Author: HackWatchit

Japan passed a law allowing preemptive offensive cyber actions Pierluigi Paganini May 19, 2025 Japan passed a law allowing preemptive offensive cyber actions, shifting from its pacifist stance to bolster defenses like major Western powers. Japan has enacted the Active Cyberdefense Law, allowing preemptive offensive cyber operations to counter threats before damage occurs. This marks a shift from Japan’s pacifist stance under Article 9, aiming to elevate its cyber defense to match major Western powers and enable broader military support to allies. The law allows government agencies to carry out hacking back operations, infiltrating and neutralizing infrastructure employed by threat…

OpenAI is planning to combine multiple products (features or models) into its next foundational model, which is called GPT-5. ChatGPT currently has too many capable models for different tasks. While the models are powerful, it can be confusing because all models have identical names. In a Reddit AMA thread, Jerry Tworek, who is a VP at OpenAI, suggested that there are plans to bring some current models and their capabilities together with the next foundational model. GPT-5 will also make the existing models significantly better at everything. “GPT-5 is our next foundational model that is meant to just make everything our models can…

Classrooms and campuses have gone fully digital — and continue to innovate – while cyber criminals are exploiting every gap in that transformation. Schools, colleges, and universities are rapidly digitalizing, but with limited cyber security infrastructure and strained IT resources, they are increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks. According to new data from Check Point Research, the education sector has seen an alarming surge in cyber threats over the past 18 months. In January 2024, the average number of weekly attacks per education organization stood at 1,176. By April 2025, that number had nearly tripled to 3,323. This steady and significant…

A misconfigured database at enterprise IT provider Serviceaide has exposed sensitive health and personal information belonging to approximately 500,000 (483,126) patients linked to Catholic Health, a non-profit healthcare system based in New York. Serviceaide confirmed the data leak in a notice posted on its website, stating the incident originated from an Elasticsearch database that was inadvertently made publicly accessible. The exposure occurred between September 19 and November 5, 2024. The leak was discovered on November 15, 2024, and a full review was only recently completed. Although there’s no confirmed evidence that the data was downloaded or misused, the company admitted…

John Strand// Using threat intelligence feeds for good….instead of wasting time and money. John’s intense hatred for threat intelligence feeds is pretty well known. Trying to defend your network against specific attacks from specific actors is a waste of time and effort. But, maybe there is a way we can do this better! Could we automate this? Possibly, John has had a change of heart…. Not likely. But join us and see for yourself. Slides can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4k7zvj2woowma58/ThreatIntelApril2018.pptx?dl=0 Available live/virtual and on-demand

AI systems can sometimes produce outputs that are incorrect or misleading, a phenomenon known as hallucinations. These errors can range from minor inaccuracies to misrepresentations that can misguide decision-making processes. Real world implications “If a company’s AI agent leverages outdated or inaccurate data, AI hallucinations might fabricate non-existent vulnerabilities or misinterpret threat intelligence, leading to unnecessary alerts or overlooked risks. Such errors can divert resources from genuine threats, creating new vulnerabilities and wasting already-constrained SecOps team resources,” said Harman Kaur, VP of AI at Tanium, told Help Net Security. One emerging concern is the phenomenon of package hallucinations, where AI…

The recent cyber-attack on the UK’s Ministry of Justice (MOJ) has raised significant concerns, particularly when considering the potential long-term consequences of this breach. Preliminary investigations suggest that hackers successfully accessed and compromised approximately 2.7 million sensitive records, including criminal records. The full extent of the attack is still being assessed, but this incident underscores the critical need for enhanced cybersecurity measures to protect sensitive data.A Closer Look at the Timeline and Investigation The attack reportedly occurred on April 23 of this year. However, it wasn’t until last week, following an in-depth investigation, that the breach was publicly disclosed. The…

Kristina TanasichukFrom terrorism to the homeland security business enterprise, for over 20 years Kristina Tanasichuk has devoted her career to educating and informing the homeland community to build avenues for collaboration, information sharing, and resilience. She has worked in homeland security since 2002 and has founded and grown some of the most renowned organizations in the field. Prior to homeland she worked on critical infrastructure for Congress and for municipal governments in the energy sector and public works. She has 25 years of lobbying and advocacy experience on Capitol Hill on behalf of non- profit associations, government clients, and coalitions.…

The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) has released a comprehensive handbook to guide national and sectoral authorities in overseeing the cybersecurity and resilience of critical infrastructure under the NIS 2 Directive. Designed for use at the national, regional, and EU levels, the Handbook for Cyber Stress Testing provides a structured approach to assessing the cybersecurity and resilience of critical sector entities. It may also serve as a valuable resource for supervisory bodies operating under related regulations, such as the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and the Critical Entities Resilience (CER) directive. The handbook defines a cyber stress test as…