Author: HackWatchit
Google Imagen 4, which is the company’s state-of-the-art text-to-image model, is rolling out for free, but only on AI Studio. In a blog post, Google announced the rollout of the new Imagen 4 model, but reminded users that it’s free for a “limited time” only. Unlike the old text-to-image model, Imagen 4 offers significant improvements and takes the text-to-image generation quality to the next level. Comic generated using Imagen 4 Google says it has two new Imagen models. The first one is called “Imagen 4” and it’s optimised for regular tasks, but the Imagen 4 Ultra is the flagship text-to-image model.…
Brian B. King // Red Teaming is one of those terms popping up all over the place lately, and it seems to mean different things to different people. Is it just an intense pentest with looser rules of engagement? Is it people on-site breaking in at night? Is it when you actually steal the asset, instead of taking a picture to prove you got to it? Micah Zenko, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote Red Team: How to Succeed by Thinking Like the Enemy, that gives a wide-ranging treatment of the question. The way he describes “Red Teaming,”…
New CloudSEK findings show Androxgh0st botnet evolving. Academic institutions, including UC San Diego, hit. Discover how this sophisticated threat uses RCE and web shells, and steps to protect against it. A recent investigation by CloudSEK shared with Hackread.com, reveals a major evolution in the Androxgh0st botnet’s operations, demonstrating a sharp increase in its ability to compromise systems. The botnet, first observed in early 2023, is now leveraging a wider array of initial access methods, including the exploitation of misconfigured servers belonging to academic institutions. Notably, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) also issued a security advisory in January…
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released a white paper emphasizing the need to embed cybersecurity into the advanced and smart technologies used in medical product manufacturing. Modern manufacturing environments rely on a growing number of connected devices, known as operational technologies (OT), which were traditionally built for reliability rather than security. As a result, it can be difficult to determine what network communications are happening, when they occur, and where they originate, making it harder to detect and respond to cyber threats. Commercially available manufacturing equipment often does not meet national or international cybersecurity standards by default.…
By James Hess – CEO and Co-Founder, Unknown Cyber In today’s world, military strength is no longer defined solely by missiles and troops. The digital realm has become a battlefield, and among America’s adversaries, Iran stands out for its determination, unpredictability, and growing cyber capabilities. As geopolitical tensions flare, the risk of Iranian cyberattacks on U.S. critical infrastructure is not hypothetical – it is imminent. Iran has steadily evolved into a formidable cyber actor. From website defacements a decade ago to today’s sophisticated attacks on industrial systems and defense contractors, the country has embraced cyber as a tool of asymmetric…
Nearly 50% of companies paid the ransom to recover their data, the second-highest rate in six years, according to Sophos. How actual payments stack up with the initial demand Ransom payments and recovery costs are on the decline Despite the high percentage of companies that paid the ransom, 53% paid less than the original demand. In 71% of cases where the companies paid less, they did so through negotiation, either through their own negotiations or with help from a third party. In fact, while the median ransom demand dropped by a third between 2024 and 2025, the median ransom payment…
From customer service chat assistants to fake social media accounts, you might be surprised just how many bots are running around online. Although bots are capable of powering some very helpful tools and automating the most tedious tasks, they can also be used for malicious purposes. As bots become ever more advanced and commonplace, understanding how they work, the risks they pose, and how to stay safe is more important than ever. Below, we break down everything you need to know about bots from what they are, the different kinds you’re likely to encounter – both good and bad –…
A recently patched directory traversal vulnerability (CVE-2025-6218) in WinRAR could be leveraged by remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on affected installations. The vulnerability has been patched in WinRAR 7.12 beta 1, released on June 10, 2025, and users are advised to upgrade to it as soon as possible. (The beta version is expected to be replaced by the final 7.12 release soon.) About CVE-2025-6218 WinRAR is a popular file archiver utility for Windows that’s used to create and view archives files (in RAR or ZIP file formats) and to “unpack” archive file in other formats and executable files containing…
Ethan Robish // Here’s a short intro for anyone not familiar with ssh config files, which are usually located at ~/.ssh/config As an example, you have ssh running on port 2222 on a system you refer to as “linux” with the username of “root”. You might have an ssh config entry that looks like this: Host linux HostName 192.168.1.100 Port 2222 User root In this example, “linux” is simply any name you want to use when connecting to the remote system. It has nothing to do with the actual hostname or any other configuration of the remote…