News

For now at least, even though government buying can improve, open source is not all it's cracked up to be

Debate  Not for the first time, Microsoft is in the spotlight for the UK government's money it voraciously consumes – apparently £1.9 billion a year in software licensing, and roughly £9 billion over five years. Not surprisingly, there are plenty of voices challenging whether this is good use of public money. After all, aren't there plenty of open source alternatives?…

Foundation warns federated servers face biggest risk, but single-instance users can take their time

The maintainers of the federated secure chat protocol Matrix are warning users of a pair of "high severity protocol vulnerabilities," addressed in the latest version, saying patching them requires a breaking change in servers and clients.…

Minnesota’s capital is the latest to feature on Interlock’s leak blog after late-July cyberattack

The Interlock ransomware gang has flaunted a 43GB haul of files allegedly stolen from the city of Saint Paul, following a late-July cyberattack that forced the Minnesota capital to declare a state of national emergency.…

Tells court 'What I did was wrong and I want to apologize for my conduct'

Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon has pled guilty to committing fraud when promoting the so-called "stablecoin" Terra USD and now faces time in jail.…

None under active exploit…yet

Microsoft’s August Patch Tuesday flaw-fixing festival addresses 111 problems in its products, a dozen of which are deemed critical, and one moderate-severity flaw that is listed as being publicly known.…

And yes, there’s the usual credit monitoring

Global staffing firm Manpower confirmed ransomware criminals broke into its Lansing, Michigan franchise's network and stole personal information belonging to 144,189 people, months after the extortionists claimed that they pilfered "all of [the company's] confidential data." …

Website, emails, and phones are down for a second day

The Pennsylvania's Office of Attorney General (OAG) is blaming a digital blackout of its services on a "cyber incident."…

US cops yank servers, domains, and crypto from the Russia-linked gang - but the crooks remain at large

In a display of bureaucratic bravado, US law enforcement agencies say they've “disrupted” the BlackSuit ransomware gang (also known as Royal), freeing millions of dollars in virtual currency from its clutches.…

Scattered Spider, ShinyHunters, and Lapsus$ spent the weekend bragging to each other on a Telegram channel

Prolific cybercrime collectives Scattered Spider, ShinyHunters, and Lapsus$ appear to have come together in a new Telegram channel that shares news of their exploits.…

Automaker's answer to spate of car thefts is to charge customers for extra

Hyundai is charging UK customers £49 ($66) for a security upgrade to prevent thieves from bypassing its car locks.…

Home Office officials reportedly concede Brit government on back foot as Trump moves to protect US Big Tech players

Analysis  The Home Office's war on encryption – its most technically complex and controversial aspect of modern policymaking yet – is starting to look like battlefield failure after more than ten years of skirmishes.…

Sysadmins, your job is safe

Automating IT operations using AI may not be the best idea at the moment.…

A few weeks earlier 'zeroplayer' advertised an $80K WinRAR 0-day exploit

Russia-linked attackers found and exploited a high-severity WinRAR vulnerability before the maintainers of the Windows file archiver issued a fix.…

The alleged perpetrators remain at large

The US Department of Justice is trying to recoup around $1 million that three IT specialists secretly working for the North Korean government allegedly stole from a New York company.…

The bad news? The machines, and their operators, are coming on fast

Black Hat/DEF CON  At the opening of Black Hat, the largest security shindig in the Hacker Summer Camp week ahead of DEF CON and BSides, the opening keynote speaker suggested the current state of AI slightly favors defenders over attackers, but he warned that was not a given for much longer.…

But it can contest if it lands up in 'Category 1,' and the move hurts operations, says judge

Wikipedia today lost a legal battle against the UK's tech secretary to tighten the criteria around the Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA), as it seeks to exclude itself from the strictest regulations.…

Amid hints by president he may announce 100% tariffs on imported chips, semiconductors

Intel boss Lip-Bu Tan reportedly has an appointment at the White House today, just days after President Donald Trump called for his resignation. The move comes as Intel's former CEO Craig Barrett weighs in on the troubled chipmaker's future.…

By video, picture, and voice – the fakers are coming for your money

DEF CON  While AI was on everyone's lips in Las Vegas this week at the trio of security conferences in Sin City – BSides, Black Hat, AND DEF CON – there were a lot of people using the F-word too: fraud.…

Many core offerings now back in action, says retailer

British retailer Marks and Spencer updated its website today, confirming its Click & Collect service is once again available to customers.…

And yes, that means (retch) catering to AI searchers

The job market is queasy and since you're reading this, you need to upgrade your CV. It's going to require some work to game the poorly trained AIs now doing so much of the heavy lifting. I know you don't want to, but it's best to think of this as dealing with a buggy lump of undocumented code, because frankly that's what is between you and your next job.…