2025
DEF CON hackers plug security holes in US water systems amid tsunami of threats
Five pilot deployments are just a drop in the bucket, so it's time to turbo scale def con A DEF CON hacker walks into a small-town water facility…no, this is not the setup for a joke or a (super-geeky) odd-couple rom-com. It's a true story that happened at…
The inside story of the Telemessage saga, and how you can view the data
It turns out no one was clean on OPSEC DEF CON On Saturday at DEF CON, security boffin Micah Lee explained just how he hacked into TeleMessage, the supposedly secure messaging app used by White House officials, which in turn led to a massive database dump of their…
Chinese biz using AI to hit US politicians, influencers with propaganda
In misinformation, Russia might be the top dog but the Chinese are coming warns former NSA boss DEF CON A cache of documents uncovered by Vanderbilt University has revealed disturbing details about how a Chinese company is building up a database of US politicians and influencers with whom…
Star leaky app of the week: StarDict
Fun feature found in Debian 13: send your selected text to China – in plaintext As Trixie gets ready to début, a little-known app is hogging the limelight: StarDict, which sends whatever text you select, unencrypted, to servers in China.…
Ex-White House cyber, counter-terrorism guru: Microsoft considers security an annoyance, not a necessity
Tells The Reg China's ability to p0wn Redmond's wares 'gives me a political aneurysm' Comment Roger Cressey served two US presidents as a senior cybersecurity and counter-terrorism advisor and currently worries he'll experience a "political aneurysm" due to Microsoft's many security messes.…
Infosec hounds spot prompt injection vuln in Google Gemini apps
Not a very smart home: crims could hijack smart-home boiler, open and close powered windows and more. Now fixed Black hat A trio of researchers has disclosed a major prompt injection vulnerability in Google's Gemini large language model-powered applications.…
UK secretly allows facial recognition scans of passport, immigration databases
Campaigners brand Home Office’s lack of transparency as ‘astonishing’ and ‘dangerous’ Privacy groups report a surge in UK police facial recognition scans of databases secretly stocked with passport photos lacking parliamentary oversight.…
UK proxy traffic surges as users consider VPN alternatives amid Online Safety Act
It's 'more than a temporary trend,' Decodo claims Amid the furor around surging VPN usage in the UK, many users are eyeing proxies as a potential alternative to the technology.…
Microsoft, CISA warn yet another Exchange server bug can lead to ‘total domain compromise’
No reported in-the-wild exploits…yet Microsoft and the feds late Wednesday sounded the alarm on another high-severity bug in Exchange Server hybrid deployments that could allow attackers to escalate privileges from on-premises Exchange to the cloud.…
Black Hat’s network ops center brings rivals together for a common cause
The Reg goes behind the scenes of the conference NOC, where volunteers 'look for a needle in a needle stack' Black Hat Neil "Grifter" Wyler is spending the week "looking for a needle in a needle stack," a task he'll perform from the network operations center (NOC) that…