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Cybercrime

Law Enforcement Sweeps Up Cybercrime Forums

Akshaya Asokan  •  January 30, 2025

Operators of a cybercrime forums had a bad day Thursday after European and U.S. law enforcement announced server seizures and arrests. The websites of the Nulled, Cracked and HeartSender markets no longer work. They served millions of users.

Microsoft CEO: AI Scaling Laws Drive Efficiency, Lower Costs

Michael Novinson  •  January 29, 2025

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI scaling laws, compounded by Moore’s Law, are accelerating efficiency gains, with a 10x improvement per model generation. He revealed Microsoft’s strategy for optimizing AI costs and highlights DeepSeek-R1’s availability on Azure AI Foundry and GitHub.

Swedish Authorities Seize Vessel in Cable Sabotage Probe

Chris Riotta  •  January 27, 2025

Swedish authorities seized a vessel in the Baltic Sea as part of a criminal investigation into sabotage of an undersea cable between Sweden and Latvia after a series of regional cable disruptions, including one involving suspected Russian shadow fleet activity, raising security concerns.

Application Security

Fenix24 Buys vArmour IP to Boost Cyber Resilience, Recovery

Michael Novinson  •  January 27, 2025

By acquiring vArmour's intellectual property, Fenix24 will enhance its recovery services with advanced application visualization and dependency mapping. CEO Mark Grazman said the move will streamline recovery processes during ransomware attacks and improve organizational readiness.

Cyberwarfare / Nation-State Attacks

Patching Lags for Vulnerabilities Targeted by Salt Typhoon

Mathew J. Schwartz  •  January 24, 2025

Chinese nation-state hackers who surreptitiously gained "broad and full" access to telecommunications networks in the U.S. and dozens of other countries have regularly exploited known flaws in their networking gear that the victims failed to patch, security experts have warned.

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

OpenAI Launches AI Agent 'Operator'

Rashmi Ramesh  •  January 24, 2025

OpenAI introduced an AI agent capable of independent action with the launch of Operator, an general-purpose AI tool that interacts with websites to perform tasks. The agent can navigate menus and complete forms to do tasks such as travel booking, ordering takeout, buying stuff or scheduling tasks.

Cybercrime

Breach Roundup: Researchers Find Flaws in Palo Alto Firewalls

Anviksha More  •  January 23, 2025

This week, researchers spied Palo Alto firewall flaws, a North Korean IT worker conspiracy, ChatGPT as DDoS vector. Chinese hackers targeted a VPN maker, a fake PyPI package and a Russian threat actor shifted tactics. BreachForums' admin faces prison, and scammers used the release of Ross Ulbricht.

HIPAA/HITECH

15 States Sue HHS to Drop HIPAA Reproductive Health Info Reg

Marianne Kolbasuk McGee  •  January 22, 2025

A Biden administration HIPAA Privacy Rule, which went into effect last June to restrict the disclosure of reproductive health information, is being challenged in federal court by the attorneys general of 15 states. The AGs are asking a Tennessee federal court to overturn the rule.

Cloud Security

Ransomware Campaign Targets Amazon S3 Buckets

Prajeet Nair  •  January 14, 2025

A ransomware group is targeting Amazon S3 buckets, exploiting the data stored there using AWS's server-side encryption with customer keys and demanding a ransom in exchange for the encryption key needed to unlock the data. The group uses compromised or publicly exposed AWS account credentials.

Access Management

1Password Acquires Trelica to Boost SaaS Access Management

Michael Novinson  •  January 7, 2025

The addition of Trelica allows 1Password to accelerate its extended access management roadmap by 18 months. The acquisition emphasizes simplicity for end users while unifying SaaS visibility, device management and identity security under a single solution.

Governance & Risk Management

Longtime Tenable CEO, NetWitness Head Amit Yoran Dies at 54

Michael Novinson  •  January 4, 2025

Amit Yoran - a West Point graduate who founded NetWitness, sold the company to RSA and took Tenable public - died Friday. He was 54. Yoran was diagnosed in March 2024 with a treatable form of cancer, and in December temporarily stepped away from his role as Tenable's CEO to get additional treatment.

Blockchain & Cryptocurrency

Ex-Terraform CEO Extradited to US Over Crypto Fraud Charges

Chris Riotta  •  January 2, 2025

Do Hyeong Kwon, former CEO of Terraform Labs, appeared in a Manhattan federal courtroom Thursday after facing extradition from Montenegro over allegations he defrauded investors out of billions of dollars while misrepresenting his company's cryptocurrency and other products.