infosec

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

Security /

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

Security /

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

Security /

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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Why Apple sends spyware victims to this nonprofit security lab

Security /

Before the elections, the cybersecurity team of U.S. vice president and then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris reached out to Apple asking for help, according to Forbes, after a tool that’s designed to detect spyware on iPhones flagged anomalies on two devices belonging to campaign staffers. Apple declined to forensically analyze the phones, per Forbes.  The company’s

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Serbian police used Cellebrite to unlock, then plant spyware, on a journalist’s phone

Security /

This year, a Serbian journalist and an activist had their phones hacked by local authorities using a cellphone-unlocking device made by forensic tool maker Cellebrite. The authorities’ goal was not only to unlock the phones to access their personal data, as Cellebrite allows, but also to install spyware to enable further surveillance, according to a

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Ukraine says Russian hackers are targeting country’s defense contractors

Security /

Ukraine’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) said in a report published over the weekend that a hacking group has been targeting the country’s defense and military companies with phishing attacks.  The CERT identified the hacking group as UAC-0185 — also known as UNC4221 — without saying who was behind the group. Earlier this year, however,

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US charges five accused of multi-year hacking spree targeting tech and crypto giants

Security /

The U.S. government announced charges against five individuals accused of carrying out a multi-year hacking spree targeting tech giants and cryptocurrency owners, which security researchers dubbed 0ktapus. On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice published a press release announcing the charges against the five alleged hackers: Ahmed Hossam Eldin Elbadawy, 23, of College Station, Texas;

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Snowflake hackers identified and charged with stealing 50 billion AT&T records

Security /

The U.S. government has accused Connor Moucka and John Binns of being the hackers who broke into the systems of AT&T, stealing around 50 billion customer call and text records.  In July, AT&T said hackers stole the phone records of “nearly all” of its cellular and landline customers, as well as calls and text message

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Canadian authorities say they arrested hacker linked to Snowflake data breaches

Security /

A hacker suspected of involvement in a series of massive Snowflake-related hacks has been arrested in Canada, according to local authorities. Ian McLeod, a spokesperson for the Canadian Department of Justice, told TechCrunch in an email that, “following a request by the United States, Alexander Moucka (a.k.a. Connor Moucka) was arrested on a provisional arrest

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