The Register – Security

Beijing wants to ‘seize the initiative in the international competition in cyberspace’ Chinese authorities on Thursday certified the China Environment for Network Innovation (CENI), a vast research network that Beijing hopes will propel the country to the forefront of networking research.…

Plus: Lazarus Group has a brand new BeaverTail Even Amazon isn’t immune to North Korean scammers who try to score remote jobs at tech companies so they can funnel their wages to Kim Jong Un’s coffers.…

Study finds built-in browsers across gadgets often ship years out of date Web browsers for desktop and mobile devices tend to receive regular security updates, but that often isn’t the case for those that reside within game consoles, televisions, e-readers, cars, and other devices. These outdated, embedded browsers can leave you open to phishing and other security vulnerabilities.…

‘Within 10 minutes of gaining initial access, crypto miners were operational’ Your AWS account could be quietly running someone else’s cryptominer. Cryptocurrency thieves are using stolen Amazon account credentials to mine for coins at the expense of AWS customers, abusing their Elastic Container Service (ECS) and their Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) resources, in an ongoing operation that started on November 2.…

ByBit attack doing some seriously heavy lifting North Korea’s yearly cryptocurrency thefts have accelerated, with Kim’s state-backed cybercriminals plundering just over $2 billion worth of tokens in 2025.…

Flaw in remote-access appliance lets attackers chain bugs for root-level takeover SonicWall has warned customers of a zero-day flaw in its SMA 1000 remote-access appliance that’s being actively exploited, potentially allowing attackers to escalate privileges and take over boxes.…

Justice Department claims unlicensed exchange funneled ransomware profits US feds have dismantled a crypto laundering service that they say helped cybercrooks wash tens of millions of dollars in dirty digital cash, seizing its servers and unsealing charges against an alleged Russian operator.…

Around 2,000 GP practices use its products Updated  An NHS tech supplier is investigating a cyberattack that affected its systems in the early hours of Sunday.…

Security boffins warn flaw is now being used for ransomware attacks against live networks Microsoft says attackers have already compromised “several hundred machines across a diverse set of organizations” via the React2Shell flaw, using the access to execute code, deploy malware, and, in some cases, deliver ransomware.…

18-year-old platform crumbles under 94M daily requests while resellers flog £62 tests for £500 The UK’s Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) has appointed a new chief exec to tackle spiraling waits for practical driving tests with bots overrunning its aging booking system.…

Investigatory Powers Commissioner says reforms have failed to close oversight gaps The UK’s Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (IPA) has several regulatory gaps that must be plugged in future legislative reforms, according to Investigatory Powers Commissioner (IPC) Sir Brian Leveson.…

No timeline for a patch Suspected Chinese-government-linked threat actors have been battering a maximum-severity Cisco AsyncOS zero-day vulnerability in some Secure Email Gateway (SEG) and Secure Email and Web Manager (SEWM) appliances for nearly a month, and there’s no timeline for a fix.…

Plus: automated SBOMs, $250,000 bounties ahead interview  No good idea – like rewarding open source software developers and maintainers for their contributions – goes unabused by cybercriminals, and this was the case with the Tea Protocol and two token farming campaigns.…

Regulator makes various additional demands over alleged cybersecurity failings In proposing a settlement agreement, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says that Illusory Systems must repay users funds lost in a 2022 cyberattack.…

Buckle up to innovate at speed, says PwC Sponsored Post  As AI spreads across the enterprise, so too do the security and compliance risks. Regulations are evolving, risk postures are shifting, and organizations must find a way to innovate responsibly without slowing down.…

Build a digital backbone faster than adversaries can evolve or lose the information war NATO is in an existential race to develop sovereign cloud-based technologies to underpin its mission, the alliance’s Assistant Secretary General for Cyber and Digital Transformation told an audience at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) last week.…

Folder permission changes cause queue failures and misleading error messages, no real fix yet Microsoft has good news for administrators: while some organizations now pay for security updates on older Windows versions, the inconsistent quality remains free.…

Regulator proposes strict limits on screen-based testing, cites infrastructure concerns and lack of evidence for benefits Most students taking school and college GCSE, A-level, and AS-level exams in England will continue to use pen and paper, according to proposals from the sector’s regulator for a very limited expansion of screen-based assessments.…

Misconfigured servers are in, 0-days out Chinese espionage crew Ink Dragon has expanded its snooping activities into European government networks, using compromised servers to create illicit relay nodes for future operations.…

An employee of the adult site could be responsible. Analytics vendor Mixpanel says it is not the source of data stolen from Pornhub and says the info was last accessed by an employee of the adult site.…

More than 8 million people have installed extensions that eavesdrop on chatbot interactions Ad blockers and VPNs are supposed to protect your privacy, but four popular browser extensions have been doing just the opposite. According to research from Koi Security, these pernicious plug-ins have been harvesting the text of chatbot conversations from more than 8 million people and sending them back to the developers.…

All I want for Christmas … is all of your data A new, modular infostealer called SantaStealer, advertised on Telegram with a basic tier priced at $175 per month, promises to make criminals’ Christmas dreams come true. It boasts that it can run “fully undetected” even on systems with the “strictest AntiVirus” and those belonging to governments, financial institutions, and other prime targets.…

Adult site, streaming platform, and Japanese retailer expose user info, but not credentials Three very different companies have now confirmed data breaches affecting millions of users – each insisting the damage stopped well short of passwords and payment details.…

New spy boss says officers must master code alongside tradecraft as agency navigates ‘space between peace and war’ New MI6 chief Blaise Metreweli outlined her vision for technology-augmented intelligence gathering in her first public speech on December 15, warning that the UK operates “in a space between peace and war.”…

PwC supports clients across the full cyber lifecycle Sponsored Post  Managing cybersecurity risk has never been simple, but in today’s threat landscape it can also become a source of strength. PwC believes that AI is now central to that transformation, helping organizations not just react faster to attacks, but evolve their defences with greater confidence.…

Bum note for 20 percent of users whose data leaked Music hosting and streaming service SoundCloud has admitted it suffered a cyberattack.…

‘Sustained focus on Western critical infrastructure’ Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) is behind a years-long campaign targeting energy, telecommunications, and tech providers, stealing credentials and compromising misconfigured devices hosted on AWS to give the Kremlin’s snoops persistent access to sensitive networks, according to Amazon’s security boss.…

Who hasn’t exploited this max-severity flaw? At least five more Chinese spy crews, Iran-linked goons, and financially motivated criminals are now attacking React2Shell, a maximum-severity flaw in the widely used React JavaScript library, according to Google.…

Watchdog links schedule change to replanning of UK payments system overhaul The European Central Bank’s (ECB) decision to delay its move to a new messaging standard in 2022 ended up costing the Bank of England £23 million as it was forced to adjust migration to a new settlement system to avoid compounding risks.…

Automaker admits raid that crippled its factories in August led to the theft of sensitive info Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has reportedly told staff the cyber raid that crippled its operations in August didn’t just bring production to a screeching halt – it also walked off with the personal payroll data of thousands of employees.…