Each week I publish interesting articles and ways to improve your understanding of cybersecurity.

Projects

• TryHackMe – Windows Command Line – Complete
• TryHackMe – Windows PowerShell – In Progress

Videos

Articles

• Caught secretly selling car owners’ driving data, General Motors slapped with a hefty ban by Lina Khan’s FTC – General Motors reached a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that will prohibit it from selling information on its customers’ driving habits without their knowledge and explicit consent for the next 20 years.
• Ex-CIA Analyst Pleads Guilty to Sharing Top-Secret Data with Unauthorized Parties – According to court filings, Rahman is alleged to have retained without authorization two documents classified as Top Secret on or about October 17, 2024, and delivered it to multiple individuals who were not entitled to receive it.
• FBI Warned Agents It Believes Phone Logs Hacked Last Year [Paywall] – FBI leaders have warned that they believe hackers who broke into AT&T Inc.’s system last year stole months of their agents’ call and text logs, setting off a race within the bureau to protect the identities of confidential informants, a document reviewed by Bloomberg News shows.
• Treasury Levels Sanctions Tied to a Massive Hack of Telecom Companies and Breach of Its Own Network – The Treasury Department announced sanctions in connection with a massive Chinese hack of American telecommunications companies and a breach of its own computer network.
• Bitbucket services “hard down” due to major worldwide outage – Bitbucket is investigating a massive outage affecting Atlassian Bitbucket Cloud customers worldwide, with the company saying its cloud services are “hard down.”
• FortiGate config leaks: Victims’ email addresses published online – Experts warn not to take leaks lightly as years-long compromises could remain undetected
• Cloudflare Blocked a Record-breaking 5.6 Tbps Ddos Attack – Cloudflare announced that it has blocked a record-breaking 5.6 terabit-per-second (Tbps) distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

Podcasts

• Smashing Security 401: Hacks on the high seas, and how your home can be stolen under your nose

Each week I publish interesting articles and ways to improve your understanding of cybersecurity.

I took a few weeks off, but I’m back now and there is a lot of news happening. I hope you enjoy this weeks round up.

Projects

• TryHackMe – Splunk: Setting up a SOC Lab – Complete
• TryHackMe – Search Skills – In Prgoress

Videos

Articles

• Chinese hackers also breached Charter and Windstream networks – More U.S. companies have been added to the list of telecommunications firms hacked in a wave of breaches by a Chinese state-backed threat group tracked as Salt Typhoon.
• Green Bay Packers’ online store hacked to steal credit cards – The Green Bay Packers American football team is notifying fans that a threat actor hacked its official online retail store in October and injected a card skimmer script to steal customers’ personal and payment information
• Washington Attorney General Sues T-Mobile Over 2021 Data Breach – Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson has filed a lawsuit against T-Mobile over a 2021 data breach that impacted over 76 million consumers.
• Apple offers $95 million in Siri privacy violation settlement – Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a class action lawsuit in the U.S. alleging that its Siri assistant recorded private conversations and shared them with third parties.
• A Us Soldier Was Arrested for Leaking Presidential Call Logs – US authorities have arrested soldier Cameron John Wagenius for his alleged involvement in leaking presidential phone records.
• Volkswagen Breach Exposes Data of 800K EV Customers – Ethical hacking group Chaos Computer Club uncovered exposed data of electrical vehicle owners across the company’s VW, Audi, Seat, and Skoda brands.
• Telegram hands over data on thousands of users to US law enforcement – Telegram reveals that the communications platform has fulfilled 900 U.S. government requests, sharing the phone number or IP address information of 2,253 users with law enforcement.
• Suspected Chinese underwater spy drone found by fishermen in waters off the Philippines – A submarine drone suspected to be from China was recovered in waters off the central Philippines, police said on Thursday, warning of “potential national security implications.”
• Google: Chinese hackers likely behind Ivanti VPN zero-day attacks – Hackers exploiting the critical Ivanti Connect Secure zero-day vulnerability disclosed yesterday installed on compromised VPN appliances new malware called ‘Dryhook’ and ‘Phasejam’ that is not currently associated with any threat group.
• Fed ‘Cyber Trust’ Label: Good Intentions That Fall Short – The voluntary program is intended to boost consumer confidence in vulnerable IoT devices, but experts want to see vendors held to a higher standard.
• Over 4,000 backdoors hijacked by registering expired domains – Over 4,000 abandoned but still active web backdoors were hijacked and their communication infrastructure sinkholed after researchers registered expired domains used for commanding them.
• Top 5 Malware Threats to Prepare Against in 2025 – 2024 had its fair share of high-profile cyber attacks, with companies as big as Dell and TicketMaster falling victim to data breaches and other infrastructure compromises
• A Day in the Life of a Prolific Voice Phishing Crew – Besieged by scammers seeking to phish user accounts over the telephone, Apple and Google frequently caution that they will never reach out unbidden to users this way.

Podcasts

• Only Malware in the Building – Malware metamorphosis: 2024 reflections and 2025 predictions
• Smashing Security 399: Honey in hot water, and reset your devices