WTF?! According to Kaspersky, cybercriminals have been targeting Steam users with a sustained malware campaign since 2025, distributing malicious software disguised as desktop wallpapers. The attack hijacked the accounts of gamers using Steam’s live wallpaper application Wallpaper Engine, which ranks among the platform’s most popular non-game downloads.

The attack reportedly abused Wallpaper Engine’s “Application Wallpaper” executable, which runs as a standalone Windows program and can include community-developed games, planners, calendars, system monitors, and other widgets. However, because the app allows unverified third-party code to run on users’ systems, it can be abused by threat actors to target unsuspecting users.

The researchers found that the attackers used two primary methods to distribute malware. The first involved archives containing the executable wallpaper alongside a malicious payload, typically including compromised .exe files, DLLs, or scripts. The malware was also frequently concealed within password-protected archives and executed automatically when the wallpaper was applied.

Once applied, the infected executables stole users’ account credentials, hijacked live sessions, and transmitted the stolen data to servers controlled by the attackers. The researchers discovered dozens of malicious application wallpapers on Steam Workshop, some of which were downloaded tens of thousands of times.

To test the attackers’ modus operandi, the researchers launched a wallpaper containing a malicious game called NTRaholic, which ran “flawlessly.” The gameplay and controls worked as advertised, raising no suspicion at first glance. However, unbeknownst to the user, the wallpaper dropped a backdoor called Synaptics.exe, part of the notorious DarkKomet malware family.

The executable that launched the game was named ._cache_GAME1.exe, but it also installed a system library called AggregatorHost.dll, which contained a malicious payload designed to steal user data and transmit it to the attackers’ command-and-control server. Once the attackers gained control of the active session, they used the compromised account to upload additional malicious wallpapers to Steam Workshop.

The campaign primarily targeted gamers in China, who accounted for 89% of the compromised downloads. Users in Germany, Canada, Russia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and India were also affected, though in much smaller numbers. Steam has since removed all of the malicious wallpapers, but Kaspersky is still urging users to run antivirus scans before applying wallpapers that include built-in executables.

Benz’s electric “Grand Limousine” might just make minivans cool.

Don’t call it a Caravan

The media experience

Creature comforts

Behind the wheel

Wrap-up

Compilation Matters: Despite the meteoric rise of generative AI services, traditional image editing tools like Photoshop still dominate the creative industry. So much so that Microsoft – now largely focused on cloud services and AI models – is working hard to find new ways to make Windows-based applications run faster.

Thanks to a close collaboration with Adobe, Microsoft engineers have significantly improved performance in certain Photoshop operations. Photoshop is a large, native desktop application written in C++ and compiled with Microsoft’s Visual C++ compiler on Windows, which is why Microsoft focused on MSVC in an effort to extract additional performance from one of the world’s most widely used image editing applications.

Microsoft explained that the collaboration targeted real-world customer scenarios involving CPU-intensive operations. Many complex image processing workloads are now handled – or in some cases “accelerated” – by the GPU. However, some latency-sensitive tasks, such as brush responsiveness, stroke input, and file-opening operations, still depend heavily on a CPU’s raw performance.

The engineers explored new practical ways to improve Photoshop’s performance at compile time. First, they enabled MSVC’s “peak-performance” compilation mode, which is designed to produce highly optimized binaries on Windows.

They then experimented with profile-guided optimization to further optimize the executables. PGO uses data collected from test runs of .exe and .dll binaries to better reflect real-world usage patterns and improve performance. However, the engineers found that PGO was not an ideal fit for Photoshop’s development workflow, as it adds complexity to the build process.

After trying – and failing – with PGO, the engineers turned to Sample-based Profile Guided Optimizations as a potential alternative. Unlike traditional PGO, SPGO replaces data collected from “representative” workloads with hardware performance samples gathered from actual release binaries. SPGO is also more flexible in terms of data collection, enabling analysis across a diverse set of test and production machines, and can deliver typical performance gains of around 5% to 15%.

Microsoft said SPGO proved to be a better fit for the Photoshop collaboration. Instead of relying on manual tuning, engineers could use compiler feedback – collected with negligible runtime overhead – to improve the code generated during MSVC’s final build process.

SPGO also proved to be more compatible with Adobe’s engineering environment. By combining MSVC’s peak-performance mode with SPGO, the teams were able to improve Photoshop performance by 20% on x64 Windows systems and by 13% on Arm.

As noted by Adobe senior software developer John Fitzgerald, the optimized builds delivered better responsiveness in drawing and stroke operations, file-opening times, and filter processing. “These are among the most frequently used and latency-sensitive interactions in a professional creative workflow, where responsiveness directly affects a user’s ability to work fluidly and iteratively,” Fitzgerald said.

Microsoft said the collaboration with Adobe provides a meaningful foundation for improving performance in software designed for Windows. The company is now highlighting MSVC’s capabilities as a way to improve performance and user experience across its broader software ecosystem.

Like other popular services like Netflix and Max, Hulu is a streaming service that has exclusive series, current-season episodes, hit movies, Hulu Originals, kids shows, and more. There’s also a Hulu plan for nearly every kind of watcher, including streaming content with ads for a service on the cheap, or bundles for additional platforms like Disney+ and ESPN+ to get even more content at reduced prices. I have a Hulu plan to watch some of my favorite shows like critically-acclaimed Atlanta or my current fave wholesome comedy, Abbott Elementary. We at WIRED stay glued to our devices and round up the best movies and the best TV shows currently being streamed on Hulu. Right now, we have outlined various ways to save while streaming on Hulu, including the chance to pay just $1.99 per month with the Hulu student discount.

Get this Hulu Student Discount: $2 Per Month

Students can stream a bevy of shows and movies with Hulu for just $2 per month. This deal saves you 80% off the original monthly subscription price, and is valid for new and existing Hulu subscribers enrolled in an accredited college or university who meet verification qualifications. All you need to do to get Hulu for less than two bucks is verify your student status through SheerID to save.

Enjoy a Hulu TV + Live TV Free Trial

I love my Hulu account, but with half-a-dozen other streaming services, it’s been hard to keep them all, or even know which is worth the money at the end of every month. I’m trying to decide which to keep, and the Hulu TV free trial is an excellent way to test the plan and see if it fits my TV watching needs. There is a free 3-day trial to test it out, and the plan has a $0 Broadcast TV fee, $0 Regional Sports fee, $0 Set-top box or related rental fees, and a $0 administrative fee. The Hulu live TV plan is essentially the best of both worlds—your favorite streaming-only series, along with cable-only content like sports and news programming, including over 95 live TV channels like ABC and ESPN.

Watch the Latest Hulu TV Shows for Less

One of the things I love most about Hulu is that they are constantly adding both new original shows and old favorites. They truly have something for every type of watcher and mood. As a true crime lover (I know it’s problematic, I’m sorry), I’ve been excited to see the Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox.

Here’s what I’m also excited to watch this season. Classic crime drama The Rookie stars perennial heartthrob Nathan Fillion centers on a small-town man becoming the oldest rookie in the LAPD. I always look forward to the feel-good comedy Abbott Elementary, which focuses on a quirky cast of misfits in the public education system in Philadelphia. In R.J. Decker, the titular character is a conman and disgraced newspaper photographer who begins entering the dark underworld of private investigating in South Florida.

Plus, there’s something for everyone, from trash reality TV like The Bachelorette, to intriguing Paradise, to quirky comedy High Potential, to the classic boy cartoon-comedy Family Guy.

from the lucy-pulling-away-the-copyright-football dept

I can’t say I know for sure that Stephen Colbert is a Techdirt reader, but I very much believe he is. His interests align somewhat with ours, he often comments on some of the same topics we do, and, it turns out, he decided to troll his previous employer during his last show in a very Techdirt-ian manner.

After CBS decided to sacrifice Colbert at the altar of American fascism, the wind down of The Late Show culminated in a final broadcast weeks ago. During that broadcast, Colbert was covering a story about Lee Mendelson Film Productions, which owns the music catalogue for the Charlie Brown franchise, suing several targets for use of its copyrighted music. As he did so, the show band began playing the Charlie Brown theme song. Colbert mused afterwards sarcastically that he hoped that wouldn’t cost CBS any money.

Well played, if only to highlight the absurdity that such a short performance of an iconic song like that could actually result in threats, lawsuits, or demands for payment. But many speculated that the show had already gotten the rights to play the music before it aired, or that Lee Mendelson Film Productions wouldn’t actually do anything about it all to avoid inserting itself into the public spat between Colbert, CBS, and our current government.

Wrong. The company did apparently reach out to CBS, which eventually had to enter into a licensing agreement to avoid any legal issues.

The agreement will see CBS take a license for “Linus and Lucy,” the unofficial Peanuts theme that Colbert’s band played on the air during the show. The proceeds from the deal will be donated to the charity World Central Kitchen, run by Chef José Andrés.

“LMFP found the music’s use on The Late Show funny and entertaining, and is proud to support World Central Kitchen’s mission,” the group’s chairman Jason Mendelson said. A spokeswoman for CBS confirmed the agreement but declined to comment.

On the one hand, I guess it’s nice to see some of CBS’ money go to a good organization like World Central Kitchen. But I do indeed wonder if similar arrangements were struck with the other four entities against which LMFP filed lawsuits. I somehow doubt it. I would guess instead that such treatment was reserved for CBS, in order to make this story more lighthearted and warming.

It’s not, this is stupid, and none of this is as it should be. Colbert shouldn’t have been forced out of his job by a combination of a thin-skinned gibbon and a compliant CBS. It’s insanity that copyright law is in a place where such a diminutive use of a famous song could result in the requirement of a licensing arrangement, never mind actual potential lawsuits. And if it’s so necessary to protect copyright in this instance that lawsuits need to be filed against multiple parties, it should be important enough that any licensing fees and/or damages obtained shouldn’t just be given away to charities.

But as a final poke in CBS’ eye, this was a good one.

Filed Under: charlie brown, copyright, licensing, stephen colbert

Companies: cbs, lmfp, paramount, world central kitchen

In context: Unpatchable, hardware-level vulnerabilities caused a stir some years ago when they repeatedly turned up in AMD and Intel processors, but they’ve been far rarer on Apple chips. This latest discovery only affects older iPhone processors, but it still shows that even relatively recent SecureROM implementations aren’t foolproof.

Security researchers at Paradigm Shift have published the first iPhone bootROM exploit in years. The process, called usbliter8, targets a hardware-level flaw, which means upgrading to newer hardware is the only real fix.

The exploit affects the iPhone XS’s A12 chip, the Apple Watch Series 4’s S4 chip, and the iPhone 11’s A13 SoC. The S5, found in the Apple Watch Series 5, first-generation SE, and HomePod mini, is vulnerable too. Pulling it off requires physical access and a Raspberry Pi, since the flaw sits in a part of the USB controller that standard Mac and PC USB stacks can’t reach.

A12 and A13 are exposed because of how their USB controllers mishandle data packets, leaving SRAM data insecure. Earlier SoCs avoid the issue because they reset the DMA address after each packet comes through the USB controller, and A14 and newer are also safe, having corrected the underlying configuration.

Using the exploit to jailbreak devices is fairly simple on A12, S4, and S5 chips. A13 is trickier, since SecureROM’s PAC protections add extra steps, but it’s ultimately just as vulnerable as its predecessor. The flaw can’t be patched via software, and altered firmware survives reboots.

While most devices built on these chips have been considered obsolete for years, the iPhone 11 which still runs on the A13 chip happens to be the oldest iPhone that supports iOS 26. Apple isn’t dropping it for iOS 27 this fall, either, so it’s guaranteed at least another year of software updates.

The last unpatchable iPhone jailbreak, checkm8, surfaced in 2019 and covered the A5 (iPhone 4S) through A11 (iPhone X). It later resurfaced as a way to bypass the security chips on some Macs. Together, the two exploits leave every iPhone from the 4S through the 11 open to an unpatchable jailbreak.

A fundamentally similar bootROM exploit recently surfaced for Microsoft’s Xbox One, a console long considered unhackable. But getting it to work proved far harder than on iPhones, requiring a voltage-based hijack to pull off.

Google’s next-generation smart speaker is finally available to pre-order. The new Google Home Speaker launches with Gemini built in, costs $99.99/£99.99, and comes with a six-month subscription to Google Home Premium for a limited time.

The speaker was first teased last year, with Google recently hinting that more details were just around the corner. Now, pre-orders are officially live ahead of general availability from June 25.

Gemini is the headline feature here, bringing Google’s AI assistant directly to the speaker. Buyers will also get six months of Google Home Premium, which unlocks additional features including access to Gemini Live.

Google is promising a noticeable audio upgrade over the Nest Mini. The Home Speaker features a centrally positioned 58mm driver. It claims to deliver 2.5 times stronger bass than its smaller smart speaker. While it lacks the dedicated tweeter found in the larger Nest Audio, Google is clearly positioning it as a more capable option for music playback. It is more capable than the Nest Mini.

Long before we had Amazon or Facebook marketplace, or thousands of other online retailers, we had eBay. And now, we have an eBay coupon to help you save on basics like vacuums and phones, to even your most niche need—because eBay has everything from haunted objects to ironic landline phones to retro gaming consoles. One of the first and most enduring online shopping platforms, eBay has stood the test of time, providing us with the old-school feel of estate sales, complete with bidding wars and gently used items of quite literally every type.

Save up to 60% on Your Next Purchase at eBay

eBay has rotating deals, like 20% off up-and-coming brands, so be sure to check their page often to know which deals are next. They have huge savings on essentials, like Dyson vacuums—an enduring titan in the home cleaning realm. There’s also discounts on like-new refurbished Apple MacBooks and iPads so you can work or study for so much less. It’s not only office tech they have deals on, but even kitchen essentials, like the forever-popular KitchenAid Stand Mixer. eBay has deals on everything from clothing and jewelry to power tools, so check eBay’s deals page often.

How to Use an eBay Coupon (If you Have one Handy)

Once you’ve perused the nearly endless options of items on eBay, here’s how you can redeem the eBay discount code or offer at checkout: first, make sure your code isn’t expired (I know it sounds like a no-brainer, but you don’t want to be disappointed when that dreaded ‘invalid’ pop-up comes on the screen). Enter the code in the ‘Add coupons’ section, or check the box if the coupon is displayed. When you select ‘apply,’ you should see the discounted total, and then you’ll be prompted to pay.

Save More With Free Shipping

Once you find the special item of your dreams, go to the “shipping and pickup” search filter and check the “free shipping” box to get free shipping. Make sure you choose eBay free shipping on a multitude of items like motor parts, books, golf clubs, Pokemon cards, haunted objects, tech, and virtually anything else you can imagine.

Shop These Rotating eBay Deals

eBay has rotating deals, like 20% off up-and-coming brands, so be sure to check their page often to know which deals are next. They also have spotlighted, trending, and featured deals for huge savings on a myriad of products like auto parts, golf clubs, shoes, and more. eBay has a money-back guarantee to ensure you get the item you ordered or you get your money back.

Shop With eBay Mastercard to Get More Rewards

Have you heard of an eBay Mastercard? I hadn’t either, but if you’re a collector or frequent eBay shopper, an eBay Mastercard is a smart way to save on purchases you were already planning to make. You’ll earn five times the amount of points for the rest of the year after you spend $1,000 on eBay in a calendar year. Until then, you’ll earn three times the points per $1 spent, up to $1,000, on eBay in a calendar year. You can also earn twice as many points per $1 spent on gas, restaurant, and groceries, and 1 times as many points per $1 spent on all other Mastercard purchases.

Get Daily Deals With the eBay App

If you’re someone who shops or sells on eBay often, I’d suggest downloading the eBay app for even more perks. The eBay mobile app makes it easy to find the best rotating deals on various items and access to the hottest deals and discounts of the day before they leave. Through the app, you can browse everything from trendy items, to power tools, to tech gadgets, and then choose whatever price looks best. There’s also app-only discounts and special offers exclusively for eBay app users. Plus, eBay will help you figure out when’s the best time to buy, with price notifications to let you know when the price has dropped.

Try an eBay Gift Card

If you don’t know what to get the quirky fashionista or vintage collector in your life? Rather than a run-of-the-mill present, get them an eBay gift card so that they can use it to expand their rare baseball collection or get a discounted Nintendo Switch. eBay gift cards can be used to pay for almost any item online. You can get a digital gift card on eBay, or you can buy a physical eBay gift card at CVS, Walgreens, and other retailers.

Don’t Miss the Ebay Auction Hub

eBay has expanded considerably, but it first gained popularity by being the first online auctioneer, expanding the world of trading and rarities globally. Today, it’s even more streamlined, with the eBay auction hub, where folks can catch the rarest weekly collectible drops from top vendors. Some of the most popular auction items include Pokemon, baseball cards, basketball, and football cards. If you’re looking to upgrade your collectibles collection, this is where you want to start.

Shop Car and Truck Parts at Ebay

You probably don’t think of eBay when you think of car parts and accessories, but eBay has a wide range of everything you need for car additions and maintenance for way less than if you bought new at a chain retailer. On eBay, you can shop by popular car and truck parts categories, like racks, cargo carriers, towing parts, exhaust and emission systems, brakes, starters, alternators, and more.

10% Off With This eBay Coupon Code

Summer is the time to get out in the wide open and get exploring while the sun is out later and temperatures rise. eBay is a great place to shop for powersport parts like wheels and tires for ATVs, UTVs, and motorcycles. And right now, you can get 10% off powersport parts with eBay coupon code Adventure10 (until June 30). There’s no minimum on this eBay coupon code, and the discount applies to the purchase price and excludes shipping, handling, and taxes.