ARPA-H joins DARPA's AIxCC, adds $20M to cash rewards Interview As ransomware gangs target critical infrastructure – especially hospitals and other healthcare organizations – DARPA has added another government agency partner to its Artificial Intelligence Cyber Challenge (AIxCC).... [...]

Plus: Alleged front sanctioned, UK blames PRC for Electoral Commission theft, and does America need a Cyber Force? The United States on Monday accused seven Chinese men of breaking into computer networks, email accounts, and cloud storage belonging to numerous critical infrastructure organizations, companies, and individuals, including US businesses …

Just 35.5M names, addresses, emails, phone numbers... no biggie Clothing and footwear giant VF Corporation is letting 35.5 million of its customers know they may find themselves victims of identity theft following last year's security breach.... [...]

Forget the Riesling, bring on the WINELOADER The Kremlin's cyberspies targeted German political parties in a phishing campaign that used emails disguised as dinner party invitations, according to Mandiant.... [...]

Crew may well be working under contract for Beijing Chinese spies exploited a couple of critical-severity bugs in F5 and ConnectWise equipment earlier this year to sell access to compromised US defense organizations, UK government agencies, and hundreds of other entities, according to Mandiant.... [...]

The device that makes it possible is required in all American big rigs, and has poor security Vulnerabilities in common Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs) required in US commercial trucks could be present in over 14 million medium- and heavy-duty rigs, according to boffins at Colorado State University.... [...]

You better watch out, you better not cry, better not pout, they're telling you why The US government has recommended a series of steps that critical infrastructure operators should take to prevent distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.... [...]

Phishing season started early with crims intent on the hooking early filers As the digital wolves dress in sheep's tax forms, Microsoft has thrown a spotlight on a crafty 2024 phishing expedition, unraveled in January, that preys on the unsuspecting herd of early tax filers.... [...]

At least 31,031 people affected last year Stalkerware has reached "pandemic proportions," according to Kaspersky, which documented a total of 31,031 people affected by the intrusive software in 2023 – up almost six percent on the prior year.... [...]

Unless you want to be the next Change Healthcare, that is The Feds and friends yesterday issued yet another warning about China's Volt Typhoon gang, this time urging critical infrastructure owners and operators to protect their facilities against destructive cyber attacks that may be brewing.... [...]

Plus potential links to I-Soon, researchers say Chinese cyberspies have compromised at least 70 organizations, mostly government entities, and targeted more than 116 victims across the globe, according to security researchers.... [...]

Sneaky software slips past shields, spurring scramble Fujitsu has confirmed that miscreants have compromised some of its internal computers, deployed malware, and may have stolen some customer information.... [...]

Sneaky software slips past shields, spurring scramble Fujitsu has confirmed that miscreants have compromised some of its internal computers, deployed malware, and may have stolen some customer information.... [...]

Telco reckons data is old, isn't from its systems More than 70 million records, allegedly stolen from AT&T in 2021, were dumped on a cybercrime forum at the weekend.... [...]

Uncle Sam can use this snooping tool, too, but that's beside the point There's another Chinese-manufactured product – joining the likes of TikTok, cars and semiconductors – that poses a national security risk to Americans: electronic locks, such as those used in safes.... [...]

Canadian-Russian said to have turned to a life of cybercrime during pandemic, now must pay the price – literally A LockBit ransomware kingpin has been sentenced to almost four years behind bars and ordered to pay more than CA$860,000 ($635,000, £500,000) in restitution to some of …

Will the WEF experiment work? The Cybercrime Atlas, a massive undertaking that aims to disrupt cybercriminals across the globe, enters its operational phase in 2024, two years after organizers laid the groundwork at the RSA Conference.... [...]

A $2M drop from previous year. So... things are more secure? Google awarded $10 million to 632 bug hunters last year through its vulnerability reward programs.... [...]

Critical bugs galore among 61 Microsoft fixes, 56 from Adobe, a dozen from SAP, and a fistful from Fortinet Patch Tuesday Microsoft's monthly patch drop has arrived, delivering a mere 61 CVE-tagged vulnerabilities – none listed as under active attack or already known to the public.... [...]

Plus almost $1.5b for health-care cybersecurity US President Joe Biden has asked Congress to approve an extra $103 million in funding for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, bringing CISA's total budget to $3 billion.... [...]

US senator calls cyber attack 'inexcusable,' calls for mandatory security rules The Biden administration and US lawmakers are turning up the pressure on UnitedHealth group to ease medical providers' pain after the ransomware attack on Change Healthcare, by expediting payments to hospitals, physicians and pharmacists – among other tactics.... [...]

Don't worry, we have a strong suspicion Putin's still gonna win The Kremlin has accused the United States of meddling in Russia's upcoming presidential election, and even accused Uncle Sam of planning a cyberattack on the country's online voting system.... [...]

Plus: CISA pulls plug on couple of systems feared compromised There's yet another group of miscreants out there hijacking insecure Ivanti devices: A new, financially motivated gang dubbed Magnet Goblin has emerged from the shadowy digital depths with a knack for rapidly exploiting newly disclosed vulnerabilities before vendors have …

Still 'no evidence' of any compromised customer-facing systems, we're told Microsoft has now confirmed that the Russian cyberspies who broke into its executives' email accounts stole source code and gained access to internal systems. The Redmond giant also characterized the intrusion as "ongoing."... [...]

CISA announces more help, and calls on app makers to step up The US government and some of the largest open source foundations and package repositories have announced a series of initiatives intended to improve software supply-chain security, while also repeating calls for developers to increase support for such …