On Monday, the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission banned all new foreign-made drone models from distribution in the U.S., citing “national security concerns.” Americans who already own older foreign drone models will still be able to use those products, the government said.
In a fact sheet published Monday, the FCC claimed that “criminals, hostile foreign actors, and terrorists” could use drones “to present new and serious threats to our homeland.” As a result, the agency said that it had updated its Covered List — which is a list of products that have been “deemed to pose an unacceptable risk to the national security” of the country — to include all “UAS and UAS critical components produced abroad.”
The FCC’s chairman, Brendan Carr, said Monday that he approved of the policy. “I welcome this Executive Branch national security determination, and I am pleased that the FCC has now added foreign drones and related components, which pose an unacceptable national security risk, to the FCC’s Covered List,” Carr said. “Following President Trump’s leadership, the FCC will work closely with U.S. drone makers to unleash American drone dominance.”
The new rule will obviously impact many different companies, but it is destined to strike a blow against Chinese drone maker DJI, which is currently considered the dominant player in drone sales globally. Indeed, DJI is considered to be one of the most popular drone brands for American consumers.
When reached for comment by TechCrunch, DJI said it disapproved of the decision. “DJI is disappointed by the Federal Communications Commission’s action today to add foreign‑made drones to the Covered List. While DJI was not singled out, no information has been released regarding what information was used by the Executive Branch in reaching its determination.”
The company, which said that it remained committed to the U.S. market, continued: “As the industry leader, DJI has advocated for an open, competitive market that benefits all US consumers and commercial users, and will continue to do so. DJI products are among the safest and most secure on the market, supported by years of reviews conducted by U.S. government agencies and independent third parties.”
Throughout his multiple presidential administrations, Trump has repeatedly played hardball with Chinese companies. His administration laid the groundwork for the new drone ban with an executive order passed in June that sought to boost the production of U.S.-made drones and thus foster a “strong and secure domestic drone sector,” while also securing “the United States drone supply chain against foreign control or exploitation.”
IO Interactive’s James Bond simulator 007 First Light has been delayed until May 27, 2026. It was supposed to come out in March. The company says two-month delay is for polish and refinement, which is fine by me. I’d always rather wait a bit longer for a better end product.
IO says the game is already “fully playable from beginning to end” but still needs a bit of attention to ensure “the strongest possible version at launch.” The developer promises to share more updates at the beginning of next year.
For the uninitiated, 007 First Light is the first James Bond game in over a decade. The developer is the same organization behind the renowned Hitman franchise, so this could potentially be the best Bond game since Goldeneye.
The gameplay looks fast-paced, frenetic and filled with spycraft. It features an original story that pulls from all over the decades-long franchise. We got a chance to speak to narrative director Martin Emborg and he noted that the game stars a young and inexperienced Bond, which seems to be the direction Amazon is taking with its upcoming film.
The game also boasts a pretty stacked cast. Patrick Gibson, from The OA and Dexter: Original Sin, plays the famous lothario spy and Lenny Kravitz has been cast as the primary villain. Other cast members include Lennie James, Kiera Lester, Alastair Mackenzie and Priyanga Burford.
Who knows when the next Bond film will actually come out, so this should be a nice little stopgap for fans.
Google One is running a “limited time” discount for 2026 where new subscribers can get 50% off 2 TB and AI Pro annual plans.
Framed as a way to “Capture every moment of the new year,” it starts with the Basic 100 GB plan at $9.99 instead of $19.99 for one year. This storage can be used for Gmail, Google Photos, and Drive.
The Premium 2 TB plan is now $49.99 for 12 months, with the price going up to the usual $99.99 the next year. You will get 10% back in the Google Store and premium Workspace features like longer Meet calls that can be streamed to YouTube, as well as enhanced Calendar appointment scheduling.
In the Gemini app, you get higher usage limits for Gemini 3 Pro at 100 prompts per day, as well as expanded image generation and editing:
Nano Banana: Up to 1,000 images per day (versus 100/day on free)
Nano Banana Pro: Up to 100 images per day (versus 3/day on free)
Then there’s Veo 3.1 Fast (3 videos/day) generation and 20 Deep Research reports using Gemini 3 Pro per day in the Gemini app. The 1 million token context window, which is about 1,500 pages of text, allows you to do more, including spreadsheet and code analysis.
There’s also expanded model access in Google AI Mode, as well as the Gemini side panel in Google Workspace apps like Gmail, Drive, and Docs.
You also have expanded limits for AI features in Google Photos, NotebookLM, Flow, and Whisk. Developers get higher access in Google Antigravity, Gemini CLI, Gemini Code Assist, and Jules.
This Google One 2026 discount is only available for “New subscribers only” and looks to expire around New Year’s Eve. You can sign-up by going to one.google.com/ai-nye.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links.More.
A multi-car crash in Watertown left two people dead on Tuesday afternoon.
Police were called at about noon to Bigelow Avenue for the incident, according to the Watertown Police Department.
First-responders determined that two people died as a result of the collision, police said. The identities of the two were not immediately released.
Watertown police and the Massachusetts State Police are investigating the incident.
“Our thoughts are with the families and loved ones affected by this tragic incident,” Watertown police said in a statement.
Officials are asking the public to avoid the area of the crash and allow first responders to continue their work.
Luis joined MassLive in 2022 as a general assignment reporter, writing breaking news stories, exposing the use of confidentiality agreements in Palmer public schools and the ‘ladies’ controversy in Easthampton….
Three versions of Activision’s Call Of Duty games are seen on sale at a Best Buy store in Mountain View, Calif., in 2011. Vince Zampella, one of the creators behind the best-selling video games, has died at age 55.
Paul Sakuma/AP
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Vince Zampella, one of the creators behind bestselling video games such as Call of Duty, has died. He was 55.
Video game company Electronic Arts said Zampella died Sunday. The company did not disclose his cause of death.
In 2010, Zampella founded Respawn Entertainment, a subsidiary of EA, and he also was the former chief executive of video game developer Infinity Ward, the studio behind the successful Call of Duty franchise.
A spokesperson for Electronic Arts said in a statement on Monday that Zampella’s influence on the video game industry was “profound and far-reaching.”
“A friend, colleague, leader and visionary creator, his work helped shape modern interactive entertainment and inspired millions of players and developers around the world,” the statement said. “His legacy will continue to shape how games are made and how players connect for generations to come.”
One of Zampella’s crowning achievements was the creation of the Call of Duty franchise, which has sold more than half a billion games worldwide.
The first-person shooter game debuted in 2003 as a World War II simulation and has sold over 500 million copies globally. Subsequent versions have delved into modern warfare and there is a live-action movie based on the game in production with Paramount Pictures.
In recent years, Zampella was at the helm of the creation of the action adventure video games Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
Geoff Keighley, video game journalist and co-creator of The Game Awards, said he was shocked to hear of Zampella’s sudden death.
“Vince was an extraordinary person — a gamer at heart, but also a visionary executive with a rare ability to recognize talent and give people the freedom and confidence to create something truly great,” Keighley wrote on social media on Monday. “And while he created some of the most influential games of our time, I always felt he still had his greatest one ahead of him. It’s heartbreaking that we’ll never get to play it.”
Google parent Alphabet has agreed to buy Intersect Power, a data center and clean energy developer, for $4.75 billion in cash, plus the assumption of the company’s debt.
The acquisition, which was announced Monday, will help Alphabet expand its power-generation capacity alongside new data centers without having to rely on local utilities that are struggling to keep up with the demand of AI companies. Securing access to energy that powers data centers has become a critical part of training AI models.
Alphabet previously held a minority stake in Intersect Power after Google and TPG Rise Climate led an $800 million strategic funding round in the company last December. That partnership set a target of $20 billion in total investment by 2030.
The acquisition includes Intersect’s future development projects but excludes its existing operation, which will be bought out by other investors and managed as a separate company.
Intersect’s new data parks, which are essentially locations next to wind, solar, and battery power, are expected to be operational late next year and fully completed by 2027, Google said when it announced its minority investment.
The transaction is expected to close in the first half of next year.
Google will be the primary user. However, Intersect’s campuses are designed as industrial parks that can host other companies’ AI chips alongside Google’s.
Upgrading to a good SSD can make your computer feel brand new again. Apps open faster, files move in a blink and even older machines start to feel a lot more responsive. It is one of the easiest ways to breathe life into a laptop or desktop without replacing the whole system, and the performance boost is something you notice right away.
There are plenty of SSDs to choose from, though, and the naming alone can be confusing if you are not already familiar with the specs. Some drives are built for simple upgrades, while others offer speeds that benefit creators or gamers. To help you sort through it, we tested a wide mix of options and pulled together the best SSDs you can buy right now.
Table of contents
Best SSDs in 2026
Crucial
Capacity: 500GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4TB | Connection: SATA | Read speed: 560 MB/s | Write speed: 510 MB/s
You don’t have to look far to find the best SATA SSD: it’s the Crucial MX500. With sequential read speeds of 560MB/s and a $100 MSRP for the 1TB model, this internal SSD offers a hard-to-beat combination of excellent performance and value. It also comes with a five-year warranty for additional peace of mind. But, best of all, it frequently goes on sale for as little as $45. I’ve been using a 1TB MX500 drive to store my music, photos and games for years, and it has yet to give me any problems.
I don’t recommend buying a Gen5 NVMe, even if you have the hardware needed to run one. The read speeds might look impressive on paper, but the reality is that few games and apps can take advantage of those capabilities right now.
Still, if you’re set on outfitting your computer with the fastest possible storage, I think the Crucial T700 offers a compelling mix of price and performance. The T700 is one of the fastest NVMe drives on the market right now, and after launching at $180, it’s possible to find it on sale for about $143. Note that if your motherboard didn’t come with a heatsink for your NVMe drives, you will need to buy the T700 model that includes one, which further increases the cost.
Provided you own the necessary hardware, Gen4 NVMe drives offer pretty good value right now. After testing a few different models, I ended up buying the Western Digital WD_Black SN850X for my own system. It’s very fast, delivering read speeds of up to 7,300MB/s, and I was able to pay less than $100 for the 1TB model during a sale.
If you’re set on buying a Gen4 model, but want to save some money, Western Digital offers the more affordable SN770. It’s not as fast as the SN850X, but if your system has one Gen4 NVMe slot, it’s great for storing Windows and your most important apps.
A previous version of this guide recommended the Crucial P2 as a great budget Gen 3 NVMe pick, but as Gen4 and now Gen5 NVMe drives have entered the market, manufacturers like Micron have discontinued some of their entry-level Gen4 models. The good news is that their old high-end Gen3 drives are now more affordable than ever. Take the Crucial P3, for instance. Micron originally priced the 1TB model at $90, but in recent months, it’s been on sale for as little as $40. That’s great value for a drive that offers 3,500MB/s read speeds.
If you’re confident enough to open your Steam Deck to install a new, higher capacity NVMe, the Sabrent Rocket 2230 is a great small-sized NVME. It will slot into the Steam Deck’s M.2 slot without issue, and you don’t need to worry about it overheating. With recent discounts on this model, it’s dropped enough in price where you could save money by buying the 512GB Steam Deck OLED model and installing more storage later.
Engadget has a separate guide dedicated to the best PlayStation 5 SSDs, but if you came to this page looking for a recommendation on what NVMe to buy for your PS5, look no further than the Corsair MP600 Pro LPX. It meets all of Sony’s compatibility requirements and comes with a pre-installed heatsink, meaning all you need to do is install it into your PS5 and you’re good to go.
For carrying files on the go, the Crucial X9 Pro is a portable SSD with the right mix of performance, features and cost. There are technically faster options out there, but its 10 Gbps speeds should be quick enough for the backups and file transfers most people do with an external drive, and it outpaced most other models within its performance class in our benchmark tests. It’s super tiny and sufficiently rugged on top of that, with an IP55-rated case made from aluminum and rubber. A five-year warranty helps as well. Just note that the included USB-C cable is fairly short, and there’s no adapter for USB-A ports in the box. — Jeff Dunn, Senior Reporter, Buying Advice
Capacity: 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, 512GB | Connection: USB 3.1 | Read speed: Up to 400MB/s depending on the model | Write speed: Up to 400MB/s
The Samsung Fit Plus has about all the features you could want on a USB drive. It connects to your computer over USB 3.1 and supports file transfer speeds of up to 300MB/s. The Fit Plus is also compact and has a handy slot for attaching it to your keychain. The only downside of Samsung’s USB drive is that it’s on the pricey side.
I’ve either tested or personally use daily every storage drive recommended on this list. Out of our top picks, I bought four with my own money after doing about a dozen hours of research. Separately, Engadget Senior Reporter Jeff Dunn has also tested a handful of our recommendations, including the Crucial X9 Pro listed above.
What to look for in a PC SSD
The most affordable way to add fast storage space to a computer is with a 2.5-inch SATA drive. It’s also one of the easiest if you don’t want to worry about compatibility since almost every computer made in the last two decades will include a motherboard with Serial ATA connections. For that reason, the best SATA SSDs are an excellent choice if you want to extend the life of an older PC build. Installation is straightforward, too. Once you’ve secured the internal SSD in a drive cage, all you need to do is to connect it to your motherboard and power supply.
The one downside of SATA drives is that, in terms of responsiveness, they’re slower than their high-performance NVMe counterparts, with SATA III limiting data transfers to 600MB/s. But even the slowest SSD will be significantly faster than the best mechanical drives. And with high-capacity, 1TB SATA SSDs costing about $100, they’re a good bulk-storage option.
If your PC is newer, there’s a good chance it includes space for one or more M.2 SSDs. The form factor represents your ticket to the fastest SSDs on the market, but the tricky part is navigating all the different standards and specs involved.
M.2 drives can feature either a SATA or PCIe connection. SSDs with the latter are known as Non-Volatile Memory or NVMe drives and are significantly faster than their SATA counterparts, with Gen3 models offering sequential write speeds of up to 3,000MB/s. These drives rely on NVMe NAND technology for their superior performance and durability. You can get twice the performance with a Gen4 SSD, but you’ll need a motherboard and processor that supports the standard.
If you’re running an AMD system, that means at least a Ryzen 3000 or 5000 CPU and an X570 or B550 motherboard. With Intel, meanwhile, you’ll need at least an 11th or 12th Gen processor and a Z490, Z590 or Z690 motherboard. Keep in mind that Gen4 SSDs typically cost more than their Gen3 counterparts as well.
More expensive still are the latest Gen5 models, which offer sequential read speeds of up to 16,000MB/s. However, even if your computer supports the standard, you’re better off buying a more affordable Gen4 or Gen3 drive. At the moment, very few games and applications can take advantage of Gen3 NVMe speeds, let alone Gen4 and Gen5 speeds. What’s more, Gen5 NVMe drives can run hot, which can lead to performance and longevity issues. Your money is better spent on other components, like upgrading your GPU, for now.
As for why you would buy an M.2 SATA drive over a similarly specced 2.5-inch drive, it comes down to ease of installation. You add M.2 storage to your computer by installing the SSD directly onto the motherboard. That may sound intimidating, but in practice the process involves a single screw that you first remove to connect the drive to your computer and then retighten to secure the SSD in place. As an added bonus, there aren’t any wires involved, making cable management easier.
Note that you can install a SATA M.2 SSD into an M.2 slot with a PCIe connection, but you can’t insert an NVMe M.2 SSD into a M.2 slot with a SATA connection. Unless you want to continue using an old M.2 drive, there’s little reason to take advantage of that feature. Speaking of backward compatibility, it’s also possible to use a Gen4 drive through a PCIe 3 connection, but you won’t get any of the speed benefits of the faster NVMe.
One last thing to consider is that M.2 drives come in different physical sizes. From shortest to longest, the common options are 2230, 2242, 2260, 2280 and 22110. (The first two numbers represent width in millimeters and the latter denote the length.) For the most part, you don’t have to worry about that since 2280 is the default for many motherboards and manufacturers. Some boards can accommodate more than one size of NVMe SSD thanks to multiple standoffs. That said, check your computer’s documentation or firmware before buying a drive to ensure you’re picking up a compatible size.
If you’re buying a replacement SSD for the Steam Deck or Steam Deck OLED, things are less complicated. For Valve’s handheld, you will need a 2230 size NVMe. Simple. If you don’t want to open your Steam Deck, it’s also possible to expand its storage by installing a microSD card. Engadget has a separate guide dedicated to SD card storage, so check that out for additional buying advice.
I alluded to this earlier, but the best buying advice I can offer is don’t get too caught up about being on the bleeding edge of storage tech. The sequential read and write speeds you see manufacturers list on their drives are theoretical and real-world performance benchmark tests vary less than you think.
If your budget forces you to choose between a 1TB Gen3 NVMe and a 512GB Gen4 model, go for the higher-capacity one. From a practical standpoint, the worst thing you can do is buy a type of SSD that’s too small for needs. Drives can slow dramatically as they approach capacity, and you will probably end up purchasing one with a higher gigabyte capacity in the future.
What to look for in portable and USB flash drives
Portable SSDs are a somewhat different beast to their internal siblings. While read and write speeds are important, they are almost secondary to how an external drive connects to your PC. You won’t get the most out of a model like the SanDisk Extreme Pro V2 without a USB 3.2 Gen 2 x 2 connection. Even among newer PCs, that’s something of a premium feature. For that reason, most people are best off buying a portable drive with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 or Thunderbolt connection. The former offers transfer speeds of up to 10Gbps. The best external hard drives also allow you to transfer data from your Windows PC to a Mac, or other device, if compatible. Be sure to consider this beforehand if you plan to use your portable drive across multiple devices.
Additionally, if you plan to take your drive on trips and commutes, it’s worthwhile to buy a model with IP-certified water and dust proofing. Some companies like Samsung offer rugged versions of their most popular drives, including the Samsung SSD T7 Shield, with a high endurance rating. For additional peace of mind, 256-bit AES hardware encryption will help prevent someone from accessing your data if you ever lose or misplace your external SSD.
Some of the same features contribute to a great thumbstick drive. Our favorite picks for best budget external SSD models feature USB 3.0 connections and some form of hardware encryption.
A note on console storage
Seagate
If PC gaming isn’t your thing and you own an Xbox Series X|S or PS5, outfitting your fancy new console with the fastest possible storage is far more straightforward than doing the same on PC. With a Series X or Series S, your options are limited to options from Seagate and Western Digital. The former offers 512GB, 1TB and 2TB models, with the most affordable starting at a not-so-trivial $90. Western Digital’s Expansion Cards are less expensive, with pricing starting at $80 for the 512GB model. The good news is that both options are frequently on sale. Your best bet is to set an alert for the model you want by using a price tracker like CamelCamelCamel.
With Sony’s PlayStation 5, upgrading the console’s internal storage is slightly more involved. Instead of employing a proprietary solution, the PS5 uses NVMe storage. Thankfully, there aren’t as many potential configurations as you would find on a PC. Engadget maintains a comprehensive guide to the best SSDs for PS5; in short, your best bet is a high-capacity Gen4 drive with a built-in heatsink. Check out that guide for a full list of gaming SSD recommendations, but for a quick go-to, consider the Corsair MP600 Pro LPX I recommend above. It meets all the memory specifications for Sony’s latest console and you won’t run into any clearance issues with the heatsink. Corsair offers 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB and 8TB versions of the drive. Expect to pay about $110 for the 1TB variant and about $200 for 2TB.
For those still playing on a previous generation console, you can get slightly faster game load times from a PlayStation 4 by swapping the included hard drive to a 2.5-inch SSD, but going out of your way to do so probably isn’t worth it at this point and you’re better off saving your money for one of the new consoles and updating your operating system instead.
SSD FAQs
What size SSD is best?
There is no one size fits all rule for SSDs, but we generally recommend getting at least a 1TB SSD if you’re looking to upgrade PC or game console storage, or looking to add an external drive to your toolkit. A 1TB drive will be plenty for most people who need extra storage space for photos, documents and programs. If you’re a hardcore gamer, you may want to invest in even more storage considering many high-profile titles today can take up a ton of space.
Is a 256GB SSD better than a 1TB hard drive?
The short answer is that it depends on what you need your drive for. In general, SSDs are faster and more efficient than HDDs, but HDDs are usually cheaper. We recommend springing for an SSD for most use cases today — upgrading a PC, saving important photos and documents, storing games long term, etc. But if you’re focused on getting the most amount of extra space possible (and sticking to a budget), an HDD could be a good option for you.
Does bigger SSD mean faster?
Getting a bigger SSD doesn’t always translate into a faster drive overall. A bigger SSD will provide a higher storage capacity, which means more space for storing digital files and programs. To understand how fast an SSD will be, you’ll want to look at its read/write speeds: read speeds measure how fast a drive can access information, while write speeds measure how fast the drive can save information. Most SSDs list their approximate read/write speeds in their specs, so be sure to check out those numbers before you make a purchase.
Google just released a really cool new Android figure on its merch store that has a built-in 3D maze game.
Available now through the Google Merchandise Store for $24, the “Android a-MAZE-ing Collectible” is the latest in a series of Android figures based on the new “The Bot” mascot that the company introduced a few years ago. But the twist on this latest one is, well, kind of awesome??
The shell of this Android figure is entirely transparent aside from the eyes, with a green section inside of the figure that’s got a maze. A single metal ball can be found inside which you move around by turning the bot around until the ball makes it through the maze.
As Google describes it:
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A-MAZE-ing is the only way to describe this unique, collectible Android figurine. Could you even think of a better name?
The figure, like every other Android figure in Google’s store, is $24. In the US, you’ll need to also pay for shipping which, depending on your location, starts at around $10. At the time of writing, there were around 1,100 of these in stock.
BOSTON — An allegation by an outside whistleblower led to a Southwick company agreeing to pay more than $2 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claim Act by receiving a Paycheck Protection Program loan for which it was not eligible, according to a release from U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley.
Located on Feeding Hills Road, Hitachi Kokusai Electric Comark, LLC, which reverted to its original name as Kokusai Denki Electric America, Inc. in December 2024, agreed to pay $2,092,371 for violating the act, according to the release.
At the time of the violations, Comark was a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi Kokusai Electric, Inc., a company based in Tokyo.
According to the settlement agreement between all the parties involved, in April 2025, Daniel Foster filed a qui tam action in U.S. District Court in Boston alleging that Comark violated the False Claims Act because when it applied and was approved for a “Second Draw PPP loan,” it indicated it had only 67 employees but didn’t include employees at affiliate companies, which was under the 300 employee threshold.
A “qui tam action” is a type of whistleblower lawsuit where a private citizen sues on behalf of the federal government, which was confirmed by Foster’s attorney Gregg Shapiro.
“He’s not [an employee of the company],” Shapiro said Monday.
He said Foster researches companies that received PPP loans but were not eligible.
With the success of Foster’s action, he is eligible for 10% of the settlement, which also includes Comark paying him $8,516.
When the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) was implemented in March 2020, it authorized forgivable loans to small businesses for job retention and certain approved expenses through the PPP.
The U.S. Small Business Administration administered the loans in two rounds. When applying for the second round of loans, Comark certified that it was eligible for the loan under the PPP regulations in effect at the time of the application and represented that it had 67 employees, including affiliates’ employees, according to the release.
In the settlement, it admitted that, in January 2021, it received a $1,342,232 second-round PPP loan.
“Comark later sought and received forgiveness from SBA of the full amount of that loan,” according to the release.
However, when it applied for forgiveness, Comark did not qualify for the loan because it had more than 300 employees, considering the employees of its affiliates.
The settlement credits Comark for cooperation under the Department of Justice’s Guidelines for Taking Voluntary Disclosure, Cooperation and Remediation into Account in False Claims Act Matters, according to the release.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian M. LaMacchia, chief of the Affirmative Civil Enforcement Unit, handled the matter.
Even as OpenAI works to harden its Atlas AI browser against cyberattacks, the company admits that prompt injections, a type of attack that manipulates AI agents to follow malicious instructions often hidden in web pages or emails, is a risk that’s not going away anytime soon — raising questions about how safely AI agents can operate on the open web.
“Prompt injection, much like scams and social engineering on the web, is unlikely to ever be fully ‘solved,’” OpenAI wrote in a Monday blog post detailing how the firm is beefing up Atlas’ armor to combat the unceasing attacks. The company conceded that “agent mode” in ChatGPT Atlas “expands the security threat surface.”
OpenAI launched its ChatGPT Atlas browser in October, and security researchers rushed to publish their demos, showing it was possible to write a few words in Google Docs that were capable of changing the underlying browser’s behavior. That same day, Brave published a blog post explaining that indirect prompt injection is a systematic challenge for AI-powered browsers, including Perplexity’s Comet.
OpenAI isn’t alone in recognizing that prompt-based injections aren’t going away. The U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre earlier this month warned that prompt injection attacks against generative AI applications “may never be totally mitigated,” putting websites at risk of falling victim to data breaches. The U.K. government agency advised cyber professionals to reduce the risk and impact of prompt injections, rather than think the attacks can be “stopped.”
For OpenAI’s part, the company said: “We view prompt injection as a long-term AI security challenge, and we’ll need to continuously strengthen our defenses against it.”
The company’s answer to this Sisyphean task? A proactive, rapid-response cycle that the firm says is showing early promise in helping discover novel attack strategies internally before they are exploited “in the wild.”
That’s not entirely different from what rivals like Anthropic and Google have been saying: that to fight against the persistent risk of prompt-based attacks, defenses must be layered and continuously stress-tested. Google’s recent work, for example, focuses on architectural and policy-level controls for agentic systems.
But where OpenAI is taking a different tact is with its “LLM-based automated attacker.” This attacker is basically a bot that OpenAI trained, using reinforcement learning, to play the role of a hacker that looks for ways to sneak malicious instructions to an AI agent.
The bot can test the attack in simulation before using it for real, and the simulator shows how the target AI would think and what actions it would take if it saw the attack. The bot can then study that response, tweak the attack, and try again and again. That insight into the target AI’s internal reasoning is something outsiders don’t have access to, so, in theory, OpenAI’s bot should be able to find flaws faster than a real-world attacker would.
It’s a common tactic in AI safety testing: build an agent to find the edge cases and test against them rapidly in simulation.
“Our [reinforcement learning]-trained attacker can steer an agent into executing sophisticated, long-horizon harmful workflows that unfold over tens (or even hundreds) of steps,” wrote OpenAI. “We also observed novel attack strategies that did not appear in our human red teaming campaign or external reports.”
Image Credits:OpenAI
In a demo (pictured in part above), OpenAI showed how its automated attacker slipped a malicious email into a user’s inbox. When the AI agent later scanned the inbox, it followed the hidden instructions in the email and sent a resignation message instead of drafting an out-of-office reply. But following the security update, “agent mode” was able to successfully detect the prompt injection attempt and flag it to the user, according to the company.
The company says that while prompt injection is hard to secure against in a foolproof way, it’s leaning on large-scale testing and faster patch cycles to harden its systems before they show up in real-world attacks.
An OpenAI spokesperson declined to share whether the update to Atlas’ security has resulted in a measurable reduction in successful injections, but says the firm has been working with third parties to harden Atlas against prompt injection since before launch.
Rami McCarthy, principal security researcher at cybersecurity firm Wiz, says that reinforcement learning is one way to continuously adapt to attacker behavior, but it’s only part of the picture.
“A useful way to reason about risk in AI systems is autonomy multiplied by access,” McCarthy told TechCrunch.
“Agentic browsers tend to sit in a challenging part of that space: moderate autonomy combined with very high access,” said McCarthy. “Many current recommendations reflect that trade-off. Limiting logged-in access primarily reduces exposure, while requiring review of confirmation requests constrains autonomy.”
Those are two of OpenAI’s recommendations for users to reduce their own risk, and a spokesperson said Atlas is also trained to get user confirmation before sending messages or making payments. OpenAI also suggests that users give agents specific instructions, rather than providing them access to your inbox and telling them to “take whatever action is needed.”
“Wide latitude makes it easier for hidden or malicious content to influence the agent, even when safeguards are in place,” per OpenAI.
While OpenAI says protecting Atlas users against prompt injections is a top priority, McCarthy invites some skepticism as to the return on investment for risk-prone browsers.
“For most everyday use cases, agentic browsers don’t yet deliver enough value to justify their current risk profile,” McCarthy told TechCrunch. “The risk is high given their access to sensitive data like email and payment information, even though that access is also what makes them powerful. That balance will evolve, but today the trade-offs are still very real.”
![The latest Android figure is this awesome little 3D maze [Gallery]](https://eyeobserver.online/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/android-maze-figure-1-768x402.jpg "The latest Android figure is this awesome little 3D maze [Gallery]")
