08/08/2026

/thesuntelegram FOLLOW / Malaysian Paper

ON TELEGRAM m RAM

BIZ & FINANCE SATURDAY | AUG 8, 2026

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Hackers targeted major US financial names, other firms

ByteDance eyes mega AI model to rival Mythos BENGALURU: ByteDance is training an AI model with as many as 10 trillion parameters that could be close to the size of Anthropic’s cutting-edge Mythos system, the Financial Times reported yesterday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. With 10 trillion parameters, the model would be more than three times the size of Chinese startup Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3, which has 2.8 trillion parameters. An AI model’s parameters refer to the numerical settings a model learns from data to recognize patterns, generate answers, and carry out tasks. They are often used as a rough measure of scale, though not necessarily capability. Reuters could not immediately verify the report. ByteDance did not immediately respond to Reuters’request for comment. Before Kimi K3’s release, Meituan’s LongCat-2.0 and DeepSeek’s V4-Pro led China’s AI industry with 1.6 trillion total parameters, while several other domestic rivals have passed the trillion parameter threshold. But direct comparisons with leading US AI models are difficult because companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI do not disclose the parameter counts for systems including Fable, Mythos or GPT-5.5. According to FT, industry estimates say Anthropic’s most advanced Mythos 5 has about 8 trillion parameters and Fable 5 about 5 trillion, making ByteDance’s new AI model close to the size of Mythos. The news comes as Chinese tech firms continue to accelerate their model release cycles to keep up with the intensifying global AI race, battling with US rivals to build more powerful systems without making them prohibitively expensive to run. The ByteDance model is currently undergoing pre-training, a process that typically lasts three to six months, before it can be fine-tuned and released, the FT report said.

with domain names such as “passkeyhelpdesk” or “secure-passkey.” If an employee followed the instructions to enter their password, the hackers would harvest their fail-safe passcode – typically sent by text or generated by an app – live over the phone and hijack their account before the call terminated. Larsen said it was wrong to think of the tactic as particularly advanced. “Sophisticated is not the right word,” he said. “It is just really effective.” Reuters was not able to reach the alleged hackers. Redact, which once went by the name Blackfile, said on its darknet website that its hackers “are not politically or morally motivated” and were “not currently taking questions from the press.” On its site, Falcon acknowledged being affiliated with Redact but said it had nothing to do with Helix or Pink. Larsen said it was unclear who the hackers were exactly or what their relationship was to one another. Although they went under different names, he said they appeared to be tied together by common infrastructure. The hacking attempts, a few of which were earlier reported by Bloomberg, have caused a stir on Wall Street. For example, Point72 Asset Management told investors on Wednesday that it had been targeted by hackers, according to a source familiar with the matter. That source – and a second source familiar with the matter – said the hackers had also attempted to breach other hedge funds, including Two Sigma Investments and Citadel, whose names also appeared in the data reviewed by Reuters. Two Sigma has not returned messages seeking comment. Citadel and Point72 declined to comment. A host of other firms were in the hackers’ crosshairs before they pivoted to financial institutions, according to Google’s blog post and the data. The data shows that the cybercriminals built digital traps for more than 200 companies in the past five weeks alone including the ride-hailing company Uber, online broker Zillow, and jeans brand Levi Strauss, as well as several law firms, including Paul Hastings and Greenberg Traurig.

o Cybercriminals used scam calls and phishing websites to steal data from companies including Blackstone, KKR, CME Group, Moody’s, TPG and Bain Capital

WASHINGTON: Ransom-seeking hackers who use phone calls to compromise their victims targeted dozens of prominent US financial institutions and other businesses over the past month, according to Google and internet intelligence data reviewed by Reuters. The data shows the hackers devised websites aimed at stealing passwords from employees of private equity firms and financial companies including Blackstone, Bridgewater Associates, Apollo Global Management, Bain Capital, KKR , TPG, CME Group, Clearlake Capital and Moody’s, as well as other businesses. Google said in a blog post about the hacking campaign published on Thursday that the hackers operate under a range of names including Redact, Pink, Falcon and Helix. Google declined to comment on Reuters findings. Its blog said in some cases companies, which it did not name, paid ransoms to the hackers. Reuters could not establish which companies the hackers successfully compromised. Experts say the hackers’ use of low-tech tactics such as phone calls to target the financial industry illustrates how, despite sophisticated security programs and AI-driven threats, the oldest tactics still rank among the most effective. If successful, the hacks could compromise data of some of the biggest US private equity firms that provide capital to companies. “Because the fence is now so fancy and high tech, we just have to trick the guard into opening the door for us,” said Lee Clark, a cyberthreat intelligence production manager with the Retail and Hospitality ISAC, an industry information sharing and analysis group. “That human element consistently is why this has exploded in the way it has,” he said.

KKR, Bain Capital, Clearlake Capital, CME, TPG and Apollo declined to comment. Blackstone, Bridgewater Associates and Moody’s did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In its blog post, Google, a unit of Alphabet, said the hackers had recently turned their attention to private equity, law firms and financial ratings agencies. Austin Larsen, the principal threat analyst at Google’s Threat Intelligence Group, said the hackers generally targeted industries based on financial calculations, often successfully. “Really, it’s a money thing,” Larsen said. “They think that these firms or organisations have data sensitive enough that, if taken, they would pay to prevent it.” Google did not identify any of the hackers’ targets by name. Reuters reverse-engineered many of the company-specific online traps used by the hackers by running the 72 malicious websites Google listed in its report through web intelligence platforms such as DomainTools and urlscan, which flagged malicious subdomains tailored to each firm. Speaking in general about the subdomains, Larsen said, “They all were likely used in attempted intrusions” though he cautioned, “They were not all successful.” Google said the hackers used “meticulous social engineering tactics,” reaching employees on their personal cellphones while pretending to call from their company’s help desk, sometimes displaying the correct help desk phone number. The hackers told their targets there was an urgent directive from IT to update their passkeys or multifactor authentication and steered the employees towards a booby-trapped website

AI demand keeps China’s exports strong despite risks BEIJING: China’s exports beat expectations in July, remaining a key driver of economic growth as the global AI infrastructure boom fuelled demand for high-tech goods and exporters rushed shipments ahead of higher US tariffs. products made from polysilicon, the raw material used in semiconductors and solar panels that is primarily produced by China. manufacturers ride the AI boom but more traditional industries struggle due to soft demand.

China’s GDP growth slowed to 4.3% in the second quarter, below Beijing’s official full-year target of 4.5% to 5%. “External demand has become increasingly important this year for the growth outlook as China’s K-shaped divergence widens,“ said Lynn Song, chief Greater China economist at ING. In a meeting late last month, China’s top decision-makers called for a faster transition from old growth drivers to new ones, signalling priority on high-tech sectors. Exports of cars rose more than 50% in both value terms and quantity, driven by Chinese automakers’ aggressive expansion abroad as domestic demand remained subdued. China’s crude oil imports fell 24.3% year-on-year in July but rose from June’s near-decade low, as cheaper barrels bought after the Strait of Hormuz reopened for a brief period in June arrived. Chinese officials have repeatedly pledged to expand imports and promote balanced trade, yet the country’s trade surplus, on track to top

“The latest US measures will have limited overall impact on Chinese exports due to a more diversified structure to other markets, such as Europe and Asean,“ said Gary Ng, senior Asia-Pacific economist at Natixis. He cautioned that the measures could drag on certain sectors, and that “the growing trade imbalance can prompt more countries to impose protectionist measures.” The Chinese yuan hovered near a 3½-year high while stocks gained following the data. Analysts expect AI demand, which drove up the prices of related goods, to underpin strong export growth in the third quarter and even the second half. Exports of semiconductors in the first seven months almost doubled in value terms from last year, and overall high-tech exports expanded 40.7%, customs data showed. Ceramic shipments slumped 28.3% and exports of toys fell 9.7%, in a further sign of the economy’s uneven development where advanced

The manufacturing powerhouse has been relying on external demand to sustain growth and counter tepid domestic consumption and an investment downturn, but frictions in China’s relations with trading partners may prompt further protectionism in an uncertain global environment due to war in the Middle East. China’s exports expanded 23.9% year-on-year in US dollar value terms in July, customs data showed yesterday, slowing from a 27% surge the previous month and compared with a 22.2% rise forecast in a Reuters poll. Imports were up 27.5% from July last year, slowing from the 36% jump in June and in line with an expected 27.9% gain. The US last month banned imports of new humanoid and quadruped robots and connected power inverters from China, and on Thursday imposed price floors and a 15% tariff on

China continues to rely on overseas demand to support growth as consumer spending and investment remain subdued. – PEXELS PIX

Union rose 16%, while imports from the bloc dropped 1.4%. Trade with South Korea maintained robust growth in July, with exports up 46.6% and imports up 97.8%, on high-tech demand. Chinese exporters and US importers continued to front-load shipments in July as they expected Washington’s tariffs on Chinese goods to rise after the expiry of a 10% temporary global levy in late July, said Xu Tianchen, a senior economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit. – Reuters

US$1 trillion (RM4.1 trillion) for a second year, continued to unnerve trading partners concerned about disruptions to their own domestic industries. China’s trade surplus narrowed to US$112.5 billion from US$125.62 billion in June. Its trade surplus with the US narrowed slightly to US$28 billion in July from US$28.86 billion the previous month. Exports to the US increased 17% from the same month last year. Outbound shipments to the European