https://x.com/UniqueMongolia/status/2110963656011760078

It enables the hacking of your phone or computer using ads on your screen—without any need to trick you into clicking anything.

“This is the first-ever public confirmation of zero-click mercenary spyware delivered via targeted ads,” said the Canadian research group, known as Citizens' Lab.

It is already in wide use, with millions of cases, and has hit some well known organizations.

“It was used to infect devices at Al Jazeera with Candiru’s spyware,” said the group. Candiru is a Tel Aviv company specializing in cyber-espionage. The United Nations was also targeted.

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THROUGH A LOOPHOLE

How does it work? Most people think of ads as just pictures: but they also contain code designed for “targeted advertising” – and it is that invisible step that is taken advantage of by a firm called Discover-Tech.

The Israel firm has a software platform called Controlium which uses ads to harvest your identity and IP address.

You can then be selected as a target for hacking, in which a mercenary spyware firm sends a malicious code containing spyware to your device, the researchers said in a lengthy report.

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DATA GOES TO CYBER-ESPIONAGE FIRMS

The Tel Aviv company has relations with a number of cyber espionage groups.

“Discover-Tech ads are used to infect and profile on behalf of mercenary spyware vendor Candiru,” the report said.

“We also detail connections between Discover-Tech and another mercenary hacking company, Bindecy, as well as connections with Intelos, a mercenary ADINT firm.” (ADINT stands for advertising intelligence.)

The result is a new type of danger, which the researchers called “AdFection” – because you end up with a computer infected through ads.

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MILLIONS OF VICTIMS

While the process is promoted as an ad placement system, the hacking puts ordinary people in danger of industrial or other forms of espionage, researchers at Citizen Lab warned.

Multiple screens at Al Jazeera were infected by spyware through the system, for example.

“Our research showed large-scale data collection from millions of devices involving Discover-Tech and Candiru,” the report said.

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STEPS FOR PROTECTION

The Toronto watchdog group say that companies need to take a number of steps to protect themselves from espionage.

- Use ad-blocking software.

- Never click Yes to on-screen offers to give you “targeted ads”.

- Block such ads at your firm's gateway level if you can.

- Get your company cyber-security staff to watch specifically for “adfection” attacks.

- If you use advertising on site, try to limit the ads to those of trusted partners.

- Ad agencies must audit their list of groups whose ads they distribute.

The researchers contacted Discover-Tech Ltd, Candiru (Integrity Labs), Bindecy, and others, before publishing the report for comment. None of them responded.

A link to the full report is supplied in the comments.

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The reaction to the Yandex strikes is starting to look rather bot-like itself.

The same claim about Russian propaganda accounts going silent, repeated over and over. Where are the accounts, the posting data, the attribution?

Instead, the same Cloudflare graph of automated web requests gets passed around as proof.

People seem so pleased with the conclusion that they’ve stopped asking how anyone reached it. That willingness to repeat a story because we want it to be true is what bothers me.

🇮🇷🇮🇳| That phone call from Rezaei to Doval not a conversation but a showdown

October 12 2026 Tehran

Mohsen Rezaei Secretary of Iran Supreme National Security Council placed a call to India National Security Advisor Ajit Doval.

This was not exchange of views. It was not discussion on matters of mutual concern. It was Tehran telling New Delhi your double game is over.

India thought it could play both sides forever

India buys 8.6 billion dollars worth of weapons from Israel. India ships 2596 consignments of military equipment to Israel. India uses Israeli Pegasus spyware to monitor its own journalists lawyers and opposition figures. India aligns with Washington within Quad to contain China. India signs 2030 Roadmap with UK.

At same time India maintains friendly relations with Iran. India has investments in Chabahar Port. India imports crude oil from Iran. India has embassy in Tehran.

Playing both sides. Deceiving both sides.

But Rezaei call was message. You cannot play both sides anymore.

Why now

Because Strait of Hormuz is in Iran hands.

Over 60 percent of India crude oil imports pass through Strait of Hormuz. India refineries Jamnagar Kochi Mangalore rely on tankers from Persian Gulf. India natural gas imports also pass through this waterway.

Iran has torched three non compliant tankers in three days. Third one was just hit and set ablaze in Strait of Hormuz.

For every barrel of Israeli weapons India buys Iran withholds barrel of oil from India.

This is not sanction. This is not threat. It is geographical fact. Rules of passage for Strait of Hormuz are set by Tehran. Indian tankers must comply or else they will end up burning at sea just like GEM NO 2.

Why this call

Because India stance on Yemen is wavering. Pakistan has intervened in Yemen. Saudi Arabia has deployed approximately 10000 desert warfare troops from Pakistan 25th Mechanized Division along Saudi Yemen border. Mecca Defense Treaty has been activated.

What is India doing. India has not condemned Saudi war on Yemen. India has not condemned US Israeli aggression against Iran. India has not condemned genocide in Gaza.

What is India doing. India is signing new arms purchase agreements with Israel. India is shipping weapons to Israel.

Rezaei asks Doval. Which side are you on.

India has 9 million citizens in Gulf.

This is not abstract geopolitics.

Nine million Indian citizens work in Gulf countries Saudi Arabia UAE Qatar Kuwait Bahrain and Oman. They remit over 40 billion dollars in foreign currency to India annually. This is one of India largest sources of foreign exchange.

If Strait of Hormuz and Bab el Mandeb Strait were to close simultaneously economies of Gulf states would collapse. Gulf oil exports rely on these two waterways. If oil cannot get out Gulf state finances will collapse. If Gulf finances collapse 9 million Indian workers will be laid off. If 9 million Indian workers lose jobs India foreign exchange inflows will collapse. If India foreign exchange collapses India economy will collapse.

Iran is telling India. You can keep buying Israeli weapons. But you need to think carefully. Are weapons more important or are livelihoods of 9 million people more important.

India has no options left.

India wants to maintain strategic autonomy. India wants to play both sides. India wants to cooperate with Washington within Quad while remaining friendly with Iran.

But this is not 2010. This is no longer era where India can straddle fence between US Israel axis and Iran.

US Fifth Fleet has withdrawn 1000 kilometers from Persian Gulf. US base in Bahrain has been severely damaged by Iranian strikes. Both of Saudi Arabia oil export routes are within firing range of Axis of Resistance. Yemeni armed forces control Bab el Mandeb Strait.

India thinks it is chess player. India is pawn. India thinks it is hedging its bets. India is losing on both sides.

Rezaei called Doval not to make request but to deliver notification.

India must choose. Tehran is awaiting answer.

Long live Iran. Long live Resistance.

happyt oexplain · 5h ago
I'm 40, and I am not suicidal, but I've definitely felt those thoughts more than ever in my life in the past two years. I wake up two or three times every night from anxiety dreams. I began drinking too much, but luckily I was able to get out of that habit. Between (some of) the effects of AI on my career and hobbies, and the effects of politics on my country and even my own town, and many more problems, I can count more things I feel love and passion for that have been demeaned or destroyed in the past decade than such things that persist.

And this isn't even to mention money, and what my future is looking like, despite having every possible intrinsic and external advantage in The Greatest Country on Earth.

I've had one same-aged friend kill themselves, and I try to be attentive to the signals being put out by everybody in my circle.

ryanbiggg · 4h ago
I turn 39 this year and am just finding more and more ways to become irrelevant. I can’t be the only one so these stats make sense to me. Fortunately, Australia has a good start on what mental health care should look like and its subsidised (or at least a few sessions are).

I was made redundant in August and despite being a 20 year career vet who has done many different langs, I still can’t find a new job.

My skills as a developer are no longer required because the all knowing robot can (apparently) do what I need to do. I’ve heard multiple companies now using it to ship stuff all the way into production without any human intervention at all. This feels to me like driving the car without holding onto the wheel.

The side hustle I had of writing books to teach people development is over — they can just ask the robot instead. I was writing a new book about how developers can train up others, but have put that on hold (due to losing my job which was that thing, and because of AI)

I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to do here to provide for my family.

hermannj314 · 3h ago
44, unemployed since July, on a cross country train trip trying to decide if it is worth going on. Stood on a bridge a bit too long the other day just wondering what the point is.

It is over for a lot of us in IT. It isn't going to get better, it is going to get worse very quickly. Rather than tell myself a convenient lie, I'd rather try to figure out why to keep living in a world like this.

Anyone going through the same thing, I hope you find something worth living for.

BREAKING: Trump considering firing Defense Secretary Hegseth after the midterms in an effort to take the blame of the unpopular Iran war off of himself and onto Hegseth in order to "protect his legacy" and "reputation as an anti-war president," per multiple initial reports.

From https://jillstein.net/#evidence:

On April 27, 2024, students at Washington University in St. Louis asked Jill Stein, then the Green Party’s candidate for president, to stand with them as they protested the university’s ties to Boeing, a major supplier of the weapons used in Israel’s assault on Gaza.

The protest was peaceful until the university ordered mass arrests. Police charged the crowd, and an officer rammed a bicycle into Stein and the demonstrators beside her. Roughly 100 people were arrested.

Two and a half years later, the charges against the others have been dropped. Jill Stein alone is being prosecuted, accused of assaulting a police officer and trespassing.

The charges are bogus and clearly an attack on free speech. Dr. Stein is asking for donations and petition signatures. This is from a recent e-mail:

The genocide in Palestine rages on at the center of this turbulent, historic moment – as you know. In 2024, with your help, our presidential campaign elevated the demand to end the genocide and the US weapons enabling it, forcing it to the forefront of national presidential debate.

As a result of our unwavering advocacy – in particular, standing with Washington University (St. Louis) students peacefully protesting genocide in 2024 – I now find myself fighting false criminal charges of assaulting a police officer and trespassing. Of 100 protestors arrested, I alone am now facing trial and up to 18 months in prison if convicted. My next court appearance is Oct. 29.

If you’re in a position to help fund our legal defense – protecting basic rights for us all – every contribution is deeply appreciated, no matter what size. You can contribute online at https://jillstein.net/donate/.

Also, I would be so grateful if you would sign the petition at https://jillstein.net telling the University and the prosecution to drop the charges. You’ll be joining Ali Abunimah, Chris Hedges, Medea Benjamin, Ajamu Baraka, Roger Waters, Glenn Greenwald, Jeffrey Sachs, Abby Martin, Craig Mokiber, Max Blumenthal, Butch Ware, Miko Peled and many more in calling for an end to this prosecution that endangers us all.

For more information go to https://jillstein.net.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Together, we can beat back genocide and this assault on our most basic freedoms.

https://foodandpower.substack.com/p/new-study-analyzes-farm-bureaus-deregulatory

The American Farm Bureau Federation is one of the most powerful forces in agriculture policy, representing 5 million farmer and rural members with chapters in all 50 states and Puerto Rico.

Farm Bureau invests significant time and resources in court to quash federal and state authority to hold agribusiness accountable for pollution, animal suffering, and abuses of market power, with some success. Private practice environmental attorney and author of the study, Carrie La Seur, concludes that the Farm Bureau’s litigation strategy demonstrates how corporate financial power can work through non-profits to undermine democratic governance and harm the general public.

While Farm Bureau claims to be “the voice of agriculture,” the organization has long advanced the interests of large farms and agribusiness corporations over small farms.

Today, the Farm Bureau has expanded into a large, federated network of state chapters and affiliated for-profit enterprises. Most notably, Farm Bureau runs a for-profit insurance business, and, in some states, most Farm Bureau members and dues payers are insurance customers, not farmers. Like any insurance company, Farm Bureau invests the premiums it collects in the stock market, making it literally invested in the success of corporations such as ConAgra, Tyson, and Bayer.

Small farm advocates have alleged that these financial ties drive Farm Bureau to oppose antitrust legislation and generally side with corporate interests, even on non-agricultural issues.

Farm Bureau’s legal activity seeks to maximize large farm and agribusiness profits by avoiding accountability for air or water pollution, chemical hazards, worker safety, and animal welfare.

https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/worried-about-russian-meddling-in

For the new British prime minister, as for his predecessors, this is all about Moscow and the UK’s favourite bogeyman, Vladimir Putin.

The head of MI5, Ken McCallum, noted that Russian disinformation was neither sophisticated nor successful. The same cannot be said for Israel’s handiwork.

This year the Israeli state massively increased its public diplomacy budget to $730 million to expand its influence operations. That includes flying even more politicians, clergy, academics and influencers to bombard them with pro-Israel propaganda they are then likely to spread back home. According to foreign minister Gideon Saar, Israeli advocacy should be treated “like investing in jets, bombs, and missile interceptors”.

This week the fanatically pro-Israel US lobby group the Anti-Defamation League revealed that it had been working with leading AI firms, which are increasingly being integrated into social media platforms, to suppress what it calls “antisemitism” – or what the rest of us would refer to as criticism of Israel.

We also know, thanks to the work of the French security services – maybe MI5 was too busy chasing Russian bots to notice – that an Israeli cyber agency called Blackcore targeted the SNP in May’s Scottish elections, as well as meddling in elections in France and New York.

Alongside the SNP, New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and a leftwing French party headed by Jean-Luc Melenchon were targeted. Why? Because, unlike their political rivals, all had dared to speak out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

With echoes of what happened to Corbyn, Blackcore’s campaigns were designed to smear candidates. In the case of the French elections, fake accounts were created to accuse one candidate of rape and another of paedophilia.

Back in May 2024 Meta identified fake Israel-based accounts, “posing as Jewish students, African Americans and other concerned citizens”, peddling pro-Israel content in the US and Canada in support of Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.

Two months ago, Meta again found the same kind of dirty tricks emanating from Israel, this time targeting Britain, France and Australia among other countries. The AI-generated accounts posed “as local, civically-engaged brands, news sources, religious organizations, and political activists”.

None of these dire outcomes, the death knell for what little remains of British democracy, is attracting even the mildest interest from the Burnham government or MI5. Instead, they are chasing what so far appears to have been far more marginal Russian output.

https://consortiumnews.com/2026/10/15/trump-cancels-livestream-of-firing-squad-execution/

Trump announced the decision hours after a nationwide poll by The Washington Post, ABC News, and Ipsos found that 8-in-10 Americans opposed the plan to livestream Hasan’s state killing, regardless of their views on the death penalty in general or on executing the convicted murderer.

The plan was strongly opposed across the political spectrum, with 91 percent of Democrats, 83 percent of independents and 64 percent of Republicans disapproving of the proposal — aggressively pushed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — to make the killing viewable to anyone.

https://consortiumnews.com/2026/10/15/jonathan-cook-israel-has-no-right-to-exist/

Israel has no right to exist. That’s the position in international law.

In fact, no state — none — has a “right” to exist, including states busy extolling their democratic credentials.

If the U.K. had a “right” to exist, for example, it would mean that Scotland could not be allowed to vote for independence. Why? Because such a vote... would be a violation of the U.K.’s supposed “right” to exist as the U.K.

Peoples have a right to exist... States, by contrast, don’t have a “right” to exist. They simply do exist as a matter of fact — until they suddenly don’t. Like apartheid South Africa. Like Rhodesia. Like Czechoslovakia. Like Yugoslavia. Like Nazi Germany.

And yet every single journalist employed by an establishment media outlet is suddenly playing dumb on this most elementary of issues.

Watch, for example, the BBC’s Nick Robinson berating Green Party leader Zack Polanski for refusing to affirm Israel’s “right to exist.” Polanksi correctly argues instead that Israelis and Palestinians have a right to live in equality.

A Green Party motion earlier this month determined that Zionism — the ideology that created and sustains Israel — is racism. That brought very unwelcome attention to the question of what kind of state Israel is.

But what Robinson and the rest of the media are insisting on is a unique carve-out for Israel... The implication, the one they want you to infer without them having to spell it out, is that any attempt to end Israel as a racist state, and reform it into a democracy where Israelis and Palestinians have equal rights, is a violation of its supposed “right to exist.”

They also want you to assume that anyone who denies Israel’s “right to exist” is calling for the mass murder, the genocide, of Israeli Jews — and possibly all Jews.

In their telling, those calling for the extermination of Jews include Zack Polanksi, the Jewish leader of the Greens, and Stephen Kapos, an elderly Holocaust survivor and one of the proposers of the motion.

If anyone says he or she has a pain in the left arm and the chest, act fast. Even if the person says they just want to lie down or whatever, ignore them. People in pain are probably unable to think clearly. https://people.com/days-of-our-lives-robert-kelker-kelly-chest-pains-before-death-62-12175293

Also call an ambulance or drive straight to the ER if someone who is normally coherent starts talking gibberish. A relative did that. His wife took him to their doctor, but she should have taken him to the ER instead. The doctor did call ahead to the hospital which was helpful. Fortunately, the patient was lucky: He recovered.

In either case, if you are able to speak to medical provider right away or while you await an ambulance, you might ask about giving the person aspirin.

If you are the person having the symptoms, do not attempt to drive yourself anywhere.

If it turns out to be a false alarm, better safe than sorry. JMO.

I have no medical training and this is not medical advice.

Some may wonder why this number of prisoners is being released. I heard they are planning to send them to Mexico to harm the left-wing government. It is very likely the cartels decline to do CIA bidding and destroy the left-wing government, so now they are planning to use outside gangs.

https://x.com/ajamubaraka/status/2110789099124654162