ASML Can't Keep Up With AI, Ivanti Zero-Day Hits, Apple Goes Home

Full transcript

Alex: Welcome to Daily Tech News, it is Wednesday, October fourteenth, twenty twenty-six, and I am Alex.

Jordan: And I am Jordan, and we have a morning where the A I boom is running into physical limits, a V P N zero day is already being exploited, and Apple is making its biggest push into the home in almost a decade.

Alex: Let us start with A S M L, the Dutch company that is the only maker of the extreme ultraviolet lithography machines needed for the most advanced chips.

Jordan: A S M L reported a record third quarter, with net sales of eleven point seven billion euros and net income of about five billion euros, and it raised its full year sales outlook to between forty-four billion and forty-five billion euros.

Jordan: The headline is what chief executive Christophe Fouquet told investors, because even after planning to raise capacity by thirty percent in twenty twenty-seven and another thirty percent in twenty twenty-eight, the company says that still will not fully meet customer demand in either year.

Alex: And customers are not just asking about next year anymore, because A S M L says some are already showing interest in placing orders for twenty twenty-nine and even twenty thirty.

Jordan: That matters because A S M L sits underneath everyone else, since chipmakers like T S M C and Samsung use its machines to print the chips that A I companies design, so when the toolmaker says it is the bottleneck, that is a hard signal about how long this build out could run.

Jordan: And A S M L says it is now looking at upgrading existing machines and building higher throughput versions to squeeze out more capacity before its big expansion in Eindhoven is ready.

Alex: From supply limits to a security emergency, and this one needs attention today if your team runs Ivanti Connect Secure.

Jordan: Ivanti disclosed a new zero day on October thirteenth, and the U S Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency says attackers are already exploiting it for credential theft and data exfiltration, and it has added the flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog.

Alex: Researchers at Volexity say a threat actor they track as U T A zero five seven six has been chaining three flaws together since the first week of October, combining an authentication bypass, remote code execution, and a privilege escalation to get unauthenticated root level access.

Jordan: In plain terms, that means an attacker who never logs in can end up with full control of a device that sits right on the edge of a corporate network.

Alex: And Volexity says the attackers are hunting for especially valuable secrets once they are in, including Local Administrator Password Solution passwords and BitLocker recovery keys, which can open doors well beyond the V P N itself.

Jordan: The fix is to patch now, with fixed versions including twenty-five point one point three for the newer releases and twenty-two point eight R two point five for the older line, and versions twenty-two point seven and below are not affected.

Alex: If you run one of these appliances, this is not a patch Tuesday someday item, it is a patch today item, because the exploitation is already happening.

Jordan: That urgency lines up with a new survey from Chainguard of one thousand three hundred security leaders, which found that ninety-one percent say A I accelerated attacks have changed their job more than anything else in the past decade.

Alex: And seventy-seven percent of those leaders say it is likely an attacker will exploit a vulnerability at their organization in the next year, while fifty-four percent admit their companies knowingly leave high or critical vulnerabilities unpatched at least sometimes.

Alex: Let us lighten it up with Apple, which held its Welcome Home event on October thirteenth and finally put a screen on its smart home ambitions.

Jordan: The star is HomeView, a seven inch Liquid Retina display in tabletop and wall mounted versions, both priced at two hundred ninety-nine dollars, available for pre-order now and launching on November thirteenth.

Alex: HomeView is built around the new Siri A I, and Apple says it can recognize up to six household members by face, pull in context from messages and calendar when you are recognized, and sync your conversations across your other devices.

Alex: Alongside HomeView, there is a new HomePod mini two for one hundred forty-nine dollars, launching October thirtieth in five colors, although its Siri A I features will arrive in a future software update rather than on day one.

Jordan: And the fourth generation Apple T V four K also costs two hundred ninety-nine dollars and launches November thirteenth, with an A nineteen chip, hands free Siri control through built in microphones, and a findable Siri Remote you can make play a sound when it disappears into the couch.

Alex: Rounding it out is the Apple Home Collection, a line of cameras, a door lock, thermostats, and sensors built with L G Electronics and Schneider Electric, starting to arrive in December.

Jordan: The context matters here, because Apple has been a small player in smart speakers for years, and HomeView is really Apple giving Siri A I a permanent home in your house instead of only living on your phone.

Alex: Now a sobering A I business story, because Character dot A I, once one of the most talked about chatbot startups, has filed for Chapter eleven bankruptcy protection.

Jordan: The filing lists estimated assets and liabilities each between fifty million and one hundred million dollars, and Disney has stepped in as the lead bidder, offering twenty million dollars for a non-exclusive perpetual license to some of the company's intellectual property.

Alex: That is a steep fall for a company that reached a one billion dollar valuation in twenty twenty-three, and that was at the center of a two point seven billion dollar licensing and hiring deal with Google in twenty twenty-four.

Jordan: The company says it will keep the platform running during the court supervised sale, which it expects to finish in late November or early December, but it warns the platform could be wound down if no bidder steps up to keep operating it.

Alex: Character dot A I says it faced significant legal, regulatory, and operational headwinds over the past year, and other bidders can still top the Disney offer, so that twenty million dollars is a floor for the auction, not a final price.

Alex: We will close with a more constructive A I safety story, because Nvidia said on Wednesday it will donate computing resources valued at two hundred fifty million dollars over five years to support agentic A I safety and security research in the United Kingdom.

Jordan: That works out to fifty million dollars in compute access each year, with a portion going to university led labs including Oxford's B O L D lab, a U C L led effort, and Imperial College London.

Alex: After a week where we have talked a lot about A I agents acting outside their guardrails, funding independent safety research with real compute is one of the more practical steps a chip giant can take.

Jordan: Agreed, and the through line today is that A I is hitting the real world in every direction, from lithography factories that cannot keep up, to V P N appliances under active attack, to a smart display on your kitchen counter.

Alex: That is your Daily Tech News for Wednesday, October fourteenth, twenty twenty-six, thanks for listening, and we will see you tomorrow.

Jordan: See you tomorrow, and if you run Ivanti Connect Secure at work, please go patch it before your coffee gets cold.