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The U.S. government is warning of an "ongoing cyber threat" facing industrial refrigeration units, after reports of cyberattacks targeting freezers and fridges in supermarkets around the world, U.S. military bases, and at least one blood bank. U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA, the FBI, and several other federal government departments warned in a joint statement on Thursday that hackers are targeting and compromising internet-connected refrigeration and cold chain monitoring systems in grocery stores and cold storage facilities. The statement said that the hacks are hitting critical infrastructure, such as the food, agriculture, transportation, and medicine-shipping industries. "If successfully exploited, the actors could...

WASHINGTON – Today, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Health and Human Services (HHS), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Department of Transportation (DOT) published a fact sheet that warns organizations of ongoing cyber threat activity targeting industrial refrigeration and cold chain monitoring systems. Critical infrastructure sectors that widely use these systems include Healthcare and Public Health, Chemical, Food and Agriculture, and Transportation Systems. Globally, malicious cyber actors are targeting vulnerabilities and weaknesses in unpatched or internet-accessible electronic temperature controllers and commercial refrigeration controllers in retail grocery and cold storage facilities. If successfully...

European supermarkets have become the center of another cyberattack, with hackers remotely heating fridges and spoiling food. The attack caused temperatures in fridges and freezers to rise sharply, with at least one store reporting temperatures of up to 50°C (122°F) and other retailers discarding food. It’s sparked concerns across the retail industry. Which countries and retailers were affected?Dutch supermarket group Ahold Delhaize reportedly had dozens of Delhaize stores affected in Belgium and Luxembourg. The Dutch supermarket giant told CNBC that there was an incident with refrigeration systems in dozens of its stores on Monday, which has resulted in food having...

According to TRM Labs, which tracks the industry, digital assets worth more than $6.3bn (£4.7bn) have been taken from Binance by North Korean hackers. This would be the largest cryptocurrency hack to date - and one of the biggest in financial history. Cryptocurrency worth more than $6.3bn (£4.7bn) has been stolen from a major exchange - with one industry insider telling Sky News it is "the largest bank heist in human history". The security exploit targeted Binance, one of the world's biggest platforms for trading digital assets, which said it was establishing the facts with urgency. Deposits and withdrawals were...

"This is what Dutch supermarkets look like after a suspected cyberattack. Earlier, hackers hit cooling systems in French supermarkets. This is just the beginning." Video at link.

In direct support of President Donald J. Trump's commitment to election integrity, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has signed a memorandum directing the Department of War to mobilize a comprehensive, whole-of-government defense of our election infrastructure from foreign adversaries. Under the Secretary's directive, U.S. Cyber Command and Combat Support Agencies will prioritize and deploy advanced intelligence and cyber capabilities to identify, disrupt, and neutralize foreign interference in U.S. democratic processes. "Free and fair elections are the foundation of our republic," said Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell. "By working in lockstep with federal, state, and local partners, U.S. Cyber Command and...

NEW YORK (AP) — OpenAI said it has paused training of its latest artificial intelligence models as reports of AI agents going rogue mount. The decision to halt development came just hours after the company disclosed Friday that it was reviewing several incidents from the summer in which OpenAI agents searching federal government websites acted in unexpected ways beyond what was asked of them while gathering and distributing information. Separately, AI evaluator Transluce said agents that appeared to come from OpenAI tried unsuccessfully to hack into a Department of Education website, a detail that OpenAI has not confirmed. OpenAI said...

An American technology executive and a Russian national have been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with alleged efforts to conceal Russian ownership and software development at a digital forensics firm that obtained U.S. government contracts, including work involving the Secret Service. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California announced on September 23 that Lee Reiber, 55, of Boise, Idaho, chief executive officer of Alexandria, Virginia-based Oxygen Forensics Inc., and Oleg Sergeyevich Davydov, 52, of Moscow, had been arrested Reiber was taken into custody in Idaho on September 20, made an initial appearance in...

As discussions took place at the UN General Assembly in New York about the opportunities AI provides - and how best to manage it - Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed that the country's universal health insurance scheme had been hacked by an OpenAI agent. In fact, the hack happened in June, the company became aware of it in August, and then sent an email to a government agency's general inbox in September. "It took the company way too long to inform the government," Albanese said, adding that the method of notifying officials was also "unacceptable". Believed to be the...

State officials said the incidents caused no harm to water quality or public safety.. Foreign actors gained access to computer systems at two small private water utilities in Colorado in late August, changing equipment controls before operators restored normal operations, according to the governor’s office. Ally Sullivan, a spokeswoman for Gov. Jared Polis, said the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment followed up with the providers to confirm the issues had been resolved. The governor’s office said it was unable to confirm which foreign actors and did not identify the utilities. “The two water utilities impacted are small, private...

Google on Friday disclosed the first known instance of its artificial intelligence software, Gemini, carrying out an undirected computer hack, weeks after similar disclosures by AI firms Anthropic and OpenAI raised security alarms about AI models going beyond the instructions of their human creators. Google said in a statement that in May its AI model gained unauthorized access to three outside systems during a test by either guessing login information or using login credentials it found in a public repository. Heather Adkins, a Google vice president for security engineering, said in the statement that the AI model thought that the...

U.S. Coast Guard and FBI are probing cyber incidents impacting foreign-flagged ships en route to the U.S., raising concerns about maritime cybersecurity amidst geopolitical tensions. On September 17, U.S. authorities confirmed that the Coast Guard and FBI conducted investigations aboard two foreign-flagged vessels headed for the United States, indicating compromised computer networks. This unusual operation took place on August 21 and August 24, amidst growing concerns over cyber vulnerabilities in the maritime sector. The Incident The joint Coast Guard and FBI operation was prompted by signs of cyber breaches on the vessels, with the Coast Guard confirming involvement of “foreign...

07.12.2025 Grassley Report Concludes Secret Service Failure to Share Threat Information Allowed for Preventable Tragedy in Butler, Identifies Path Forward for Agency ImprovementsSecret Service received threat intel 10 days before Butler rally; Major gaps in internal policies and procedures contributed to massive security breakdownBUTLER COUNTY, IOWA – U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today released a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report compiled at his request in the wake of the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024.The Grassley-requested report states senior-level U.S. Secret Service (USSS) officials received classified intelligence...

Aaron Rich, who had reportedly been blocking his family’s private investigator from looking into whether or not his brother Seth was a WikiLeaks source, works for an influential defense contractor that provides cyber security. According to a source close to the Rich family, Aaron works for Northrup Grumman, which was named as the fifth-largest defense contractor in the world in 2015. The source did not provide what his specific role is at the company. “It’s not just hacking and defending, there’s a lot more to it,” a cyber software engineer at Northrup Grumman says in a video on the company’s...

President Trump’s administration just landed a major blow against the industrial-scale scam networks stealing from Americans. In one coordinated operation, federal authorities restrained more than $52 million in cryptocurrency, sanctioned a Chinese-language criminal marketplace and helped foreign partners dismantle 13 Chinese-run scam compounds in Madagascar. This was not a small cybercrime bust. It was a strike at the infrastructure that allows fraud rings to recruit workers, build fake investment platforms, move stolen money and prey on victims across the world. The target at the center of the operation was Xinbi Guarantee, a Telegram-based marketplace that the Treasury Department says has...

Days after Donald Trump won the presidential election in November 2016, thousands flocked to the streets of New York City to demonstrate against the president elect in a protest organized by a Kremlin-connected Facebook page called BlackMattersUS, The Hill reports. Between 5,000 and 10,000 people attended the protest organized by the Facebook page, which, according to an archived screen grab, had more than 99,000 likes.“Join us in the streets! Stop Trump and his bigoted agenda!” the Facebook event page reads for the protest, which was called “Trump is NOT my President. March against Trump.” “Divided is the reason we just fell,” it reads. “We must...

Roughly 200 accounts from a suspected Chinese bot farm have quietly tried to influence Americans to oppose AI data centers on social media, X said Thursday night. Why it matters: The U.S. and China are racing to build the world's most advanced AI systems — and it appears Chinese propaganda has infiltrated American circles with the hope of slowing the U.S. down. Driving the news: The X Safety team probed suspected Chinese accounts involved in influence operations and identified 200,000 accounts, including 200 accounts "posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy,"...

X has said it uncovered a Chinese bot farm of approximately 200,000 inauthentic accounts involved in influence operations. The platform’s safety team said in an Aug. 27 statement that about 200 accounts within the newly identified network had posted material aimed at influencing U.S. debate over artificial intelligence and energy policy. X did not say how the rest of the roughly 200,000 accounts were being used. Other technology companies and U.S. authorities have separately documented Chinese influence operations involving tens or hundreds of thousands of fake, coordinated, or repurposed accounts, including networks tied to Chinese state actors and law enforcement....

Cybersecurity researchers have found surveillance backdoors in Chinese carrier routers made by Zbtlink and the same software in a different Zbtlink-made router sold through Amazon. Chinese law requires telecom and internet companies to provide technical assistance to police and state-security agencies. In an Aug. 27 report, cybersecurity firm VulnCheck said it found two hidden programs in an $88 router bought through Amazon from a U.S. seller. One, which the researchers named Speakingstone, sends information about the router to a remote server and can receive instructions to redirect internet traffic, obtain login credentials, or take control of the device. The second,...

The Department of Homeland Security is mandating random paper ballot audits for upcoming elections, citing significant security risks posed by Chinese-manufactured components in widely-used voting machines. The Homeland Security Department will require random audits of paper ballots in the midterm elections, citing long-simmering concern that the nation’s largest voting technology companies use Chinese parts in their voting machines, according to a letter from Secretary Markwayne Mullin released Thursday. Mullin sent the letter to the White House Transparency Task Force earlier this week outlining the dangers posed by Chinese components in American voting machines and the way that these components could...