Both the US and UK slapped sanctions on a company called Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology that is believed to be a front for Chinese cyber attacks. The US accused APT31 of a decade-long cyber espionage campaign.
Attacker can initiate an essentially endless error message string against a target that will eventually result in a DoS attack consuming all available resources. The study’s authors believe that there are about 300,000 vulnerable systems.
The researchers have been tracking the Chinese APT group’s activity for about two years, and in that time have confirmed at least 70 victims in 23 countries. 48 of these have been government organizations.
The Biden administration’s proposed cybersecurity budget for 2025 would increase spending by over $1 billion, but it is presently queued up behind the ongoing unresolved debate over 2024’s spending.
A massive data breach involving France’s national unemployment agency is thought to impact 43 million people, dating back through 20 years of records of those seeking employment assistance and benefits.
Researchers demonstrated multiple prompt injection attacks and content manipulation methods affecting Google Gemini, all in relatively simple ways that have previously compromised other AI systems.
The EU’s AI law has passed its last major hurdle in the European Parliament with massive support, and pending some final formalities in the coming weeks is about to go into force.
The total reported cost of cybercrime in 2023 was $12.5 billion; this number has tended to see leaps of two to three billion each year since 2019, when it was only at $3.5 billion. This is only the cost determined by incidents logged by the FBI, however.
Another leading ransomware gang appears to have folded to international law enforcement pressure, as BlackCat has closed up shop roughly three months after having infrastructure seized by an FBI-led coalition. The group has chosen to burn bridges on its way out, however, pulling an exit scam on its remaining affiliates.
The January attack on Microsoft was worse than initially reported, with an update from the company indicating the Russian hackers may have stolen source code and accessed private email exchanges between corporate accounts and customers.