The Register

Six sites targeted for security clean-up, just 49,994 to go

A plan for hackers to help secure America's critical infrastructure has kicked off with six US water companies signing up to let coders kick the tires of their computer systems and fix any vulnerabilities.…

Meanwhile, CISA chief Jen Easterly will step down prior to inauguration

Analysis  President-elect Donald Trump has announced several unorthodox nominations for his cabinet over the last two weeks, including South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, whom he tapped to serve as Homeland Security Secretary. …

He'll just have to take this one on the chin

The website of self-proclaimed misogynist and alleged sex trafficker and rapist Andrew Tate has been compromised and data on its paying subscribers stolen.…

PAN-PAN! Intruders inject web shell backdoors, crypto-coin miners, more

Thousands of Palo Alto Networks firewalls were compromised by attackers exploiting two recently patched security bugs. The intruders were able to deploy web-accessible backdoors to remotely control the equipment as well as cryptocurrency miners and other malware.…

Get some advice from this discussion with a Kaseya expert

Webinar  Want to access the key takeaways from the recent "Secure Everything for Every Endpoint" webinar?…

Fledgling band of crooks says it stole 1.2 TB of data

The new SafePay ransomware gang has claimed responsibility for the attack on UK telematics biz Microlise, giving the company less than 24 hours to pay its extortion demands before leaking data.…

Organized crime types tend not to be kind to those who go against them, so this is nasty

A local Japanese government agency dedicated to preventing organized crime has apologized after experiencing an incident it fears may have led to a leak of personal information describing 2,500 people who reached out to it for consultation.…

TL;DR: Attackers will break in and pwn you, as a US government red team demonstrated

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency often breaks into critical organizations' networks – with their permission, of course – to simulate real-world cyber attacks and thereby help improve their security. In one of those recent exercises conducted at a critical infrastructure provider, the Agency exploited a web shell left behind from an earlier bug bounty program, scooped up a bunch of credentials and security keys, moved through the network and ultimately pwned the org's domain and several sensitive business system targets.…

VotingWorks, developer of the system, disputes critics' claims

An electronic voting project backed by DARPA – Uncle Sam's boffinry nerve center – to improve the process of absentee voting for American military personnel stationed abroad has been slammed by security researchers.…

Danish military confirms it is monitoring as Swedish police investigate. Cloudflare says impact was 'minimal'

The Danish military has confirmed it is tracking a Chinese ship that is under investigation after two optical fiber internet cables under the Baltic Sea were damaged.…

Update now: Qualys says vulnerabilities give root and are 'easily exploitable'

Researchers at Qualys refuse to release exploit code for five bugs in Ubuntu Server's needrestart utility that allow unprivileged attackers to gain root access without any user interaction.…

Draft doc struggles to describe how theoretically encryption-busting powers might be used

The UK government has set out plans detailing how it will use the new law it has created to control online platforms and social media – with one telling exception.…

Digital end of life planning saves your loved ones from a little extra anguish

Japan's National Consumer Affairs Center on Wednesday suggested citizens start "digital end of life planning" and offered tips on how to do it.…

DoJ also shutters allleged crimeware and credit card mart PopeyeTools

The US Department of Justice has issued an indictment that names five people accused of stealing millions in cryptocurrency – and we are told they are suspected members of cyber-gang Scattered Spider.…

Meet Liminal Panda, which prowls telecom networks in South Asia and Africa

A senior US senator has warned that American tech companies’ activities in China represent a national security risk, in a hearing that saw infosec biz CrowdStrike testify it has identified another cyber-espionage crew it believes is backed by Beijing.…

Change Healthcare’s $2 billion recovery is still a work in progress

Still reeling from its February ransomware attack, Change Healthcare confirms its clearinghouse services are back up and running, almost exactly nine months since the digital disruption began.…

OSS-Fuzz is making a strong argument for LLMs in security research

Google's OSS-Fuzz project, which uses large language models (LLMs) to help find bugs in code repositories, has now helped identify 26 vulnerabilities, including a critical flaw in the widely used OpenSSL library.…

Vendor offers 20% discount on new model, but not patches

Owners of older models of D-Link VPN routers are being told to retire and replace their devices following the disclosure of a serious remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability.…

CISOs are quietly wishing they had less data, because the cost of management sometimes exceeds its value

I recently got to play a 'fly on the wall' at a roundtable of chief information security officers. Beyond the expected griping and moaning about funding shortfalls and always-too-gullible users, I began to hear a new note: data has become a problem.…

Ransomware scum LockBit claims it did the dirty deed

Equinox, a New York State health and human services organization, has begun notifying over 21 thousand clients and staff that cyber criminals stole their health, financial, and personal information in a "data security incident" nearly seven months ago.…