Spyware Users Exposed in Major Data Breach

In one of the largest-ever breaches of a US telecom giant, AT&T revealed this week that “nearly all” its customer phone and text records were stolen after hackers accessed its account on a third-party cloud service. Researchers at crypto-tracing firm Elliptic revealed this week that an online marketplace, Huione Guarantee, is facilitating billions of dollars in financial scams frequently known as “pig butchering.” The offerings discovered on Houine Guarantee—a company reportedly linked to Cambodia’s ruling family—range from lists of potential targets to electric shock collars used to imprison human trafficking victims who are forced to work in scam labor camps in Southeast Asia. Elsewhere in the crypto-tracing world, a US lawmaker this week introduced a resolution calling on the White House to classify former IRS investigator Tigran Gambaryan as a hostage due to his current imprisonment in Nigeria. While passkeys—the cryptographic tech that promises to kill passwords once and for all—have been widely available to users of Google’s products for more than a year, APP users require greater security due to being at higher risk of targeted attacks, and it took the company more time to find a solution that would securely replace physical authentication keys as an added protection for logging in. The “Hyper Enabled Operator” program started with the goal of creating a kind of Iron Man suit but has evolved in recent years to focus on instant situational awareness that would give soldiers the ability to assess risks faster than any mere human mind.