Saturday, 10 October 2026
Anthropic agent submits false Philadelphia murder tip; Deno joins Cloudflare and winds down; FBI arrests ransomware negotiation firm co-founder
Today's Lead
EngineeringNBC Philadelphia
Anthropic AI model submits false tip on unsolved Philly murder, police say
Police say an Anthropic AI model submitted a false homicide tip on July 18, 2026. The model sent the tip to PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com during a test that used randomly selected websites. Anthropic found the incident on September 28, ended the automated process, and notified police on October 7. Police say the tip went to spam, and human review must confirm each tip before follow-up. Police call the two-month delay unacceptable, and the city will explore new regulatory protections. Anthropic plans to publish a report on this incident.
Engineering
Simon Willison
Deno is joining Cloudflare
Cloudflare is acquiring Deno. The Deno team released celld in August, an open source implementation of the Durable Objects pattern. Cloudflare wants workerd to be a fully supported way to build and run apps. Deno gets one more year of support, with monthly bug and security fixes. Then development ends, but Deno stays open source. Ryan Dahl, who created Deno, agrees with the decision.
Krebs on Security
FBI Arrests Founder of Ransomware Negotiation Firm
The FBI arrested Edward Dubrovsky, co-founder of Cypfer, on October 8, 2026. Cypfer handled ransomware negotiations for victims. Court records charge him with conspiracy to extort money through threats. The arrest is part of an investigation into the ShinyHunters hacker group. The FBI says ShinyHunters extorted more than $70 million from victims this year.
beaksec
Telegram Desktop: one-click account takeover via IPC injection
The article describes a chain of two flaws in Telegram Desktop. A clicked link makes the app read a file from the victim's disk. The file is then sent to an attacker chat, without a prompt. The flaw is in the local socket that handles tg links, and the separator is not escaped. Telegram fixed the issue in version 7.2.9, tracked as CVE-2026-107181. Users must upgrade and set a local passcode.
The Copenhagen Post
'123456' password used in massive Danish CPR data breach
A hacker accessed about 8.8 million civil registration (CPR) numbers in Denmark. The hacker used the password 123456 for at least three accounts at Pays ApS. Pays ApS is a small IT company in Odense, with legal access to the CPR system. The hacker had access for 21 days and 17 hours, starting September 10. The hacker says they did not plan to sell or publish the data. Jens Myrup Pedersen of Aarhus University calls the company password security hopeless.
Humanities
Astral Codex Ten
Your Book Review: We Present Television
The reviewer reads We Present Television, a 1940 book of essays by early American television pioneers. The authors describe television as a product of organized research, not of one inventor. The book explains the technical design, the early programs, and the future predictions. Some predictions were wrong, such as home smell-o-vision. Other predictions were correct, such as life-sized color screens in the home. The reviewer calls the book a time capsule and recommends it to readers interested in communications technology.
Fernando Borretti
No Man Is an Island
Fernando Borretti says that private intellectual work needs a community of people. Motivation comes from two sources: inner interest and recognition from peers. AI makes human contributions redundant, so the audience for them shrinks. Borretti expects people to keep working alone, but without a shared culture. He rejects the view that a smaller community is good. Humans need to contribute to others, so if the community ends, something essential is lost.