The Register - Anti-Virus

Kari, are you OK, are you OK, Kari?

Updated  An organization that bankrolls various internet security projects has asked a Washington DC court to prevent the Trump administration from cancelling its federal funding – and expressed fears that if the cash stops flowing, the tools it supports could become harder to access.…

Massive OPSEC fail from the side who brought you 'lock her up'

Updated  Senior Trump administration officials used the messaging app Signal to discuss detailed plans to attack Houthi rebels in Yemen – and accidentally added a journalist to the group in which they chatted.…

Be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting rackets

The FCC is investigating whether Chinese manufacturers black-listed on its so-called Covered List - including Huawei - are still somehow doing business in America, either by misreading the rules or willfully ignoring them.…

Ex-US Air Force officer says companies shouldn't wait for govt mandates

Interview  Former US Air Force cyber officer Sarah Cleveland worries about the threat of a major supply-chain attack from China or another adversarial nation. So she installed solar panels on her house: "Because what if the electric grid goes down?" …

Looking to sort through large volumes of security info? Redmond has your backend

Microsoft's Security Copilot is getting some degree of agency, allowing the underlying AI model to interact more broadly with the company's security software to automate various tasks.…

CEO steps down after multiple failed attempts to take the DNA testing company private

Beleaguered DNA testing biz 23andMe – hit by a massive cyber attack in 2023 – is filing for bankruptcy protection in the US following years of financial uncertainty.…

It's been a very busy week for Digicash Donald's administration

Analysis  Is the US retreating from its hardline stance on crypto? On Friday, the US Treasury Department lifted sanctions imposed on notorious crypto mixer Tornado Cash, once accused of washing billions in illicit crypto for criminals and nation-states alike.…

Throw a spanner in the works, best get good at fixing things. Now, where did you put that spanner?

Opinion  Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. This works well in sane times, less so when "but it's both" is the default. Apply it to Microsoft's decision to make bug reports include not only a working example but a video of the same, and the meter oscillates wildly. What were they thinking? What did they expect?…

PLUS: Russian bug-buyers seeks Telegram flaws; Another WordPress security mess; NIST backlog grows; and more!

Infosec In Brief  Organized crime networks are now reliant on digital tech for most of their activities according to Europol, the European agency that fights international crime on the continent and beyond.…

PLUS: Zoho's Ulaa anointed India’s most patriotic browser; Typhoon-like gang targets Taiwan; Japan debates offensive cyber-ops; and more

Asia In Brief  China’s Cyberspace Administration and Ministry of Public Security has outlawed the use of facial recognition without consent.…

Despite evidence to the contrary as alleged pilfered info goes on sale

Oracle has straight up denied claims by a miscreant that its public cloud offering has been compromised and information stolen.…

Plus AI in the infosec world, why CISA should know its place, and more

Interview  Russia appears to be having second thoughts on how aggressively, or at least how visibly, it attempts to influence American elections, according to a former head of the NSA.…

Made up revenue and pretended to use non-existent data

The former CEO of Kubient, an advertising tech company that developed a cloudy product capable of detecting fraudulent ads, has been jailed for fraud.…

Plus: Customer info stolen from 'parental control' software slinger SpyX; F-35 kill switch denied

Infosec newsbytes  Israeli spyware maker Paragon Solutions pitches its tools as helping governments and law enforcement agencies to catch criminals and terrorists, but a fresh Citizen Lab report claims its software has been used to target journalists, activists, and other civilians.…

Feds want book thrown at Paige Thompson, who pinched 100M customer records

Paige Thompson, the perpetrator of the Capital One data theft, may be sent back behind bars – after an appeals court ruled her sentence of time served plus five years of probation was too lenient.…

So much for that vacation

A US Department of Defense electrical engineer has turned his world upside down after printing 155 pages from 20 documents, all of which were marked top secret and classified, from his DoD workspace, brought them home with him – and was collared on his way to Mexico.…

Palming off the blame using an ‘unknown’ best practice didn’t go down well either

In patching the latest critical remote code execution (RCE) bug in Backup and Replication, software shop Veeam is attracting criticism from researchers for the way it handles uncontrolled deserialization vulnerabilities.…

How to avoid another SolarWinds, Log4j, and XZ Utils situation

Organizations concerned about software supply chain attacks should focus on role-based access control, system monitoring, and boundary protection, according to a new preprint paper on the topic.…

Wow, a government project that could be on time for once ... cos it's gonna be wayyyy more than a decade

The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) today started the post-quantum cryptography (PQC) countdown clock by claiming organizations have ten years to migrate to a safer future.…

SSNs, payment details, and health info too

The Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) says a July 2024 "security incident" exposed sensitive personal data on more than half a million individuals, including financial and health info.…