Despite widespread acclaim,Final Fantasy 7 Rebirthfailed to meet Square Enixs commercial expectations upon its PS5 release a year ago. Thankfully for the game, however, its PC release seems to have gone much better, bringing with it a much-needed sales boost.Thats as per Circana analyst Mat Piscatella, who revealed recently on BlueSky that courtesy of its PC launch in January,Final Fantasy 7 Rebirthsaw significantly increased sales over the course of the month in the United States.In fact, the open world action RPG ranked third in the regional monthly sales charts, behind only Call of Duty: Black Ops 6andMadden NFL 25, climbing up from #56 in December. Meanwhile, theFinal Fantasy 7 RemakeandRebirthdouble pack climbed up to 16th place, a sharp increase from #265 in December.Upon releasing for PC in late January,Final Fantasy 7 Rebirthsaw a peak of over 40,000 concurrent Steam players. Later, Piscatella reported that it had topped US sales charts for that week.Final Fantasy 7 Rebirthis available on PC and PS5. As per leaks, it is also in development for Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2.January 2025 Top 20 Best-Selling Premium Games U.S. (Dollar Sales, Physical and Digital from digital data sharing publishers, excludes add-on content) Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 2025-02-21T14:01:06.664ZFinal Fantasy VII: Rebirths January Steam debut led to a strong sales boost for the title. Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth placed 3rd overall on the monthly chart after finishing December at 56. The Final Fantasy VII Remake & Rebirth Twin Pack ranked 16th overall during January. Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 2025-02-21T14:01:06.666Z

Modern vision-language models have transformed how we process visual data, yet they often fall short when it comes to fine-grained localization and dense feature extraction. Many traditional models focus on high-level semantic understanding and zero-shot classification but struggle with detailed spatial reasoning. These limitations can impact applications that require precise localization, such as document analysis or object segmentation.Moreover, models that primarily rely on contrastive loss sometimes do not perform well in tasks needing refined spatial cues. There is also a challenge in supporting multiple languages and ensuring fair representation across diverse cultural contexts. Addressing these issues is essential to create models that are both technically robust and socially responsible.Google DeepMind Research Releases SigLIP2: a family of new multilingual vision-language encoders with Improved Semantic Understanding, Localization, and Dense Features. SigLIP 2 extends the original imagetext training objective by blending captioning-based pretraining with self-supervised approaches like self-distillation and masked prediction. This combination is designed to enhance both the overall semantic representation and the models ability to capture local, detailed features. The training process also includes a mix of multilingual dataprimarily English with a smaller proportion of non-English contentand employs de-biasing methods to ensure fairer outcomes.Technical Details and BenefitsAt its core, SigLIP 2 is built on the foundation of Vision Transformers, ensuring backward compatibility with earlier versions. This means that users can replace the model weights without the need to overhaul their entire system. The model uses a sigmoid loss instead of the traditional contrastive loss, which allows for a more balanced learning of both global and local features.In addition to the sigmoid loss, SigLIP 2 incorporates a decoder-based loss. This helps in learning tasks like image captioning and region-specific localization, ultimately leading to better performance in dense prediction tasks. The models design also includes a MAP head for pooling features from both the image and text components, ensuring that the learned representations are both robust and detailed. Another notable technical aspect is the introduction of the NaFlex variant. NaFlex supports native aspect ratios by processing images at various resolutions using a single checkpoint. This method helps maintain the integrity of the images spatial information, which is particularly important in tasks where the aspect ratio can influence the outcome, such as in document understanding or OCR.Furthermore, the use of self-distillation and masked prediction improves the quality of the local features. By training the model to predict masked patches, it learns to focus on subtle details that are crucial for tasks like segmentation and depth estimation. This careful design allows even smaller models to achieve improved performance through enhanced distillation techniques.Results, Data Insights, and EvaluationThe experimental results in the paper support the technical choices made in SigLIP 2. Across several benchmarksincluding zero-shot classification tests on ImageNet, ObjectNet, and ImageNet ReaLthe model shows consistent improvements over earlier models. The benefits are particularly clear in tasks that demand detailed spatial understanding.For multilingual imagetext retrieval tasks, such as those evaluated on Crossmodal-3600, SigLIP 2 performs competitively with models designed exclusively for multilingual data. At the same time, it maintains strong performance on English-centered tasks. This balance is achieved through careful data curation and training methods that emphasize both semantic richness and localization precision. In dense prediction tasks, such as semantic segmentation, depth estimation, and surface normal prediction, the models advantages are again evident. When tested on open-vocabulary segmentation frameworks like Cat-Seg, SigLIP 2 consistently reports higher mean Intersection-over-Union (mIoU) scores compared to its predecessors and other open-weight models. These results are a testament to the models ability to capture intricate details in images.Localisation tasks also benefit from the models refined training. For instance, in referring expression comprehension and open-vocabulary detection, the performance improvements are clear. The model not only aligns text and image features more effectively but also demonstrates a reduced tendency toward biased associations. In evaluations of representation bias, SigLIP 2 shows a marked decrease in unfair object-to-gender associations, underscoring the importance of the de-biasing techniques used during training. The research presents a range of comparative tables and figures that detail these improvements. The data suggest that as the model size increases, the benefits of these training enhancements become even more pronounced. Across various configurations and resolutions, the models performance remains robust, making it a strong candidate for both research and practical applications.ConclusionIn conclusion, SigLIP 2 represents a measured and well-engineered step forward in the development of vision-language models. It integrates established techniques with thoughtful innovations to address known challenges such as fine-grained localization, dense prediction, and multilingual support. By moving away from solely contrastive losses and incorporating additional self-supervised objectives, SigLIP 2 achieves a more balanced representation of visual data. Its careful handling of native aspect ratios through the NaFlex variant further improves its applicability in real-world scenarios where image integrity matters.The inclusion of multilingual data and de-biasing measures reflects an awareness of the diverse contexts in which these models operate. This approach not only improves performance across various benchmarks but also ensures that the model is better aligned with broader ethical considerations in AI. Overall, the release of SigLIP 2 is a promising development for the vision-language research community. It offers a versatile, backward-compatible framework that can be readily integrated into existing systems. The models ability to deliver reliable performance across a range of taskswhile maintaining fairness and inclusivitysets a thoughtful benchmark for future research in this field.Check outthePaper, GitHub Page and Models on Hugging Face.All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also,feel free to follow us onTwitterand dont forget to join our75k+ ML SubReddit. Aswin AkAswin AK is a consulting intern at MarkTechPost. He is pursuing his Dual Degree at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He is passionate about data science and machine learning, bringing a strong academic background and hands-on experience in solving real-life cross-domain challenges.Aswin Akhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/aswinak/Boosting AI Math Skills: How Counterexample-Driven Reasoning is Transforming Large Language ModelsAswin Akhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/aswinak/Google DeepMind Releases PaliGemma 2 Mix: New Instruction Vision Language Models Fine-Tuned on a Mix of Vision Language TasksAswin Akhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/aswinak/KGGen: Advancing Knowledge Graph Extraction with Language Models and Clustering TechniquesAswin Akhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/aswinak/ViLa-MIL: Enhancing Whole Slide Image Classification with Dual-Scale Vision-Language Multiple Instance Learning

They dont make them like Danny Dolinski anymore. As played with characteristic off-kilter charisma by Christoph Waltz, the aging contract killer at the center of Old Guy swaggers around in a vintage leather jacket, exchanges playfully cutting banter with his criminal associates, and sports a shaggy coiffure. That all prompts a disappointing indicator of this crime-comedys joke-telling ability: The 90s called: They want your haircut back. In short: Dolinski is another eras idea of cool, something thats made abundantly clear when hes assigned to train the overzealous upstart (Cooper Hoffman) who could take his place as Londons top hired gun. And once our homicidal odd couple picks up a third wheel played by Lucy Liu, Old Guy starts to feel like a bygone eras idea of a cool movie, the sort of thing Quentin Tarantino or Steven Soderbergh wouldve populated with underworld smart alecks and crate-digging needle drops when Dolinski was at his peak. And I say this as someone of the age to have a sense of nostalgia for such things. This just doesnt land.The throwback vibes are subtle, but the exploration of aging is not: Just as Old Guy director Simon West has fewer opportunities to pull out his old Con Air flash these days, Dolinski is frustrated by his employers lowered expectations and a bum shooting hand. That seems like it should be enough for a diverting-but-unmemorable caper, but this one unfortunately crams in a whole buddy-movie arc and a halfhearted romance, too. And even then, it needs to pad out a plot involving an ill-fated trip to Belfast and a hostile mob takeover to get across the 90-minute mark. There are times when Old Guy mimics the rope-a-dope tactics of its protagonist, its outward doddering giving way to a level of surprise and impact it doesnt seem capable of a targets relative pulled out of the line of fire with a little How the Grinch Stole Christmas routine, or a briefly pulse-elevating car chase. But scenes like these are exceptions; so many others are driven by characters and relationships, and those are dragged down by Dolinski's failure to convincingly or meaningfully click with Hoffmans Wihlborg or Lius Anata. (You have to hand it to screenwriter Greg Johnson: His script may not be particularly novel or memorable, but the character names sure are.)At least Old Guy has a firm grasp on its actual old guy. Much of that credit goes to Waltz, whos in his element and sporting an immaculate mustache as the underestimated charmer talking his way through sticky situations. Theres a lot of work put in to earn our sympathy for him, which makes sense given his line of work: Hes a professional murderer, but hes a professional murderer in a vulnerable state, recovering from surgery and threatened by the presence of young gun Wihlborg. In one of Old Guys few moments of filmmaking panache, West breaks the slow-motion, party-hearty euphoria of Dolinskis post-work drinks, drugs, and dancing routine to show us what he looks like from an outsiders perspective. As Wihlborg approaches his reluctant partner in a bar, what we see is a rhythmless boob dancing with women half his age. Its a funny image, but its also a little sad. But the script keeps such emotions in reserve, turning them off and on with a plot-centric inconsistency thats also applied to Dolinskis supposedly debilitating injury. Sometimes hes hobbled, sometimes hes an action hero, and it makes no sense.Old Guy GalleryBut Old Guy just cant settle for being a decent character study of a GOAT in decline. In the scenes between hit men, I heard a yearning for (and, in the case of Waltz, the voice of) the downtime banter of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown. The love story in the midst of all this aspires to the fireworks of the George Clooney-Jennifer Lopez scenes in Out of Sight, but only gives off a few sparks the chemistry just isnt there between Waltz and Liu or their characters.Old Guy is at least aware enough of its limitations to keep its action sequences sensible, showing Dolinskis particular set of skills through on-the-fly ingenuity rather than any superhuman gun-fu. It doesnt make for the most thrilling shootouts, and his deadly accuracy eventually robs any standoff of its suspense, but it is amusing to see him take out multiple adversaries at once by applying his skills with munitions in the kitchen.At least Old Guy has a firm grasp on its actual old guy.The generational warfare, meanwhile, has all the depth and heat of a newspaper op-ed about millennials financially ruinous appetite for avocado toast. Dolinski debates whether Wihlborg is a member of that touchy-feely cohort, or if his strident teetotaling and hypebeast fashions mark him as a member of Gen Z a quasi-quip that only emphasizes Old Guys sweaty uncertainty about its wunderkind assassin. Its possible that the hardline stances he spouts are signs of someone whos not sure who he is, either, but for all of the sincerity Hoffman lends to his characters unearned convictions, Wihlborg never really comes into focus. Its fitting, then, that our first glimpse of his killer instincts takes place in the fuzzed-out background of a close-up on Waltz.Pity poor Lucy Liu, stranded in an extraneous subplot thats only there to deliver her character one who runs a karaoke joint and into Dolinskis arms. Around the midway point, Old Guy bafflingly mucks with its own momentum by cutting between Dolinski and Wihlborgs most trying job and Anatas date with a nice doctor. What could possibly be going on here thats as important as the high-stakes hit on one of their rival organizations top men? Whatever the reason, it speaks to the amount of filler bulking up the story because it has precious little to say. The dancefloor interludes really pile up across this hour-and-a-half, though none are as flagrantly drawn out as Dolinski and Wihlborgs arrival at their handlers dog-track HQ, where they pause to watch a hairy metaphor for their relationship do a slo-mo lap through the dirt.Theres no real tension here, just inevitability: When Dolinski instructs an injured colleague to look at a picture postcard of a tropical paradise, a clock ought to pop up onscreen, counting down to the shot of that mopes blood splattering across the postcard because theres no subversion of cliche to be found here. Uneasy alliances will be struck, fragile trusts will be betrayed, and the full range of our main hitmans righteous fury will be uncorked.Its certainly not impossible for these previously loved puzzle pieces to be taken out from the box and arranged in such a way that they can still come together into something cohesive. But here its hard to get too invested in the outcome, or what happens to any of these characters, when most of their interactions are stitched together from hermetically framed shots that seal Waltz, Hoffman, and Liu off from one another. Its just one more facet of Old Guy that makes this ensemble piece feel like several parallel one-man shows.

OpenAI on Friday revealed that it banned a set of accounts that used its ChatGPT tool to develop a suspected artificial intelligence (AI)-powered surveillance tool.The social media listening tool is said to likely originate from China and is powered by one of Meta's Llama models, with the accounts in question using the AI company's models to generate detailed descriptions and analyze documents for an apparatus capable of collecting real-time data and reports about anti-China protests in the West and sharing the insights with Chinese authorities.The campaign has been codenamed Peer Review owing to the "network's behavior in promoting and reviewing surveillance tooling," researchers Ben Nimmo, Albert Zhang, Matthew Richard, and Nathaniel Hartley noted, adding the tool is designed to ingest and analyze posts and comments from platforms such as X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Telegram, and Reddit.In one instance flagged by the company, the actors used ChatGPT to debug and modify source code that's believed to run the monitoring software, referred to as "Qianyue Overseas Public Opinion AI Assistant."Besides using its model as a research tool to surface publicly available information about think tanks in the United States, and government officials and politicians in countries like Australia, Cambodia and the United States, the cluster has also been found to leverage ChatGPT access to read, translate and analyze screenshots of English-language documents. Some of the images were announcements of Uyghur rights protests in various Western cities, and were likely copied from social media. It's currently not known if these images were authentic.OpenAI also said it disrupted several other clusters that were found abusing ChatGPT for various malicious activities -Deceptive Employment Scheme - A network from North Korea linked to the fraudulent IT worker scheme that was involved in the creation of personal documentation for fictitious job applicants, such as resums, online job profiles and cover letters, as well as come up convincing responses to explain unusual behaviors like avoiding video calls, accessing corporate systems from unauthorized countries or working irregular hours. Some of the bogus job applications were then shared on LinkedIn.Sponsored Discontent - A network likely of Chinese origin that was involved in the creation of social media content in English and long-form articles in Spanish that were critical of the United States, and subsequently published by Latin American news websites in Peru, Mexico, and Ecuador. Some of the activity overlaps with a known activity cluster dubbed Spamouflage.Romance-baiting Scam - A network of accounts that was involved in the translation and generation of comments in Japanese, Chinese, and English for posting on social media platforms including Facebook, X and Instagram in connection with suspected Cambodia-origin romance and investment scams.Iranian Influence Nexus - A network of five accounts that was involved in the generation of X posts and articles that were pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas, and pro-Iran, and anti-Israel and anti-U.S., and shared on websites associated with an Iranian influence operations tracked as the International Union of Virtual Media (IUVM) and Storm-2035. One among the banned accounts was used to create content for both the operations, indicative of a "previously unreported relationship."Kimsuky and BlueNoroff - A network of accounts operated by North Korean threat actors that was involved in gathering information related to cyber intrusion tools and cryptocurrency-related topics, and debugging code for Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) brute-force attacksYouth Initiative Covert Influence Operation - A network of accounts that was involved in the creation of English-language articles for a website named "Empowering Ghana" and social media comments targeting the Ghana presidential electionTask Scam - A network of accounts likely originating from Cambodia that was involved in the translation of comments between Urdu and English as part of a scam that lures unsuspecting people into jobs performing simple tasks (e.g., liking videos or writing reviews) in exchange for earning a non-existent commission, accessing which requires victims to part with their own money.The development comes as AI tools are being increasingly used by bad actors to facilitate cyber-enabled disinformation campaigns and other malicious operations.Last month, Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) revealed that over 57 distinct threat actors with ties to China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia used its Gemini AI chatbot to improve multiple phases of the attack cycle and conduct research into topical events, or perform content creation, translation, and localization."The unique insights that AI companies can glean from threat actors are particularly valuable if they are shared with upstream providers, such as hosting and software developers, downstream distribution platforms, such as social media companies, and open-source researchers," OpenAI said."Equally, the insights that upstream and downstream providers and researchers have into threat actors open up new avenues of detection and enforcement for AI companies."Found this article interesting? 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The crossover comic book fans have been waiting for is finally happening (again).During a presentation at the ComicsPRO retailer expo, the editors in chief of DC Comics and Marvel announced that they will be joining forces for a crossover that will be published later in 2025.While not plot details or creators have been revealed as of yet, the crossover will supposedly consist of two separate issues: One calledDC/Marvel and the otherMarvel/DC.DC/MarvelDC/Marvelloading...READ MORE: The Worst Marvel Comics Ever MadeThis is the first time DC and Marvel had crossed into each others universes in recent years, butsimilar events have happened many times before. Superman and Spider-Manfirst interacted in 1976sSuperman vs. The Amazing Spider-Manby Gerry Conway and Ross Andru. In early 1981, Batman and the Hulk met in a special issue as well. In 1982, the two hottest properties among the two companiescollided in a well-received one-off issue calledThe Uncanny X-Men and the New Teen Titans.In the 1990s, there was a slew of crossover comicsfrom the two companies includingBatman/Punisher: Lake of Fire,Green Lantern/Silver Surfer: Unholy Alliances,Batman and Captain America,Batman and Spider-Man, and evenDarkseid vs. Galactus: The Hunger.In 1996, the two companies released a hugemini-series calledDC Versus Marvel(orMarvel Versus DC,depending on which publisher released that particular issue), which saw characters from each fictional universe battle, with the outcomes determined in some cases by reader votes. (Spoiler alert: Readers voted for Wolverine to beat Lobo. Sorry Jason Momoa.)The short-term result of the battles was a brief period where the two universes were combined into the Amalgam Universe, which featured new characters created by combining one Marvel and one DC hero or villain. (Super-Soldier was Superman mixed with Captain America; Amazon was Wonder Woman mixed with Storm, and so on.)By the mid-2000s, relationships between the two companies had cooled considerably, and that put an end to the Marvel and DC crossovers for decades. But with the comic book industry not in the healthiest shape, both companies could use a boost and a major meeting of the twowill surely sell a lot of copies.Get our free mobile appThe Most Overrated Superhero MoviesWhile all of these films are varying degrees of okay to good, theyre not nearly as great as their reputations suggest.

Looking forthe most recentMini Crossword answer?Click here for today's Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.Today'sNYT Mini Crosswordis the biggest of the week, as Saturday's always is. Today's isn't too tough, though 6-Across, "cutting device in a woodworking shop," could have been many different words for tools. Need some help with today's Mini Crossword? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.The Mini Crossword is just one of many games in the Times' games collection. If you're looking for today's Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visitCNET's NYT puzzle hints page.Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini CrosswordLet's get at those Mini Crossword clues and answers. The completed NYT Mini Crossword puzzle for Feb. 22, 2025. NYT/Screenshot by CNETMini across clues and answers1A clue: Size between sm. and lg.Answer: MED4A clue: Sharp parts of forksAnswer: TINES6A clue: Cutting device in a woodworking shopAnswer: BANDSAW8A clue: Louise ___, Pulitzer-winning author of "The Night Watchman" and "The Mighty Red"Answer: ERDRICH9A clue: Faux meat option at ThanksgivingAnswer: TOFURKY10A clue: Songs, informallyAnswer: TUNES11A clue: Drug also called acidAnswer: LSDMini down clues and answers1D clue: Consciously focused on the present momentAnswer: MINDFUL2D clue: Evasive maneuversAnswer: ENDRUNS3D clue: Wished forAnswer: DESIRED4D clue: Kind of deck with four suits: wands, cups, swords and pentaclesAnswer: TAROT5D clue: Tackles of the quarterbackAnswer: SACKS6D clue: "Oh yeah? Wanna ___?"Answer: BET7D clue: Preschooler's repeated questionAnswer: WHYHow to play more Mini CrosswordsThe New York Times Games section offers a large number of online games, but only some of them are free for all to play. You can play the current day's Mini Crossword for free, but you'll need a subscription to the Times Games section to play older puzzles from the archives.

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1 million stolen credit cards given away on dark web forum.gettyBack in the day, carding forums were the busiest of online crime hangouts, selling packs of stolen credit card data to anyone with the cash. That was then; now, you are more likely to find a roaring trade being made on the dark web in the likes of stolen passwords and account credentials, phishing exploit kits and malware-as-a-service platforms. Which isnt to say that carding is dead. Far from it, it would seem. A new report has revealed that the B1ack Stash crime forum has just given away more than a million stolen credit cards for free.Stolen Credit Cards Handed Out For Free On Dark Web ForumA Feb. 21 report by Andrea Draghetti, the head of threat intelligence at D3Lab, revealed that a well-known illegal marketplace and carding site called B1ack Stash has dropped a free giveaway of more than a million stolen credit cards to its users. The massive collection of sensitive data containing over 1 million unique credit and debit cards, was published to the criminal forum on Feb. 19 and contained six archives comprising a total of 1,018,014 cards.It is understood that the data included such highly sensitive information as the primary account number of the credit cards concerned, along with expiration dates and the card verification value, CVV2, security code. But thats not all; there are also cardholder details such as their full name, address, date of birth and telephone number as well as email address. Pretty much everything you would need to commit credit card fraud or launch phishing attacks against the cardholder.Credit Cards Skimmed And Used As Marketing ToolThe analysis indicates that the data was likely stolen using web skimming techniques, Draghetti said; This method involves inserting malicious JavaScript code into compromised e-commerce payment pages, intercepting sensitive data entered by users in real-time. The stolen cards themselves are organized by type, be that credit or debit, and further indexed based on the issuing bank and country of origin. The dumps also include magnetic stripe data, allowing criminals to create physical card clones, Draghetti warned.This isnt the first time that a criminal enterprise has distributed stolen data in such a way. Draghetti pointed out that a previous such promotion was used by the BidenCash credit cards site to promote the marketplace to a wider criminal audience. It is thought that such marketing, especially in order to attract new users to the B1ack Stash criminal forum, was the driver behind the free stash release. After the initial free drop, Draghetti said, additional cards were made available for purchase, typically priced around $25 each.Holders of any credit cards, whether you know if they have been compromised or not, are advised to monitor bank statements for any suspicious or unusual activity. Better to be safe than sorry.

Infostealer malware is a real and present danger to your passwords.gettyConsidering just how many infostealer malware warnings have been issued recently, from macOS-specific threats, to those targeting a broad sweep of Gmail and Outlook email users, there can be little doubting that cybercrime actors are coming for your passwords. Now the true reach of the infostealer malware threat has been laid bare by a threat intelligence agency which specializes in leveraging dark web data, and the picture it paints is a scary one. Heres what you need to know.Infostealers Behind 3.9 Billion Stolen Passwords Shared By HackersMore than 4.3 million machines were infected by infostealer malware across 2024, responsible for an astonishing 330 million credentials being compromised, according to the latest KELA state of cybercrime report, published Feb. 20. And if you thought that was a shocking number, I hope you are sitting down as it gets even worse. The KELA analysts said they had observed 3.9 billion passwords shared in the form of credentials lists that appear to be sourced from infostealer logs. Just three strains of this insidious malware threat, Lumma, StealC, and Redline, were responsible for 75% of all infected systems. Underground economies, from malware-as-a-service to stolen credential marketplaces, contributed to a powerful infrastructure supporting a range of malicious activities, David Carmiel, CEO at threat intelligence analysts KELA, said.Malicious activity that includes the likes of both ransomware attacks and espionage campaigns. Infostealers appeal, the report suggested, lies in their efficiency and scalability, enabling attackers to compromise large volumes of accounts, both personal and corporate. By doing so, this particular malware menace becomes something of a self-fulfilling password theft prophecy, with lists of compromised credentials being sold on underground criminal marketplaces that are used to aid further attack campaigns and garner more credentials that can be sold and so on. Almost 40% of the infected machines to be found within KELAs data lake included credentials for sensitive corporate systems such as content management systems, email, Active Directory Federation Services, and remote desktop. In all, accounting for nearly 1.7 million bots and 7.5 million compromised credentials. Based on KELAs analysis, the report stated, the dataset primarily (almost 65%) contained personal computers that had corporate credentials saved on them and thus obtained by infostealer malware.To help mitigate the threat from infostealer malware, KELA recommended that multi-factor authentication be implemented across all accounts, critical systems isolated to limit the opportunity for lateral movement by attackers, and advanced email filtering solutions deployed to prevent phishing attempts. If you value your accounts and your data, then you better take action sooner rather than later. The threat actors certainly arent waiting and KELA analysts only expect the infostealer threat to your passwords to increase during 2025.

Hailee Steinfeld credits her personal trainer father for her love of fitness and how she balances work and play.And she's certainly been working hard.The American singer and actor, best-known for her roles in the "Pitch Perfect" franchise and "True Grit," will this year star alongside Michael B. Jordan in the gritty horror movie "Sinners."When she's not working, the 28-year-old who lives in LA can often be found working out. Keeping active has always been part of her life, Steinfeld told Business Insider. That doesn't look set to change considering she's engaged to Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen.Balance comes in the form of leisurely Sunday morning pancakes and Friday night margaritas.In the latest installment of BI's "5 to 9" series, where celebrities share how they spend the hours they're not working, the Oscar, Golden Globe, SAG, and BAFTA-nominated actor shares her morning and evening routines.How do you start the day?I get up between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. I try to be on the early side of that, but I've recently become a snooze hitter.I like to workout first thing to help me start my day with as clear a mind as possible. It helps me get everything in order because the rest of the day normally becomes a blur.Have you always loved fitness? Hailee Steinfeld with her fianc Josh Allen. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images My dad is a personal trainer, which is the greatest thing in the world. Because of that, health, wellness, and movement have always been priorities in my life. He is the greatest example of understanding the importance of it without feeling any pressure to do so.As I get older, I take so much more care in taking care of myself and getting that movement in. My workouts vary depending on my schedule and what I have to bring to the table that day. If I'm feeling exhausted, a two-hour intense workout is not going to serve me.Working out has become something I do for my mental health as much as physical. Whether it's 15 minutes or an hour, it's a space for me to turn everything else off and focus on myself and what my body is capable of. It's about getting in there and challenging your mind and your body. That's why I'm constantly changing my workout routine.What do you like to have for breakfast?Oh god, I'm a big breakfast person. Often, I just have a bowl of oatmeal and a banana before working out, but if we're talking about a Sunday breakfast, I love avocado toast and pancakes with a little whipped cream.Delicious. Do you make your own pancakes, order in, or go out?I love to make them myself but it doesn't always go as planned, so I do sometimes go out. Then you get the guaranteed taste and presentation. When I make them, it's one or the other.Cooking and margaritasWhat do you do when you come home after work?I have gotten so much better at coming home and leaving the day at the door. Even if I've had a great day, it's time to come home and turn my phone off. If I don't, I can start the day scrolling then come home and it's still emails and calls and texts and social media and all the things. Your brain doesn't stop.I'm lucky to live in beautiful warm weather so if I can, I like to be in nature, hear birds chirp, and look at the trees and leaves blowing in the wind. I feel like that's become a huge part of my after-work decompress process. Hailee Steinfeld (left) with some of her "Pitch Perfect" castmates in 2015. Kevin Winter/Getty Images What do you have for dinner?Cooking is very therapeutic for me. I love to flip to a random page in a recipe book and just go for it. I am always working on a signature dish. I love a good one-pot recipe because it's easy, and I feel confident that there's not a lot of room to mess up. But I love experimenting.There are some people in this world who are blessed and are just good at cooking. There are others who have had to work at that. I am in that process right now. Learning how to cut vegetables properly, for example, can make you feel really empowered.What do you like to drink? Hailee Steinfeld with her new drink, Angel Margarita. Angel Margarita I have a beautiful bar and when I moved into my home I thought, "I can't wait to have friends over and have a signature cocktail I can make them." A margarita is my go-to, and I've been trying to figure out how to make a perfect one.And now I have that in Angel Margarita, my new ready-to-drink margarita [Steinfeld spoke to Business Insider to mark the drink's launch]. I wish my margaritas tasted like that when I make them in my bar, but I don't have to do that anymore.My ideal night out or night in is just good company, great food, and great drink, and I think a margarita goes with whatever I'm trying to make in the kitchen.There's something that feels very sophisticated about having a little drink while you're cooking.You nailed it on the head. With cooking, it does make you feel sophisticated. It's your own space, you're in control of what you're making and how you're making it. And then with a beautiful, wonderful-tasting drink on the side, add in a couple of people that you love, it doesn't get much better than that.'Peaky Blinders' and skincareIs skincare a big part of your evening routine?I love a skincare moment. As time goes on, I take more interest in understanding what works for my body, my skin, and my routine. It's about washing the day away, decompressing, and those moments of quietness, calmness, and breathing.Do you like to read or watch TV in the evenings?I can't believe I'm about to admit this as I'm so far behind, but I have one episode left of "Peaky Blinders." That's been a big part of the wind-down, an episode of "Peaky." But I don't know what the heck I'm going to do when I finish that tonight. We're going to have to go back to the drawing board.You can feel a bit bereft when that happens. Moving on, do you generally sleep well?It depends, generally well but maybe not long enough. It's tough when you're traveling and not in your own space, but nothing a little white noise or calming music can't help you get through.Have you always struck a good balance between following healthy principles and looking after yourself with enjoying life and having fun? Or has that taken time to work out?A bit of both. I think I've always had a good balance, I look to my parents for that. They're both incredibly hardworking people but they love a good time and to celebrate their hard work.I love to work hard. I love what I do, and it's hard to keep doing that if you don't take care of yourself. But part of taking care of yourself is celebrating your achievements and life itself.I think I've learned how important it is to surround yourself with people you love, who lift you up, and make you feel good and vice versa.