Four individuals in Britain were arrested early on Thursday morning by the National Crime Agency on suspicion of involvement in a range of ransomware attacks targeting the British retail sector earlier this year.
The individuals are a 20-year-old British woman from Staffordshire, a 19-year-old Latvian male from the West Midlands, a 19-year-old British man from London and a 17-year-old British male from the West Midlands.
All four are now in custody having been arrested at home, and the NCA said its officers have seized their electronic devices for forensic analysis.
The individuals are suspected of involvement in three incidents in April impacting British retailers Marks & Spencer, the Co-op and the London-based luxury store Harrods.
The NCA said the individuals are suspected of Computer Misuse Act offenses, blackmail, money laundering and participating in the activities of an organized crime group.
“Since these attacks took place, specialist NCA cybercrime investigators have been working at pace and the investigation remains one of the Agency’s highest priorities,” said Paul Foster, the head of the NCA’s National Cyber Crime Unit.
“Today’s arrests are a significant step in that investigation but our work continues, alongside partners in the UK and overseas, to ensure those responsible are identified and brought to justice.
“Cyber attacks can be hugely disruptive for businesses and I’d like to thank M&S, Co-op and Harrods for their support to our investigations. Hopefully this signals to future victims the importance of seeking support and engaging with law enforcement as part of the reporting process. The NCA and policing are here to help.”
For many years, data brokers have existed in the shadows, exploiting gaps in privacy laws to harvest our information—all for their own profit. They sell our precise movements without our knowledge or meaningful consent to a variety of private and state actors, including law enforcement agencies. And they show no sign of stopping.
This incentivizes other bad actors. If companies collect any kind of personal data and want to make a quick buck, there’s a data broker willing to buy it and sell it to the highest bidder–often law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
One recent investigation by 404 Media revealed that the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), a data broker owned and operated by at least eight major U.S. airlines, including United Airlines and American Airlines, collected travelers’ domestic flight records and secretly sold access to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Despite selling passengers’ names, full flight itineraries, and financial details, the data broker prevented U.S. border forces from revealing it as the origin of the information. So, not only is the government doing an end run around the Fourth Amendment to get information where they would otherwise need a warrant—they’ve also been trying to hide how they know these things about us.
ARC’s Travel Intelligence Program (TIP) aggregates passenger data and contains more than one billion records spanning 39 months of past and future travel by both U.S. and non-U.S. citizens. CBP, which sits within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), claims it needs this data to support local and state police keeping track of people of interest. But at a time of growing concerns about increased immigration enforcement at U.S. ports of entry, including unjustified searches, law enforcement officials will use this additional surveillance tool to expand the web of suspicion to even larger numbers of innocent travelers.
More than 200 airlines settle tickets through ARC, with information on more than 54% of flights taken globally. ARC’s board of directors includes representatives from U.S. airlines like JetBlue and Delta, as well as international airlines like Lufthansa, Air France, and Air Canada.
In selling law enforcement agencies bulk access to such sensitive information, these airlines—through their data broker—are putting their own profits over travelers' privacy. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently detailed its own purchase of personal data from ARC. In the current climate, this can have a detrimental impact on people’s lives.
gbhackers.com July 10, 2025 - A newly discovered man-in-the-middle exploit dubbed “Opossum” has demonstrated the unsettling ability to compromise secure communications.
Researchers warn that Opossum targets a wide range of widely used application protocols—including HTTP, FTP, POP3, SMTP, LMTP and NNTP—that support both “implicit” TLS on dedicated ports and “opportunistic” TLS via upgrade mechanisms.
By exploiting subtle implementation differences between these two modes, an attacker can provoke a desynchronization between client and server, ultimately subverting the integrity guarantees of TLS and manipulating the data seen by the client.
The Opossum attack is built upon vulnerabilities first highlighted in the ALPACA attack, which identified weaknesses in TLS authentication when application protocols allow switching between encrypted and plaintext channels.
Even with ALPACA countermeasures in place, Opossum finds fresh leverage points at the application layer. When a client connects to a server’s implicit TLS port—such as HTTPS on port 443—the attacker intercepts and redirects the request to the server’s opportunistic-TLS endpoint on port 80.
By posing as the client, the attacker initiates a plaintext session that is then upgraded to TLS with crafted “Upgrade” headers.
Simultaneously, the attacker relays the original client’s handshake to the server, mapping the two TLS sessions behind the scenes.
therecord.media July 9th, 2025 - DGSE intelligence head Nicolas Lerner said Moscow’s tactics are evolving and increasingly include on-the-ground activities carried out by paid operatives.
France’s top intelligence official has warned that Russia is waging "a war of influence" against the country through hybrid online disinformation, espionage and sabotage operations.
Nicolas Lerner, head of the DGSE foreign intelligence agency, said in an interview with French broadcaster LCI that Moscow’s tactics are evolving and now include physical operations carried out by paid intermediaries. He cited an incident last year in which suspected Russian saboteurs placed coffins near the Eiffel Tower draped in the French flag bearing the inscription “French soldiers of Ukraine.”
“These are not amateur operations,” Lerner said. “They reflect a desire to disrupt our information space and undermine trust in our institutions.”
He said that around 80 Russian agents were active in France before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and that 50 of them have since been expelled. Paris has also imposed sanctions on individuals linked to Moscow’s intelligence services.
Lerner warned that Russia poses a medium- and long-term “existential threat” to Europe, its democracies and its values.
His comments come amid alarm over a growing wave of alleged Russian hybrid operations across Europe. In recent months, NATO allies and EU member states have reported suspected sabotage, cyberattacks, and disinformation campaigns linked to Moscow.
In June, trains between Amsterdam and The Hague were disrupted in what Dutch authorities suspect was a sabotage attempt tied to the NATO summit. Around the same time, pro-Russian hacktivists claimed responsibility for distributed denial-of-service attacks targeting summit-related organizations.
In France, the high-speed rail network was hit by coordinated sabotage just hours before last year’s Olympic Games opening ceremony, affecting lines around Paris.
Polish officials recently accused Russian intelligence of orchestrating a 2024 fire at a major Warsaw shopping mall. Warsaw responded by shutting down a Russian consulate.
On Tuesday, three South London men were found guilty of carrying out an arson attack on a depot housing humanitarian aid intended for Ukraine. The men were hired by the Wagner Group, a private militia that has acted under the orders of the Kremlin.
European officials have also warned of cyber operations targeting military, government, and critical infrastructure across the continent. On Wednesday, German media reported that a Kremlin-linked hacking group is attempting to steal sensitive data from the German armed forces.
nextgov.com - July 9, 2025 09:30 AM ET
Rogers is Canada’s top wireless provider and is among that nation’s core telecom firms mandated to comply with Canadian lawful access rules, which require them to share user data with investigators.
Canadian telecom and mass media provider Rogers Communications was identified as a firm ensnared by a major Chinese hacking group that has targeted dozens of communications firms worldwide, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The group, known as Salt Typhoon, was discovered inside a batch of American telecom operators last year and first brought to light by the Wall Street Journal in late September. The campaign likely began around two to three years ago and has expanded rapidly since.
It’s not immediately clear what data, assets or other information were pilfered from Rogers networks. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is sensitive.
“These allegations are false. We were not compromised by Salt Typhoon and this has been verified by two independent cyber security firms. As part of ongoing work, we partner with government and industry to proactively monitor and investigate potential threats,” a company spokesperson said.
"It’s important to note that if the Cyber Centre is aware of cyber threat activity in Canada, we alert the organization and provide mitigation support, advice and guidance," a spokesperson for the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security said, noting that they do not comment on specific or alleged cyber incidents but pointing to advisories they have issued about the threat posed by Salt Typhoon.
"Through the Canadian Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (CSTAC), the Cyber Centre and its government partners regularly and actively engage with Canadian telecommunications service providers and key equipment suppliers to help ensure the security of Canadian critical telecommunications infrastructure," they said.
Rogers is the country’s top wireless provider and boasts some 20 million subscribers across its various services, a company webpage says. Over 60% percent of Canadian households rely on its internet, it notes. It also has extensive contracts with Canada’s government.
Canada, like many countries with robust telecom networks, has laws that let federal investigators compel providers to turn over communications metadata on individuals suspected of criminal activity, hacking or espionage. Rogers is among those required to comply with these Canadian “lawful access” inquiries.
In 2023, the company disclosed data on some 162,000 customers to authorities under lawful access requests backed by warrants and government orders, a transparency report shows.
Salt Typhoon has gone after those same wiretap environments in the U.S., and likely abused those platforms when it directly targeted the communications of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance during their run for the White House last year.
Last month, Canada’s cybersecurity agency released a bulletin warning that Salt Typhoon was targeting telecommunications firms in the country. “Three network devices registered to a Canadian telecommunications company were compromised by likely Salt Typhoon actors in mid-February 2025,” says the bulletin, which doesn’t name the firm.
The agency identified a 2023 vulnerability in Cisco routers that was used as an access point into the unnamed Canadian provider. Cisco equipment that has not been patched with the latest security updates has provided the Chinese telecom hackers with a wide access point into various communications systems, according to earlier assessments.
That same 2023 vulnerability is detailed in a Cisco threat intelligence blog released in February.
Ian Carroll, Sam Curry / ian.sh
When applying for a job at McDonald's, over 90% of franchises use "Olivia," an AI-powered chatbot. We discovered a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to access more than 64 million job applications. This data includes applicants' names, resumes, email addresses, phone numbers, and personality test results.
McHire is the chatbot recruitment platform used by 90% of McDonald’s franchisees. Prospective employees chat with a bot named Olivia, created by a company called Paradox.ai, that collects their personal information, shift preferences, and administers personality tests. We noticed this after seeing complaints on Reddit of the bot responding with nonsensical answers.
During a cursory security review of a few hours, we identified two serious issues: the McHire administration interface for restaurant owners accepted the default credentials 123456:123456, and an insecure direct object reference (IDOR) on an internal API allowed us to access any contacts and chats we wanted. Together they allowed us and anyone else with a McHire account and access to any inbox to retrieve the personal data of more than 64 million applicants.
We disclosed this issue to Paradox.ai and McDonald’s at the same time.
06/30/2025 5:46PM ET: Disclosed to Paradox.ai and McDonald’s
06/30/2025 6:24PM ET: McDonald’s confirms receipt and requests technical details
06/30/2025 7:31PM ET: Credentials are no longer usable to access the app
07/01/2025 9:44PM ET: Followed up on status
07/01/2025 10:18PM ET: Paradox.ai confirms the issues have been resolved
