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Yesterday WikiLeaks published thousands of documents revealing top CIA hacking secrets , including the agency's ability to break into iPhones, Android phones, smart TVs, and Microsoft, Mac and Linux operating systems. It dubbed the first release as Vault 7 . Vault 7 is just the first part of leak series " Year Zero " that WikiLeaks will be releasing in coming days. Vault 7 is all about a covert global hacking operation being run by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). According to the whistleblower organization, the CIA did not inform the companies about the security issues of their products; instead held on to security bugs in software and devices, including iPhones, Android phones, and Samsung TVs, that millions of people around the world rely on. One leaked document suggested that the CIA was even looking for tools to remotely control smart cars and trucks, allowing the agency to cause "accidents" which would effectively be "nearly undetectable assas...

Researchers have disclosed a new technique that could be used to circumvent existing hardware mitigations in modern processors from Intel, AMD, and Arm, and stage  speculative execution  attacks such as Spectre to leak sensitive information from host memory. Attacks like  Spectre  are designed to break the isolation between different applications by taking advantage of an  optimization technique  called speculative execution in CPU hardware implementations to trick programs into accessing arbitrary locations in memory and thus leak their secrets. While chipmakers have incorporated both software and hardware  defenses , including  Retpoline  as well as safeguards like Enhanced Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation ( eIBRS ) and  Arm   CSV2 , the latest method demonstrated by VUSec researchers aims to get around all these protections. Called  Branch History Injection  (BHI or Spectre-BHB), it's a new variant of Spectr...

Security boffins have discovered a critical vulnerability in a GnuPG cryptographic library that allowed the researchers to completely break RSA-1024 and successfully extract the secret RSA key to decrypt data. Gnu Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG) is popular open source encryption software used by many operating systems from Linux and FreeBSD to Windows and macOS X. It's the same software used by the former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden to keep his communication secure from law enforcement. The vulnerability, labeled CVE-2017-7526 , resides in the Libgcrypt cryptographic library used by GnuPG, which is prone to local FLUSH+RELOAD side-channel attack. A team of researchers — from Technical University of Eindhoven, the University of Illinois, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Maryland, and the University of Adelaide — found that the "left-to-right sliding window" method used by the libgcrypt library for carrying out the mathematics o...

The latest dump of hacking tools allegedly belonged to the NSA is believed to be the most damaging release by the Shadow Brokers till the date. But after analyzing the disclosed exploits, Microsoft security team says most of the windows vulnerabilities exploited by these hacking tools, including EternalBlue, EternalChampion, EternalSynergy, EternalRomance and others, are already patched in the last month's Patch Tuesday update. " Most of the exploits that were disclosed fall into vulnerabilities that are already patched in our supported products. Customers still running prior versions of these products are encouraged to upgrade to a supported offering, " Microsoft Security Team said in a blog post  published today. On Good Friday, the Shadow Brokers released a massive trove of Windows hacking tools allegedly stolen from NSA that works against almost all versions of Windows, from Windows 2000 and XP to Windows 7 and 8, and their server-side variants such as Serve...

You arrive at the office, power up your system, and panic sets in. Every file is locked, and every system is frozen. A ransom demand flashes on your screen: "Pay $2 million in Bitcoin within 48 hours or lose everything." And the worst part is that even after paying, there's no guarantee you'll get your data back. Many victims hand over the money, only to receive nothing in return, or worse, get hit again. This isn't a rare case. Ransomware attacks are crippling businesses worldwide, from hospitals and banks to small companies. The only way to stop the damage is by proactively analyzing suspicious files and links before they can be executed. Below, we break down the top three ransomware families active in 2025: LockBit, Lynx, and Virlock, and find out how interactive analysis helps businesses detect and stop them before it's too late. LockBit: Teasing a Comeback in 2025 LockBit is one of the most notorious ransomware groups, known for its highly efficient encryption, do...

Cybersecurity today is less about single attacks and more about chains of small weaknesses that connect into big risks. One overlooked update, one misused account, or one hidden tool in the wrong hands can be enough to open the door. The news this week shows how attackers are mixing methods—combining stolen access, unpatched software, and clever tricks to move from small entry points to large consequences.  For defenders, the lesson is clear: the real danger often comes not from one major flaw, but from how different small flaws interact together. ⚡ Threat of the Week WhatsApp Patches Actively Exploited Flaw — WhatsApp addressed a security vulnerability in its messaging apps for Apple iOS and macOS that it said may have been exploited in the wild in conjunction with a recently disclosed Apple flaw in targeted zero-day attacks. The vulnerability, CVE-2025-55177 relates to a case of insufficient authorization of linked device synchronization messages. The Meta-owned company ...

Ever wonder what happens when attackers don't break the rules—they just follow them better than we do? When systems work exactly as they're built to, but that "by design" behavior quietly opens the door to risk? This week brings stories that make you stop and rethink what's truly under control. It's not always about a broken firewall or missed patch—it's about the small choices, default settings, and shortcuts that feel harmless until they're not. The real surprise? Sometimes the threat doesn't come from outside—it's baked right into how things are set up. Dive in to see what's quietly shaping today's security challenges. ⚡ Threat of the Week FBI Warns of Scattered Spider's on Airlines — The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has warned of a new set of attacks mounted by the notorious cybercrime group Scattered Spider targeting the airline sector using sophisticated social engineering techniques to obtain initial access. Cybersecurity vendors Palo Alto Networks Unit 4...

Even in well-secured environments, attackers are getting in—not with flashy exploits, but by quietly taking advantage of weak settings, outdated encryption, and trusted tools left unprotected. These attacks don't depend on zero-days. They work by staying unnoticed—slipping through the cracks in what we monitor and what we assume is safe. What once looked suspicious now blends in, thanks to modular techniques and automation that copy normal behavior. The real concern? Control isn't just being challenged—it's being quietly taken. This week's updates highlight how default settings, blurred trust boundaries, and exposed infrastructure are turning everyday systems into entry points. ⚡ Threat of the Week Critical SharePoint Zero-Day Actively Exploited (Patch Released Today) — Microsoft has released fixes to address two security flaws in SharePoint Server that have come under active exploitation in the wild to breach dozens of organizations across the world. Details of exploitation emer...

Terrorist groups are increasingly using high-grade, advanced end-to-end encryption technologies so that no law enforcement can catch them. The deadliest terror attacks in Paris that killed 129 people were the latest example of it. How did the Terrorists Communicate and Organize the Plot? The Paris terrorists almost certainly used difficult-to-crack encryption technologies to organize the plot – locking law enforcement out, FBI Director James B. Comey told Congress Wednesday. Also Read:   ISIS Calls Anonymous "IDIOTS" in response to their "Total war" Cyber Threat . The ISIS mastermind behind the Friday's Paris massacre is identified to be Abdelhamid Abaaoud , who is based in Syria. So to transmit his plans to the suicide bombers and gunmen, he would have made use of secure communication to keep law enforcement out. FBI's Comey believes ISIS is making use of popular social media platforms to reach out to potential recruits and smartphone messaging app...

Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, has been fined €251 million (around $263 million) for a 2018 data breach that impacted millions of users in the bloc, in what's the latest financial hit the company has taken for flouting stringent privacy laws. The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) said the data breach impacted approximately 29 million Facebook accounts globally, of which approximately 3 million were based in the European Union and European Economic Area (EEA). It's worth noting that initial estimates from the tech giant had pegged the total number of affected accounts at 50 million. The incident, which the social media company disclosed back in September 2018, arose from a bug that was introduced to Facebook's systems in July 2017, allowing unknown threat actors to exploit the "View As" feature that lets a user see their own profile as someone else. This ultimately made it possible to obtain account ac...

According to research from GitGuardian and CyberArk, 79% of IT decision-makers reported having experienced a secrets leak , up from 75% in the previous year's report. At the same time, the number of leaked credentials has never been higher, with over 12.7 million hardcoded credentials in public GitHub repositories alone . One of the more troubling aspects of this report is that over 90% of valid secrets found and reported remained valid for more than 5 days. According to the same research, on average, it takes organizations 27 days to remediate leaked credentials. Combine that with the fact that non-human identities outnumber human identities by at least 45:1 , and it is easy to see why many organizations are realizing stopping secrets sprawl means finding a way to deal with this machine identity crisis. Unfortunately, the research also shows that many teams are confused about who owns the security of these identities. It is a perfect storm of risk.  Why Does Rotation Take So L...