News

Model was fine-tuned to write vulnerable software – then suggested enslaving humanity

Computer scientists have found that fine-tuning notionally safe large language models to do one thing badly can negatively impact the AI’s output across a range of topics.…

Boffins poked around inside censorship engines for years before Beijing patched hole

Smart folks investigating a memory-dumping vulnerability in the Great Firewall of China (GFW) finally released their findings after probing it for years.…

244M purloined passwords added to Have I Been Pwned thanks to govt tip-off

A tip-off from a government agency has resulted in 284 million unique email addresses and plenty of passwords snarfed by credential-stealing malware being added to privacy-breach-notification service Have I Been Pwned (HIBP).…

Up to $140M in bounty rewards for return of Ethereum allegedly pilfered by hermit nation

Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, just days after suspected North Korean operatives stole $1.5 billion in Ethereum from it, has launched a bounty program to help recover its funds.…

Starting with Snapdragon 8 Elite and 'droid 15

It seems manufacturers are finally getting the message that people want to use their kit for longer without security issues, as Qualcomm has said it'll provide Android software updates, including vulnerability fixes, for its latest chipsets for eight years instead of four.…

Experts warned the UK’s recent 'victory' over Apple would kickstart something of a domino effect

Signal CEO Meredith Whittaker says her company will withdraw from countries that force messaging providers to allow law enforcement officials to access encrypted user data, as Sweden continues to mull such plans.…

Plus: DOGE staff quit; LastPass PC, Mac gasp; and CISA warns Oracle and Adobe flaws under attack

Infosec bytes  Kaspersky says it has found more than 200 GitHub repos hosting fairly convincing-looking fake projects laced with malicious software.…

Plus: New figurehead of DOGE emerges and they aren't called Elon

During confirmation hearings in the US Senate Tuesday for the role of deputy director of the Dept of Homeland Security, the nominee Troy Edgar said CISA has had the wrong management and needed to be "reined in."…

If there's something nasty on your employment record, extortion scum could come calling

DISA Global Solutions, a company that provides drug and alcohol testing, background checks and other employee screening services, this week notified over 3.3 million people that their sensitive information may have been stolen by miscreants.…

Of course, Microsoft is in the mix, isn't it

Chinese spies reportedly broke into the US Republication National Committee's Microsoft-powered email and snooped around for months before being caught.…

Is a trivial remote-code execution hole in every version part of the training, or?

The smart cookie who discovered a perfect 10-out-of-10-severity remote code execution (RCE) bug in MITRE's Caldera security training platform has urged users to "immediately pull down the latest version." As in, download it and install it.…

More than a dozen women came forward with accusations

Details about the harassment allegations leveled at DEF CON veteran Christopher Hadnagy have now been revealed after a motion for summary judgment was filed over the weekend.…

Why organizations should protect everything, everywhere, all at once

Sponsored Feature  Considering it has such a large share of the data protection market, Veeam doesn't talk much about backups in meetings with enterprise customers these days.…

Sly like a PRC cyberattack

A Chinese government-backed group is spoofing legitimate medical software to hijack hospital patients' computers, infecting them with backdoors, credential-swiping keyloggers, and cryptominers.…

Fuxnet and FrostyGoop were both used in the Russia-Ukraine war

Two new malware variants specifically designed to disrupt critical industrial processes were set loose on operational technology networks last year, shutting off heat to more than 600 apartment buildings in one instance and jamming communications to gas, water, and sewage network sensors in the other.…

Leaked chats and spilled secrets as AI helps decode circa 200K private talks

Southern Water neither confirms nor denies offering Black Basta a $750,000 ransom payment following its ransomware attack in 2024.…

Blueprints shared for jail-breaking models that expose their chain-of-thought process

Analysis  AI models like OpenAI o1/o3, DeepSeek-R1, and Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking can mimic human reasoning through a process called chain of thought.…

Everyone knew texted OTPs were a dud back in 2016

Google has confirmed it will phase out the use of SMS text messages for multi-factor authentication in favor of more secure technologies.…

'Appropriate action will be taken,' we're told – as federal HR email sparks uproar, ax falls on CISA staff

Visitors to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's headquarters in the capital got some unpleasant viewing on Monday morning after TV screens across the building began showing a deepfake video of President Trump kissing and sucking Elon Musk's toes.…

Four domains to build resilience

Partner Content  Security can feel like fighting a losing battle, but it doesn't have to be.…