UN experts warn technology advances threaten accountability in mercenary activity - JURIST - News - Jurist.org

Most enterprises govern AI the way they would any other IT rollout: deploy dashboards, institute policies, and conduct periodic reviews. Having the right AI governance tools in place and addressing gaps is important, but IT executives should be more concerned about rethinking workflows and establishing ownership. “Accountability usually breaks down first,” says Beena Ammanath, executive director of the Global Deloitte AI Institute. “Teams deploy AI faster than their organizations can define who owns risk, approvals, monitoring, and outcomes,” she adds, which results in inconsistent use, fragmented controls, and limitations in scale.

Among the major vendors that listed Discover-Tech as a “certified” or “verified” vendor were Google and the advertising industry association IAB Europe. The Israeli firm also used European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) consent frameworks to target users within the European Union. Discover-Tech has served ads through major networks such as Google, Yandex, and Beeswax. Google and IAB Europe have since removed Discover-Tech from their ad vendor registries, and Google further terminated Discover-Tech’s access to its ad exchange platforms. Beeswax has removed Discover-Tech from its ad buying platform. Fellow ad platform Vungle (Liftoff) paused Discover-Tech’s access while conducting a review, and Eskimi blocked Discover-Tech’s accounts and domains.

Devices at international news network Al Jazeera were infected with mercenary spyware from Candiru (rebranded as “Integrity Labs”) via targeted online advertisements. We provide the first public technical confirmation of a zero-click mercenary spyware attack delivered via targeted advertising, which we call AdFection. The malicious advertisements were purchased by Discover-Tech, an Israeli company that presents itself as a legitimate advertising company, but which we found operates as a facilitator for multiple mercenary spyware partners.

Here’s your NYT Strands hint for today, plus the spangram and all of today’s Strands answers for puzzle No. 959 on Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026. Today’s Strands theme was tricky. It helps to be a runner. Read on for all the answers.