This week’s Department of Know is hosted by Rich Stroffolino with guests Andy Ellis, Principal, Duha, and Johna Till Johnson, CEO and Founder, Nemertes Research
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Ransomware payments pass $4.5 billion
Ransomware payments reported to the U.S. Treasury’ s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has now topped $4.5 billion USD, with 2023 standing out as the most expensive year on record. More than $2.1 billion was paid between 2022 and 2024, including $1.1 billion in 2023 alone. Akira accounted for the most reported incidents, but ALPHV/BlackCat took in the biggest haul with nearly $400 million in payments. Financial services, manufacturing, and healthcare remained the hardest-hit sectors, and most ransom demands stayed under $250,000.
Scammers poison AI search results
Scammers appear to be manipulating the public websites that AI tools rely on, causing systems like Google’s AI Overview and Perplexity’s Comet to recommend fraudulent customer support numbers. Researchers at Aurascape’s Aura Labs say attackers are planting GEO and AEO-optimized spam across compromised government and university sites, WordPress blogs, YouTube descriptions, and Yelp reviews. LLMs then scrape and merge this poisoned content into answers that look legitimate. Tests showed bogus numbers for Emirates and British Airways surfaced by both Perplexity and Google. (ZDNet)
Humanoid robots go mainstream
Security experts warn that the rise of AI-powered humanoid robots poses new cyber risks, including the potential for physical “botnets.” With forecasts of billions of robots by 2060 across industries and households, vulnerabilities in connectivity, AI learning, and embedded sensors could allow attacks, espionage, or hijacking. A recent proof-of-concept exploited Unitree robots’ Bluetooth interface, allowing wormable malware. Experts predict a new sector for humanoid robot cybersecurity will emerge. (The Register)
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CEO of retail giant Coupang resigns/Chinese national as suspect
South Korea’s Coupang CEO Park Dae-jun stepped down after a breach exposed data from around 34 million customers. The company said he resigned out of responsibility for the incident, discovered Nov. 18th. Coupang named Chief Administrative Officer Harold Rogers interim CEO, with a focus on stabilizing operations and reassuring users. South Korean authorities are investigating, including a raid on Coupang’s headquarters and a probe involving a former employee from China. (CNBC)
Following up on a story we have been covering all this month, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency now says the data breach at South Korean retailer Coupang that exposed the information of 33.7 million customers has been attributed to a former employee who retained access to internal systems after leaving the company. Last Wednesday, as we reported, the company’s CEO, Park Dae-Jun, announced his resignation and apologized to the public for failing to stop what is the country’s worst cybersecurity breach in history. The suspect is a 43-year-old Chinese national who “joined Coupang in November 2022, was assigned to an authentication management system and left the firm in 2024. He is believed to have already left the country.”
MITRE shares 2025’s top 25 most dangerous software weaknesses
Released in collaboration with the Homeland Security Systems Engineering and Development Institute and CISA, the list contains 25 of the most dangerous software weaknesses behind more than 39,000 security vulnerabilities disclosed between June 2024 and June 2025. Topping the list is cross-site scripting, followed by SQL injection, cross-site request forgery, missing authorization, and out-of-bounds Write, with new entries this year being variations on buffer overflows. A link to the full list is available in the show notes to this episode.
US Department of Defense Transitioning to Post-Quantum Cryptography
The US Dept of Defense has announced plans to transition to quantum-resistant cryptography, based on NIST’s approved post-quantum encryption schemes approved last year. The transition includes conducting a cryptography inventory and risk assessment, selecting top priority systems for immediate migration, and migrating systems in priority order from legacy protocols, with a goal of having fully complete migration by December 31, 2030. (HSToday)