The Register

AI attacks are keeping most practitioners up at night, says Darktrace, and with good reason

Sponsored feature  From the written word through to gunpowder and email, whenever an enabling technology comes along, you can be sure someone will be ready to use it for evil. Most tech is dual-use, and AI is no exception.…

They're smishing, they're vishing

The FBI has warned that fraudsters are impersonating "senior US officials" using deepfakes as part of a major fraud campaign.…

Entire process took less than five minutes, prosecutors say

A former DoorDash driver has pleaded guilty to participating in a $2.59 million scheme that used fake accounts, insider access to reassign orders, and bogus delivery reports to trigger payouts for food that was never delivered.…

DragonForce-riding ransomware ring also has 'shiny object syndrome' so will likely move on to another sector soon

Interview  The same miscreants behind recent cyberattacks on British retailers are now trying to dig their claws into major American retailers' IT environments – and in some cases even deploying ransomware, according to Google.…

One expert tells us: 'It is the most unique breach disclosure I've ever seen'

Coinbase says some of its overseas support staff were paid off to steal information on behalf of cybercriminals, and the company is now being extorted for $20 million.…

Sometimes, less information is more

In its latest gambit to reduce the noise of unnecessary security alerts, Socket has acquired Coana, a startup founded in 2022 by researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark that tells users which vulnerabilities they can safely ignore.…

Lessons learned from last year's security snafu

interview  Being the chief information security officer at Snowflake is never an easy job, but last spring it was especially challenging.…

Would you believe it, this RaaS cartel says Russia is off limits

DragonForce, a new-ish ransomware-as-a-service operation, has given organizations another cyber threat to worry about — unless they’re in Russia, which is off limits to the would-be extortionists.…

Ransomware or critical infra hit? Top US manufacturer maintains steely silence

Nucor, the largest steel manufacturer in the US, shut down production operations after discovering its servers had been penetrated.…

How Adversarial Exposure Validation is changing the way we approach vulnerability management

Partner content  Two decades ago, CVSS revolutionized vulnerability management, enabling security teams to speak a common language when measuring and prioritizing risks posed by the vulnerability to the affected asset. However, today, the same tool that once guided us in the right direction is holding us back.…

Nightwing claims insider intel helped secure lucrative CISA work but US says decision is unrelated

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) scrapped a highly lucrative cybersecurity contract originally awarded to Leidos following a legal challenge from rival bidder Nightwing, yet insists the pushback had nothing to do with it.…

Vendor says vulns are linked with 2 mystery open source libraries integrated into EPMM product

Australia's intelligence agency is warning organizations about several new Ivanti zero-days chained for remote code execution (RCE) attacks. The vendor itself has said the vulns are linked to two mystery open source libraries which it declined to name.…

'Legitimate interest' won't wash, says privacy outfit, as Zuck's org claims activists want to 'delay AI innovation'

There's a Max Schrems-shaped object standing in the way of Meta's plans to train its AI on the data of its European users, and he's come armed with several justifications for why Zuckercorp might be violating EU regulations with its stated plans. …

Admits due diligence fell short - furious users cry ‘gaslighting’

Customers are blasting VPN Secure's new parent company after it abruptly axed thousands of "lifetime" accounts. The reason? The CEO admits in an interview with The Register that his team didn't dig deep enough before acquiring the virtual private network outfit, and simply can't afford to honor those legacy deals.…

No rush, according to Gartner chap who says: 'Nobody has ever out-patched threat actors at scale'

Patch Tuesday has rolled around again, but if you don't rush to implement the feast of fixes it delivered, your security won't be any worse off in the short term – and may improve in the future.…

Crickets as senior security folk asked about risks at NCSC conference

CYBERUK  Peter Garraghan – CEO of Mindgard and professor of distributed systems at Lancaster University – asked the CYBERUK audience for a show of hands: how many had banned generative AI in their organizations? Three hands went up.…

Defenses are weaker, and victims are more likely to pay, SANS warns

Criminals who attempt to damage critical infrastructure are increasingly targeting the systems that sit between IT and operational tech.…

Plus: All the fun and frolic of fixes from Adobe, SAP, Ivanti

Patch Tuesday  It's that time of the month again, and Microsoft has made it extra spicy by revealing five flaws it says are under active exploitation – but rates as important rather than critical fixes.…

ETH Zurich boffins exploit branch prediction race condition to steal info from memory, fixes have mild perf hit

Researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland have found a way around Intel's defenses against Spectre, a family of data-leaking flaws in the x86 giant's processor designs that simply won't die.…

Air Force Dumb

The Trump administration is set to accept a $400 million luxury 747-8 from the royal family of Qatar – a lavish "palace in the sky" meant as a temporary Air Force One. But getting it up to presidential security standards could take years and cost hundreds of millions more.…