A Kosovar national has pleaded guilty to operating Rydox, a large illegal online marketplace that sold stolen personal information, login credentials, credit card details, and cybercrime tools.

Kosovo law enforcement and Albania’s Special Anti-Corruption Body (SPAK) arrested 28-year-old Ardit Kutleshi and two other Rydox administrators (Jetmir Kutleshi and Shpend Sokoli) in December 2024.

The arrests were part of a joint international law enforcement operation that also shut down the Rydox marketplace, seized the Rydox[.]cc domain, and seized its servers in Kuala Lumpur with the help of the Royal Malaysian Police.

Ardit Kutleshi was extradited from Kosovo to the United States in 2025, when he was charged with crimes related to their Rydox admin role, including conspiracy to commit identity theft, aggravated identity theft, two counts of identity theft, access device fraud, and money laundering.

“Rydox put cybercriminal tools and sensitive data up for sale, including the stolen identities and logins of thousands of people,” said Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division. “The FBI and its foreign partners shut the marketplace down, and now the man who created it and ran it pleaded guilty.”

​According to court documents, between February 2016 and Rydox’s shutdown in 2024, marketplace sellers were involved in over 7,600 sales of login credentials, credit card information, and stolen personal information (including Social Security numbers, names, and addresses) of thousands of U.S. citizens.

Rydox also offered over 321,000 other “cybercrime products” for sale to more than 18,000 users, including various devices, software tools, and materials for committing cybercrimes.

Rydox users had to deposit cryptocurrency into their accounts before making a purchase via Bitcoin (“BTC”), Monero, Ripple, Ethereum, Litecoin, Perfect Money, Tron, or Verge payments that were deposited into a Rydox-controlled cryptocurrency wallet and could be used to buy illicit products, services, tools, and programs from Rydox sellers.

The marketplace also charged registered users a one-time fee (that fluctuated between $200 and $500) to become authorized sellers, who received 60% of the sale proceeds, while the marketplace retained 40% from every sale.

Kutleshi has pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft and money laundering conspiracy and is scheduled to be sentenced on February 9, 2027.

He now faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for money laundering and a minimum penalty of two years in prison for the aggravated identity theft count.

Since the start of the year, the owner of the Incognito dark web drugs market was sentenced to 30 years in prison in February, while a California man who sold fentanyl and methamphetamine on the Nemesis dark web marketplace was sentenced to more than 26 years in federal prison.

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Hollywood studios are turning to film schools for graduates who already know how to use AI video tools, rather than training their own staff, Semafor reported on Thursday.

“How do we find people who already know how to use this?” studios are now asking, Runway chief executive Cristóbal Valenzuela told Semafor.

Runway, which makes AI tools for generating and editing video, has helped build that pipeline. It announced its first university course, with NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, in December 2024. The NYU Tisch course began in January 2025 at the Martin Scorsese Virtual Production Center.

USC’s School of Cinematic Arts also runs a graduate AI filmmaking course that uses Runway’s tools, according to the company. In addition, Semafor reported that courses using Runway are taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, MIT, and Harvard, and at universities in Europe and Latin America.

Google and OpenAI run their own programmes. In September 2025, Google Labs launched Flow Sessions, which gives selected filmmakers access to its Flow AI filmmaking tool, along with mentoring and training.

OpenAI, meanwhile, teamed up with Tribeca Studios on a year-long programme. It funded independent filmmakers to make short films with OpenAI’s tools, with premieres planned for the 2026 Tribeca Festival.

Filmmaker Brad Tangonan, who took part in Flow Sessions, told Semafor he expects AI skills to become a requirement for working in film.

“You’re going to have to learn how to use [these tools] if you do want to be in the industry,” Tangonan told Semafor.

The hiring push comes as studios use more AI in production. Netflix said it used generative AI in about 300 titles this year, and it has asked all its staff to build AI fluency.

Google has also moved closer to film studios. In June, it invested $75m in A24 and set up an AI filmmaking research partnership between the studio and Google DeepMind.

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The data breach is in retaliation for alleged disinformation published by the FBI about ShinyHunters’ cybercrime methods, according to the group.

Cybercriminal group ShinyHunters said it breached the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) yesterday (22 September) and stole the personal information of a number of current and former FBI employees.

A screenshot shared by the group with a number of outlets reportedly showed information ShinyHunters had obtained on 5,000 FBI agents, including names, addresses, phone numbers and details on the employees’ spouses.

Reuters said it could not verify whether the screenshot was real, but was able to partially verify the authenticity of some of the information displayed – the outlet was able to match details from the leak to FBI employees in at least 10 instances, one of which was FBI director Kash Patel.

However, the publication said it could not establish where the data came from, or whether it had been stolen from the FBI’s internal systems as claimed by ShinyHunters.

According to 404 Media, which cited an FBI spokesperson, ShinyHunters was able to instigate the breach through a zero-day exploit in an Oracle product called PeopleSoft, after which the group managed to access AWS GovCloud servers and download data. The total exfiltrated data amounts to between 2TB and 3TB, according to the publication.

In a statement first posted to the group’s website on the dark web, ShinyHunters said it had targeted the FBI due to a report the agency published about the group earlier this year, which detailed the group’s methods and advised people not to pay if targeted for ransom.

ShinyHunters said the FBI made false allegations about the group and its cybercrime methods in the report – including alleged usage of threatening phone calls and false claims of compromising information – and has given the FBI one week to “correct or simply remove” the report.

It’s unclear what the group plans to do with the data if the one-week deadline passes. When asked by BleepingComputer if it would release the stolen data if the FBI failed to correct or remove the report, ShinyHunters said: “No comment.”

Commenting on the FBI breach, Closed Door Security CEO William Wright told SiliconRepublic.com: “Hell hath no fury like a ShinyHunter scorned.

“This is a retaliation attack, which not only demonstrates that no organisation is safe from the group, but also the fact that they will go to any length to protect their image.

“The group clearly wants to control the narrative around their activities, ensuring nothing is said that could dent their reputation. Just like any organisation, reputation is everything, even in the dark and unruly world of cybercrime.”

Wright also said Oracle needs to act fast to mitigate the zero-day vulnerability that allegedly allowed this breach to occur.

“It is essential Oracle takes steps to understand the [exploited] CVE [Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures] and whether it is already known to them. If not, an emergency update is essential,” he said.

“Any gaps between this announcement and a patch being released will only leave organisations vulnerable. Other threats actors will use the gap to exploit the CVE and launch further attacks.”

ShinyHunters has been linked to a number of high-profile breaches in recent months.

In March, the prolific group claimed responsibility for a breach of the European Commission’s Europa.eu platform, in which a reported 350GB of data, across multiple databases, was accessed and stolen.

In May, ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for hacking education management platform Canvas and issued a ransom to Canvas parent company Instructure. Some days later, Instructure reached an agreement with the group.

Recently, ShinyHunters targeted rival cybercrime group Clop by hacking and defacing its ransomware leak site in an escalation of a dispute between the two groups.

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Merlin Entertainments and Mojang Studios used Saturday’s Minecraft Live stream to confirm Minecraft World Hotel will open in 2027 at Chessington World of Adventures in south-west London, inside a new £50 million land called Minecraft World. The stay sits beside the first official Minecraft theme park land, a project first sketched in March 2026 and now far enough along that construction footage shows coaster track already going in.

Sixty-nine rooms will be packed into a four-story building at Chessington, divided into 20 premium and 49 regular rooms that truly bring the world of Minecraft to life, with biomes, creatures, and items replicated just as they would appear in game. Family rooms will be designed out similarly to Merlin’s Legoland hotels, with larger beds for adults and a separate section for children, often a set of bunks or a trundle bed. The blocky aesthetic can be found everyplace, from Creeper face pillows to wooden chests that double as furniture, block style lighting, and wall scenes, as well as passageways that resemble mineshafts and lifts straight out of a video game. Beds are provided, therefore there is no need to bring your crafting table, as stated on the official page.

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The public spaces are equally immersive as the apartments themselves. The lobby concept picture is packed of detail, with minecart tracks, Steve brandishing a pickaxe, and a newborn zombie dressed as a chicken jockey. Great food is essential in every hotel, and at the Deep Sea Diner, you can eat from tables that are truly surrounded by an underwater setting. The hotel bar is inspired on the Woodland Mansion. Room rates and a release date have yet to be determined, and booking a room is currently unavailable.

Minecraft fans are also in for a treat with the brand new Escape the Nether rollercoaster, which is marketed as the world’s first Minecraft rollercoaster. You get to board a minecart with Steve and Alex and rush through the darkness, avoiding aggressive creatures and lava until bursting out into the Nether portal and splashing into the Overworld. The rules for riders will be announced closer to the event’s start. Chessington Park has also added a new area dedicated to Minecraft World, which will have play spaces, interactive adventures, its own shops and eating, and even the opportunity to meet some of the game’s most famous mobs. It replaces the previous Wild Asia region.

Merlin and Mojang struck a deal in 2024 to bring Minecraft to the UK and US, with £85 million set aside for the two nations, and Chessington is the first of the new venues to launch. No information about other US sites has been given yet. Daisy Mercedes, Merlin’s creative producer, says you’ll be able to sleep inside the game and wake up exactly where you want to be. Filip Keatley Thoms, Mojang’s head for Minecraft Parks and Experiences, stated that the team worked hard to ensure that the game felt as immersive in real life as it does in the game when strolling around the biomes and witnessing the critters in person.

Mitsubishi spent the late 1980s and early 1990s stretching the limits of glass and electron guns until a 40-inch direct-view tube became something you could actually buy. The CS4307 belongs to that short, expensive run of sets that sat at the top of the company’s American lineup in the mid-1990s. Few other makers even tried a tube this large for living-room use. Projection sets offered more inches for less money, yet they never matched the punch of a real cathode-ray picture. Owners who wanted the biggest possible image without a projector chose this family of Mitsubishi consoles and paid accordingly.

A finished CS4307 weighs about 250 pounds and measures 39 and a half inches broad, 32 inches tall, and 27 inches deep, making it a bit of a handful to lift. Usually, you need four adults to lift the item. The cabinets, by the way, come in a fairly standard dark plastic with a very basic front panel layout that includes a power button, volume control, channel select, input select, a dedicated degauss switch because, you know, having one on the front can be useful at times, and an A/V reset for when things go wrong.

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Rear connections? Pretty basic for the time, however most 1996 versions include RF, composite, and S-Video; later, one of its siblings added component video, making it the only 40-inch standard-definition set in North America with that input. Some of the higher-end models also had twin tuners, which allowed you to view one channel in a small window while retaining the other full screen. The stereo speakers that came with it sit on either side of the image tube and generate surprisingly clear sound for a mid-nineties television.

Mitsubishi built the chassis in Braselton, Georgia, and paired it with a Japanese-made slot-mask tube with a dark tint and a dual-focus electron gun. Horizontal scan remains rock solid at 15 kHz, vertical scan at 60 Hz, hence the set performs best at 240p and 480i. Now I’m told that the three-line digital comb filter handles the most of the work when it comes to differentiating color and brightness.

The geometry on a well-adjusted example is somewhat unexpected, especially given the size of the thing, since circles appear round and squares appear square after consulting the service menu. Of course, color purity is important, as the huge glass in this item is sensitive to the Earth’s magnetic field. That’s why you get a variety of switches to help tell the set if it’s facing north, south, or sitting in a neutral position, as well as a manual degauss button right on the front for when the picture starts to become a little weird and you get that telltale patch of color.

The list price was between $3,400 and $4,000 ($7,259 and $8,540 today), depending on the year and any extras you wanted, such as the StarSight program guide or the ViewPoint on-screen menu. For that money, you got a picture with deep blacks, natural skin tones, and enough brightness to cut through a typically lighted room after a little gray-scale tweaking. Letterboxed films looked their best because the black bars stayed black, and retro gamers later discovered the same strength: 240p from a NES, Super Nintendo, or PlayStation looked sharp and colorful through S-Video, and the large screen on set thing brought light-gun games closer to the arcade experience.