Enlarge / Some ASCII art of our favorite visual cliche for a hacker. (credit: Getty Images) Researchers have discovered a new way to hack AI assistants that uses a surprisingly old-school method: ASCII art. It turns out that chat-based large language models such as GPT-4 get so distracted trying to …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Charles O'Rear) A dual Canadian-Russian national has been sentenced to four years in prison for his role in infecting more than 1,000 victims with the LockBit ransomware and then extorting them for tens of millions of dollars. Mikhail Vasiliev, a 33-year-old who most recently …

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images) AI assistants have been widely available for a little more than a year, and they already have access to our most private thoughts and business secrets. People ask them about becoming pregnant or terminating or preventing pregnancy, consult them when considering a divorce …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Researchers have unearthed Linux malware that circulated in the wild for at least two years before being identified as a credential stealer that’s installed by the exploitation of recently patched vulnerabilities. The newly identified malware is a Linux variant of NerbianRAT, a remote access …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) Microsoft said that Kremlin-backed hackers who breached its corporate network in January have expanded their access since then in follow-on attacks that are targeting customers and have compromised the company's source code and internal systems. The intrusion, which the software company disclosed in January, was …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Attackers have transformed hundreds of hacked sites running WordPress software into command-and-control servers that force visitors’ browsers to perform password-cracking attacks. A web search for the JavaScript that performs the attack showed it was hosted on 708 sites at the time this post went live …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) VMware is urging customers to patch critical vulnerabilities that make it possible for hackers to break out of sandbox and hypervisor protections in all versions, including out-of-support ones, of VMware ESXi, Workstation, Fusion, and Cloud Foundation products. A constellation of four vulnerabilities—two carrying severity …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) The ransomware group responsible for hamstringing the prescription drug market for two weeks has suddenly gone dark, just days after receiving a $22 million payment and standing accused of scamming an affiliate out of its share of the loot. The events involve AlphV, a ransomware …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) Hackers backed by the North Korean government gained a major win when Microsoft left a Windows zero-day unpatched for six months after learning it was under active exploitation. Even after Microsoft patched the vulnerability last month, the company made no mention that the North Korean …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Nine days after a Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate took down the biggest US health care payment processor, pharmacies, health care providers, and patients were still scrambling to fill prescriptions for medicines, many of which are lifesaving. On Thursday, UnitedHealth Group accused a notorious ransomware gang known …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Code uploaded to AI developer platform Hugging Face covertly installed backdoors and other types of malware on end-user machines, researchers from security firm JFrog said Thursday in a report that’s a likely harbinger of what’s to come. In all, JFrog researchers said, they …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) GitHub is struggling to contain an ongoing attack that’s flooding the site with millions of code repositories. These repositories contain obfuscated malware that steals passwords and cryptocurrency from developer devices, researchers said. The malicious repositories are clones of legitimate ones, making them hard to …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) The FBI and partners from 10 other countries are urging owners of Ubiquiti EdgeRouters to check their gear for signs they’ve been hacked and are being used to conceal ongoing malicious operations by Russian state hackers. The Ubiquiti EdgeRouters make an ideal hideout for …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) Two days after an international team of authorities struck a major blow at LockBit, one of the Internet’s most prolific ransomware syndicates, researchers have detected a new round of attacks that are installing malware associated with the group. The attacks, detected in the past …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) iMessage is getting a major makeover that makes it among the two messaging apps most prepared to withstand the coming advent of quantum computing, largely at parity with Signal or arguably incrementally more hardened. On Wednesday, Apple said messages sent through iMessage will now be …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) After years of being outmaneuvered by snarky ransomware criminals who tease and brag about each new victim they claim, international authorities finally got their chance to turn the tables, and they aren't squandering it. The top-notch trolling came after authorities from the US, UK, and …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Hundreds of Microsoft Azure accounts, some belonging to senior executives, are being targeted by unknown attackers in an ongoing campaign that's aiming to steal sensitive data and financial assets from dozens of organizations, researchers with security firm Proofpoint said Monday. The campaign attempts to compromise …

Enlarge / A Flipper Zero device (credit: https://flipperzero.one/) Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has identified an unlikely public enemy No. 1 in his new crackdown on car theft: the Flipper Zero, a $200 piece of open source hardware used to capture, analyze and interact with simple radio communications …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) As Apple has stepped up its promotion of its App Store as a safer and more trustworthy source of apps, its operators scrambled Thursday to correct a major threat to that narrative: a listing that password manager maker LastPass said was a “fraudulent app impersonating …

Enlarge Linux developers are in the process of patching a high-severity vulnerability that, in certain cases, allows the installation of malware that runs at the firmware level, giving infections access to the deepest parts of a device where they’re hard to detect or remove. The vulnerability resides in …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) Mass exploitation began over the weekend for yet another critical vulnerability in widely used VPN software sold by Ivanti, as hackers already targeting two previous vulnerabilities diversified, researchers said Monday. The new vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-21893, is what’s known as a server-side request forgery …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Federal civilian agencies have until midnight Saturday morning to sever all network connections to Ivanti VPN software, which is currently under mass exploitation by multiple threat groups. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency mandated the move on Wednesday after disclosing three critical vulnerabilities in …

Enlarge / A Wi-Fi router. (credit: Getty Images | deepblue4you ) The US Justice Department said Wednesday that the FBI surreptitiously sent commands to hundreds of infected small office and home office routers to remove malware China state-sponsored hackers were using to wage attacks on critical infrastructure. The routers—mainly Cisco and …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Ars Technica was recently used to serve second-stage malware in a campaign that used a never-before-seen attack chain to cleverly cover its tracks, researchers from security firm Mandiant reported Tuesday. A benign image of a pizza was uploaded to a third-party website and was then …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) OpenAI officials say that the ChatGPT histories a user reported result from his ChatGPT account being compromised. The unauthorized logins came from Sri Lanka, an Open AI representative said. The user said he logs into his account from Brooklyn, New York. “From what we discovered …