Apple urges iPhone, iPad and Mac update ASAP
The update, identified as 18.6.2 responds to a vulnerability that affects ImageIO, which “lets applications read and write most image file formats. This lets your device know how to process and display a photo or other image.” Apple says, “processing a malicious image file may result in memory corruption” means that an attacker could exploit a flaw in ImageIO by creating an image designed to corrupt your device’s memory. They could then run malicious code and even install spyware. Apple further states “the flaw may have already been used in an ‘extremely sophisticated attack’ on targeted individuals.”
(ZDNet)
Scattered Spider operative gets 10 years and a big fine
Twenty-year-old Noah Michael Urban has been given the sentence for pleading guilty to charges related to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. He faces an additional three years of supervised release following his sentence and has been ordered to pay $13 million in restitution to victims. Urban has long history of cybercriminal activity, detailed in a blog post by Brian Krebs. Urban also called the sentence unjust alleging, “the judge purposefully ignored my age as a factor because of the fact another Scattered Spider member hacked him personally during the course of my case.” This was indeed the fact, as Krebs quotes another judge from the court as saying, “the Court’s password…business is handled by an outside contractor. And somebody called the outside contractor representing Judge Toomey saying, ‘I need a password change.’ And they gave out the password change. That’s how whoever was making the phone call got into the court.”
(The Hacker News and Krebs on Security)
Microsoft seeks customer feedback on SSD failure issues
This request follows on from the August 2025 security update, in which some customers experienced failure and data corruption issues affecting their solid-state drives (SSDs) and hard disk drives (HDDs). Microsoft has said it is aware of reports regarding the data corruption and failure issues, but that it “could not reproduce the issue on up-to-date Windows 11 24H2 systems,” and as such is now looking to collect user reports.
AI crawlers and fetchers place heavy burden on the web
A new report from cloud services company Fastly says that AI crawlers “account for 80 percent of all AI bot traffic, with the remaining 20 percent used by AI fetchers.” Together they can demand data from websites up to thousands of times per minute. The report points a finger squarely at Meta’s AI division, which accounts for more than half of the crawlers, and also at OpenAI, which is responsible for the majority of on-demand fetch requests. Fastly senior security researcher Arun Kumar says in the report, “AI-driven automation risks are becoming a blind spot for digital teams.”
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Belgian telecom suffers cyberattack
Just a month after its parent company Orange Group detected a cyberattack, the Belgian subsidiary, Orange Telecom, announced this week that it too had discovered a cyberattack at the end of July. This attack compromised data from 850,000 customer accounts. The company said that no critical data such as passwords, email addresses, banking or financial details were compromised, but did warn that customer telephone numbers, SIM card numbers, PUK codes, and tariff plans had been accessed.” PUK codes are (Personal Unblocking Key) codes, an 8-digit security codes that allow customers to unblock their SIM cards if they enter the wrong PIN multiple times.
Business Council of New York State announces data breach
The council, which “lobbies for business interests in the state legislature and promotes economic development,” says the February attack “gave hackers access to sensitive information on more than 47,000 people.” Stolen data includes PII, Social Security numbers, state ID numbers, payment card numbers, PINs as well as expiration dates, taxpayer identification numbers and electronic signature information. Some also had medical data released, “including information on diagnoses, prescriptions, treatments, procedures and health insurance.”
Flipper Zero turns anyone into one of the Kia Boys
Just about a year ago, we reported on a story detailing how the famous ethical hackers go-to tool, the Flipper Zero, can be used to steal Tesla cars by simply opening the doors electronically. An article from 404media shows that the technology can now be used on a much wider selection of cars models from companies such as Ford, Audi, Volkswagen, Subaru, Hyundai, Kia, and others, and also that newbie thieves are able to crack the Flipper Zero software, meaning they do not have to pay to access the tool. The tool also locks legitimate owners out of their own cars. According to the article, 404 Media contacted all of the vehicle manufacturers mentioned in the hackers recently released document. Most manufacturers “did not provide a statement on whether they were aware of the attack or what they were doing to mitigate it. Ford declined to comment.”
(404media)
Hackers use QuirkyLoader to spread malware
Researchers from IBM X-Force are warning of a new malware loader called QuirkyLoader being used to deliver information stealers and remote access trojans via email spam campaigns. In fact, this has been going on since November 2024. The attacks “involve sending spam emails from both legitimate email service providers and a self-hosted email server, and these emails feature a malicious archive, which contains a DLL, an encrypted payload, and a real executable.” The DLL loader has only been used in limited campaigns thus far, chiefly targeting Taiwan and Mexico.