Leakers claim Pokémon Wind and Waves will be procedurally generated games that expand endlessly, with a focus on survival elements and exploration.
Pokémon fans may want to tread carefully right now, and not just because Pokémon Legends: Z-A has leaked days ahead of release. It seems that Game Freak may have suffered a much bigger leak than a single game, based on material that is currently circulating on the internet. The content, which purportedly shares a timeline for the next handful of Pokémon games, reveals what could be coming next for the 10th generation of mainline Pokémon games. Is any of it credible, though? There are reasons to believe the leaks are legit, and reasons to be skeptical.
We know that Game Freak did in fact suffer a major breach of information back in 2024 for which Nintendo filed a subpoena earlier this year, in the hopes of catching whoever was behind the leak. The leak, which fans refer to as "teraleak," contained a shocking amount of information not just about immediate games like Pokémon Legends: Z-A, but also a trove of materials that were never meant for public consumption. These included concept art and development documentation for new and old Pokémon games alike. At the time, the leaker suggested that they did not share everything they acquired on Game Freak, like the source code for Pokémon Legends: Z-A. This would imply that more information could potentially leak in the future.
Fast-forward to now, and leak accounts on social media are once again disseminating a bewildering amount of Pokémon content that supposedly originates from the same source. Moreover, these are leak accounts that have a proven track record with Pokémon leaks in the past, like when Pokémon Legends: Z-A's Mega Evolutions were posted on the internet months ahead of schedule. Whether the material actually comes from the same leaker is unclear, especially if the people involved might be in the middle of, or about to be in, a legal battle with Nintendo. Nintendo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Another reason the leak seems credible is the volume and quality of the materials floating around. The leaks include dozens of pages of apparent proposal documents for Pokémon Sword and Shield, concept art, and beta footage of Pokémon Legends: Z-A. Some of this material is the sort of thing generative AI could ostensibly create, given that Pokémon games have a specific art style that could be emulated. But things like hand-drawn maps or unpolished gameplay footage seem significantly harder to pull off, given their imperfect nature.
The material is also granular in a way that does not look curated. It's easy to believe someone might be motivated to trick people into believing they've got the inside track on the next mainline Pokémon game. It's not quite as probable that someone would spend time putting together a collection of boring graphs and Excel sheets. Not impossible, but unlikely.
With all of this said, what are leakers actually saying about the next mainline Pokémon games? According to leaked documents, the concept for the next big Pokémon games are Pokémon Wind and Waves, and they're aimed for release in 2026. The set of games will reportedly feature procedurally generated islands that are loosely based on Indonesia and southeast Asia. Unlike most major Pokémon games, Wind and Waves will supposedly begin in a big city rather than a small town. The games are said to have more of a survival bent than previous titles, including the ability to explore jungle and underwater regions. Special focus will be placed on weather elements, which will also be the theme behind the upcoming legendaries. There will be a new type of creature called "seed" Pokémon, but specifics regarding their function are currently being debated. The leaks even claim to outline what fans can expect in terms of rivals and enemy organizations. Get this: The baddie this time is supposedly going to be involved with land development, which runs counter to the untamed environments that Wind and Waves will supposedly allow players to explore.
While some of these ideas border on fantasy — can Game Freak truly pull off a game that could generate new areas infinitely when Scarlet and Violet barely handled open-world environments? — some of the details make sense on paper. It sounds believable that the newest Pokémon games will see Game Freak exploring whatever was trendy years ago — in this case, survival games, open-world environments, and procedural generation. It's also worth noting that Sword and Shield were partially limited by the power of the original Switch. Any future games will not be cross-platform, which would ostensibly free up Game Freak to pursue more technically demanding gameplay concepts.
The other huge asterisk worth considering here is, even if all of what's floating around is true, game development scarcely goes as planned. Five years is a long time from now. Ideas could change down the line or be scrapped entirely. To wit: The beta footage of Pokémon Legends: Z-A shows purported gameplay mechanics that almost certainly aren't in the final game, like third-person shooting mechanics and parkour. Both of these mechanics sound like they pertain to entirely different games than the one Pokémon Legends: Z-A turned out to be, according to previews and its pre-release marketing.
Beyond the mainline games, leaks assert that they've got the entirety of The Pokémon Company's next five years mapped out. For example, the next few years will include a tantalizing game that will include multiple regions from previous games, which the player will be able to explore seamlessly.
The thing is, leaks don't always pan out. Earlier this year, the rumor going around was that the 10th generation of Pokémon games were supposed to be set in Greece. Now those same sources are saying something else entirely. What's different this time around is that there's way more circumstantial evidence that makes the claims sound plausible. And the details are weirdly specific, like footage of water wave simulations and unfinished terrain.
But until Game Freak announces it? Take anything you see regarding Pokémon with a grain of salt.
bleepingcomputer.com By Sergiu Gatlan
October 3, 2025
An extortion group has launched a new data leak site to publicly extort dozens of companies impacted by a wave of Salesforce breaches, leaking samples of data stolen in the attacks.
The threat actors responsible for these attacks claim to be part of the ShinyHunters, Scattered Spider, and Lapsus$ groups, collectively referring to themselves as "Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters."
Today, they launched a new data leak site containing 39 companies impacted by the attacks. Each entry includes samples of data allegedly stolen from victims' Salesforce instances, and warns the victims to reach out to "prevent public disclosure" of their data before the October 10 deadline is reached.
The companies being extorted on the data leak site include well-known brands and organizations, including FedEx, Disney/Hulu, Home Depot, Marriott, Google, Cisco, Toyota, Gap, McDonald's, Walgreens, Instacart, Cartier, Adidas, Sake Fifth Avenue, Air France & KLM, Transunion, HBO MAX, UPS, Chanel, and IKEA.
"All of them have been contacted long ago, they saw the email because I saw them download the samples multiple times. Most of them chose to not disclose and ignore," ShinyHunters told BleepingComputer.
"We highly advise you proceed into the right decision, your organisation can prevent the release of this data, regain control over the situation and all operations remain stable as always. We highly recommend a decision-maker to get involved as we are presenting a clear and mutually beneficial opportunity to resolve this matter," they warned on the leak site.
The threat actors also added a separate entry requesting that Salesforce pay a ransom to prevent all impacted customers' data (approximately 1 billion records containing personal information) from being leaked.
"Should you comply, we will withdraw from any active or pending negotiation indiviually from your customers. Your customers will not be attacked again nor will they face a ransom from us again, should you pay," they added.
The extortion group also threatened the company, stating that it would help law firms pursue civil and commercial lawsuits against Salesforce following the data breaches and warned that the company had also failed to protect customers' data as required by the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
https://www.international.gc.ca Date modified: 2025-09-12
Summary
Rapid Response Mechanism Canada (RRM Canada) has detected a “hack and leak” operation by Iran-linked hacker group, “Handala Hack Team” (Handala). The operation targeted five Iran International journalists, including one from Canada. RRM Canada assesses that the operation began on July 8, 2025.
The hacked materials ranged from photos of government IDs to intimate content. They were first released via the Handala website, then further amplified via X, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, and Iranian news websites. At the time of assessment, engagement with the hacked materials has varied from low to medium (between 0 to 2,200 interactions and 1 to 225,000 views), depending on the platform. The social media campaign appears to have stopped as of early August.
Following the aftermath of the initial “hack and leak” operation, RRM Canada also detected amplification of the leaked information through multiple AI chatbots—ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Grok, and DeepSeek. These platforms all outlined detailed information about the “hack and leak” operation, providing names of the affected individuals, the nature of the leaked information, and links to the released images. RRM Canada notes that some of these chatbots continue to surface the leaked images upon request.
Many sources, including the Atlantic Council, have associated the Handala Hack group with Iran’s intelligence services. Footnote1
Targets and content
Initial “hack and leak” operation
On July 8, 2025, alleged “hacktivist” group “Handala Hack Team” claimed to have accessed the internal communication and server infrastructure of Iran International—a Farsi satellite television channel and internationally-based English, Arabic, and Farsi online news operation.Footnote2 The group released several uncensored photos of government IDs (including passports, permanent resident cards, and driver’s licences) of five Iran International staffers. In some instances, released content included email address passwords, along with intimate photos and videos. (See Annex A)
RRM Canada detected the operation on July 9, 2025, following the release of the information on a Telegram channel associated with Handala. The group claimed to have acquired information of thousands of individuals linked to Iran International, including documents and intimate images of journalists who worked for the news agency.Footnote3
On July 11, 2025, RRM Canada detected further distribution of materials on X and Facebook. The information appears to focus on a Canadian resident employed by Iran International. The leak included several photos of the individual’s ID, including their provincial driver’s licence, permanent resident card, and Iranian passport, and other personal photos and videos. Three other internationally based staff of the news agency were targeted in a similar fashion, with the release of government-issued ID on Handala’s website and then distributed online.
It is believed that more journalists have been affected by the hack, and there are suggestions that the group is also using the hacked intimate images as a source of revenue by implementing pay-for-play access to some images.
Information amplified through AI chatbots
RRM Canada tested six popular AI chatbots—ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Grok, and DeepSeek—to assess whether the platforms would retrieve and share the information leaked by Handala. While the required prompts varied, all tested chatbots outlined detailed information about the operation, providing the names of the individuals implicated in the lead in addition to the nature of information. (See Annex B)
In addition to providing information, links, and, in some cases, images related to the leak, the chatbots provided citations that included links to unreliable or state-linked sources or repeated unverified accusations against Iran International regarding its credibility from Handala.
Tactics, techniques and procedures
“Hack and leak” operations are a type of cyber-enabled influence campaign where malicious actors hack into a target’s systems or accounts to steal sensitive or private information and then leak the information publicly. Operations are often implemented with the intent to damage reputations, influence public opinion, disrupt political processes, and even put personal safety at risk.
These operations are often associated with state-sponsored actors, hacktivist groups, or cybercriminals.
Links to Iranian intelligence
Handala established their web presence in December 2023. The group has limited social media presence, likely resulting from frequent violations of the platforms’ terms of service.
Atlantic Council and several threat intelligence firms (including Recorded Future, Trellix, and others) report that Handala has connections or is affiliated with other Iranian intelligence-linked groups such as Storm-842 (also known as Red Sandstorm, Dune, Void Manticore, or Banished Kitten).Footnote4 Iran International asserts that Handala and Storm-842 are the same group operating as a cyber unit within Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence.Footnote5
Implications
The leak of personal information increases the risk to the personal safety of the affected Iran International staff. The ease of access to the information resulting from search engine algorithms and availability on AI chatbots further increases this risk. Such operations are used as a form of digital transnational repression (DTNR), which is leveraged to coerce, harass, silence, and intimidate those who speak against foreign actors or against their interests.
Annex A: Sample images of leaked information
Image 1
Image 1: Government-issued ID and personal photos of a Canadian resident working for Iran International.
Image 2
Image 2: post likely from Handala Hack Team associates amplifying leaked materials.
Annex B: Large language model outputs
Image 3
Image 3: Web version of ChatGPT producing leaked images.
Image 4
Image 4: Google’s Gemini reproducing images of the leak.
Image 5
Image 5: Grok showing X posts that include leaked information.
Image 6
Image 6: Claude generating responses with a citation linking directly to Handala's website.
Image 7
Image 7: DeepSeek generating responses with a citation linking directly to Handala’s website.
www.digitaldigging.org - Digital Digging investigation: how your AI conversation could end your career
Corporate executives, government employees, and professionals are confessing to crimes, exposing trade secrets, and documenting career-ending admissions in ChatGPT conversations visible to anyone on the internet.
A Digital Digging investigation analyzed 512 publicly shared ChatGPT conversations using targeted keyword searches, uncovering a trove of self-incrimination and leaked confidential data. The shared chats include apparent insider trading schemes, detailed corporate financials, fraud admissions, and evidence of regulatory violations—all preserved as permanently searchable public records.
Among the discoveries is a conversation where a CEO revealed this to ChatGPT:
Confidential Financial Data: About an upcoming settlement
Non-Public Revenue Projections: Specific forecasts showing revenue doubling
Merger intelligence: Detailed valuations
NDA-Protected Partnerships: Information about Asian customers
The person also revealed internal conflict and criticizing executives by name.
Our method reveals an ironic truth: AI itself can expose these vulnerabilities. After discussing the dangers of making chats public, we asked Claude, another AI chatbot, to suggest Google search formulas that might uncover sensitive ChatGPT conversations.
WASHINGTON, June 30 (Reuters) - Iran-linked hackers have threatened to disclose more emails stolen from U.S. President Donald Trump's circle, after distributing a prior batch to the media ahead of the 2024 U.S. election.
In online chats with Reuters on Sunday and Monday, the hackers, who go by the pseudonym Robert, said they had roughly 100 gigabytes of emails from the accounts of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Trump lawyer Lindsey Halligan, Trump adviser Roger Stone and porn star-turned-Trump antagonist Stormy Daniels.
On May 7, 2025, the LockBit admin panel was hacked by an anonymous actor who replaced their TOR website with the text ‘Don’t do crime CRIME IS BAD xoxo from Prague’ and shared a SQL dump of their admin panel database in an archived file ‘paneldb_dump.zip’:
There is not much information available regarding the individual identified as 'xoxo from Prague' whose objective seems to be the apprehension of malicious ransomware threat actors. It is uncommon for a major ransomware organization's website to be defaced; more so for its administrative panel to be compromised. This leaked SQL database dump is significant as it offers insight into the operational methods of LockBit affiliates and the negotiation tactics they employ to secure ransom payments from their victims.
Trellix Advanced Research Center’s investigations into the leaked SQL database confirmed with high confidence that the database originates from LockBit's affiliates admin panel. This panel allows the generation of ransomware builds for victims, utilizing LockBit Black 4.0 and LockBit Green 4.0, compatible with Linux, Windows and ESXi systems, and provides access to victim negotiation chats.
The leaked SQL database dump encompasses data from December 18, 2024 to April 29, 2025, including details pertaining to LockBit adverts (aka ransomware affiliates), victim organizations, chat logs, cryptocurrency wallets and ransomware build configurations.
Detailed blueprints of Russia’s modernized nuclear weapon sites, including missile silos, were found leaking in public procurement database.
Russia is modernizing its nuclear weapon sites, including underground missile silos and support infrastructure. Data, including building plans, diagrams, equipment, and other schematics, is accessible to anyone in the public procurement database.
Journalists from Danwatch and Der Spiegel scraped and analyzed over two million documents from the public procurement database, which exposed Russian nuclear facilities, including their layout, in great detail. The investigation unveils that European companies participate in modernizing them.
According to the exclusive Der Spiegel report, Russian procurement documents expose some of the world’s most secret construction sites.
“It even contains floor plans and infrastructure details for nuclear weapons silos,” the report reads.
German building materials and construction system giant Knauf and numerous other European companies were found to be indirectly supplying the modernization through small local companies and subsidiaries.
Knauf condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and announced its intention to withdraw from its Russian business in 2024. Knauf told Der Spiegel that it only trades with independent dealers and cannot control who ultimately uses its materials in Russia.
Danwatch jointly reports that “hundreds of detailed blueprints” of Russian nuclear facilities, exposed in procurement databases, make them vulnerable to attacks.
“An enormous Russian security breach has exposed the innermost parts of Russia’s nuclear modernization,” the article reads.
“It’s completely unprecedented.”
The journalists used proxy servers in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus to circumvent network restrictions and access the documents. The rich multimedia in the report details the inner structure of bunkers and missile silos.
Today it was discovered that an unknown actor had managed to exploit a vulnerability in Lockbit’s PHPMyAdmin instance (on their console onion site). Apparently they were running PHP 8.1.2 which is vulnerable to an RCE CVE-2024-4577. Which uhh… lol? It probably would have been prudent to do a post-paid penetration test on their own infrastructure at some point.
Further compounding the unfortunate situation, the actor was able to dump their database. This contained, as stated by Bleeping Computer, a number of tables such as bitcoin addresses, data about their build system such as bespoke builds for affiliates, A ‘chats’ table containing negotiation messages, which we’ll go through in a later post. And finally, of interest today, the usernames and passwords of LockBit agents using the console.
Of special importance, making our work markedly easier, these passwords were not hashed. Which sure is a choice, as an organization that performs ransomware attacks.
The vast majority of the passwords in this table as reasonably secure; it’s not solely hilariously weak credentials, but there still are a number that display poor security hygiene.
The weak passwords
Before going into my standard analysis, I’ll list off all of the weak passwords in question, and then we’ll go through the statistics of the whole set. The fun to highlight passwords:
In February 2025, the cybersecurity community witnessed an unprecedented leak that exposed the internal operations of Black Basta.
Les échanges internes au groupe Black Basta divulgués la semaine dernière offrent une nouvelle opportunité d’enquêter sur l’un de ses leaders : tramp. Il pourrait avoir été arrêté en Arménie en juin 2024, avant d’être relâché.
A hacker claims to have stolen thousands of internal documents with user records and employee data after breaching the systems of Orange Group, a leading French telecommunications operator and digital service provider.
#Breach #Computer #Data #Email #Extortion #InfoSec #Jira #Leak #Orange #Ransom #S.A. #Security
A fresh post on the Kraken ransomware group’s leak website refers to data stolen in a 2022 cyberattack, Cisco says.
The data, a list of credentials apparently exfiltrated from Cisco’s systems, appeared over the weekend on a new data leak site operated by the Kraken ransomware group.
“Cisco is aware of certain reports regarding a security incident. The incident referenced in the reports occurred back in May 2022, and we fully addressed it at that time,” a Cisco spokesperson said, responding to a SecurityWeek inquiry.
In July 2024, we identified a vulnerability that resulted in access to millions of live customer support messages for organizations using Cisco Webex Connect.
France's Navy personnel revealed classified information about submarine patrols through the Strava fitness app, found an investigation by Le Monde.
La centrale nucléaire de Gösgen, dans le canton de Soleure, mise sur la technologie des drones pour sa sécurité et l'inspection. Aujourd'hui, la publication involontaire d'images suscite le débat.
The documents provide never-been-seen insight into the current cat-and-mouse game between forensics companies and phone manufacturers Apple and Google.
people frequently reach out to me with companies to look into. usually it takes me about 10 minutes before i move on for one reason or another—it's not interesting for a story or has good security, for example. i didnt expect anything different when an acquaintance told me about Tracki, a self-proclaimed "world leader in GPS tracking" that they suspected could be used nefariously.
at first glance, Tracki appeared to be a serious company, maybe even one that cared about security. we could never have guessed what was about to unfold before us.
half a year into our investigation, we'd found it all: a hidden conglomerate posing as five independent companies, masked from governments and customers alike through the use of dozens of false identities, US letterbox companies, and an undeclared owner. a 90s phone sex scheme that, through targeting by one of hollywood's most notorious fixers, spiraled into a collection of almost a hundred domains advertising everything from online dating to sore throat remedies. a slew of device-assisted murder cases, on top of potential data breaches affecting almost 12 million users, ranging from federal government officials to literal infants. and most importantly, a little-known Snoop Dogg song. how in the world did we get here?
starting our descent
The campaign suggested Iran was to blame. POLITICO has not independently verified the identity of the hacker or their motivation.
[German]A Microsoft software developer has accidentally shared internal PlayReady source code with the public (a developer forum). The data leak of 4 GByte is sufficient to compile the required DLL from the source code. This could be a real boon for people who want to reverse engineering or crack PlayReady. What is PlayReady? PlayReady is...
A user on the online forum 4chan has leaked a massive 270GB of data belonging to The New York Times. This leak includes the source code for the
