The Register

Election infosec advisory agency also shuttered

A penetration tester who worked at the US govt's CISA claims his 100-strong team was dismissed after Elon Musk's Trump-blessed DOGE unit cancelled a contract – and that more staff at the cybersecurity agency have also been let go.…

Microsoft tackles 50-plus security blunders, Adobe splats 3D bugs, and Apple deals with a doozy

Patch Tuesday  Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday bundle has appeared, with a dirty dozen flaws competing for your urgent attention – six of them rated critical and another six already being exploited by criminals.…

Non-password-protected, unencrypted 108GB database…what could possibly go wrong

Exclusive  More than 86,000 records containing nurses' medical records, facial images, ID documents and more sensitive info linked to health tech company ESHYFT was left sitting in a wide-open S3 bucket for months — or possibly even longer — before it was closed it last week.…

Oh wow, just looks at all the scary stuff in your Windows Event Viewer

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is distributing over $25.5 million in refunds to consumers deceived by tech support scammers, averaging about $34 per person.…

Nothing like an OpenAI-powered agent leaking data or getting confused over what someone else whispered to it

AI models with memory aim to enhance user interactions by recalling past engagements. However, this feature opens the door to manipulation.…

Crooks built bots to exploit astoundingly bad quotation website and made off with data on thousands

New York State has sued Allstate Insurance for operating websites so badly designed they would deliver personal information in plain-text to anyone that went looking for it.…

Expired cert kerfuffle leaves second-gen, Audio gadgets useless

Google's second-generation Chromecast and its Chromecast Audio are suffering a major ongoing outage, with devices failing to cast due to an expired security certificate. The web giant is aware of the breakdown and says a fix is in the works.…

Phishing and ancient vulns still do the trick for one of the most prolific groups around

Researchers say the Sidewinder offensive cyber crew is starting to target maritime and nuclear organizations.…

Terabytes of sensitive info remain available for download

Break-ins to systems hosting the data of two US healthcare organizations led to thieves making off with the personal and medical data of more than 300,000 patients.…

Study finds 4 out of 6 providers don't do enough to stop impersonation

Four out of six companies offering AI voice cloning software fail to provide meaningful safeguards against the misuse of their products, according to research conducted by Consumer Reports.…

Experts say that the way you handle things after the criminals break in can make things better or much, much worse

Feature  Experiencing a ransomware infection or other security breach ranks among the worst days of anyone's life — but it can still get worse.…

Insiders say board members must be held accountable and drive positive change from the top down

Analysis  Walk into any hospital and ask the same question – "Which security system should we invest in?" – to both a doctor and a board member, and you may get different answers. The doctor chooses the system that leads to the most positive patient outcomes, while the board member chooses whichever solution is best for their increasingly stretched budget.…

Likening memory safety bugs to smallpox may not soothe sensitive C coders

Rust is alive and well in the Linux kernel and is expected to translate into noticeable benefits shortly, though its integration with the largely C-oriented codebase still looks uneasy.…

Also, phone cleaner apps are a data-sucking scam, Singapore considering the literal rod for scammers, and more

Infosec in Brief  Microsoft has spotted a malvertising campaign that downloaded nastyware hosted on GitHub and exposed nearly a million devices to information thieves.…

PLUS: Malaysia teams with Arm for local chip designs; NTT warns of possible breach; Samsung strikers settle; and more

Asia in Brief  India’s government has proposed giving its tax authorities sweeping powers to access private email systems and applications.…

iPhone giant compartmentalizes OS for the sake of security

Apple has been working to harden the XNU kernel that powers its various operating systems, including iOS and macOS, with a feature called "exclaves."…

IsDavisLuEnabledInActiveDirectory? Not any more. IsDavisLuGuilty? Yes. IsDavisLuFacingJail? Also yes

A federal jury in Cleveland has found a senior software developer guilty of sabotaging his employer's systems – and he's now facing a potential ten years behind bars.…

$96B in transactions, some even labeled 'dirty funds,' since 2019, say prosecutors

The Feds today revealed more details about the US Secret Service-led Garantex takedown, a day after seizing websites and freezing assets belonging to the Russian cryptocurrency exchange in coordination with German and Finnish law enforcement agencies.…

I knew you were trouble, Queens DA might have said

Police have made two arrests in their quest to start a cybercrime crew's prison eras, alleging the pair stole hundreds of Taylor Swift tickets and sold them for huge profit. …

Which is why taking down chiefs and infra behind big name brand operations isn't working

Interview  There's a handful of cybercriminal gangs that Jason Baker, a ransomware negotiator with GuidePoint Security, regularly gets called in to respond to these days, and a year ago only one of these crews — Akira — was on threat hunters' radars and infecting organizations with the same ferocity as it is today.…