Apple pulls data protection feature in UK amid government demands
Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab is scrapping its most advanced security encryption feature for cloud data in Britain, the company said on Friday, an unprecedented response to government demands for access to user data. The change affects a feature called Advanced Data Protection (ADP), which extends end-to-end encryption across a wide range of cloud data. Apple said it is no longer available in Britain for new users, with those who try to turn it on receiving an error message starting Friday, and that current users will eventually need to disable this security feature.
Notorious crooks broke into a company network in 48 minutes. Here’s how.
In December, roughly a dozen employees inside a manufacturing company received a tsunami of phishing messages that was so big they were unable to perform their day-to-day functions. A little over an hour later, the people behind the email flood had burrowed into the nether reaches of the company’s network. This is a story about how such intrusions are occurring faster than ever before and the tactics that make this speed possible. The speed and precision of the attack—laid out in posts published Thursday and last month—are crucial elements for success. As awareness of ransomware attacks increases, security companies and their customers have grown savvier at detecting breach attempts and stopping them before they gain entry to sensitive data. To succeed, attackers have to move ever faster.
Leaked chat logs expose inner workings of secretive ransomware group
More than a year’s worth of internal communications from one of the world’s most active ransomware syndicates have been published online in a leak that exposes tactics, trade secrets, and internal rifts of its members. The communications come in the form of logs of more than 200,000 messages members of Black Basta sent to each other over the Matrix chat platform from September 2023 to September 2024, researchers said. The person who published the messages said the move was in retaliation for Black Basta targeting Russian banks. The leaker’s identity is unknown; it’s also unclear if the person responsible was an insider or someone outside the group who somehow gained access to the confidential logs.
Trump 2.0 Brings Cuts to Cyber, Consumer Protections
One month into his second term, President Trump’s actions to shrink the government through mass layoffs, firings and withholding funds allocated by Congress have thrown federal cybersecurity and consumer protection programs into disarray. At the same time, agencies are battling an ongoing effort by the world’s richest man to wrest control over their networks and data. The Trump administration has fired at least 130 employees at the federal government’s foremost cybersecurity body — the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Those dismissals reportedly included CISA staff dedicated to securing U.S. elections, and fighting misinformation and foreign influence operations.
GenAI’s unexpected impact: Disrupting high-skilled tech jobs, too
A new Brookings Institution report on generative AI (genAI) found that the more highly skilled a tech worker is, the more vulnerable they are to having their jobs supplemented by the technology. That differs dramatically from past automation technologies that primarily displaced low-skilled or physical laborers, according to Brookings, a Washington-based nonprofit public policy research firm. While IT workers can be found in virtually any organization today, genAI will have its greatest impact on jobs in high-tech geographical regions such as Silicon Valley, Seattle, WA., and Cambridge, MA., where highly skilled workers are concentrated. The report asserts that genAI tools will target cognitive tasks — such as writing, coding, and data analysis — impacting professionals in fields like software development, legal analysis, and finance.
