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Connected devices can leave an otherwise secure network vulnerable

Pwned  Welcome to Pwned, The Register's new column, where we highlight the worst infosec own goals so you can, hopefully, protect against them. Caffeine is an essential tool for most IT defenders, so, on balance, we're sure it has protected against a lot more exploits than it has caused. But in this case, the desire for everyone's favorite stimulant led to a massive breach.…

First public downstream victim, but won't be the last

AI hiring startup Mercor confirmed it was "one of thousands of companies" affected by the LiteLLM supply-chain attack as the fallout from the Trivy compromise continues to spread.…

Plus: how to train your human AI

interview  Amazon has seen a 40 percent efficiency gain by using AI tools to pentest its products before and after launch, according to security chief CJ Moses.…

We could tell you no for free

The UK government will spend about £630,000 running a discussion panel on its digital identity card plans, which minister James Frith said will "consider different perspectives and debate trade-offs" alongside a formal consultation.…

ESET says factory outages, lost revenue, and supply chain disruption are becoming routine

Nearly 80 percent of British manufacturers say they've been hit by a cyber incident in the past year, as new research suggests disruption on the factory floor is no longer an exception but business as usual.…

How to avoid social engineering attacks? Employee training tops the list

Be careful what you click on. Miscreants are abusing WhatsApp messages in a multi-stage attack that delivers malicious Microsoft Installer (MSI) packages, allowing criminals to control victims' machines and access all of their data.…

Researchers say some targets correlate with cities hit by Iranian missile strikes

Suspected Iran-linked threat actors are conducting password-spraying attacks against hundreds of organizations, primarily Middle Eastern municipalities, in campaigns that security researchers believe may have been aimed at supporting bomb-damage assessment following missile strikes.…

Hijacked maintainer account let attackers slip cross-platform trojan into 100M-downloads-a-week Axios

One of npm's most widely used HTTP client libraries briefly became a malware delivery vehicle after attackers hijacked a maintainer's account and slipped a remote-access trojan (RAT) into two seemingly legitimate axios releases, in what's being described as "one of the most impactful npm supply chain attacks on record."…

Check Point says outbound controls blocked web traffic but overlooked DNS

OpenAI talks up data security for its AI services, yet Check Point says that ChatGPT allowed data to leak through a DNS side channel before the flaw was fixed.…

Also, EU probes Snapchat, RedLine suspect extradited, AstraZeneca leak claim surfaces, and more

infosec in brief  The cybercrime crew linked to the Trivy supply-chain attack has struck again, this time pushing malicious Telnyx package versions to PyPI in an effort to plant credential-stealing malware on developers’ systems.…