Author: HackWatchit

Blue Shield of California, a nonprofit health insurance provider, is making headlines this week after revealing that its members’ personal data was compromised in a breach that may have been caused by a misconfiguration or insider threat. Over 4.7 million members are affected, with sensitive data fraudulently accessed by the Google Ads platform. According to records obtained by Cybersecurity Insiders, Blue Shield was originally meant to share only anonymized data with Google Analytics for research and development purposes. This arrangement was designed to help the company gain insights into its services and improve user experience. However, an unexpected error—whether from…

Anthony, can you tell us a bit about yourself? I am originally from New Jersey, but currently live in South Carolina. I am an attorney on the Check Point team covering the Americas, working closely with many different business units here at Check Point. I am very passionate about the law and technology, specifically the intersection between the two, and how it is ever-changing in this fast-paced environment. What led to your decision to join Check Point? The opportunity to join a company that is a leader in the cyber security industry was an opportunity that I could not pass…

Interlock ransomware group claims it stole 20TB of sensitive patient data from DaVita Healthcare. While the group has leaked 1.5TB; it is offering the rest of the data for a price which includes the personal details of millions of patients. Patients receiving critical kidney dialysis treatment from DaVita, a major healthcare provider, are now facing the possible exposure of their sensitive information. A group of cyber criminals from the Interlock ransomware has claimed responsibility for the cyberattack on the company and has begun posting what they say is stolen patient data on their dark web leak site. This development comes…

When we think about vishing (voice phishing), the usual suspects come to mind: fake refund scams impersonating Norton, PayPal, or Geek Squad. When one of our security researchers brought this campaign to my attention, I knew right away it was something different. This wasn’t your typical refund scam or tech-support vishing attempt. Instead, it was targeting something much more personal—healthcare appointments. It’s smart. It’s subtle. And it works because it feels personal. Let’s break down how this attack plays out. If you’re thinking this doesn’t concern you because it sounds personal—not corporate—stick with me. I’ll explain why these attacks still matter…

are used in businesses to classify brand-related text datasets (such as product and site reviews, surveys, and social media comments) and to track how customer satisfaction metrics change over time. There is a myriad of recent topic models one can choose from: the widely used BERTopic by Maarten Grootendorst (2022), the recent FASTopic presented at last year’s NeurIPS, (Xiaobao Wu et al.,2024), the Dynamic Topic Model by Blei and Lafferty (2006), or a fresh semi-supervised Seeded Poisson Factorization model (Prostmaier et al., 2025). For a business use case, training topic models on customer texts, we often get results that are…

Dakota Nelson // ‘Twas the week before HackmasAnd all through their housesNot a tester was workingNor moving their mousesThe findings were listed in reports with careIn hopes that bugfixes would soon be thereThe hackers were nestled all snug in their chairsWhile bitstreams of 0day flowed through twisted pairsAnd Heather on her treadmill desk, and John on a plane,Had just muted the testers so they could try to stay sane,When out on the Twitter there arose such a stormThat even the interns were stirred from their dormsAway to the internet, we flew screaming “WOWZERS”,Ate up all the bandwidth (with our non-BHIS…

British retailer giant Marks & Spencer (M&S) has suspended online orders while working to recover from a recently disclosed cyberattack. The multinational retailer operates over 1,400 stores, employs 64,000 employees globally, and sells various products, including clothing, food, and home goods. M&S, which reported revenues of £13 billion for FY24, is listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and is included in the FTSE100 Index, the UK’s best-known stock market index. “As part of our proactive management of a cyber incident, we have made the decision to pause taking orders via our M&S.com websites and apps. Our product range remains…

Operation SyncHole: Lazarus APT targets supply chains in South Korea Pierluigi Paganini April 25, 2025 The North Korea-linked Lazarus Group targeted at least six firms in South Korea in a cyber espionage campaign called Operation SyncHole. Kaspersky researchers reported that the North Korea-linked APT group Lazarus targeted at least six firms in South Korea in a cyber espionage campaign tracked as Operation SyncHole. The campaign has been active since at least November 2024, Lazarus Group is targeting South Korean organizations using watering hole tactics and exploiting software vulnerabilities. Targeted organizations are in IT, finance, semiconductors, and the telecom sectors, with…

As businesses continue to adapt to hybrid work and increasingly complex IT environments, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to security solutions. Many organizations today rely on a mix of deployment models, including Prisma SASE and Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW), to help secure their networks and keep operations running smoothly. However, traditional monitoring tools provide fragmented insights, making it difficult to pinpoint issues that impact end-user experience, such as user device slowdowns, connectivity disruptions or degraded application performance. This goes across the entire service delivery chain, from users and branch offices to applications, spanning on-premises, cloud and hybrid environments. Without…