EMEA overtakes North America as top DDoS target, says Akamai
For the first time in five years, the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) has surpassed North America as the most targeted area for Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, according to new research from Akamai Technologies. The report, titled “Fighting the Heat: EMEA’s Rising DDoS Threats,” underscores the severity of the situation, revealing that the UK is disproportionately affected, suffering over a quarter (26%) of all attacks in the region. Saudi Arabia and Germany follow as the next most targeted nations, at 22% and 9%, respectively.
The Justice Department announced today that a jury found a former senior executive and a former sales manager of Epsilon Data Management LLC (Epsilon) guilty of federal criminal charges related to the targeting of millions of U.S. consumers for mass-mailing fraud schemes. Robert Reger, 57, of Boulder, Colorado, and David Lytle, 64, of Leawood, Kansas, were found guilty today of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and numerous counts of substantive mail and wire fraud. According to evidence presented at the two-week trial, the defendants were key participants in a scheme that knowingly sold targeted lists of consumers and their addresses to perpetrators of fraud schemes involving the sending of false and deceptive mail to consumers over the course of 10years.
ISPs seek halt of net neutrality rules before they take effect next month
As expected, broadband industry lobby groups have sued the Federal Communications Commission in an attempt to nullify net neutrality rules that prohibit blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. Lobby groups representing cable, telecom, and mobile Internet service providers sued the FCC in several US appeals courts last week. Industry groups also filed a petition with the FCC on Friday asking for a stay of the rules, claiming the regulations shouldn’t take effect while litigation is pending because the industry is likely to prevail in court.
Windows Recall demands an extraordinary level of trust that Microsoft hasn’t earned
Microsoft’s Windows 11 Copilot+ PCs come with quite a few new AI and machine learning-driven features, but the tentpole is Recall. Described by Microsoft as a comprehensive record of everything you do on your PC, the feature is pitched as a way to help users remember where they’ve been and to provide Windows extra contextual information that can help it better understand requests from and meet the needs of individual users. This, as many users in infosec communities on social media immediately pointed out, sounds like a potential security nightmare. That’s doubly true because Microsoft says that by default, Recall’s screenshots take no pains to redact sensitive information, from usernames and passwords to health care information to NSFW site visits. By default, on a PC with 256GB of storage, Recall can store a couple dozen gigabytes of data across three months of PC usage, a huge amount of personal data.
ARRL says it was hacked by an “international cyber group”
American Radio Relay League (ARRL) has shared more information about a May cyberattack that took its Logbook of the World offline and caused some members to become frustrated over the lack of information. ARRL is the national association for amateur radio in the United States, representing amateur radio interests to government regulatory bodies and promoting events and educational programs for enthusiasts around the country. On May 16, the ARRL announced that it had suffered a “serious incident involving access to our network and headquarters-based systems.”
