Author: HackWatchit

PowerSchool is warning that the hacker behind its December cyberattack is now individually extorting schools, threatening to release the previously stolen student and teacher data if a ransom is not paid. “PowerSchool is aware that a threat actor has reached out to multiple school district customers in an attempt to extort them using data from the previously reported December 2024 incident,” PowerSchool shared in a statement to BleepingComputer. “We do not believe this is a new incident, as samples of data match the data previously stolen in December. We have reported this matter to law enforcement both in the United States and in…

Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | RSS Over the past few months, we have discovered a couple trends that organizations seem to be missing. No silver bullets, just some general vulnerability issues we are seeing again and again. In this podcast, Jordan & Kent give a few pointers and some new tools to help the blue team stay on top of these issues. Slides available here: https://blackhillsinformationsecurity.shootproof.com/gallery/7945173/ Find out when our next LIVE webcast is by signing up for our email notifications: https://blackhillsinfosec.us15.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=e12efe2af6573cc76c90fc019&id=b7b017ed3a Want to learn more mad skills from the person…

I always want to answer a question, which pushes me to learn more about Blockchain technology. It is, “Will blockchain become the next-generation Internet?” I want to compare it to the Internet to find the answer. What’re the essential inventions in the entire human history? I would say they are paper and currency. Because the paper is the solution for saving, expressing, and transmitting information, and the currency is the solution for saving, expressing, and conveying value. Now everyone knows the Internet is the more advanced solution to make information transmission efficient and effective. And what blockchain is doing is…

As the world roils in turmoil on numerous fronts, bad actors are seizing the moment by stepping up DDoS activity. “DDoS attacks are surging due to geopolitical tensions, hacktivism and the rise of DDoS-as-a-service platforms,” says J Stephen Kowski, field CTO at SlashNext. “Motivations range from financial extortion to political statements, with attackers exploiting the low-cost, high-impact nature of these attacks.” Kowski’s comments come after Qrator.Radar reported a 110% uptick in DDoS attacks in Q1 2025, compared to the same quarter last year.  The report found that in absolute terms, the multivector attacks rose 20%, but they represented a smaller share (11.1%)…

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Department of Energy (DOE) have identified cyber incidents targeting operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS) within U.S. critical infrastructure. They urge these entities to review and act immediately to improve their cybersecurity posture against cyber threat activities specifically and intentionally targeting internet connected OT and ICS. These agencies strongly urge critical infrastructure asset owners and operators to review this fact sheet for detailed guidance on reducing the risk of potential intrusions. Although these activities often include elementary intrusion techniques, the…

In this Help Net Security interview, Michael Pound, Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham shares his insights on the cybersecurity risks associated with LLMs. He discusses common organizational mistakes and the necessary precautions for securing sensitive data when integrating LLMs into business operations. Where do you see the biggest gaps in understanding or preparedness among CISOs and security teams when it comes to LLM use? Many security professionals are – quite reasonably – not well versed in the underlying machine learning of LLMs. With past technologies this hasn’t been a big deal, but LLMs appear at a glance to…

Joff Thyer// Many of you have probably already looked at Beau Bullock’s fine blog entry on a penetration testing dropbox. Beau has some excellent guidance on how to build the base dropbox platform using different platforms. In this case, I selected the ODroid-C2 platform running KALI (ARM) edition and am going to extend upon that to add some important capabilities. I suggest you read Beau’s post here as the information I will write about builds upon that foundation. In short, Beau’s fine work speaks of deploying an ad-hoc Access Point for attacker/pen-tester communications, however in some scenarios (think multi-tenant / multi-floor building) such…

Canary Exploit tool allows to find servers affected by Apache Parquet flaw Pierluigi Paganini May 07, 2025 F5 Labs researchers released a PoC tool to find servers vulnerable to the Apache Parquet vulnerability CVE-2025-30065. A working proof-of-concept exploit for the critical Apache Parquet vulnerability CVE-2025-30065 has been released by F5 Labs, allowing the identification of vulnerable servers. The tool, called “canary exploit,” is available on the security firm’s GitHub repository.  Apache Parquet’s Java Library is a software library for reading and writing Parquet files in the Java programming language. Parquet is a columnar storage file format that is optimized for…

Abstract  The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has tested the global governmental and public agency  response to pandemic emergencies with regard to a number of areas. This essay focuses on  major agency involvement in the United States as well as relevant historical comparisons to  highlight important aspects of our current challenges in mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic.  Analysis of previous pandemics including both domestic and international response inform our  suggested best practices for public agency involvement in ongoing pandemic operations in the  United States and abroad.  Introduction  Since being first recognized in December 2019 and declared a global pandemic on March 11, …