Author: HackWatchit

Here’s the bottom line: local public broadcasting stations save lives. That’s not a slogan. It’s a fact.   When I led FEMA, one of the biggest challenges we faced during disasters was getting accurate, timely information to the public — especially when everything else was failing. Cell networks go down. Power grids fail. But local public broadcasting stations stay on the air. And they’re often the only lifeline communities have.   Public media isn’t just about educational programs and documentaries. It’s about infrastructure. It’s about having a trusted voice and a signal that reaches nearly every household in America — especially in…

Noah Michael Urban, the 20-year-old hacker from the notorious Scattered Spider group, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Learn about his SIM swapping and phishing crimes that stole millions in cryptocurrency from companies and individuals. A 20-year-old hacker, Noah Michael Urban, has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for his involvement in the notorious cybercrime group Scattered Spider (UNC3944). Urban, aka Sosa, Elijah, Gustavo Fring, and King Bob, pleaded guilty in April 2025 to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges in both Florida and California. According to the DoJ’s press release, the court also ordered him…

China-linked Silk Typhoon APT targets North America Pierluigi Paganini August 23, 2025 China-linked Silk Typhoon APT group ramp up North America attacks, exploiting n-day and zero-day flaws for system access, CrowdStrike warns. China-linked Silk Typhoon APT group (aka Murky Panda) targets organizations in North America exploiting n-day and zero-day flaws for system access, CrowdStrike warns. This Chinese APT has one of the widest targeting scopes. In March, Microsoft experts observed the group exploiting vulnerabilities opportunistically by swiftly acting on scanning discoveries. Silk Typhoon targets multiple sectors worldwide, including information technology (IT) services and infrastructure, remote monitoring and management (RMM) companies,…

Attackers don’t always need a technical flaw. More often, they just trick your people. Social engineering works, and AI makes it harder to catch.” Only about one in four cybersecurity teams are effective at collaborating with the broader business (Source: LevelBlue) A new LevelBlue report shows how this problem is growing worldwide. Forty-one percent of organizations say they are experiencing more cyberattacks than a year ago, rising to 49% in Asia-Pacific. Employees are struggling to tell the difference between real and fake communications. Globally, 59% of respondents report this problem, and in Latin America it climbs to 66%. The report…

What is Single Sign-On (SSO) richard-r.stew… Fri, 08/22/2025 – 16:53 Single Sign-On (SSO) [GO1] is an authentication model in which a user logs in once with a set of credentials to gain access to multiple applications. It forms a key part of many identity and access management (IAM) systems. Rather than needing a specific username and password for each login, SSO offers single-click access to all authorized tools securely and without redundancy. For example, take the case of a user logging into a corporate session at the beginning of work hours. As soon as they are authenticated, they can open their email,…

The Pakistani APT36 cyberspies are using Linux .desktop files to load malware in new attacks against government and defense entities in India. The activity, documented in reports by CYFIRMA and CloudSEK, aims at data exfiltration and persistent espionage access. APT 36 has previously used .desktop files to load malware in targeted espionage operations in South Asia. The attacks were first spotted on August 1, 2025, and based on the latest evidence, are still ongoing. Desktop file abuse Although the attacks described in the two reports use different infrastructure and samples (based on hashes), the techniques, tactics and procedures (TTPs), attack…

In brief SharpLink Gaming unveiled $1.5 billion in potential stock buybacks. The company traded at a slight premium to its Ethereum holdings. SharpLink’s stock price surged more than 15% on Friday to $20.83. SharpLink Gaming can repurchase up to $1.5 billion worth of common stock under a newly authorized repurchase program, the Ethereum treasury firm said in a blog post on Friday.With a market cap of $3.5 billion, that would be almost half of the company’s value, but Co-Chief Executive Officer Joseph Chalom described the program as a potential resource for instances when the company’s shares trade a discount to…

According to a technical paper from Google, accompanied by a blog post on their website, the estimated energy consumption of “the median Gemini Apps text prompt” is 0.24 watt-hours (Wh). The water consumption is 0.26 milliliters which is about five drops of water according to the blog post, and the carbon footprint is 0.03 gCO2e. Notably, the estimate does not include image or video prompts. What’s the magnitude of 0.24 Wh? If you give it 30 median-like prompts per day all year, you will have used 2.62 KWh of electricity. That’s the same as running your dishwasher 3-5 times depending…

The initial results are in four months into the pilot effort to improve the cloud security program known as FedRAMP. Four vendors have crossed the finish line to receive low authorizations under FedRAMP, proving the faster review process is working. Pete Waterman, the director of the FedRAMP program, said the goal of 20x is to make the authorization process better, faster and cheaper. Pete Waterman, the director of FedRAMP, speaks at the Alliance for Digital Innovation event in March. (Jason Miller/FNN) “The learning is this has worked out really exactly like we dreamed, almost more than we dreamed. What we…