Image by ELLA DON, from Unsplash

Discord Customer Service Breach Exposes User Data

• Written by Kiara Fabbri Former Tech News Writer
• Fact-Checked by Sarah Frazier Former Content Manager

Discord announced that its third-party customer service provider experienced a data breach, which exposed information from a limited number of users.

In a rush? Here are the quick facts:

• Attackers aimed to extort a financial ransom from Discord.
• User data accessed includes names, emails, usernames, and partial credit card info.
• A small number of government ID images were accessed during age verification appeals.

The company says an “unauthorized party” accessed information from users who contacted Discord’s Customer Support or Trust & Safety teams, apparently aiming to “extort a financial ransom from Discord.”

Discord emphasized that the attackers “did not gain access to Discord directly” and no messages or activity outside of customer support communications were exposed. The potentially accessed data includes names, usernames, emails, IP addresses, the last four digits of credit card numbers, and purchase history if provided to support.

A “small number” of government ID images from users who appealed age determinations, such as driver’s licenses or passports, were also accessed. Full credit card numbers, passwords, and other authentication data were not affected.

The company sends email notifications to affected users who can check if their account ID was compromised. Discord warns that communications about the incident will only come from ‘noreply@discord.com,’ and not by phone.

The company took immediate action by cutting off all access to its ticketing system from the third-party provider while starting an internal investigation with the help of law enforcement and a leading computer forensics firm.

The company examined its security systems that detect threats and its third-party support provider’s security controls, and informed all necessary data protection organizations.

Discord protects user information while sending alerts about possible suspicious messages to users. “At Discord, protecting the privacy and security of our users is a top priority. That’s why it’s important to us that we’re transparent with them about events that impact their personal information,” the company said.

Third-party service vulnerabilities lead to security breaches that affect users through their data management operations, even though the primary platform remains secure.

Photo by Sandip Kalal on Unsplash

Mira Murati’s Thinking Machine Launches Training API Tinker

• Written by Andrea Miliani Former Tech News Expert
• Fact-Checked by Sarah Frazier Former Content Manager

Thinking Machines Lab, the startup co-founded by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, announced its first product, a training API called Tinker, on Wednesday.

In a rush? Here are the quick facts:

• Thinking Machines launched its first product, a training API called Tinker.
• Tinker is in private beta mode, but has already been tested by multiple organizations, including Redwood Research and teams at Stanford, Princeton, and Berkeley.
• The company also launched an open-source library, Tinker Cookbook.

According to Mira Murati, Tinker will allow researchers and developers to build new AI models, systems, and workflows through its API. The tool is currently in private beta but has already been tested by multiple organizations.

“Today we launched Tinker,” wrote Murati on the social media platform X. “Tinker brings frontier tools to researchers, offering clean abstractions for writing experiments and training pipelines while handling distributed training complexity. It enables novel research, custom models, and solid baselines.”

Today we launched Tinker. Tinker brings frontier tools to researchers, offering clean abstractions for writing experiments and training pipelines while handling distributed training complexity. It enables novel research, custom models, and solid baselines. Excited to see what… https://t.co/rLSluOckuC — Mira Murati (@miramurati) October 1, 2025

Thinking Machines Lab, which launched in February , described the new product as “a flexible API for fine-tuning language models.” Tinker supports open-source models such as Alibaba’s Qwen and Meta’s LLaMA, aiming to provide infrastructure support so developers and researchers can focus on customizing and adapting models to their needs.

“We handle scheduling, resource allocation, and failure recovery,” wrote the company. “This allows you to get small or large runs started immediately, without worrying about managing infrastructure.”

Tinker uses Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA), a method that optimizes fine-tuning by reducing costs and improving speed. The company also released an open-source library called Tinker Cookbook, which provides methodologies and post-training resources that run on the Tinker API to help developers and researchers achieve better results.

“We believe [Tinker] will help empower researchers and developers to experiment with models and will make frontier capabilities much more accessible to all people,” said Mira Murati, cofounder and CEO of Thinking Machines, in a recent interview with Wired .

Other experts in the industry have also shared their thoughts on Tinker. Andrej Karpathy—former researcher at OpenAI and founder of Eureka Labs , called the API “clever” and pointed out a few advantages and challenges on the social media platform X.

“Tinker is cool,” wrote Karpathy. “Compared to the more common and existing paradigm of ‘upload your data, we’ll post-train your LLM,’ this is, in my opinion, a more clever place to ‘slice up’ the complexity of post-training—delegating the heavy lifting while keeping the majority of the data and algorithmic creative control.”

He also emphasized that the community needs to better understand when and how fine-tuning makes sense.