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A software researcher has cracked the encryption protocol used by AppLovin's ad mediation system, revealing what appears to be a weak, home-rolled cipher protecting sensitive advertising traffic. It's a reminder that security through obscurity rarely holds — and that ad-tech infrastructure, touching billions of devices, deserves far more scrutiny than it typically gets.
Shifting to the roads, Waymo's autonomous vehicles found themselves stranded in an Atlanta suburb after a software glitch left a fleet of driverless cars unable to proceed. No injuries were reported, but the incident highlights the fragile edge cases that still haunt self-driving systems when real-world conditions outpace the training data.
And on a story that touches anyone using Google Cloud, The Register reports that two developers hit with unexpected bills — after fraudsters exploited their API keys to rack up charges on Gemini AI models — have finally had those costs reversed. But Google says it will keep automatically raising spending limits, meaning the underlying exposure remains wide open for countless other users.
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