Wetherspoons has stopped short of banning Meta-style smart glasses from its pubs, but told The Register that customers should switch off their cameras and refrain from filming. "Like many hospitality companies, Wetherspoon has CCTV cameras for security reasons, but their use is strictly controlled by data legislation," a spokesperson said. "Apart from that, the general code that applies in our pubs, and most pubs, is that you can't film customers or employees without their permission. "Meta glasses seem to breach this code, and common sense, by enabling surreptitious surveillance, so our instinct is to say turn off the cameras. This is akin to our efforts to stop audible playing of videos in our pubs, which also invades people's space." The Register asked whether customers who refused to stop recording would be ejected, but Wetherspoons declined to elaborate. Wetherspoons' statement suggests that recording, rather than merely wearing the glasses during a wallet-friendly session, would attract the attention of security staff. The policy is therefore less strict than those adopted by venues and events that have banned recording glasses outright over privacy concerns. DEF CON, which concluded last week, was the latest in a series of organizations to issue outright bans on Meta-style recording glasses, even for those who use them with prescription lenses. Conference organizers told delegates to pack "non-violating eyewear" if they needed them. Monopoly Events, which runs UK Comic Cons among other events, recently imposed a ban after talent agencies and guests raised concerns about privacy and the effect of covert recording on personal interactions. Scottish ferry operator CalMac also temporarily suspended unplanned visits to ships' bridges after a passenger made crew members feel uncomfortable during a crossing in June. Restaurateur Jeremy King, who owns London's Arlington, The Park, and Simpson's in the Strand, has said the glasses should not be worn in his establishments. Similarly, private members' club Soho House does not allow recording inside its venues, a policy that extends to Meta-style glasses. Brighton's Yellow Book Bar called the glasses "creepy and intrusive" when announcing its ban, and theatre companies ATG Entertainment and Trafalgar Entertainment do not permit them either. Meta's smart glasses have become shorthand for the wider category of camera-equipped eyewear. Google unveiled Glass in 2012 but failed to turn it into a mainstream consumer product. Meta and EssilorLuxottica launched their first Ray-Ban Stories glasses in 2021, followed by the second-generation Ray-Ban Meta range in 2023 and an expansion into Oakley-branded models. Meta's glasses have become the most prominent products in the category, prompting other tech companies to work on rivals. The next-gen eyewear has proven especially popular among social media users, allowing them to record high-res, hands-free, and first-person footage with ease. Unlike Google Glass, however, the wearables are largely indistinguishable from their analog counterparts, which makes their recording capabilities all the more problematic. The camera in Meta's specs is small and embedded neatly inside the glasses' frame. The company routinely highlights that each pair is fitted with a recording light, which activates when the user begins shooting video, and that if this light is covered up, then recording immediately stops. The feature has done little to appease those who feel the cameras are an invasion of privacy. UK law does not generally prevent individuals from filming in public, although pubs are private premises and may set their own rules. Smart glasses make those rules harder to enforce because recording is far less conspicuous than when someone points a smartphone at the scene. Researchers have shown that Meta's glasses can be paired with apps that can dox passersby in seconds. Others have worked up projects that inform Android users of nearby glasses-wearers using Bluetooth signals. Meta faces a UK data protection probe concerning the cross-border data flows of its glasses' footage after Kenyan reviewer teams reported seeing footage from wearers' more intimate moments. ®

Modular laptop maker Framework has warned customers that an attacker exploited a zero-day at analytics provider Metabase to access names, email addresses, phone numbers, physical addresses, and login IP addresses, according to an email shared on Reddit. For business customers, the exposed information may also include company names, phone numbers, VAT or Employer Identification Numbers (EINs), and billing email addresses. Framework said order and payment details were not affected. "We are deeply sorry for this breach of information, and are reviewing and improving our methodology for data storage in external database vendors," Framework said, adding that it's notifying regulators where required, though it noted that names, email addresses, phone numbers, and physical addresses don't cross the mandatory reporting threshold in many regions. Customers are getting the heads-up regardless. Framework didn't immediately reply to The Register's questions, but told TechCrunch that the breach had affected "all customers." The intrusion began with a zero-day vulnerability in Metabase, the business intelligence platform Framework uses to analyze its data. In its own blog post, Metabase said an attacker targeted its cloud service using a previously unknown vulnerability affecting versions 1.58 and later. The company blocked the endpoints used in the attack, patched the bug, and deployed the fix across its cloud service. Framework's account provides a timeline for the break-in. Metabase discovered the attack on August 3 and notified Framework at 9am Pacific Time on August 6, telling the laptop maker that its instance had been vulnerable and that the attacker had successfully gained access to it. Framework said it then rotated credentials for every database connected to its Metabase instance and found no changes to admin access or evidence that systems outside Metabase had been accessed. The company has also brought in a third-party forensics firm to investigate, and cautioned that its findings so far are preliminary. According to Metabase, exploitation can allow an attacker to inject arbitrary SQL against the application's database and potentially gain administrator access. From there, they could alter configuration settings, steal credentials for databases connected to Metabase, query data those connections can access, and export the results. Metabase told anyone running their own instance to patch immediately. If the vulnerable password-reset endpoint was exposed to the internet, admins have more work ahead of them: killing active sessions, checking for rogue API keys or admin accounts, rotating database credentials, and digging through logs for anything suspicious. Framework is reviewing how customer information is made available through external analytics services, but hasn't yet said what changes that review might produce. The breach lands during an already bumpy spell for Framework and its customers. In July, the repairable PC maker warned that the price it was being charged for LPCAMM2 memory used in its Laptop 13 Pro had more than doubled, forcing it to raise memory prices rather than swallow the increase. It also warned that CPU prices were heading upward and could push overall system prices higher in the coming weeks. Being able to replace almost every part of your laptop is handy. Finding your home address exposed through an analytics service is rather less so. ®