Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from ProPublica: A few months into President Donald Trump's second term, political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wanted Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to secretly acquire a voting machine and hack it. The appointees wanted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to procure the machine, examine it and report back the findings so they could be given to the White House, according to two former administration officials with knowledge of the request.
The proposition was shocking to CISA's career staffers, according to one of the former officials. CISA typically worked to thwart hackers. Moreover, the agency had been directed not to alert the voting machine company if it uncovered flaws, contrary to its standard practices. The request made the CISA employees fear they were being asked to take part in political interference. "My thought was they could keep it in their back pocket to invalidate any [election] results they don't like," one of the former officials said. "This goes against everything CISA represents." [Or, perhaps do something worse?]
The CISA employees repeatedly told the political appointees that their request was impossible, in part because the agents capable of pulling off such an operation had just been laid off by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative. The appointees eventually stopped pressing CISA. Though not acted on, the request shows how the Trump administration has tried to use the agency for its own ends while draining it of resources for one of its critical missions: protecting the nation's voting systems.
The dire projections come from the state’s Climate Change Assessment, which analyzes the impacts of changing weather patterns on the nation’s most-populous state.
The report finds that without major intervention, as much as three-quarters of California’s beaches could disappear — either seasonally or permanently — by 2100 because of coastal erosion.
Rachel de Souza names Middlesbrough and Hounslow among hardest places in which to grow up and says some children are being ‘radically failed’
Services for children in parts of England are in a “state of emergency”, according to a report that identifies what it claims to be the hardest places in the country for young people to grow up in.
The children’s commissioner, Rachel de Souza, said in some local authorities individual service failures or systemic problems meant “no child could reasonably be expected to thrive and those that do thrive do so against the odds”.
Female colleague says she was forced out shortly after incident with Luke Campbell, Hull and East Yorkshire mayor
A Reform UK mayor is under police investigation for allegedly showing “naked and sexualised” images of himself to a female member of staff.
Luke Campbell, a former Olympic boxing champion and the mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire, is understood to have been questioned under caution by Humberside police earlier this month.
Scrutiny committee looks into financing of Manchester Life project as PM promises ‘full transparency’
A £55m loan to Manchester City’s Abu Dhabi owner will be investigated as part of a review into a fund for housing projects while Andy Burnham was mayor.
The prime minister has faced weeks of scrutiny over his links to Manchester City’s super-rich owners after the club was found guilty of boosting its income by £900m in a nine-year breach of financial rules.
For more than a year, The New York Times followed recipients of a universal basic income program who received $1,330 a month for an entire year.
There were benefits, but also the everyday challenges of being poor, and turning their life around "did not turn out to be quite that simple."
Across Silicon Valley, experimental guaranteed income programs have quietly taken off. Google began funding six different initiatives in 2022 as part of a $50 million donation to nonprofits in the San Francisco Bay Area, saying basic income could be a novel way to prevent homelessness in one of the nation's most expensive locations. Each program has hundreds of participants who receive around $1,000 a month, and academics study the results. State and federal tax laws limit the lengths of the programs and the payment amounts.
The studies have found that most basic income programs improve short-term employment and mental health while reducing food insecurity. But while data from these efforts has been closely tracked, less is known about the individual journeys of participants... The Times ultimately shadowed three people... All of the program participants, including the ones The Times followed, were previously homeless and transitioning off a housing stipend that paid for a portion of their rent, and many received the payments on top of other social assistance like food stamps.
The Times's findings mirrored the academic studies. For all three recipients, the instant benefits of basic income were clear: They had breathing room for groceries, rent and other expenses. But the success of the payments in another area — giving people more free time and opportunity in the long term — was mixed. "It's a lot to ask of someone to get their life together in 12 months, when a lot of these issues are structural or systemic," said Jennifer Loving, who runs Destination: Home, a nonprofit that administers basic income programs in Silicon Valley. "And the world around them isn't getting cheaper."
One recipient began going to community college — but resorted to taking one class at a time while single parenting — and using their monthly payments to help support relatives. In fact, the article notes that a recent study of 3,000 universal basic income participants found that money spent supporting friends and family increased 26%, "the most of any category. That was more than the increases for food (6%) and child care (11%)."
Another recipient used the time to get help at a community college to find a higher-paying job. And one recipient died — but his mother used what he'd saved to help put his brother through a drug rehab program.
Alan Feeney, who sat on Solihull and Birmingham councils, said there was ‘no excuse’ for his comments
Alan Feeney has resigned as a Reform councillor for Solihull and Birmingham after backlash over racist comments that were captured in an undercover investigation.
In a Facebook post on Friday, Feeney wrote: “There is no excuse for my comments. With responsibility comes accountability, and it is for that reason that I have resigned every post I hold on both Solihull borough council and Birmingham city council.”
Meta’s annual conference last month in Menlo Park, Calif. The company received $22 million back from its American Technology Excellence Project and $3 million from a California advocacy group it funded.
A Russian researcher, who died from an unknown illness, worked at a remote anti-plague facility. Few foreigners have visited these labs, which dot the former Soviet states, and are shrouded in secrecy.
The employee, now fired, had said he advised government agencies in Saudi Arabia. He was also listed as a partner at a venture firm with a Saudi prince.
The San Francisco offices of OpenAI. According to a court filing, a thumb-size recording device wrapped in toilet paper was found plugged into the back of a television in an executive conference room.
Party faces fresh crisis as three councillors quit after ITV undercover filming exposed violence, misogyny and racist views
Reform UK has been rocked by a fresh crisis after councillors and election candidates for the party were caught on film making graphic threats of extreme violence and expressing racist and misogynistic views.
Three councillors have already stood down from the party, which said it was conducting an investigation over the first revelations from an ITV undercover investigation that aired on Wednesday.
Environmentalists of all political hues must find the language and ideas that turn passion for climate action into impetus
The future of Green politics is under constant discussion after the Holborn and St Pancras byelection, but a much heavier clash – in meaning, symbolism and portent – happened earlier this summer, in King’s Lynn and West Norfolk. The council declared a climate emergency in 2021, along with hundreds of others, and while it was under Conservative control. It is now controlled by independents, and a Reform UK councillor, Austen Moore, moved to scrap the declaration.
It was the end of June, and the meeting had to be called off, because of the extreme heat in the King’s Lynn council chamber. A lot of people paused to grimly remark on that irony, but not Moore, who simply rescheduled the motion for the following week, where it was voted down (by 33 to seven). A local scientist and member of Extinction Rebellion liveblogged that debate, adding helpful maps, such as how much of the county was already below the annual flood level – most of it, including King’s Lynn itself. If this all sounds like a cheerful take home, numerous other Reform-led councils have had the same debate and Reform has prevailed. Their arguments can be terrifyingly illiterate. In Kent, councillor Linden Kemkaran asserted that climate change is fine because the world was warmer in Roman times, and as “carbon dioxide … is a trace gas essential for life on Earth”, to try to cut carbon emissions would itself be dangerous.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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Exclusive: Greater Manchester mayor Bev Craig invited City representative on trade trip organised by business secretary
A club representative from Manchester City was invited on a government-backed trade delegation to India this week, despite the club being found guilty of 114 breaches of Premier League rules.
Andy Burnham’s successor as Manchester mayor Bev Craig took a representative from the club to Delhi and Mumbai on a trip organised by business secretary Jonathan Reynolds,where she and other northern mayors have been promoting British trade and tourism.
The original 1970s Lewisham self-build scheme that he mentions, using methods developed by the German architect Walter Segal, was proposed by a friend of mine, Brian Richardson, who was a Lewisham council architect at the time.
Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, questioning the company’s $6.6 billion in tax breaks.
Meta has claimed to the Internal Revenue Service that the data centers it is building across the country to power its new generative A.I. efforts are “experimental.”
For more than a decade, conservative activists held that a single atomic bomb could, without killing Americans directly, lay waste to the country — a claim that built fervor for war with Iran.
The test detonation in 1962 of a hydrogen bomb lit up the night sky over Honolulu and knocked out some of the city’s electrical systems. Experts linked the unanticipated damage to what they came to call the electromagnetic pulse.
More than 50 families call for investigation into how Vincent Chan was allowed to return to job after inquiry by nursery
The parents of the victims of paedophile nursery worker Vincent Chan have reacted with fury to the news that he was cleared to return to work after “significant concerns” wereraised by the parent of a young girl.
As first revealed in the Guardian, Chan was reported to his employer, the nursery chain Bright Horizons, by a concerned parent in 2021.
Exclusive: Homes demolished along east coast after being deemed too vulnerable to live in, figures reveal
Seaside communities along the east coast of England have lost at least183 homes to coastalerosion and landslides over the past 16 years, figures obtained by the Guardian reveal.
After councils judged properties across the Yorkshire and East Anglian coasts too vulnerable to remain safely occupied, the homes were proactively demolished.
Preparing her first report on England’s social care system, the peer says ‘everything is on the table’. This should include older people’s wealth, rather than taxes on younger workers
Residents with advanced dementia lined the day room, glazed stares or sleeping mouths agape, with that terrible human vacancy everyone most fears for their own end days.
This was Millvina House in Anfield, Liverpool, which I visited withLouise Casey, who is heading the commission on social care in England, last week. Here is a snippet of what she saw: an angry man jolting into life, shooting out his arm at her and bellowing: “Out! Get out! Get out!” A young care assistant went to stroke his back and calm him down. It’s a hard job, and part of it is watching for warning signs of aggression, one of dementia’s dreadful symptoms. “People don’t want to know,” Casey said, “but if you are born, you will die. Chances are you will need care, and dementia is the biggest killer.”
Survivors had criticised ‘outrageous’ appointment of Laura Johnson to £150,000 job with Barnet Group
A housing director who oversaw cost cutting at Grenfell Tower before the fatal fire has left a £150,000-a-year senior council housing role after a backlash from bereaved families and survivors.
Laura Johnson was the director of housing at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) at the time of the 2017 Grenfell fire which killed 72 people, and was criticised in the subsequent inquiry for her role in budget-cutting decisions prior to the blaze.
Council car parks have switched away from ticket machines to cut costs, leading to extra fees for users
Drivers are unwittingly paying up to 40% more to park as more councils switch to app-only payments and force customers to pick up the tab.
Many councils across England have removed pay and display machines and replaced them with app payments, including a number in London. Most local authorities encourage drivers to pay by app to beat queues, while apps are often the only way to pay when ticket machines are out of order. However, many car park signs fail to mention that app payments may incur an additional service fee.
Major TV networks were notified on Friday that the department was examining whether they violated antitrust laws when they suspended pool coverage of President Trump.
The Philadelphia Police Department said the agents had also sent in a false homicide tip. The incidents led the White House to call for better disclosure of rogue A.I. behavior.
Finance expert launches Small Ideas Initiative to gather ‘practical, low-cost’ ideas to put before cross-party panel
Every day, people run into what the finance expert Martin Lewis calls “the life-potholes of unintended consequences” – clunky systems and poorly conceived rules that make life harder than it should be. His latest project, the Small Ideas Initiative, will attempt to address that, with a cross-party panel of politicians and policymakers crowdsourcing ideas for everyday fixes to take to government.
The ideas could cover anything from health and schools to policing, tech and money. Lewis is encouraging people to submit ideas for “practical, low-cost, non-controversial ways to improve the UK” before 12 November.
A bold south London initiative to give land to community groups rather than private developers could transform the system
Lewisham council, in southeast London, is developing ambitious plans to transfer public land to community groups in an attempt to get new social housing built in the borough. According to papers tabled at Wednesday’s council cabinet meeting, the local authority is devising a new housing strategy, which includes giving packages of public land worth up to £2m each to community-led organisations such as housing co-operatives, on the condition that they build social housing.
The Green-controlled council is further considering placing any land it gives away through the programme into community land trusts, legal instruments that lock in permanent affordability. They may also provide low-interest loans to help developments get started, and pre-approve planning permission to speed up construction. It is hoped that the proposals will take effect within a year.Together, they form the most radical suite of solutions to the housing crisis any local authority is currently putting forward. If adopted elsewhere, the approach could transform the construction of social housing not just in Lewisham, but across the entire country.
Vaccine safety experts say more research into the side effects would be welcome yet question whether the health secretary’s effort will be grounded in science.
Zack Polanski has led energetic campaign for the Greens, while Labour will hope to hold on to Starmer’s old seat
Voting has opened in the Holborn and St Pancras byelection, a contest seen as a key gauge of Andy Burnham’s ability to energise voters and whether Zack Polanski’s Greens can still peel off support from Labour’s left.
Polanski, who leads the Greens in England and Wales, is standing for his party in the north London constituency, previously held by Keir Starmer before he stood down as an MP shortly after resigning as prime minister.
Senator Patty Murray, a former chair of the Senate health committee, is forming a group of experts to examine how to insulate the C.D.C. from political interference.
Drawing blood at an H.I.V. clinic in South Africa last year. The research networks’ large footprint has enabled them to develop tools to prevent and treat H.I.V., including in marginalized or rare populations.
Faced with a president who has called global warming a hoax, officials have filed dozens of suits against oil companies to try to cover the costs of extreme weather.
Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general and Republican Senate candidate, has alleged a sprawling profit-driven conspiracy. Pediatricians say the accusations are an attempt at intimidation.
U.S. President Donald Trump "doxxed" a U.S. senator today, writes the Washington Sun, by posting his cell phone number "as part of a plea for his Truth Social followers to badger his Republican ally into making daylight saving time permanent."
When The Washington Sun called the number minutes after Trump's post, a recording said the mailbox was full and could not receive messages...
[Senator Tom] Cotton has long detested the idea of making daylight saving time permanent. In a Senate floor speech last year, Cotton said doing so would "make winter a dark and dismal time for millions of Americans," particularly harming kids. The Senate was only able to unanimously pass the bill in 2022 because Cotton was reportedly unaware the vote was taking place, though the measure stalled out from there. The Arkansas Republican didn't back down in a post on Saturday. "Arkansans don't want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I'll always put Arkansas first," he posted on X.
Trump continued his tear against Cotton soon after. "If Tom Cotton were putting Arkansas first, he would give them an extra hour of daylight and, more importantly, they wouldn't have to run all over their houses, farms, work places, and everywhere else, twice a year, having to change their Clocks, and often forgetting to do so," he posted on Truth.
The move, affecting about one-fifth of the National Science Foundation’s primary research budget, is the latest sign of how the White House is asserting more control over grants.
Uncovering evidence of alien life would be “the biggest discovery ever made by humanity,” one expert said. But so far, there’s a lot of blurry photos and unconfirmed reports.
Over the course of the summer, the cyclospora outbreak linked to Taylor Farms caused nearly 13,000 illnesses, 570 hospitalizations and two deaths in 21 states.
Many think artificial intelligence companies should be held liable for their runaway technology. But legal scholars say applying existing law could be messy.
The mostly Democratic-led states say that the E.P.A. acted unlawfully when it erased Biden-era limits on carbon dioxide from coal- and gas-fired plants.
President Trump has pushed to dismantle many federal policies that aim to tackle climate change, including Biden-era rules that limited planet-warming emissions from power plants.
Changpeng Zhao, jailed in the United States for a financial crime and pardoned by President Trump, is now living a gilded life in the United Arab Emirates.
Seldom do local officials consider the cumulative effect that several data-center projects have on a region. Construction of a Texas data center near a residential community recently.
Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president and co-founder, said internally that the super PAC, Leading the Future, had become a “distraction” for the A.I. company.
Higher education faces a difficult security equation. Universities hold large volumes of sensitive student, financial, health, and research data while supporting open networks, distributed users, legacy infrastructure, and increasingly complex cloud environments. Attackers have taken notice, and the pressure on security teams continues to grow.
In Q2 2025, universities faced an average of 4,388 cyberattacks per organization per week, up 24% from the same period in 2024. Nine in ten universities reported experiencing a breach or security incident during the previous 12 months, while the average cost of a data breach in education reached $10.22 million. Confirmed attacks against higher education institutions exposed more than 3.9 million records in 2025, with ransomware continuing to disrupt teaching, research, financial aid, and administrative operations.
Those figures are concerning on their own, but they only explain part of the problem. For university systems with multiple campuses, the way security is organized can create an additional layer of risk.
Why is higher education so difficult to secure?
Universities operate differently from most commercial organizations. Open access, collaboration, and academic freedom are central to their mission, which means security teams must protect environments where students, faculty, researchers, guests, and third parties connect from almost anywhere.
That openness sits alongside an unusually broad mix of sensitive data. A single university may hold student PII, financial aid and tax records, health information, proprietary research, government-funded projects, and intellectual property. Many institutions also rely on legacy systems that have been connected over time to modern cloud applications, APIs, learning platforms, and research networks, creating visibility gaps that can be difficult to manage.
Resource pressure adds to the challenge. The draft cites 94% of higher education IT leaders as saying they lack enough personnel to defend their environments adequately, leaving relatively small teams responsible for sprawling networks with large numbers of users, devices, applications, and third-party services.
For multi-campus university systems, many of these pressures are compounded by decentralized security operations. Individual campuses often maintain their own infrastructure, security tools, teams, incident response processes, vendor relationships, and renewal cycles.
The result can be limited visibility across the wider institution. If ransomware is detected at one campus, teams elsewhere may have no immediate view of the same attacker activity. If a zero-day is exploited in one research environment, another campus may remain exposed because the intelligence and response process stay local.
Fragmentation also affects efficiency. When each campus independently buys, deploys, and manages its own security stack, the wider university system can carry duplicated costs, additional management overhead, and inconsistent coverage. Fragmentation can also slow the spread of threat intelligence across a university system. If one campus detects a new attack pattern, an unusual intrusion technique, or previously unseen malware, that insight may remain local rather than reaching security teams elsewhere in time to act. A suspicious login sequence identified at Campus B, for example, could be the early signal of activity already moving toward Campus A or Campus C, but without shared visibility each team may investigate the same threat independently and at different speeds.
The same problem can appear during vulnerability response. If one campus confirms active exploitation of a newly disclosed vulnerability in a research environment, another campus may still be exposed because patching decisions, asset inventories, and remediation workflows are managed separately. What should become a system-wide priority can remain a local incident until someone connects the dots.
Attackers do not necessarily respect those organizational boundaries. A smaller or less-resourced campus can provide an entry point into relationships, systems, and data connected to the wider institution, while defenders may still be working with a campus-by-campus view.
What should university systems change?
Higher education security needs to preserve the autonomy individual campuses require while improving visibility and coordination across the broader institution.
That means giving security teams a shared view of exposure, threats, and active incidents across campuses, along with the ability to coordinate detection and response when activity in one part of the university may affect another. It also creates an opportunity to reduce duplicated tooling and processes, share threat intelligence more effectively, and make better use of limited security resources.
The objective is a model where a local security team can continue managing the needs of its own campus without losing access to the wider context of what is happening across the university system.
As the threat landscape becomes more connected, higher education security architecture needs to become more connected with it.
In Part 2 of this series, we’ll look at another pressure making that shift more urgent: the growing compliance burden across FERPA, GLBA, HIPAA, and CMMC, and why fragmented security can make regulatory readiness harder to manage across a university system.
Rapid7 helps more than 11,000 organizations worldwide take command of their security. Learn more at rapid7.com/sled.
The Federal Trade Commission building in Washington. The agency is examining whether top A.I. companies have harmed consumers, a person with knowledge of the inquiry said.
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