Tech News Weekly 453 Transcript

Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.
 

Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
Coming up on Tech News Weekly, Abrar Al-Heeti is here and we kick off the show talking about the John Ternus era at Apple. Then we take a look at one climate scientist's calculations of just how much AI costs. Afterward, I talk about the bezel-free phone someone just saw at IFA and round things out with Chris Fistonich of Malwarebytes, who joins the show to warn people not to download GTA 6 Extended Looks. Stay tuned for this episode of Tech News Weekly.

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Mikah Sargent [00:00:40]:
This is Tech News Weekly, episode 453, with Abrar Al-Heeti and me, Micah Sargent. Recorded Thursday, September 3rd, 2026. Scammers cash in on GTA 6. Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. I am your host, Micah Sargent, and I am joined today by the wonderful Abrar Al-Heeti. Welcome back, Abrar.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:01:11]:
Hello. How are you?

Mikah Sargent [00:01:13]:
I'm doing well. How are you?

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:01:14]:
I'm doing well, thank you. It's our favorite season.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:17]:
It's our favorite season of the year. It is.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:18]:
It's fall time. It's fall time. This is the fall time dance. Da-da-da-da.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:01:23]:
The next TikTok trend. Love it.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:25]:
Oh, yeah. Or Fortnite.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:01:29]:
There you go.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:30]:
Fortnite emote.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:01:30]:
Whoever wants it, it's yours.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:01:32]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:32]:
Somebody take it and pay me for it. Somebody stop me. Anyway, let's do a show. So this, if you are tuning in for the first time, is the part of the show, and welcome by the way, is the part of the show where we share our stories of the week. Abrar, tell us what's on the table for today.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:01:51]:
Well, I wanna talk about the big news of the week, which is Apple's new CEO, John Ternus, and kind of what's at stake here, what he has to kind of live up to slash push forward. So John Ternus has been at Apple since 2001, and he's very much a hardware guy, right? So he's the senior vice president of hardware engineering. He's worked on, you know, the core products, the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple Watch, AirPods, MacBook Air, all the good stuff. And so now it's his turn to step into the spotlight. And what a time to do so, because next week is Apple's big iPhone event. You know, we're anticipating hopefully some big reveals there. Maybe we'll finally see a foldable iPhone. And if we don't, then we'll all be really disappointed and pretend that we're not.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:02:36]:
And so I kind of just wanted to talk about some of the things that he is walking into as he takes over this role. So some of the biggest challenges I think he'll be kind of encountering. Let's start out by talking about AI, right? So Apple still has a lot to prove in the AI space and they're, they're getting there. They're taking steps there. You know, that, that smart assistant that I won't name for the sake of not triggering your devices is getting smarter finally, right? Finally, hopefully able to pull that contextual information from your screen, you know, available in beta. We'll see what that kind of looks like when that launches more broadly. But that'll be a really big thing. And obviously, I think something that people at Apple are really fixated on.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:03:19]:
And then you have things like manufacturing challenges, right? So Apple has been kind of shifting its production for, you know, expanding it beyond just China to India and Vietnam and more locations, especially as the Trump administration imposes super high tariffs. So that'll be one thing that he is having to mitigate in addition to the RAM shortage, which is hiking up prices. So we'll likely see the effects of those price hikes when we want to buy our next iPhone. And then, you know, there's regulatory pressure. The US Department of Justice and the EU have gone after Apple's quote unquote walled garden, you know, accusing it of violating antitrust laws. If you have an Android phone, you're probably aware of how that feels when you are excluded from iMessage chats and blamed for turning the text green. So does Apple continue to navigate that, which is like one of their most valuable assets, is their ecosystem, right? Right. How do you navigate all of that? And then, you know, I think the big thing is evolving Apple's products.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:04:21]:
So, you know, I think a lot of people feel like the iPhone has— the design of the iPhone has stagnated for a while. And that's where that foldable iPhone hopefully comes in, right? Something that feels fresh. You know, Tim Cook was in charge of some big products, you know, Apple Watch, being one of the big ones. But the mobile space is where there needs to be perhaps a little bit more evolution. So will next week on Wednesday, will that be the time when Apple takes that next step forward with a foldable iPhone? And you know what it will be like when, when Tim Cook takes the spotlight and is the face of that event. But I'm curious what you're thinking and what you've kind of heard about, you know, his takeover and what you think, if there's anything I didn't mention that might be part of the challenges that he's going to face.

Mikah Sargent [00:05:09]:
I think you've nailed it in terms of a lot of the challenges. One of the things that we saw was how in Tim Cook switching to the role that he switched to, handling some of the— I can't remember exactly how they phrased it, but essentially talking to the US administration. Like, let's be frank. I think it was phrased as sort of political liaison across the world, but I think we know where that conversation happens. What I found interesting, and I'm not going to make any value judgments on the situation in this case, I thought it was interesting that there was perhaps an opportunity to set a tone when it came to a recent change to the name of a lake in the US. And I mean, I guess there was an opportunity to set a tone, and I guess a tone was set in the, in the case that the name in Apple Maps was changed to Lake America. Um, I wondered if it was going to be any different at all.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:06:22]:
Yes, same.

Mikah Sargent [00:06:23]:
If, if, if the CEO of the company did not have to focus on also being that liaison, you had someone who already had an established relationship, would that perhaps result in an Apple that we've seen in the past.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:06:38]:
Right.

Mikah Sargent [00:06:39]:
Because there was obviously a little bit of— for some people, disappointment, for some people, shock and awe, for others, no surprise. And however people were feeling about it, it was interesting to just see how it was going to turn out. So, I don't know how different things are going to be, but I certainly do not envy anyone who has to sit step into that role because Tim Cook was a brilliant, like, supply engineer and, and figured out a way to pilot the company into the incredibly valuable company that it is today.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:07:32]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:07:33]:
And I would argue I would argue with my microphone, apparently. I would argue that Tim Cook had a much harder job taking over for this sort of hero visionary messiah character that a lot of people saw Steve Jobs as.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:07:53]:
Oh, yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:07:54]:
Whereas Ternus does not have that same Uh, task ahead of him. Um, and so in that way, I, I'm not as sort of worried for Ternus as I was for Tim Cook in the beginning. Um, and I think that the company, like, it's, it'll, it'll be fine. I think that's what it boils down to for me. It'll be fine.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:08:25]:
Yeah. Um, I think so too.

Mikah Sargent [00:08:27]:
There are some shakeups inside, and we've seen people moving here and moving there. I'm curious to see if talent bleed will change at all. This is all stuff that we just have to see play out. It hasn't happened yet. And it is, you know, sometimes it can be good to get some quote unquote fresh blood into a situation and see what buttons to press and what can be— what, what, uh, Jenga piece can be pulled out from the tower and everything still stands up. That must be equal parts frightening and exciting for, you know, an incoming CEO.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:09:04]:
Yeah, definitely. I think you bring up a great point, though, about the pressure that Tim Cook, I think, faced throughout his entire tenure. I don't think he was even just in the beginning because I still see interviews where people ask him about Steve Jobs. And, you know, like, I— he obviously doesn't seem bothered by it, but it's, it's interesting that that continued to be the point of reference. As he continued to make Apple a trillion-dollar company, it was still questions about, you know, Steve Jobs' success. And, you know, I think people highlighted both, but he really was under that shadow throughout the entire time. So John Ternus is kind of one step removed from that, hopefully, I think. And I also wanted to go back to that point about foldable iPhones because we have a survey that we posted on CNET about how people feel about foldable phones and an iPhone foldable in particular.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:09:54]:
So in our survey, we found out that about 75% of people don't care about an Apple foldable. And what I'll say is I will— you know, the bit of context here is this phone hasn't been released yet. Right. So I think they're not interested because they haven't seen it and it's not available. Right. And so I think it'll be really interesting once this phone hopefully makes its debut next week. You can tell I'm truly, like, clearly not really, really anxious for this to become a reality or anything. But hopefully it is revealed next week.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:10:29]:
I think it'll be interesting to see how people respond then because, you know, Apple has brand power and there are a lot of foldables out there. But every time I have a foldable phone, someone says, I wish Apple made one. You know, that's cool, but it's not an iPhone, right? So this might finally be the time where Apple has its foldable iPhone. The other point in our survey that I thought was, was interesting and a little funny was that apparently U.S. adults would spend an average of about $781 on an Apple foldable device. Let me tell you, it will not be under $800. Yeah, you can't even get the iPhone 17 for that. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:11:07]:
So people are going to—

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:11:08]:
I'm sorry, but yeah, sorry, guys, you're going to have to maybe double that a little bit more than double it. And then you might have a, have a sale there, especially with the RAM shortage. Right. So it's not even just— yeah, it's The design and the RAM shortage, that are 2 things that will affect the prices and whether people feel like upgrading. Will people say, well, okay, well, I'm just going to hold on to my device now. I'm not even going to upgrade to a Pro model because that's too expensive now. So I think depending on what they reveal and what the prices are, then I'm curious to see how people feel about this. But I think there will be a lot of buzz.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:11:40]:
I'm sure it'll be available in limited quantities, which will hike up that interest and the, you know, the special value of this device. But, but I think that would be such, such an epic, epic way to kick off Ternus's tenure.

Mikah Sargent [00:11:53]:
Yeah, I agree. That is— that's a nice thing, that having the opportunity to be at the forefront of the launch of something, you know, different and new. And that is exciting. I like what you said about, you know, a survey for a product that doesn't yet exist. It is a good point that— I mean, because even I Um, uh, despite sort of knowing enough about foldables and everything, I've talked about how, uh, this one doesn't really interest me. And I, people, you know, whenever we've heard about rumors coming up, then someone will say, so what do you think? And I've gone, oh, you know, I don't know. And then the day happens and then suddenly it's like, ooh.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:12:39]:
Yeah, exactly. Shiny. Yeah, exactly.

Mikah Sargent [00:12:41]:
Yeah. New, shiny, fun. Oh, they nailed this. Oh, look, they built a robot that folds and unfolds it 75 million times.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:12:51]:
Incredible. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:12:52]:
Yeah, exactly. We talked last time about the crease on the device that you were testing. And, um, I think that's, I'm, I'm still very interested to see what Apple has to say about it, if anything. Um, cause it's just, yeah, it's, it's a hardware limitation, arguably, if it even is a limitation, as you said, it's not necessarily.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:13:16]:
People really do harp on it though. People become very fixated on the creases. And I, I am also very curious to see what happens because the rumors have been that Apple could be the first company to release a truly creaseless foldable phone. And if that's true, that'll be fascinating. I mean, you know, apparently Samsung Display is working on that screen and the Galaxy Z Fold 8 had a very minimal crease. So will Apple be the ones to take it the next step and really make that creaseless? We'll see. But yeah, I think that'll be interesting. And the cameras, how good will the cameras be on that? And the battery life that I think the cameras and the battery life will really be the true selling point as to whether people want this device or not.

Mikah Sargent [00:13:53]:
Yeah, yeah. Uh, I'm, I'm looking forward to next week and also not looking forward to next week.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:14:01]:
No, same. That's exactly how I feel.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:03]:
Uh, and I'm wishing you all the best in terms of—

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:14:07]:
Thank you. It's like going to war. Yeah, yeah, mentally, physically.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:11]:
Yeah, it's real intense. It's real intense. All right, we are back from the break, and as I mentioned, joined this week by the wonderful Abrar Al-Heeti. Uh, we are going to cover another Story of the week. Every time somebody brings up the environmental cost of AI, there's a number that gets pulled out that is supposed to calm the room. It's that a single chatbot prompt uses about a quarter of a watt-hour, so less electricity than watching 9 seconds of television. Google published that figure. Sam Altman published a similar one, and then a whole genre of actually your ChatGPT habit is fine writing has been built on top of it.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:57]:
Here's the thing. Those numbers, to be fair, are correct, and they may also be increasingly beside the point. And then I'm going to tell you, I love this person's name. It's one of the best names I think I've ever read. A, has the same name as my youngest brother— first name as my youngest brother.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:15:19]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:15:19]:
But B, the last name's so cool. So Zeke Hausfather, H-A-U-S-Father. That's pretty awesome. What? Amazing. Anyway, Zeke Hausfather, the climate scientist who writes The Climate Brink, spent 8 weeks logging his own AI use. Now, this was not chatbot prompts. This was agentic coding sessions in Claude 2, and then ran the token counts through 3 independent methodologies to figure out what he was actually What he found is that the unit everyone's been measuring is the wrong one. So let's get into it.

Mikah Sargent [00:15:55]:
Now, again, yes, it's like, it's, it's something that's become a bit of a mantra for me lately is multiple things can be true. And that's a really hard thing to agree to on the internet, that multiple things can be true, because it always has to be like one way or the other. But this is a situation where Those numbers that are being bandied about are not incorrect, but there are more numbers involved. So Housefather does not tear down those statistics. In fact, he reaffirms them. Google's median Gemini text prompt at 0.24 watt-hours, Altman's 0.34 watt-hours per ChatGPT query, Andy Masley and Hannah Ritchie's math showing that one prompt is roughly 1/150,000th of an average American's daily emissions. Those numbers are basically right, is what he says. They are also increasingly divorced from how AI is actually being used today.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:53]:
So then he puts his own 8 weeks on the table. 1,138 typed prompts into Claude 2, which triggered more than 14,000 model calls and processed 3.2 billion tokens. That ranks in at an estimated 170 kilowatt-hours of data center electricity. That's about 150 watt-hours per prompt, which is 600 times a median chat prompt. So a prompt is ultimately not a unit of AI use any more than trips are a measurement of driving. It's how far you go that actually matters. That's the part that needs to be understood.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:17:44]:
Hmm.

Mikah Sargent [00:17:45]:
It's not, here's what gets kicked off when I do the prompt. It's what keeps happening as you go along and what else is there. So, you know, just counting how many times you turned the key for a car to say that that's how you measure, you know, a car's emissions, that's what this is sort of equivalent to if you base it on just the prompt. But I wanted to ask you, Abrar, first and foremost, so we can kind of talk about this.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:18:13]:
Mm-hmm.

Mikah Sargent [00:18:15]:
Do you feel like this reframing of the measurement is something that will/could land for people? Or is this going to be a situation where you hear, well, we keep moving the goalposts, and if we keep moving the goalposts, then we can never defend it? I shouldn't say it like that because then I'm sort of leading the question.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:18:43]:
No, I mean, I think we're on the same wavelength. there. I think it's interesting. This is coming at a time when people have already become so dependent on these platforms, right? So what— is somebody going to change their habits or is a company going to amend its energy consumption because of this information, which is very important and very eye-opening? But I hate being cynical and I'm a journalist, so I can't fight it. Yeah, me too. But it's like, you know, what will the effect of this be? Now that we have this information, what happens now? But I think knowledge is important, and I hope people look into this and explore what is revealed here because it's good to be cognizant of the effects of what we do, namely what corporations do, right? And how they are responsible for this. But it's at a time when, again, this has been so baked into what we do and what, you know, so many people have become dependent on, um, that I wonder what happens now. And I wonder if you're feeling kind of the same way about where we go from here.

Mikah Sargent [00:19:50]:
Yeah, I— it's hard because, I mean, I just— we just launched a new— we just announced that we're launching a new show on the network that I'm hosting called Hands on AI. Um, I felt like— I have felt like, um, too much of the help content that's out there is for token maxers. Right.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:20:14]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:20:14]:
You know, it's just like, and I don't like— I want access for normal people. Yeah, I shouldn't say normal people. Access for everyday people. Yeah.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:20:24]:
Yes.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:20:24]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:20:24]:
Thank you. You, you get it. I got you.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:20:26]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:20:27]:
And that's, that's what the show is. But yeah, it's— it is something that people have to be aware of. And it's something that I think is important to acknowledge. And I think it's especially important to acknowledge this when it comes to— I don't know, for me, I like arguments that are airtight, as airtight as possible.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:20:51]:
Sure.

Mikah Sargent [00:20:52]:
And that are made in good faith. And so I think context like this is important and it needs to be part of the discussion. Something that's wild about this piece. There's a number, and that number is 96%. And it's wild. 96% of the energy use that Housefather Saul— again, such a cool name. I want him to also be a DJ. Like, he should be an EDM DJ.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:21:20]:
He might be, yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:21:21]:
Yeah. If you're not, Zeke, please, I'm telling you.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:21:24]:
It's untapped territory, yeah. It is.

Mikah Sargent [00:21:28]:
96% of the energy that's being used is just the agent rereading its own notes.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:21:32]:
Oh, God.

Mikah Sargent [00:21:34]:
So of the 3.2 billion tokens that House Father looked at, the model's output was about 0.4% of the total. 96% of it were cache reads, which is just the agent reprocessing its entire accumulated context every single time it takes another step.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:21:53]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:21:54]:
So it runs a command, reads a file, calls a tool, and then the whole working memory gets read again. Each of his prompts averaged 2.9 million tokens, tokens, and then 12 separate model calls. So this is in comparison to a typical web chat exchange that doesn't use reasoning, um, or search that runs at about 1,000 tokens.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:22:18]:
Mm-hmm.

Mikah Sargent [00:22:18]:
So cache reads, it turns out, are cheaper than fresh processing. Um, and House Father says that his central energy assumption with 1% and 25%, uh, when Wait, that's a little confusing. Oh, it technically is cheaper to do the cache reads than it is to just completely do fresh processing. However, if you say that it is cheaper on an individual level, yes. But when 96% is the number, then cheaper times that 96% still does end up being most of the bill.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:22:58]:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:22:59]:
So yeah, it's understandable that that is the way that the process goes, but because it ends up not being that big of— not as much of an impact, but it still is quite a wild, I think, number for sure. Real quick, we'll kind of talk about a day in the life of, because Housefather goes into this too. And I don't want to share the whole story because I want everyone to go and read it. Really, really in-depth, really well done. So he kind of converts everything into appliances. His median Claude code sessions run at about 0.6 kilowatt-hours. That's 50 times the energy that it takes to charge a cell phone. And then at the top end, his average day comes in at 3.0 kilowatt-hours.

Mikah Sargent [00:23:50]:
That's more electricity— more electricity than running 2 modern refrigerators.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:23:55]:
Gosh.

Mikah Sargent [00:23:56]:
Ooh! 11 kilowatt-hours was his heaviest day. Multiple parallel agents churning through a large geospatial analysis that used more than a third. Oh my God.

Mikah Sargent [00:24:07]:
This is—

Mikah Sargent [00:24:08]:
I have to say, it's a little wild to me, the thought that any one person has this much control over the power grid. Like, he is just one human being who doesn't work for that company who can do a thing to make this happen. On that heaviest day, with multiple parallel agents running, more than a third of the total daily electricity of an average US home.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:24:34]:
God.

Mikah Sargent [00:24:35]:
I don't want to have that power, I think, is what I'm— you know what I mean?

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:24:39]:
No, we don't need it.

Mikah Sargent [00:24:41]:
We don't want it.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:24:42]:
Not necessary at all. And most people are not setting their track, you know, like no one's cognizant of it. You're just doing it.

Mikah Sargent [00:24:49]:
I'm going, I want this thing. Can you do it? And then if I think that, yeah, if there was some sort of like, if I had a— maybe that's what I need to do. It'll probably cost a whole day's worth of a house of power. But hear me out.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:25:04]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:25:04]:
What if I had a little—

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:25:06]:
Like a meter.

Mikah Sargent [00:25:07]:
Like a meter, exactly. But it's like a pond that's— this reminds me when I was a kid, my— I can't remember if they had it hanging on a wall or if it was in a book or somewhere, but somewhere I can remember so clearly There was a pond with some fish in it, and the fish looked so sweet and just like had the biggest, you know, cutest eyes and like eyelashes, which— what? I love these fish, right? And then it had this little, um, at the bottom, a little hole in the bottom of the pond, and it showed it going up into the faucet, and it showed somebody brushing their teeth with the water running.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:25:44]:
Oh yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:25:45]:
And so as a kid, I like that. That locked into my brain. I was like, I cannot let the fish die, essentially.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:25:52]:
Save some water for the fishes.

Mikah Sargent [00:25:54]:
Absolutely. I wonder if I made like an animated meter of my fish starting to drown, I would probably—

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:26:01]:
Yes. If you are a fellow empath, I think that 1,000% would work. Yes. I think you're onto something. That's your next business venture.

Mikah Sargent [00:26:09]:
Exactly. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:26:10]:
You know what?

Mikah Sargent [00:26:11]:
Maybe that is something I could do.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:26:13]:
Yeah, Housefather does the DJing. You do the little fish meter, and we're set. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:26:19]:
So I wanted to kind of round things out just by asking you, because we've talked before about how Google has really done a good job with Gemini on its devices to make those devices more useful. Apple, of course, at WWDC announced Apple Intelligence and showed off some of those features. The companies are trying to do more locally on device, and some of this processing happens locally.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:26:48]:
Mm-hmm.

Mikah Sargent [00:26:49]:
What is your take on how much this— like, do you— I guess what I'm wondering is, do you think that the average person who's using these tools has any concept of the potential impact that they could have? Again, the thought that I could just blow a third of a house's energy in a day without somebody like asking me 5 times, are you sure you want to do this? Like, I should get a call or something. It's just kind of wild to me anyway.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:27:23]:
Yeah, I don't think anyone has any concept of how much energy they're using. And I think that's by design. I think, you know, the goal is to push these capabilities onto you through your devices. through, especially through your phone, which you are using all the time anyway. So, uh, as you have those capabilities baked in, you're going to dive into them. You're not even going to, sometimes you're not even going to realize you're using an AI function because that is how they want it to be. They don't want you to think about it. Right.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:27:47]:
So if you're not even aware, I mean, this is looking at, you know, people who are aware of how they are using AI, but as you're using photo editing features, as you're using kind of assistive features to, you know, automatically add things to your calendar or Pull data from your Gmail, you know, all those things.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:03]:
Yeah.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:28:03]:
Those are all happening using AI and you're not even feeling it.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:07]:
But the fish are.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:28:09]:
But the fish are. That's the takeaway. So everyone walk away with this remembering, think of the fish.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:15]:
Think of the fish.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:28:16]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:17]:
And I guess I'm every episode of Hands-On AI, I'm gonna have to end it.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:28:21]:
Think of the fish is the new tagline.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:22]:
Thank you for being here and think of the fish.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:28:23]:
I think it'll be great. It's like the new Bob Barker, like, don't forget to The spay your pets. Yeah, spay and neuter your pets.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:30]:
And then, uh, who, who was it that always say make good choices? Um, oh yeah, whoever it was.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:28:35]:
Yeah, right, exactly.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:36]:
So, and then back before Ellen was mean, she said be kind to everyone or whatever.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:28:41]:
This time you got to practice what you preach though. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:44]:
Oh no, I'm Ellen.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:28:46]:
You're Ellen Fish. Congratulations.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:48]:
Yeah, anyway. Love talking to you, Abrar.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:28:57]:
Likewise.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:58]:
Always a pleasure, always so nice. Um, and I'm wishing you the best of luck in the coming weeks.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:29:04]:
Thank you.

Mikah Sargent [00:29:04]:
You know, get those elbows ready as you—

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:29:06]:
I know, seriously, everyone watch out.

Mikah Sargent [00:29:09]:
I hope you come in with elbow pads.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:29:11]:
I should actually. Helmet, the whole thing. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:29:14]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:29:14]:
Oh my God, that would be incredible.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:29:17]:
It's just for the memes.

Mikah Sargent [00:29:18]:
Oh my God, I would love that. In any case, if people would like to follow you online and make sure that they're checking out the work you're doing next week, where should they go? All your elbow pads.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:29:30]:
And watch me in my helmet, yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:29:31]:
Where do they go to do that?

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:29:33]:
You can find me on cnet.com, also on Instagram, Abrar Al-Hitti, no spaces, no hyphens. And I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully we get some good stuff next week.

Mikah Sargent [00:29:43]:
I hope so as well. Thank you, Abrar. We'll see you again soon.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:29:45]:
Thank you. Appreciate you having me. There you go.

Mikah Sargent [00:29:48]:
All right, back from the break, and it is time for a wee little story of the week before we get into our interview. I wanted to mention, because right now there is an event going on where companies are announcing new products, and The Verge has a fascinating story. If you think back about 10 years when every phone company on Earth was in a race to sort of shrink that black border that you have around your screen, well, those bezels got thinner, screens, they got bigger, and then somewhere around about a millimeter on each side, everybody just kind of said, oh no, we handled it, it's good. Nobody, you know, said, okay, we've, we've nailed it. It just became the shape of the phone. And you look around and you see tiny little bezels on all the phones. But at IFA in Berlin this week, the budget brand Tecno said, you know what, we're going to finish the job, we're going to carry it all the way. Dominic Preston at The Verge got hands-on time with a prototype called the Bezel-less.

Mikah Sargent [00:30:55]:
This is a concept phone that removes the black border around the display entirely. It doesn't shrink it, it removes it. It's never going on sale, but it does show that, hey, you know, it can be done. And of course is happening right before Apple is allegedly, reportedly, possibly going to be— revealing a 20th anniversary iPhone that also removes the bezels completely. Uh, Tecno's device, again the bezel-less, and again a concept phone, uh, it's a 6.78-inch OLED, 144Hz refresh rate, 1.5K resolution. Uh, and Preston said the screen ends and then the frame begins, and that's that. The only imperfection he said that he found was that the tiniest Hint of a fraction of a black line that he can see just under the frame if he looks at the phone from an angle. So there's no bezel, but there is still a bit of a frame.

Mikah Sargent [00:32:03]:
Uh, as far as how Tecno pulled it off, the OLED panel still has an inactive edge, and so instead of showing it, they just put it into the frame. It's just hidden under the frame. So you get 2 layers of cover glass. The top layer runs to the edge of the frame, and then the lower glass layer and the OLED panel both go underneath it. And that means that, you know, you get this bezel-less design. It did also mean that they had to kind of build the phone in reverse. So you mount the display from the rear of the phone rather than the front. The reason I wanted to mention this is because, of course, we've got, um, we've got rumors of new phones coming around the corner, and every time a new phone is announced, And revealed, it for the most part is some version of a thick slab of glass, or a thin, I should say, a thin slab of glass and metal or plastic sandwiched together.

Mikah Sargent [00:33:07]:
And it's not something that feels like A new look, a new feel. And this does, this is interesting to see a budget company make something that has, uh, has these, these, you know, layers of, of difference to them. So let's kind of, uh, dig in a little bit more. Um, it, it feels like the logical next step between the folding phone and what comes next. And And I can't remember, it was just the other day, one of our listeners was talking about building an app that allowed for remote access to their Mac via Apple Vision Pro and brought up Minority Report. And Minority Report, as well as there was this video a long time ago that Microsoft released that was meant to show a concept of what the future could look like. And those 2 have continued to remain my sort of holy grail of what I want for the future of computing and interaction. So every phone that has come out that just shrinks the bezels a little bit, makes the phone a little bit lighter, or in this case, completely gets rid of the bezels, still feels like a compromise on that eventual future.

Mikah Sargent [00:34:42]:
But you got to do something, right? And this is something. I do wonder why we haven't seen more manufacturers trying to make bezel-less phones. Um, Preston says that he thinks that bezel shrinking stopped because manufacturers, uh, felt like it got small enough that most people stopped caring. So removing a strip of black from the screen doesn't really make the phone feel dramatically more impressive or useful than any other phone, he says. Uh, it's a function, you know, it's, it's not really a functional upgrade. It's just more of a look and feel sort of situation. And I think I have to agree with that. It doesn't feel like this is such a, such an improvement, such an advancement.

Mikah Sargent [00:35:29]:
Um, and I also, when I'm holding a phone and I'm kind of trying to reach Into the the phone, it's nice to have a little bit of space there on the end to to kind of grip it. And so I am a little bit nervous about Apple's rumored bezel-less device and what they will do about touch rejection at the corners, the edges of the screen. You know, if you were if this phone were to be released, it would of course give you. That expansive frame. So when you're watching something, it does kind of feel like the edges disappear. The Android interface works well on it. And I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see this coming to this sort of concept coming to more phones, particularly given, again, the rumors about what Apple is doing in the future. So we will see if other Android devices end up going this way.

Mikah Sargent [00:36:27]:
But we'll see when the edge-to-edge iPhone ships in the future for the phone's 20th anniversary. All right. It's just about time for our interview. Grand Theft Auto 6 is one of the most anticipated games, I don't know, perhaps in all time. And after real footage leaked online this month, and of course later we saw actual gameplay footage of the game, a lot of people went looking for more. That search traffic didn't go unnoticed Researchers at Malwarebytes tracked down a cluster of convincing Rockstar lookalike sites promising something that doesn't exist. And what people actually got instead was designed to quietly walk off with everything their browser remembers. Joining us to break down what they found is Chris Fistonich from the Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence team.

Mikah Sargent [00:37:21]:
Welcome, Chris.

Chris Fistonich [00:37:22]:
Hello, and thank you for having me.

Mikah Sargent [00:37:24]:
Absolutely. So first and foremost, let's go ahead and start with kind of how this landed on your radar. Kind of what were you seeing in search engines What was it that caught your eye in the search results around GTA 6? And then what made your team decide to sort of pull on that thread?

Chris Fistonich [00:37:38]:
As a researcher, it is extremely tempting to immediately pull out all of our most advanced tools, our advanced toys, when a new threat emerges. But sometimes the best place to start is low-tech. In this case, we put ourselves in the shoes of a typical video game player. What would a fan search for? GTA news? GTA download? GTA demo? GTA leak, perhaps? That's a natural first reaction for someone who has heard rumors that there might be a mysterious playable demo out there. But cybercriminals take advantage of this curiosity. Any topic that has sort of reached the public zeitgeist to this degree becomes an opportunity to be taken advantage of. of, especially since the target audience has such a vested interest in being the first to experience something they were not supposed to experience. So when we ran these searches, we found a network of fake Rockstar-branded websites right alongside legitimate news coverage.

Chris Fistonich [00:38:41]:
We first saw the malicious executable file just one day after leaked material started circulating that was attributed to a guy named CyberLeak. It has become evident that cybercriminals respond to the very same news cycles that we all see and that they can respond to news extremely quickly.

Mikah Sargent [00:39:02]:
Now, if you could walk me through kind of what one of these sites actually looks like, if somebody lands on it and they are thinking that it's real, what are they actually seeing? And then more importantly, what are the instructions? What are they being told that they're going to get as a result of visiting the site?

Chris Fistonich [00:39:21]:
The websites look just like genuine Rockstar websites. It directly copied official artwork and official text from Rockstar's genuine Extended Look announcement, so a visitor is looking at authentic branding with little reason to feel suspicious. Where they take it a step further is the addition of a big Play Now button, a simple but enticing opportunity to experience something first, taking advantage of what we call fear of missing out, or FOMO, to get unsuspecting users to trust this dangerous source. Building something that convincing used to take substantial design effort, substantial time, and substantial money, but with AI-assisted tools nowadays, it now only takes a few minutes. In this era, a hyper-polished-looking unofficial website should be raising alarm bells rather than instilling trust. And I'll add one small detail that anyone can check for themselves if they're worried. The malicious files related to this campaign were on the smaller side. They weighed in at about 1 megabyte, but a modern AAA game typically weighs in at 100 gigabytes or more.

Chris Fistonich [00:40:31]:
So this type of sanity checking could be the difference between getting infected by malware or not.

Mikah Sargent [00:40:37]:
Hmm.

Chris Fistonich [00:40:37]:
Mm-hmm.

Mikah Sargent [00:40:38]:
Now, of course, there was the real sort of leak that happened in the background, actual footage that circulated since about mid-August, and then the release on Netflix of gameplay. So, do you feel like that mix of real and then also unofficial material shaped the environment, helped to kind of set up the environment that these operators were working in? And if so, So maybe you'd have some advice for how people can manage their excitement and therefore impulsivity in the moment.

Chris Fistonich [00:41:14]:
Absolutely. The fact that there was genuine material circulating during this time really worked to muddy the waters. Real footage existed. Rockstar had an extended— excuse me, an official extended look scheduled to premiere soon thereafter. any reasonable person might think, wow, there are real leaks occurring. What else could be out there for me to discover? This Play Now button that I found on this website could be the real deal. And really fueling that intrigue is over a decade of anticipation for one of the most highly sought-after video game sequels possibly ever. Social engineering scammers take advantage of this exact hype, so much so that the impatience does most of the persuasion for them.

Chris Fistonich [00:42:00]:
So I encourage everyone to stay calm. The game has been delayed for a substantial length of time, but the game will eventually be released and we will all get to enjoy it.

Mikah Sargent [00:42:11]:
There we go. Now, once someone clicks through and runs the, the file hoping that they'll be able to do some gameplay, what happens actually on their machine? in terms of what they can see and then what they can't see? What is that executable and what's actually going on after the fact?

Chris Fistonich [00:42:30]:
When a user clicks on the file, first of all, there's no game to play. There is no free demo here. There's also not even an error. There's no window that pops up at all. From the victim's point of view, the file simply appears to do nothing. In the background, though, it's activating through your browser. The payload is an info stealer malware called Vidar. This is a type of malware that's sold as a service.

Chris Fistonich [00:42:53]:
Any criminal can buy it, customize it for the campaign they're trying to run, and then unleash it onto unsuspecting users. It steals your passwords, your session cookies, your browser history, your download history, banking information. All of this is fair game. We counted 19 browser targets. including Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, even AI browsers such as Perplexity's Copilot. Even beyond browsers, we saw it targeting game platforms such as Roblox Studio.

Mikah Sargent [00:43:25]:
Mm-hmm.

Chris Fistonich [00:43:26]:
I want to draw attention to that last bit just a little bit because it tells you that these scammers know precisely who their target audience is. They know that gamers are susceptible to being taken advantage Even so, the stolen data reaches well past gaming. Email, social media, shopping, banking info, and payment accounts are all targets to be stolen. Wow.

Mikah Sargent [00:43:50]:
Yeah, I think one of the more interesting technical details here in, uh, in this write-up that you folks did, it's how that malware gets at the data that browsers have kind of tried to lock down. That, that's something that is just a good general awareness tip for people, right? Like that a browser has some of this data, the fact that this malware is attempting to access it, it's one more place where we have to be careful about what we're doing online. Can you kind of explain what you and the team observed there and why that approach matters?

Chris Fistonich [00:44:26]:
Yeah, one of the more interesting aspects for us is that this does not behave like a typical info stealer Trojan. Instead of just reading the browser's password files and cookie files on disk, it instead launches the real Chrome, the real Edge, the real Firefox, etc., in what's called headless mode with logging turned off. It creates and deletes temporary directories that you'll never see. And alongside this, we see the classic injection behavior. New processes are created and suspended. Memory is written into another process, and hidden child processes can evade detection. Doing the work inside of a real browser process is extremely valuable to an attacker because it runs the sensitive part of the operation inside of software that's already trusted and already allowed to touch that data. This potentially allows even the bypassing of 2-factor authentication because of abusing this existing browser authentication session.

Mikah Sargent [00:45:25]:
Wow. And then another thing that kind of stood out to me is that the malware doesn't re— I mean, from what I understand, doesn't set itself up to survive a reboot. Uh, still, you do talk about changing a password not being enough of, of a fix for this.

Chris Fistonich [00:45:42]:
So can you tell us kind of what is the lasting exposure here, even after So what made this campaign particularly dangerous is that we saw no real persistence mechanisms, no run key in the registry, no scheduled tasks that were created, no services created in the registry. And that is because this type of malware does not need to persist in any way. It needs a single execution, a single breach of trust, and by the time it finishes is running, your credentials are already gone. More importantly, these stolen session cookies can get an attacker into an account without a password and without a fresh 2-factor authentication token. So even a password change may not be sufficient to protect you after the fact. You also have to revoke the active sessions in your browsers.

Mikah Sargent [00:46:34]:
Hmm.

Chris Fistonich [00:46:35]:
There's a second reason this is also dangerous. Because Vidar is sold as service to cybercriminals. The people who buy this and create these campaigns can swap out the payload as needed whenever they like. They can have the same IP address serve completely different malware. What we analyzed is the build that was used on that particular day. The next visitor may get a loader or a Trojan that does something completely different. Once unknown code has been run with escalated privileges, the truth is that the machine's integrity is truly unknown. It ought to be treated as compromised even after any malicious file is gone.

Mikah Sargent [00:47:14]:
Wow. So for somebody who's watching this who just wants GTA 6 footage, GTA 6 gameplay, or perhaps someone who thinks that they have already run something that they shouldn't have, uh, can you give them just a little bit of advice?

Chris Fistonich [00:47:33]:
If you just want game footage, go to Rockstar's own official channels. There's so much hype regarding this game that it can be extremely tempting to want to find unofficial sources and to be the first to take a look at something that no one else has ever seen. This temptation has to be resisted. The game will release eventually despite some delays. Your PC security is just not worth compromising. If you think you fell victim to this attack, assume that your credentials have been stolen and work in this order. Do a full scan with a reputable security product such as Malwarebytes. Change your passwords from a different clean device that's never been on the same network as your home device, starting with your email.

Chris Fistonich [00:48:17]:
Then you have to revoke active sessions in your browsers. Check for unfamiliar recovery addresses. 2-factor authentication requests and be as hypervigilant as possible.

Mikah Sargent [00:48:29]:
Wonderful. I want to thank you so much, uh, for, A, you and the team doing this research and warning people, uh, very, very, very important. But also, I want to thank you for taking the time to be here. If people would like to kind of stay up to date with, uh, announcements from Malwarebytes and, uh, you know, be aware of what's going on, where are the places they should go? to do so.

Chris Fistonich [00:48:52]:
Um, first I just want to make one note for your general viewership. Scamming is the largest criminal enterprise in the world today. Scamming is a multi-billion dollar worldwide criminal enterprise that is closely tied to current events, not just in the gaming world. Any major news story can create an environment of uncertainty that scammers can and do take advantage of. I think it's so easy for you users, particularly savvy ones, to say, I would never fall victim to a scam, they're so easy to identify. In reality, scammers have all the time in the world. Data leaks are happening on a near-daily basis through no fault of our own. Social engineering attempts are more clandestine than ever.

Chris Fistonich [00:49:32]:
AI tools make the job of malware authors easier than ever. You must remain vigilant. We at Malwarebytes work around the clock to help keep you safe. We have new tools like our Identity Theft Protection and our Scam Guard that are protecting you from the scams and the malware of the 21st century.

Mikah Sargent [00:49:52]:
Wonderful. Thank you so much. We appreciate it.

Chris Fistonich [00:49:55]:
Thank you.

Mikah Sargent [00:49:56]:
Alrighty folks, that brings us to the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly. Of course, you can head to twit.tv/TNW to subscribe to the show in audio and video formats, and we would love it if If you did so, I mentioned Club Twit during the show. twit.tv/clubtwit is where you go to check it out and get those awesome benefits. If you'd like to follow me online, I'm @MikahSargent on many a social media network, or you can head to chihuahua.coffee. That's chihuahua.coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. And of course, be sure to check out my other shows on the network, including iOS Today, Hands-On Tech, Hands-On Apple. Apple, and in October, Hands-On AI. Looking forward to the launch of that show as well.

Mikah Sargent [00:50:41]:
I'll be back next week with another episode of Tech News Weekly, but until then, goodbye.