Security lapse leaves sensitive information and contact details of 51 government officials exposed for 40 hours
The public body in charge of the UK’s state investments has been pushed to improve its internal security after a data breach left “high-level management information” publicly accessible for nearly two days.
UK Government Investments (UKGI), the agency that manages the taxpayers’ interest in a swathe of companies including Channel 4 and the Post Office, said the security failure also left more than 50 government officials’ personal details exposed for nearly 40 hours.
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© Photograph: Marina Demidiuk/Alamy
© Photograph: Marina Demidiuk/Alamy
© Photograph: Marina Demidiuk/Alamy
Hackers access Australian customers’ names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and some bank account details, company says
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Origin Energy customers’ addresses, phone numbers and partial bank account data have been accessed in a hack, the company has confirmed.
The firm has 4.8m customer accounts in Australia, providing electricity, fossil gas, LPG and internet services to homes and businesses.
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© Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters
© Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters
© Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters
Thalha Jubair, 20, and Owen Flowers, 19, sentenced to five and a half years each for cyber-attack that cost Transport for London £39m
The data of millions of commuters was stolen, Londoners were left out of pocket and 27,000 Transport for London staff were forced to reset their passwords.
Over four days in 2024 a pair of teenage hackers had London’s transport network at their mercy. Thalha Jubair and Owen Flowers had burrowed into the heart of Transport for London’s IT systems and held the “keys to the kingdom”.
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© Photograph: William Barton/Alamy
© Photograph: William Barton/Alamy
© Photograph: William Barton/Alamy
Signal agencies in Australia, the US, the UK, New Zealand and Canada sound alarm after Trump blocks foreign nationals from Anthropic’s Fable AI model
Powerful AI models capable of devastating new cyber attacks on governments and businesses are mere months away, intelligence agencies for the Five Eyes have warned in a rare joint statement, urging leaders to “act now”.
The surprising public intervention by signals agencies for Australia, the US, the UK, New Zealand and Canada comes after the Trump administration earlier this month decided to block “foreign nationals” from using a much-hyped AI model built by tech company Anthropic, called Fable.
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© Photograph: Andre M Chang/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Andre M Chang/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Andre M Chang/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts
This week’s question: Is ‘ripen at home’ fruit the supermarkets’ idea of a joke?
I’ve been struggling to get my head around the idea that a passkey, which can be a pin on your phone, or facial recognition, can be safer than using a complicated password and two-factor authentication.
I get that having something unique to your device, not stored on a company’s server, is unphishable and less hackable by cybercrims, but what if your phone is nicked and someone guesses the password? And what if you lose your phone?
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© Photograph: Posed by model; d3sign/Getty Images
© Photograph: Posed by model; d3sign/Getty Images
© Photograph: Posed by model; d3sign/Getty Images
Tech company says it ‘caught and disrupted’ NSO Group’s attempts to access accounts in Jordan and Lebanon
A spyware firm has been targeting WhatsApp users with malicious links in contravention of a US court order forbidding it from doing so, Meta has said.
In a post, Meta said WhatsApp had “caught and disrupted spear phishing attempts” by NSO Group, which a spokesperson said targeted a handful of users in Jordan and Lebanon. It had also caught the group creating “test accounts and groups” on WhatsApp.
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© Photograph: Martin Meissner/AP
© Photograph: Martin Meissner/AP
© Photograph: Martin Meissner/AP
Businesses are advised against paying – but many are prepared to deal to protect users’ privacy
After a week of outages, hundreds of millions of students’ data stolen, delayed assignment due dates and school login pages being defaced by hackers, the US tech firm Instructure – which operates the education platform Canvas, used by education providers worldwide – announced it had “reached an agreement with the unauthorised actor” behind the ransomware attack.
Experts read the careful language as a sign that a ransom has been paid. The company has not confirmed this.
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© Photograph: Boonchai Wedmakawand/Getty Images
© Photograph: Boonchai Wedmakawand/Getty Images
© Photograph: Boonchai Wedmakawand/Getty Images
Three-storey GreenSquare datacentre in Hazelmere was to power cloud computing and the acceleration of AI
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A 15,000 sq metre datacentre near Perth will no longer go ahead after the developer withdrew plans amid community opposition over its impact on culturally significant sites.
The three-storey, 120-megawatt GreenSquare datacentre in the town of Hazelmere had been intended to power cloud computing and the acceleration of artificial intelligence, but faced fierce community backlash – as is increasingly common with such developments.
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© Photograph: Trillion Trees
© Photograph: Trillion Trees
© Photograph: Trillion Trees
Health service has given US tech firm ‘unlimited access’ to certain data to build integrated platform, according to reports
MPs have warned that an NHS decision to grant Palantir access to identifiable patient information in its plan to use AI to improve the health service is “dangerous” and will fuel public fears that data privacy is not being prioritised.
NHS England has allowed staff from the US tech firm and other contractors to access patient data before it has been pseudonymised, despite internal fears of a “risk of loss of public confidence”, the Financial Times reported.
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© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
2Apply’s over-collection of personal information adds to the power of the real estate industry in the competitive rental market, Carly Kind says
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An online rental platform has been urged to stop collecting users’ personal information after the Australian privacy commissioner found the gathering of “excessive” data compounded the vulnerability of tenants amid the housing crisis.
RentTech platforms are increasingly used by real estate agents in Australia for people applying for rental properties to submit applications and supporting documentation. The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute has identified 57 different rent platforms operating in Australia.
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© Photograph: Cavan Images/Alamy
© Photograph: Cavan Images/Alamy
© Photograph: Cavan Images/Alamy
Undisclosed number of names and contact and reservation details accessed in latest cybercrime attempt
The accommodation reservation website Booking.com has suffered a data breach with “unauthorised parties” gaining access to customers’ details.
The platform said it “noticed some suspicious activity involving unauthorised third parties being able to access some of our guests’ booking information”.
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© Photograph: CrocusPhotography/Alamy
© Photograph: CrocusPhotography/Alamy
© Photograph: CrocusPhotography/Alamy
Letter from group published by MPs blames 12 March glitch on software update to its mobile banking apps
Lloyds Banking Group exposed the personal data of nearly 500,000 customers in an IT glitch that left people’s payments, account details and national insurance numbers visible to other users, a committee of MPs has revealed.
A letter from Lloyds, published by MPs on the Treasury select committee on Friday, blamed the glitch on a software defect introduced during an IT update to its Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland mobile banking apps overnight into 12 March.
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© Photograph: David Burton/Alamy
© Photograph: David Burton/Alamy
© Photograph: David Burton/Alamy
Banks, governments and tech providers urged to upgrade security because current systems will soon be obsolete
Banks, governments and technology providers need to be prepared for quantum computer hackers capable of breaking most existing encryption systems by 2029, Google has warned.
The tech company said in a blogpost that quantum computers would pose a “significant threat to current cryptographic standards” before the end of the decade and urged other companies to follow its lead.
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© Photograph: Reuters
© Photograph: Reuters
© Photograph: Reuters
Exclusive: Lab tests discover ‘new form of insider risk’ with artificial intelligence agents engaging in autonomous, even ‘aggressive’ behaviours
Robert Booth UK technology editor
Rogue artificial intelligence agents have worked together to smuggle sensitive information out of supposedly secure systems, in the latest sign cyber-defences may be overwhelmed by unforeseen scheming by AIs.
With companies increasingly asking AI agents to carry out complex tasks in internal systems, the behaviour has sparked concerns that supposedly helpful technology could pose a serious inside threat.
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© Photograph: Andrey Kryuchkov/Alamy
© Photograph: Andrey Kryuchkov/Alamy
© Photograph: Andrey Kryuchkov/Alamy
Hard disks and magnetic tape have a limited lifespan, but glass storage developed by Microsoft could last millennia
Some cultures used stone, others used parchment. Some even, for a time, used floppy disks. Now scientists have come up with a new way to keep archived data safe that, they say, could endure for millennia: laser-writing in glass.
From personal photos that are kept for a lifetime to business documents, medical information, data for scientific research, national records and heritage data, there is no shortage of information that needs to be preserved for very long periods of time.
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© Photograph: Tetra Images/Erik Isakson/Getty Images
© Photograph: Tetra Images/Erik Isakson/Getty Images
© Photograph: Tetra Images/Erik Isakson/Getty Images
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