SoylentNews

Australia to require age verification using Google or Microsoft to access adult material

Get your VPNs ready! Australia, having already nominated an age limit for social media coming this December (after they work out how it will be implemented), will progress to requiring Australians to verify their identity by logging in to a Microsoft or Google account to access adult material starting with search engines. Stop laughing. No, really. They will. Soon. Ok, two minute laugh session. Moving on. While this change in law is for 'good intentions' and Australian politicians high five themselves for 'protecting children', Professor Lisa Given of the RMIS Information Sciences department was quoted as saying that the changes "will definitely create more headaches for the everyday consumer and how they log in and use search services." Meanwhile, in England where similar laws have been enacted, VPN use has skyrocketed.

As stated in the law passed late last year, platforms also cannot rely solely on using government-issued ID for age verification, even though the government-backed technology study found this to be the most effective screening method.

Instead, the guidelines will direct platforms to take a "layered" approach to assessing age with multiple methods and to "minimise friction" for their users — such as by using AI-driven models that assess age with facial scans or by tracking user behaviour.

Ms Wells has previously highlighted those models as examples of cutting-edge technology, although the experts have raised questions about their effectiveness.

Australia's Under 16s Social Media Ban Could Extend to Reddit, Twitch, Roblox and Even Dating Apps

upstart writes:

Lego Play and Steam among the unexpected additions to the list that includes Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and X:

Reddit and X are among the companies approached by the eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, right, about the requirement to prevent under 16s from holding social media accounts. Composite: Guardian AustraliaView image in fullscreenReddit and X are among the companies approached by the eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, right, about the requirement to prevent under 16s from holding social media accounts. Composite: Guardian AustraliaAustralia's under 16s social media ban could extend to Reddit, Twitch, Roblox and even dating apps

Lego Play and Steam among the unexpected additions to the list that includes Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and X

Twitch, Roblox, Steam, Lego Play, X and Reddit are among the companies eSafety has approached about whether the under 16s social media ban applies to them from December.

Companies approached by the eSafety commissioner this month about the requirement to prevent under 16s from holding social media accounts from 10 December have conducted a self-assessment that the commissioner will use to decide if they need to comply with the ban.

eSafety will not be formally declaring which service meets the criteria but companies that eSafety believes meet the criteria will be expected to comply.

The eSafety commissioner's office initially declined to release the list of companies contacted earlier this month but on Wednesday named the companies.

canopic jug writes:

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) turns forty on October 4, 2025. The Free Software Foundation will have then been defending the rights of all software users for the past 40 years. The long term goal is for all users have the freedom to run, edit, contribute to, and share software.

There will be an online event, with an in-person option for those that can get to Boston. In November there will also be a hackathon.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

"This is a giant project," Nvidia CEO said of new 10-gigawatt AI infrastructure deal:

On Monday, OpenAI and Nvidia jointly announced a letter of intent for a strategic partnership to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia systems for OpenAI's AI infrastructure, with Nvidia planning to invest up to $100 billion as the systems roll out. The companies said the first gigawatt of Nvidia systems will come online in the second half of 2026 using Nvidia's Vera Rubin platform.

"Everything starts with compute," said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, in the announcement. "Compute infrastructure will be the basis for the economy of the future, and we will utilize what we're building with NVIDIA to both create new AI breakthroughs and empower people and businesses with them at scale."

The 10-gigawatt project represents an astoundingly ambitious and as-yet-unproven scale for AI infrastructure. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC that the planned 10 gigawatts equals the power consumption of between 4 million and 5 million graphics processing units, which matches the company's total GPU shipments for this year and doubles last year's volume. "This is a giant project," Huang said in an interview alongside Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman.

To put that power demand in perspective, 10 gigawatts equals the output of roughly 10 nuclear reactors, which typically output about 1 gigawatt per facility. Current data center energy consumption ranges from 10 megawatts to 1 gigawatt, with most large facilities consuming between 50 and 100 megawatts. OpenAI's planned infrastructure would dwarf existing installations, requiring as much electricity as multiple major cities.

[...] Bryn Talkington, managing partner at Requisite Capital Management, noted the circular nature of the investment structure to CNBC. "Nvidia invests $100 billion in OpenAI, which then OpenAI turns back and gives it back to Nvidia," Talkington told CNBC. "I feel like this is going to be very virtuous for Jensen."

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277

Wayland breaks everything! It is binary incompatible, provides no clear transition path with 1:1 replacements for everything in X11, and is even philosophically incompatible with X11. Hence, if you are interested in existing applications to "just work" without the need for adjustments, then you may be better off avoiding Wayland.

Wayland solves no issues I have but breaks almost everything I need. Even the most basic, most simple things (like xkill) - in this case with no obvious replacement. And usually it stays broken, because the Wayland folks mostly seem to care about Automotive, Gnome, maybe KDE - and alienating everyone else (e.g., people using just an X11 window manager or something like GNUstep) in the process.

What follows is a very well written "Feature comparison" between Xorg and Wayland.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The deal could go through as early as next week:

As reported by the The Wall Street Journal, gaming giant EA is set to go private⁠—that is, no longer be traded on the stock market⁠—in a $50 billion deal with an investor group. This would be the largest such leveraged buyout ever recorded.

According to the WSJ's anonymous sources, EA could be sold for as much as $50 billion, though the final price has not yet been agreed on, and EA has an estimated market value of $43 billion. The group of investors reportedly includes the private equity firm Silver Lake and the government of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.

The deal could be announced as early as next week, and would be the largest leveraged buyout ever recorded. A leveraged buyout is when a private equity firm uses a significant amount of borrowed money to seal the deal, with the asset set to be acquired used as collateral in the debt.

This effectively leaves the acquired company liable for the debt⁠—if its income can't adequately service the debt, it will bear the consequences of a default, not the investors who made the purchase, and that usually means closures and layoffs. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, one such leveraged buyout eventually resulted in bankruptcy and closure for the once-ubiquitous toy retailer, Toys R Us.

The fact that the reported cost of the deal—up to $50 billion—is close to EA's estimated value (what's $7 billion between friends?) could give reason for optimism that EA's debt burden would be proportional to its means. Even aside from eventual bankruptcy, though, there's precedent for acquisitions like this causing massive disruptions to the company: Microsoft cut 1,900 jobs at Xbox in January 2024 shortly after its acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, and Blizzard Entertainment was heavily affected in particular.

[...] EA, much like its competitor Ubisoft, has struggled in recent years. Once formidable titans, both have been left behind as consolidation efforts have turned Microsoft and Sony into unassailable super heavyweights. At the same time, smaller publishers like DreadXP, Devolver, and Playstack have become ubiquitous at the other end of the budget spectrum.

EA lost the lucrative FIFA license, leading to its new, genericized EA FC series. Beloved RPG developer BioWare was sharply downsized after Dragon Age: The Veilguard proved a relative sales failure. The impending release of Battlefield 6, which has seen massive beta numbers and a positive critical reception, is looking like a much-needed win for the company.

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

https://phys.org/news/2025-09-world-screwworm-parasite-northern-mexico.html

A dangerous parasite once eliminated in the United States has been detected in northern Mexico, close to the U.S. border.

Mexico's agriculture ministry confirmed Sunday that an 8-month-old cow in Nuevo León tested positive for New World screwworm. The animal was part of a shipment of 100 cattle from Veracruz, but only one showed signs of infestation.

The cow was treated, and all others received ivermectin, an antiparasitic medication, officials said.

The case was found in Sabinas Hidalgo, a small city less than 70 miles from Texas. It is the northernmost detection so far, moving much closer to the U.S. border than earlier outbreaks in other parts of Mexico.

Screwworm flies lay eggs in wounds and their larvae feed on living tissue, causing serious injury in livestock. The parasite was eradicated from the U.S. in the 1960s by mass-producing and releasing sterile flies to contain the flies' range, but recent outbreaks in Central America and Mexico have caused concerns again.

It is a "national security priority" U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and multiple other agencies are "executing a phased response strategy that includes early detection, rapid containment and long-term eradication efforts," the statement said.

Further, the USDA has invested nearly $30 million this year to expand sterile fly production in Panama and build a new facility in Texas, The New York Times reported.

Thousands of fly traps have also been placed along the border, with no infected flies detected so far.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said U.S. officials recently inspected local control measures and will issue a report soon. U.S. ports remain closed to livestock, bison and horse imports from Mexico until further notice, The Times said.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

8,000 years of human activities have caused wild animals to shrink and domestic animals to grow:

Humans have caused wild animals to shrink and domestic animals to grow, according to a new study out of the University of Montpellier in southern France. Researchers studied tens of thousands of animal bones from Mediterranean France covering the last 8,000 years to see how the size of both types of animals has changed over time.

Scientists already know that human choices, such as selective breeding, influence the size of domestic animals, and that environmental factors also impact the size of both. However, little is known about how these two forces have influenced the size of wild and domestic animals over such a prolonged period. This latest research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , fills a major gap in our knowledge.

The scientists analyzed more than 225,000 bones from 311 archaeological sites in Mediterranean France. They took thousands of measurements of things like the length, width, and depth of bones and teeth from wild animals, such as foxes, rabbits and deer, as well as domestic ones, including goats, cattle, pigs, sheep and chickens.

But the researchers didn't just focus on the bones. They also collected data on the climate, the types of plants growing in the area, the number of people living there and what they used the land for. And then, with some sophisticated statistical modeling, they were able to track key trends and drivers behind the change in animal size.

The research team's findings reveal that for around 7,000 years, wild and domestic animals evolved along similar paths, growing and shrinking together in sync with their shared environment and human activity. However, all that changed around 1,000 years ago. Their body sizes began to diverge dramatically, especially during the Middle Ages.

Domestic animals started to get much bigger as they were being actively bred for more meat and milk. At the same time, wild animals began to shrink in size as a direct result of human pressures, such as hunting and habitat loss. In other words, human activities replaced environmental factors as the main force shaping animal evolution.

"Our results demonstrate that natural selection prevailed as an evolutionary force on domestic animal morphology until the last millennium," commented the researchers in their paper. "Body size is a sensitive indicator of systemic change, revealing both resilience and vulnerability within evolving human–animal–environment relationships."

This study is more than a look at ancient bones. By providing a long-term historical record of how our actions have affected the animal kingdom, the findings can also help with modern-day conservation efforts.

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

Physicists nearly double speed of superconducting qubit readout in quantum computers

RIKEN physicists have found a way to speed up the readout of qubits in superconducting quantum computers, which should help to make them faster and more reliable.

After decades of being theoretical propositions, working quantum computers are just starting to emerge. For experimentalists such as Peter Spring of the RIKEN Center for Quantum Computing (RQC), it's an auspicious time to be working in the field.

"It's very exciting. It feels like this is a very fast-moving field that has a lot of momentum," says Spring. "And it really feels like experiments are catching up with theory."

When they come online, mature quantum computers promise to revolutionize computing, being able to perform calculations that are well beyond the capabilities of today's supercomputers. And it feels like that prospect is not so far off.

Currently, half a dozen technologies are jockeying to become the preferred platform for tomorrow's quantum computers. A leading contender is a technology based on superconducting electrical circuits. One of its advantages is the ability to perform calculations faster than other technologies.

Because of the very sensitive nature of quantum states, it is vital to regularly correct any errors that may have crept in. This necessitates repeatedly measuring a selection of qubits, the building blocks of quantum computers. But this operation is slower than quantum gate operations, making it a bit of a bottleneck.

"If qubit measurement is much slower than the other things you're doing, then basically it becomes a bottleneck on the clock speed," explains Spring. "So we wanted to see how fast we could perform qubit measurements in a superconducting circuit."

Now, Spring, Yasunobu Nakamura, also of RQC, and their co-workers have found a way to simultaneously measure four qubits in superconducting quantum computers in a little over 50 nanoseconds, which is about twice as fast as the previous record. The findings are published in the journal PRX Quantum.

A special filter ensures that the measurement line used to send the measurement signals doesn't interfere with the qubit itself. Spring and colleagues realized the filter by "coupling" a readout resonator with a filter resonator in such a way that energy from the qubits wasn't able to escape through the measurement line.

They were able to measure the qubits at very high accuracies, or "fidelities." "We were surprised at how high fidelity the readout turned out to be," says Spring. "On the best qubit, we achieved a fidelity of more than 99.9%. We hadn't expected that in such a short measurement time."

The team aims to achieve even faster qubit measurements by optimizing the shape of the microwave pulse used for the measurement.

More information: Peter A. Spring et al, Fast Multiplexed Superconducting-Qubit Readout with Intrinsic Purcell Filtering Using a Multiconductor Transmission Line, PRX Quantum (2025). DOI: 10.1103/prxquantum.6.020345
       

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

The most alluring aspect of a CRM system, its centralized collection of customer data, is also its Achilles' heel:

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems sit at the heart of modern business. They store personal data, behavioral histories, purchase records, and every digital breadcrumb that shapes customer identity.

Yet while these platforms are marketed as engines of efficiency, they've become prime targets for cybercriminals.

The uncomfortable truth is that CRMs are often riddled with blind spots. Companies invest heavily in deployment, but treat cybersecurity as an afterthought. That oversight has left the door wide open to sophisticated attacks that exploit both technical gaps and human error. Let's take a look at how to fortify your defenses.

[...] More than anything, centralization multiplies risk. A breach doesn't just compromise one isolated dataset; it unlocks a holistic map of customer interactions. Sophisticated actors exploit these unified records to fuel identity theft and targeted phishing campaigns [PDF].

Worse still, because CRMs often integrate with marketing automation, billing, and support systems, a single compromise can cascade through multiple business-critical platforms.

The article goes on to discuss the human element of CRM insecurity, how integration fuels exploitation, and the costs of neglecting CRM security and convenience.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

If the technology can be scaled up, it could help make AI cheaper and more efficient:

A regular computer chip cannot reuse energy. All the electrical energy it draws to perform computations immediately becomes useless heat. Your phone or laptop will "use energy once and then throw it away," says Michael Frank, a scientist at Vaire Computing, the London company where the new test chip was made. When your device is working hard, you can feel the warmth of all that wasted energy.

[...] The new chip, tested in August, drew around 30 percent less energy than a regular chip performing the same computation. The system was reusing a portion of its electrical energy instead of wasting it as heat. "This is quite exciting," says Aatmesh Shrivastava, a computer engineer at Northeastern University in Boston. "We all want a computing system where we can recover energy."

To develop Ice River, Frank and the team at Vaire reimagined two inefficient features of modern computer chips.

First, chips sold now waste energy by erasing information. A typical chip's logic — the circuitry and rules that determine the way the chip processes information — only works in one direction. When you do a computation, the original 1s and 0s are erased, generating heat. IceRiver instead uses reversible logic, which allows it to un-compute and get the original information back. This avoids losing heat to erasures.

Second, modern chips waste energy when their voltage rapidly changes. Like a hammer coming down, the power supply slams 1s into 0s or vice versa. This allows for very fast computation, but those rapid changes give off heat.

In contrast, IceRiver uses an approach called adiabatic computing, in which voltages gradually go up and down. "You can think of [the energy] as sloshing back and forth," Frank says. It's more like a pendulum than a hammer. The system can partly keep itself going and reuse energy in the next operations. Importantly, the power supply doing all this is housed on the chip itself.

upstart writes:

A "nation-state" is said to be involved:

The US Secret Service announced this morning that it has located and seized a cache of telecom devices large enough to "shut down the cellular network in New York City." And it believes a nation-state is responsible.

According to the agency, "more than 300 co-located SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards" were discovered at multiple locations within the New York City area. Photos of the seized gear show what appear to be "SIM boxes" bristling with antennas and stuffed with SIM cards, then stacked on six-shelf racks. (SIM boxes are often used for fraud.) One photo even shows neatly stacked towers of punched-out SIM card packaging, suggesting that whoever assembled the system invested some quality time in just getting the whole thing set up.

The gear was identified as part of a Secret Service investigation into "anonymous telephonic threats" made against several high-ranking US government officials, but the setup seems designed for something larger than just making a few threats. The Secret Service believes that the system could have been capable of activities like "disabling cell phone towers, enabling denial of services attacks, and facilitating anonymous, encrypted communication between potential threat actors and criminal enterprises."

Analysis of data from so many devices will take time, but preliminary investigation already suggests that "nation-state threat actors" were involved; that is, this is probably some country's spy hardware. With the UN General Assembly taking place this week in New York, it is possible that the system was designed to spy on or disrupt delegates, but the gear was found in various places up to 35 miles from the UN. BBC reporting suggests that the equipment was "seized from SIM farms at abandoned apartment buildings across more than five sites," and the ultimate goal remains unclear.

While the gear has been taken offline, no arrests have yet been made, and the investigation continues.

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

https://phys.org/news/2025-09-physics-ai-local-flocking-motion.html

Researchers at Seoul National University and Kyung Hee University report a framework to control collective motions, such as ring, clumps, mill, flock, by training a physics-informed AI to learn the local rules that govern interactions among individuals.

The paper is published in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science.

The approach specifies when an ordered state should appear from random initial conditions and tunes geometric features (average radius, cluster size, flock size). Furthermore, trained on published GPS trajectories of real pigeons, the model uncovers interaction mechanisms observed in real flocks.

Collective motion is an emergent phenomenon in which many self-propelled individuals (birds, fish, insects, robots, even human crowds) produce large-scale patterns without any central decision-making. Each individual reacts only to nearby neighbors, yet the group exhibits coherent collective motion. Analyzing how simple local interactions give rise to such global order is challenging because these systems are noisy and nonlinear, and perception is often directional.

To address these challenges, the team built neural networks that obey the laws of dynamics and are trained on simple pattern characteristics and, when available, experimental trajectories.

The neural networks infer two basic types of local interaction rules: distance-based rules that set spacing, velocity-based rules that align headings, as well as their combination. The team also showed that self-propelled agents following these rules reproduce intended target collective patterns with specified geometrical characteristics.

Examples include adjusting ring radius, cluster size in clumps, and rotational mode (either single or double) in mill; inducing continuous transitions among different collective modes; and achieving motions near obstacles and within confined areas.

upstart writes:

"They have to have on-orbit refueling because they don't access space as frequently as we do."

SpaceX scored its 500th landing of a Falcon 9 first stage booster on an otherwise routine flight earlier this month, sending 28 Starlink communications satellites into orbit. Barring any unforeseen problems, SpaceX will mark the 500th re-flight of a Falcon first stage later this year.

A handful of other US companies, including Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, and Stoke Space, are on the way to replicating or building on SpaceX's achievements in recycling rocket parts. These launch providers are racing a medley of Chinese rocket builders to become the second company to land and reuse a first stage booster.

But it will be many years—perhaps a decade or longer—until anyone else matches the kinds of numbers SpaceX is racking up in the realm of reusable rockets. SpaceX's dominance in this field is one of the most important advantages the United States has over China as competition between the two nations extends into space, US Space Force officials said Monday.

"It's concerning how fast they're going," said Brig. Gen. Brian Sidari, the Space Force's deputy chief of space operations for intelligence. "I'm concerned about when the Chinese figure out how to do reusable lift that allows them to put more capability on orbit at a quicker cadence than currently exists."

[...] "They've put more satellites on orbit," Sidari said, referring to China. "They still do not compare to the US, but it is concerning once they figure out that reusable lift. The other one is the megaconstellations. They've seen how the megaconstellations provide capability to the US joint force and the West, and they're mimicking it. So, that does concern me, how fast they're going, but we'll see. It's easier said than done. They do have to figure it out, and they do have some challenges that we haven't dealt with."

One of those challenges is China's continued reliance on expendable rockets. This has made it more important for China to make "game-changing" advancements in other areas, according to Chief Master Sgt. Ron Lerch, the Space Force's senior enlisted advisor for intelligence.

upstart writes:

Consumer Reports slams Microsoft for Windows 10 mess, urges extension of free updates:

Consumer Reports (CR), the venerable consumer rights organization known for its in-depth product testing, sent a letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella this week. The letter, authored by the nonprofit's policy fellow Stacey Higginbotham and director of technology policy Justin Brookman, expressed "concern about Microsoft's decision to end free ongoing support for Windows 10 next month."

Consumer Reports isn't the first organization to come to the defense of the soon-to-be-orphaned Windows 10. Nearly two years ago, in October 2023, the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) urged Microsoft to reconsider its decision, calling it "a bad deal for both users and the planet." The group warned that up to 400 million perfectly functional PCs could be discarded simply because they don't meet Windows 11's hardware requirements.

PIRG issued a new plea this week, bringing together a group of consumer and environmental organizations, including the European Right to Repair coalition, iFixit, and Consumer Reports.

In its letter, CR argues on behalf of its 5 million members that Microsoft's decision "will strand millions of consumers who have computers that are incompatible with Windows 11, and force them to pay $30 for a one-year extension of support, spend hundreds on a new Windows 11-capable computer, or do nothing and see the security and functionality of their computer degrade over time."

And this isn't just a consumer issue: Having hundreds of millions of unprotected PCs that can be commandeered for attacks on other entities is a risk to national security.

The group cites a member survey from earlier this year, covering more than 100,000 laptop and desktop computer owners. "More than 95% of all laptop and desktop computers purchased since the beginning of 2019 and owned for no more than five years were still in use," they reported. Those members tend to keep their Windows-based computers for a long time, the group concluded. "[I]t's clear that consumers purchased machines before Microsoft announced the hardware needs for Windows 11, expecting to be able to operate them through the next Microsoft OS transition."

Airlines Seen as Vulnerable as Ransomware Confirmed in Weekend Cyberattack

upstart writes:

A ransomware attack was confirmed as the source of the weekend's airport disruption:

While no one crew has claimed responsibility for the attack that disrupted a number of European airports, including in Brussels, Berlin, London, Dublin and Cork this weekend, Europe's cybersecurity agency (ENISA) confirmed to the BBC that a ransomware attack was behind the chaos.

"The type of ransomware has been identified. Law enforcement is involved to investigate," the agency told Reuters.

The cyberattack disrupted check-in and baggage systems last Friday (19 September), targeting 'Muse' (multi-user system environment), a software tool made by Collins Aerospace, which provides a range of aircraft technologies, including baggage tagging and handling.

Experts had been warning for some time that airlines are particularly susceptible to widespread attacks. In July, after UK retailers were hit hard with Scattered Spider attacks, the FBI and cyber experts warned that airlines were likely to be next in line. Hackers using Scattered Spider tactics are renowned for targeting one sector at a time, although there is no indication as yet that they were behind this attack.

[...] "The aviation sector, with its complex network of third-party suppliers and contractors, presents an attractive target," said Haris Pylarinos, founder and CEO of cybersecurity company Hack the Box back in July. "If just one weak link is compromised, the ripple effects could be massive."

While the effects of the weekend attack were limited, it is certainly a major wake-up call for the airline industry.

"I'm deeply concerned but not surprised by the scale of the cyberattack on European airports," said Adam Blake, CEO and founder of cybersecurity company ThreatSpike

"Businesses are pouring vast sums of money into advanced security tools and bolt-on solutions, but it's just fragmenting security posture, creating overlapping controls and gaps for adversaries to exploit.

"Cybersecurity needs to be treated a lot more holistically, as a strategic priority built on end-to-end visibility, consistent monitoring and response, and proactive threat detection," he warned. "Where organisations stitch together a patchwork of vendors, vulnerabilities will inevitably emerge."

UK Arrests Man Linked to Ransomware Attack That Caused Airport Disruptions Across Europe

janrinok writes:

UK arrests man linked to ransomware attack that caused airport disruptions across Europe

The U.K.'s National Crime Agency (NCA) said on Wednesday that a man was arrested in connection to the ransomware attack that has caused delays and disruptions at several European airports since the weekend.

The hack, which began Friday, targeted check-in systems provided by Collins Aerospace, causing delays at Brussels, Berlin, and Dublin airports, as well as London's Heathrow, which lasted until yesterday.

While the NCA did not name the arrested man, the agency said he is "in his forties" and that he was arrested in the southern county of West Sussex on Tuesday under the country's Computer Misuse Act "as part of an investigation into a cyber incident impacting Collins Aerospace."

The man was released on conditional bail, according to the agency.

"Although this arrest is a positive step, the investigation into this incident is in its early stages and remains ongoing," said Paul Foster, deputy director and head of the NCA's National Cyber Crime Unit, in a statement.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2