Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

The Head Mare hacktivist group has been exploiting vulnerabilities in unpatched TrueConf video conferencing servers to replace client installers with malicious versions that deliver backdoors. The exploited vulnerabilities allowed the attacker to execute arbitrary code with the highest level of privileges and deploy the PhantomCore and PhantomGraph backdoors. TrueConf is a video conferencing tool widely used in Russia, especially in the enterprise and government sectors, as a secure, on-premise alternative to Western tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Researchers at cybersecurity company Kaspersky discovered the attack in July. They found that Head Mare hackers used TCP port 4307, which is…

Bybit sued North Korea, its Reconnaissance General Bureau, and Lazarus Group in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. The exchange won a preliminary injunction blocking unnamed defendants from moving or selling stolen crypto.Public court reporting describes the order as covering those identified assets, without confirming the full $1.5 billion stolen in February 2025 or disclosing the dollar value the injunction protects.This injunction landed roughly 532 days after the hack—about 17 months after North Korean hackers pulled off the largest crypto theft on record. Chainalysis tracked a consistent laundering pattern by DPRK-linked groups after a major theft, moving…

Claim: Video of an object smashing into the moon and creating a plume of dust authentically shows the Aug. 5, 2026, crash of the upper stage of a SpaceX rocket. Rating: In August 2026, part of a SpaceX rocket orbiting the moon since January 2025 crashed into the lunar surface, as previously predicted by scientists. Soon after the crashed happened, a video began spreading across social media, especially X, allegedly showing the crash. For example, one X post (archived) shared the video alongside a caption reading, “NEW: A SpaceX rocket has crashed into the Moon, leaving a 100 foot crater.”…

Four years ago, after a former police officer shot or stabbed more than 30 people in northeastern Thailand — the deadliest mass killing by a single attacker in the country’s history — Anutin Charnvirakul, the country’s health minister, vowed tighter controls on guns.Now the prime minister, Mr. Anutin on Friday found himself repeating that promise in the aftermath of another mass shooting, this time at a high school just northwest of Bangkok, the capital.That morning, a student at Debsirin Nonthaburi School used his grandfather’s pistol to shoot and kill both of his grandparents at their home before going to school,…

The US Department of Commerce, which oversees the Census Bureau, is circulating a proposed rule that would cease the collection of demographic data on racial minorities and LGBTQ+ people and prevent undocumented immigrants from being counted in the 2030 census, according to documents viewed by WIRED.The decision could have far-reaching implications for federal funding, particularly in states where there are substantial numbers of racial and ethnic minorities, as well as on immigrant communities across the country.The proposed rule, which is being circulated across government agencies for review, says the census will eliminate questions about race and sexual orientation “to protect…

DEF CON — Varonis Threat Labs has disclosed a one-click vulnerability in Rovo, Atlassian’s enterprise AI assistant, that let a specially crafted link seed attacker-controlled instructions directly into a user’s live AI session.  Dubbed RovoBlast, the flaw required no jailbreak and no permission bypass, relying on the fact that the assistant simply treated externally supplied parameters as trusted input. Rovo functions as an AI layer spanning Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, and third-party tools such as Slack, Microsoft 365, and Google Workspace. It also carries autonomous agent features capable of completing multi-step tasks with no further user involvement, which is what enabled…

In brief XRP fell 2.05% in 24 hours to $1.02, the lone red coin among the top 10; every other major is green. The Senate left Washington without voting on the Clarity Act, delaying the market-structure bill until at least September. XRP trades within a confirmed death cross, but prediction market traders remain optimistic for now. The Senate left town without taking up the Clarity Act, pushing the market-structure vote to at least September. Every major coin shrugged it off—except XRP.While Bitcoin stayed flat, dealing with its own headwinds, and Dogecoin gained 1.38% over the day to be the best…

MONTGOMERY, Ala.—For the first time in more than 40 years, Alabama utility regulators this week convened formal hearings to potentially decrease profits for one of the state’s major monopoly utilities.  The Alabama Public Service Commission held the hearings on Thursday and Friday to consider the allowed rate of return for Spire Alabama and Spire Gulf, subsidiaries of Spire Inc., which provides natural gas to nearly 2 million homes and businesses across Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee.  The hearings were triggered when Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office—which represents the public in rate matters—could not reach an agreement with Spire on…

US President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Todd Blanche has been narrowly confirmed as attorney general – the nation’s top law enforcement official.The vote brings to an end a lengthy standoff between Senate Republicans and the Trump administration over Blanche, who has served as acting attorney general since April.Blanche won confirmation in a 50-49 vote overnight, with two Republican senators, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, joining all Democrats to oppose his nomination.Senator Bill Cassidy cast the deciding vote, a decision closely watched in Washington given the years of acrimony between the Louisiana Republican and Trump.Some Republican senators had raised concerns…

Meloni slammed Madrid after it rolled out a scheme to grant legal status to more than 1 million unauthorized migrants earlier this year, and called for a debate on the consequences of the measure during a meeting of European leaders last month. As the Ceuta crisis unfolded, the Italian premier spearheaded the drafting of a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa in which 22 EU leaders argued Madrid’s migration policies had undermined the security of the bloc’s external borders. “We have a duty to effectively deter and relentlessly combat illegal migration, by coordinating our…