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Comparitech found that healthcare ransomware attacks rose 4% in H1 2025, a significantly lower rate than the cross-sector average of 50%

A new malware campaign uses GitHub to deliver payloads via Amadey botnet, bypassing email distribution

Cybercriminals are using AI cloaking tools to evade detection, disguising phishing and malware sites

Sophos X-Ops sees exploitation across multiple customer estates

Strengthening cybersecurity, data sovereignty, and regional performance.

For the 16th consecutive report, Sophos has been recognized by Gartner as a Leader in the Endpoint Protection Platforms (EPP) category.

ProPublica is reporting:

Microsoft is using engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems—with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel—leaving some of the nation’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary, a ProPublica investigation has found.

The arrangement, which was critical to Microsoft winning the federal government’s cloud computing business a decade ago, relies on U.S. citizens with security clearances to oversee the work and serve as a barrier against espionage and sabotage.

But these workers, known as “digital escorts,” often lack the technical expertise to police foreign engineers with far more advanced skills, ProPublica found. Some are former military personnel with little coding experience who are paid barely more than minimum wage for the work.

This sounds bad, but it’s the way the digital world works. Everything we do is international, deeply international. Making anything US-only is hard, and often infeasible.

EDITED TO ADD: Microsoft has stopped the practice.

Beautiful photo.

Difficult to capture, this mysterious, squid-shaped interstellar cloud spans nearly three full moons in planet Earth’s sky. Discovered in 2011 by French astro-imager Nicolas Outters, the Squid Nebula’s bipolar shape is distinguished here by the telltale blue emission from doubly ionized oxygen atoms. Though apparently surrounded by the reddish hydrogen emission region Sh2-129, the true distance and nature of the Squid Nebula have been difficult to determine. Still, one investigation suggests Ou4 really does lie within Sh2-129 some 2,300 light-years away. Consistent with that scenario, the cosmic squid would represent a spectacular outflow of material driven by a triple system of hot, massive stars, cataloged as HR8119, seen near the center of the nebula. If so, this truly giant squid nebula would physically be over 50 light-years across.

The Chinese have a new tool called Massistant.

• Massistant is the presumed successor to Chinese forensics tool, “MFSocket”, reported in 2019 and attributed to publicly traded cybersecurity company, Meiya Pico.
• The forensics tool works in tandem with a corresponding desktop software.
• Massistant gains access to device GPS location data, SMS messages, images, audio, contacts and phone services.
• Meiya Pico maintains partnerships with domestic and international law enforcement partners, both as a surveillance hardware and software provider, as well as through training programs for law enforcement personnel.

From a news article:

The good news, per Balaam, is that Massistant leaves evidence of its compromise on the seized device, meaning users can potentially identify and delete the malware, either because the hacking tool appears as an app, or can be found and deleted using more sophisticated tools such as the Android Debug Bridge, a command line tool that lets a user connect to a device through their computer.

The bad news is that at the time of installing Massistant, the damage is done, and authorities already have the person’s data.

Slashdot thread.

The ICEBlock tool has vulnerabilities:

The developer of ICEBlock, an iOS app for anonymously reporting sightings of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, promises that it “ensures user privacy by storing no personal data.” But that claim has come under scrutiny. ICEBlock creator Joshua Aaron has been accused of making false promises regarding user anonymity and privacy, being “misguided” about the privacy offered by iOS, and of being an Apple fanboy. The issue isn’t what ICEBlock stores. It’s about what it could accidentally reveal through its tight integration with iOS.