Apple backports CVE-2023–43010 WebKit fix after Coruna exploit kit abused iOS flaws, protecting older iPhones and iPads from memory corruption attacks
Category: mobile phones
Atom-thin material could help solve chip manufacturing problem
Making computer chips smaller is not just about better design. It also depends on a critical step in manufacturing called patterning, where nanoscale structures are carved into materials to form the circuits inside everything from smartphones to advanced sensors.
To create these patterns, engineers use a hard mask, a thin, durable material layer that protects selected regions while the exposed areas are etched away.
“As chips get smaller, the manufacturing process becomes much more demanding,” said Saptarshi Das, Penn State Ackley Professor of Engineering Science and professor of engineering science and mechanics. “The mask used to define these patterns must survive extremely harsh processing conditions. If the mask degrades, the patterns cannot be transferred reliably.”
New BeatBanker Android malware poses as Starlink app to hijack devices
A new Android malware named BeatBanker can hijack devices and tricks users into installing it by posing as a Starlink app on websites masquerading as the official Google Play Store.
The malware combines banking trojan functions with Monero mining, and can steal credentials, as well as tamper with cryptocurrency transactions.
Kaspersky researchers discovered BeatBanker in campaigns targeting users in Brazil. They also found that the most recent version of the malware deploys the commodity Android remote access trojan called BTMOB RAT, instead of the banking module.
Cuffless Devices for the Measurement of Blood Pressure: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association
Cuffless BP devices have the potential to increase access and overcome barriers to BP screening, particularly for underresourced communities. Individuals from these communities—including people from rural areas, with low income, or from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups—often have a higher prevalence of hypertension and uncontrolled BP than their counterparts and face barriers to accessing health care services, including regular BP monitoring and confirmation of office BP with ABPM.32–34
One of the primary barriers to BP screening in underresourced communities is a lack of health care facilities and trained physicians.35 Cuffless devices, which are often portable and convenient and can be incorporated into everyday objects (eg, watches, smartphones), can be deployed in homes, in community centers, among lay community health workers, and by individuals themselves.4,5,36 This accessibility eliminates the need for individuals to travel long distances to receive basic health screenings, making it easier for residents of rural areas, or areas with shortages of health care professionals, to monitor their out-of-office BP regularly.
Cost is a major barrier hindering access to health care and traditional BP monitoring methods for individuals from underresourced populations, many of whom may be uninsured or underinsured. Cuffless BP devices could theoretically reduce costs, particularly when integrated into wearable or mobile devices that consumers purchase for multiple uses.36 However, because of the limitations of cuffless devices, including the need for calibration with additional purchased devices and insufficient accuracy, cost-effectiveness remains speculative.
Alibaba’s Qwen 3
QWEN 3.5 running on iPhone Pro in airplane mode. Full large language model running onan edge device with no network connectivity.
5 is now running fully on device on an iPhone 17 Pro, and that’s a big deal.
Despite its compact size, Qwen 3.5 reportedly outperforms models up to four times larger. It shows strong multimodal capability, meaning it can interpret and reason over images as well as text. It also includes a reasoning toggle, letting users switch between faster responses and deeper step by step thinking depending on the task.
The demo uses a 2B parameter model quantized to 6 bit precision, optimized with MLX for Apple Silicon. That combination allows advanced AI to run locally, without relying on cloud servers.
If this scales, it signals a shift toward powerful, private, on device AI that doesn’t need a data center to compete.
Using tiny ripples at skin level to monitor for possible health problems below
Caltech scientists have developed a method that detects tiny, imperceptible movements at the surface of objects to reveal details about what lies beneath. By analyzing the physics of waves traveling across the surface of an object—whether that be a manufactured product or the human body—the new technique can determine both the stiffness and thickness of the underlying material or tissue. This lays the groundwork for the project’s ultimate goal of enabling inexpensive, at-home health monitoring using little more than a smartphone camera.
“There is information scattered all around us in plain sight that we just haven’t learned to tap into. Our work is trying to leverage that information to recover material properties from inside objects by studying tiny movements on the surface,” says Katie L. Bouman, professor of computing and mathematical sciences, electrical engineering, and astronomy at Caltech and both a Rosenberg Scholar and a Heritage Medical Research Institute (HMRI) Investigator.
Bouman and her colleagues from Caltech presented the technique, called visual surface wave elastography, and its medical applications in a paper presented at the International Conference on Computer Vision in Honolulu last fall. The lead authors are Alexander C. Ogren, Ph.D., and Berthy T. Feng, Ph.D., who completed the work while at Caltech.
Abstract: Challenging the dogma…
Here, Adrian Vella & team show hepatic resistance to glucagon’s effects on amino acid catabolism is not a significant factor in postprandial metabolism, regardless of obesity or hepatic steatosis: type2diabetes MASH Glucagon.
Address correspondence to: Adrian Vella, Endocrine Research Unit, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, 200 First St. SW, 5–194 Joseph, Rochester, Minnesota 55,905, USA. Phone: 507.255.6515; Email: vella.adrian@mayo.edu.
Find articles by Christie, H. in: | Google Scholar | 
1Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, Metabolism and Nutrition, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA.
Abstract: This study is directly relevant to the clinical care of patients with the most common malignant tumor of the peripheral nervous system
While providing fundamental biological insight👇
Harish N. Vasudevan & team reveal transcriptional, functional genetic, and cellular mechanisms of interferon signaling that underlie radiotherapy response in people with MPNST.
Address correspondence to: Harish N. Vasudevan, Helen Diller Cancer Research Building, 1,450 3rd Street, Mail Box 520, San Francisco, California 94,158, USA. Phone: 415.502.4107; Email: harish.vasudevan@ucsf.edu.
Encryption: A Key Guardian of Our Digital Future
By Chuck Brooks and Bill Bowers.
Every time you send a text, pay for groceries with your phone, or use your health site, you are relying on encryption. It’s an invisible shield that protects your data from prying eyes. Encryption is more than just a technological protection; it is the basis for digital trust.
Encryption is more than just safeguarding data; it is also about protecting people. It helps ensure privacy by protecting persons from spying and exploitation. And it is widely adopted to help ensure digital transaction security. For National Security it serves to protect key infrastructure and government communications. And it has a human rights function by providing citizens with peace of mind by ensuring the safety of their personal information. In places where surveillance is widespread, encryption can even defend free expression and opposition. It is a human right in this digital age.
In my book Inside Cyber: How AI, 5G, IoT, and Quantum Computing Will Transform Privacy and Security, I referred to encryption as the “linchpin of privacy and commerce in a connected society.” Without it, the digital economy would crumble under the strain of criminality, fraud, and spying.