Author: HackWatchit

HBO Max is home to an impressive catalogue of hit TV shows and Hollywood movies including The White Lotus, Friends, Mickey 17, and the Harry Potter collection. Although HBO Max is available in dozens of countries worldwide, the UK isn’t one of them due to an existing agreement between Warner Bros, Discovery, and Sky. As such, if you’re in the UK and want to watch HBO Max, you’ll find it region-locked unless you use a VPN to access it. A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, lets you spoof your location so you can access geo-restricted content such as HBO Max from anywhere. Connecting to a…

by Gary Miliefsky, Publisher, Cyber Defense Magazine Every year, Black Hat showcases not just the latest innovations and products from the cybersecurity industry but also the presence of major government stakeholders who play a critical role in global cyber defense. This year, one federal agency caught everyone’s attention with a creative and unconventional approach. Making a bold appearance at Black Hat was the U.S. Department of State’s Rewards for Justice Program (RFJ), which offers rewards for information on threats to U.S. national security. Originally a counterterrorism rewards program, RFJ now offers rewards for information on foreign election interference, illicit activities…

A hack of the Netherlands’ Public Prosecution Service has had an unusual side effect – causing some speed cameras to be no longer capturing evidence of motorists breaking the rules of the road.Last month, Dutch media reports confirmed that Openbaar Ministerie (OM), the official body responsible for bringing suspects before the criminal court in the Netherlands, had suffered a security breach by hackers.The National Cybersecurity Centre (NCSC) and data protection regulators in The Netherlands were informed that a data breach had potentially occurred, and an internal memo from the organisation’s director of IT warned of the risks of reconnecting systems…

The European Commission’s NIS Cooperation Group has opened a public consultation to gather feedback on its recently published roadmap for building a quantum-safe European digital infrastructure. The consultation is aimed at providers of critical infrastructure, industry stakeholders, academia, and the wider public. The consultation is open until Sept. 29. Feedback received will play a direct role in shaping the next steps toward a secure, quantum-resistant European digital infrastructure. Participants are encouraged to suggest improvements to the roadmap, including sector-specific challenges, additional text, or concrete proposals that could strengthen the transition to quantum-resistant systems. References to open-source tools that may benefit…

Google used its Cloud Security Summit 2025 today to introduce a wide range of updates aimed at securing AI innovation and strengthening enterprise defenses. The announcements span protections for AI agents, new tools for security operations centers, enhancements in cloud security, and extended safeguards for enterprise browsing. New dashboards in Google Security Operations showcasing the native integration of SOAR data AI security takes the spotlight AI security took center stage with the debut of new capabilities for Google Agentspace and Agent Builder. These updates include expanded AI agent inventory and risk identification, advanced in-line protection and posture controls, and proactive…

Australian ISP iiNet confirms data breach as hackers stole 280,000 email accounts, phone numbers and user data using stolen employee credentials, TPG says. Australian internet provider iiNet has confirmed a data breach in its order management system, with parent company TPG Telecom reporting that customer information was accessed using stolen employee credentials. The breach was detected on Saturday, 16 August 2025, after attackers used stolen employee credentials to gain access to the system. According to TPG, the information exposed was limited in scope compared with other recent corporate breaches, but the details are still sensitive enough to cause problems for…

Securing the Future of AI Powered Coding:  Where Speed Meets Risk The rise of AI powered coding tools like Cursor and Windsurf have kicked off what many are calling the “vibe coding” era. Developers can now write, test and deploy production ready code faster than ever before. But what feels like a dream for coders has quickly become a nightmare for security teams. As with anything that gets easier, there’s a hidden price. Speed in these cases are often traded with safety and met with exposure. Vulnerabilities are now slipping into production just as fast as features. Beyond insecure code, Model…

Enterprise search and security company Elastic is rejecting reports of a zero-day vulnerability impacting its Defend endpoint detection and response (EDR) product. The company’s statement follows a blog post from a company called AshES Cybersecurity claiming to have discovered a remote code execution (RCE) flaw in Elastic Defend that would allow an attacker to bypass EDR protections. Elastic’s Security Engineering team “conducted a thorough investigation” but could not find “evidence supporting the claims of a vulnerability that bypasses EDR monitoring and enables remote code execution.” Zero-day claims According to AshES Cybersecurity’s write-up from August 16, a NULL pointer dereference flaw in Elastic Defender’s kernel…

As legal cannabis has expanded around the United States for both recreational and medical use, companies have amassed troves of data about customers and their transactions. People who have applied for medical marijuana cards have had to share particularly personal health data to qualify. For some patients in Ohio who use medical weed, a recent data exposure could impact their sensitive information.Security researcher Jeremiah Fowler found a publicly accessible database in mid-July that appeared to contain medical records, mental health evaluations, physician reports, and images of IDs like driver’s licenses for people seeking medical cannabis cards. The 323-GB trove stored…