These are the cybersecurity tales we have been jealous of in 2024

Since 2018, with colleagues first at dad or mum VICE, and now on TechCrunchI revealed a listing on the finish of the 12 months highlighting the perfect cybersecurity tales reported by different media retailers. Cybersecurity, surveillance, and privateness are enormous matters that no single publication can cowl successfully. Journalism is by definition aggressive, but additionally a extremely collaborative discipline. That is why it is typically a good suggestion to direct our readers to different publications and their work to study extra about these difficult, sprawling rhythms.

With out additional ado, listed here are our favourite cybersecurity tales of this 12 months from our associates at competing media. —Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai.

In one of many largest and most brazen huge hacks in latest historical past, hackers this 12 months attacked tons of of unsecured cloud storage accounts hosted by cloud computing firm Snowflake, the place s ‘assist a few of the world’s largest know-how and telecommunications firms. The hackers then held the massive quantities of stolen information for ransom. A sufferer of the hacks, AT&T, confirmed that it lost call and text records of ‘almost everyone’ of AT&T’s 110 million clients within the breach, representing greater than 50 billion name and textual content information.

Days after AT&T made information of its breach public, an impartial safety journalist Kim Zetter introduced the information that AT&T had paid a hacker $370,000 a few weeks earlier to delete the massive cache of stolen phone records. and never publicly disclose the info. Zetter’s reporting revealed a significant piece of the puzzle: who was behind these intrusions – on the time identified solely as UNC5537 by Mandiant – and who was behind these intrusions. later identified as Connor Moucka and John Binns and charged for their roles in huge thefts from Snowflake buyer accounts. -Zack Whittaker.

The most recent Kashmir Hill investigation report in The New York Times revealed that automakers share client habits and driving habits with information brokers and insurance coverage firms, who use the info to extend buyer charges and premiums, a dystopian use of driver data to towards them. For GM automobile house owners, drivers are often not informed that signing up for its Sensible Driver function would mechanically trigger automobiles to share their driving habits with third events. Historical past sparked a congressional investigationwhich revealed that automakers have been in some circumstances promoting client information for pennies. -Zack Whittaker.

It is only a loopy story. If this story have been a film – hell, it must be – it will nonetheless be surprising. However the truth that this really occurred is nothing wanting unimaginable. Zach Dorfman has pulled off an unimaginable feat of reporting right here. Writing about intelligence operations shouldn’t be simple; by definition, these are supposed to stay secret endlessly. And it is not a type of tales that the intelligence neighborhood would secretly be comfortable to see. There may be nothing to be proud or comfortable about right here. I do not wish to spoil this story in any means, simply learn it. It is so good. —Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai.

This is not only a cybersecurity story, however in a means crypto has all the time been part of hacking tradition. Born as a libertarian chimera, it has been clear for several years that Bitcoin and all its cryptographic ramifications don’t have anything to do with what Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious inventor of cryptocurrency and blockchain know-how, imagined in 2008 in his seminal article on Bitcoin. Immediately, crypto has turn into a device permitting the far proper to train its energy, as Charlie Warzel explains very nicely on this article. —Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai.

Bloomberg’s Katrina Manson obtained a scoop nobody else might: drug distributor Cencora paid $75 million ransom to extortion gang to withhold delicate private and medical information on greater than 18 million folks following an earlier cyberattack. Cencora was hacked in February, however has steadfastly and frequently refused to say how many individuals had their data stolen – although public information showed more than 1.4 million people affected and an increase. TechCrunch had been following this story concerning the alleged ransom cost for a while (and we weren’t the one ones!) after listening to rumors that Cencora had paid what’s believed to be the most important ransomware cost thus far . Bloomberg’s Manson obtained particulars of the Bitcoin transactions and confirmed the ransom cost. -Zack Whittaker.

I have been excited by ransomware for years, and whereas the hackers behind these information theft assaults are sometimes prepared to speak, the victims of those assaults are normally not so prepared to open up. Bloomberg’s Ryan Gallagher did the inconceivable by asking UK-based supply firm Knights of Previous to reveal everything about a ransomware attack this resulted within the firm closing after 158 years in enterprise. Paul Abbott, co-owner of Knights, spoke candidly concerning the assault, giving readers an perception into the devastation attributable to the Russia-linked hacker gang. Abbott revealed how and why the corporate determined to not negotiate, resulting in the discharge of greater than 10,000 inside paperwork. This leak, Abbot revealed, meant the corporate couldn’t safe a mortgage or promote the enterprise, forcing it to shut its doorways completely. -Carly Web page.

404 Media completely killed it a couple of 12 months after launch. There have been many nice tales, however this one stood out to me. Right here, Joseph Cox and different journalists got the identical information set, and he neatly determined to deal with a significant challenge in his article: how mobile phone monitoring might assist determine folks visiting well being clinics. abortion. With Donald Trump returning to the White Home and the Republican Social gathering controlling all branches of presidency, it’s probably that we are going to see additional challenges to abortion rights and entry, making one of these surveillance significantly harmful. —Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai.

I have been protecting cryptocurrency hacks and heists on and off for a number of years now. It is an enchanting world full of scammers, scammers, hackers, and relentless investigators. One of the vital intriguing characters is a person named ZachXBT. For years, he has solved a few of the most complicated crypto mysteries, hacks, heists, scams and cash laundering operations. This 12 months, Wired’s Andy Greenberg did a fantastic job profiling ZachXBT. And although Greenberg could not reveal the detective’s actual id and withheld quite a lot of figuring out data, the story painted a vivid image of the investigator and his motivations. —Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai.

Wired’s Andy Greenberg has the news on one other main Chinese language-backed hacking marketing campaign. The revealing report, published in Octoberreveals how researchers working for Chengdu-based cybersecurity agency Sichuan Silence and the College of Digital Science and Expertise of China spent years researching vulnerabilities in Sophos firewalls. The vulnerabilities subsequently utilized by hacker teams supported by the Chinese language authorities, like APT41 And Typhoon Voltto put in backdoors in Sophos firewalls utilized by organizations around the globe and steal their delicate information. The five-year marketing campaign, as also detailed by Sophos itselfresulted within the compromise of greater than 80,000 firewalls worldwide, together with some utilized by the US authorities. Following Greenberg’s data, the US authorities sanctioned the Chinese language cybersecurity firm and considered one of its workers for his or her position within the huge hacking marketing campaign. -Carly Web page.

The Salt Hurricane hack of US cellphone and web giants is not going to solely go down as one of many largest cybersecurity tales of 2024, but additionally as one of many largest hacks in historical past. The Wall Street Journal had an impressive scoop on this story.reporting in October that Salt Hurricane, a Chinese language government-backed hacking group, had penetrated the networks of numerous U.S. telecommunications suppliers to entry data from methods the federal authorities makes use of for approved wiretapping requests by the courts. The WSJ’s wonderful reporting sparked months of follow-up and prompted motion from the U.S. authorities, which has since urged Americans to switch to encrypted messaging appslike Sign, to attenuate the chance of their communications being intercepted. -Carly Web page.

KYC, or “know your buyer,” checks are among the many hottest strategies utilized by banks and know-how firms to attempt to affirm that it’s you they’re coping with. KYC entails inspecting your driver’s license, passport or different sort of identification doc and verifying, to the best extent doable, the authenticity of the doc. However whereas fakes and fakes are inevitable, generative AI fashions make these KYC checks fully pointless. 404 Media explored the clandestine site where “neural networks” quickly produce false identity cardswhich was an effective way to point out how simple it’s to generate faux IDs on the fly that may allow financial institution fraud and felony cash laundering. The positioning disconnected following studies from 404 Media. -Zack Whittaker.