Since 2018, together with colleagues first at VICE Motherboard, and now at TechCrunch, I’ve been publishing a listing on the finish of the yr highlighting the perfect cybersecurity tales reported by different retailers. Cybersecurity, surveillance, and privateness are enormous subjects that nobody single publication can cowl successfully by itself. Journalism is by definition aggressive, but in addition a extremely collaborative area. That’s why it generally is smart to level our readers to different publications and their work to study extra about these difficult and sprawling beats.
With out additional ado, listed here are our favourite cybersecurity tales of this yr written by our associates at rival retailers. — Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai.
In one of many greatest and most brazen mass-hacks in latest historical past, hackers this yr raided lots of of insecure cloud storage accounts hosted by cloud computing firm Snowflake, relied on by a number of the world’s largest tech and telecom corporations. The hackers then held the massive troves of stolen knowledge for ransom. One sufferer of the hacks, AT&T, confirmed that it misplaced the decision and textual content information of “practically all” of AT&T’s 110 million clients 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 massive cache of stolen telephone information and never publicly launch the information. 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 have been later recognized as Connor Moucka and John Binns and indicted for his or her function 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 shoppers’ driving conduct and habits with knowledge brokers and insurance coverage corporations, which use the information to hike buyer charges and premiums, a dystopian use of a driver’s personal data in opposition to them. For GM car homeowners, drivers are usually not knowledgeable that enrolling in its Good Driver function would routinely lead to autos sharing their driving habits with third-parties. The story prompted a congressional inquiry, which revealed that the carmakers offered shoppers’ knowledge in some circumstances for mere pennies. — Zack Whittaker.
That is only a wild story. If this story was a film — heck, it must be — it might nonetheless be stunning. However the truth that this really occurred is simply unimaginable. Zach Dorfman pulled off an unimaginable feat of reporting right here. Writing about intelligence operations shouldn’t be straightforward; by definition, these are supposed to remain secret perpetually. And this isn’t a kind 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 wish to spoil this story in any manner, you simply need to learn it. It’s that good. — Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai.
This isn’t purely a cybersecurity story, however in some methods crypto has all the time been a part of hacking tradition. Born as a libertarian pipe dream, it’s been clear for just 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 expertise, imagined again in 2008 in his founding paper on Bitcoin. Now, crypto has develop into a device for the far-right to wield their energy, as Charlie Warzel explains very properly on this piece. — Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai.
Bloomberg’s Katrina Manson obtained the news 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 folks following an earlier cyberattack. Cencora was hacked in February, however steadfastly and regularly refused to say what number of people had their data stolen — regardless that public filings confirmed upwards of 1.4 million affected people 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 most important ransomware cost to this point. Bloomberg’s Manson obtained 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 keen 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.Ok.-based supply firm Knights of Outdated 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 inner 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 yr 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 well determined to deal with one main situation in his story: How cellphone location might assist determine folks visiting abortion clinics. With Donald Trump returning to the White Home, and the Republican Celebration controlling all branches of presidency, it’s possible that we’ll 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 just a few years now. It’s a fascinating world stuffed with grifters, scammers, hackers — and dogged investigators. One of the vital 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 yr, Andy Greenberg at Wired did an important job profiling ZachXBT. And even when Greenberg couldn’t reveal the detective’s real-world id and withheld numerous figuring out data, the story painted a vivid image of the investigator and his motivations. — Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai.
Wired’s Andy Greenberg obtained the news on one other main China backed-hacking marketing campaign. The attention-opening report, revealed in October, reveals how researchers working for Chengdu-based cybersecurity agency at Sichuan Silence and the College of Digital Science and Expertise of China spent years researching vulnerabilities in Sophos firewalls. The vulnerabilities subsequently utilized by Chinese language-government backed hacking teams, comparable to APT41 and Volt Hurricane, 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 every of its workers for his or her function within the widespread hacking marketing campaign. — Carly Web page.
The Salt Hurricane hack of U.S. telephone and web giants won’t solely go down as one of many greatest cybersecurity tales of 2024, but in addition as one of many greatest hacks in historical past. The Wall Road Journal impressively obtained the news on this story, reporting in October that Salt Hurricane, a Chinese language government-backed hacking group, had penetrated the networks of a swath of U.S. telecom suppliers to entry data from methods 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 modify to encrypted messaging apps, comparable to Sign, to reduce the chance of getting their communications intercepted. — Carly Web page.
KYC, or “know your buyer” checks, are a number of the most relied upon methods that banks and tech corporations use to attempt to verify it’s the truth is you they’re coping with. KYC includes taking a look at your driver’s license, passport, or different sort of ID, and checking — to the best diploma potential — the authenticity of the doc. However whereas fakes and forgeries are inevitable, generative AI fashions are rendering these KYC checks completely ineffective. 404 Media explored the underground web site the place “neural networks” churn out pretend IDs at velocity, which was a superb technique to expose how straightforward it’s to generate pretend IDs on the fly which might be able to enabling financial institution fraud and legal cash laundering. The positioning went offline following 404 Media’s reporting. — Zack Whittaker.