The US government has launched an investigation into the national security risks posed by foreign-made vehicles with internet connectivity—especially those made in China. At a briefing on Wednesday, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo even raised the specter of Beijing remotely triggering mayhem on US highways. “Imagine if there were thousands …
Read More »A Global Police Operation Just Took Down the Notorious LockBit Ransomware Gang
For the past four years, the LockBit ransomware group has been on an unrelenting rampage, hacking into thousands of businesses, schools, medical facilities, and governments around the world—and making millions in the process. A children’s hospital, Boeing, the UK’s Royal Mail, and sandwich chain Subway have all been recent victims. …
Read More »China’s Hackers Keep Targeting US Water and Electricity Supplies
An indictment from the US Department of Justice may have solved the mystery of how disgraced cryptocurrency exchange FTX lost over $400 million in crypto. The indictment, filed last week, alleges that three individuals used a SIM-swapping attack to steal hundreds of millions in virtual currency from an unnamed company. …
Read More »A Startup Allegedly ‘Hacked the World.’ Then Came the Censorship—and Now the Backlash
Hacker-for-hire firms like NSO Group and Hacking Team have become notorious for enabling their customers to spy on vulnerable members of civil society. But as far back as a decade ago in India, a startup called Appin Technology and its subsidiaries allegedly played a similar cyber-mercenary role while attracting far …
Read More »Notorious Spyware Maker NSO Group Is Quietly Plotting a Comeback
On New Year’s Eve, NSO Group—the Israel-based company behind the Pegasus spyware, one of the world’s most sophisticated cyberweapons—quietly released a new transparency report. The 27-page document is carefully worded—even apologetic—and is intended to demonstrate resilience, progress, and responsibility to further strengthen the company’s human rights compliance program. It claims …
Read More »A Flaw in Millions of Apple, AMD, and Qualcomm GPUs Could Expose AI Data
As more companies ramp up development of artificial intelligence systems, they are increasingly turning to graphics processing unit (GPU) chips for the computing power they need to run large language models (LLMs) and to crunch data quickly at massive scale. Between video game processing and AI, demand for GPUs has …
Read More »Lawmakers Are Out for Blood After a Hack of the SEC’s X Account Causes Bitcoin Chaos
A raft of US senators have demanded answers from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after a security incident led to false and market-moving information being published by the financial regulator. At 4:11 pm ET on January 9, a post was published to the SEC’s X account announcing the approval …
Read More »Google Just Denied Cops a Key Surveillance Tool
A hacker group calling itself Solntsepek, previously linked to the infamous Russian military hacking unit Sandworm, took credit this week for a disruptive attack on the Ukrainian internet and mobile service provider Kyivstar. As Russia’s kinetic war against Ukraine has dragged on, inflicting what the World Bank estimates to be …
Read More »McDonald’s Ice Cream Machine Hackers Say They Found the ‘Smoking Gun’ That Killed Their Startup
A little over three years have passed since McDonald's sent out an email to thousands of its restaurant owners around the world that abruptly cut short the future of a three-person startup called Kytch—and with it, perhaps one of McDonald's best chances for fixing its famously out-of-order ice cream machines. …
Read More »Hacker Group Linked to Russian Military Claims Credit for Cyberattack on Ukrainian Telecom
Over nearly a decade, the hacker group within Russia's GRU military intelligence agency known as Sandworm has launched some of the most disruptive cyberattacks in history against Ukraine's power grids, financial system, media, and government agencies. Signs now point to that same usual suspect being responsible for sabotaging a major …
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