Pentagon awards Microsoft $9.7B deal to centralize software licenses

The goal of the proposed Pentagon program would be to identify "recurring risks, failure modes, vulnerabilities, and systemic weaknesses” in AI systems.

If ever there were a lawsuit in which a jury and judge should have ruled against both the accuser and the defendants, Elon Musk’s suit against OpenAI and Microsoft was it.  The high-profile legal battle pitted the world’s richest man against a company worth more than $3 trillion, another that might soon launch a $1 trillion IPO, and tech execs claiming to have only the good of the world in mind, not mere filthy lucre, while they develop a technology some fear could eventually destroy humankind. The lawsuit was eventually thrown out, but only on technical grounds. Meanwhile, unregulated AI marches on, with Musk, OpenAI and Microsoft all getting richer. The only winner in this suit was hypocrisy. Here’s why. Back to the beginning To understand how this unfolded, we need to go back to OpenAI’s beginnings. The company was founded by current CEO Sam Altman, Musk and others in 2015 — back when AI was a niche technology, used primarily for image and speech recognition, robotics, and experimen

Bitmine and Galaxy Digital may also be eligible for the Russell 1000, an index tracking the largest 1,000 US companies that includes Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple.

Microsoft is previewing a new automatic device isolation capability in Defender for Endpoint’s auto attack disruption tool to help security pros contain cyber attacks in progress on their IT networks. The company announced the capability earlier this month in a column about new features in Defender. There’s no word on when automatic device isolation will be in full production. However, a new SANS Institute research paper warns that, in certain conditions, an attacker could leverage the new function to disable all user accounts. The lesson, said Johannes Ullrich, the institute’s dean of research, is that autonomous AI action tools have to be tuned and tested like any other automation capability. “Automatic isolation and attack disruption are not new concepts,” Ullrich said in an email, “but ideas like these have been used in the past in open source and commercial tools. This feature is most important in organizations with under-resourced IT security teams, as it automates attack respons

IREN's strategic pivot to AI infrastructure, backed by substantial investments, positions it for growth but ties its fortunes closely to Microsoft's plans. The post IREN Limited signs $1.6B deal with Dell for AI cloud systems appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The Pentagon's pushback on SpaceX's pricing highlights the growing tension between government reliance on private tech and cost control challenges. The post Pentagon disputes SpaceX’s $500M plan for Starlink service in Iran appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The Pentagon's pushback on SpaceX's pricing highlights the growing tension between government reliance on private tech and cost control challenges. The post Pentagon disputes SpaceX’s $500M plan for Starlink service in Iran appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Microsoft is preparing to make a significant change to the Secure Boot system in Windows that will impact operations for both clients and servers. In a nutshell: The Secure Boot certificates that Microsoft issued 15 years ago are being replaced by newer ones, with the older certificates set to expire beginning in June. To continue to receive the most up-to-date security protections for the Windows boot-up process, individual users and IT administrators alike need to make sure their Windows devices have the new Secure Boot certificates installed. Have questions? Of course you do. Here are answers to eight key questions about the Secure Boot certificate updates. What is Secure Boot? Secure Boot is a security feature that verifies that all firmware-based software is signed by a trusted certificate when Windows starts up. If something doesn’t match, it gets blocked. This all happens immediately on boot, before Windows or anything else loads. Secure Boot is a part of the UEFI firmware stand