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Snowflake attacker pleads guilty to hack of 165 companies’ data

7 August 2026 at 14:25

A Canadian hacker has admitted being part of a group responsible for several major cyberattacks. Connor Riley Moucka pleaded guilty to being part of a coterie of hackers that hit 165 organizations, resulting in the theft of customer records and the extortion of millions of dollars.

Industry sources have identified Moucka as one of the main players in attacks on data hosted by cloud data warehouse Snowflake. Companies affected by the hacks include the likes of AT&T, Ticketmaster and the Neiman Marcus Group.

He worked with two other hackers: John Edward Binns and Cameron John Wagenius. Binns was not in US custody as of April 2026, while Wagenius, going by the name of Kiberphant0m, was arrested in January 2025 and pleaded guilty in July that year

Moucka and other members of the group used stolen login credentials to compromise data belonging to at least 165 customers of a US-based software-as-a-service company. This unauthorized access was used to steal billions of sensitive customer records and download terabytes of information,

“Connor Moucka hacked over 150 companies and organizations, obtained extremely sensitive information, and extorted the victims for millions of dollars. Today’s guilty plea serves as a reminder to all cybercriminals, regardless of where they live, that they cannot hide behind a wall of anonymity. You will be found and brought to justice,” said assistant attorney general A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division

The trial is the result of a coordinated worldwide action against the Snowflake group. The investigation was led by the FBI but benefited from contributions from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Australian Federal Police, Spain’s Guardia Civil, the Security Service of Ukraine and the Turkish National Police.

This article first appeared on CSO.

New Databricks tool uses AI agents to rewrite legacy SQL at scale

30 July 2026 at 12:37

Databricks is adding an agentic code conversion capability to its Lakebridge toolkit, using Genie Code to provide its new customers another way to move from rival data warehouses to its lakehouse built atop Databricks SQL.

The new capability, called the agentic code converter, uses AI subagents to analyze source code, convert files in parallel, validate the translated SQL, and iteratively retry failed sections within a migration project, while allowing developers to define reusable migration rules for enterprise-specific SQL constructs.

The Lakebridge migration tooling already includes multiple transpilation engines, including the pattern-based BladeBridge technology Databricks acquired in 2025, the compiler-based Morpheus, and the LLM-powered Switch transpiler.

The key difference between the transpilers and the new agentic code converter, according to analysts, lies in how each of them executes conversion and how that could benefit enterprises.

“Deterministic transpilers (Morpheus) handle syntax mapping well: date functions, join syntax, straightforward pattern-to-pattern translation. They get brittle fast on anything requiring control-flow reasoning, cursors, dynamic SQL assembled at runtime, recursive CTEs implemented differently across T-SQL, Teradata, and Oracle,” said Amit Chandak, chief analytics officer at IT consulting firm Kanerika.

“That’s the same 10% to 15% of a legacy codebase that eats most of the manual remediation time on every migration I’ve worked on,” Chandak noted.

In contrast, agentic code conversion, said Pareekh Jain, principal analyst at Pareekh Consulting, is better suited for stored procedures, dynamic SQL, proprietary functions, and complex business logic that require contextual understanding.

“It should improve first-pass conversion quality and reduce manual remediation, especially for the most complex portions of a migration,” Jain noted.

For CIOs, that translates into shorter timelines and lower costs to complete migration projects, especially those that involve thousands of SQL scripts, Jain added.

Chandak, however, said enterprises should temper expectations, mostly because the agentic code converter capability continues to be in beta.

The current beta limits conversion jobs to batches of 300 files, meaning migrations involving thousands of stored procedures still require multiple runs and manual checkpoints, Chandak pointed out.

That limitation could be somewhat offset by the new custom migration skills feature, included with the capability, which allows developers to codify one-off fixes as reusable conversion rules, although whether the agentic system can perform consistently remains an open question till the product matures, Chandak added.

Even if the capability delivers on that promise, Chandak further pointed out that enterprises should not expect it to dramatically shorten end-to-end migration projects because SQL conversion is only one part of the overall modernization effort, as enterprises still need to reconcile migrated data against production systems, sequence dependencies, and obtain business sign-off before workloads can be cut over.

“Because Databricks’ roadmap places data migration and reconciliation in a future phase, the new capability is likely to compress the SQL rewrite effort rather than the overall migration timeline,” Chandak noted.

Databricks isn’t the only data platform vendor using AI to lower the barriers to migration.

Rival Snowflake already has a similar tool, named SnowCovert, that uses agents to help enterprises move their data, data warehouses, business intelligence (BI) reports, and code to Snowflake’s platform.

Google Cloud, too, enables automated migration workflow through Gemini-powered schema and code conversion capabilities in its Database Migration Service.

There’s One Very Stinky Reason Why Labour’s Housebuilding Targets Are Doomed to Fail

24 July 2026 at 17:38

There's one very stinky reason why Labour's ambitious housebuilding targets are doomed to fail, says Mike Wells: Britain's creaking sewers and drainage systems simply can't cope with all the demands of new homes.

The post There’s One Very Stinky Reason Why Labour’s Housebuilding Targets Are Doomed to Fail appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Millions of flat-dwelling Australians are missing out on rooftop solar. Can new incentives bridge the installation gap?

18 July 2026 at 01:00

Apartment living can be a barrier to solar and battery adoption. Here’s how to navigate the hurdles and practicalities

  • Change by degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint

  • Got a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at changebydegrees@theguardian.com

Australia is a world leader in household solar, but the benefits of rooftop renewables are unevenly distributed – and many of the 2.5 million people living in apartments or units are missing out.

About 39% of Australians living in detached or semi-detached houses have solar, compared with 6% of those in apartments or units, research by Energy Consumers Australia (ECA) finds. A gap also exists in the take-up of batteries, installed in 7% of houses but only in 3% of apartments or units.

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© Photograph: Allume Energy

© Photograph: Allume Energy

© Photograph: Allume Energy

£900,000 – The Price of An A-rated Energy Performance Certificate

17 June 2026 at 15:00

A well-heeled homeowner has spent nearly £1 million converting his home so that it could achieve an Energy Performance Certificate with an ‘A’ rating – and demonstrated just how unaffordable Net Zero is.

The post £900,000 – The Price of An A-rated Energy Performance Certificate appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

I asked AI for help with DIY. It told me to build a subfloor on rotting stumps, but also taught me valuable lessons | Myke Bartlett

4 June 2026 at 16:00

Nothing does more for your ego than realising you can make a better decision than a bot with all of human knowledge at its digital fingertips

I am not, by nature, an early adopter. There comes a point in our lives where change becomes more irritating than exciting and, I suspect, I reached it sooner than most. But when a workplace recently tasked me with exploring practical applications for AI, I spotted an opportunity to cast off my luddite inclinations.

It turned out AI was very good at mimicking most of the things I could already do. Irrespective of quality, it could churn out articles, reports, presentations, fiction, even podcasts with stammering hosts. That was no use to me. What I wanted help with was all the stuff I was useless at. There was an obvious target: DIY.

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© Photograph: Neustockimages/Getty Images

© Photograph: Neustockimages/Getty Images

© Photograph: Neustockimages/Getty Images

Landlord inaction on energy upgrades stops renters saving $20bn on power bills in a decade

26 May 2026 at 15:01

Property owners’ lack of motivation due to ‘split incentive’ is main reason rental properties are missing out on energy upgrades, research finds

Renters make up nearly a third of Australian households yet many are missing out on energy upgrades – such as insulation, appliances and rooftop solar – that could slash their power bills and improve home comfort.

The problem, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), is landlords’ lack of motivation.

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© Photograph: David Mariuz/AAP

© Photograph: David Mariuz/AAP

© Photograph: David Mariuz/AAP

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