The two biggest NAND flash memory manufacturers on the planet, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, are reportedly working to upgrade their Chinese factories to produce more advanced chips for use in AI data centers, Reuters reports. The move comes as the two companies continue to fight off competition from the fast-growing Chinese memory makers like CXMT. Fierce competition in the lucrative AI RAM market has already seen manufacturers slash consumer-focused production to allow them to increase production capacity for the more advanced — and money-spinning — components.

Citing four people familiar with the companies' plans, the report claims that Samsung Electronics aims to switch its Xian plant to the production of 286-layer flash chips by the end of the year. SK Hynix has its sights set a little lower, targeting chips with 240 or more layers at its Dalian facility. That factory was taken over back in 2021, but a timescale for the new upgrades isn't clear.

However, while Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are well placed to deal with the growing threat from Chinese chipmakers, both are faced with additional complications in the form of U.S. regulations. Export controls on chipmaking equipment were applied in 2022, with the aim of slowing China's technological progress. Both companies, based in South Korea, must now get licenses in order to install U.S.-built hardware in Chinese factories. The report points to this as a reason for the recent growth of Chinese firms like Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC). The company told investors at a recent IPO preparation meeting that it aims to become the world's largest NAND flash producer by the end of 2027.

While both Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix say that they are working in consultation with the U.S. authorities, there's little doubt that this extra step has hampered the companies' ability to upgrade their factories to better meet the new AI memory demand.

It's impossible to overstate just how key Samsung and SK Hynix are to NAND supply. Samsung's Xian factory produces around 40% of the company's global output. It currently produces chips that have around 200 layers, but Samsung's plans aim to boost that to 286 layers for V9 NAND chips. For its part, SK Hynix's Dalian plant currently produces chips with 192 layers, with the company's aim for 240-layer chips reportedly confirmed by three people familiar with the plans.

Meanwhile, CXMT, China's premier chipmaker, is looking to move beyond DRAM production. A report from September 2026 noted that it was eyeing production of 3D NAND memory for use in solid-state storage (SSD) products. The country's largest DRAM producer, CXMT, posted $22.41 billion in revenue and $11.57 billion in net profit in the first half of 2026 after years of losing money. But despite this purple patch, the company is still much smaller than the likes of Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron.

Millions of dollars worth of gift cards were stolen and then used to buy high-value tech gear at retailers like Target, Sephora, and Lowe's after a Chinese crime ring gained access to an internal Staples system and then used it to issue more than 15,000 cards to itself. While the hack hasn't been made public to date, a 404 Media report notes that it actually took place back in 2023.

The outlet reviewed court records that show that Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) was told about the hack in October of that year. The hack came to light after it led to a search warrant that was unsealed last week. And while the document doesn't specifically name Staples as the victim of the hack, 404 Media has confirmed that it was the company affected based on other information. Such information includes the fact that the victim company is headquartered in Massachusetts, that it uses Blackhawk Networks to fulfill gift card orders, and that the company uses an internal customer support system called Nexus. The report notes that a reference to Nexus can be found on a former Staples executive's LinkedIn profile.

While Staples was under the impression that Nexus could not be accessed from beyond its own network, hackers found that not to be the case. They then "performed multiple heap dump requests," a process that captures all of the data held in an app's memory. That information gave the hackers the tools they needed to hijack logged-in sessions of Staples customer service employees. From there, they were able to issue gift cards at will.

Once the gift cards had been issued, the crime group sent runners to physical retail stores to spend them before they were identified and canceled. Target found that 35 gift cards were used at a New Hampshire store, with high-value products from Apple, Bose, and Beats all bought. All 35 cards were used within a period of just a single hour, although not all of them were obtained via this hack.

In total, Target told investigators that 3,850 gift cards worth over $140,000 were used across 85 different stores in just two days. Sephora was hit for $58,600 worth of sales, while Lowe's saw $226,000 spent across online and in-store purchases. In total, 4,630 stolen gift cards were used with a value of around $425,000.

This hack was just the tip of the iceberg, too. Last April, a Department of Justice announcement confirmed that three Chinese nationals had been sentenced for their part in a gift card fraud conspiracy. Including the Staples hack, the crime group stole more than $100 million worth of gift cards.

Chinese organized crime groups often pop up on the radar of U.S.-based law enforcement. Earlier this year, a Chinese phishing service that was used to generate scam websites using AI was dismantled. The service was linked to almost $2 billion in losses.

A Chinese-speaking hacker has been observed using artificial intelligence (AI) agents to probe and then gain unauthorized access to more than 100 websites belonging to some extremely well-known companies. From Deere, the farming equipment manufacturer, to SharkNinja, the company behind beloved kitchen appliances, the agents were able to leverage exposed instances of Carin, an open-source AI-powered problem-solving platform that has proven popular among hackers, a Reuters report explains.

This is just the latest example of hackers turning to AI agents in an attempt to level up their attacks on unsuspecting companies and services. Snorre Fagerland, principal threat researcher at the cybersecurity company NorForge, spotted the hacker's antics when observing Carin instances that had been inadvertently exposed.

Fagerland was able to watch multiple hackers go about their business, but the Chinese-speaking hacker was the most prolific, the report says. They targeted businesses based in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Japanese e-commerce sites. Notably, the hacker didn't get into detail when commanding their legion of AI agents. Fewer than 100 Chinese characters were used, yet the agents had attempted ot break into more than 1,200 different websites as of the week ending October 18, 2026.

These agents weren't simply throwing everything at a wall and hoping it stuck, either. Security researcher Fagerland was "impressed" by some of the tactics that had been used. In one case, the AI agents scoured digital records to find infrastructure associated with their target, located a public-facing control panel, identified a weakness, and then leveraged it to force the execution of malicious commands, the Reuters report detailed. "It's ⁠not straightforward to come up with solutions like that," Fagerland told Reuters. "It's not script kiddie stuff."

Vitally, the approach of using AI agents in this way means that they can be given instructions and then left to their own devices. With no supervision required, those commanding the agents are free to turn their attention elsewhere. While SharkNinja told Reuters that the attack only impacted a site used for product support information, the rest of the AI-aided hackers had more luck. One of the hackers monitored by Gargerland stole credit card data, while another tried to steal from a cryptocurrency exchange — although it isn't clear whether they were successful.