Legal
UK fines water supplier $1.3M for exposing data of 664k customers
The Information Commissioner’s Office has fined South Staffordshire Water Plc and parent company South Staffordshire Plc £963,900 ($1.3 million) over a cyberattack that exposed the personal data of 663,887 customers and employees. The company supplies 330 million liters of drinking water to 1.6 million consumers daily and, in 2022, disclosed that it was the target […]
GM agrees to $12.75M California settlement over sale of drivers’ data
California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a $12.75 million settlement agreement with General Motors (GM) over allegations that the company violated the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). The violations arise from allegations that the car maker illegally collected and sold Californians’ driving and location data to data brokers Verisk Analytics and LexisNexis Risk Solutions, between 2020 and […]
Student hacked Taiwan high-speed rail to trigger emergency brakes
A 23-year-old university student in Taiwan was arrested for interfering with the TETRA communication system used by the country’s high-speed railway network (THSR). According to local media reports, the student halted four trains for 48 minutes on April 5 by using software-defined radio (SDR) communications and handheld radios to transmit a high-priority “General Alarm” signal, triggering […]
Operation PowerOFF identifies 75k DDoS users, takes down 53 domains
More than 75,000 individuals using distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) platforms for disruptive attacks have been warned through emails and letters during the latest phase of the Operation PowerOFF international law enforcement action. The ongoing operation is supported by Europol and involves authorities in 21 countries. Coordinated efforts led to the arrest of four people, taking offline […]
German authorities identify REvil and GandCrab ransomware bosses
The Federal Police in Germany (BKA) has identified two Russian nationals as the leaders of GandCrab and REvil ransomware operations between 2019 and 2021. According to BKA’s disclosure, 31-year-old Daniil Maksimovich Shchukin and 43-year-old Anatoly Sergeevitsch Kravchuk acted as the heads of the two ransomware groups “from at least the beginning of 2019 until at least July 2021.” Shchukin hid behind the […]
FCC bans new routers made outside the USA over security risks
The Federal Communications Commission has updated its Covered List to include all consumer routers made in foreign countries, banning the sale of new models in the U.S. The Covered List, created under the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019, is an FCC-maintained list of communications equipment and services that the U.S. government has […]
Europe sanctions Chinese and Iranian firms for cyberattacks
The Council of the European Union has sanctioned three Chinese and Iranian companies and two individuals for cyberattacks targeting devices and critical infrastructure. One of the two sanctioned Chinese companies, identified as Integrity Technology Group, provided “technical and material support” between 2022 and 2023 that led to hacking more than 65,000 devices in six EU […]
US disrupts SocksEscort proxy network powered by Linux malware
Law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Europe, along with private partners, have disrupted the SocksEscort cybercrime proxy network that relied solely on edge devices compromised via the AVRecon malware for Linux. According to Lumen’s Black Lotus Labs (BLL), which helped the U.S. Department of Justice take down Socksescort, the proxy network had a constant average of 20,000 […]
EU court adviser says banks must immediately refund phishing victims
Athanasios Rantos, the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU), has issued a formal opinion suggesting that banks must immediately refund account holders affected by unauthorized transactions, even when it’s their fault. The opinion was issued in response to a request for a preliminary ruling submitted by the District Court in Koszalin, Poland, […]
Samsung TVs to stop collecting Texans’ data without express consent
Samsung and the State of Texas have reached a settlement agreement over the alleged unlawful collection of content-viewing information through its smart TVs As part of the agreement, the TV manufacturer will revise its privacy disclosures to clearly explain its data collection and processing practices to consumers. Last December, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed […]