It was another loaded weekend in business IT: two separate ransomware campaigns actively exploiting unpatched software you might be running right now, and two AI model launches that are quietly pushing prices down across the board. Here are the four stories that matter most if you are running a small or midsize business, or leading its IT.
A ransomware gang is raiding exposed product design servers, and the patch has been available for weeks. Cl0p ransomware affiliates are exploiting a critical, unauthenticated flaw in PTC’s Windchill and FlexPLM software, tools widely used by manufacturers, automakers, aerospace firms, and retailers to manage product design data, stealing engineering files from servers that were never updated after the bug was disclosed and patched back in June. The group is now sending mass extortion emails to hundreds of employees at each affected company rather than negotiating quietly through a single contact. If your business runs Windchill, FlexPLM, or anything similar, this is worth a direct question to whoever manages it: is the June patch actually installed, not just scheduled. Read more at BleepingComputer
A critical VPN bug is an open door for ransomware right now, and Palo Alto customers should not wait to patch. The Qilin ransomware crew is breaking into corporate networks through a critical flaw in Palo Alto Networks’ GlobalProtect VPN client, with recent victims including Corporate 360 Business Solutions, a Canadian business technology provider, and once inside, Qilin affiliates move quickly from initial access to data theft and encryption. A VPN is one of the few pieces of your infrastructure that sits directly exposed to the internet, waiting for exactly this kind of bug, so if your business or your IT provider runs GlobalProtect, this is the week to confirm it is patched, not next month. Read more at BleepingComputer
Anthropic’s new model makes near flagship AI a lot cheaper, and it is a sign of where AI pricing is headed generally. Anthropic released Claude Opus 5, a new model priced the same as its predecessor but delivering nearly the performance of its most expensive model, Claude Fable 5, for less than half the cost per task, and it is now the default model in Anthropic’s premium consumer tier while outperforming the older top tier model on several coding and knowledge work benchmarks. Whatever AI tool your team pays for, “nearly as good, half the price” keeps arriving faster than most people expect, so it is worth checking every so often whether the tier you are paying for is still the best deal for what you actually use it for. Read more at Axios
The largest open source AI model ever built just shipped, and it undercuts US pricing by half. Chinese AI lab Moonshot AI released full open weights for Kimi K3 today, a 2.8 trillion parameter model the company says is the largest open weight AI model built so far, with independent testing putting it near the top of the pack for reasoning and coding work, and Moonshot’s own API pricing running roughly half of what Anthropic charges for comparable tasks. You do not need to run your own AI model to benefit from this. It is another data point that AI capability keeps getting cheaper and more commoditized every few months, useful leverage the next time a vendor tries to lock you into a long term AI contract at today’s prices. Read more at VentureBeat
Sponsored by Lucky 13 Solutions
Business in Motion. Tech in Sync. Lucky 13 Solutions is a managed services provider helping small and midsize businesses keep their IT reliable, secure, and well-supported, without needing a full in-house team. Learn more at l13s.com.
Get the Business IT News Roundup in your inbox: