Latest posts

  • He called himself an ‘untouchable hacker god’. But who was behind the biggest crime Finland has ever known?

    How would you feel if your therapist’s notes – your darkest thoughts and deepest feelings – were exposed to the world? For 33,000 Finnish people, that became a terrifying reality, with deadly consequences Tiina Parikka was half-naked when she read the email. It was a Saturday in late October 2020, and Parikka had spent the…

    Read more

  • ‘This will be a stressful job’: Sam Altman offers $555k salary to fill most daunting role in AI

    New head of preparedness at OpenAI will face unnerving in-tray amid fears from some experts that AI could ‘turn on us’ The maker of ChatGPT has advertised a $555,000-a-year vacancy with a daunting job description that would cause Superman to take a sharp intake of breath. In what may be close to the impossible job,…

    Read more

  • ‘Why should we pay these criminals?’: the hidden world of ransomware negotiations

    Cybersecurity experts reveal what they do for high-profile clients targeted by hackers such as Scattered Spider They call it “stopping the bleeding”: the vital window to prevent an entire database from being ransacked by criminals or a production line grinding to a halt. When a call comes into the cybersecurity firm S-RM, headquartered on Whitechapel…

    Read more

  • UK Foreign Office victim of cyber-attack in October, says Chris Bryant

    Minister says ‘any individual’ at low risk from hack, while Sun reports Chinese cyber gang responsible for breach The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office was hacked in October, the minister Chris Bryant has said. Bryant, a trade minister in Keir Starmer’s government, told Sky News there was a low risk to “any individual” from…

    Read more

  • London councils enact emergency plans after three hit by cyber-attack

    Kensington and Westminster councils investigating whether data has been compromised as Hammersmith and Fulham also reports hack Three London councils have reported a cyber-attack, prompting the rollout of emergency plans and the involvement of the National Crime Agency (NCA) as they investigate whether any data has been compromised. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea…

    Read more

  • AI firm claims it stopped Chinese state-sponsored cyber-attack campaign

    Anthropic says financial firms and government agencies were attacked ‘largely without human intervention’ A leading artificial intelligence company claims to have stopped a China-backed “cyber espionage” campaign that was able to infiltrate financial firms and government agencies with almost no human oversight. The US-based Anthropic said its coding tool, Claude Code, was “manipulated” by a…

    Read more

  • ‘I lost 25 pounds in 20 days’: what it’s like to be on the frontline of a global cyber-attack

    The security chief of SolarWinds reflects on the Russian hack that exposed US government agencies – and the heart attack he suffered in the aftermath Tim Brown will remember 12 December 2020 for ever. It was the day the software company SolarWinds was notified it had been hacked by Russia. Continue reading…

    Read more

  • Cyber-attacks rise by 50% in past year, UK security agency says

    Officials say increased dependence on technology leaves society more vulnerable to threats such as ransomware “Highly significant” cyber-attacks rose by 50% in the past year and the UK’s security services are now dealing with a new nationally significant attack more than every other day, figures from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) have revealed. In…

    Read more

  • Hack of age verification firm may have exposed 70,000 Discord users’ ID photos

    Names, email addresses and other contact details of users from around the world could also have been taken Government ID photos of about 70,000 global users of Discord, a popular messaging and chat platform among video gamers, may have been exposed after hackers compromised a company contracted to carry out age verification checks. Some users’…

    Read more

  • Six out of 10 UK secondary schools hit by cyber-attack or breach in past year

    Hackers are more likely to target educational institutions than private businesses, government survey shows When hackers attacked UK nurseries last month and published children’s data online, they were accused of hitting a new low. But the broader education sector is well used to being a target. Continue reading…

    Read more