Author: HackWatchit

Despite ranking among the top most visited pages on the planet, porn sites still don’t have a particularly stellar reputation. Early sites were full of scams and malware, and while some things have improved, privacy and security concerns remain. So are porn websites safe in 2025? Not really. If you venture outside the mainstream options, you’re still likely to be bombarded with scammy ads and pop-ups. Meanwhile, the “safe” porn sites use trackers to log everything you do, have spam-filled comments, or get exposed for outright hosting illegal content. While there’s plenty to say about the ethical issues in the…

Solana’s recent governance vote on the SIMD-228 proposal, which put forward the idea of lowering Solana’s inflation rate and boosting staking, showed the network can effectively handle major voting decisions without a hitch on the technical level. Meanwhile, we’ve also seen throughput on the network increasing to accommodate the huge volume of memecoin trading. However, one major hurdle remains on its path to becoming the “Nasdaq on the blockchain” – MEV bots. MEV stands for maximum extractable value and refers to the additional profit that can be made from a transaction. MEV is like waiting in line at a store…

Why is Smart Machine Identity Management Crucial? What comes to your mind when you think about cybersecurity? Most often, we conceptualize cybersecurity as a measure to protect user data, financial information, and other forms of human-associated identities. While these are certainly significant, there is an underlying and often underestimated area of cybersecurity – the management of Non-Human Identities (NHIs). NHIs are machine identities used that allow machines to communicate securely with each other. The “secrets” that create these identities can be likened to encrypted passports granting permission for machines to “travel” within networks. As a result, managing these identities is…

A flaw in Verizon’s iOS Call Filter app exposed call records of millions Pierluigi Paganini April 05, 2025 A now-patched flaw in Verizon ’s iOS Call Filter app exposed call records of millions. No abuse found. Only phone numbers and timestamps were at risk. A now-patched vulnerability in Verizon ’s iOS Call Filter app could have been exploited to harvest the call records of millions of Americans. Verizon’s Call Filter app allows users to identify and manage unwanted calls, such as spam and robocalls. It offers features like spam detection, automatic blocking of high-risk spam calls, and the ability to…

A vulnerability in the WinRAR file archiver solution could be exploited to bypass the Mark of the Web (MotW) security warning and execute arbitrary code on a Windows machine. The security issue is tracked as CVE-2025-31334 and affects all WinRAR versions except the most recent release, which is currently 7.11. Mark of the Web is a security function in Windows in the form of a metadata value (an alternate data stream named ‘zone-identifier’) to tag as potentially unsafe files downloaded from the internet. When opening an executable with the MotW tag, Windows warns the user that it was downloaded from…

In a major international crackdown, law enforcement agencies have taken down “Kidflix,” one of the largest known child sexual abuse material (CSAM) websites on the dark web. The platform, which had over 1.8 million registered users, was dismantled on March 11, 2025, in a coordinated effort involving authorities from more than 35 countries. 3.5 CSAM Videos Uploaded Every Hour Authorities say the platform was active from 2021 until its seizure and was designed to grow fast. Kidflix allowed users to stream and download CSAM and used a system that rewarded uploads and engagement with cryptocurrency-based tokens. These tokens could be…

This is a joint emergency webcast from the teams of Black Hills Information Security, Wild West Hackin’ Fest, and Active Countermeasures, presented by John Strand. There have been a couple of very scary ransomware stories in the news over the past few weeks. We figured it would be a good idea to throw a quick emergency webcast together to cover some of these new developments and hit on some very real and very easy things to mitigate against some of these attacks. We say “some” because these attacks are evolving. Traditionally, there are two classes of ransomware, but we are…

Highlights From Antarctica to the Amazon rainforest, ATMs are boldly popping up in unexpected places. Diebold Nixdorf made headlines with its announcement of installing two new ATMs at the U.S. National Science Foundation’s McMurdo Station in Antarctica. The installation of ATMs in places like Antarctica and other remote locations highlights the evolving nature of banking technology. We get a lot of press releases here at PYMNTS. We consider all of them, and some are more newsworthy than others. But this one really got our attention. This past week, Diebold Nixdorf made headlines with its announcement of successfully installing two new…

Marlink, vendor of managed services for business-critical IT solutions, announced the creation of Marlink Cyber, a cybersecurity company to address the growth of cyber threats and the increasing need for compliance. It will work across market sectors with a portfolio of managed services spanning security assessment, infrastructure protection, and cyber defence solutions. Marlink Cyber combines legacy expertise within Marlink with the skills, resources and geographic presence gained with the acquisition of Diverto and Port-IT. Some 150 experts will focus on developing and delivering the services and solutions customers need to address emerging cyber challenges. The new company provides multiple customer…