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Google has revealed the various safety measures that are being incorporated into its generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems to mitigate emerging attack vectors like indirect prompt injections and improve the overall security posture for agentic AI systems. "Unlike direct prompt injections, where an attacker directly inputs malicious commands into a prompt, indirect prompt injections involve hidden malicious instructions within external data sources," Google's GenAI security team said . These external sources can take the form of email messages, documents, or even calendar invites that trick the AI systems into exfiltrating sensitive data or performing other malicious actions. The tech giant said it has implemented what it described as a "layered" defense strategy that is designed to increase the difficulty, expense, and complexity required to pull off an attack against its systems. These efforts span model hardening, introducing purpose-built mac...

A former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst has been sentenced to little more than three years in prison for unlawfully retaining and transmitting top secret National Defense Information (NDI) to people who were not entitled to receive them and for attempting to cover up the malicious activity. Asif William Rahman, 34, of Vienna, has been sentenced today to 37 months on charges of stealing and divulging classified information. He was an employee of the CIA since 2016 and had Top Secret security clearance to access Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) until he was terminated from his job after he was arrested last November in Cambodia. Earlier this January, Rahman pleaded guilty to two counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information related to the national defense. As previously reported by The Hacker News, Rahman retained multiple Secret and Top Secret documents without authorization on October 17, 2024, took them to his place of residence...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said it has filed a civil forfeiture complaint in federal court that targets over $7.74 million in cryptocurrency, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other digital assets allegedly linked to a global IT worker scheme orchestrated by North Korea. "For years, North Korea has exploited global remote IT contracting and cryptocurrency ecosystems to evade U.S. sanctions and bankroll its weapons programs," said Sue J. Bai, Head of the Justice Department's National Security Division. The Justice Department said the funds were originally restrained in connection with an April 2023 indictment against Sim Hyon-Sop, a North Korean Foreign Trade Bank (FTB) representative who is believed to have conspired with the IT workers. The IT workers, the department added, gained employment at U.S. cryptocurrency companies using fake identities and then laundered their ill-gotten gains through Sim to further Pyongyang's strategic objectives in violati...

Google has disclosed details of a financially motivated threat cluster that it said "specializes" in voice phishing (aka vishing ) campaigns designed to breach organizations' Salesforce instances for large-scale data theft and subsequent extortion. The tech giant's threat intelligence team is tracking the activity under the moniker UNC6040 , which it said exhibits characteristics that align with threat groups with ties to an online cybercrime collective known as The Com . "Over the past several months, UNC6040 has demonstrated repeated success in breaching networks by having its operators impersonate IT support personnel in convincing telephone-based social engineering engagements," the company said in a report shared with The Hacker News. This approach, Google's Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) added, has had the benefit of tricking English-speaking employees into performing actions that give the threat actors access or lead to the sharing of valua...

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery/Deployment (CI/CD) refers to practices that automate how code is developed and released to different environments. CI/CD pipelines are fundamental in modern software development, ensuring code is consistently tested, built, and deployed quickly and efficiently. While CI/CD automation accelerates software delivery, it can also introduce security risks. Without proper security measures, CI/CD workflows can be vulnerable to supply chain attacks, insecure dependencies, and insider threats. To mitigate these risks, organizations must integrate measures for continuous monitoring and enforcing security best practices at every pipeline stage. Securing CI/CD workflows preserves the software delivery process's confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Security challenges and risks in CI/CD workflows While CI/CD workflows offer benefits in terms of automation and speed, they also bring unique security challenges that must be addressed to ...

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has disclosed that unknown cyber actors broke into its systems and stole account data for a small subset of its customers. "Criminals targeted our customer support agents overseas," the company said in a statement. "They used cash offers to convince a small group of insiders to copy data in our customer support tools for less than 1% of Coinbase monthly transacting users." The end goal of the campaign was to put together a list of customers who they contacted by masquerading as Coinbase and deceiving them into handing over their cryptocurrency assets. Coinbase said the threat actors then unsuccessfully attempted to extort the company for $20 million on May 11, 2025, by claiming to have information about certain customer accounts as well as internal documents. In a statement shared with Fortune, Coinbase said the compromised customer agents worked in India and have all been fired.  "No passwords, private keys, or funds w...

The North Korean threat actors behind the Contagious Interview campaign have been observed using updated versions of a cross-platform malware called OtterCookie with capabilities to steal credentials from web browsers and other files. NTT Security Holdings, which detailed the new findings, said the attackers have "actively and continuously" updated the malware, introducing versions v3 and v4 in February and April 2025, respectively. The Japanese cybersecurity company is tracking the cluster under the name WaterPlum , which is also known as CL-STA-0240, DeceptiveDevelopment, DEV#POPPER, Famous Chollima, PurpleBravo, and Tenacious Pungsan. OtterCookie was first documented by NTT last year after having observed it in attacks since September 2024. Delivered by means of a JavaScript payload via a malicious npm package, trojanized GitHub or Bitbucket repository, or a bogus videoconferencing app, it's designed to contact an external server to execute commands on compromis...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday announced charges against a 36-year-old Yemeni national for allegedly deploying the Black Kingdom ransomware against global targets, including businesses, schools, and hospitals in the United States. Rami Khaled Ahmed of Sana'a, Yemen, has been charged with one count of conspiracy, one count of intentional damage to a protected computer, and one count of threatening damage to a protected computer. Ahmed is assessed to be currently living in Yemen. "From March 2021 to June 2023, Ahmed and others infected computer networks of several U.S.-based victims, including a medical billing services company in Encino, a ski resort in Oregon, a school district in Pennsylvania, and a health clinic in Wisconsin," the DoJ said in a statement. Ahmed is accused of developing and deploying the ransomware by exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange Server known as ProxyLogon. The ransomware worked by either encrypting data from ...

Russian companies have been targeted as part of a large-scale phishing campaign that's designed to deliver a known malware called DarkWatchman . Targets of the attacks include entities in the media, tourism, finance and insurance, manufacturing, retail, energy, telecom, transport, and biotechnology sectors, Russian cybersecurity company F6 said . The activity is assessed to be the work of a financially motivated group called Hive0117, which has been attributed by IBM X-Force to attacks aimed at users in Lithuania, Estonia, and Russia spanning telecom, electronic, and industrial sectors. Then in September 2023, the DarkWatchman malware was once again used in a phishing campaign targeting energy, finance, transport, and software security industries based in Russia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Estonia. Russian banks, retailers and marketplaces, telecom operators, agro-industrial enterprises, fuel and energy companies, logistics businesses, and IT firms were singled out again in No...

Find out how Reco keeps Microsoft 365 Copilot safe by spotting risky prompts, protecting data, managing user access, and identifying threats - all while keeping productivity high. Microsoft 365 Copilot promises to boost productivity by turning natural language prompts into actions. Employees can generate reports, comb through data, or get instant answers just by asking Copilot.  However, alongside this convenience comes serious security concerns. Copilot operates across a company's SaaS apps (from SharePoint to Teams and beyond), which means a careless prompt or a compromised user account could expose troves of sensitive information.  Security experts warn that organizations shouldn't assume default settings will keep them safe. Without proactive controls, every file in your organization could be accessible via Copilot. A malicious actor might use Copilot to discover and exfiltrate confidential data without having to manually search through systems. With the right prom...

Multiple threat activity clusters with ties to North Korea (aka Democratic People's Republic of Korea or DPRK) have been linked to attacks targeting organizations and individuals in the Web3 and cryptocurrency space. "The focus on Web3 and cryptocurrency appears to be primarily financially motivated due to the heavy sanctions that have been placed on North Korea," Google-owned Mandiant said in its M-Trends report for 2025 shared with The Hacker News. "These activities aim to generate financial gains, reportedly funding North Korea's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program and other strategic assets." The cybersecurity firm said DPRK-nexus threat actors have developed custom tools written in a variety of languages such as Golang, C++, and Rust, and are capable of infecting Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. At least three threat activity clusters it tracks as UNC1069, UNC4899, and UNC5342 have been found to target members of the cryptocurren...