Ransomware DataBreachToday.com

Hacking Was the Easy Part, Notifying McDonald's the Extremely Difficult Bit
A security researcher gained access to McDonald's global marketing portal by changing a single word in its URL, uncovering a slew of additional vulnerabilities. The hard part was notifying the burger giant about the flaws, says self-described ethical hacker "BobDaHacker."

Inotiv Inc. Tells SEC Some Business Operations Disrupted, No Recovery Date in Sight
Inotiv, a drug research and development firm, told federal regulators that it's been dealing with a cyberattack since Aug. 8 that has encrypted some IT systems and data, and is disrupting certain business operations. Ransomware gang Qilin has listed the company as a victim on its dark website.

Claude Models May Shut Down Harmful Chats in Some Edge Cases
Anthropic introduced a safeguard to its Claude artificial intelligence platform that allows certain models to end conversations in cases of persistently harmful or abusive interactions. The company said it's doing so not to protect human users, but as a way to mitigate risks to the models.

Successful Breaches Renew Fears of Operational Vulnerabilities Across Water Sector
Russia is suspected of escalating cyberattacks on European water utilities, including attempts to sabotage Polish and Norwegian water facilities and dams, signaling a broader threat to global critical infrastructure as state-backed actors exploit critical OT weaknesses amid global conflict.

Practical Guide to Architect, Govern, Scale AI Agents for Enterprise Transformation
Part 1 of this two-part feature on agentic AI covered how the autonomous systems shift enterprises from reactive generative AI to autonomous, accountable systems. Part 2 provides a practical blueprint for architecting, governing and scaling agentic AI to deliver enterprisewide transformation.

Maximum Validity of Public TLS Certificates Will Drop From 398 Days to Just 47 Days
The future of managing digital certificates is already here - it's just not evenly distributed yet. With the public TLS certificate validity period set to drop to just 47 days, as well as the need to migrate to quantum-safe encryption, experts see automation as key to achieving crypto agility.

Common Weaknesses Healthcare Providers Must Overcome to Avoid Regulators' Wrath
Regulators have long pushed HIPAA-regulated providers to ensure their enterprise-wide security risk analysis is comprehensive and timely, so they can identify security issues before they become data breaches. Why do so many organizations struggle with this top HIPAA priority?

CEO Matthew Prince: Unchecked Scraping Could Undermine the Internet's Economic Model
With 20% of the web behind its platform, Cloudflare will now block AI web crawlers from scraping monetized content by default. CEO Matthew Prince says the company's policy gives all users, even on the free plan, control over AI bot access and protects the incentives for content creation.

Tulsi Gabbard Takes Credit After Apparent British Reversal of Backdoor Request
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced the United Kingdom has apparently reversed course on a demand for Apple to provide the government with a backdoor into its advanced iCloud encrypted protections following growing criticism from U.S. lawmakers and privacy advocates.

PolarNet Has Hallmarks of an Operational Relay Box
Nearly 40,000 enterprise-grade devices and consumer-class routers, IP cameras and more are infected with malware researchers codenamed PolarEdge, controlled by a botnet of the same name, which experts suspect is designed to hide traffic tied to cyberespionage operations.

Healthplex, Part of UnitedHealth Group, Lacked MFA on Compromised Email Account
New York State has fined a dental plan administrator owned by UnitedHealth Group $2 million for failing to protect data with multifactor authentication and other issues related to a phishing breach that affected 90,000 people. It's the state's second fine against Healthplex for the same breach.

Fraud Expert Trace Fooshee on Regulatory Steps Needed to Curb Payment Scams
While the U.K. and Australia have mobilized multiple sectors to tackle payment scams, the United States faces complex hurdles. The U.S. can't replicate other regulatory models but it can pursue targeted actions such as regulating scam-prone ad platforms and creating a central fraud-fighting agency.

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Centers Connected to RADIUS Left Vulnerable
Networking equipment giant Cisco warned firewall customers to patch after discovering a maximum-severity vulnerability that could allow unauthenticated hackers to commandeer the server. The flaw rates a maximum score of 10 on the CVSS system.

CRM Breach May Be Tied to Ongoing Scattered Spider and ShinyHunters Campaign
Cloud software giant Workday said its customer relationship management software has been breached and customer data stolen. The alert comes as attackers continue to pose as employees to trick help desks into giving them direct access to a victim's Salesforce CRM instance.

Support Portals Offline as Ransomware Gang Claims It Stole Data
British-based multinational telecom Colt Technology Services said a "cyber incident" is responsible for days-long disruptions to its customer portal and support services. The WarLock ransomware operation took responsibility for the hack, asserting it stole "1 million documents."

Recent advisories from U.S. federal authorities on vulnerabilities in certain operational technology devices underscore the potential security risks that many healthcare providers frequently underestimate, said Sila Özeren, a security research engineer at Picus Security.

Space Policy and Tech Head Paul Liias on Dealing With Satellite Vulnerabilities
A major disruption of civil and military satellites could cause chaos on the ground to communications, navigation and other vital services. But the threats don't just come from missiles. They also comes from hackers who could exploit numerous vulnerabilities, said Estonia's Paul Liias.

Cyfinoid's Shrivastava Calls for Greater Visibility Over Software Security Risks
Software supply chain security is all too often viewed through a narrow lens, focused mostly on code dependencies and Software Bill of Materials. But the devil remains in the details and risks can emerge from overlooked areas, said Anant Shrivastava, founder and chief researcher at Cyfinoid.

Researchers Say AI Bots Blur Lines Between Identity, Consent and Cyber Defense
As generative AI programs continue to evolve, they are introducing new threats to the modern workplace. Digital twins, once confined to industrial systems, now enable hyper-realistic copies of actual employees to mimic vocal patterns, behaviors and even pick up on decision-making trends.

Ransomware Attacks Pummel Critical National Infrastructure Sectors, Experts Warn
The oil and gas sector in Pakistan is on high alert following a ransomware attack against the state-owned oil and gas company Pakistan Petroleum, an instance of ransomware impacting critical infrastructure in a year that has already tallied hundreds of incidents.