An experimental reusable rocket developed by the research and development arm of Honda Motor Company flew to an altitude of nearly 900 feet Tuesday, then landed with pinpoint precision at the carmaker’s test facility in northern Japan.

The accomplishment may not sound like much, but it’s important to put it into perspective. Honda’s hopper is the first prototype rocket outside of the United States and China to complete a flight of this kind, demonstrating vertical takeoff and vertical landing technology that could underpin development of a reusable launch vehicle.

While Tuesday’s announcement by Honda was unexpected, the company has talked about rockets before. In 2021, Honda officials revealed they had been working on a rocket engine for at least two years. At the time, officials said a small satellite launch vehicle was part of Honda’s roadmap.

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One-time SMS codes are widely used as the second checkpoint in two-factor authentication (2FA) to sign into everything from banking apps to email accounts. As I’ve written before, though, SMS is one of the least secure 2FA methods, as it can be phished relatively easily.

It turns out these codes may also be visible to other parties besides the sender (the service generating the code) and the recipient (you), increasing the risk that your accounts can be compromised by bad actors. As reported by Bloomberg Businessweek, an obscure third-party telecom service had access to at least one million 2FA codes that passed through its network.

How more than one million SMS codes were compromised

An investigation led by Bloomberg and Lighthouse Reports—based on data received from an industry whistleblower—found that more than a million text messages containing 2FA codes were visible to Swiss company Fink Telecom Services during June 2023. As an intermediary between the companies that generate authentication codes and the users logging into their accounts, Fink handled the messages and had access to their content.

While this is a weakness in SMS—which is unencrypted and relatively easy to intercept—the Fink incident is particularly concerning due to the company’s involvement in the surveillance industry and alleged infiltration of user accounts.

According to the reporting, the messages came from senders like Google, Meta, Amazon, Tinder, Snapchat, Binance, Signal, WhatsApp, and several European banks and went to recipients in more than 100 countries.

Companies commonly use intermediaries to send text messages at cheaper rates, which are possible thanks to large contracts with multiple carriers and the ownership or lease of so-called “global titles”: network addresses that facilitate communication between carriers in different countries. Maintaining privacy and security standards when working with third parties is further complicated by the fact that Fink (and others like it) are often subcontractors not hired directly by the original companies.

Bottom line: If you use SMS as your authentication method, you aren’t guaranteed that no one else has access to your code or that they won’t use it to hack your private accounts.

More secure 2FA alternatives

Unfortunately, many companies continue to rely on SMS for 2FA, but wherever possible, you should opt for other multi-factor authentication (MFA) methods.

The most secure choices are based on WebAuthn credentials, like biometrics or passkeys, and stored on your device or a physical security key. These methods don’t pass unencrypted through a third party, and they are highly resistant to phishing attacks. Authenticator apps like Google Authenticator that generate codes on your device and refresh every 30 seconds are also stronger than SMS.

In general, the more authentication factors required for logging in, the greater the security, though these factors should be independent and not all accessible on the same device.

People in Iran have been having difficulties accessing internet services, mostly foreign websites and messaging apps like WhatsApp. According to The New York Times and NBC News, it was the government’s decision to restrict internet in the country to ward off cyberattacks by Israel as the conflict between the countries escalate. Fatemeh Mohajerani, Iran’s spokesperson, said the government was forced to throttle internet speeds in the country to maintain network stability “given the enemy’s cyber attacks.” Iran reportedly plans to reduce its internet bandwidth by 80 percent. 

Kentinc and Netblocks, companies which track global internet connectivity, told NBC News that Iran’s connection plummeted at around 5:30PM Eastern time on June 17. Iranians have been having issues accessing online services for days, however, with their mobile data networks being completely down in parts of the country and the VPNs they were using to access foreign websites being blocked intermittently. In addition to blocking WhatsApp, the Iranian government urged citizens to delete it from their smartphones, accusing it of collecting information to send to Israel. WhatsApp told AP that it was “concerned these false reports will be an excuse for [its] services to be blocked at a time when people need them the most.”

While Iran’s spokesperson said that the government is blocking and slowing down the country’s internet connection as a way to prevent Israeli cyberattacks, it’s also making it harder for people to get warnings about incoming attacks and to contact loved ones in cases of emergency. And since maps like Google’s also aren’t working, people trying to evacuate are also reportedly getting lost. Iran is urging its citizens to use its national internet services or N.I.N., which remain available and allow messaging using government platforms, but people don’t think they’re secure.

It’s worth noting that Iran also seems to have launched its own cyber attacks on Israel. As The Verge notes, cybersecurity firm Radware reported a surge in cyberattacks on Israel since its strike on Iran. The firm believes they were carried out by Iranian state actors and pro-Iran hacker groups. Iran had been linked to several cyberattacks in the past, including an instance wherein hackers associated with the country stole US voter information and sent intimidating emails to Democrat voters. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/iran-restricts-internet-access-to-ward-off-israeli-cyberattacks-120025170.html?src=rss

The at-home fitness space is more or less dominated by Peloton, which probably makes you think that whether you’re stretching with the company’s app or riding one of its machines, like the Bike, you’re working out alone. One of the major drawbacks of at-home workouts, honestly, is that you miss the collaborative, communal experience of heading to the gym—and in its absence, you can fall off your schedule or lose accountability or motivation altogether. Even though you might assume exercising with Peloton’s offerings is a solo experience—and of course, it can be—the brand makes it surprisingly easy to take classes and do exercises with friends. To add some variety and accountability to your fitness routine, you really should.

How to set up on-demand classes with friends

The Peloton app makes it easy to schedule a ride, stretch, walk, run, or more with a friend. (Note: This feature is technically called “Sessions,” so if you see that terminology, it just means “an on-demand class with friends.”) First, you have to make sure you and the person you want to work out with are following each other’s Peloton profiles. Navigate to any on-demand class in the app (and I do recommend doing this on the phone because it’s much simpler than trying to finagle on the touchscreen of one of Peloton’s proprietary devices, like the Tread or Row), and you will see a row of options. The first is the button to add the class to your Stack, which is like a playlist of classes you can make so all your routines, from stretching to riding to cooling down, flow into each other when you’re ready to work out. The second button is a Schedule, so if you want to, say, take a particular yoga class at noon in two days, you can schedule it so you can get calendar notifications. The third button is the one we want, Invite, while the fourth button is Preload and allows you to preload a class so it doesn’t buffer or suck up too much cell data while you’re taking it. The fifth button is the Bookmark button, which adds a class to a list of ones you want to save to review later.

Obviously, we’re targeting that third button, Invite. Tapping it first brings you to a list of members you follow. Select the one you’d like to work out with—or more; it’s unlimited!—and hit Continue. On the next page, select a date and time you’d like to take the class with your chosen friend(s) and hit Continue again. You can then choose a reason for the joint workout, like a celebration, a birthday, or “just because.” The final screen is a confirmation page that details the class, time, and invitees.

How to take live Peloton classes together

Any time you select a class, whether on your Bike, Tread, Row, phone, tablet, or Roku, you can find that Invite button. You don’t need to pre-schedule with the calendar feature, necessarily. If a friend is available, they can hop on and join you. This is nice because it means you can also do live classes pretty easily. As you enter the class, just look for that Invite button, select the name of the person you’d like to work out with, and proceed as normal.

Waiting for cycling Session to begin.
Credit: Lindsey Ellefson

It goes without saying, but it’s a lot easier to coordinate all of this by text or call rather than just sending random invitations to people. Agreeing on workout type, music genre, and time of day are pretty key components of exercising together effectively, so flag to your friends if there’s a class you’re interested in taking and want them to join, then use the Peloton app to make it all official.

Taking Peloton classes with friends

Once your invitee confirms their attendance, it’s on both of you to show up at the specified time. It’s helpful to set a calendar reminder. From the home page of the app, look for the Calendar icon in the top right. That’s your schedule and you should see the class you pre-scheduled with your friend. Tap on it and hit Add to calendar, then select Google Calendar or iCal and set an alert notification.

Actually taking the class is as easy as opening the app, whether on your phone or a Peloton machine, a few minutes before the start time. From the Home screen, navigate to that Calendar button, then select My schedule in the top left. A countdown to the class you scheduled will appear along with a button that says Start class, which you can tap if you and your friend(s) are ready—or you can just wait for the countdown to finish and start right at the selected time.

I tested this out a few different ways. Once, I did a meditation class with a mutual follower and followed along on my phone. As the class went on, I could see their name under Here now and could send an in-app “high five,” the same as I could to any stranger who might be taking a class at the same time as me. Next, we moved on to the Bike after pre-scheduling a class using the mobile app. There, the same thing: I could see their name on the leaderboard with me, send a high five, and see their output reflected by their name.

To be clear, there isn’t much more to it than that. There’s no audio or video component, meaning you can’t hear or see your friend(s). At the completion of the class, there is no breakdown of your stats vs. theirs or anything like that (although you do get a “Dynamic Duo” achievement badge if it’s your first joint workout). You’re only doing this “together” in the sense that you’re both doing it at the same time, vaguely aware of each other while focusing on your own workout.

I like it, though, because it can introduce some accountability into what might otherwise risk becoming a structureless pursuit. Even just knowing someone is expecting you to hop on your Bike at a certain time can get you to do it. That’s why I love in-person classes so much and am a little weary—but still supportive of—virtual-only options.

Former Cloudflare executive John Graham-Cumming recently announced that he launched a website, lowbackgroundsteel.ai, that treats pre-AI, human-created content like a precious commodity—a time capsule of organic creative expression from a time before machines joined the conversation. “The idea is to point to sources of text, images and video that were created prior to the explosion of AI-generated content,” Graham-Cumming wrote on his blog last week. The reason? To preserve what made non-AI media uniquely human.

The archive name comes from a scientific phenomenon from the Cold War era. After nuclear weapons testing began in 1945, atmospheric radiation contaminated new steel production worldwide. For decades, scientists needing radiation-free metal for sensitive instruments had to salvage steel from pre-war shipwrecks. Scientists called this steel “low-background steel.” Graham-Cumming sees a parallel with today’s web, where AI-generated content increasingly mingles with human-created material and contaminates it.

With the advent of generative AI models like ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion in 2022, it has become far more difficult for researchers to ensure that media found on the Internet was created by humans without using AI tools. ChatGPT in particular triggered an avalanche of AI-generated text across the web, forcing at least one research project to shut down entirely.

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman accused Meta of attempting to poach his developers with $100 million sign-on bonuses and higher compensation packages as the social media giant races to catch up in AI race. Altman said Meta, which has a $1.8 trillion market capitalization, began making the offers to his team members after falling behind in AI efforts. “I’ve heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor,” Altman said on the Uncapped podcast hosted by his brother.

None of his “best people” had accepted Zuckerberg’s offers, he said. Meta has been recruiting top researchers and engineers from rival companies to build a new “superintelligence” team focused on developing AGI. The Facebook parent company has struggled this year to match competitors, facing criticism over its Llama 4 language model and delaying its flagship “Behemoth” AI model.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has a long history of being criticized for coming up with clunky product names, and for changing them so often it’s hard for customers to keep up. The company’s own employees once joked in a viral video that the iPod would have been called the “Microsoft I-pod Pro 2005 XP Human Ear Professional Edition with Subscription” had it been created by Microsoft. The latest gripe among some employees and customers: The company’s tendency to slap “Copilot” on everything AI.

“There is a delusion on our marketing side where literally everything has been renamed to have Copilot it in,” one employee told Business Insider late last year. “Everything is Copilot. Nothing else matters. They want a Copilot tie-in for everything.” Now, an advertising watchdog is weighing in. The Better Business Bureau’s National Advertising Division reviewed Microsoft’s advertising for its Copilot AI tools. NAD called out Microsoft’s “universal use of the product description as ‘Copilot'” and said “consumers would not necessarily understand the difference,” according to a recent report from the watchdog.

“Microsoft is using ‘Copilot’ across all Microsoft Office applications and Business Chat, despite differences in functionality and the manual steps that are required for Business Chat to produce the same results as Copilot in a specific Microsoft Office app,” NAD further explained in an email to BI. NAD did not mention any specific recommendations on product names. But it did say Microsoft should modify claims that Copilot works “seamlessly across all your data” because all of the company’s tools with the Copilot moniker don’t work together continuously in a way consumers might expect.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.