Bloomberg:

According to sources, Microsoft is in advanced talks to acquire Nuance Communications, a provider of speech technology, for about $16 billion, or $56 per share, a 23% premium to Nuance’s Friday close. The proposed price would value Nuance at $56 per share. This week could see the announcement of a deal.

Even when using the most recent firmware, security researchers examined nine widely used WiFi routers and discovered a total of 226 possible vulnerabilities in them.

Millions of people use the tested routers, which are made by Asus, AVM, D-Link, Netgear, Edimax, TP-Link, Synology, and Linksys.

The TP-Link Archer AX6000, which has 32 problems, and the Synology RT-2600ac, which has 30 security flaws, are the two devices with the most vulnerabilities.

The examination process
In partnership with CHIP magazine, researchers at IoT Inspector conducted security tests with a focus on models primarily used by small businesses and residential users.

According to Florian Lukavsky, CTO & Founder at IoT Inspector, “vendors provided them with current models, which were upgraded to the newest firmware version, for Chip’s router review.”

“IoT Inspector automatically examined the firmware versions and searched for more than 5,000 CVEs and other security flaws.”

Although not all defects posed the same risk, the researchers discovered a few widespread issues that impacted the majority of the evaluated models:

The firmware contains an outdated Linux kernel.
stale VPN and multimedia features
over-reliance on BusyBox’s earlier iterations
weak default passwords like “admin” are used
Hardcoded credentials are present in plain text.
Changing the router’s default password when configuring it for the first time is one of the most crucial steps you can take to secure it, according to Jan Wendenburg, CEO of IoT Inspector.

Whether an IoT device is used at home or in a corporate network, changing the password upon first use and turning on automatic updates must be regular procedure, according to Wendenburg.

In addition to manufacturer-introduced vulnerabilities, utilising an IoT device with the adage “plug, play, and forget” poses the greatest risk.

Massachusetts court supports a request from the IRS to obtain the records of all Circle customers who had $20K+ in crypto transactions between 2016 and 2020  —  A Massachusetts court is supporting a request from the IRS to obtain the records Circle customers, the Department of Justice said.