Author: HackWatchit

Hunters International ransomware gang closes after 55 confirmed and 199 unconfirmed cyberattacks. Read about its rebrand to World Leaks and its impact on healthcare and businesses. A prominent ransomware-as-a-service group ‘Hunters International’ has officially declared its shutdown, effective today, July 4, 2025. Active for approximately two years, and speculated to be a revival or successor to the notorious Hive Ransomware (dismantled by global law enforcement in January 2023 after extorting over $100 million), Hunters International gained notoriety for its double extortion tactics. This involved both encrypting victim data and stealing it for public release if a ransom wasn’t paid. However,…

Critical Sudo bugs expose major Linux distros to local Root exploits Pierluigi Paganini July 04, 2025 Critical Sudo flaws let local users gain root access on Linux systems, the vulnerabilities affect major Linux distributions. Cybersecurity researchers disclosed two vulnerabilities in the Sudo command-line utility for Linux and Unix-like operating systems. Local attackers can exploit the vulnerabilities to escalate privileges to root on affected systems. Sudo (short for “superuser do”) is a command-line utility found in Unix and Linux systems. It lets a permitted user run commands with the security privileges of another user, most commonly the root user (the system’s…

What aspects of the CSA program did you find most interesting or valuable? What I found most interesting about the CSA course was the topics related to logs and log management—specifically, log architecture, SOC architecture, and the importance of securing logs. These areas are critical during security breaches, forensic investigations, incident handling, and even data and disaster recovery. Another highlight was the hands-on lab experience. Using tools like Splunk provided valuable exposure to enterprise-grade solutions. Unlike other programs that may focus on specific tools or techniques, CSA provides a well-rounded understanding of the purpose, structure, and importance of SOCs in…

AI is rewriting the day-to-day of data scientists. , data scientists must learn how to improve productivity and unlock new possibilities with AI. Meanwhile, this transformation also poses a challenge to hiring managers: how to find the best talent that will thrive in the AI era? One critical step in building a strong AI-empowered data team is to revamp the hiring process to better evaluate candidates’ ability to work alongside AI.  In this article, I will share my perspective on how data scientist interviews should (would) evolve in the age of AI. While my focus here is on Data Scientist…

Two nationals of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) made their initial appearances in federal court in Portland, Oregon, and Houston, Texas, yesterday to face charges issued out of the Northern District of California for acting as agents of the Government of the PRC without prior notification to the Attorney General. The defendants, Yuance Chen, 38, a PRC national and legal permanent resident who resides in Happy Valley, Oregon, and Liren “Ryan” Lai, 39, a PRC national who traveled from the PRC to Houston, Texas, on a tourist visa in April 2025, were arrested Friday on a criminal complaint charging…

If working with several customers at once, or in succession, it would be easy to lose track of whose data you’re looking at, or to include one customer’s information in another’s report. That would be bad. Using a separate virtual machine for each customer can help you avoid those mistakes, but virtual machines can get pretty big, and can take a long time to create. Having one per client wastes a lot of time and space. That’s not as bad as the other thing, but it’s not good, either. Enter Linked Clones. With Linked Clones, you can create a new…

Additional Post Contributor: Patrick Whyte A lot of our best firewall findings in the Security Operations Centers (SOCs) of recent events have come from the cutting-edge tech of the Encrypted Visibility Engine (EVE) and SnortML. Cisco Live San Diego 2025 was somewhat of a return to basics, with traditional Snort rules providing the strongest findings they’ve had in quite some time. Secure Firewall at Cisco Live San Diego got off with a bang as we started our first morning shift with over 1,000 events for a single rule — SERVER-WEBAPP Cisco DNA Center API default login attempt. A high volume…

IT giant Ingram Micro is experiencing a global outage that is impacting its websites and internal systems, with customers concerned that it may be a cyberattack after the company remains silent on the cause of the issues. Ingram Micro is one of the largest business-to-business technology distributors and service providers in the world, offering hardware, software, cloud, logistics, and training solutions to resellers and managed service providers worldwide. The company employs around 24,000 people and generated approximately $48 billion in revenue in 2024. Ingram Micro’s outage started Thursday morning, with the website going offline and customers unable to place orders.…

In this three-part blog series, we explore how a hybrid mesh architecture can effectively break the ransomware attack chain. Part One examines the evolving state of ransomware in 2025, unpacks the stages of the ransomware attack chain, and explains why fragmented security architectures continue to fail. Part Two highlights five critical ways a hybrid mesh approach uniquely disrupts the ransomware lifecycle, from initial access to lateral movement and data exfiltration. Part Three features four key recommendations for CISOs from cyber security expert Pete Nicoletti and offers a concise overview of Check Point’s hybrid mesh architecture strategy. Stopping Ransomware: How a…