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 perfect cybersecurity tales reported by different retailers. Cybersecurity, surveillance, and privateness are big matters that nobody single publication can cowl successfully by itself. Journalism is by definition aggressive, but additionally a extremely collaborative area. That’s why it generally is sensible to level our readers to different publications and their work to study extra about these difficult and sprawling beats.
With out additional ado, listed below are our favourite cybersecurity tales of this 12 months written by our mates at rival retailers. — Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai.
In one of many greatest and most brazen mass-hacks in current 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 few 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 misplaced the decision and textual content information of “almost 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, unbiased safety reporter Kim Zetter broke the information that AT&T had weeks earlier paid a hacker $370,000 to delete the large cache of stolen telephone information and never publicly launch the info. Zetter’s reporting uncovered a significant piece within the puzzle of who was behind the intrusions — on the time recognized solely as UNC5537 by Mandiant — and who had been later recognized as Connor Moucka and John Binns and indicted for his or her position within the mass-thefts from Snowflake’s buyer accounts. — Zack Whittaker.
Kashmir Hill’s newest investigative report in The New York Occasions revealed that automakers are sharing customers’ driving conduct and habits with knowledge brokers and insurance coverage firms, which use the info to hike buyer charges and premiums, a dystopian use of a driver’s personal info in opposition to them. For GM automobile homeowners, drivers are usually not knowledgeable that enrolling in its Good Driver function would routinely end in automobiles sharing their driving habits with third-parties. The story prompted a congressional inquiry, which revealed that the carmakers offered customers’ knowledge in some instances for mere pennies. — Zack Whittaker.
That is only a wild story. If this story was a film — heck, it ought to be — it could nonetheless be surprising. However the truth that this truly occurred is simply unimaginable. Zach Dorfman pulled off an unimaginable feat of reporting right here. Writing about intelligence operations is just not simple; by definition, these are supposed to remain secret eternally. And this isn’t a type of tales that the intelligence neighborhood would secretly be joyful to see on the market. There’s nothing to be proud or joyful of right here. I don’t need to spoil this story in any manner, you simply should 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 number of 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 expertise, imagined again in 2008 in his founding paper on Bitcoin. Now, crypto has turn into a instrument for the far-right to wield their energy, as Charlie Warzel explains very nicely on this piece. — Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai.
Bloomberg’s Katrina Manson acquired the inside track that no one else might: 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 individuals 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 confirmed upwards of 1.4 million affected people and rising. TechCrunch had been chasing this story concerning the alleged ransom fee 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 fee up to now. Bloomberg’s Manson acquired the small print 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 usually aren’t so eager to open up. Bloomberg’s Ryan Gallagher achieved the near-impossible by getting the U.Okay.-based supply firm Knights of Previous to reveal all a few ransomware assault 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 brought on by 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 obtained the identical dataset, and he neatly determined to concentrate on one main difficulty in his story: How cellphone location might assist establish individuals visiting abortion clinics. With Donald Trump returning to the White Home, and the Republican Get together controlling all branches of presidency, it’s possible 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 overlaying crypto hacks and heists on and off for a number of years now. It’s a fascinating world filled with grifters, scammers, hackers — and dogged investigators. One of the intriguing characters is a person who goes by the deal with ZachXBT. For years, he has been unraveling a few of the most intricate crypto mysteries, hacks, heists, scams, and cash laundering operations. This 12 months, Andy Greenberg at Wired did an excellent job profiling ZachXBT. And even when Greenberg couldn’t reveal the detective’s real-world id 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 acquired the inside track on one other main China backed-hacking marketing campaign. The attention-opening report, printed in October, reveals how researchers working for Chengdu-based cybersecurity agency 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, resembling APT41 and Volt Storm, to plant backdoors in Sophos firewalls utilized by organizations around the globe and steal their delicate knowledge. The five-year-long marketing campaign, as additionally detailed by Sophos itself, resulted within the compromise of greater than 80,000 firewall gadgets 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 all its workers for his or her position within the widespread hacking marketing campaign. — Carly Web page.
The Salt Storm hack of U.S. telephone and web giants is not going to solely go down as one of many greatest cybersecurity tales of 2024, but additionally as one of many greatest hacks in historical past. The Wall Avenue Journal impressively acquired the inside track 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 wonderful reporting kickstarted months of follow-ups and prompted motion from the U.S. authorities, which has since urged People to change 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 few of the most relied upon strategies that banks and tech firms use to attempt to affirm it’s in truth you they’re coping with. KYC includes taking a look at your driver’s license, passport, or different form 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 web site the place “neural networks” churn out faux IDs at velocity, which was an excellent technique to expose how simple it’s to generate faux IDs on the fly which might be able to enabling financial institution fraud and prison cash laundering. The positioning went offline following 404 Media’s reporting. — Zack Whittaker.
