All posts tagged: data breaches

It Takes 2 Minutes to Hack the EU’s New Age-Verification App

It Takes 2 Minutes to Hack the EU’s New Age-Verification App

Published by skeptic

Planning a big night out at Madison Square Garden? Have fun—but don’t say we didn’t warn you. A WIRED investigation this week revealed new details about the private surveillance state instituted by MSG owner Jim Dolan and his head of security, John Eversole. According to court records and WIRED sources, visitors to the Garden and some other Dolan-owned venues have been subjected to face recognition, social media monitoring, in-person surveillance, and more. The US government’s warrantless wiretap powers hit a roadblock this week. Despite a push from President Donald Trump for a long-term reauthorization of the so-called Section 702 spy program, 20 Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives voted against a full reauthorization, forcing Speaker Mike Johnson to merely extend the program for an additional 10 days. Meta’s Ray-Ban and Oakley AI smartglasses have an image problem—for good reason. More than 70 civil society groups, including the ACLU and the National Organization for Women, sent a letter to the company this week, demanding that it abandon any plans it may have to equip its …

Orbán’s spies were hunting me, says Hungarian journalist accused of espionage – POLITICO

Orbán’s spies were hunting me, says Hungarian journalist accused of espionage – POLITICO

Published by Sam Flores

“That’s when they grabbed all the material they had on me, edited it, spun it around and published it as a sort of kompromat,” Panyi said, referring to a Russian term for compromising material. Szijjártó has acknowledged speaking with Russian counterparts before and after EU meetings, following reporting by The Washington Post that he gave Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reports on what was discussed, and the possible solutions proposed, during EU meetings. On Thursday, Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office Gergely Gulyás announced that the government had filed a criminal complaint against Panyi, accusing him of espionage and collusion with Ukrainian intelligence services. The complaint alleges he shared sensitive information about Szijjártó but does not disclose specific details or evidence. Prosecutors now have to decide whether to launch an investigation or not. The Hungarian Parliament and the Dunabe river in July 2021. | Gergely Besenyei/AFP via Getty Images Orbán and Szijjártó have maintained close relations with the Kremlin — including making multiple trips to meet top-level officials in Moscow — even after the EU …

Sears Exposed AI Chatbot Phone Calls and Text Chats to Anyone on the Web

Sears Exposed AI Chatbot Phone Calls and Text Chats to Anyone on the Web

Published by skeptic

Sears department stores have largely disappeared across the United States, but the brand and its appliance repair service are still in business, complete with a modern twist: an AI chatbot and phone assistant named Samantha. As the historic retailer steps into the future, though, new research shows that conversations people had with the chatbot were publicly exposed online. Since Sears is still a trusted name but largely out of the public eye, security researcher Jeremiah Fowler was surprised and alarmed last month when he found three publicly exposed databases containing massive troves of chat logs, audio files, and text transcriptions of audio that contained personal details about Sears Home Services customers. The Home Services division claims to be the US’s “largest appliance repair service provider” and reports that it performs more than seven million repairs each year. The exposed Sears databases uncovered by Fowler, which have since been secured, contained 3.7 million chat logs, plus 1.4 million audio files and plain text transcripts from 2024 to this year. Fowler found that one CSV file about …

How ‘Handala’ Became the Face of Iran’s Hacker Counterattacks

How ‘Handala’ Became the Face of Iran’s Hacker Counterattacks

Published by skeptic

Since the United States and Israel first unleashed a broad campaign of air strikes across Iran in late February, the cybersecurity industry has warned that the country’s retaliatory measures would include punishing, disruptive cyberattacks against Western targets. Late Tuesday night, the first of those attacks arrived in the US: a devastating breach of the medical technology firm Stryker that has reportedly disabled as many as tens of thousands of computers and paralyzed much of the company’s global operations—all carried out by an Iranian hacker group that calls itself Handala. “We announce to the world that, in retaliation for the brutal attack on the Minab school and in response to ongoing cyber assaults against the infrastructure of the Axis of Resistance, our major cyber operation has been executed with complete success,” read a statement posted to Handala’s website, referencing both the American Tomahawk missile that killed at least 165 civilians at a girl’s school in Iran and numerous hacking operations that the US and Israel have carried out as part of the two countries’ assaults across …