Kirsten Doyle

Lurking in the shadow of the sleek platforms and subscription stacks we see today, lies a forgotten digital world. It’s populated by millions of inactive logins; remnants of fleeting curiosity or abandoned convenience. These are known as zombie accounts. According to a new survey by Secure Data Recovery, 94% of Americans have them.  Pandora, Groupon, Shutterfly, Tumblr. Once darlings of the digital age, they are now little more than names on a login screen that few remember. Secure Data Recovery’s study asked a simple question: what platforms have we left behind, and which ones left us wishing we hadn’t signed…

President Donald Trump has signed a trio of artificial intelligence-focused executive orders yesterday at an AI summit in Washington.  The event, a joint effort by the bipartisan Hill and Valley Forum and the All-In Podcast, hosted by Trump’s AI czar David Sacks and other tech investors, is seen as the administration’s most significant step yet toward formalizing its AI policy direction.  This was also Trump’s first major address on AI since the beginning of his second term. The executive orders are expected to feed directly into the forthcoming AI Action Plan, mandated by a January order that set a 180-day…

A misconfigured Elasticsearch server has exposed hundreds of millions of records tied to Swedish citizens and companies. No password. No firewall. Just open to the internet. The leak was discovered by Cybernews researchers. The server contained over 100 million records, spread across 25 indices. Some datasets were more than 200GB in size. The data ran from 2019 to 2024. It included:  Full names, including former names  Swedish personal identity numbers  Birth dates, gender, and civil status  Swedish and foreign address histories  Tax filings from the past five years  Income levels and employer information  Debt, defaults, bankruptcies  Property ownership indicators  Logs…

When cybercrime makes headlines, the conversation usually turns to ransomware payloads, zero-days, or patching lapses. But in the case of Scattered Spider, the threat isn’t just technological; it’s psychological. This group has elevated social engineering to a fine art, targeting the most vulnerable point in many entities: people. Since 2022, Scattered Spider (also tracked as UNC3944, 0ktapus, Muddled Libra, Scatter Swine, Octo Tempest, and Storm-0875) has launched targeted, high-impact campaigns that have cost companies like Qantas, Harrods, MGM, and Marks & Spencer hundreds of millions in damages. Their tactics rely less on technical exploits and more on strategic deception, identity…

The UK government is preparing to outlaw ransomware payments by public sector and critical national infrastructure (CNI) organisations. This is part of a broader plan to cut off funding streams to cybercriminals and shrink the attack surface across the economy. The move follows a 12-week public consultation and lands as ransomware continues to dominate the national threat landscape. The July 2025 response paper outlines the government’s intention: to deter attacks by making targeted organisations less lucrative, while bolstering visibility through mandatory reporting. Critics and supporters alike agree. This is a significant step. But whether it hits the right targets is…

Phishing remains the blunt instrument of choice for cybercriminals. And in Q2 2025, they wielded it with more precision (and more imagination) than ever. Microsoft is still the most mimicked brand online. But the bigger story may be who joined it. Check Point Research’s Phishing Trends Q2 2025 report revealed a striking shift in attackers’ priorities: streaming services, travel platforms, and social networks are no longer second-tier targets. They’re front and centre.  Spotify, for instance, has re-entered the phishing charts after a six-year absence. Booking.com scams are proliferating. And trusted tech names like Google, Apple, and Adobe are still being…

When it comes to “vibe coding,” automation is king. Tools like Cursor (an AI-based code editor rapidly gaining popularity among developers) promise faster workflows, smarter completions, and agentic autonomy with minimal human oversight. But speed comes with risk. Cursor’s flagship feature, auto-run, is designed to let its AI agents act on your behalf, reading, writing, and executing commands without your intervention. To keep things “safe,” it uses a denylist: you list dangerous commands, and the agent won’t run them unless you explicitly allow it. In theory, this should stop rogue commands in their tracks. In practice, it doesn’t. A False…

One week after Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear infrastructure, Lookout Threat Intelligence discovered four new samples of DCHSpy, a mobile surveillance tool tied to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security. The malware, attributed to the Iranian APT group MuddyWater, is back, and it’s watching.  DCHSpy collects WhatsApp messages, contact lists, SMS, call logs, stored files, and location data. It can also take photos and record audio. The latest samples show expanded capability: scanning for files of interest and extracting WhatsApp data with precision. The lure this time? Starlink. One of the new samples was disguised as a VPN app named…

Microsoft has released an out-of-band security update to address ToolShell, a critical SharePoint vulnerability that’s already being exploited in the wild. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2025-53770, enables unauthenticated remote code execution; no login, prompts, or user interaction are required.  The Washington Post reported the breach impacted US federal and state agencies, universities, energy firms, and an Asian telecom company, citing sources from state officials and private researchers. Until now, there was no fix. Only mitigations. But that changed overnight.  “Microsoft is aware of active attacks targeting on-premises SharePoint Server customers by exploiting vulnerabilities partially addressed by the July Security Update,”…

With summer in full swing, the world is moving again. Airports are crowded, business trips are back, and employees are logging in from cafés, taxis, and terminals. But as travel picks up, so do the risks, particularly for the mobile devices we carry with us everywhere. According to Zimperium’s latest research, more than 5 million unsecured public Wi-Fi networks have been discovered globally since January. One-third of users are connecting to them. And attackers are waiting.  “Phones and tablets have become essential productivity tools for a mobile workforce,” Zimperium researchers wrote. “But without the right protections, they can become serious…