AI Ethics | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Microsoft on Thursday unmasked four of the individuals that it said were behind an Azure Abuse Enterprise scheme that involves leveraging unauthorized access to generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) services in order to produce offensive and harmful content. The campaign, called LLMjacking, has targeted various AI offerings, including Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service. The tech giant is tracking the cybercrime network as Storm-2139. The individuals named are - Arian Yadegarnia aka "Fiz" of Iran, Alan Krysiak aka "Drago" of United Kingdom, Ricky Yuen aka "cg-dot" of Hong Kong, China, and Phát Phùng Tấn aka "Asakuri" of Vietnam "Members of Storm-2139 exploited exposed customer credentials scraped from public sources to unlawfully access accounts with certain generative AI services," Steven Masada, assistant general counsel for Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU), said . "They then altered the capabilities of ...

A dataset used to train large language models (LLMs) has been found to contain nearly 12,000 live secrets, which allow for successful authentication. The findings once again highlight how hard-coded credentials pose a severe security risk to users and organizations alike, not to mention compounding the problem when LLMs end up suggesting insecure coding practices to their users. Truffle Security said it downloaded a December 2024 archive from Common Crawl , which maintains a free, open repository of web crawl data. The massive dataset contains over 250 billion pages spanning 18 years.  The archive specifically contains 400TB of compressed web data, 90,000 WARC files (Web ARChive format), and data from 47.5 million hosts across 38.3 million registered domains. The company's analysis found that there are 219 different secret types in the Common Crawl archive, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) root keys, Slack webhooks, and Mailchimp API keys. "'Live' secrets ar...

The problem is simple: all breaches start with initial access, and initial access comes down to two primary attack vectors – credentials and devices. This is not news; every report you can find on the threat landscape depicts the same picture.  The solution is more complex. For this article, we'll focus on the device threat vector. The risk they pose is significant, which is why device management tools like Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) are essential components of an organization's security infrastructure. However, relying solely on these tools to manage device risk actually creates a false sense of security. Instead of the blunt tools of device management, organizations are looking for solutions that deliver device trust . Device trust provides a comprehensive, risk-based approach to device security enforcement, closing the large gaps left behind by traditional device management solutions. Here are 5 of those limitations and how to ov...

South Korea has formally suspended new downloads of Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot DeepSeek in the country until the service makes changes to its mobile apps to comply with data protection regulations. Downloads have been paused as of February 15, 2025, 6:00 p.m. local time, the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) said in a statement. The web service remains accessible. The agency said it commenced its own analysis of DeepSeek right after its launch and that it "identified some shortcomings in communication functions and personal information processing policies with third-party service providers." DeepSeek is said to have recently appointed a local representative, per PIPC, with the company also acknowledging it had failed to take into consideration domestic privacy laws when launching the service.  To that end, downloads of DeepSeek are being paused until the company implements the necessary improvements that bring the service in compliance...

Italy's data protection watchdog has blocked Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek's service within the country, citing a lack of information on its use of users' personal data. The development comes days after the authority, the Garante, sent a series of questions to DeepSeek, asking about its data handling practices and where it obtained its training data. In particular, it wanted to know what personal data is collected by its web platform and mobile app, from which sources, for what purposes, on what legal basis, and whether it is stored in China. In a statement issued January 30, 2025, the Garante said it arrived at the decision after DeepSeek provided information that it said was "completely insufficient." The entities behind the service, Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence and Beijing DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence, have "declared that they do not operate in Italy and that European legislation does not apply to them," it...

Buzzy Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup DeepSeek , which has had a meteoric rise in popularity in recent days, left one of its databases exposed on the internet, which could have allowed malicious actors to gain access to sensitive data. The ClickHouse database "allows full control over database operations, including the ability to access internal data," Wiz security researcher Gal Nagli said . The exposure also includes more than a million lines of log streams containing chat history, secret keys, backend details, and other highly sensitive information, such as API Secrets and operational metadata. DeepSeek has since plugged the security hole following attempts by the cloud security firm to contact them. The database, hosted at oauth2callback.deepseek[.]com:9000 and dev.deepseek[.]com:9000, is said to have enabled unauthorized access to a wide range of information. The exposure, Wiz noted, allowed for complete database control and potential privilege escalati...

Curious about the buzz around AI in cybersecurity? Wonder if it's just a shiny new toy in the tech world or a serious game changer? Let's unpack this together in a not-to-be-missed webinar that goes beyond the hype to explore the real impact of AI on cybersecurity. Join Ravid Circus , a seasoned pro in cybersecurity and AI, as we peel back the layers of AI in cybersecurity through a revealing survey of 200 industry insiders. This isn't your average tech talk; it's a down-to-earth, insightful discussion about what AI is actually doing for us today. Why Tune In? Get the Inside Scoop: How are real-world security teams using AI right now? Learn about the genuine perks and the real snags, from data hiccups to transparency troubles. Boost Your Cyber Defenses: Discover which cybersecurity corners AI is revolutionizing the most. It's about pinpointing where AI can really beef up your security measures. Walk Away With a Game Plan: This isn't just about high-level idea...

With the evolution of modern software development, CI/CD pipeline governance has emerged as a critical factor in maintaining both agility and compliance. As we enter the age of artificial intelligence (AI), the importance of robust pipeline governance has only intensified. With that said, we'll explore the concept of CI/CD pipeline governance and why it's vital, especially as AI becomes increasingly prevalent in our software pipelines. What is CI/CD Pipeline Governance? CI/CD pipeline governance refers to the framework of policies, practices, and controls that oversee the entire software delivery process. It ensures that every step, from the moment the code is committed to when it's deployed in production, adheres to organizational standards, security protocols, and regulatory requirements. In DevOps, this governance acts as a guardrail, allowing teams to move fast without compromising on quality, security, or compliance. It's about striking the delicate balance betwee...

Apple has publicly made available its Private Cloud Compute (PCC) Virtual Research Environment (VRE), allowing the research community to inspect and verify the privacy and security guarantees of its offering. PCC, which Apple unveiled earlier this June, has been marketed as the "most advanced security architecture ever deployed for cloud AI compute at scale." With the new technology, the idea is to offload computationally complex Apple Intelligence requests to the cloud in a manner that doesn't sacrifice user privacy. Apple said it's inviting "all security and privacy researchers — or anyone with interest and a technical curiosity — to learn more about PCC and perform their own independent verification of our claims." To further incentivize research, the iPhone maker said it's expanding the Apple Security Bounty program to include PCC by offering monetary payouts ranging from $50,000 to $1,000,000 for security vulnerabilities identified in it. Th...

OpenAI on Friday said it banned a set of accounts linked to what it said was an Iranian covert influence operation that leveraged ChatGPT to generate content that, among other things, focused on the upcoming U.S. presidential election. "This week we identified and took down a cluster of ChatGPT accounts that were generating content for a covert Iranian influence operation identified as Storm-2035," OpenAI said . "The operation used ChatGPT to generate content focused on a number of topics — including commentary on candidates on both sides in the U.S. presidential election – which it then shared via social media accounts and websites." The artificial intelligence (AI) company said the content did not achieve any meaningful engagement, with a majority of the social media posts receiving negligible to no likes, shares, and comments. It further noted it had found little evidence that the long-form articles created using ChatGPT were shared on social media platforms....

Meta has suspended the use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in Brazil after the country's data protection authority issued a preliminary ban objecting to its new privacy policy. The development was first reported by news agency Reuters. The company said it has decided to suspend the tools while it is in talks with Brazil's National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) to address the agency's concerns over its use of GenAI technology. Earlier this month, ANPD halted with immediate effect the social media giant's new privacy policy that granted the company access to users' personal data to train its GenAI systems. The decision stems from "the imminent risk of serious and irreparable damage or difficult-to-repair damage to the fundamental rights of the affected data subjects," the agency said. It further set a daily fine of 50,000 reais (about $9,100 as of July 18) in case of non-compliance. Last week, it gave Meta "five more days to p...

Large language models (LLMs) powering artificial intelligence (AI) tools today could be exploited to develop self-augmenting malware capable of bypassing YARA rules. "Generative AI can be used to evade string-based YARA rules by augmenting the source code of small malware variants, effectively lowering detection rates," Recorded Future  said  in a new report shared with The Hacker News. The findings are part of a red teaming exercise designed to uncover malicious use cases for AI technologies, which are  already being experimented  with by threat actors to create malware code snippets, generate phishing emails, and conduct reconnaissance on potential targets. The cybersecurity firm said it submitted to an LLM a known piece of malware called  STEELHOOK  that's associated with the APT28 hacking group, alongside its YARA rules, asking it to modify the source code to sidestep detection such that the original functionality remained intact and the gene...