News – November 2025


  • Phone location data of top EU officials available for sale

    November 4, 2025

    Journalists in Europe found it was “easy” to spy on top European Union officials using commercially obtained location histories sold by data brokers, despite the continent having some of the strongest data protection laws in the world. EU officials said they’re “concerned” about the trade of citizen and officials’ mobile phone location data, and have issued ...

  • Hackers target UK drinking water suppliers

    November 4, 2025

    New reports have revealed five cyberattacks have targeted British drinking water facilities since January 2024 – a record number in any two year period. Reports of these incidents were obtained by The Record using Freedom of Information requests to the watchdog – the Drinking Water Inspectorate. The regulator is only required by NIS regulations to report ...

  • SesameOp: Novel backdoor uses OpenAI Assistants API for command and control

    November 3, 2025

    Microsoft Incident Response – Detection and Response Team (DART) researchers uncovered a new backdoor that is notable for its novel use of the OpenAI Assistants Application Programming Interface (API) as a mechanism for command-and-control (C2) communications. Instead of relying on more traditional methods, the threat actor behind this backdoor abuses OpenAI as a C2 channel as ...

  • University of Pennsylvania says it has called FBI over data breach

    November 3, 2025

    The University of Pennsylvania says it has called in the Federal Bureau of Investigation after offensive emails were distributed to alumni. In a statement, the university said that a data breach had affected “select information systems.” An email sent to University of Pennsylvania alumni on Friday and reviewed by Reuters showed that someone masquerading as the ...

  • US government warns Linux CVE-2024-1086 flaw is now being exploited for ransomware attacks

    November 3, 2025

    The US government is warning that a Linux flaw introduced more than a decade ago – and fixed more than a year ago – is being actively used in ransomware attacks. In February 2014, a vulnerability was introduced into the Linux kernel via a commit. The bug was first disclosed in late January 2024, and described ...

  • Chicago firm that resolves ransomware attacks had rogue workers carrying out their own hacks

    November 2, 2025

    Rogue employees of a Chicago company that specializes in negotiating ransoms to mitigate cyber attacks were carrying out their own piracy in a plot to extort millions of dollars from a series of companies, prosecutors say. Kevin Tyler Martin, a ransomware threat negotiator for River North-based DigitalMint at the time of the alleged conspiracy, was among ...