
Ransomware and supply‑chain breaches surge across sectors
The Cyber Express reports a sharp rise in ransomware incidents and supply‑chain compromises. High‑profile attacks include a ransomware intrusion at Hasbro, a malicious package update that hit AI startup Mercor via the LiteLLM project, and a North Korean‑linked attack on the Axios JavaScript library.
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The episode reviews the latest social engineering threats, highlighting CrowdStrike's 2025 Global Threat Report which notes faster breach times, a rise in vishing and account abuse, and a shift toward malware‑free intrusions. It then examines the industrialization of "pig‑butchering" romance scams, detailing how fraud gangs use scripted psychological tactics to lure victims into fake investments. Guest Rishika Desai discusses the emerging tactic of renting social‑media ad accounts to facilitate scams, and the hosts share a humorous Reddit story about using a Jedi‑style "Force" to repel a scammer. Overall, the conversation underscores the growing sophistication and diversification of cyber‑fraud techniques.

Centraleyes recently integrated the OWASP Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS) into its cyber‑risk platform, enabling structured, repeatable assessments for web and cloud services. ASVS defines three verification levels—opportunistic, standard, and advanced—allowing organizations to match security controls to application risk. The...

Cybersecurity budgets are set to increase again, yet security leaders still struggle to demonstrate clear business value. Finance executives express uneven trust in security teams’ ability to translate risk mitigation into financial outcomes, creating friction in budget approvals. Divergent definitions...

The National Security Agency has published the first two documents in its Zero Trust Implementation Guidelines series—a Primer and a Discovery Phase guide. The Primer explains the structure and principles of the series, while the Discovery Phase directs organizations to...

Microsoft and international law‑enforcement agencies, including Europol, dismantled RedVDS, a cybercrime‑as‑a‑service platform that has stolen roughly $40 million since March 2025. The operation seized the service’s marketplace, customer portal, and associated domains, cutting off access to cheap virtual dedicated servers rented for...

Depthfirst Inc. announced a $40 million Series A round led by Accel to accelerate its AI‑native security platform. The startup’s General Security Intelligence platform deploys custom AI agents that continuously analyze code, infrastructure and workflows, delivering context‑aware vulnerability detection. In its first...

Belgian cybersecurity firm Aikido Security announced a $60 million Series B round that values the company at $1 billion, making it Europe’s fastest unicorn in the sector. The funding will accelerate its unified application security platform, which combines static and dynamic testing, software...

The tutorial demonstrates how to construct a Minimal Communication Protocol (MCP) that is stateless, cryptographically signed, and capable of handling asynchronous, long‑running tasks. Using Python, Pydantic models enforce strict schema validation for every request and response, while HMAC signatures guarantee...
Project Eleven, a post‑quantum security and digital‑asset migration startup, announced a $20 million Series A financing round. The round was led by Castle Island Ventures and included investors such as Coinbase Ventures, Balaji Srinivasan, Fin Capital, Variant, and several other venture funds....

The RSA Conference (RSAC) will convene cybersecurity leaders in San Francisco from March 23‑26, 2026, offering a platform to explore emerging strategies and bold technologies. Simultaneously, GISEC GLOBAL 2026 will gather CISOs, government officials, and ethical hackers across the Middle East and Africa...

Researchers from the University of Denver introduced PolicyPulse, an information‑extraction pipeline that converts natural‑language privacy policies into structured, machine‑readable formats. The system combines a specialized XLNet classifier with a BERT‑based semantic role labeler, processing sentences to preserve predicate‑argument relationships. Trained...
Iran’s near‑total internet blackout, begun Jan 8, has stripped millions of residential users offline, leaving only government‑controlled networks visible. Cybersecurity analysts say this creates a rare window to fingerprint Iranian state‑linked IPs and map their digital infrastructure. Vendors like Whisper Security...

Black Lotus Labs at Lumen Technologies announced that it has null‑routed traffic to more than 550 command‑and‑control nodes used by the AISURU/Kimwolf botnet since early October 2025. The botnet now controls over two million Android devices, primarily unsecured TV boxes, and...
E‑commerce platforms depend on a robust technical foundation that goes beyond aesthetics. Scalability, security, speed, and continuous uptime are essential to handle traffic spikes, protect customer data, and maintain conversion rates. Managed hosting and automated backups simplify maintenance while platform‑specific...
Bruce Schneier’s events page lists a packed speaking itinerary through March 2026, spanning academic venues in Canada, a book‑signing at Chicago Public Library, and high‑profile industry conferences in Europe and the United States. He will appear at the University of...
Cognizant and Rubrik have launched a Business Resilience as a Service (BRaaS) platform that merges Rubrik’s cyber‑resilience technology with Cognizant’s delivery expertise. The service addresses modern threats such as ransomware, cloud‑infrastructure attacks, and AI‑driven disruptions by providing unified data protection,...

Microsoft released a service alert confirming that the WinSqlite3.dll library, a core Windows component, was mistakenly flagged by third‑party security tools as vulnerable to CVE‑2025‑6965. The false‑positive affected Windows 10, Windows 11, and Windows Server 2012‑2025 systems for several months. Microsoft updated...

Bluspark Global, a U.S. shipping‑tech firm behind the Bluvoyix platform, left its API and customer data exposed to the public internet. Researchers discovered unauthenticated endpoints, plaintext passwords, and the ability to create admin accounts, granting access to decades‑old shipment records....

Jobrapido, a global recruitment‑marketing platform, partnered with DataDome to combat bot‑driven traffic that was inflating costs and skewing performance metrics. The AI‑powered solution filtered out roughly 15% of invalid visits, giving the company a clean, real‑time view of genuine user...

Microsoft announced a joint operation with international law enforcement to dismantle RedVDS, a cybercrime‑as‑a‑service platform that provides disposable Windows VMs for phishing, BEC and financial fraud. Launched in 2019, RedVDS charged as little as $24 per month and is tied...
A hacker using the alias CamelliaBtw posted on DarkForums claiming a full breach of Russia’s Max Messenger, exfiltrating roughly 142 GB of data that includes 15.4 million user records, authentication tokens, passwords, communication metadata, source code, and internal infrastructure assets. The alleged...

AppOmni, a SaaS security platform vendor, has disclosed a critical vulnerability in ServiceNow identified as CVE‑2025‑12420, nicknamed BodySnatcher. The flaw enables an unauthenticated attacker to impersonate any ServiceNow user and spawn a malicious AI agent within the platform. Because ServiceNow...

Former Gartner analyst Ravisha Chugh and Abnormal’s Director of Product Marketing Lane Billings will host a webinar on January 20 2026, revealing how email‑security vendors will be evaluated in 2026. The session outlines Gartner’s evaluation criteria, essential vendor questions, red‑flags, and a proven shortlisting...
Panorays’ survey of 200 U.S. CISOs reveals that 60% consider AI vendors uniquely risky, yet only 22% have formal vetting processes. The rapid rollout of chat‑bots and AI agents is outpacing traditional third‑party risk controls, leaving most organizations with limited...

New research by Jamf uncovers that the Predator spyware, sold by Intellexa, includes a self‑diagnostic system that reports detailed error codes when attacks fail. These codes convey why deployments were aborted—such as detection of developer mode, proxies, or analysis tools—allowing...

Researchers at Varonis uncovered a “Reprompt” attack that lets hackers hijack Microsoft Copilot Personal sessions by embedding malicious prompts in the URL’s `q` parameter. After a victim clicks a crafted link, the attacker can issue follow‑up commands that bypass Copilot’s...

EasyDMARC announced the appointment of Armen Najarian as its new Chief Commercial Officer. Najarian brings over 25 years of experience in email security, fraud prevention, and AI‑driven analytics, previously leading go‑to‑market roles at ThreatMetrix, Agari, Outseer and Sift. He will...
South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) has ordered e‑commerce giant Coupang to stop publishing its own findings about a recent data breach that exposed personal information of millions of users. The regulator warned that unverified disclosures could mislead consumers...
Eurail confirmed a data breach that exposed personal information of customers, particularly those who received passes through the EU‑funded DiscoverEU programme. The breach potentially includes passport numbers, issuance details, and bank information, though direct‑purchase customers’ passports were not stored visually....

Airia has launched an AI Governance product, completing its three‑pillar enterprise AI management ecosystem alongside AI Security and Agent Orchestration. The new suite offers a governance dashboard, model and agent registries, compliance automation, and risk assessment tools to provide end‑to‑end...
SpyCloud unveiled its Supply Chain Threat Protection solution, extending identity‑threat visibility to vendors and other third‑party partners. The platform draws on billions of recaptured breach, malware, phishing and dark‑web data points to deliver real‑time evidence of compromised credentials. It introduces...

One Identity launched Manager 10.0, adding risk‑based governance, identity threat detection and response (ITDR) playbooks, and AI‑assisted natural‑language reporting. The upgrade integrates third‑party UEBA risk scores, automates remediation actions, and introduces a browser‑based admin console. Enhanced Syslog CEF formatting improves SIEM...

Cloud commerce platform Pax8 inadvertently emailed an internal spreadsheet to fewer than 40 UK partners, exposing business data for roughly 1,800 managed service providers. The CSV listed more than 56,000 entries, including partner IDs, customer names, Microsoft SKU counts and...

The Victorian Department of Education disclosed that an unauthorized party accessed a database containing personal details and school‑issued email addresses of current and former students, along with encrypted passwords. More sensitive information such as birth dates, home addresses, and phone...

The G7 Cyber Expert Group has issued a recommended roadmap urging financial institutions and public entities to fully adopt post‑quantum cryptography by 2034. The plan outlines six phases—from awareness and inventory to migration, testing and validation—spanning 2025‑2035. While advisory, it...

New research shows 64% of third‑party applications on websites access sensitive data without a clear business justification, up from 51% in 2024. Only 39% of security leaders have deployed dedicated web‑exposure solutions, despite 81% ranking web attacks as a top...

Microsoft released its latest Patch Tuesday update, fixing 114 CVEs including three critical zero‑day bugs. The zero‑days are CVE‑2026‑20805 (information disclosure in Desktop Window Manager), CVE‑2026‑21265 (secure‑boot certificate bypass), and CVE‑2023‑31096 (elevation of privilege in legacy Agere modem drivers). The...
The March 2025 White House Executive Order calls on states, localities and tribal entities to own their cybersecurity preparedness, while the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program (SLCGP) allocates $1 billion over four years to fund those efforts. The bipartisan PILLAR...
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A command‑injection flaw (CVE‑2026‑22718) has been discovered in the Spring CLI VS Code extension, affecting all versions up to 0.9.0. The vulnerability allows an attacker with local access to execute arbitrary commands, earning a medium severity rating and a CVSS score...
Australia has enacted a law prohibiting anyone under 16 from holding a social‑media account, forcing platforms to purge non‑compliant profiles. The move positions the country as a global test case for age‑based bans and sparks a broader debate on mandatory...

Microsoft confirmed that a recent Windows 365 update is preventing users from signing into their Cloud PC sessions, causing widespread access failures that began on Tuesday at 19:00 UTC. The issue, tracked under incident WP1217671, stems from a security‑focused update that unintentionally broke...
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Elastic has issued urgent patches for four critical Kibana vulnerabilities spanning versions 7.x through 9.2.3. The most severe, CVE‑2026‑0532, combines SSRF and file disclosure, allowing authenticated attackers to exfiltrate credentials. Three medium‑severity flaws can cause denial‑of‑service through resource exhaustion in...

Monroe University disclosed that a December 2024 cyberattack compromised personal, financial, and health data of more than 320,000 individuals. Attackers accessed the network for two weeks, from Dec 9 to Dec 23, before the breach was detected. The university began notifying affected...

AI adoption in U.S. manufacturing is accelerating, with 55% of firms already using generative AI and many planning further expansion. Meanwhile, ransomware attacks on the sector surged 87% in 2024, making manufacturing the most targeted industry. Without enterprise‑grade security—especially through...
How Do You Manage AI Agents Before Your Tech Stack Spins Out of Control As #AIagents spread rapidly across businesses, many organizations are sleepwalking into fragmented, insecure and ungoverned #tech stacks. This article explains how leaders can regain control by...
RTFM…. Literally I once was testing an older piece of software but didn’t have creds. Nothing available to me. Downloaded the manual and saw the url paths to the admin section. Plugged those in to my domain, one hit, boom 5k authorization...

Scamnetic launched its patent‑pending IDeveryone Payment Protection solution, extending identity‑proofing to every payment channel—from push and digital payments to cryptocurrency, checks, wire transfers and ACH. The offering adds real‑time recipient verification and optional insurance, aiming to curb the $442 billion global...

Node.js released security updates fixing a critical vulnerability (CVE‑2025‑59466) that causes the runtime to terminate with exit code 7 when a stack overflow occurs while async_hooks is enabled. The bug affects all versions from 8.x through 18.x and impacts major frameworks...

CISO Assistant’s community edition is an open‑source governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) platform that lets security teams document assets, risks, controls, and framework alignment in a single, self‑hosted system. The tool ships with built‑in mappings to ISO 27001, NIST CSF, and...
The White House renominated seasoned cyber veteran Sean Plankey as CISA director after his initial nomination lapsed, but Senate holds tied to a Coast Guard issue and a pending telecom security report are delaying confirmation. Simultaneously, deep budget cuts have...