InfoQ - Cloud

GPT-6 Astra Is the First Model OpenAI Classifies as Critical for Cybersecurity

Steef-Jan Wiggers — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 04:59:00 GMT

OpenAI has classified GPT-6 Astra at the Critical cybersecurity threshold under its Preparedness Framework, a first. In expert-led testing the model found previously unknown vulnerabilities in a browser and an OS kernel and built working exploits. The same system card reports a substantial decline in chain-of-thought monitorability.

By Steef-Jan Wiggers

Dropbox Outlines How Focusing on Existing Infrastructure Efficiency Can Create Headroom for AI

Matt Foster — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 07:15:00 GMT

Dropbox has outlined how a decade of infrastructure optimization is helping it absorb growing demand from AI without treating new data-center capacity as the only answer. Its work spans forecasting, fleet utilization, storage density, hardware lifecycles, and rack-level power delivery, much of it predating the current AI boom.

By Matt Foster

Amazon Linux 2027 Enters Public Preview with SELinux Enforcing by Default

Steef-Jan Wiggers — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 03:40:00 GMT

AWS has released Amazon Linux 2027 in public preview, built on the AL2023 baseline with kernel 7.1 and SELinux in enforcing mode by default. Applications that pass on AL2023's permissive mode may fail under enforcing. The announcement gives no AL2023 end-of-support date, no GA date, and no in-place migration path.

By Steef-Jan Wiggers

Cloudflare Tests Cache Transcoding to Reduce Storage Requirements

Renato Losio — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 10:35:00 GMT

Cloudflare recently described a prototype called Cache Transcoding that compresses eligible cache content, mainly uncompressed text such as HTML, JSON, CSS, and JavaScript, using Zstandard before storing it on disk. The hyperscaler estimates that the approach could provide petabytes of additional effective cache capacity, although broader testing is still needed.

By Renato Losio

Lambda SnapStart Comes to Container Images, Ending a Packaging Tradeoff

Steef-Jan Wiggers — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 10:09:00 GMT

AWS has extended Lambda SnapStart to container image functions, which hold up to 10 GB against 250 MB for zip archives. Teams previously chose between dependency headroom and sub-second startup. A Reddit thread from a month earlier shows what that cost: stripping whitespace and docstrings from installed packages to stay under the limit.

By Steef-Jan Wiggers

Presentation: How to Run on Three Clouds at Once, and When Not to

Ross McFarlane, Kevin Holditch — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 11:00:00 GMT

Ross McFarlane and Kevin Holditch discuss Form3's evolution from a single-cloud setup to a triple active multi-cloud architecture. They share key engineering strategies for cross-cloud networking, distributed databases with CockroachDB and NATS, custom Kubernetes operators, and navigating distinct regional disaster recovery expectations across the UK, Europe, and US financial markets.

By Ross McFarlane, Kevin Holditch

Presentation: Fixing the AI Infra Scale Problem by Stuffing 1M Sandboxes in a Single Server

Felipe Huici — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 11:00:00 GMT

Felipe Huici explains how Unikraft achieves millisecond cold boots, stateful scale-to-zero, and extreme density for sandboxing AI workloads. He discusses isolation primitives, Linux kernel optimizations, and snapshotting tricks, demonstrating how to maintain sub-10ms performance at scale while integrating seamlessly into Kubernetes environments with hardware-level security.

By Felipe Huici

Azure Virtual Desktop Hybrid Reaches GA with Licensing Details Unpublished

Steef-Jan Wiggers — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 08:54:00 GMT

Microsoft has made Azure Virtual Desktop Hybrid generally available. Session hosts run on customer hardware through Azure Arc while brokering stays in Azure. The Hybrid service license is unpriced, Windows Server support requires RDS CALs with Software Assurance, and multi-session Windows is not supported at all.

By Steef-Jan Wiggers

Article: Implementing Chaos Engineering in Financial Payment Systems: Lessons from Enterprise ECS Deployments

Salim Adedeji — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT

Standard chaos engineering assumes experiments stop cleanly, blast radius is knowable in advance, and production is fair game. Payment systems violate all three. Salim Adedeji describes ECS-specific failure modes from enterprise deployments: a 60-second DNS TTL that produced 93-second failover, retry logic amplifying database load 2.4x, and AZ rebalancing loops that generic tooling misses.

By Salim Adedeji

Does ICANN Open the Door on Identity Theft by Dropping 3rd Level .name Domains Registrations?

Olimpiu Pop — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 08:08:00 GMT

Neil Fraser's disclosure highlights a regulatory change affecting the .name top-level domain. Following ICANN's approval, Verisign will eliminate third-level registrations due to declining usage. This affects about 22,000 registrants and raises security concerns, as released second-level domains could be exploited. Affected users are considering legal options to challenge the decision.

By Olimpiu Pop

Zone Redundancy Comes to API Management Standard v2

Steef-Jan Wiggers — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 10:09:00 GMT

Microsoft has enabled zone redundancy on the Standard v2 tier of Azure API Management, following its arrival on Premium v2 in December. Standard v2 starts at $700 per month against $2,801 for Premium v2, but carries a 99.95% SLA rather than 99.99%. Zone redundancy can only be configured when creating an instance.

By Steef-Jan Wiggers