Technology

On October 11, 2026, the DNS root is scheduled to change its key-signing key (KSK) for only the second time ever. This key anchors DNSSEC’s chain of trust, which lets DNS resolvers authenticate answers using cryptographic signatures. The change is called a KSK rollover. Validating resolvers need to trust the new key before the switch, as otherwise healthy websites could become unreachable.

When we wrote about the first root KSK rollover in 2018, we had seen resolvers lose their learned trust in the new key during software upgrades or moves between machines. Publishing the key well in advance was only part of the job. We also needed to know whether resolvers had retained it, and we couldn’t give users a practical way to check.

Most website operators do not need to make any changes for this rollover. If you run a DNSSEC-validating resolver, check that it trusts the new root key, KSK-2024, and follow your software vendor’s instructions to update its trust anchors if the key is missing. If you use Cloudflare for your domain's DNS or rely on 1.1.1.1 and Gateway DNS, you do not need to take any action — our systems already trust KSK-2024.

To check ahead of time, visit our rollover readiness test. It asks the resolver your browser uses whether it trusts the new key. The test uses RFC 8509: A Root Key Trust Anchor Sentinel for DNSSEC, which we’ve implemented in 1.1.1.1 ahead of the rollover.

New key, same algorithm

KSK-2017 and KSK-2024 both use RSA/SHA-256. The rollover replaces the key pair while keeping the same method for creating and verifying signatures.

In our 2018 post, we wrote that a successful rollover would open the door to discussing an algorithm change. Eight years later, the root still uses RSA.

What comes after October

The October 11 switch changes which KSK signs the root’s DNSKEY set. The rollover continues into 2027, when ICANN plans to revoke KSK-2017, remove it from the root zone, and delete its private key. Stopping a key from signing and removing trust in that key are separate steps.

ICANN has also proposed a future root algorithm rollover to ECDSA P-256. ECDSA produces smaller keys and signatures than the RSA algorithm used today. That proposal is separate from this October’s key replacement, and ECDSA is not a post-quantum algorithm.

The Trump administration is suspending Microsoft, Adobe, and several other technology companies from a program that helps skilled foreign workers obtain permanent residency in the United States, accusing the companies of fraud.

“Our message to Microsoft is: You’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers,” U.S. ⁠Vice President JD Vance said in a news conference on Thursday, Reuters reported.

The other firms being suspended from the program include Capgemini, Cognizant, HCL, Infosys, Tata, and Wipro. Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling said the government would not accept any new or pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies.

H-1B visas are designed for highly skilled positions that employers may struggle to fill with qualified U.S. workers. Tech companies are among the largest users of the program, with nearly three-quarters of approved visas going to workers from India, according to The Associated Press.

“We believe in the strength and talent of the American workforce,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email to TechCrunch. “That is why the vast majority of Microsoft employees in the United States are Americans. We look forward to providing the Administration with additional information. For example, of the approximately 6,000 H-1B visa applications we submitted in the last fiscal year, 80% percent were to extend or change the status of existing Microsoft employees.”

The statement continues, “These were not to hire new people. The remaining filings for new employees were for individuals already legally in the United States who decided to come work for us, and they equal only 1% of our U.S. workforce. They are not new arrivals to our country.”

The company went on to note that it only files H-1B petitions for those who meet the “rigorous standards” of the visa category, and that pays its H-1B employees the same as any “other employees doing comparable work.”

Vance also said during the news conference that the administration would investigate nine universities, including Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, over allegations they’re abusing a program that allows international students to come to the U.S. and were using the program to undermine wages for American workers.

Adobe did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/76636743

VMware customers face multiple obstacles as they rethink their virtualization strategy to reduce dependence on VMware.

Today, Rimini Street published its “2026 IT Virtualization Survey – What’s Next for VMware Users.” The survey examined 300 organizations worldwide that use VMware.

Notably, Rimini sells third-party support for VMware and other software, including Oracle and SAP. That means there’s an incentive for Rimini to portray VMware users as experiencing obstacles. However, the survey was also conducted by a third-party research company, Unisphere Research, and the results align with other recent reports about VMware customers.

For example, 90 percent of participants in Rimini’s survey said they’re exploring VMware alternatives due to VMware’s higher licensing costs, while 54 percent pointed to Broadcom killing support for perpetual license holders.

Since Broadcom took over VMware, customers have said that their VMware costs increased by as much as 1,000 percent, with many more pointing to more modest price hikes of around 100 to 300 percent. In Rimini’s survey, 73 percent of participants pointed to cost savings as a top priority in their virtualization roadmap decisions.

“Significant barriers”

In today’s announcement, Rimini pointed to “significant barriers to progress” for organizations exploring virtualization options, with the most cited barriers being operational complexity (named by 40 percent of respondents), multi-vendor management challenges (38 percent), securing the increased attack surface (37 percent), and team skills requirements (37 percent).

“These findings suggest that while organizations are actively pursuing change, they are also looking for ways to reduce risk and avoid unnecessary disruption,” Rimini’s announcement said.

Broadcom’s takeover has spotlighted the challenges of being overly reliant on a single vendor.

“Many clients are looking … at this [as] a wake-up call to how dependent they had become on a single vendor and are looking for more diversity in their on-premises environments,” Tony Harvey, a senior director analyst at Gartner, previously told Ars, referring to Broadcom’s acquisition.

Rimini reported that 60 percent of the organizations it surveyed are considering a multi-hypervisor strategy, which is indicative of “growing interest in more flexible, mixed environments that support both operational and financial goals.”

“In addition, 47 percent are favoring a hybrid IT virtualization environment consisting of hypervisors and containers for ‘best of both worlds’ workload placement,” the announcement said.

Rimini noted that 48 percent of respondents aren’t planning to move any of their assets to VMware’s hybrid cloud platform, Cloud Foundation.

“The trend shows increasing diversification in enterprise virtualization strategies with a longer-term transition toward bespoke, multi-platform IT virtualization environments. As organizations reevaluate their paths to modernization, they are increasingly adopting approaches that combine on-premises infrastructure, private cloud, public cloud and alternative hypervisors to support workload flexibility, operational efficiency and better cost control,” the announcement says.

In its “Magic Quadrant for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure” released last month, Gartner predicted that 55 percent of enterprises will make “proofs of concept for alternative distributed hybrid infrastructure products to replace their VMware-based deployments and embrace hybrid cloud infrastructure delivery” by 2029, which is an increase from 25 percent in 2026.

In a statement today, Joe McKendrick, lead analyst at Unisphere Research, pointed to interest among VMware users to do more than just replace their virtualization vendor.

“[The survey] reflects a broader effort by enterprises to reduce dependency on a single provider, maintain continuity for mission-critical systems and modernize at a pace that fits their own business requirements,” he said. “For many organizations, that means balancing support for existing environments with new investments designed to improve resilience, security and scalability over time.”

https://archive.ph/5m4x5

A new fleet of AI agents is making its presence felt on the internet. On Sunday, a group of independent researchers posted preliminary findings about the agents, observing that they seem to be running on Tencent’s infrastructure and targeting Alibaba’s map service, Amap.

Researchers, however, resisted the term “swarm,” noting that there seems to be little coordination between their different queries. “‘Agent fleet,’ not ‘swarm:’” one researcher wrote in the preliminary report, “many parallel agents on the same kind of task, with no sign of communication between them.”

The agents were discovered by monitoring traffic to the domain-scanning service urlquery, a technique that previously revealed long-running activity by OpenAI agents. AI agents often use urlquery to load websites that they cannot access directly, leaving a record of their activities that can be valuable to researchers.

In this case, the record showed queries to Alibaba’s Amap service, seeking directions to different entrances of various public places, including a park, a zoo, and a hospital.

The research is ongoing and so few details are available, but the behavior shows how persistent AI agent activity has become on the internet. In the wake of the Hugging Face incident, many researchers are actively monitoring for rogue agent activity on the internet. Much of that activity has been easy to find because agents tend to use the same techniques and make little effort to conceal themselves.

In this case, the agents don’t seem to have been doing anything more nefarious than side-stepping Alibaba’s API rules — but we may not always be so lucky.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/76486627

What just happened? Another incident has taken place that illustrates the need to be careful what you tell AI. A Florida woman is facing felony charges after she used Claude as a diary and allegedly wrote that she planned to "shoot up" the Sheriff's office. After a human reviewer examined the statements, they were reported to police.

According to the arrest report, Carli Michelle Heller, of Bonita Springs, Florida, wrote on September 26 that she would attack the Sheriff's office. She later said that she uses Anthropic's chatbot like a "diary."

Claude's safety systems flagged the entry and it was escalated to a human reviewer. After deciding it was a credible threat, the reviewer reported it to law enforcement.

The company says it may share user information in limited emergencies if it believes disclosure is necessary to prevent death or serious physical injury.

Deputies identified Heller and visited her home. She was detained without incident before an LCSO intelligence detective took over the investigation.

Heller faces a charge of making a written threat of violence under Florida law. Florida Statute 836.10 makes it a second-degree felony to send, post, or transmit a written or electronic record threatening to kill or injure someone, carry out a mass shooting, or commit an act of terrorism. The communication must be made in a manner in which another person may view it.

Anthropic isn't going to be taking any chances when it comes to anything it deems a potential threat. Last month, it was reported that OpenAI and Sam Altman are being sued by British Columbia over claims that the company could have prevented a mass shooting in the Canadian province.

The shooter, eighteen-year-old former pupil Jesse Van ⁠Rootselaar, had previously been flagged by OpenAI's safety team for her conversations about gun violence, but OpenAI never alerted police because the conversations did not meet the threshold for legal referral.

In June, Florida also sued OpenAI and Altman, alleging that ChatGPT had contributed to real-world harms, including the 2025 Florida State University shooting.

The latest incident is another reminder to think before you enter something into a chatbot that could get you into trouble. It's certainly not a private diary whose contents are for your eyes only.

Reports last month revealed that human contractors reviewing Microsoft Copilot's image editor can see users' prompts, uploaded photos and AI-generated edits. Documents show that some of those assignments contain sexual, disturbing or potentially illegal material, though the reviewers are not there to flag the content – only to assess whether the output is accurate.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/76516412

https://youtube.com/shorts/kOoD85gynhc