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Satellite Imagery and Phone Data Reveal Romance Scam Centers Still Expanding Despite Crackdowns

3 weeks 5 days ago
Massive mobile device tracking data has exposed the interconnected network of Myanmar's expanding scam centers, revealing how trafficked workers circulate between compounds despite February crackdowns. Analysis of 4.9 million location records from 11,930 mobile devices between January 2024 and May 2025 showed five devices visited all three major compounds -- Yatai New City, Apolo Park, and Yulong Bay Park -- plus the raided KK Park and Huanya Park facilities. Workers are forced into romance scams, deceiving victims into believing they're in romantic relationships before extracting money. A South Asian man held six months at KK Park worked 16 hours daily conducting these online deceptions while enduring beatings and electric shocks for poor performance. Nikkei's investigation combined satellite imagery analysis, social media posts from Chinese platform Douyin, and open-source intelligence techniques to document continued construction at eight of 16 suspected sites. Myanmar authorities deported over 66,000 foreign nationals involved in these online fraud operations between October 2023 and June 2025.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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For Now, AI Helps IBM’s Bottom Line More Than Its Top Line

3 weeks 5 days ago

While the hyperscalers and clouds and their AI model builder customers are setting the pace in compute, networking, and storage during the GenAI revolution, that does not mean that they will necessarily provide the only systems that will be used by the largest enterprises in the world. …

For Now, AI Helps IBM’s Bottom Line More Than Its Top Line was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Timothy Prickett Morgan

Securing Linux: Steady Momentum in AppArmor and SELinux Uptake

3 weeks 5 days ago
by George Whittaker Introduction

In recent times, two critical Linux security frameworks, AppArmor and SELinux, have seen noteworthy acceleration in real-world deployment. As Linux continues to anchor enterprise, container, cloud, and desktop systems, these Mandatory Access Control (MAC) tools have crossed threshold events signaling broader acceptance. This article examines those pivotal inflection points, dives into why they matter, and offers reflections on the shifting landscape of Linux security.

A Swift Journey to Widespread Use SELinux’s Ascendancy

Originally conceived by the NSA and later shepherded by Red Hat, SELinux added powerful MAC controls to Linux by the early 2000s. Since being fully embedded into the Linux 2.6.x kernel, SELinux has steadily expanded its reach. It has become the default security layer on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, and their derivatives, and integrated into Debian 9+, plus Ubuntu from version 8.04. Android further embraced SELinux starting from version 4.3, marking its normalization in mobile devices.

But the most recent watershed occurred in early 2025: openSUSE Tumbleweed made SELinux the default MAC for new installations beginning with snapshot 20250211, accompanied by minimalVM images running in enforcing mode. Existing installations remain unaffected unless manually migrated, and AppArmor remains an installer option. Moreover, openSUSE Leap 16 will be shipping with SELinux in enforcing mode by default, affirming a full shift within SUSE ecosystems.

This chain of events reflects a conscious pivot in favor of SELinux across both SUSE and community platforms, aligning them more closely with enterprise-grade security policies.

AppArmor’s Established Reach

AppArmor, originally named SubDomain in the late '90s, emerged from Immunix and later became a core tool in SUSE distributions. It officially became part of the Linux kernel in version 2.6.36 around October 2010. Ubuntu began shipping it by default starting with 7.10; by 8.04, CUPS was protected. Over the following releases, its scope widened to include MySQL, libvirt, browser sessions, and more. In Debian 10 ("Buster"), released July 2019, AppArmor became enabled by default, anchoring its adoption across Debian-based ecosystems.

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George Whittaker