Author: HackWatchit

Customers of cybersecurity firm SentinelOne were left without answers or a clear view of their security status for hours May 29 due to a console outage that the vendor has yet to explain, though it said in a brief statement that its “RCA [root cause analysis] suggests this is not a security incident.”The outage that occurred midmorning took down the Mountain View, California-based company’s commercial customer consoles, through which enterprises and other organizations can view, monitor, and manage their cybersecurity systems. The outage lasted about six hours.“We are aware of ongoing console outages affecting commercial customers globally and are currently…

I that most companies would have built or implemented their own Rag agents by now. An AI knowledge agent can dig through internal documentation — websites, PDFs, random docs — and answer employees in Slack (or Teams/Discord) within a few seconds. So, these bots should significantly reduce time sifting through information for employees. I’ve seen a few of these in bigger tech companies, like AskHR from IBM, but they aren’t all that mainstream yet. If you’re keen to understand how they are built and how much resources it takes to build a simple one, this is an article for you.…

SEATTLE — County-level emergency management officials in Washington state have been barred in recent weeks from communicating with their traditional contacts at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to a spokesperson for U.S. Sen. Patty Murray. Several local officials were instructed this week or last that FEMA is changing how local jurisdictions interact with the agency and should no longer contact the individuals they have traditionally worked with. Murray’s office suggested the change stems from President Trump’s push for more centralized control of FEMA operations. The development was revealed during a roundtable discussion Thursday with Murray, where emergency management officials…

ConnectWise suffered a cyberattack carried out by a sophisticated nation state actor Pierluigi Paganini May 30, 2025 ConnectWise detected suspicious activity linked to a nation-state actor, impacting a small number of its ScreenConnect customers. ConnectWise revealed it had detected suspicious activity linked to an advanced nation-state actor. The company confirmed that the attack impacted a small number of its ScreenConnect customers. “ConnectWise recently learned of suspicious activity within our environment that we believe was tied to a sophisticated nation state actor, which affected a very small number of ScreenConnect customers,” the software firm said in a statement. “We have launched…

Microsoft announced today that the Windows 11 Notepad application is getting a text formatting feature supporting Markdown-style input. The feature is being introduced one year after Microsoft removed the WordPad basic word processing app that had text formatting capabilities, with the rollout of Windows 11 24H2 to Insiders in the Release Preview Channel. “With this update, we are introducing lightweight formatting in Notepad, providing additional flexibility in how you structure content across your files,” said Dave Grochocki, a Principal Product Manager Lead at Microsoft. “The experience supports Markdown style input and files for users who prefer to work directly with…

As geopolitical tensions sharpen and cyber operations move into the shadows of critical infrastructure, non-profit organization MITRE published a fact sheet on its December 2024 national-level tabletop exercise, offering a glimpse into how government and industry leaders are grappling with the growing possibility of a sustained cyber assault across American installations. The white paper lays down five steps to prepare critical infrastructure for a cyber war, including creating a civil defense mindset, managing limited resources during emergencies, planning for operations under extreme conditions, strengthening emergency communications systems, and ensuring workforce readiness for emergencies. Authored by Mark Bristow, Irving Lachow, Meredith…

Mike Felch // Meet ‘The Box’ Bomb For the last few years at the security conference DEF CON in Las Vegas, the Tamper Resistant Village has hosted a challenging contest called ‘The Box’ where contestants mimic an EOD technician in an attempt to defuse a bomb. The fake bomb consists of trigger sensors, traps, electronic components, and locks, that together need to be reverse engineered in order to disable a simulated explosion. Each team of two members has ten minutes to work together to solve each component of the challenge using their own tools and are not allowed to remove tape or cut wires.…

Microsoft is ending support for Exchange Server 2016, Exchange Server 2019, and Outlook 2016 on October 14, 2025. That date might seem far off, but if you’re managing email systems or Office deployments, it’s worth paying attention to now. These products will keep working past that deadline, but without security updates or tech support, they’ll be risky to keep in production. What’s ending and when? The key date to remember is October 14, 2025. On that day, Microsoft will officially stop supporting: Exchange Server 2016 Exchange Server 2019 Outlook 2016 (as part of Office 2016) Support will also end for…

What is the Interlock ransomware?Interlock is a relatively new strain of ransomware, that first emerged in late 2024. Unlike many other ransomware families it not only targets Windows PCs, but also systems running FreeBSD.If you are impacted, you will find that your files have not only been encrypted but have also had “.interlock” appended to their filenames. For example, a file named report.xlsx would become report.xlsx.interlock, visibly signaling that it has been encrypted by Interlock.And let me guess – it asks you to pay up for the decryption?How did you know? Yes, as is so normal with cyber attacks these…