Mario Nawfal

The internet just had one of its WORST weeks in years, and some in the cyber world are already calling it “BLACK OCTOBER.” Here’s what went down: •⁠ ⁠PHP, which runs an estimated 70% of the web’s backends, rushed out emergency fixes for 2 critical flaws. Japan’s Prime Minister personally urged businesses to patch or take their sites offline, and AWS spotted exploitation attempts 4 days before the fix even landed. •⁠ ⁠A flaw in Signal’s calling system could let the person on the other end keep LISTENING, and possibly watching, after you hang up. It’s been fixed, so update the app on every device you use. •⁠ ⁠An Indian certificate authority’s security keys were so weak that one of them was literally the number 4. Anyone holding them could have faked a trusted certificate for ANY website, and Mozilla, Google and Apple all moved to block them. •⁠ ⁠GitLab patched a perfect 10/10 severity flaw that lets attackers with no account run code on self-hosted servers. The bug had been sitting there for 12 years. •⁠ ⁠A hacker used AI agents to break into more than 100 companies, including John Deere and SharkNinja, at roughly $50 per break-in. •⁠ ⁠The FBI and CISA say SafePay ransomware has hit more than 600 critical infrastructure organizations across 4 continents since 2024. •⁠ ⁠Data on more than 5.7 million California public school students, including disability status, was stolen through a testing contractor. •⁠ ⁠Hosting platform Railway had customer secrets stolen, and researchers have tied about $371,000 in crypto thefts to the breach. •⁠ ⁠Zeabur, another hosting platform, got breached for the 2nd time in 3 months, exposing 321,810 accounts, and announced it’s shutting down for good. Half these holes were found by AI, and the other half were exploited by it. Welcome to the future. Sources: OfficeChai, Forkast, The Hacker News, BleepingComputer, Help Net Security / Writer: Julie

WTF!! 😬 Writer: Ian t.co/R5LUKukEzZ

🇯🇵 Japan is turning to AI to simulate cyberattacks after security flaws in PHP, a programming language used by millions of websites, caused widespread disruptions earlier this week. The vulnerabilities have triggered millions of hacking attempts worldwide, forcing Japanese banks, airlines, railway operators and government agencies to temporarily suspend online services. SoftBank has even disabled its mobile emergency alert system during maintenance, leaving some customers without earthquake and tsunami warnings. Japan now plans to use AI to identify vulnerabilities before hackers exploit them, as the technology makes cyberattacks increasingly automated and difficult to prevent. Source: Reuters / Writer: Mhedi

🇵🇰 Imran Khan’s sons haven’t spoken to their father in over six months... and now all three of his sisters are behind bars too It used to be one phone call every three months, and now there’s nothing, with nobody laying eyes on him in two months. Qasim Khan and Sulaiman Khan say even a Supreme Court order for a private hospital only got him a trip to a government one and straight back to his cell: “Pakistan are now going against Supreme Court orders to keep him in isolation.” If a former prime minister’s sisters can land in a cell, nobody in Pakistan is out of reach. @Kasim_Khan_1999

🇺🇸 Nick Shirley went real deep on goals: If you want real progress, DO THINGS YOURSELF, even when it’s scary. Stop waiting for company or permission. Take the first step alone, keep going through setbacks, and double down on what works. He points to Charlie Kirk, who started alone on college campuses and stood by his beliefs when they weren’t popular. Nobody else shares your exact mission. Waiting for the perfect moment only keeps you stuck. @nickshirleyy / Writer: Lucas

Russia plants a flag with a drone... Ukraine blows it up... with a drone 😂 Writer: Ian t.co/ENG0q9yaDM

🇩🇪 Berlin wants to take over 144,000 apartments from private landlords. And pay them BILLIONS less than they're worth on paper. Die Linke, which won last month's election, is negotiating with the Social Democrats and Greens to bring the properties into public ownership and curb soaring rents. Any company owning more than 10,000 apartments in Berlin would have to give up every flat above that line, with legislation planned for 2028. And here's where things get VERY expensive. Berlin wants to cap compensation at €16 BILLION, roughly €100,000 per apartment and more than 40% below what the landlords have them on their books for. Europe's biggest landlord, Vonovia, faces an especially nasty hit. Its 120,000 affected flats are valued at €20.4 BILLION. Berlin would pay roughly €12 billion, leaving an €8.4 BILLION gap, equivalent to about 60% of the company's entire market value! Vonovia’s CEO calls the plan “unconstitutional,” and a rival landlord warns Germany becomes “uninvestable” if it goes through. Berliners voted for the idea back in 2021, and the city's housing shortage remains severe. Berlin has a housing crisis, angry renters, and now some VERY angry billion-euro landlords. What could possibly go wrong, right? Source: FT / Writer: Julie

🇵🇰 Imran Khan’s sons say Pakistan’s government wants their father DEAD... and he fears ending up like Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi Three years of pressure never broke him into a deal that would end his political career, so the plan now, as Qasim Khan and Sulaiman Khan see it, is to make him vanish from public life, and they haven’t forgotten the bullets fired at him before he was ever jailed: “It’s very clear they want him dead.” If Islamabad wants to put those fears to rest, the fastest way is opening that cell to his family and independent doctors. @Kasim_Khan_1999

🇮🇳 A look at the monumental levels of INSANITY at India's circuses. This episode was all about whether a man would survive having a massive rock dropped onto his cushioned chest. Writer: Mhedi t.co/9gxPZQAmSk

China's approach to workplace safety 😬 Writer: Ian t.co/SiMNeWqw5J

🇵🇰 EXCLUSIVE: IMRAN KHAN'S SONS SAY THE PAKISTANI GOVERNMENT IS TRYING TO KILL THEIR FATHER! I spoke again with Qasim and Sulaiman Khan, and this conversation was the most heartbreaking. Not only is their father, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, still in solitary confinement, but his three courageous sisters, Aleema, Uzma and Noreen, have now also been arrested And when @PTIofficial supporters hit the streets, many were arrested, beaten, and even killed! Imran Khan’s sons say they haven't spoken to their father in over 6 months, nobody has seen him for 2 months, and they're increasingly worried about his deteriorating health. I asked them the hardest question of all: Do they still believe they’ll ever see their father again? Qasim admitted, he has very little hope, but they will never stop fighting I told them both I wouldn't give up hope. And I meant it. @Kasim_Khan_1999

This breaks my mind By 2030, we're cooked Writer: Ian t.co/WmlKhAqYYj

🇺🇸 This woman decided it was worth getting a tan that makes her look like a badly cooked piece of meat so she too could be a victim of ICE. It was terrible, she said. They are so racist, she said. 🤣 Writer: Mhedi t.co/emrijuzjeS

Should have bought a Tesla 🤣 Writer: Ian t.co/1HuOgWrcQQ

🇨🇳🇳🇱🇨🇦 China says it bought 65 TONNES of gold in 4 months. Goldman Sachs estimates 148. That's one hell of a difference! From May through August, Goldman reckons Beijing bought more than DOUBLE what it officially reported. Even August's 25 tonnes was higher than China's declared 20, and that was the smallest gap in months! And the official numbers are hardly modest. China has been buying gold for 23 straight months, with September marking its biggest monthly purchase in nearly 3 years. Beijing isn't alone in this gold rush. Goldman estimates central banks worldwide snapped up 79 tonnes in August, more than 4 TIMES their pre-2022 monthly average of 17. But they’re not just buying gold, they're also moving what they already hold OUT of North America. The Dutch central bank shifted 86 tonnes of gold reserves from New York and Ottawa to London, citing growing geopolitical unrest. Gold holdings at the New York Fed also fell by 40 tonnes in August alone. Nobody's officially breaking up with the dollar. But central banks seem awfully interested in having a VERY shiny Plan B. Sources: Fortune, Goldman Sachs, DNB / Writer: Julie

This has to be one of the luckiest guys ever hit by a drone Writer: Ian t.co/KVaRA66R04

Grok Bot's computer just got 3X faster. And that's only ONE of the upgrades. It can now read and reply to your 𝕏 DMs, jump into 𝕏 threads when you tag it, and remember what you discussed on recent phone calls. Need research done? Tag your bot on 𝕏. Need your messages handled? Let it help. Want to connect more of your apps? New integrations are rolling out too. Cleaner chat cards, fewer notifications and easier ways to manage bots across your team. Every week, there's a little more you can hand over to Grok Bot. Less for you to handle. @Grok @Bot @X @spacexai / Writer: Annette, Designer: Janné

If you're going to smoke drugs, maybe find somewhere more chill to do it 😂 Writer: Ian t.co/vJOJAx3k9v

She asked her grandma to give a message for her future husband, and she basically politely said she's FOR THE STREETS 🤣 Writer: Mhedi t.co/SyFIdjz6zE

This guy was having an argument with his wife and couldn't take it anymore, so he jumped out of his apartment window 😬 Writer: Ian t.co/fj2hWpaRRb

🇷🇺🇺🇦 Forget trench warfare, it's now pipeline warfare in Ukraine This is the moment when Russian troops were reportedly trying to cut into a pipe being used by Ukrainians, who opened fire on them before it could be fully breached Writer: Ian t.co/4ADGgwMVVY

🚨BREAKING: 🇮🇱🇵🇸 West Bank shooting injures 5 Israelis, 2 of whom are in critical condition Two gunmen opened fire at the Judea Junction on Route 35, with IDF soldiers returning fire and killing them  Writer: Ian t.co/YHP4CPANaU

🇦🇺 Apple fans LINE UP in Melbourne for the iPhone Duo launch! 📲 The first customer even wore a blazer matching the Star White model. Australia is among the first countries to get it, with prices starting at A$3,499. The wait is over, and the first buyers are getting their hands on it. Writer: Lucas t.co/kSfGaUKIlG

🇺🇸 Trump endorses Max Engling for Indiana Secretary of State praising the lifelong Hoosier and former Senate staffer as a true MAGA Warrior! “Max Engling has my Complete and Total Endorsement to be the next Secretary of State of Indiana — HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!” Engling better deliver too. Trump does not take kindly to being let down... Writer: Bri

🇨🇦Pushing body and mind to the absolute limit. Canadian diver, Molly Carlson made history off the coast of Newfoundland as the first woman to dive off an iceberg. What started as a journey with her own mental health turned into the scariest, most powerful jump of her life…and she NAILED IT! “I’ve always seen icebergs as 10% of what everyone sees and then 90% under the surface what nobody is seeing and what people are struggling with.” Writer: Bri t.co/md8LM3PDMo

🇰🇵 The YouTuber Harry Jaggard showed up in NORTH KOREA to ask for the KIM JONG UN HAIRCUT He brought a barber in Pyongyang a photo of the leader and walked out with the signature style for $8, plus a head massage. North Korea will lock you up for the wrong song or the wrong haircut if you’re local, but a tourist can walk in and ask for the supreme leader special. Turns out the rules get a little flexible when the customer is paying in dollars. Writer: Lucas t.co/yZfhHCR3fv

🇺🇸 The Pentagon and Lockheed just shook on a 10-year, 850-jet F-35 deal worth tens of billions Production stays at 156 a year, Lockheed kicks in $7 billion for unspecified "initiatives," and nobody has said what the whole thing costs or saves. Congress still has to sign off, the House wants proof of at least 5% savings plus full spare parts on every jet, and neither chamber has authorized the decade of maintenance that's half the point. A previous five-year maintenance deal died because nobody could show it saved money or improved readiness. The Air Force told Congress yesterday it needs 1,509 combat-ready fighters by 2035 after losing 81 airframes to Iran. The answer this week is a deal that locks in the same output for ten years, on a jet whose newest copies are parked for training because the upgrade isn't cleared for combat. Source: Breaking Defense / Lockheed Martin / Writer: Daniel

🇫🇷 Tucker says the first thing you notice in the Paris riot footage is that MOST of the people DON'T LOOK FRENCH He argues that many people in the clips appear to have African or North African backgrounds, pointing to France’s colonial history and decades of immigration from French-speaking African countries. His broader argument is that France stopped tracking origins as immigration accelerated, making the scale of the change harder to measure. When you bring in large numbers from places that have long struggled with stability, he argues, the conditions tend to follow. The footage, in his view, simply makes the demographic shift impossible to ignore. Source: @TCNetwork / Writer: Lucas

🚨🇺🇸 Palmer Luckey and the man who brought back the dire wolf are building CAPTAIN AMERICA PUPS... $200 million worth of cloned and gene-edited good boys for the Pentagon The problem Warhound is solving is real: the Pentagon runs 2,200 dog teams, buys 80% of them from Europe while bidding against China and Russia for the same litters, and has to purchase 200 dogs to field 100 because the rest wash out with bad hips, bad eyes or cancer. Warhound biobanks the best Malinois and Shepherds that already passed, clones them, edits out the career-ending genes, and straps on Anduril armor, eye and ear protection and goggles tied into its battlefield network so dog, handler and drones share one picture. First dogs in two years, sold as “Canine-as-a-Service,” with the Humane Society certifying training and reuniting retirees with their handlers. Anyone who has worked next to a military dog knows they find what sensors miss and go where machines can’t, and losing half of them to genetics before they deploy is a waste the troops have eaten for decades. Lamm calls it the Captain America dog program. A $1.2 billion valuation for the goodest boys ever made, and WORTH EVERY CENT. Source: TechCrunch / Writer: Daniel