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November 11-13 | Maxon User Connect 2024 in Seoul, South Korea! Experience the latest Maxon updates with demonstrations showcasing essential workflows using #RedGiant, #Cinema4D, and #ZBrush. Attendees will have the opportunity for a hands-on #ZBrushForiPad experience!Gain essential creative knowledge on ZBrush, Red Giant and Cinema 4D! You will be able to try out the brand-new ZBrush for iPad at the venue.

Researchers performed DNA testing on the bones highlighted in this image. Paumen, Wargnies and Demory / Fdration Wallonie-Bruxelles / Veselka et al.Back in the 1970s, when archaeologists excavated a skeleton from an ancient graveyard in Belgium, they thought they had found a typical Roman burial. But during a recent reexamination of the bones, researchers noticed peculiarities. For instance, the skeletons spine appeared to be made of both adolescent and adult vertebrae.I started thinking, okay, something really weird is going on, researcherBarbara Veselka, an archaeologist at theFree University of Brussels, tellsNew Scientists Christa Lest-Lasserre.Veselkas team used radiocarbon dating to analyze the individual bones; they also sequenced ancient DNA found in them. They found that the skeleton is made of bones from at least eight unrelated men and women, according to a recent study published in the journal Antiquity. The skeleton contained these five adult foot bones and two adolescent toe bones. Veselka et al.The skeleton was found in the town of Pommerul, near Belgiums border with France. Placed in the fetal position, it was the only intact body in a graveyard containing 76 cremation burials. Because of a bone pin found near the head, researchers initially concluded the burial was Roman, dating to the second or third century C.E., when the Roman Empire covered theGallic lands of present-day France and Belgium.The skeletons bones are actually much older, with the earliest contributor dying nearly 4,445 years ago, per New Scientist. The skeleton contains bones from multiple generations in the lateNeolithic period, who lived thousands of years before the Romansconquered Gaul.Still, the skeleton isnt completely out of place in the Roman cemetery. According to genetic analysis, its skull belongs to a Roman woman of the third or fourth century C.E., whose DNA matches similarly-aged Roman remains in a nearby cemeteryprobably siblings.How did this composite Neolithic skeleton end up with a Roman skull more than 2,000 years later? As the researchers write, Gallo-Roman groups may have disturbed the old burial while interring their own dead. If it was headless, the Romans might have completed it by adding a skull of their own. If not, maybe they replaced the skull. Or maybe they created the entire amalgamated skeleton themselves.Whether the assembly of the bones occurred in the late Neolithic or in the Roman period, the presence of the individual was clearly intentional, write the researchers. The bones were selected, a fitting location chosen and the elements arranged carefully to mimic the correct anatomical order.Whoever composed the burial understood enough about the human skeletal structure to create a convincing puzzle. As Veselka tells New Scientist, They knew what they were doing, for sure.As Jane Holmstrom, a bioarchaeologist at Macalester College who wasnt involved in the research, tellsLive Sciences Kristina Killgrove, this fascinating and complex study may help illuminate Neolithic burial customs. Veselka notes that Pommerul was located near a riveran enduring mark of geographic and spiritual importance. Various groups over time may have wanted to control it.The composite skeleton provides an interesting possibility of land-claiming through burial during the Neolithic, Holmstrom adds, with family groups within the clan asserting claim together, with the Romans furthering the land claim to assert their authority over Gaul.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

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Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn MoreWhile 99% of businesses plan to invest more in security, only 52% have fully implemented multi-factor authentication (MFA), and only 41% adhere to the principle of least privilege in access management.Adversaries, including nation-states, state-funded attackers and cybercrime gangs, continue to sharpen their tradecraft using generative AI, machine learning (ML) and a growing AI arsenal to launch increasingly sophisticated identity attacks. Deepfakes, tightly orchestrated social engineering and AI-based identity attacks, synthetic fraud, living-of-the-land (LOTL) attacks and many other technologies and tactics signal that security teams are in danger of losing the war against adversarial AI.Identity remains one of the hairiest areas of securityin really basic terms: you need authorization (authZ: the right to access) and authentication (authN: the means to access). In computer security, we work really hard to marry authZ and authN, Merritt Baer, CISO at Reco.ai, told VentureBeat in a recent interview.What we have to do is make sure that we use AI natively for defenses because you cannot go out and fight those AI weaponization attacks from adversaries at a human scale. You have to do it at machine scale, Jeetu Patel, Ciscos executive vice president and chief product officer, told VentureBeat in an interview earlier this year.The bottom line is that identities continue to be under siege, and adversaries continued efforts to improve AI-based tradecraft targeting weak identity security are fast-growing threats. The Identity Defined Security Alliance (IDSA) recent report, 2024 Trends in Securing Digital Identities, reflects how vulnerable identities are and how quickly adversaries are creating new attack strategies to exploit them.The siege on identities is actual and growing.Cloud, identity and remote management tools and legitimate credentials are where the adversary has been moving because its too hard to operate unconstrained on the endpoint. Why try to bypass and deal with a sophisticated platform like CrowdStrike on the endpoint when you could log in as an admin user? Elia Zaitsev, CTO of CrowdStrike, told VentureBeat during a recent interview.The overwhelming majority of businesses, 90%, have experienced at least one identity-related intrusion and breach attempt in the last twelve months. The IDSA also found that 84% of companies suffered a direct business impact this year, up from 68% in 2023.The future will not be televised; it will be contextual. Its rare that a bad actor is burning a 0-day (new) exploit to get accesswhy use something special when you can use the front door? They are almost always working with valid credentials, Baer says.80% of the attacks that we see have an identity-based element to the tradecraft that the adversary uses; its a key element, Michael Sentonas, president of CrowdStrike, told the audience at Fal.Con 2024 this year. Sentonas continued, saying, Sophisticated groups like Scattered Spider, like Cozy Bear, show us how adversaries exploit identity. They use password spray, they use phishing, and they use MTM frameworks. They steal legitimate creds and register their own devices.Why identity-based attacks are proliferatingIdentity-based attacks are surging this year, with a 160% rise in attempts to collect credentials via cloud instance metadata APIs and a 583% spike in Kerberoasting attacks, according to CrowdStrikes 2023 Threat Hunting Report.The all-out attacks on identities emphasize the need for a more adaptive, identity-first security strategy that reduces risk and moves beyond legacy perimeter-based approaches:Unchecked human and machine identity sprawl is rapidly expanding threat surfaces. IDSA found that 81% of IT and security leaders say their organizations number of identities has doubled over the last decade, further multiplying the number of potential attack surfaces. Over half the executives interviewed, 57%, consider managing identity sprawl a primary focus going into 2025, and 93% are taking steps to get in control of it. With machine identities continuing to increase, security teams need to have a strategy in place for managing them as well. The typical organization has 45 times more machine identities than human ones, and many organizations do not even know exactly how many they have. What makes managing machine identities challenging is factoring in the diverse needs of DevOps, cybersecurity, IT, IAM and CIO teams.Growing incidence of adversarial AI-driven attacks launched with deepfake and impersonation-based phishing techniques. Deepfakes typify the cutting edge of adversarial AI attacks, achieving a 3,000% increase last year alone. Its projected that deepfake incidents will go up by 50% to 60% in 2024, with 140,000-150,000 cases globally predicted this year. Adversarial AI is creating new attack vectors no one sees coming and creating a new, more complex, and nuanced threatscape that prioritizes identity-driven attacks. Ivantis latest research finds that 30% of enterprises have no plans in place for how they will identify and defend against adversarial AI attacks, and 74% of enterprises surveyed already see evidence of AI-powered threats. Of the majority of CISOs, CIOs, and IT leaders participating in the study, 60% say they are afraid their enterprises are not prepared to defend against AI-powered threats and attacks.More active targeting of identity platforms starting with Microsoft Active Directory (AD). Every adversary knows that the quicker they can take control of AD, the faster they control an entire company. From giving themselves admin rights to deleting all other admin accounts to insulate themselves during an attack further, adversaries know that locking down AD locks down a business. Once AD is under control, adversaries move laterally across networks and install ransomware, exfiltrate valuable data and have been known to reprogram ACH accounts. Outbound payments go to shadow accounts the attackers control.Over-reliance on single-factor authentication for remote and hybrid workers and not enforcing multi-factor authentication to the app level company-wide. Recent research on authentication trends finds that 73% of users reuse passwords across multiple accounts, and password sharing is rampant across enterprises today. Add to that the fact that privileged account credentials for remote workers are not monitored and the conditions are created for privileged account misuse, the cause of 74% of identity-based intrusions this year.The Telesign Trust Index shows that when it comes to getting cyber hygiene right, there is valid cause for concern. Their study found that 99% of successful digital intrusions start when accounts have multi-factor authentication (MFA) turned off. The emergence of AI over the past year has brought the importance of trust in the digital world to the forefront, Christophe Van de Weyer, CEO of Telesign, told VentureBeat during a recent interview. As AI continues to advance and become more accessible, it is crucial that we prioritize trust and security to protect the integrity of personal and institutional data. At Telesign, we are committed to leveraging AI and ML technologies to combat digital fraud, ensuring a more secure and trustworthy digital environment for all.A well-executed MFA plan will require the user to present a combination of something they know, something they have, or some form of a biometric factor. One of the primary reasons why so many Snowflake customers were breached is that MFA was not enabled by default. CISA provides a helpful fact sheet on MFA that defines the specifics of why its important and how it works.Ransomware is being initiated more often using stolen credentials, fueling a ransomware-as-a-service boom. VentureBeat continues to see ransomware attacks growing at an exponential rate across healthcare and manufacturing businesses as adversaries know that interrupting their services leads to larger ransomware payout multiples. Deloittes 2024 Cyber Threat Trends Report found that 44.7% of all breaches involve stolen credentials as the initial attack vector. Credential-based ransomware attacks are notorious for creating operational chaos and, consequently, significant financial losses. Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) attacks continue to increase, as adversaries are actively phishing target companies to get their privileged access credentials.Practical steps security leaders can take now for small teamsSecurity teams and the leaders supporting them need to start with the assumption that their companies have already been breached or are about to be. Thats an essential first step to begin defending identities and the attack surface adversaries target to get to them.I started a company because this is a pain point. Its really hard to manageaccess permissions at scale. And you cant afford to get it wrong with high-privileged users (execs) who are, by the way, the same folks who need access to their email immediately! on a business trip in a foreign country, says Kevin Jackson, CEO of Level 6 Cybersecurity.The following are practical steps any security leader can take to protect identities across their business:Audit and revoke any access privileges for former employees, contractors and admins Security teams need to get in the practice of regularly auditing all access privileges, especially those of administrators, to see if theyre still valid and if the person is still with the company. Its the best muscle memory for any security team to get in the habit of strengthening because its proven to stop breaches. Go hunting for zombie accounts and credentials regularly and consider how genAI can be used to create scripts to automate this process. Insider attacks are a nightmare for security teams and the CISOs leading them. Add to that the fact that 92% of security leaders say internal attacks are as complex or more challenging to identify than external attacks, and the need to get in control of access privileges becomes clear. Nearly all IAM providers have automated anomaly detection tools that can help enforce a thorough identity and access privilege clean-up. VentureBeat has learned that approximately 60% of companies are paying for this feature in their cybersecurity suites and are not using it.Make MFA the standard with no exceptions and consider how user personas and roles with access to admin rights and sensitive data can also have biometrics and passwordless authentication layered in. Security teams will need to lean on their vendors to get this right, as the situation at Snowflake and now Okta logins with 52-character-long user names have been allowing login session access without providing a password. Gartner projects that by next year, 50% of the workforce will use passwordless authentication. Leading passwordless authentication providers include Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), OneLogin Workforce Identity, Thales SafeNet Trusted Access, and Windows Hello for Business. Of these, Ivantis Zero Sign-On (ZSO) is integrated into its UEM platform, combines passwordless authentication FIDO2 protocols, and supports biometrics, including Apples Face ID as a secondary authentication factor.Get just-in-time (JIT) provisioning right as a core part of providing least privileged access. Just-in-Time (JIT) provisioning is a key element of zero-trust architectures, designed to reduce access risks by limiting resource permissions to specific durations and roles. By configuring JIT sessions based on role, workload, and data classification, organizations can further control and protect sensitive assets. The recently launched Ivanti Neurons for App Control complements JIT security measures by strengthening endpoint security through application control. The solution blocks unauthorized applications by verifying file ownership and applying granular privilege management, helping to prevent malware and zero-day attacks.Prevent adversaries and potential insider threats from assuming machine roles in AWS by configuring its IAM for least privileged access. VentureBeat has learned that cyberattacks on AWS instances are increasing, and attackers are taking on the identities of machine roles. Be sure to avoid mixing human and machine roles in DevOps, engineering, production, and AWS contractors. If role assignments have errors in them, a rogue employee or contractor can and has stolen confidential data from an AWS instance without anyone knowing. Audit transactions and enforce least privileged access to prevent this type of intrusion. There are configurable options in AWS Identity and Access Management to ensure this level of protection.Predicting the future of identity management in 2025Every security team needs to assume an identity-driven breach has happened or is about to if theyre going to be ready for the challenges of 2025. Enforcing least privileged access, a core component of zero trust, and a proven strategy for shutting down a breach needs to be a priority. Enforcing JIT provisioning is also table stakes.More security teams and their leaders need to take vendors to task and hold them accountable for their platforms and apps supporting MFA and advanced authentication techniques.Theres no excuse for shipping a cybersecurity project in 2025 without MFA installed and enabled by default. Complex cloud database platforms like Snowflake point to why this has to be the new normal. Oktas latest oversight of allowing 52-character user names to bypass the need for a password just shows these companies need to work harder and more diligently to connect their engineering, quality, and red-teaming internally so they dont put customers and their businesses at risk. VB DailyStay in the know! Get the latest news in your inbox dailyBy subscribing, you agree to VentureBeat's Terms of Service.Thanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here.An error occured.

Sony on Concord's failure: "With new IP, you don't know the result until you actually try it"Company president Hiroki Totoki shared lessons learned from live service shooter's struggles during earnings callImage credit: Firewalk Studios News by James Batchelor Editor-in-chief Published on Nov. 8, 2024 Sony leadership has discussed some of the factors behind the failure of live service shooter Concord.VGC reported that investors asked management multiple questions regarding the game's collapse during the earnings call that followed Sony's most recent financials.Sony president, COO and CFO Hiroki Totoki said, via an interpreter, that the platform holder is "still in the process of learning" when it comes to live service games, but that several areas of improvement of already been identified for future titles."With regards to new IP, of course, you dont know the result until you actually try it," he said."We probably need to have a lot of gates, including user testing or internal evaluation, and the timing of such gates. And then we need to bring them forward, and we should have done those gates much earlier than we did."Also, we have a siloed organisation, so going beyond the boundaries of those organisations in terms of development, and also sales, I think that could have been much smoother."And then going forward, in our own titles and in third-party titles, we do have many different windows. And we want to be able to select the right and optimal window so that we can deploy them on our own platform without cannibalisation, so that we can maximise our performance in terms of title launches."Concord launched on August 23, and was taken offline 11 days later due to low sales. Players were offered a full refund, while Sony said it would work with developer Firewalk Studios "determine the best path forward."Last week, Sony revealed that path ahead meant closure for Firewalk Studios and a permanent shutdown for Concord.Elsewhere in the earnings call, VGC reported that Sadahiko Hayakawa Sony's senior vice president for finance and investor relations emphasised that while Concord failed, the company has seen success with live service launches in 2024."We launched two live-service games this year," he said. "Helldivers 2 was a huge hit, while Concord ended up being shut down. We gained a lot of experience and learned a lot from both."We intend to share the lessons learned from our successes and failures across our studios, including in the areas of title development management as well as the process of continually adding expanded content and scaling the service after its release so as to strengthen our development management system."We intend to build on an optimum title portfolio during the current mid-range plan period that combines single-player games which are our strengths and which have a higher predictability of becoming hits due to our proven IP with live-service games that pursue upside while taking on a certain amount of risk upon release."Hayakawa's comments affirm that Sony will continue to push into the live service space, with the company announcing this time last year that it would launch six such titles by the end of March 2026.

A new iOS 18 security feature makes it harder for police to unlock iPhonesA new iOS 18 security feature makes it harder for police to unlock iPhones / Apple added an inactivity timer that reboots iPhones to a more secure state when they havent been unlocked in a while.By Wes Davis, a weekend editor who covers the latest in tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and more as a tech journalist since 2020. Nov 9, 2024, 4:49 PM UTCShare this story Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty ImagesThere is an apparently new iOS 18 security feature that reboots iPhones that havent been unlocked in a few days, frustrating police by making it harder to break into suspects iPhones, according to 404 Media. 404 Media, which first reported police warnings about the reboots on Thursday, writes that restarted iPhones enter a more secure Before First Unlock, or BFU state. Now, it seems Apple added inactivity reboot code in iOS 18.1 that triggers iPhones to restart after theyve been locked for four days, Chris Wade, who founded mobile analysis company Corellium, told the outlet.The code appears below in screenshots posted by Dr. -Ing. Jiska Classen, a Hasso Plattner Institute research group leader.Both iOS and Android devices enter this BFU state when theyre restarted, requiring you to enter your passcode (or PIN) to unlock your phone, limiting what sort of data forensics experts can extract, according to a blog post from Dakota State Universitys digital forensics lab. Apple didnt immediately respond to The Verges request for comment. The company has steadily made iPhones harder to compromise over the years, putting it at odds with law enforcement and raising the specter of government regulations requiring encryption backdoors. Apple has repeatedly resisted authorities requests to create backdoors, although that hasnt stopped law enforcement from finding its own workarounds.Most PopularMost Popular

Black Friday wont be here for several more weeks, but the holiday promos are beginning to take shape at Amazon, Best Buy, and other retailers. We expect to see steep discounts on a number of gaming goods when many of the early sales kick off next week, but if you want to shop ahead of time, Seagates 2TB Storage Expansion Card for the Xbox Series X / Sis already matching its all-time low of $199.99 ($160 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Seagates online storefront.RelatedWhile pricey, Seagates proprietary expansion cards are a great way to expand the storage capacity of your Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S. The NVMe-based, Microsoft-licensed cards of which there are currently two are incredibly easy to install, fast, and allow you to run games as if they were loaded on your consoles internal memory. That means they support Microsofts Quick Resume function and prevent you from having to shuffle downloads around, which youd have to do if you were to purchase a USB-based external hard drive (those are limited to playing backward-compatible games).Understandably, Sonys approach to expandable storage, which lets PlayStation 5 owners upgrade their console with any PS5-compatible M.2 SSD, is still far more inviting. But Seagates proprietary option has been coming down in price since the introduction of Western Digitals WD_Black C50, and Seagates 2TB model is far easier to stomach now than with its original starting price of $399.99. Heres hoping the current price drop is a sign of steeper cuts to come.$200$200$28029% offProprietary SSD expansion for the Xbox Series X / S consoles. The plug-and-play drives are designed to be as fast as the Xbox internal SSD and are sold in 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB configurations.Other deals and discounts of noteGoogles Pixel Buds Pro 2 are on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and Wellbots for an all-time low of $179 ($50 off), with the latter retailer offering an additional $10 off when you use offer code VERGEBF60 at checkout. Theyre a pretty notable step up from the prior model particularly if you use a Pixel phone with a smaller build, an excellent transparency mode, and some of the best battery life you can get in a pair of noise-canceling earbuds. Read our review.Nomad is running an early Black Friday sale through the end of today, November 9th, allowing you to save 20 percent on a variety of accessories when you use coupon code EARLY20. The promo applies to a few Verge favorites, including the Traditional Leather Case for the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max ($12 off) and a selection of Apple Watch Sport Bands ($12 off), along with the Nomad Stand One ($22 off). The latter isnt as capable as the Stand One Max, but it still offers up to 15W MagSafe speeds and an ultra-premium design made of metal and glass. Read our Stand One review.In some ways, the best Fitbit you can buy is actually the Google Pixel Watch 3. The Fitbit Charge 6 isnt a bad alternative for fitness tracking, though, especially since its fallen to $99.95 ($100 off) at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy. The high-end band features a color OLED screen and a solid suite of fitness-tracking tools, plus EKG, EDA, and SpO2 sensors. It also offers turn-by-turn navigation via Google Maps and a haptic side button, one thats far better than the inductive groove on the previous model. Read our review.

Google Photos continues to get new and improved features on a regular basis, and one of the most recent Android updates has focused on video editing. Even if you dont have the latest Pixel 9 phone (which is required if you want to try out the weird new Reimagine tool), you can now speed up, slow down, and enhance your clips with a few taps as well as trim them down more easily.You can also expect what Google calls AI-powered video presets on both the Android and iOS versions of Google Photos. After the app algorithm analyzes your clips, you get a choice of effects trims, zooms, slow-mos you can apply with a tap. The app takes the role of director and chooses where and how these tweaks should be applied.When the changes arrive on your phone, youll also notice the interface is a little cleaner, with larger icons and bigger text that make it more obvious what youre doing. The idea is its more straightforward than ever to quickly apply a few edits before sharing your clips, without having to open up a separate editor on your phone or computer.Trim toolFirst up, we have what Google describes as improved controls for cutting out extraneous footage at the start and end of your clips though, to my eyes, theres not a huge amount thats different here compared to the previous version of the trim tool.The handles at each end of the clip are a little bigger and thicker, making them easier to hit with a finger press. You also get a timestamp shown onscreen as you drag those handles around, so overall, the edits are a little easier to apply.The trim tool shows up automatically as soon as you edit a video, and you can get back to it by tapping the Video button.Drag the left-hand handle to change where the video starts.Drag the right-hand handle to change the videos end point.Drag the white bar between the two handles to move around the clip.Tap the play button at any point to check your new footage.Choose Save copy to confirm your changes and save a separate clip.The trim tool has a new look. Screenshot: GoogleYou can toggle the auto-enhancement changes on and off. Screenshot: GoogleAuto-enhance toolGoogle Photos now has a new auto-enhance feature you can access, which analyzes your clip and then applies its own choice of color enhancements, while stabilizing the video at the same time.Tap Video then Enhance to apply the automatic enhancements.Tap the play button to see how the updated footage looks.Tap Enhance again to see the difference with and without the tweaks.Choose Save copy to save the enhanced video as a separate file.If youd rather apply the video stabilization without the color enhancements, just tap Stabilize on the Video panel of tools instead.Speed toolSpeed up or slow down your footage. Screenshot: GoogleThe new speed tool in Google Photos gives you more control over the pace of your videos for speeding up and slowing down the action. The effect can be applied to a specific section of your clip or all of it.Tap Video and then Speed to bring up the editor.Use the bars on the timeline to indicate where you want the effect to start and stop.Choose a playback speed under the timeline: from 1/4 speed to 4x the speed.Tap the play button to see how the video now looks.Choose Done, then Save copy when youre happy with the results, to save a separate video file.Its not the most advanced video editing effect youll ever see, but considering it only takes a couple of taps on your phone screen, you can get some impressive results from it.Video presetsAI-powered presets make editing easier. GIF: GoogleUnlike the tools above, which are exclusive to Android, the AI-powered video presets are available in Google Photos for both Android and iOS. Or at least, they will be eventually though they were announced in September, as of this writing, I havent yet seen the presets in the Google Photos apps on either platform.When they do appear, the Presets button will appear between Video and Crop in the options at the bottom of the interface. Select it, and youll see a choice of edits you can apply with a tap: Basic cut, Slow-mo, Zoom, and Track. These will be applied as the Google Photos AI sees fit based on the video content.The example Google gives is a skateboard video, with the action trimmed right down to a key jump, which is also slowed down. Color enhancements are applied at the same time for good measure. As before, you can preview the changes, then tap Save copy to accept the changes and save a new video file, leaving the original untouched.