Friday Squid Blogging: Neon Flying Squid

The neon flying squid can fly in formation.

The shoal of about 100 squid rose unexpectedly from a patch of the Pacific Ocean around 370 miles from Tokyo and glided near the boat for about 30 metres. The astonished researchers were the first to capture photographs of such a thing, which looked like the early stages of an alien invasion.

They were probably neon flying squid (Ommastrephes bartramii), the subsequent study states, a species that is part of a 20-strong flying squid family that was known to leap from the water but, until then, was only rumoured to also be able to glide above it.

The neon flying squid was able to gain such elevation by using the hyponome, a funnel-like muscular organ also present in other cephalopods, such as octopuses. The organ is able to force water out in a jet, propelling the body along both in and out of the sea. Photographs of the gliding squid show them with their arms (they have 10 limbs in all) splayed outwards.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

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Posted on August 21, 2026 at 5:07 PM • 19 Comments

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Rontea • August 22, 2026 9:14 AM

Google clarified this week that email sent from verified political groups or candidates to Gmail users will not be filtered by its spam system.

blanket • August 22, 2026 9:54 AM

Cyberleek GTA 6 Leak: Gameplay, Full Leonida Map and Rockstar’s Near-Real-Time DMCA Offensive

https://thecybersecguru.com/news/cyberleek-gta-6-leak-gameplay-map-dmca/

Cyberleek has released alleged GTA 6 gameplay footage and a large Leonida map leak just days before Rockstar’s next official reveal. As players attempt to repost screenshots and videos, Rockstar and Take-Two appear to be issuing copyright takedowns at remarkable speed, while Cyberleek threatens to release more material unless its demands are met. The leak has continued to expand since the first material appeared. Newer footage reportedly includes additional gameplay mechanics and a possible story cutscene, while clues from the latest video have raised fresh questions about how recent the leaked build actually is. Cyberleek has also continued to threaten additional releases, turning what initially appeared to be a limited leak into an ongoing confrontation with Rockstar.

KC • August 23, 2026 8:49 AM

Anthropic is rolling out Claude Mythos 5 for cyber defense.

Claude Security scans can now run on Mythos 5.

Claude Enterprise users can now run this model to scan codebases for vulns and suggest patches.

The new Defender Advantage Fund (0xDAF) will offer $35 million in credits for open-source projects.

Building on Project Glasswing, the fund will help organizations support open-source maintainers. Grants will focus on three areas:

  • Patching live vulnerabilities in widely used projects
  • Automating scanning and patching in ways other projects can replicate, and
  • Helping projects pursue more ambitious security approaches that make them resistant to whole classes of attack.

Users will work through a purpose-built interface that only runs Mythos in the background for a defined task, and will only receiving the specific artifact the product is intended to provide.

https://claude.com/blog/bringing-claude-mythos-5-to-more-defenders

K.S • August 23, 2026 8:50 AM

@ResearcherZero

> “charged an advisor for using email.”

Using email is not illegal, that not all that happened.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/former-fauci-adviser-pleads-guilty-us-conspiring-conceal-covid-19-records-2026-08-19/

“A former adviser to infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci pleaded ‌guilty on Tuesday to conspiring to evade public records laws and conceal government documents related to grant research funding and the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The criminal part is “evade public records laws” on “grant research funding”.

Anonymous • August 23, 2026 2:38 PM

Honestly..I’m kinda freaking out about the flying squid. Just exactly how smart are these things??!

lurker • August 23, 2026 4:22 PM

@KC, ResearcherZero

“conspiring to evade public records laws” = used personal email because he was away from the office and too lazy or VPN login was too complicated/non-existeent.

“conceal government documents” = ditto

“related to grant research funding” ah, now there he may well have been hiding from his bosses the fact he was working on something else they did not want him to do (even if it was “public good” research).

The criminal part that is often hammered in is the “conspiring.” Where are the co-conspirators? and are they also charged?

Anonymous • August 23, 2026 7:49 PM

@ Anonymous,

Honestly..I’m kinda freaking out about the flying squid. Just exactly how smart are these things??!

Smarter than you, Fred.

r • August 24, 2026 9:14 PM

crazy conspiracy alert, probably best to ignore this one.

we interrupt this broadcast to bring you a technical error, cnn ISN’T the only network lately with glitches.

there’s other trends right now too concerning the fcc w respect to routers robots vacuums and drones or separately sovereign countries who manufacture electronics compenents and large unnamed economies.

just keep your eyes peeled, if everything is brought under “one roof” just remember NK is KING of slave labor and you’re all getting tariffed for aiding and ebetting forced labor overseas. there was some other curious point i had too but it escapes me at the moment.

oh yeah, you’re disallowed nuclear research but biological and ecological weapons are not being tabled at all currently.

save kernel exploits if you can get your hands on them and keep devices offline.

general application processors are your friend (browsers with javascript fit that bill under ceetain circumstances), treat them with respect.

lavabit 3.0

Wael • August 24, 2026 10:50 PM

@Blaziken,

Has anyone heard from Clive lately? Should we be worried?

I was wondering the same. Hopefully @Clive Robinson is ok.

r • August 25, 2026 1:43 AM

he’s disappeared before, glad you made it back last week.

i had a question for him and everyone that i thought would be uplifting.

i am sort’ve near mr. shannon’s early years proximally. i was wondering if i couldn’t find his fishing spot, his sledding hill, maybe his church if he had one.

maybe look around for the embers of his inspiration.

i had another question that got poached by the spam filters here last month, a question about his supply chain tooling.

one factor, i know is his knowledge of the material. but i had other questions about organization and note taking.

bruce could find the questions at the filterhead by searching for “evaporating into” “constituent parts”.

but, unrelated; since i mentioned lavabit:

“lavabit” WILL NEVER happen again. with the changes in technology in such an event we can only expect at most “service interuption”.

if the government can’t find a willing or capabke programmer to alter a codebase?

we’ve got a robot for that.

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