The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is warning of a significant increase in attacks targeting internet-exposed programmable logic controllers (PLCs) in the water and wastewater systems sector.

The agency’s urgent alert comes after hackers disrupted more than 30 community water systems in Minnesota in attacks that started last Sunday and continued through Monday.

CISA’s alert refers to threat activity involved hackers targeting exposed programmable logic controllers (PLC) and changing passwords to lock operators out, modifying IP addresses to disconnect devices from the internet, and other actions that disrupted operations.

“CISA urges critical infrastructure owners, operators, and integrators to remove publicly exposed PLCs and other operational technology (OT) from the internet as soon as possible.”

Organizations of all sizes running water and wastewater systems are being targeted, including some with mature cybersecurity programs.

The bulletin notes that exposed operational technology (OT) may include undocumented cellular modems installed by operators, vendors, or system integrators.

Internet-facing assets are exposed to defacement attacks, configuration changes, operational disruptions, and even physical damage, the agency said.

CISA recommends immediately removing these assets from direct internet exposure. If this is not possible, organizations should use a VPN connection or gateway devices for secure access.

Additionally, default passwords should be changed, and access should be limited to an IP address allow-list.

The agency also pointed owners of Rockwell Automation MicroLogix 1400 PLCs to vendor guidance for recovering access if passwords have been changed.

Cybersecurity search company Censys published a blog post where it quantifies internet exposure, estimating that currently there are more than 4,100 internet-exposed Rockwell Automation/Allen-Bradley hosts, 4,100 Siemens hosts, and over 2,000 Schneider Electric hosts.

However, it should be clarified that the map above shows devices reachable over the public internet, not systems that are necessarily being targeted or compromised.

Regarding the MicroLogix 1400 controllers mentioned in CISA’s bulletin, Censys notes that many appear to be running EoS (end-of-sale) firmware versions.

The cybersecurity company also highlighted the problem of undocumented cellular modems as a common blind spot, reporting that nearly half of the exposed Rockwell devices are reachable via Verizon Business, AT&T, T-Mobile, Comcast, Charter, and Starlink networks.

Censys also provided an expanded set of indicators of compromise (IoCs) in its report, along with threat-hunting guidance.

Earlier this week, the Minnesota IT Services (MNIT) agency activated the state’s cybersecurity incident response plan after identifying what it described as “a coordinated cyberattack targeting operational technology at more than 30 Minnesota community water systems.”

Multiple municipalities reported disruptions caused by the cyberattack, with equipment malfunctions forcing some utilities to temporarily switch to manual operations.

MNIT has shared threat intelligence collected from the affected systems and provided guidance and best practices to help impacted utilities restore normal operations.

Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.

The Picus whitepaper shows how breach and attack simulation tests your SIEM and EDR rules so threats stop slipping by detection.

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The first job was lucrative and went well, but a pension was preferable to rolling projects

ON CALL Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day, dear reader! And happy Friday, too, as it heralds both the end of the working week and the day on which The Reg delivers another edition of On Call, the reader-contributed column in which we share your stories of support jobs that twisted, tanked, or turned out terrifically.

This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Roger” who told us he spent decades providing application support for a UK-based software biz.

In 2015, Roger’s company ended support for legacy products and assumed users would decommission their systems. The company advised them to preserve their old documents and invoices on paper or in durable file formats, just to be safe.

Roger retired in 2021, and a year later heard that a large US-based corporation had acquired his former employer. “They immediately modernized the business by making the entire European support team redundant,” Roger told On Call.

He therefore put his old job out of his mind and settled into life as a pensioner.

And then, a few months ago, the American company contacted Roger.

“They had a customer in Germany who had used our software in the past, lost their paper archive, but still had their digital archives,” he told On Call.

“Every single backup disk was still there and contained every byte of raw data with military precision. What they did not contain were the few insignificant items required to turn those bytes back into documents.”

Which was awkward because the customer was undergoing a tax audit and needed every last document to prove its affairs were in order.

The American company asked if Roger could restore the documents – for a daily fee roughly equal to one month’s pension.

Those sums meant Roger was sure he could help – and proved it by remembering that backups of the application in question produced raw ASCII data that could be converted into human-readable documents with a print server running on bespoke software.

Roger found all the relevant code, got it running, and converted the ASCII files into PDFs.

“Twenty years after last using the software, I still remembered the installation procedure,” he told On Call. “Apparently retirement affects one’s recollection of obscure print server parameters less than where one left one’s reading glasses.”

Once he converted all the files, Roger assumed the job was done.

Then came news that the auditors had refused to accept the data for 2013.

“Apparently a large number of invoices for that year existed in the documents I had provided, but were missing in the accounts data. The expression ‘large-scale tax fraud’ began appearing with uncomfortable frequency.”

Roger rescued the situation by realizing that someone had imported one year’s archives twice, doubling the number of invoices and confusing the taxman.

“I had to charge them another day to discover their error,” Roger told On Call.

One of the younger people on the project casually mentioned several other archives were preserved using the same techniques, suggesting there was plenty more work for Roger to do.

“At that point I decided that retirement was still preferable to returning to full-time employment,” he told On Call.

This story has a bittersweet ending, because Roger told us that as he worked on the project, he realized the income would complicate his own tax affairs. He therefore donated his fees to the care home where he lives.

“That was very positively received by the home’s management,” he told On Call.

Have you been hauled out of retirement to support ancient tech? If so, make one more mouse click here to send On Call and email and share your story. ®

Why it matters: The video game industry has seen a historic wave of layoffs in recent years, with thousands of workers impacted in the last few weeks alone. To support some of the developers affected, indie game storefront itch.io is collaborating with an industry union to sell a collection of over 100 heavily discounted games.

The Game Industry Hardship Fund bundle is live on itch.io through August 13. The collection currently includes more than 100 indie titles, along with a few soundtracks, assets, and other materials, all for just $10.

All proceeds go toward the Game Industry Hardship Fund, which the United Videogame Workers union has promoted amid repeated massive rounds of layoffs throughout the industry. US and Canada-based developers can add more games to the bundle, so it will likely keep growing over the next couple of weeks. Customers can download any games added after their purchase at no additional cost.

The bundle mostly consists of small indie titles, but it also includes a few gems with positive Steam ratings. Examples include A Short Hike (MSRP: $8), Dungeon Bodega Simulator ($10), Eldritch ($15), Neon Struct ($18), Holedown ($10), and more.

Although games purchased through the bundle do not activate on Steam, downloads via the itch app or website are DRM-free. Many of the included titles also natively support macOS and Linux, and items from bundles appear in a separate tab on itch.io’s library section.

The Game Industry Hardship Fund aims to support the thousands of employees laid off over the past several years amid the industry’s pandemic-era overinvestment. The bundle page cites reports claiming that 33% of the industry’s workers have experienced job losses in the past two years.

Publishers have announced layoffs impacting thousands this summer alone. France’s video game union, the Syndicat des travailleurs et travailleuses du jeu vidéo, announced a strike after more than 1,000 workers lost their jobs. Bungie also recently eliminated roughly 400 positions after pivoting away from Destiny 2.

Ubisoft laid off 51 workers at its Barcelona studio shortly after the massively successful launch of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, a game the office helped develop, and MindsEye developer Build A Rocket Boy recently faced protests from laid-off workers in the UK while flying in fans for playtesting.

Most notably, Microsoft recently eliminated 1,600 positions, with another 1,600 employees set to be laid off over the course of this year. In a bid to “reset” Xbox, the company let go of five studios and began reorganizing its gaming business. That move has already prompted further layoffs at the now-independent Double Fine.

The writing is on the wall, so CodeWeavers is removing its reliance on Rosetta 2. A very early test version of Apple Silicon-native Crossover is now available for testing.

Cross-platform app compatibility tool CrossOver was designed to work on Intel Macs and could only work on newer M-series models thanks to Apple’s Rosetta 2 translation layer. Apple put developers on notice in June 2025, warning them that they would need to build apps designed without needing Rosetta 2 before 2027’s big macOS software update.

Since then, the developers of CrossOver have been working to get ready for the big transition. It announced in June 2026 that CrossOver 27 would ditch support for Intel Macs and transition fully to Apple Silicon.

Now, CodeWeavers has announced the availability of a preview version of CrossOver 27, complete with Apple Silicon support.

Very much a preview

Simplifying a complex issue, Apple Silicon uses ARM64 architecture. CodeWeavers has been working on an ARM64-native version of CrossOver for some time.

Wine, the compatibility layer that allows Windows apps to run on Macs, is core to CrossOver and began work to transition to ARM64 in January 2023.

There have been various milestones since that date, culminating in the release of this preview version of CrossOver.

However, while the preview can be downloaded and used on Apple Silicon Macs today, there are some caveats to keep in mind. CodeWeavers warns that the current very early preview has three big, known limitations.

• No D3DMetal in this build. Direct3D 12 support coming soon.
• Many game launchers do not function at all.
• No way to convert existing bottles to ARM64: you will need to create new bottles for testing.

Thankfully, all three limitations are expected to be resolved before CrossOver 27 launches. It’s currently penciled in for a release in early 2027.

If you’re still using an Intel Mac, the good news is that CrossOver 26 will continue to work even after CrossOver 27 is released. But Apple’s upcoming macOS Golden Gate update will not support Intel Macs, giving Intel owners yet another reason to upgrade to a new model.

• Startup replaces Nvidia GPUs with custom Arm-powered AI processing hardware
• Prometheus packs up to 128TB of unified LPDDR6 memory onboard
• New server promises 1,000× more memory available per processor

Majestic Labs, a startup founded in 2023 by former Google and Meta engineers, has unveiled a server built to rival Nvidia‘s GPU and HBM combination.

The Tel Aviv-based company argues that pairing costly graphics processors with high-bandwidth memory has become a fundamentally memory-bound and dead-end approach for AI inference.

Morgan Stanley has pared its Apple price target from $364 to $360 after slowing Services growth and higher memory costs weakened its earnings outlook, despite strong demand for the company’s products.

The investment bank kept its Overweight rating on Apple, but analyst Erik Woodring said two of the three factors that usually support the stock are under pressure. Morgan Stanley identified those factors as the iPhone, Services, and gross margins.

The iPhone remains the strongest part of Morgan Stanley’s report, seen by AppleInsider. Services growth and margins now appear weaker than the firm expected, however, prompting it to reduce its fiscal 2027 earnings estimate from $10.39 to $10 per share.

Apple reported fiscal third-quarter revenue of $109.4 billion on July 30, up 16% from the previous year. iPhone revenue reached a June-quarter record of $54.3 billion, while Mac revenue climbed 29%.

The company also told analysts that its active installed base and number of customers upgrading devices reached records. Morgan Stanley said the results could indicate that replacement cycles are beginning to shorten after several years of customers holding onto devices for longer.

Services growth is falling below 10%

Apple’s Services business generated $30.7 billion during the quarter, up 12% from 2025. Morgan Stanley said the growth rate missed its 14.6% consensus forecast.

The firm expects Services growth to slow to about 9.5% in the September quarter, which would mark the first result below 10% since the June 2023 quarter. Foreign exchange accounts for much of the slowdown, but Morgan Stanley also pointed to weaker App Store performance.

According to the report, Apple cited softer mobile gaming activity, uneven game-release schedules, litigation, and changes to App Store business models in some countries. Management also referred to broader changes in consumer engagement without blaming the weakness on a single factor.

Services gross margin fell from 76.7% in the March quarter to 75.6% in the June quarter. Morgan Stanley said the decline supports its view that the App Store is no longer outperforming the rest of the Services business.

Apple’s Services business generated $30.7 billion during the quarter, up 12% from 2025.

The slowdown makes future price increases and the launch of Apple’s upgraded Siri more important to the investment case. Morgan Stanley said Apple described internal and developer feedback as overwhelmingly positive, but the company is still evaluating the feature’s computing costs and revenue potential.

Apple also suggested that heavier Siri use could create opportunities for higher-tier iCloud+ subscriptions. Morgan Stanley said it hasn’t yet seen a clear measurable boost from AI in either product demand or Services revenue.

Memory costs squeeze Apple’s margins

Apple guided for a September-quarter gross margin between 47% and 48%. Morgan Stanley estimates that tariff refunds contribute about one percentage point, leaving an underlying midpoint of roughly 46.5%.

Morgan Stanley’s estimated underlying gross margin of 46.5% would be about 1.5 percentage points lower than Apple’s June-quarter gross margin. The firm said Apple’s gross margin has historically remained flat or increased by as much as half a percentage point during the same seasonal transition.

Management told analysts that higher memory costs would account for more than the entire sequential decline. Savings on other components and a more profitable sales mix weren’t enough to offset the increase.

Morgan Stanley expects future iPhone price increases and shipments of a foldable iPhone assumed in its model to provide some relief in the December quarter. Neither has been announced by Apple, and the larger question is whether memory inflation will delay a sustained margin recovery into fiscal 2027.

The firm’s revised $360 target is based on projected calendar 2027 earnings of $10.30 per share and an unchanged multiple of about 35 times earnings.

Demand is strong, but supply is tight

Apple management also acknowledged constraints affecting advanced 3-nanometer chip production for the iPhone, Mac, and iPad during the September quarter. Morgan Stanley said the problem reflects demand exceeding Apple’s earlier forecasts more than a supplier failing to execute.

Apple’s outlook implies that iPhone revenue will grow in the mid-teens percentage range year over year during the quarter.

Apple also said its supply chain has less flexibility than usual to respond. Channel inventory was lean at the end of the June quarter, and Morgan Stanley expects it to remain tight through September.

Apple’s outlook implies that iPhone revenue will grow in the mid-teens percentage range year over year during the quarter. Morgan Stanley believes growth could have been stronger without the component constraints.

The firm’s supply-chain checks also indicate that Apple hasn’t reduced its production plans for the second half of calendar 2026. Morgan Stanley interprets that as a sign Apple still expects customers to upgrade when its next iPhones arrive, even if higher prices test demand.

Despite its near-term concerns, Morgan Stanley remains positive about Apple’s longer-term prospects. The firm pointed to the company’s growing installed base, strong cash generation, faster product launches, and potential expansion in AI, health, payments, cloud services, and the home.

Apple shares closed at $333.43 on July 30, leaving room for near-term upside in Morgan Stanley’s view. The firm expects the stock to remain under pressure until new iPhones, the upgraded Siri, regulatory approvals, or stronger earnings estimates give investors another reason to buy.