- Apple pulls data protection feature in UK amid government demands
February 21, 2025
Apple is scrapping its most advanced security encryption feature for cloud data in Britain, the company said on Friday, an unprecedented response to government demands for access to user data. The change affects a feature called Advanced Data Protection (ADP), which extends end-to-end encryption across a wide range of cloud data. Apple said it is no ...
- UK: Man jailed for abusive emails to politicians
February 18, 2025
A 39-year-old man has been jailed for sending malicious communications to a government minister, the mayor of London and a senior Met Police officer. Jack Bennett, of Newlands Park, Seaton, Devon, pleaded guilty to four counts of sending malicious emails; one to Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips, one to Metropolitan police officer Matt Twist, and two counts ...
- Argentine judge investigates fraud case against President Milei over crypto promotion
February 18, 2025
A judge in Argentina was selected Monday to investigate allegations of fraud against President Javier Milei for his brief promotion of a cryptocurrency whose value collapsed within hours of its launch last week. Milei distanced himself from the scandal and said he acted in good faith. Milei and his office denied involvement with creators of the ...
- Posting hateful speech online could lead to police raiding your home in this European country
February 16, 2025
If you’ve ever dared to read the comments on a social media post, you might start to wonder if civilized discourse is just a myth. Aggressive threats, lies, and harassment have unfortunately become the norm online, where anonymity has emboldened some users to push the limits of civility. In the United States, most of what ...
- Trump administration fires over 400 DHS employees as mass firings continue
February 14, 2025
The Trump administration on Friday moved to fire more than 400 employees at the Department of Homeland Security, the latest effort in a government-wide campaign to dramatically reduce the federal workforce. Officials at DHS said they had fired hundreds of employees across several of its agencies after supervisors identified “non-mission critical personnel in probationary status” within ...
- China’s Salt Typhoon hackers continue to breach telecom firms despite US sanctions
February 13, 2025
Security researchers say the Chinese government-linked hacking group, Salt Typhoon, is continuing to compromise telecommunications providers, despite the recent sanctions imposed by the U.S. government on the group. In a report shared with TechCrunch, threat intelligence firm Recorded Future said it had observed Salt Typhoon — which the company tracks as “RedMike” — breaching five telecommunications ...
- Italian government denies Paragon has cut spyware contract
February 12, 2025
Italy denied on Wednesday that Israeli spyware maker Paragon had cut ties with Rome following allegations that the Italian government had illegally used its technology to hack the phones of critics instead of criminals. “Paragon has never suspended the service and has not terminated its contract,” the cabinet undersecretary for intelligence matters, Alfredo Mantovano, told reporters. ...
- The BadPilot campaign: Seashell Blizzard subgroup conducts multiyear global access operation
February 12, 2025
Microsoft is publishing for the first time their research into a subgroup within the Russian state actor Seashell Blizzard and its multiyear initial access operation, tracked by Microsoft Threat Intelligence as the “BadPilot campaign”. This subgroup has conducted globally diverse compromises of Internet-facing infrastructure to enable Seashell Blizzard to persist on high-value targets and support tailored ...
- Scammers target Italian tycoons using defense minister’s AI-generated voice
February 10, 2025
Scammers target Italian tycoons using defense minister’s AI-generated voice on OpenAI Voice Engine Scammers used AI-generated voice of Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto in an atempts to steal millions of dollars from Italian business tycoons, according to reports. Crosetto said last Thursday on X that someone was using his name and his artificially generated voice to ...
- Trump ends Biden’s security clearances, intelligence briefings
February 7, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said he was revoking former President Joe Biden’s security clearances and stopping his daily intelligence briefings as there was no need for his predecessor to receive classified information. In a post on Truth Social, Trump referenced a report by Special Counsel Robert Hur that described Biden last year as a ...
- U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts
February 7, 2025
Security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a back door allowing them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post. The British government’s undisclosed order, issued last month, requires blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not ...
- Spyware maker Paragon confirms US government is a customer
February 4, 2025
Israeli spyware maker Paragon Solutions confirmed to TechCrunch that it sells its products to the U.S. government and other unspecified allied countries. Paragon’s executive chairman John Fleming said in a statement to TechCrunch on Tuesday that “Paragon licenses its technology to a select group of global democracies — principally, the United States and its allies.” Fleming ...
- Funksec Ransomware Teams Up with Another Ransomware Group to Double Down on Targets
February 3, 2025
FunkSec is a relatively new but highly active ransomware group that, as of this writing, has targeted several dozen victims across industries like government, banking, communications, and education. In a recent blog post, the group announced a partnership with another ransomware outfit, FSociety, aiming to carry out attacks more efficiently. This week, SonicWall Capture Labs research ...
- USAID security leaders removed after refusing Elon Musk’s DOGE employees access to secure systems
February 2, 2025
The U.S. Agency for International Development’s director of security and his deputy were placed on administrative leave Saturday after they tried to prevent employees from the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing secure USAID systems, five sources familiar with the events told NBC News. The USAID systems the DOGE team tried to access included personnel files ...
- CL-STA-0048: An Espionage Operation Against High-Value Targets in South Asia
January 29, 2025
We identified a cluster of activity that we track as CL-STA-0048. This cluster targeted high-value targets in South Asia, including a telecommunications organization. This activity cluster used rare tools and techniques including the technique we call Hex Staging, in which the attackers deliver payloads in chunks. Their activity also includes exfiltration over DNS using ping, and ...
- UK: Whitehall is at risk from hackers due to poor cyber defences
January 29, 2025
Whitehall departments are at growing risk of being hacked because anti-cyber attack defences are ‘lower’ than thought, an alarming report has found. The inquiry by the National Audit Office (NAO) was branded a ‘wake-up call’ for officials to step-up defences against hostile actors.It identified a shortage of cyber skills within departments and risks posed by outdated ...
- Trump administration fires members of cybersecurity review board in ‘horribly shortsighted’ decision
January 22, 2025
On Tuesday, a day after Donald Trump’s inauguration as the new U.S. president, the Department of Homeland Security told members of several advisory committees that they were effectively fired. Among the committees impacted is the Cyber Safety Review Board, or CSRB, according to sources familiar with the board who spoke to TechCrunch, as well as reporting ...
- Conduent confirms outage was due to a cybersecurity incident
January 22, 2025
U.S. government contractor Conduent, which provides technology to support services such as child support and food assistance, has confirmed that a recent outage was caused by a cybersecurity incident. Conduent confirmed the disruption, which left some U.S. residents without access to support payments, to TechCrunch on Tuesday but declined to say whether the outage was related ...
- New Star Blizzard spear-phishing campaign targets WhatsApp accounts
January 16, 2025
Star Blizzard’s new spear-phishing campaign, while novel in that it uses and targets WhatsApp for the first time, exhibits familiar spear-phishing TTPs for Star Blizzard, with the threat actor initiating email contact with their targets, to engage them, before sending them a second message containing a malicious link. The sender address used by the threat actor ...
- Japan links Chinese hacker MirrorFace to dozens of cyberattacks targeting security and tech data
January 8, 2025
Japan on Wednesday linked more than 200 cyberattacks over the past five years targeting the country’s national security and high technology data to a Chinese hacking group, MirrorFace, detailing their tactics and calling on government agencies and businesses to reinforce preventive measures. MirrorFace sent emails with attachments containing malware to targeted organizations and individuals to view ...