infosec

US, French authorities confirm arrest of BreachForums hackers

U.S. and French authorities have confirmed the arrests of five hackers accused of being behind several major hacks and being part of a notorious cybercrime forum.  On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the indictment of British national Kai West, 25, accusing him of being “a serial hacker” known as IntelBroker. U.S. authorities allege […]

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Researchers confirm two journalists were hacked with Paragon spyware

Two European journalists were hacked using government spyware made by Israeli surveillance tech provider Paragon, new research has confirmed.  On Thursday, digital rights group The Citizen Lab published a new report detailing the results of a new forensic investigation into the iPhones of Italian journalist Ciro Pellegrino and an unnamed “prominent” European journalist. The researchers

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US government sanctions tech company involved in cyber scams

The U.S. government imposed sanctions on FUNNULL, a company accused of providing infrastructure for cybercriminals running so-called “pig butchering” crypto scams that have led to $200 million in losses for Americans victims.  On Thursday, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced the sanctions, saying FUNNULL is “linked to the majority of virtual currency investment

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Mysterious hacking group Careto was run by the Spanish government, sources say

More than a decade ago, researchers at antivirus company Kaspersky identified suspicious internet traffic of what they thought was a known government-backed group, based on similar targeting and its phishing techniques. Soon, the researchers realized they had found a much more advanced hacking operation that was targeting the Cuban government, among others. Eventually the researchers

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Hidden Waymo feature let researcher customize robotaxi’s display

A security researcher found a hidden unreleased feature in the Waymo app that allowed her to display whatever characters she wanted on the robotaxi’s top display.  Jane Manchun Wong, a well-known security researcher, posted an image on X on Saturday showing the top display of a Waymo car — officially called “dome” — that included

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How victims of PowerSchool’s data breach helped each other investigate ‘massive’ hack

On January 7, at 11:10 p.m. in Dubai, Romy Backus received an email from education technology giant PowerSchool notifying her that the school she works at was one of the victims of a data breach that the company discovered on December 28. PowerSchool said hackers had accessed a cloud system that housed a trove of

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Governments call for spyware regulations in UN Security Council meeting

On Tuesday, the United Nations Security Council held a meeting to discuss the dangers of commercial spyware, which marks the first time this type of software — also known as government or mercenary spyware — has been discussed at the Security Council.  The goal of the meeting, according to the U.S. Mission to the UN,

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Facebook awards researcher $100,000 for finding bug that granted internal access

In October 2024, security researcher Ben Sadeghipour was analyzing Facebook’s ad platform when he found a security vulnerability that allowed him to run commands on the internal Facebook server housing that platform, essentially giving him control of the server.   After he reported the vulnerability to Facebook’s owner Meta, which Sadeghipour said took just one hour

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