Since 2018, together with colleagues first at VICE Motherboard, and now at TechCrunch, I’ve been publishing an inventory on the finish of the 12 months highlighting the very best cybersecurity tales reported by different shops. Cybersecurity, surveillance, and privateness are big subjects that nobody single publication can cowl successfully by itself. Journalism is by definition aggressive, but in addition a extremely collaborative subject. That’s why it generally is sensible to level our readers to different publications and their work to be taught extra about these sophisticated and sprawling beats.
With out additional ado, listed below are our favourite cybersecurity tales of this 12 months written by our buddies at rival shops. — Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai.
In one of many largest and most brazen mass-hacks in latest historical past, hackers this 12 months raided a whole bunch of insecure cloud storage accounts hosted by cloud computing firm Snowflake, relied on by a number of the world’s largest tech and telecom firms. The hackers then held the large troves of stolen knowledge for ransom. One sufferer of the hacks, AT&T, confirmed that it lost the call and text records of “nearly all” of AT&T’s 110 million prospects within the breach, accounting for greater than 50 billion name and textual content information.
Days after AT&T went public with information of its breach, impartial safety reporter Kim Zetter broke the information that AT&T had weeks earlier paid a hacker $370,000 to delete the huge cache of stolen phone records and never publicly launch the information. Zetter’s reporting uncovered a serious piece within the puzzle of who was behind the intrusions — on the time identified solely as UNC5537 by Mandiant — and who had been later identified as Connor Moucka and John Binns and indicted for their role within the mass-thefts from Snowflake’s buyer accounts. — Zack Whittaker.
Kashmir Hill’s newest investigative report in The New York Times revealed that automakers are sharing customers’ driving habits and habits with knowledge brokers and insurance coverage firms, which use the information to hike buyer charges and premiums, a dystopian use of a driver’s personal info in opposition to them. For GM automobile house owners, drivers are often not informed that enrolling in its Good Driver function would mechanically lead to autos sharing their driving habits with third-parties. The story prompted a congressional inquiry, which revealed that the carmakers bought customers’ knowledge in some circumstances for mere pennies. — Zack Whittaker.
That is only a wild story. If this story was a film — heck, it ought to be — it might nonetheless be surprising. However the truth that this really occurred is simply unbelievable. Zach Dorfman pulled off an unbelievable feat of reporting right here. Writing about intelligence operations isn’t straightforward; by definition, these are supposed to remain secret eternally. And this isn’t a type of tales that the intelligence neighborhood would secretly be glad to see on the market. There’s nothing to be proud or glad right here. I don’t need to spoil this story in any manner, you simply must learn it. It’s that good. — Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai.
This isn’t purely a cybersecurity story, however in some methods crypto has at all times been a part of hacking tradition. Born as a libertarian pipe dream, it’s been clear for a few years that Bitcoin and all its crypto offshoots don’t have anything to do with what Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious inventor of the cryptocurrency and blockchain know-how, imagined again in 2008 in his founding paper on Bitcoin. Now, crypto has grow to be a software for the far-right to wield their energy, as Charlie Warzel explains very properly on this piece. — Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai.
Bloomberg’s Katrina Manson received the news that no person else may: drug distributor Cencora paid a $75 million ransom to an extortion gang to not launch delicate private and medical-related knowledge on upwards of round 18 million folks following an earlier cyberattack. Cencora was hacked in February, however steadfastly and frequently refused to say what number of people had their info stolen — despite the fact that public filings showed upwards of 1.4 million affected individuals and rising. TechCrunch had been chasing this story concerning the alleged ransom cost for a while (and we weren’t the one ones!) after listening to rumblings that Cencora had paid what’s believed to be the largest ransomware cost up to now. Bloomberg’s Manson received the main points on the bitcoin transactions and confirmed the ransom funds. — Zack Whittaker.
I’ve lined ransomware for years, and whereas the hackers behind these data-theft assaults are sometimes prepared to speak, the victims of those assaults sometimes aren’t so eager to open up. Bloomberg’s Ryan Gallagher achieved the near-impossible by getting the U.Ok.-based supply firm Knights of Previous to reveal all about a ransomware attack that resulted within the firm shuttering after 158 years in enterprise. Paul Abbott, Knights’ co-owner, spoke frankly concerning the assault, giving readers a glimpse into the devastation attributable to the Russia-linked hacking gang. Abbott revealed how — and why — the corporate determined to not negotiate, ensuing within the publication of greater than 10,000 inside paperwork. This leak, Abbot disclosed, meant the corporate couldn’t safe a mortgage or promote the corporate, forcing it to shut its doorways for good. — Carly Web page.
404 Media has completely been killing it within the 12 months or so after it launched. There have been loads of nice tales however this one stood out for me. Right here, Joseph Cox and different journalists acquired the identical dataset, and he neatly determined to give attention to one main challenge in his story: How cellphone location may assist determine folks visiting abortion clinics. With Donald Trump returning to the White Home, and the Republican Get together controlling all branches of presidency, it’s doubtless that we are going to see additional challenges to abortion rights and entry, making this sort of surveillance particularly harmful. — Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai.
I’ve been masking crypto hacks and heists on and off for just a few years now. It’s a fascinating world stuffed with grifters, scammers, hackers — and dogged investigators. Some of the intriguing characters is a person who goes by the deal with ZachXBT. For years, he has been unraveling a number of the most intricate crypto mysteries, hacks, heists, scams and cash laundering operations. This 12 months, Andy Greenberg at Wired did an amazing job profiling ZachXBT. And even when Greenberg couldn’t reveal the detective’s real-world identification and withheld a variety of figuring out info, the story painted a vivid image of the investigator and his motivations. — Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai.
Wired’s Andy Greenberg received the news on one other main China backed-hacking marketing campaign. The attention-opening report, published in October, reveals how researchers working for Chengdu-based cybersecurity agency at Sichuan Silence and the College of Digital Science and Know-how of China spent years researching vulnerabilities in Sophos firewalls. The vulnerabilities subsequently utilized by Chinese language-government backed hacking teams, such as APT41 and Volt Typhoon, to plant backdoors in Sophos firewalls utilized by organizations world wide and steal their delicate knowledge. The five-year-long marketing campaign, as also detailed by Sophos itself, resulted within the compromise of greater than 80,000 firewall units globally — together with some used within the U.S. authorities. Following Greenberg’s reporting, the U.S. authorities sanctioned the Chinese language cybersecurity firm and one in every of its staff for his or her function within the widespread hacking marketing campaign. — Carly Web page.
The Salt Storm hack of U.S. telephone and web giants won’t solely go down as one of many largest cybersecurity tales of 2024, but in addition as one of many largest hacks in historical past. The Wall Street Journal impressively got the scoop on this story, reporting in October that Salt Storm, a Chinese language government-backed hacking group, had penetrated the networks of a swath of U.S. telecom suppliers to entry info from techniques the federal authorities makes use of for court-authorized community wiretapping requests. The WSJ’s glorious reporting kickstarted months of follow-ups and prompted motion from the U.S. authorities, which has since urged Americans to switch to encrypted messaging apps, resembling Sign, to attenuate the danger of getting their communications intercepted. — Carly Web page.
KYC, or “know your buyer” checks, are a number of the most relied upon strategies that banks and tech firms use to attempt to affirm it’s actually you they’re coping with. KYC entails your driver’s license, passport, or different sort of ID, and checking — to the best diploma attainable — the authenticity of the doc. However whereas fakes and forgeries are inevitable, generative AI fashions are rendering these KYC checks totally ineffective. 404 Media explored the underground site where “neural networks” churn out fake IDs at speed, which was a superb method to expose how straightforward it’s to generate faux IDs on the fly which can be able to enabling financial institution fraud and felony cash laundering. The location went offline following 404 Media’s reporting. — Zack Whittaker.
