grail’ in quantum technology, and more specifically quantum computing,” explained Linder.

He and his colleagues are now on the trail of this triplet superconductor—much to the excitement of physicists worldwide. “We think we may have observed a triplet superconductor,” said Professor Linder.

Cheaper green hydrogen? New catalyst design cuts energy losses in AEM electrolyzers

Producing clean hydrogen from water is often compared to storing renewable energy in chemical form, but improving the efficiency of that process remains a scientific challenge. Researchers at Tohoku University have now developed a catalyst design that helps hydrogen form more smoothly under alkaline conditions, a key step toward practical green hydrogen production.

The work is published in the journal ACS Catalysis.

Red blood cells serve as a primary glucose sink to improve glucose tolerance at altitude

Martí-Mateos et al. show that red blood cells explain improved glucose tolerance at high altitude. By manipulating red blood cell number, they determine that these cells are necessary and sufficient for hypoxic hypoglycemia. This highlights red blood cells as unappreciated glucose regulators and reveals novel strategies to treat diabetes.

AI tool debuts with better genomic predictions and explanations

Artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm. In biology, AI tools called deep neural networks (DNNs) have proven invaluable for predicting the results of genomic experiments. Their usefulness has these tools poised to set the stage for efficient, AI-guided research and potentially lifesaving discoveries—if scientists can work out the kinks. The findings are published in the journal npj Artificial Intelligence.

“Right now, there are a lot of different AI tools where you’ll give an input, and they’ll give an output, but we don’t have a good way of assessing the certainty, or how confident they are, in their answers,” explains Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Associate Professor Peter Koo. “They all come out in the same format, whether you’re using a large language model or DNNs used in genomics and other fields of biology.”

It’s one of the greatest challenges today’s researchers face. Now, Koo, former CSHL postdoc Jessica Zhou, and graduate student Kaeli Rizzo have devised a potential solution—DEGU (Distilling Ensembles for Genomic Uncertainty-aware models). DNNs trained using DEGU are more efficient and more accurate in their predictions than those learning via standard methods.

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