Microsoft’s Security team analyzes more than 6.5 trillion security signals a day to identify trends that could affect the digital landscape that we all live in. After scanning more than 470 billion email messages that have been sent and received by customers of its Office 365 platform, the company reports that malicious phishing attacks are on the rise, and not by a small margin — by a massive 250 percent. Worse, techniques used by scammers are becoming more proficient and harder to detect.
In Microsoft’s Security Intelligence Report — Volume 24, the team acknowledged that technology such as machine learning has been able to reduce a significant number of phishing attacks from succeeding, however, these manipulative attacks are still on the rise. Scammers who are choosing to run phishing attacks, a practice that aims to deceive a user and request sensitive information while masquerading as a trustworthy entity, have also begun to step up their game by diversifying their attacks.
According to Microsoft’s report, techniques used by phishers include domain spoofing, domain impersonation, user impersonation, text lures, credential phishing links, phishing attachments, and links to fake cloud storage locations. Using these methods phishing emails can appear to be sent from official domains or personal while presenting malicious files and links for a user to access. Emails may also contain malicious file attachments to aid the process.
When accessing your email, it is essential to take precautions against phishing — a practice that targets both individuals and businesses. Never send sensitive information such as bank account information or passwords within an email, and always be sure to check the address from which an email was sent carefully. If ever in doubt, contact the person or institution in question to verify if they had sent you a legitimate email or if it might be fraud.
Microsoft’s report also revealed information on malware attacks such as ransomware and crypto jacking. Overall, users encountering malware have decreased by around 34 percent from last year. Microsoft notes that many malicious organizations chose to abandon high-maintenance ransomware attacks for more low-effort, and lucrative, crypto-jacking campaigns — an attack in which malware is unknowingly installed onto a user’s machine, using its resources to generate cryptocurrencies for the attacker.
Did you think hitting delete on your AI chatbot conversation actually makes it disappear? Georgia Tech researchers just proved that's not entirely true. They have built a forensic tool called ORISA that can dig deleted conversations from your phone and even rebuild them into a working chatbot session you can keep talking to.
How can ORISA bring deleted AI conversations back?
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Two residents of Chicago have filed a lawsuit in the US over claims that robots run by Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics captured their facial and hand measurements without consent, bringing renewed attention to the food delivery robots. The cases raise a troubling question: If a robot delivers food to your door, can it also be gathering sensitive information about you?
According to a report by The Associated Press, the proposed class-action lawsuits were filed in Cook County on Oct. 9 and allege violations of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The complaints claim that the robots’ cameras and LiDAR sensors captured information on customers’ faces and hands as they approached the machines to pick up their orders. Both have denied the allegations.