Security

Hackers threaten to leak data after breaching University of Pennsylvania to send mass emails

On Friday morning, University of Pennsylvania alumni, students, staff, and community affiliates received several emails from hackers purporting to represent the university’s Graduate School of Education (GSE). “We have terrible security practices and are completely unmeritocratic,” read the email. “We love breaking federal rules like FERPA (all your data will be leaked).” A partially redacted […]

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Government hackers breached telecom giant Ribbon for months before getting caught

U.S. telecommunications giant Ribbon has confirmed that government-backed hackers had access to its network for almost a year before getting caught, according to a public filing. The telco giant said in a 10-Q disclosure last week with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that a suspected “nation-state actor had gained access to the company’s IT

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Former L3Harris Trenchant boss pleads guilty to selling zero-day exploits to Russian broker

Peter Williams, the former general manager at defense contractor L3Harris, has pleaded guilty to selling surveillance technology to a Russian broker that buys “cyber tools,” the U.S. Department of Justice confirmed Wednesday.  “The material, stolen over a three-year period from the U.S. defense contractor where he worked, was comprised of national-security focused software that included

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CEO of spyware maker Memento Labs confirms one of its government customers was caught using its malware

On Monday, researchers at cybersecurity giant Kaspersky published a report identifying a new spyware called Dante that they say targeted Windows victims in Russia and neighboring Belarus. The researchers said the Dante spyware is made by Memento Labs, a Milan-based surveillance tech maker that was formed in 2019 after a new owner acquired and took

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LG Uplus is latest South Korean telco to confirm cybersecurity incident

LG Uplus, one of the largest telecom operators in South Korea, has confirmed to TechCrunch that it has reported a suspected data breach to Korea’s national cybersecurity watchdog KISA, but did not say when the results of its investigation would be available. All three major South Korean telecom providers, SK Telecom, KT Telecom, and now

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Tata Motors confirms it fixed security flaws, which exposed company and customer data

Indian automotive giant Tata Motors has fixed a series of security flaws that exposed sensitive internal data, including personal information of customers, company reports, and data related to its dealers. Security researcher Eaton Zveare told TechCrunch that he discovered the flaws in Tata Motors’ E-Dukaan unit, an e-commerce portal for buying spare parts for Tata-made

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CyDeploy wants to create a replica of a company’s system to help it test updates before pushing them out — catch it at Disrupt 2025

For any company using software, there is often a difficult balance between patching systems as quickly as possible to prevent cyberattacks while also making sure the updates don’t break how those systems work.  That’s where the startup CyDeploy wants to help.   The company’s founder, Tina Williams-Koroma, explained to TechCrunch that the idea of CyDeploy

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U.S. government accuses former L3Harris cyber boss of stealing trade secrets

The U.S. government has accused a former executive at defense contractor L3Harris of stealing trade secrets and selling them to a buyer in Russia, according to court documents seen by TechCrunch.  On October 14, the Department of Justice accused Peter Williams of stealing eight trade secrets from two unnamed companies. The DOJ made the allegation

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Apple alerts exploit developer that his iPhone was targeted with government spyware 

Earlier this year, a developer was shocked by a message that appeared on his personal phone: “Apple detected a targeted mercenary spyware attack against your iPhone.”   “I was panicking,” Jay Gibson, who asked that we don’t use his real name over fears of retaliation, told TechCrunch.   Gibson, who until recently built surveillance technologies for Western

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Amazon identifies the issue that broke much of the internet, says AWS is back to normal

An outage on Monday affected web hosting giant Amazon Web Services (AWS), which took out vast swathes of the web, including websites, banks, and some government services. On Monday afternoon, the company offered an update on the cause of the issue and said it was working to restore services. At 6:01 PM ET, Amazon said

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