Weekly summary: October 28 - November 3, 2026

The biggest crypto exchange heist in history began with fake recruitment, and the state is paying hackers for vulnerabilities on gov.pl. Plus Big Tech’s bill for the AI race and three labor law issues that concern employers.

Three stories that mattered most in our view

This week had three clear themes. The first was cybersecurity: the record theft from Binance and a state rewards program for found vulnerabilities. The second was the cost of the AI race, which investors saw in the results of Amazon and Alphabet. The third was labor law: internships, temperature limits and B2B contract inspections. Each of these translates into decisions in companies, which is why we devote more space to them. We have gathered the rest of the week below in thematic blocks.

Cybersecurity: a lesson from Binance and rewards from NASK

Hackers stole about $6.3 billion from the Binance crypto exchange. This is the largest recorded cryptocurrency theft in history. The funds left the exchange’s wallets on 10 blockchains, mostly within about 20 minutes. Analytics firm TRM Labs attributes the attack to the North Korean group TraderTraitor, linked to Lazarus.

The entry point was fake recruitment. In September, a person posing as a project director from a non-existent company contacted a DevOps engineer (a specialist combining software development with infrastructure maintenance) on a recruitment platform. They asked him to download a “test task” onto a work laptop. Binance co-founder Richard Teng noted, however, that the attacker did not simply exploit the permissions of a single engineer, and the company later disclosed additional points of compromise. Binance does not assign blame to any specific person.

The exchange suspended deposits and withdrawals and says it will cover the losses. The SAFU fund (the exchange’s reserve for hacks, about $1.17 billion) covers roughly 40 percent of the losses, with the rest to be supplemented from the company’s own funds. About $2.9 billion still sits in the attacker’s wallets. On Friday, October 30, after the scale of the breach was revealed, bitcoin lost more than 4 percent and fell to about $77,995. Editorial takeaway: every company can now check whether its policies allow employees to run files from unknown people on company equipment, and tell teams directly what such “recruitment tasks” look like.

In Poland, NASK launched its own bug bounty platform, a program in which security researchers get paid for found and confirmed vulnerabilities. The reward pool is PLN 1 million, and up to PLN 20,000 can be earned for a single report. At launch, the program covers the gov.pl portal, NASK systems and CERT Polska, the Municipality of Władysławowo, and the mSzyfr messenger. Reports are accepted at hack.cert.pl (opens in a new tab), and participation is open to adults with a Polish PESEL number, Polish tax residency, and an account at a domestic bank.

The platform was built at NASK from scratch, without external companies. According to NASK, this means information about vulnerabilities does not leave the teams that verify them. The backdrop is telling: from January to September 2026, more than 105,000 new vulnerabilities were detected worldwide, compared with nearly 71,000 in all of 2025. Over three years, CERT Polska recorded an increase of more than 300 percent in the number of vulnerabilities handled.

Reports on the launch of the program are based on NASK’s announcement. We have not yet found independent assessments of its effectiveness.

The cost of the AI race: Amazon adds more, Alphabet loses on the market

Amazon raised its 2026 capital expenditure (capex) forecast to about $220 billion, from about $200 billion previously. The main reason is rising memory chip prices. Compared with about $125 billion in 2025, that is an increase of 76 percent. CEO Andy Jassy announced that investment will be even higher in 2027, and that computing power for AI will remain constrained at least through 2027-2028. AWS, Amazon’s cloud business, grew 39.3 percent year on year, the fastest pace in 18 quarters, and its order backlog stands at $578 billion. Altogether, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta will spend about $730 billion on AI infrastructure this year, 78 percent more than a year earlier.

Alphabet reported third-quarter results on Wednesday, October 28. Revenue rose 25 percent, Google Cloud 103 percent, but search advertising only 12 percent, versus expectations of 15 percent. Free cash flow was negative $9.07 billion with capital spending of $51.36 billion in a single quarter. Net profit fell 25 percent to $26.17 billion, partly because of an accounting loss of $8.7 billion on the investment portfolio. On Thursday, the shares fell 12.6-13 percent, and the company lost $400-500 billion in market value; sources differ on the exact figures. Analysts cut price targets, but most, including Cantor Fitzgerald and Rosenblatt, maintained positive recommendations. More cautious DA Davidson has a neutral rating.

Google says that traditional results, AI Overviews and AI Mode will become one product. Management says it plainly: first quality and user engagement, then scaling ad formats. The Gemini app has a billion users. The company launched Connected Apps Platform, which via MCP (a protocol connecting AI models with external applications) allows the use of third-party site functions directly in search, and also unveiled the Gemini 4 Carbon model. Editorial takeaway: companies that live off search traffic should expect fewer classic results and ads, whose formats in AI Mode are only now being created.

Labor law: internships, heat and B2B contracts

The Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy is working on an internship law. The draft provides for a fixed-term employment contract, pay of at least 65 percent of the minimum wage, an internship program and a supervisor for the intern. It does not provide for an age limit. Adam Abramowicz, president of the Entrepreneurs’ Council, said in an interview with pulsHR.pl (opens in a new tab): “I consider the solutions proposed in the current draft to be a legal mess that will lead to a reduction in the number of internships.” He proposes dual education or a craft-based model in which the state subsidizes companies and learners. According to Deputy Science Minister Prof. Marek Gzik, co-financing of internships is being considered. There are also concerns about abuse by companies: the lack of an age limit may encourage “replacing” interns, which would hurt people aged 50 plus. Abramowicz considers that risk low in the current labor market.

From January 11, 2027, binding temperature limits at work will take effect: 35°C indoors and 32°C outdoors for heavy work. Already above 25°C and 28°C, the employer must act either technically (e.g. air conditioning) or organizationally (shorter working hours, breaks). Lewiatan estimates the cost of compliance at from several to several dozen million zlotys and points to ambiguities in the definitions.

The third issue concerns flexible forms of employment. If the National Labour Inspectorate classifies a B2B contract (a contract with a self-employed person) or a mandate contract as an actual employment relationship, ZUS may pursue outstanding contributions for up to five years back.

Week in review: other stories

Apart from the three main themes, we have collected events worth knowing about, even though we did not cover them separately.

Good work

The Walt Disney Company is preparing another wave of layoffs. Management is to find savings of around 20 percent of costs in film studios, television and theme parks; the company employs more than 230,000 people (Wirtualnemedia.pl (opens in a new tab)).

Ryanair wants to limit hiring and make greater use of AI to cut costs. The carrier’s net profit fell 15 percent to €2.15 billion (Spider's Web (opens in a new tab)).

Marketing and sales

Adam Fry, responsible for the ChatGPT product at OpenAI, said that Google handles about five times more search-type queries than ChatGPT. From January 11, 2027, Google Ads tags in server-side Google Tag Manager will be able to receive full IP addresses, while Google Analytics tags will continue to mask them; marketing teams should check this with the department responsible for data protection.

The New York Times sued Brave Software, the maker of a browser with a paywall blocker. The publisher alleges that the company made more than $100 million by copying content and reselling it to AI firms, including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral and xAI (Ars Technica (opens in a new tab)).

Technology

Mistral AI made the Large 4 model with more than a trillion parameters available for free download. The model can run locally, without connecting to the manufacturer’s servers, which matters for companies that keep close track of where their data goes (Spider's Web (opens in a new tab)).

Market and start-ups

In October, start-ups worldwide raised $59 billion, 45 percent more than a year earlier. The result was driven by the record round of China’s DeepSeek, worth $15.9 billion (Crunchbase News (opens in a new tab)). European venture capital fund (investing in young, fast-growing companies) Creandum closed its eighth fund at $750 million; the previous one was €500 million. It is focusing on AI and early stages.

Freenow in Poland will become Lyft. The migration starts in Q1 2027, and the company wants to double the number of rides and enter 15-20 smaller cities. From November 3, the PCC (tax on civil law transactions) exemption threshold for the sale of movable goods, for example on classified platforms, rose from PLN 1,000 to PLN 3,000 (Spider's Web (opens in a new tab)).

Editors’ choice: what to read in other media

Three pieces that help explain the week’s stories better than press releases:

• BleepingComputer on the Binance attack (opens in a new tab) - a concrete description of the path from fake recruitment to theft.
• Search Engine Journal on Google’s results (opens in a new tab) - an SEO specialist’s commentary on how combining search with AI changes things for companies.
• pulsHR.pl on the internship law (opens in a new tab) - entrepreneurs’ arguments and proposals for alternative solutions.

For the coming weeks, we are leaving open questions: whether Binance will recover some of the funds, whether NASK will expand the list of systems in the program, and what shape the internship law will take. We will return to them when new facts emerge.