Cyber Security News


  • US border agents must get warrant before cell phone searches, federal court rules

    July 29, 2024

    A federal district court in New York has ruled that U.S. border agents must obtain a warrant before searching the electronic devices of Americans and international travelers crossing the U.S. border. The ruling on July 24 is the latest court opinion to upend the U.S. government’s long-standing legal argument, which asserts that federal border agents should ...

  • UK: 48 cyber breaches of utility companies recorded last year, a 586% increase on 2022

    July 29, 2024

    The number of successful cyber attacks against UK utility companies has risen to 48 in 2023, a 586% increase on the seven cases in 2022, says global specialty (re)insurance group Chaucer. So far these cyber attacks have been largely restricted to the theft of data or ransomware attacks. There have been concerns that cyber attacks designed ...

  • Intruders at HealthEquity rifled through storage, stole 4.3M people’s data

    July 29, 2024

    HealthEquity, a US fintech firm for the healthcare sector, admits that a “data security event” it discovered at the end of June hit the data of a substantial 4.3 million individuals. Stolen details include addresses, telephone numbers and payment data.… The incident began in March but was only detected in June. The company said in a ...

  • U.N. cybercrime treaty faces new scrutiny

    July 29, 2024

    U.N. member states meet Monday seeking to finalize an international treaty on the fight against cybercrime, a text strongly opposed by an unlikely alliance of human rights groups and big technology companies. The “United Nations Convention Against Cybercrime” originated in 2017 when Russian diplomats sent the world body’s secretary-general a letter outlining the initiative. Two years ...

  • Millions more victims exposed in debt collection agency data breach

    July 29, 2024

    It seems that the data breach at the debt collection agency Financial Business and Consumer Solutions (FBCS) was a lot bigger than initially thought. After first reporting some 1.9 million victims, the company now says that more than 4.2 million were actually affected. In late April, it was reported that FBCS suffered a cyberattack two months ...

  • Elon Musk’s X accused of AI data grab in ‘blatant breach of law’

    July 29, 2024

    Privacy organisation Open Rights Group has branded a move by social network X (formerly Twitter) to use user data to train its Grok AI as a “blatant breach of GDPR”. The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is an EU law protecting people’s data, and is implemented in the UK as part of the Data Protection Act ...

  • Georgia: Columbus hit by data breach, officials say not considered ransomware incident

    July 29, 2024

    Columbus experienced a data breach last Wednesday, the same day as an internet outage, city officials say. The only information believed to have been accessed are employees’ names, work emails and passwords, according to Mike Richardson, the city’s director of security and risk. He said no employee’s personal financial information was compromised. All employee passwords were ...

  • Northern Ireland: Man arrested in connection with PSNI data breach

    July 29, 2024

    Detectives investigating criminality linked to the PSNI data breach have arrested a 54-year-old man. Data relating to all 9,483 PSNI officers and staff was mistakenly included in a spreadsheet published online last August in response to a freedom of information request. The list included the surname and first initial of every employee, their rank or grade, ...

  • New regulatory license for social media platforms in Malaysia to fight cyber offences

    July 28, 2024

    Malaysia will require social media services to apply for a license if they have more than 8 millon users in the country from August 1, in an attempt to combat increasing cyber offences, said the government. The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission said in a statement on Saturday that the license was in line with cabinet’s ...

  • Bangladesh restores mobile internet after 11-day blackout to quell protests

    July 28, 2024

    Bangladesh has restored mobile internet, 11 days after a nationwide blackout was imposed to contain deadly protests over quotas in government jobs. The South Asian nation’s 4G mobile internet services resumed on Sunday, hours after Zunaid Ahmed Palak, the state minister for telecommunications and information communication technology, made the announcement. Read more… Source: AL Jazeera News Sign up for ...

  • Investigators probe suspected sabotage of French fiber optic network

    July 28, 2024

    The disruptions occurred early Wednesday, hitting several — but not all — internet operators. Authorities suggested the damage to the cables was intentional. The prosecutor’s office opened a preliminary investigation on charges of “damaging goods of a nature of harming the fundamental interests of the nation,” as well as “obstruction of an automatic data processing system” ...