Author: HackWatchit

Something looks a little…sketchy. Is that website safe or unsafe?   Nowadays, it can take a bit of work to tell.  And that’s by design. Increasingly, hackers and scammers go to great pains when they create their malicious websites. They take extra steps to make their sites look legit, when in fact they’re anything but. Certainly, plenty of other hackers and scammers slap together malicious sites that still look a bit roughshod, which makes them easier to spot.  So whether it’s a clever knockoff or a slapdash effort, unsafe websites of all kinds have several telltale signs you can spot.…

 Above all, people working in the military intelligence and other national security situations get things done when they collaborate. Full collaboration requires a sharing of data in multiple forms, and that’s, of course, where the challenge always comes in. Despite good intentions, everyone in a work group, unit, mission or even bureau, usually doesn’t have all the same level of clearance. Some may be working in a SCIF. Others may be at home teleworking. And sometimes collaborators are from different nations. Agencies must balance all of these needs and still get their missions done. Bill Anderson, the principal product…

It’s been a confusing few days in the world of American cybersecurity.At the end of last week, it was reported that US Cyber Command had been ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to pause its offensive operations against Russia. The news was swiftly followed by reports that staff at the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) had been given similar instructions to turn a blind eye to hacks directed against United States that might be linked to Russia.As we described yesterday, both CISA and US Cyber Command had reportedly been ordered by the Trump administration to stop following or…

There are some Sql patterns that, once you know them, you start seeing them everywhere. The solutions to the puzzles that I will show you today are actually very simple SQL queries, but understanding the concept behind them will surely unlock new solutions to the queries you write on a day-to-day basis. These challenges are all based on real-world scenarios, as over the past few months I made a point of writing down every puzzle-like query that I had to build. I also encourage you to try them for yourself, so that you can challenge yourself first, which will improve…

Scammers are impersonating the BianLian ransomware gang in fake ransom notes sent to US companies via snail mail through the United States Postal Service. The fake ransom notes were first reported by Guidepoint Security today, with BleepingComputer later being sent a scan of the note from a CEO who received the same letter. The envelopes for these ransom notes claim to be from the “BIANLIAN Group” and have a return address located in an office building in Boston, Massachusets: BIANLIAN GROUP 24 FEDERAL ST, SUITE 100 BOSTON, MA 02110 In the letter shared with BleepingComputer, the envelope shows it was mailed…

The post Talkin’ About Infosec News – 6/9/2023 appeared first on Black Hills Information Security.

Scammers are impersonating BianLian ransomware, and mailing fake ransom letters to businesses. Learn the red flags and how to protect against this extortion scam. GuidePoint Security’s Senior Threat Intelligence Analyst, Grayson North, has discovered a peculiar trend in the corporate sector in which executives at various organizations began receiving physical letters delivered via the US Postal Service. In March 2025, the GuidePoint Research and Intelligence Team (GRIT) received reports of suspicious physical letters from the BianLian ransomware group, claiming that the recipient’s corporate IT network had been compromised and sensitive data had been stolen. The letters were delivered via mail…

It’s still unclear whether cloud gaming will ever become the next big thing. The appeal is clear: The game you’re playing runs in a data center near you, and the video output is directly streamed to your local device. When you interact with the game, everything is relayed back to the data center. When it works, it’s an amazing experience. It’s a flexible, easy way to play games across multiple devices without buying new hardware. That’s why many companies have launched services that let you play games remotely — there’s Nvidia’s GeForce Now service, Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming, Amazon Luna,…

Artificial intelligence used to be reserved for the population’s most brilliant scientists and isolated in the world’s top laboratories. Now, AI is available to anyone with an internet connection. Tools like ChatGPT, Voice.ai, DALL-E, and others have brought AI into daily life, but sometimes the terms used to describe their capabilities and inner workings are anything but mainstream.  Here are 10 common terms you’ll likely hear in the same sentence as your favorite AI tool, on the nightly news, or by the water cooler. Keep this AI dictionary handy to stay informed about this popular (and sometimes controversial) topic.  AI-generated…