All news with #insider threat tag

🚨 Step Finance announced on January 31 that attackers compromised devices belonging to several executives, resulting in the theft of roughly $40 million in digital assets. The Solana-based DeFi analytics and execution platform engaged external cybersecurity researchers and law enforcement and has recovered about $4.7 million so far through Token22 protections and partner coordination. Some operations are paused to strengthen security. Users are advised not to interact with the STEP token while a pre-exploit snapshot and remediation plan are processed.

🔒 A former Google engineer, Linwei Ding, was convicted by a US federal jury on 14 counts, including economic espionage and theft of trade secrets, after allegedly exfiltrating over 2,000 pages of sensitive AI technical documents. Prosecutors say he copied data into Apple Notes, converted it to PDFs, and uploaded the materials to a personal Google Cloud account to evade DLP controls. The stolen IP involved custom TPU and GPU orchestration software and SmartNIC designs intended for AI supercomputers, and the DoJ alleges Ding planned to support Chinese state-affiliated entities.

🔒 A U.S. jury has convicted Linwei Ding, a former software engineer at Google, for stealing confidential AI supercomputer information and covertly sharing it with China-based technology firms. Prosecutors say Ding exfiltrated more than 2,000 pages of proprietary material — including details about TPU and GPU systems, orchestration software, and SmartNIC networking — by uploading files to his personal cloud account between May 2022 and April 2023. He later founded Shanghai Zhisuan Technology Co., sought government talent programs, and was convicted on multiple counts of economic espionage and trade secret theft after an 11-day San Francisco trial.

🔒 The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released an infographic to help critical infrastructure operators and SLTT governments prevent, detect and respond to insider threats. It advocates treating insider risk as an essential capability and recommends scalable, multidisciplinary teams that are embedded in existing structures. The guidance outlines a four-stage model—plan, organize, execute, maintain—and emphasizes confidentiality, legal compliance and coordination with external partners.

🛡️ The acting director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency uploaded multiple for official use only (FOUO) contracting documents to the public version of ChatGPT between mid‑July and early August 2025, triggering automated DHS security alerts. Sensors detected the activity in early August, generating several alerts in the first week and prompting an internal review. The uploads—containing contracting information not intended for public release—underscore gaps in AI governance and exception handling for senior officials at CISA.

🚨 Hungarian and Romanian police arrested four young men accused of orchestrating Discord-based SWATting and doxing campaigns that triggered hoax bomb threats and endangered targeted individuals. Law enforcement released video of coordinated raids in which computers, phones and other digital evidence were seized as investigators traced anonymous calls to spoofed numbers. Suspects, aged 16 to 20, face investigations and charges including misuse of personal data and public endangerment; authorities stress these actions are serious crimes with potentially life‑threatening consequences.

🛡️ CISA is urging critical infrastructure organizations and SLTT governments to take decisive action against insider threats and has published an infographic titled Assembling a Multi-Disciplinary Insider Threat Management Team to guide prevention, detection, and mitigation. The agency highlights that insider threats include both deliberate malicious acts and unintentional errors that can undermine systems and trust. The resource offers actionable steps to build cross-functional teams, foster accountability, and strengthen organizational resilience.

🔍 US law firm Hagens Berman is investigating alleged security failures at Coupang after a June 2025 breach that may have exposed the personal data of 33.7 million customers. The firm says it is probing why it took nearly six months to detect a former employee’s access and alleges inadequate access protocols. Investors are being urged to join a class action by the February 17 lead-plaintiff deadline. South Korean regulators and police have also opened inquiries, and Coupang has faced executive changes and an order to remove a liability disclaimer from its terms.

🔒 A growing body of evidence shows insider threats are a systemic and underestimated risk: a Bitkom survey found 48% of German companies attribute data theft, espionage or sabotage to employees. Insiders hold legitimate access and institutional knowledge, enabling subtle misuse that often evades technical controls. Effective protection requires shifting from isolated tools to a holistic, human-centred approach that combines culture, governance and clear ownership of risk.

🔒 Orphan accounts — abandoned human, service, and AI‑agent identities — create persistent, unseen access across applications, platforms, assets, and cloud consoles. These dormant accounts often evade traditional IAM and IGA tools due to integration gaps, unclear ownership, and proliferation of non‑human identities. Continuous identity audit using application telemetry and a unified audit trail can detect, flag, and automatically remediate or decommission orphaned accounts. Orchid positions its Identity Audit as connective evidence to inform IAM decisions.

🔍 Organizational culture — not the tools — is the decisive factor in security outcomes. The piece identifies three interrelated layers: observable (policies, controls, visible behaviors), non-observable (beliefs, biases, risk perception) and implicit (unspoken norms and power dynamics) that together determine whether controls work in practice. It uses high-profile breaches and a deep dive into a mid-sized financial firm to show how misaligned incentives, leadership signals and psychological safety can nullify even well-built technical defenses, and prescribes culture audits, leadership modeling, integrated DevSecOps and incentive changes to effect durable improvement.

📞 This Unit 42 engagement recounts how an attacker used social engineering to impersonate employees and manipulate payroll, IT, and HR help desks to reset passwords and re-enroll MFA, ultimately redirecting direct-deposit payments into attacker-controlled accounts. Unit 42 investigated using Cortex XSIAM and correlated payroll, HR, and firewall telemetry to contain the compromise to three accounts, reverse fraudulent payroll changes, and harden identity controls. The case underscores how human-driven workflows can be exploited to bypass technical defenses and cause targeted financial fraud.

⚠️ XM Cyber disclosed privilege-escalation flaws in Google’s Vertex AI that let low‑privileged users manipulate Google-managed Service Agents to gain elevated project-wide permissions. Google told XM Cyber this behavior is "working as intended." Security experts warn that managed service identities and insecure defaults create invisible, structural risks. CISOs are urged to audit service identities, reduce authentication scope, and monitor agent activity like privileged users.

⚠️ Economic pressures, mass layoffs, and rapid AI adoption have pushed insider risk to multi-year highs. In 2025 tech companies announced roughly 245,000 job cuts while US employers logged more than 1.17 million cuts, fueling resentment, negligence, and opportunistic exfiltration. Autonomous AI agents — highlighted by Palo Alto Networks — expand the attack surface, introducing risks like goal hijacking, prompt injection, and shadow deployments that require urgent governance and monitoring.

🔒 The Amsterdam Court of Appeal sentenced a 44‑year‑old Dutch national to seven years in prison for breaching IT systems at the ports of Rotterdam, Barendrecht and Antwerp to facilitate drug trafficking. The court found he gained access after employees introduced USB sticks containing malware, enabling installation of a remote access tool, data exfiltration and interception. An appeal arguing unlawful interception of Sky ECC communications was rejected, as the defence failed to substantiate procedural violations. He was acquitted on one large cocaine import charge but upheld on hacking, facilitating the importation of 210 kg of cocaine, and attempted extortion.

🎧 In episode 449 of the Smashing Security podcast, Graham Cluley examines an actual romance-fraud handbook that includes scripts, personality “types,” corporate jargon and a seven-day plan to convince victims to hand over cryptocurrency. Guest Lesley Carhart delivers a stark reality check on the shrinking entry-level cybersecurity job market and the hazards of automated CV screening. The show also features ThreatLocker CEO Danny Jenkins discussing how misconfigurations drive breaches and how default-deny approaches work in practice.

🔒 A former Coinbase customer service agent was arrested in Hyderabad, India, after allegedly accepting bribes from criminal gangs to access and sell sensitive customer records, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced. The incident, disclosed in May 2025, involved compromised support staff leaking data on nearly 70,000 customers, including IDs and financial details. Coinbase refused a US $20 million ransom and instead committed that sum to a reward fund while cooperating with law enforcement.

🔒 A former Coinbase customer support agent was arrested in Hyderabad after investigators linked the individual to a scheme that helped hackers access a company database earlier this year. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said additional arrests are expected. The incident, tied to outsourced agents at TaskUs, affected about 69,500 customers and involved a $20 million ransom demand.

🛡️ Amazon's chief security officer Stephen Schmidt says the company has blocked more than 1,800 job applications since April 2024 that are suspected to originate from North Korean agents, with linked submissions increasing roughly 27% per quarter in 2025. Amazon combines AI-based analysis with manual review—searching for links to at-risk institutions, application anomalies, and geographic inconsistencies—and verifies identities via background checks, references, and structured interviews. Recurring trends include increasingly sophisticated identity theft, hijacked LinkedIn profiles, fake U.S. educational credentials, and the use of "laptop farms" to simulate local presence; even phone numbers formatted with a country code of "1" can be a red flag. Amazon says the purpose appears to be securing remote employment to funnel income to North Korea's weapons program and urges industry peers to tighten identity verification and report suspicious activity to authorities such as the FBI.

🔒 Coupang disclosed a data breach impacting 33.7 million customer accounts, exposing names, phone numbers, email addresses, delivery address books and purchase histories. The company detected unusual activity on November 6, confirmed a breach on November 18 and publicly disclosed the incident on November 29; attackers had access from June 24 to November 8. A former employee who retained access keys is the prime suspect. The incident highlights gaps where non‑mandated data remained unencrypted and underscores the need for stronger voluntary protections.