The US Department of Justice charged three Iranian nationals as part of an effort to hack into the emails and computers used by President Donald Trump’s campaign staff and other political connections.

The Washington Post reported that DOJ officials filed charges against Masoud Jalili, Seyyed Ali Aghamiri and Yasar Balaghi in an indictment filed Thursday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. The indictment alleges the three men “prepared for and engaged in a wide-ranging hacking campaign” against current and former US officials, political campaigns and the media.

According to the indictment Jalili, Aghamiri and Balaghi’s “activity is part of Iran’s continuing efforts to […] erode confidence in the US electoral process.” They also face possible charges such as providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.

The suspects are accused of running a targeted hacking campaign committed in Iran over a four-year period. Their victims include current and former officials with the US State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the US Ambassador to Israel and an Iranian human rights organization.

Then last May, the three hackers successfully gained access to accounts belonging to Trump campaign officials. (Attempts to breach Biden campaign staff were, apparently, unsuccessful.) President Joe Biden’s campaign staffers as well as news outlets like The Washington Post and Politico received unsolicited emails from an AOL account owned by “Robert” that contained materials stolen from the Trump campaign. They included some internal poll results and the vetting dossier for Trump’s running mate Senator J.D. Vance.

Because of extradition laws, it’s unlikely these hackers will be brought to justice on US soil.

Cohere has announced the release of updated versions of its application programming interfaces (APIs) for its AI models Chat, Embed, Rerank, and Classify.

Collectively, the new API updates are known as API V2, and Cohere is being transparent about the fact that the updates are meant to more closely align with AI industry standards to make it easier for developers to switch their applications over to be powered by Cohere’s models in lieu of the competition: namely, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, and Meta.

Earlier this month, Andreessen Horowitz (A16z) general partner Martin Casado posted on X an image of a graph showing the results of a survey from AI API platform Kong of 800 enterprise leaders revealing the large language models (LLMs) they were using.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT dominated the chart with 27% market share compared to 18% using Microsoft’s Azure AI cloud service and 17% for Google Gemini. Cohere was second-to-last with a distant 5%, showing how the Toronto-based startup — co-founded by some of the former Google researchers behind the original 2017 Transformer paper that ushered in the generative AI era — has a lot of ground to make up to win over the enterprise customers it’s courting.

Enhanced reliability with more precise settings

One of the most significant changes in the V2 API release is the requirement for developers to specify the model version in their API calls.

Previously, this field was optional, which sometimes led to unexpected behavior when new models were released and the default model changed.

By making the model version a mandatory field, Cohere ensures that developers maintain consistent application performance, particularly in scenarios involving Embed models, where using different versions can impact results.

The updated Chat API introduces several usability improvements, including the consolidation of input parameters into a single messages array, replacing the previous structure that required separate message, chat_history, and preamble parameters.

This change simplifies the input process, allowing for more complex use cases where roles such as system or assistant can be assigned to the latest message in a chat sequence.

Cohere’s new APIs also enhance tool integration capabilities. In the V2 release, tools are defined using JSON schema instead of Python types, making the process more flexible and compatible with a wider range of applications.

Additionally, each tool call now includes a unique ID, enabling the API to correctly match tool results with their corresponding calls—an improvement over the V1 API, which lacked this feature.

For streaming interactions, the V2 Chat API has switched from JSON-stream events to Server Sent Events (SSE), providing a more robust and responsive experience for users.

Support for existing APIs

Cohere has confirmed that the V1 suite of APIs will continue to be supported, ensuring that developers who are not yet ready to migrate can still rely on existing implementations.

There will be no breaking changes to the V1 API or its associated SDKs.

However, the company recommends upgrading to V2 for enhanced stability and access to the latest features, such as model version enforcement and advanced chat capabilities.

Resources for developers

To facilitate the transition to API V2, Cohere has released a new SDK and an OpenAPI specification for its updated endpoint.

These resources, along with a detailed Chat Migration Guide, are available on the Cohere platform. Developers are encouraged to provide feedback and suggestions via the company’s Discord community.

Cohere’s API V2 release represents a significant step forward in making its platform more accessible and efficient for developers. With these updates, the company aims to offer a more streamlined and predictable development experience, and ultimately, win over users from OpenAI and other popular APIs.

WordPress.org has lifted its ban on hosting provider WP Engine until October 1, after putting a block on it earlier this week. The block prevented several sites from updating their plug-ins and themes and exposing them to potential security risk.

WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, who has been in a tussle with WP Engine for over a week, blamed WP Engine’s private equity investor, Silver Lake.

“I’ve heard from WP Engine customers that they are frustrated that WP Engine hasn’t been able to make updates, plugin directory, theme directory, and Openverse work on their sites. It saddens me that they’ve been negatively impacted by Silver Lake‘s commercial decisions,” Mullenweg said on the WordPress.org blog.

“WP Engine was well aware that we could remove access when they chose to ignore our efforts to resolve our differences and enter into a commercial licensing agreement. Heather Brunner, Lee Wittlinger, and their Board chose to take this risk. WPE was also aware that they were placing this risk directly on WPE customers,” he added.

After Mullenweg barred WP Engine from accessing WordPress.org resources, many people in the WordPress community criticized the sudden move, which affected several websites.

In the past week, Mullenweg called WP Engine “Cancer to WordPress” and called them out on their lack of contributions to the WordPress ecosystem. WP Engine sent a cease-and-desist letter to Automattic— which owns WordPress.com and has an exclusive commercial license to the WordPress trademark — and Mullenweg to withdraw these comments. In reply, Automattic also sent its cease-and-desist letter to WP Engine, accusing them of trademark infringement.

This fight impacts a larger ecosystem as WordPress technology is open source and free, and it powers a huge chunk of the internet — around 40% of websites. Websites can host their own WordPress instance or use a provider like Automattic or WP Engine for a plug-and-play solution.

Over the last few days, Mullenweg has said that his fight is against WP Engine — and primarily about tradermarks. However, the WordPress community at large has felt uncertain about how they can use WordPress in their services and if Automattic or Mullenweg would come after them as well.

The WordPress Foundation, which owns the WordPress trademark, filed for two new trademarks, “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress,” in July. Developers and providers are worried that if these trademarks are granted, they could be used against them.

The three hackers, all of whom have ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, allegedly gained access to the accounts of campaign officials using social engineering and spear phishing, a tactic that attempts to trick victims into disclosing sensitive information. They then used the hijacked accounts to steal nonpublic campaign documents and emails, which they shared with the press.

As outlined in the indictment, the US linked the hackers to an Iranian internet service provider, Respina Networks, which allegedly allowed them “unrestricted” internet access outside of Iran. It also goes over how they used a commercial virtual private network (VPN) to create numerous phony domains like “tinyurl.ink” and “mailer-daemon.online,” which they eventually used to mislead their victims.

The US is charging the three hackers with wire fraud, material support to a terrorist organization, and conspiracy to obtain information from protected computers. “These hack-and-leak efforts by Iran are a direct assault on the integrity of our democratic processes,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division said in the press release. “Iranian government actors have long sought to use cyber-enabled means to harm U.S. interests.”