Welcome to the July 25, 2025 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• SharePoint Attacks Include Ransomware Infections
• Trump AI Plan Pulls Restraints
• Meta Wristband Controls Computers with Hand Gestures
• Tech Giants’ Age Verification Tools Tested by U.K. Online Safety Rules
• China Plans Network to Sell Surplus Computing Power
• Security Measures for Safeguarding Brain Implants
• Researchers Bypass Anti-Deepfake Markers on AI Images
• Machine Learning Uncovers Threats to Global Underground Fungi Networks
• On Its Path to the Future, AI Studies Roman History
• Tesla Testing if Its Robotaxis Can Be Hacked Remotely
• Germany Plots the Future of Warfare
• Spin-Qubit Control Circuit Stays Cool
• NASA Tests Scalable Satellite Tech to Launch Sensors Quicker

SharePoint Attacks Include Ransomware Infections

Microsoft confirmed late Wednesday that a threat group it tracks as China-based Storm-2603 is abusing vulnerable on-premises SharePoint servers to deploy ransomware. The security holes affect SharePoint Enterprise Server 2016, SharePoint Server 2019, and SharePoint Server Subscription Edition. Fixes for all three have been issued. More than 400 organizations have been compromised thus far, according to Belgium's Eye Security, including the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains U.S. nuclear weapons.
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Trump AI Plan Pulls Restraints

The Trump administration's AI action plan outlines a strategy to establish U.S. dominance in AI through three key initiatives: accelerating innovation, expanding domestic AI infrastructure, and promoting U.S. hardware and software as global standards. The plan centers on a federal approach to eliminate "bureaucratic red tape." Said Trump, “We have to have a single federal standard, not 50 different states regulating this industry."
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Meta Wristband Controls Computers with Hand Gestures

Meta has developed a prototype wristband that uses electromyography to detect electrical signals from forearm muscles, enabling touch-free control of digital devices. These signals, generated by alpha motor neurons before physical movement occurs, allow the device to interpret user intent. The wristband captures the signals externally and can move cursors, open apps, or even transcribe air-written text in real time.
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Tech Giants’ Age Verification Tools Tested by U.K. Online Safety Rules

Tech companies' age verification tools will be put to the test this weekend as the U.K. begins enforcing restrictions preventing children from accessing sites that carry adult content. Media regulator Ofcom has recommended a series of what it deems “highly effective” tools that sites can use to verify users’ ages, but many social media companies are relying on alternative techniques that use machine learning technology to “infer” a user’s age based on how they use the site and with whom they communicate.
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China Plans Network to Sell Surplus Computing Power

China plans to build a cloud-based network to sell computing power and curb the proliferation of datacenters in the country that has caused a capacity glut and threatened their viability. China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is collaborating with that nation’s three state telecom companies on ways to connect datacenters in a network to create the platform, say sources.
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Security Measures for Safeguarding Brain Implants

Researchers at Yale University’s Digital Ethics Center recommend measures that brain-computer interface (BCI) manufacturers and government regulators can adopt to protect patients’ safety and privacy. The researchers advised regulators to mandate non-surgical methods for updating and recovering devices, robust authentication schemes for software modifications, and the encryption of data moving to and from patients’ brains. They also recommend steps to guard BCIs against the malicious use of AI.
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Researchers Bypass Anti-Deepfake Markers on AI Images

Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada developed a tool that can quickly remove watermarks identifying artificially generated content. The UnMarker tool can remove watermarks without knowing anything about the system that generated them or anything about the watermarks. Explained Waterloo’s Andre Kassis, "We can just apply this tool and within two minutes max, it will output an image that is visually identical to the watermark image" but without the watermark indicating its artificial origin.
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Machine Learning Uncovers Threats to Global Underground Fungi Networks

Researchers at the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks developed the first high-resolution global maps of mycorrhizal fungal biodiversity by using machine learning on a dataset of more than 2.8 billion samples from 130 countries. The study revealed that 90% of these underground biodiverse fungal hotspots lie outside protected ecosystems, and that the loss of such ecosystems could threaten crop productivity, carbon drawdown efforts, and ecosystem resilience to climate extremes.
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On Its Path to the Future, AI Studies Roman History

An AI model from researchers at Google's DeepMind trained on a vast body of ancient Latin inscriptions to place a more precise date on an important Latin text credited to a Roman emperor. Historians have long clashed over when “Res Gestae Divi Augusti,” (“Deeds of the Divine Augustus”) was first etched in stone. The Aeneas model cited a wealth of evidence to claim the text originated around A.D. 15, or shortly after Augustus’s death.
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Tesla Testing if Its Robotaxis Can Be Hacked Remotely

Tesla has received U.S. Federal Communications Commission approval to test its robotaxis for vulnerabilities to cellular and radio frequency (RF) hacking. The company will simulate RF attacks to assess how resilient its autonomous vehicles are to malicious interference. The tests aim to strengthen cybersecurity measures ahead of broader autonomous vehicle deployment.
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Germany Plots the Future of Warfare

Germany plans to nearly triple its defense budget to €162 billion annually by 2029, aiming to modernize its military with advanced technologies. A new draft procurement law is designed to ease access for innovative startups like Helsing and Swarm Biotactics, which are developing AI-driven defense systems, including autonomous drones and cyborg cockroaches for surveillance. Said Helsing’s Gundbert Scherf, “We want to help give Europe its spine back.”
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Spin-Qubit Control Circuit Stays Cool

Researchers in Australia led by David Reilly at the University of Sydney created a CMOS chip that can control the operation of multiple spin qubits at ultralow temperatures. The voltage pulses needed to control the spin qubits are generated by moving small amounts of charge between closely spaced capacitors on the chip. Reilly explained, "Via careful design, we show that the qubits hardly notice the switching of 100,000 transistors right next door."
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NASA Tests Scalable Satellite Tech to Launch Sensors Quicker

NASA’s Athena Economical Payload Integration Cost (EPIC) small satellite platform, launched this week as a rideshare on a SpaceX Falcon 9, is engineered to share resources among its payloads by managing routine functions so individual payloads don’t have to do so. Explained NASA's Kory Priestley, “We’re using the processors on the HISats (Hyper-Integrated Satlet instruments) to control things like our heaters and do some of the control functions that typically would be done by a processor on our payload."
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