#cybersecurity

#cybersecurity

The livestream of a YouTube content creator talking about investments mysteriously appeared to take over a White House website, raising questions about whether the site was hacked. The livestream appeared for at least eight minutes late Thursday on whitehouse.gov/live, where the White House usually streams live video of the president speaking. It's unclear if the website was breached or the video was linked accidentally by someone in the government. The White House said in a statement that it was aware and looking into what happened.

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US

OpenAI has released GPT-5.2-Codex, a new version of its agentic AI model for software development that focuses specifically on professional software engineering and cybersecurity. The model builds on GPT-5.2 but has been further optimized to work independently within complex development environments. With this release, OpenAI is positioning Codex not just as a programming assistant but as a broader support technology for the entire software development process.

As reported in Chinese state media, tests of the network saw it shift 72 terabytes of data in 1.6 hours, across a distance of around 1,000 km between a radio telescope in Guizhou province and a university in Hubei. We think that's almost 100 Gbit/s, an impressive feat for a sustained long-distance data transfer even if it took place in a controlled environment.

A warning for WhatsApp users: cybercriminals have discovered an alarmingly simple way to access a user's conversations in real time by manipulating the app's device pairing or linking routine.

Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

Steve Schmidt, the chief security officer at Amazon, says his team has identified and blocked more than 1,800 attempts by North Korea to secure IT roles at the tech giant. He warns that this scheme is becoming more prevalent across the technology industry as the nation-state actor targets the lucrative salaries of generative artificial intelligence and machine learning jobs, and the troves of valuable data such workers have access to.

Technology plays an important role in how businesses operate, communicate, and deliver services. As systems become more advanced, many companies find themselves facing IT challenges that disrupt daily work, affect productivity, and impact customer experience. Believe it or not, these issues aren't limited to large organisations, as small and medium-sized businesses often feel the pressure even more, especially when IT responsibilities fall on already busy teams.

"SoundCloud recently detected unauthorized activity in an ancillary service dashboard," opens a Monday post from the company. "Upon making this discovery, we immediately activated our incident response protocols and promptly contained the activity. We also engaged leading third-party cybersecurity experts to assist in a thorough investigation and response." Not long after SoundCloud and its hired help contained the incident, the site became the subject of multiple denial of service attacks.

As the rest of the world rushes to harness the power of artificial intelligence, militant groups also are experimenting with the technology, even if they aren't sure exactly what to do with it. For extremist organizations, AI could be a powerful tool for recruiting new members, churning out realistic deepfake images and refining their cyberattacks, national security experts and spy agencies have warned.

The new chief of MI6, Blaise Metreweli, will warn of "the acute threat posed by Russia" when she makes her first public speech later. She will highlight so-called hybrid warfare, which includes incidents such as cyber attacks and drones suspected of being launched near critical infrastructure by Russian proxies. Ms Metreweli will describe this as "an acute threat posed by an aggressive, expansionist and revisionist Russia".

When the library system's IT department detected suspicious activity on one of the library's servers Thursday morning, staff immediately "turned off the server in the middle of this happening," as well as shut down all remote access to the library's computer systems, library director Todd Dunkelberg said. "That stopped all activity," Dunkelberg said Friday about the cyberattack, which was first reported by KTVZ, as well as Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Bacon wrote, This means the top two positions at NSA and the four-star commander at Cyber Command will remain vacant for 8 months and counting. We are at Cyber War every day, and the inability to get leaders in place is gross negligence. Bacon went on to blame the chaos on infighting in the White House and the involvement of whacky Laura Loomer in hiring.

LastPass failed customers and fell short on expectations that the company would employ robust measures to protect personal data. Password managers are a safe and effective tool for businesses and the public to manage their numerous login details and we continue to encourage their use, he said. However, as is clear from this incident, businesses offering these services should ensure that system access and use is restricted to ensure risks of attack are significantly reduced,

Despite overwhelming focus on the Department of Homeland Security's handling of immigration enforcement, a Thursday hearing on worldwide threats targeting the U.S. did feature some insights into the biggest cybersecurity challenges facing the nation. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent and FBI National Security Branch operations chief Michael Glasheen testified before the House Homeland Security Committee in the annual hearing meant to discuss terrorism, cybersecurity, drones and other matters that concern Americans' security.

The retail giant, often compared to Amazon for its dominance in South Korean e-commerce and logistics, last month revealed details of a data breach affecting close to 34 million people. The breach allegedly began in June but wasn't noticed until November, when Coupang initially said over 4,500 customers had their data stolen. The company later revised that figure dramatically upward.

In December 2011, the CIA lost control of a stealth drone near the Iranian city of Kashmar, about 140 miles from the Afghanistan border, and it wound up in the regime's possession. On state television, the Iranian military displayed the boomerang-shaped craft like a trophy. Triumphant banners beneath its 30-foot wings said, in Farsi, THE US CAN'T MESS WITH US and WE'LL CRUSH AMERICA UNDERFOOT.

Cloudflare says it has fixed an outage that took down several websites and apps, including Zoom, LinkedIn, Shopify and Fortnite, early on Friday, in the latest major glitch involving the web traffic management giant whose shares dipped in premarket trading. Another Cloudflare outage took down several websites and apps early on Friday morning. An update on Cloudflare's status page said the nearly half-hour-long outage was the result of "issues with Cloudflare Dashboard and related APIs."

The big picture: Hassabis in May had predicted AI that meets or exceeds human capabilities - artificial general intelligence, or AGI - could come by 2030. What they're saying: In an interview with Axios' Mike Allen, Hassabis assessed the risk from a number of "catastrophic outcomes" of AI misuse as the technology develops, particularly "energy or water cyberterror." "That's probably almost already happening now, I would say, maybe not with very sophisticated AI yet, but I think that's the most obvious vulnerable vector," he said.

Case in point: Palo Alto finalized a $25 billion deal to buy Israeli cybersecurity firm CyberArk in July, giving the Silicon Valley firm access to a leader in the identity security and management space for people, machines and AI agents. The deal highlights how, regardless of how good an AI model is, no one can win the AI race without solid supporting services.

Speaking on 3 December at the Financial Times Cyber Resilience Summit 2025, security minister Dan Jarvis said: "We've heard the criticisms about the Computer Misuse Act, and how it can leave many cyber security experts feeling constrained in the activity that they can undertake. These researchers play an important role in increasing the resilience of UK systems, and securing them from unknown vulnerabilities."

Quietly launched earlier this year, Share and Defend collates data gleaned from public reports made to the NCSC, industry threat intelligence experts, protective domain name service (PDNS) providers and takedown actions. These datasets are then shared with internet service provider (ISP) partners, which in turn filter them through their own DNS platforms to stop their customers from accessing malicious websites.

Public Wi-Fi has become an essential part of daily business life in London. From cafés and co-working spaces to hotels and trains, employees and entrepreneurs rely on wireless networks to stay connected on the move. Yet as Wi-Fi usage grows, so does the risk. Over the past five years, cybersecurity reports have consistently shown that public hotspots remain one of the easiest entry points for attackers. Business travellers, remote workers, and small companies-especially those without dedicated IT teams-are often the most exposed.

The fallout from this incident is likely to continue for months, and probably years. With car production halted for over a month and over 5,000 businesses affected, the Cyber Monitoring Centre has estimated a financial impact of £1.9bn, and likely "the most economically damaging cyber event to hit the UK". The shutdown meant that the number of cars manufactured in September 2025 was the lowest in the UK since 1952.

Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, who chairs NATO's Military Committee told the Financial Times that they are reassessing how they are confronting Russia 's hybrid threats which have escalated across Europe. Russia is also behind explosions and fires which includes a fire at an East London Ukrainian warehouse. In recent years hybrid attacked have intensified which includes cyber-attacks, underwater infrastructure was damaged in the Baltic Sea that all points to Russia.

In the ever-evolving cryptocurrency landscape, both investors and miners face a growing challenge-how to mine profitably while maintaining security, transparency, and sustainability. In an industry often affected by cyberattacks, energy concerns, and unreliable platforms, FutureWave Mining emerges as a forward-thinking solution. By integrating cutting-edge technology, renewable energy, and accessible cloud mining, FutureWave Mining sets a new standard for safe, sustainable, and intelligent crypto mining.

A third of UK organizations are failing to back up all of their sensitive data, hindering their ability to restore operations and ensure service continuity in the event of a breach. Almost half of those surveyed by security firm Cohesity reported not backing up all their workloads, including virtual machines, applications, and unstructured data, while 38% aren't applying consistent data categorization, backup controls, and policies globally.

The individual was believed to have been paid around $25,000 for this, which all things considered, I think, is quite low when you're risking being fired and, you know, a potential jail sentence in the aftermath of this. So these were leaked on Telegram. CrowdStrike, obviously, was made aware of this and they reacted pretty swiftly like we mentioned. That person has since been dismissed, I don't think it was too much of an issue for HR in that situation.

"The holiday season is filled with gifts, including the ones we unknowingly hand over to threat actors in the form of sharing personal information and other security mishaps that result in cyberattacks," says Nathan Wenzler, Field CISO at Optiv. "This year, consumers across the U.S. plan to spend nearly $80 billion online and in-store during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, an increase of about $20 billion compared to last year, according to a new survey conducted by Omnisend."

"It's truly astonishing that such a market-sensitive document could find its way online via official channels in advance of the Chancellor's speech," he said. "Basic compliance requirements should be in place to prevent this from happening. A complete review is required to understand how and why such a major breach occurred."