Ernst & Young is notifying customers of a data breach caused by the compromise of a third-party support ticket system used by its IT personnel.

According to the company, support tickets submitted through the platform may have included documents containing client tax information.

Ernst & Young (EY) is among the world’s four largest auditing and professional services providers, offering auditing, tax, consulting, and transaction advisory services to major organizations in more than 150 countries.

The company employs 406,000 people and reported a global revenue of $53.2 billion last year.

The breach notification to affected clients states that Ernst & Young detected anomalous activity on its networks on April 23 and initiated an investigation.

With help from external cybersecurity experts, the company determined that an unauthorized third party had accessed the said platform between March 28 and April 12 and downloaded multiple documents.

The affected information included certain personal and financial data contained in or used to prepare tax filings. Since the notification sample features a placeholder for the specific data types, the type of the information exposed remains unclear.

Also, the company has not shared exactly how many customers were affected or whether the incident impacts only its U.S. customer base or other countries as well.

Ernst & Young says it secured its systems and notified federal law enforcement authorities, while it has assured that the unauthorized access has been removed.

The company also states that it is not aware of any misuse or further exposure of the stolen files and has no indication that particular individuals were targeted by the threat actors.

To mitigate the risks arising from this exposure, EY offers affected clients 24 months of identity monitoring and restoration service through Experian and urges letter recipients to enroll by October 31, 2026.

At the time of writing, no data extortion or ransomware groups have taken responsibility for the attack on Ernst & Young.

BleepingComputer has contacted EY to learn more about the incident, but we have not yet received a response at the time of publication.

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The search for life beyond Earth has borne little fruit. That remains true, but scientists have some renewed hope. For the first time, astronomers discovered an atmosphere surrounding an exoplanet within the habitable zone of its host star. 

Say hello to LHS 1140b, an Earth-like rocky planet that lives approximately 48 light-years away from us. For reference, Voyager 1 is rapidly approaching its first light day after nearly 50 years in flight. LHS 1140b sits in the “Goldilocks” zone for its star, which means it’s far enough away to not get roasted like Mercury, but close enough that it gets warm enough to support liquid water. 

According to a new study published in Science, the “special” part of this discovery is not just the habitable zone around a star. It’s that it seems to meet extra criteria that scientists care about — i.e., it’s rocky, not a gas giant, and can still hold onto an atmosphere despite harsh conditions. An atmosphere is what helps stabilize surface temperatures, which is essential for life to exist. 

“It’s very exciting,” said Collin Cherubim, lead author on the study and a PhD graduate from Harvard, in an email. “A major goal in the field has been to understand whether any rocky exoplanets at all can retain atmospheres.”

Cherubim says that most rocky planets orbit M-class dwarf stars, which “emit high-energy radiation for far longer than stars like the sun.” Most rocky planets are stripped of their atmospheres fairly early in their life cycles, thanks to this radiation, the stripping effect of solar wind and other factors, thereby eliminating their chance to host life.

Until LHS 1140b, Earth was the only rocky planet that humans had ever observed with an intact atmosphere. 

It wasn’t easy to find. Cherubim used a computer model he’d developed during his work that “simulates how exoplanet atmospheres evolve over billions of years.” Those models predicted the existence of “helium worlds,” or rocky planets with helium atmospheres (or at least mostly helium). Cherubim tested his theory with LHS 1140b and struck proverbial gold. 

Is there life on LHS 1140b?

Whether or not LHS 1140b contains life is a complicated question. Cherubim says that science recognizes three main requirements for a planet to support life: an atmosphere, the right temperatures to sustain liquid water, and a mostly rocky planet to make it hospitable. LHS 1140b appears to have all of those.

The primary problem is that LHS 1140b’s upper atmosphere is almost entirely helium, which is also “depleted of hydrogen.” That doesn’t bode well for life, since helium typically can’t support life as we know it here on Earth. 

Cherubim says the planet is also tidally locked to its star, like the moon to Earth, meaning one side of the planet has permanent daytime and the other permanent night. It’s also roughly 70% larger than Earth, which means gravity is nearly twice as strong there. These findings don’t rule out life entirely, but if LHS 1140b does host life, it would surely be very different from life on Earth.

Cherubim also admits that researchers don’t yet know whether the planet has a rocky surface or is entirely covered by an ocean, the latter of which would be significant for the search for life. Computer models developed by Cherubim predict that the lower atmosphere may even contain gases more conducive to life, such as carbon dioxide, water and even oxygen.

“While we need more data to see what’s going on in the rest of the atmosphere, this may be the first known helium world,” Cherubim said. “That these rocky worlds can retain helium atmospheres isn’t just good for habitability prospects, but also tells us our [computer prediction] models are getting something right.”

Until then, Mars is the most likely candidate for finding signs of life, since researchers have already identified possible biosignatures in its soil. 

Another potential candidate for habitability is K2-18b, where scientists have reported tentative evidence for dimethyl sulfide, a compound commonly produced by oceanic phytoplankton. Scientists are also paying attention to the Trappist-1 star system, which has seven Earth-sized planets, three of them in the star’s habitable zone.

‘Building a successful urban air mobility ecosystem requires collaboration across industries,’ said Eve Air Mobility’s CEO Johann Bordais.

Zurich-headquartered Hitachi Energy is partnering with air mobility company Eve to explore urban air transportation – loosely, flying cars.

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency has said that Urban Air Mobility (UAM) could become a commercial reality in the bloc within three to five years, as a way to – among other things – address transportation challenges in densely populated areas.

This possibility is supported by new innovation areas including battery technologies and electric propulsion.

Hitachi and Eve, as part of a memorandum of understanding (MoU), have agreed to explore infrastructure challenges to ensure ‘vertiports’ – a take-off and landing port for urban air vehicles – can be reliably connected to the power grid and be equipped to handle energy demands.

Hitachi will leverage its energy infrastructure, already widely deployed globally, while the Florida-based Eve, a manufacturer of electric vertical take-off and landing (EVTOL) aircrafts and other UAM products, will provide its complementary expertise to the project.

The companies will also assess requirements to enable vertiport operations, including power availability and high-power charging for EVTOL aircraft.

“Building a successful urban air mobility ecosystem requires collaboration across industries,” said Eve Air Mobility’s CEO Johann Bordais.

“As the sector moves toward commercial operations, it is increasingly important to understand how charging infrastructure, grid connectivity and vertiport energy requirements will be integrated into existing networks.”

The company said it holds around 2,700 letters of intent for EVTOLs from prospective customers. It has been conducting flight tests since last December.

“With more than a century of innovation, we are addressing the most urgent energy challenge of our time, balancing soaring electricity demand while decarbonising the power system,” said Marco Berardi, the head of grid and power quality solutions and service at Hitachi Energy.

“We firmly believe that no single company or country can make the energy transition happen on its own, so we are thrilled to collaborate with Eve to jointly accelerate the decarbonisation of urban air mobility.”

As per the MoU, the two businesses will also explore the potential to repurpose aircraft batteries for energy storage after their aviation life cycle.

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First look: Nvidia is working with Japan’s newly formed Noetra consortium to build a 140-megawatt AI factory that will serve as the compute backbone for the government’s FRONTia program, which focuses on robotics, industrial automation, and digital twins. The facility will run on Nvidia’s DSX data center platform and use Vera Rubin NVL72 racks, each combining 72 Rubin GPUs and 36 Vera CPUs.

In total, the project calls for 27,500 Rubin GPUs and 13,750 Vera CPUs connected through Spectrum-X Ethernet networking. The system is designed to handle the training of trillion-parameter models as capacity ramps up.

Nvidia is positioning the Rubin AI factory as a full-stack platform encompassing chips, networking, systems, and software for training and deploying open multimodal foundation models. These models are designed to operate with robots and physical systems, rather than just processing text and images. The plan is to make pretrained weights widely available to developers and companies in Japan so they can fine-tune the models for their own robotics, logistics, and industrial applications.

The hardware footprint is substantial even by today’s AI data center standards. The component count translates into 382 Vera Rubin NVL72 racks, each a tightly integrated system designed for high-bandwidth NVLink communication within the rack and Spectrum-X networking across the broader fabric.

Industry pricing estimates suggest that VR200 NVL72 systems cost between $5 million and $7 million each, which would put the rack hardware alone in the $1.9 billion to $2.7 billion range before accounting for memory, networking equipment, and cooling infrastructure. Estimates from Morgan Stanley value Rubin GPUs at roughly $55,000 each in volume, implying approximately $1.5 billion in GPU silicon costs alone.

Neither Nvidia nor Noetra has provided a firm deployment timeline, and Rubin systems are only expected to enter volume production in the second half of this year. As a result, the AI factory will likely come online in phases.

Noetra is a newly formed consortium created to bring major Japanese technology and industrial companies together around a shared AI infrastructure effort. The group is led by SoftBank Corp., Sony, NEC, and Honda, with support from 44 companies and organizations.

Noetra, together with the national research institute AIST, won a public tender to operate the FRONTia project from fiscal 2026 through fiscal 2030. Initial funding is set at ¥387.3 billion – about $2.4 billion – with a long-term target of up to ¥1 trillion, or roughly $6.1 billion, over five years. However, that additional funding is subject to annual reviews, meaning the full amount is not guaranteed.

The FRONTia roadmap extends beyond simple language models. Noetra is targeting a reasoning foundation model in fiscal 2026. By fiscal 2028, the plan is to develop an omni-modal model capable of handling text, images, video, and audio. By fiscal 2030, the goal is “real-world native AI” with spatial awareness and other capabilities designed for robots and physical systems operating in factories, warehouses, and healthcare environments.

The Rubin AI factory is intended to serve as the compute foundation that enables this progression, providing enough scale to train and retrain very large models while still allowing their weights to be shared for downstream applications.

This project joins several other Nvidia-related initiatives in Japan but serves a different purpose. SoftBank has already announced a Blackwell-based DGX supercomputer aimed at enterprise AI workloads. Meanwhile, RIKEN, Fujitsu, and Nvidia are collaborating on FugakuNEXT, a $740 million zetta-scale system planned for around 2030 and designed for scientific computing.

The Rubin AI factory, by contrast, is a state-funded national infrastructure project selected through a public tender and designed specifically for physical AI and robotics applications across multiple industries.

The broader policy direction is clear. Japan’s AI Robotics Strategy, released in March, sets a goal of capturing more than 30% of the global AI robotics market by 2040, representing an opportunity the government estimates at roughly $133 billion. The strategy calls for domestic control over the foundation models and data that future robots will rely on.

By investing in a Rubin-based AI factory and connecting it to a consortium led by major Japanese hardware and telecommunications companies, officials are treating large-scale physical AI computing as a national asset rather than simply another private supercomputer project.

Apple’s long-rumoured OLED iPad mini could finally be close to launch, with a new report suggesting the compact tablet is in the final stages of development.

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the next-generation iPad mini, reportedly codenamed J510 is nearing the end of development. It is expected to arrive shortly after the iPhone 18 Pro launches.

The biggest upgrade is the display. Multiple reports have pointed to Apple replacing the current LCD panel with an 8.4-inch hybrid OLED display.

This will mark the first time the iPad mini has adopted the technology. The screen is also rumoured to use an LTPS backplane and retain a 60Hz refresh rate. Therefore, ProMotion will remain exclusive to Apple’s higher-end iPads. A shame, but maybe not that much of a surprise.

Abbott Laboratories is investigating two separate cybersecurity incidents after confirming unauthorized access to internal legacy Exact Sciences systems in its Cancer Diagnostics business, while also investigating a separate claim that attackers breached its LabCentral portal and stole company data.

The company confirmed the Cancer Diagnostics incident after the ShinyHunters extortion gang added Abbott to its data leak site, initially threatening to publish allegedly stolen data after July 18 unless the company negotiated with the group, before later extending the deadline to July 21.

When BleepingComputer asked Abbott about the alleged ShinyHunters incident, Abbott directed BleepingComputer to a statement published on its website.

“Abbott is investigating a cyber incident in which there was unauthorized access to a limited number of internal systems in our Cancer Diagnostics business only,” the company said. 

“This does not impact any business operations, product or product availability, manufacturing or lab operations, or our ability to serve patients.”

Abbott added that the security incident has not impacted any other Abbott businesses or systems, and said the legacy Exact Sciences systems are separate from Abbott’s.

The company said it activated its incident response procedures after it learned of the incident, engaged cybersecurity experts, and notified law enforcement.

Abbott also stated that it does not expect the incident to have a material impact on its business or financial results.

ShinyHunters claimed to BleepingComputer that it gained access through a vishing attack targeting several Abbott employees in mid-June. According to the threat actor, the attack allowed it to compromise a Microsoft Entra single sign-on (SSO) account and gain access to internal systems.

Since last year, the extortion group has been conducting social engineering campaigns that target employees’ Microsoft Entra, Okta, and Google SSO accounts.

After gaining access to a corporate SSO account, the threat actors steal data from connected SaaS applications such as Salesforce, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, SAP, Slack, Adobe, Atlassian, Zendesk, Dropbox, and many others.

The extortion gang has been increasingly targeting medtech companies, including Medtronic, OneMedical, and AdaptHealth. BleepingComputer has learned that ShinyHunters was also behind the iRhythm data breach and targeted Stryker soon after the company recovered from a destructive Iranian data-wiping attack.

When asked what data was allegedly stolen, ShinyHunters claimed it exfiltrated data from Microsoft Entra, ServiceNow, SharePoint, Databricks, and Coupa, including internal documents, contracts, and customer information.

The threat actor further claimed to have stolen more than 30 million rows of customer personally identifiable information (PII) from multiple datasets containing names, email addresses, phone numbers, physical addresses, dates of birth, and more than one million Social Security numbers.

The group also claimed to have stolen over 22 million client notes containing doctor-patient conversations, more than 20 million medical orders, and customer agreements and NDAs.

BleepingComputer has not independently verified the threat actor’s claims regarding the stolen data.

Alleged breach at LabCentral customer portal

The second incident involves a threat actor known as ShadowByt3$, who contacted BleepingComputer claiming to have breached Abbott’s Core Laboratory diagnostics business through its LabCentral customer portal.

The threat actor said it breached the unit via its LabCentral customer portal using compromised customer credentials after identifying what it described as a “weak point” in the environment.

According to the threat actor, they gained access on July 4, 2026, after which they slowly exfiltrated files by targeting API endpoints. 

ShadowByt3$ claims the stolen data includes CE manufacturing certificates, operation manuals, technical specifications, regulatory documentation, product requirement archives, calibrator value assignments, assay files, and other product documentation related to Abbott’s laboratory diagnostic systems.

The group says no customer data was stolen, but claims it obtained sensitive business documents and intellectual property. It also provided BleepingComputer with screenshots and a file listing as purported proof of the intrusion. 

Abbott confirmed to BleepingComputer that it is aware of the “potential” cyber incident but disputed the threat actor’s characterization of the data it claims to have stolen, stating that all data stored in the environment is public and not sensitive.

“LabCentral is an externally facing third-party hosted portal used by Abbott’s core laboratory diagnostics business,” an Abbott spokesperson told BleepingComputer.

“It houses publicly available technical product reference documents, including operating manuals, troubleshooting checklists and product specifications, and does not contain proprietary/sensitive customer or business information.”

At this time, neither ShinyHunters nor ShadowByt3$ has publicly released data they claim to have stolen from Abbott.

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The Fold 8 Ultra could get a sharper display, a more powerful chipset, a new camera, and a larger battery. Samsung’s purported wider foldable, the Fold 8, is expected to solve the most common problem with tall-body, narrow cover screens by adopting a new aspect ratio. The Flip 8, on the other hand, could only debut with a new chip, and not a Snapdragon one. 

The Flip 7 wasn’t a bad clamshell by any measure. However, it’s been one year, and the memory crisis has already hit the smartphone market hard. In a tricky cost-to-margin situation, the Flip 8 could end up getting a price hike without any major improvements, and that might not sit well with potential buyers.

Price and release date

A recent report from WinFuture claims the Flip 8’s pricing will begin at €1,299 for the 256GB model and €1,499 for the 512GB model. For those catching up, the Flip 7 launched at €1,199 for the 256GB variant and €1,319 for the 512GB variant. 

In other words, Samsung might ask between €100 and €180 more for the phone in Europe. In the US, the Flip 8 (256GB) could land around $1,199, while the 512GB variant could cost $1,399. However, these are speculations at the moment, based on the ongoing memory crisis and its effects on smartphone manufacturers. 

Despite rumors of a price increase, Samsung might retain its free storage upgrade launch offer to boost initial purchases. The Flip 8 could break cover at the Galaxy Unpacked event on July 22, 2026, and, based on Samsung’s recent launch pattern, sales could commence around August 5, 2026. 

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8: Rumored specs at a glance

Design

Samsung might not revamp the Flip 8’s design at all. As seen in the renders, the Flip 8 could be virtually indistinguishable from the Flip 7. According to Android Headlines, the flip phone could be available in four colors: Graphite, Cream, Pink, and Mint (Samsung exclusive shade).

A leak from Ice Universe puts the Flip 8’s total thickness at 6.6 mm, which is 0.3 mm less than the Flip 7’s 6.9 mm. However, a new WinFuture report refutes those claims, mentioning that the Flip 8 could be 0.2 mm thicker than the Flip 7. When it comes to weight, however, the upcoming Flip could be about eight grams lighter. 

All the other things, such as the placement of the rear cameras, the cover display that runs around those cameras, a punch-hole screen on the inside with relatively thicker bezels, and the positioning of the buttons and USB-C port, could largely remain the same. 

Display

Per the current consensus on leaks and the absence of any claims of upgrades, the displays on the Galaxy Z Flip 8 may be unchanged from those on the Flip 7. The Inner panel could retain the 6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X at 120Hz, while the cover screen could feature the familiar 4.1-inch Super AMOLED. 

Even though both the panels hold up their ground, buyers paying more than last year would naturally expect upgrades across the board.

According to a new report from NewsPim (via SammyFans), the Flip 8 won’t get Samsung’s Flex Titanium display. In other words, it might not get the new hinge design that could enable a more durable, less-visible crease on the Fold 8 and Fold 8 Ultra, despite early rumors.

Performance

This is yet another distinction between the Fold 8, Fold 8 Ultra, and the Flip 8. While the book-style foldables are rumored to be based on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chipset, the Flip 8 could feature the Exynos 2600 chip. 

So, if you were hoping Snapdragon would return to Samsung’s flip foldable, expect disappointment, and you’ll never be disappointed (I’ve seen the Spider-Man teasers). Anyway, the Exynos 2600 isn’t all that bad. It is a 10-core chip running at up to 3.8 GHz, a step up from the Exynos 2500 in the Flip 7, and paired with 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM across both storage tiers.

I’ve used the chip on the baseline Galaxy S26 earlier this year (on the Indian version), and it did well, especially in terms of peak performance. What I didn’t like about it is the thermal management: the S26 got warm rather quickly under heavy workloads. In retrospect, the chipset can handle everything you’d possibly do on a clamshell foldable. 

Software

The Galaxy Z Flip 8 will most definitely ship with One UI 9 on Android 17, and there are two things to discuss here. First, the updates that might roll out to Samsung’s foldables due to Google’s Android 17, which may or may not include the new features Google talked about at The Android Show and Google I/O 2026. 

Second, the specific additions Samsung launches as part of One UI 9, including those rumored for the Samsung Internet Browser, multi-window browsing, new Galaxy AI features, and other visual enhancements across the user interface. Like the company’s previous flagships, this one could also come with seven years of major operating system and security updates. 

Cameras

Camera hardware on the Galaxy Z Flip 8 might be unchanged from the Flip 7 across the board. The clamshell could sport a 50MP primary sensor, a 12MP ultrawide sensor, and a 10MP selfie shooter on the front. No source has reported any sensor-level improvement, new apertures, or new processing modes specific to the Flip 8.

Of course, the computational photography pipeline could benefit from the Exynos 2600’s new ISP, but nothing beats adding more capable hardware. It is the Fold 8 Ultra that is supposed to come with the best camera arrays on a Samsung Fold yet: a 200MP primary camera, a 10MP telephoto camera, and a new 50MP ultrawide camera. 

Battery life and charging

The battery situation on the Galaxy Z Flip 8 could be the most frustrating part of the whole spec sheet. At 4,300 mAh, it could be identical to the Flip 7. In a year when Motorola is shipping 5,000 mAh into its premium flip phones, the decision to hold the line is a deliberate trade-off in favor of form factor.

The one genuine upgrade is wired charging, which jumps from 25W on the Flip 7 to 45W on the Flip 8. At 45W, a 4,300 mAh battery might reach full charge in roughly an hour. The phone could also support wireless charging, but whether it will come with magnetic wireless charging remains to be seen. 

Should you wait for the Flip 8, or buy something now?

If you’re upgrading from an old clamshell foldable, perhaps the Flip 4 or the Flip 5, and you’re certain that you want a Samsung, and you’ve used a regular smartphone but have always been drawn to a flip phone’s form factor, waiting for the Flip 8 makes sense. 

However, if the Flip 8’s cameras or battery don’t look impressive enough, and you’re open to other brands, the Motorola Razr Ultra is available now with a larger 5,000 mAh battery, Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, and a competitive camera setup. Its price, $1,499, could make you think twice about your decision. 

AI deepfakes have become a headache for creators, and TikTok is finally stepping up to fight back. Social media consultant Matt Navarra spotted the platform quietly testing a new opt-in tool that hunts down AI-generated content mimicking a creator’s face, giving them the power to flag it directly.

TikTok US spokesperson Zachary Kizer confirmed to The Verge that the test is currently limited to a small group of US creators. This puts TikTok right on YouTube’s heels, which already expanded its own likeness detection tool to eligible creators over 18 after months of quiet testing, and even extended similar protections to celebrities and talent agencies earlier this year.

To fight deepfakes, TikTok wants a scan of your real face

TikTok’s AI likeness detection tool is optional, but creators who want to use it must first verify their identity through Jumio. That includes a real-time selfie and an ID check. According to Kizer, TikTok does not keep ID documents, while facial data is used only to match a creator’s likeness and identify possible unauthorized AI-generated content.

Once verification is complete, TikTok starts scanning AI-generated content that may feature the creator’s face or likeness. If it finds potential matches, the creator can review them and report any posts or accounts they believe are impersonating them.

Why does TikTok’s opt-in approach matter here?

Recent events have shown how quickly AI-generated likenesses can become controversial. Earlier this month, Meta launched Muse Image, letting anyone generate AI images using public Instagram photos, with every account opted in by default. Backlash was swift enough that Meta pulled the feature just three days later, admitting it missed the mark.

TikTok flips that script: verification comes first, participation is opt-in, and creators stay in control. With YouTube and TikTok now leading the way on this kind of protection, AI likeness detection is quickly becoming a tool creators expect from every major video platform.