Athletics boss accused of deep-faking Baltimore school principal Baltimore police have arrested Dazhon Leslie Darien, the former athletic director of Pikesville High School (PHS), for allegedly impersonating the school's principal using AI software to make it seem as if he made racist and antisemitic remarks.???

Cash to go out as refunds to punters The FTC today announced it would be sending refunds totaling $5.6 million to Ring customers, paid from the Amazon subsidiary's coffers.???

Suspects in Portugal and the US said to have laundered over $100M Two men alleged to be co-founders of cryptocurrency biz Samourai Wallet face serious charges and potentially decades in US prison over claims they owned a product that facilitated the laundering of over $100 million in criminal cash.???

Google security crew reveal ???the four Ds??? to be on the watch for It may come as a surprise to absolutely nobody that experts say, in revealing the most prevalent and likely tactics to meddle with elections this year, that state-sponsored cybercriminals pose the biggest threat.???

Why the triple threat of ransomware, data breaches, and extortion is a cybersecurity crisis The UK government could be forgiven for wanting to forget March 2024 ever happened.???

After two years of warnings, and outages, regulators ran out of patience with Kotak Mahindra Bank India???s central bank has banned Kotak Mahindra Bank from signing up new customers for accounts or credit cards through its online presence and app.???

And warn that AI is already being used by extremists to plot attacks The director general of Australia???s lead intelligence agency and the commissioner of its Federal Police yesterday both called for social networks to offer more assistance to help their investigators work on cases involving terrorism, child exploitation, and racist nationalism.???

Don't get too comfortable: 'Line Dancer' malware may be targeting other vendors, too A previously unknown and "sophisticated" nation-state group compromised Cisco firewalls as early as November 2023 for espionage purposes ??? and possibly attacked network devices made by other vendors including Microsoft, according to warnings from the networking giant and three Western governments.???

One wonders why are there adverts on public-sector portals at all Exclusive ?? At least 18 public-sector websites in the UK and US send visitor data in some form to various web advertising brokers ??? including an ad-tech biz in China involved in past privacy controversies, a security firm claims.???

Doctorow: 'The most amazing part is that this isn't already the way it's done' Collaboration software used by federal government agencies ??? this includes apps from Microsoft, Zoom, Slack, and Google ??? will be required to work together and be securely end-to-end encrypted, if legislation proposed by US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) passes.???

Their holiday options are now far more restricted The US has charged and sanctioned four Iranian nationals for their alleged roles in various attacks on US companies and government departments, all of whom are claimed to have worked for fake companies linked to Iran's military.???

Secure-by-default... if your pockets are deep enough Microsoft has come under fire for charging for security add-ons despite the company's own patchy record when it comes to vulnerabilities and breaches.???

The firm 'fessed up to staff misconduct and avoided criminal liability A company contracted to manage an Amarillo, Texas nuclear weapons facility has to pay US government $18.4 million in a settlement over allegations that its atomic technicians fudged their timesheets to collect more money from Uncle Sam.???

Privacy Sandbox slips into 2025 after challenges from UK authorities Google's plan to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome is being postponed to 2025 amid wrangling with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).???

Unverified users could scoop up data on high-value individuals without any form of verification process Neighbourhood Watch (NW) groups across the UK can now rest easy knowing the developers behind a communications platform fixed a web app bug that leaked their data en masse.???

City council says it lost control after shutting down systems It's become somewhat clich?? in cybersecurity reporting to speculate whether an organization will have the resources to "keep the lights on" after an attack. But the opposite turns out to be true with Leicester City Council following its March ransomware incident.???

That said, good ol' American healthcare system so elaborately costly, some are forced to avoid altogether UnitedHealth Group, the parent of ransomware-struck Change Healthcare, delivered some very unwelcome news for customers today as it continues to recover from the massively expensive side and disruptive digital break-in.???

The 'big victory for the good guys' shouldn't be celebrated too much, though The average time taken by global organizations to detect cyberattacks has dropped to its lowest-ever level of ten days, Mandiant revealed today.???

Outsourcers outsourced work for the BBC, Amazon, and HBO Max to the hermit kingdom A misconfigured cloud server that used a North Korean IP address has led to the discovery that film production studios including the BBC, Amazon, and HBO Max could be inadvertently hiring workers from the hermit kingdom for animation projects.???

Putin's pals use 'GooseEgg' malware to launch attacks you can defeat with patches or deletion Russian spies are exploiting a years-old Windows print spooler vulnerability and using a custom tool called GooseEgg to elevate privileges and steal credentials across compromised networks, according to Microsoft Threat Intelligence.???

US Senate kills reform amendment, Biden swiftly signs bill into law US lawmakers on Saturday reauthorized a contentious warrantless surveillance tool for another two years ??? and added a whole bunch of people and organizations to the list of those who can be compelled to spy for Uncle Sam.???

Prosecutors believe one frikkin' laser did make its way to Beijing Germany has arrested three citizens who allegedly tried to transfer military technology to China, a violation of the country's export rules.???

Don't bore us, get to the chorus: You need less privacy so we can protect the children Yet another international cop shop has come out swinging against end-to-end encryption - this time it's Europol which is urging an end to implementation of the tech for fear police investigations will be hampered by protected DMs.???

Sadly no push to end stupid TikTok dances, but ByteDance would have year to offload app stateside Fresh US legislation to force the sale of TikTok locally was passed in Washington over the weekend after an earlier version stalled in the Senate.???

Meta insists it's just misunderstood and it's safe to talk to citizens over FB The Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) has warned that government organizations should not use Facebook to communicate with the country's citizens unless they can guarantee the privacy of data.???

Leaked draft report says stated goals still come up short Google's Privacy Sandbox, which aspires to provide privacy-preserving ad targeting and analytics, still isn't sufficiently private.???

Facing down the triple threat of ransomware, data breaches and criminal extortion Sponsored ?? On the face of it, there really isn't much of an upside for the current UK government after MPs described its response to attacks by cyber-espionage group APT31 as 'feeble, derisory and sadly insufficient.'???

What if it's not AI but the algorithm to blame? Opinion ?? It was a bold claim by the richest and most famous tech founder: bold, precise and wrong. Laughably so. Twenty years ago, Bill Gates promised to rid the world of spam by 2006. How's that worked out for you????

For once, Redmond's finest saved the day - by being rubbish in unexpectedly useful ways Who, Me? ?? It's Monday once again, dear reader, and you know what that means: another dive into the Who, Me? confessional, to share stories of IT gone wrong that Reg readers managed to pretend had gone right.???

Two rounds of reports and patches may not have completely closed this hole BLACK HAT ASIA ?? Researchers at US/Israeli infosec outfit SafeBreach last Friday discussed flaws in Microsoft and Kaspersky security products that can potentially allow the remote deletion of files. And, they asserted, the hole could remain exploitable ??? even after both vendors claim to have patched the problem.???

A day after FBI boss warns Beijing is poised to strike against US infrastructure China last week reorganized its military to create an Information Support Force aimed at ensuring it can fight and win networked wars.???

PLUS: Akira ransomware resurgent; Telehealth outfit fined for data-sharing; This week's nastiest vulns Infosec In Brief ?? In a cautionary tale that no one is immune from attack, the security org MITRE has admitted that it got pwned.???

Police say this appears to be a 'deliberate act.' Sacramento International Airport (SMF) suffered hours of flight delays yesterday after what appears to be an intentional cutting of an AT internet cable serving the facility.???

Still available in Hong Kong and Macau, for now Apple has removed four apps from its China-regional app store, including Meta's WhatsApp and Threads, after it was ordered to do so by Beijing for security reasons.???

It???s the second time the World-Check list has fallen into the wrong hands The World-Check database used by businesses to verify the trustworthiness of users has fallen into the hands of cybercriminals.???

Apparently an attempt to damage Ukraine's war effort Bavarian state police have arrested two German-Russian citizens on suspicion of being Russian spies and planning to bomb industrial and military facilities that participate in efforts to assist Ukraine defend itself against Vladimir Putin???s illegal invasion.???

Source blames BlackSuit infection ??? as separately ISP Frontier confirms cyberattack Octapharma Plasma has blamed IT "network issues" for the ongoing closure of its 150-plus centers across the US. It's feared a ransomware infection may be the root cause of the medical firm's ailment.???

'I want to buy a car. That's all' Crooks are exploiting month-old OpenMetadata vulnerabilities in Kubernetes environments to mine cryptocurrency using victims' resources, according to Microsoft.???

Police emit Spotify Wrapped-style videos to let crims know they're being hunted Feature ?? Cops have brought down a dark-web souk that provided cyber criminals with convincing copies of trusted brands' websites for use in phishing campaigns.???

Criminals make lucrative use of stolen credit cards Black Hat Asia ?? Speaking at Black Hat Asia on Thursday, a Korean researcher revealed how the discovery of one phishing website led to uncovering an operation whose activities leveraged second-hand shops and included using Apple???s "someone-else pickup" method to cash in.???