Security

The FBI is investigating, Reuters reports. Hackers allegedly targeted US nonprofits and activists who have spoken out against ExxonMobil. Lawyers for ExxonMobil wielded hacked documents to fight lawsuits filed against the company, according to Reuters.

T-Mobile has confirmed last week’s report that it actually stopped a cyberattack in progress before sensitive customer data was exposed — something the company doesn’t have the best track record for.

T-Mobile didn’t identify the attackers, but the breach resembles the recent Salt Typhoon attacks — which sounds increasingly nefarious as more details arrive.

The Register points out an advisory from D-Link for a series of business routers asking owners to “Please Retire and Replace” these models: DSR-150 / DSR-150N / DSR-250 / DSR-250N.

The problem? A “stack buffer overflow vulnerability, which allows unauthenticated users to execute remote code execution,” published after their EOL, so D-Link isn’t fixing it and will instead offer owners a discounted upgrade.

The folks at 404 Media are reporting on leaked documents revealing the capabilities of Graykey, a tool that law enforcement uses to hack into seized phones. From the looks of it, Graykey can only retrieve some data from the iPhone 12 and newer, whereas it’s possible to recover “full” info from an iPhone 11. The cat and mouse game continues.

The former congressman selected as Trump’s attorney general has come up in connection to a defamation lawsuit filed by one of his friends, as the New York Times reports a hacker has obtained evidence shared among lawyers on the case:

The file of 24 exhibits is said to include sworn testimony by a woman who said that she had sex with Mr. Gaetz in 2017 when she was 17, as well as corroborating testimony by a second woman who said that she witnessed the encounter.

As spotted by TechCrunch, researcher Jiska Classen posted a video showing that iOS 18 will reboot your iPhone after three days of inactivity. The security feature, which 404 Media originally reported on, is apparently making it more difficult for police to break into suspects’ phones.

The search giant has released two new blogs that examine recent scam trends that people online should be wary of, and share policy recommendations Google is urging governments and tech industries to take to better fend against them.

“Preventing user harm from malicious scams requires effective cooperation across the online ecosystem,” says Google’s Trust and Safety head Laurie Richardson. “Bad actors are constantly evolving their tactics and techniques.”

Nintendo’s buzzy new alarm clock has been jailbroken by a hacker named Gary who figured out the device’s boot sequence and found a way to exploit and run code through USB. It opens up the possibility for some interesting hacks, but to start we have cat pictures and plasma effects.

Gary previously created a Wii U DNS exploit and chimed in on dying Wii Us.

Reuters reports Delta filed a lawsuit Friday over the July 19th crash, blaming CrowdStrike for having “forced untested and faulty updates to its customers, causing more than 8.5 million Microsoft Windows-based computers around the world to crash.”

Delta’s CEO already called out Microsoft and CrowdStrike during a CNBC interview (included below), saying, “When was the last time you heard of a big outage at Apple?,” while Microsoft said Delta ignored offers to help recover faster.

The Wall Street Journal previously reported Chinese hackers “engaged in a vast collection of internet traffic” from ISPs, including Verizon, AT&T, and Lumen, that reached the system used for court-ordered wiretapping requests. The New York Times now says Donald Trump and JD Vance were targeted in the Verizon breach.

Later on Friday afternoon, the WSJ followed up with another report confirming that, while saying other targets included people affiliated with the Harris campaign and even a WSJ writer reporting on the investigation. The FBI and Verizon also acknowledged an investigation without adding additional details.

Update: Added details from WSJ.

Since the last report, according to Microsoft:

Russian actors continue to integrate generative AI into their content, Iranian groups ramp up their preparations to enable cyber-influence operations, while Chinese actors shift focus to several down-ballot candidates and members of Congress. Russian actors have notably attempted to target the Harris-Walz campaign by attacking the candidates’ characters.  

The alliance managing the passwordless login standard is working on a way to securely move passkeys between password managers offered by 1Password, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Okta, etc. The draft specifications for secure credential exchange are now in community review.

Hopefully this will get sorted soon as passkeys inch closer to going mainstream. The last thing users want is to have their passwords locked to a tech ecosystem.