Leif Ames

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.

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Catherine Breed began unprecedented journey at northern end of state, swimming 10 miles a day to reach other end in less than four months

A 33-year-old ultra-endurance athlete has completed an unprecedented swim down the entire coast of California, finishing the 900-mile journey in less than four months.

Catherine Breed will celebrate the end of her swim at San Diego’s Coronado beach on Monday afternoon, 111 days since she began her journey on 1 July at the northern border of California.

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Ricardo Gonzalez, a US citizen, was detained and injured by ICE officers while being arrested in Long Beach, California, on 17 October, officials said. The Department of Homeland Security has not commented publicly on why Gonzalez was detained. The Long Beach police department said in a statement that officers arrived to find 'a large group disturbance' involving the federal agents. The police later removed the handcuffs on Gonzalez and transported him to the hospital for treatment

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How will the Commanders and 49ers fare today? Here is what to know, including kick-off time, TV channels and live stream options

The Commanders’ first task on Monday night against the 49ers will be to keep track of the clock. A week after frittering away a simple game-winning field goal opportunity in overtime against the Giants, Washington’s reward is a trip out west on Monday Night Football to face one of the best teams in the NFL. The 1-3-1 Commanders entered the week with the second-worst point differential in the NFC at minus-34, and it’ll take a herculean road effort for them to avoid falling out of the mix in the mediocre East.

The Niners, meanwhile, are on Easy Street. Their 5-0 start has afforded them a shocking degree of cushion in an NFC West that was expected to be the best division in football but so far looks like San Francisco and everyone else. The defending champion Seahawks and MVP Matthew Stafford’s Rams each dropped three games in the season’s first six weeks. Those included a pair of losses to Kyle Shanahan’s team, meaning the Niners have not just a huge advantage in the loss column but (for now) a head-to-head tiebreaker as well. San Fran could hardly have enjoyed a dreamier start.

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President facing criticism for his move to waive sanctions for Russia as a new poll by Reuters shows only 31% of Americans approve of his performance in office

A new Washington Post-ABC poll shows that Donald Trump’s approval rating has reached a new low – 33%.

This comes, just over two weeks away from the November midterms, as the president continues crisscrossing the country as part of his campaign blitz for embattled Republicans.

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Meshtastic has gained a lot of popularity over the last few years thanks to its low barrier of entry. No licenses are needed and the hardware is dirt cheap, at …read more

Florida governor has consistently opposed any legislation to curb planet-heating emissions, calling it a ‘radical climate agenda’

A life-sized statue of Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, was unveiled and promptly began melting in front of an audience in Tallahassee in a symbolic protest at his rejection of action on the climate crisis.

The silvery statue, revealed to an audience of onlookers last week, melted away to show a skull under DeSantis’s face. The structure was cast from solid gallium, a metal that melts at 85.6F (29.8C), which is below summertime high temperatures frequently reached in Tallahassee, Florida’s capital.

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President facing criticism for his move to waive sanctions for Russia as a new poll by Reuters shows only 31% of Americans approve of his performance in office

A new Washington Post-ABC poll shows that Donald Trump’s approval rating has reached a new low – 33%.

This comes, just over two weeks away from the November midterms, as the president continues crisscrossing the country as part of his campaign blitz for embattled Republicans.

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Crackdown marks latest escalation in the Trump justice department’s push to target alleged noncitizen voting

The US Department of Justice has filed criminal charges against 28 green card holders in California accused of fraudulently registering to vote and casting illegal ballots.

The crackdown marks another escalation in the federal government’s ongoing efforts against alleged noncitizen voting, efforts that Democrats and voting rights groups say are part of a strategy by the Trump administration to sow doubt in the results of the upcoming midterm elections.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: A hacker broke into more than 100 websites using an army of AI agents that mostly operated on their own, according to findings from the AI security firm Norforge. Though Norforge doesn't name the targets, Reuters reports that the victims included companies like John Deere, SharkNinja, and Cummins. [...] Researchers at Norforge uncovered the attacks through exposed work on Cairn, an open-source AI platform that describes itself as a "general-purpose problem-solving engine." With Cairn, users set a start and end point for the AI agents, which document their progress as they move forward with the task. However, as noted by Norforge, hackers can also use the tool to orchestrate cyberattacks using AI agents. The hacker who broke into more than 100 sites was the "most active" among the exposed Cairn instances discovered by Norforge, waging attacks on companies based in the US, Canada, Australia, and Japan, as reported by Reuters. This attacker laid out "preferred intrusion tactics" using fewer than 100 Chinese characters, with successful breaches taking about 23 hours, according to Reuters. Overall, Nordforge found more than 20 exposed Cairn instances that are "likely malicious." A John Deere spokesperson said there is "no indication that sensitive information was accessed" as a result of the attack, while Cummins said it's "investigating the report of a potential cyber-attack on a website operated by one of our third-party vendors." Meanwhile, SharkNinja says the breach impacted a standalone site with product support information, and that it has contained the threat.

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A judge ordered Abdulrahman Alfozan to remain in custody, likening the Saudi government’s offer to secure the former OpenAI engineer’s release to a “blank check.”