Technology News: Cybersecurity Insights, Global IT Disruptions, GPT-4o Launch, Apple's Wi-Fi Safety, IRCTC Scam Alert, and Meta's Business Plans

It was on Friday that the world witnessed an outage, which compelled CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz to tell News18 Tech that a defect in the Windows host content update was the cause for the problem, not a cyber-attack. He said Mac and Linux users are safe. According to him, the issue has now been identified and isolated, with a fix deployed, and ongoing updates available on their support portal. Kurtz recommended that organizations affected by the ransomware, such as big banks and large-running airports on Windows, reach out immediately to CrowdStrike in search of an official fix.

A worldwide outage saw Windows PCs hit by a BSOD error in the United States, Europe, and India; users reported that the problem had caused problems at workplaces, on airlines, and in banks and media companies. CrowdStrike's Falcon has been identified as the root cause of the problem—its cybersecurity solution, which comes as an integral part of Windows PC security. The company is working on fixing the problem, which hit flight services, the London Stock Exchange, 911 emergency services, and even Microsoft Azure customers. Many users are frustrated by the timing and impact of this outage and voice their complaints on social media.

OpenAI has announced GPT-4o mini, a small, cost-effective AI model. This reduced-size model is a way of expanding its customer base by making the technology more economical and power-efficient. With only 15 cents per million input tokens and 60 cents per million output tokens, it comes out over 60% cheaper than GPT-3.5 Turbo. It nails chat preference, and on the Massive Multitask Language Understanding benchmark, it scores 82% at the very top—before Google's Gemini Flash and Anthropic's Claude Haiku. ChatGPT users have immediate access, with enterprise access to follow.

An Apple patent would help users be safer on public Wi-Fi networks without compromising their security ranking and user privacy. According to the technology, iPhones would have the ability to detect and suggest secure Wi-Fi networks considering such factors as the security strength or quality of a network, warning users to connect elsewhere. This innovation, therefore, puts at the forefront considerations of risks intrinsic in public Wi-Fi and user security and privacy.

IRCTC has warned against the fake online ticket refund scams and has advised users not to find customer care numbers on social media or search engines. Official channels for asking refunds are either utilizing the Contact Us section on the IRCTC website or application or mailing directly to care@irctc.co.in. All of these steps are taken so that users are not redirected to any fake website, which intends to steal personal and banking information in the name of offering IRCTC services.

It was because of a faulty software update that cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike issued, which caused the global technological disruption, affecting Microsoft Windows users worldwide, grounding flights, disrupting financial services, news outlets, hospitals, and government offices. That event exposed how vulnerable interconnected systems could be. Other similar disruptions in earlier years, which exhibit the difficulty of holding digital infrastructure stable, include the Dyn cyberattack in 2016, the failure of British Airways' IT in 2017, Google's outage in 2020, Amazon Web Services' in 2021, and Fastly's server downtime in the same year.

Bumble is rolling out a feature against AI-generated profile photos in a bid to preserve authentic relationships and not fool people. The move came after research from a study about the strong user sentiment against AI-generated content. Now users can report in-profile by choosing the 'Fake profile' option and mentioning that the photos or videos were AI-generated. According to Bumble's vice president, safety within the dating space comes first. Further AI tools are helping ensure user safety and authenticity, including a spam detector and nude image blur.

Now, Meta Verified subscription plans are live for businesses in India, offering the elusive "Blue Tick" verification badge on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Thereafter, starting at Rs 639 a month per app, it offers enhanced impersonation protection, account support, and extra features for better reach and visibility. Businesses can now opt for either individual app subscriptions or bundled packages of Facebook and Instagram. It's without neglect that Meta has customer support options, all the way from email and chat to dedicated case monitoring for customer care. Verified subscribers could have an extended ability to view additional features of the profiles across its products.