Author: HackWatchit
GitHub announced updates to its Advanced Security platform after it detected over 39 million leaked secrets in repositories during 2024, including API keys and credentials, exposing users and organizations to serious security risks. In a new report by GitHub, the development company says the 39 million secrets were found through its secret scanning service, a security feature that detects API keys, passwords, tokens, and other secrets in repositories. “Secret leaks remain one of the most common—and preventable—causes of security incidents,” reads GitHub’s announcement. “As we develop code faster than ever previously imaginable, we’re leaking secrets faster than ever, too.” This…
Delaware, USA, April 2nd, 2025, CyberNewsWire Brinker, an innovative narrative intelligence platform dedicated to combating disinformation and influence campaigns, has been recognized as one of the “10 Most Promising Defense Tech Startups of 2025” by Défense Israel and Robel Innovations. This distinction underscores Brinker’s groundbreaking approach to safeguarding governments, enterprises, and NGOs from increasingly sophisticated narrative-based threats. Brinker’s proprietary technology identifies malicious narratives across platforms, languages, and geographies, performing automated OSINT investigations and providing real-time mitigation options at the press of a button—dramatically reducing the entire response process from weeks to minutes. In October 2024, Brinker was selected to join…
What happens when a small team with a modest budget takes on the titans of artificial intelligence? San Francisco-based Sentient, a decentralized AI developer backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, announced the upcoming launch of Open Deep Search (ODS), an open-source AI framework poised to outstrip Perplexity in search and reasoning capabilities. With a waitlist of 1.75 million users for its Sentient Chat tool, the company is betting that transparency and community-driven innovation can rival the closed-source giants dominating the industry. Sentient’s move comes at a time when AI development is often shrouded in secrecy, controlled by corporations with deep…
On the heels of our DMARC adoption research in Europe’s higher education sector, we’re taking a look to see how schools in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region are faring with their email security. In this study, we surveyed the top colleges and universities in Australia, New Zealand, and APAC as a region based on faculty and staff counts. To conduct this research, we took the parent domains of the schools and sifted them through our tools to access the publicly available DMARC, SPF and DKIM records published in the DNS. Colleges and universities are prime targets because of the volumes…
into frontend web development today, and you might be thinking: what does this have to do with Data Science? Why is Towards Data Science publishing a post related to web dev? Well, because data science isn’t only about building powerful models, engaging in advanced analytics, or cleaning and transforming data—presenting the results is also a key part of our job. And there are several ways to do it: PowerPoint presentations, interactive dashboards (like Tableau), or, as you’ve guessed, through a website. Speaking from personal experience, I work daily on developing the website we use to present our data-driven results. Using…
Royal Mail Group, the UK’s centuries-old postal institution, has allegedly suffered a massive data breach resulting in the leak of 144GB of internal files, customer information, and marketing data. The breach was first made public on the cybercrime forum Breach Forum by a user known as GHNA. 144GB of Leaked Data As seen by the Hackread.com research team, GHNA published a post on Monday, March 31, 2025, stating: “Today, I have uploaded 144GB of data from Royal Mail Group for you to download (courtesy of Spectos, again). Thanks for reading, and enjoy!” The post included a screenshot of what appears…
Brian Fehrman has been with Black Hills Information Security (BHIS) as a Security Researcher and Analyst since 2014, but his interest in security started when his family got their very first computer. Brian holds a BS in Computer Science, an MS in Mechanical Engineering, an MS in Computational Sciences and Robotics, and a PhD in Data Science and Engineering with a focus in Cyber Security. He also holds various industry certifications, such as Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP) and GIAC Exploit Researcher and Advanced Penetration Tester (GXPN). He enjoys being able to protect his customers from “the real bad people”…
As well as CSAM, Fowler says, there were AI-generated pornographic images of adults in the database plus potential “face-swap” images. Among the files, he observed what appeared to be photographs of real people, which were likely used to create “explicit nude or sexual AI-generated images,” he says. “So they were taking real pictures of people and swapping their faces on there,” he claims of some generated images.When it was live, the GenNomis website allowed explicit AI adult imagery. Many of the images featured on its homepage, and an AI “models” section included sexualized images of women—some were “photorealistic” while others…
The U.S. House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection reviewed the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program (SLCGP), which is up for reauthorization this year. Witnesses noted that although the program is operational, it may need adjustments to boost its effectiveness. Managed by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the SLCGP’s current impact was assessed. Subcommittee members also explored potential collaborations with the federal administration to strengthen state and local governments’ preparedness and resilience against cyberattacks. To help state and local governments improve their cybersecurity postures, Congress passed the SLCGP…