In today’s cybersecurity news…
NYC mayoral inauguration bans Flipper Zero, Raspberry Pi devices
As part of New York City’s 2026 mayoral inauguration of Zohran Mamdani some new items have been added to the list of prohibited items such as backpacks, weapons, and laser pens. As first reported by the tech blog site Adafruit, the event’s official FAQ now includes Flipper Zero and Raspberry Pi devices. “Event organizers have not provided any details explaining why the Flipper Zero and Raspberry Pi were singled out.”
Crypto must now share account details with UK tax officials
As of yesterday, people buying cryptocurrency in the UK must now share their account details with the country’s tax authorities or face penalties. This move enacted by the UK’s tax body, HMRC, is “designed to ensure they pay all relevant tax on buying and selling crypto, including capital gains tax. HMRC will begin automatically collecting information on all users of cryptocurrency exchanges – which are effectively the industry’s banks – in a bid to start collecting tens of millions in unpaid tax.”
(BBC News)
Finland seizes suspected cable sabotage ship
Finnish authorities have announced the seizure of a ship suspected of damaging a subsea telecommunications cable in the Baltic Sea. This is after a series of faults were detected in undersea cables, and in this case in part of a cable running through Estonia’s exclusive economic zone, detected on December 31. Estonia is a northern European country located directly across the Gulf of Finland from Helsinki. “Finland’s Border Guard found the ship with its anchor chain lowered into the sea and instructed the vessel to move to safe anchorage within Finland’s territorial waters.”
Two more banks suffer Marquis Software ransomware attack
Following up on a story we covered early in December, two more U.S. banks are now warning customers about fallout from an August ransomware attack on the financial software company Marquis Software. These two banks, Artisans’ Bank and VeraBank confirmed that the breaches resulted in access to customer communication data such as informational updates and analysis of bank products and services that may best fit customer needs. “Both banks stressed the hackers never breached their own systems and only stole information maintained by Marquis Software.”
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New ErrTraffic service exploits ClickFix through fake browser glitches
Researchers at Hudson Rock are warning of this new platform that allows threat actors to “automate ClickFix attacks by generating fake glitches on compromised websites to lure users into downloading payloads or following malicious instructions. The platform promises conversion rates as high as 60% and can determine the target system to deliver compatible payloads.” The researchers describe ErrTraffic as requiring prior access either to a website that accepts victim traffic, or where it has injected malicious code into a legitimate, compromised website, and then add ErrTraffic to it via an HTML line.
Coupang to spend over $1 billion to compensate users
South Korea’s leading e‑commerce and logistics platform, often dubbed “Korea’s Amazon” has announced the amount, specifically the equivalent of $1.17 billion to compensate almost 34 million people affected by its recent data breach. This will be in the form of purchase vouchers for impacted users. Coupang plans to “sequentially notify all 33.7 million account users via text message regarding the voucher redemption process.”
Korean telco failed at femtocell security, say investigators
South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT found that Korea Telecom (KT) deployed thousands of poorly secured femtocells, enabling long-running attacks involving micropayments fraud and customer surveillance. “Femtocells are customer premises equipment which include a small mobile base station and use a wired broadband service for backhaul into a carrier’s network. Carriers typically deploy them in areas where mobile network signals are weak to improve coverage in and around customers’ homes.” All devices used the same network authentication certificate, had no root password, stored keys in plaintext, and exposed remote SSH access. Attackers could extract the certificate, clone femtocells, and have them accepted as legitimate by KT’s network for up to ten years. Investigators believe up to 20 clones were used, one for ten months in 2024-2025. Compromised devices allowed attackers to intercept texts, learn subscriber IDs, and track calls, compounded by KT lacking proper femtocell management tools.
UK company sends factory with 1,800 degree furnace into space
Space Forge, company based in Cardiff, in Wales, has sent a factory the size of a microwave oven into orbit, and has “demonstrated that its furnace can be switched on and reach temperatures of around 1,800°F. The company plans to manufacture material for semiconductors, for use in electronics, communications infrastructure, computing and transport. Why put it up there? The company explains, “conditions in space are ideal for making semiconductors, which have the atoms they’re made of arranged in a highly ordered 3D structure. When they are being manufactured in a weightless environment, those atoms line up absolutely perfectly. The vacuum of space also means that contaminants can’t sneak in. The purer and more ordered a semiconductor is, the better it works.”
(BBC News)