Coast Guard seizes 6.4 million metres of illegal hilsa net in a single day

Meta has paused a feature that let users share conversations with its Muse artificial-intelligence assistant after security researchers showed that thousands of the resulting links could be found and opened by strangers.

The problem lay in how Meta built the addresses. According to the security firm Claroc, each shared chat was given a web address made from the conversation's title, a short phrase describing what it contained, followed by a random identifier. Those addresses sit under a Meta-owned domain, and the full hostname was written into the public domain name system, the internet's directory of web addresses. A search of historical DNS records therefore returned a list of shared pages, labelled by subject, without anyone having to guess a link.

Claroc said it found more than 6,800 such links. Its researchers opened only a few hundred, so the figure does not mean that 6,800 confidential conversations were exposed. Most of the pages they inspected were ordinary, but a minority held material that users plainly expected to stay private. The examples included a marketing company's internal revenue review addressed to its chief executive, a small business owner's loan application, a workplace's staff calendar for the year, partial details from a bank fraud alert and notes for a job candidate's call with an AI laboratory.

Meta confirmed the pause. "People have the ability to share specific Muse artifacts, which creates a page that can be accessed by those with the link," Tracy Clayton, a spokesperson for Muse, told The Verge. "However, we've paused this functionality while we review this report and consider changes to how these links can be discovered."

The sequence matters. Meta acted once the researchers' findings were reported, and Bangla Tribune said a check of 40 links on 20 October found that none would open. The old DNS records, however, still preserve the hostnames, including the conversation titles, so the subject matter of some shares may remain visible in historical records.

This was a design weakness rather than a break-in. Nobody needed a stolen password or an account to reach the pages; the link itself was the only protection, and the way it was put together made it discoverable. A shared page could be opened by anyone who came across its address, which is why the DNS trail mattered so much.

Muse is part of Meta's artificial-intelligence lineup and was launched only last month. Sharing a conversation is meant to be a convenience, letting a user send a result to a colleague or friend. The episode shows how quickly that convenience can turn into a disclosure when a public link is treated as if it were private.

Similar accidents have happened elsewhere. Shared conversations from OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude and xAI's Grok have appeared in search results in the past, and security researchers have repeatedly warned that a link created for one recipient may be reachable by anyone who comes across it.

For users, the practical lesson is blunt: a shared AI conversation should be treated as public material. Work documents, loan papers, client names, account numbers, internal calendars and anything else that would cause harm if a stranger read it should not be pasted into a chat that will be shared by link. Where a team relies on such tools, it should check what is being shared and whether the service offers a way to revoke a link after it has been sent.

Several questions remain open. Meta has not said how many shared pages contained sensitive material, whether it has contacted the people affected, how long the links were discoverable, or whether it will restore sharing in a different form. It is also not known how many of the links belonged to users in Bangladesh or elsewhere in South Asia; the researchers did not identify individuals or businesses.

What happens next depends on Meta's review. The company could redesign the share addresses so that titles no longer appear in DNS, add expiry dates, or require a stronger secret before a page opens. Until it says which route it has chosen, the safest assumption for anyone using the assistant is that a Muse share link is not a private channel.

Gold jewellery became cheaper across Bangladesh on Thursday morning after the Bangladesh Jewellers Association cut its retail rates for the second time in nine days, following a sustained fall in world prices.

Under a BAJUS notice that took effect at 10:00am, 22-carat gold was fixed at Tk 2,26,340 a bhori, down Tk 1,691 from the previous rate. A bhori, the unit used in Bangladeshi jewellery shops, is 11.664 grams, so the new price works out at about Tk 19,405 a gram.

The other grades fell by similar margins. Twenty-one carat gold was set at Tk 2,16,192 a bhori, a cut of Tk 1,575; 18-carat at Tk 1,85,691, down Tk 1,341; and traditional hand-worked gold at Tk 1,51,690, down Tk 1,108. BAJUS also reduced silver, with 22-carat silver at Tk 4,024 a bhori, Tk 175 lower, followed by 21-carat at Tk 3,849, 18-carat at Tk 3,324 and traditional silver at Tk 2,508. All the quoted prices include value-added tax.

The association said the decision was taken at a meeting of its standing committee on pricing and price monitoring on Thursday morning, and the notice was signed by the committee's chairman, Dewan Aminul Islam Shahin. The new rates apply at jewellery shops nationwide and will stay in force until further notice, BAJUS said. The change was announced by the association rather than by a government body; retail gold rates in Bangladesh are set through BAJUS notices.

Thursday's cut follows a larger one on 13 October, when 22-carat gold dropped Tk 3,266 a bhori to Tk 2,28,031. The two notices have removed Tk 4,957 from the price of a bhori of the best-quality gold in nine days, a fall of about 2.1 percent.

BAJUS linked the local reduction to a fall in the price of pure, or tejabi, gold and silver in the local market. Prothom Alo reported that gold slid US$44 an ounce in Thursday's trading and silver US$1.41, and that the metal has lost roughly US$150 an ounce over the past month and US$574 over six months. The slide is unusual for a period of conflict: gold usually gains when investors are nervous, but Prothom Alo reported that prices have fallen since the war between Iran, the United States and Israel began, as yields on dollar-denominated bonds rose and investors moved money into them.

For buyers, the notice changes the sticker price but not the other costs of a purchase. BAJUS said VAT is included in the rates and cannot be charged separately, while making charges, which depend on the design and workmanship, are added on top. Dhaka Tribune reported that a customer exchanging old gold jewellery for new pieces faces a 12 percent deduction on the stipulated price, and someone selling old gold to a jeweller faces an 18 percent deduction; making charges and the cost of stones are excluded from both calculations.

Gold occupies a particular place in Bangladeshi household finances. Families buy it for weddings, hold it as savings and turn to it in an emergency, and a change of a few hundred taka a bhori is noticed by anyone planning a purchase. The rate is set by the BAJUS committee, which reviews local and international prices and issues a notice whenever it decides the retail price should move. Because the metal is imported and priced in dollars, both the world rate and the exchange rate feed into the local figure.

What happens next is less clear. BAJUS has not indicated whether further cuts are coming, and its notices depend on how world prices and the dollar behave. Jewellers may also vary in how quickly they apply the new rate, and making charges differ from shop to shop, so the amount a customer actually pays can differ from the published figure.

The deeper question is whether the fall continues. Prothom Alo's account points to bond yields and the Iran conflict rather than to demand in Bangladesh, which means a shift in either could reverse the trend quickly. For now, the direction is down: a bhori of 22-carat gold costs Tk 4,957 less than it did before the 13 October cut, and shops began quoting the new rate from mid-morning on Thursday.