In today’s cybersecurity news…
Coupang CEO questioned by police regarding data breach probe
Harold Rogers was “reportedly questioned on Friday by police in Seoul who are probing whether the e-commerce site destroyed or hid evidence relating to a massive data breach that became public in November.” He is considered a suspect in their investigation into whether Coupang obstructed a government inquiry, according to the Korea Herald. Investigators are still also probing another former Coupang employee, whom they believe played a key role in the data breach.
Cyberattack on large Russian bread factory disrupts deliveries
This attack occurred in Russia’s Vladimir region, 120 miles east of Moscow, and has disrupted food deliveries according to local media. The Vladimir Bread Factory is one of the region’s largest bakeries and the attack disabled office computers, servers, electronic document management tools and the widely used 1C enterprise accounting system. Production of bread products was not affected however delivery and logistics were. No group has been identified or has taken responsibility.
Real estate agents in Australia use apps that leave lease documents at risk
According to a researcher who spoke to The Guardian Australia under conditions of anonymity, the platforms used by real estate agents in that country to upload documentation regarding renters and landlords are “leaving people’s personal information exposed in hyperlinks accessible online.” This was proven by follow-up research performed by The Guardian. The exposed data includes “lease agreements, identification documents, payslips and personal references. The researcher also showed that these links can be scanned by web crawlers and cached.
Microsoft to disable NTLM by default in future Windows releases
NTLM (short for New Technology LAN Manager) is a 30-year-old challenge-response authentication protocol that was introduced in 1993 with Windows NT 3.1 and followed on as successor to the LAN Manager (LM) protocol. It has now been superseded by Kerberos, which remains the default protocol for domain-connected devices running Windows 2000 or later. NTLM is still used as a fallback authentication although it uses weak cryptography and has been widely exploited in NTLM relay attacks and by pass-the-hash attacks. The retirement of NTLM, part of Microsoft’s push toward passwordless, phishing-resistant authentication methods, will occur in phases throughout 2026.
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Microsoft links Windows 11 boot failures to failed December 2025 update
Following up on a story we covered last Monday, the Windows 11 boot failures that had been reported following the January 2026 updates are now being attributed by Microsoft to “previously failed attempts to install the December 2025 security update, which left systems in an improper state.” The boot failures were first reported after having installed the January 2026 Patch Tuesday cumulative update, resulting in a stop error of “UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME” code. Microsoft said it is working on a fix.
Ex-Google engineer convicted of stealing AI secrets
Following up on a story we covered in March 2024, a former Google engineer who had been accused of stealing thousands of the company’s confidential documents to build a startup in China has now been convicted in the U.S., according to a Department of Justice announcement on Thursday. Linwei Ding (aka Leon Ding), 38, was “convicted by a federal jury on seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets” for stealing more than 2,000 documents dealing with Google’s AI technology research. Ding now faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for each count of theft of trade secrets and 15 years in prison for each count of economic espionage.
More Oregon residents find out health data was stolen in TriZetto breach
The November 2024 hack on the insurance verification provider TriZetto Provider Solutions (TPS) allowed intruders to pore through protected health information and other sensitive personal information belonging to hundreds of thousands of patients and insurance policy holders. TriZetto “did not discover the presence of the thieves on their network for nearly a year.
NSA candidate Rudd defends foreign spying law
Army Lt. Gen. Joshua Rudd has spoken in favor of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which is weeks away from expiring if no action is taken by Congress. FISA “gives spy agencies broad authority to collect communications from U.S. technology firms to hunt for national-security threats living overseas but also scoops up an unknown amount of Americans’ communications without a warrant.” This is a divisive issue within the highest levels of the U.S. government.