All news with #news tag

🛠️ Verizon confirmed that a nationwide wireless outage on January 14 was caused by a software issue and said there is no indication the disruption was a cybersecurity incident. The outage left many customers nationwide unable to make calls, with phones stuck in SOS mode and callers sometimes hearing that the "called party is temporarily unavailable." New York City officials warned some Verizon customers might not be able to reach 911. Verizon said engineers resolved the problem the same day, advised restarts, apologized, and will provide a $20 credit to affected accounts.

🔍 Episode 450 explores confusion after claims that data linked to 17.5 million Instagram accounts was put up for sale — a story driven by a vague post, conflicting statements, and an unexpected flood of password‑reset emails. The episode also examines Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, after it generated sexualised images of women and children, raising urgent questions about guardrails and accountability. Hosts discuss why simple censorship is not a solution.

🔒 IANS' 2026 State of the CISO Report, drawn from interviews with 662 North American CISOs, shows the role shifting toward the executive suite: 46% now hold executive titles while 27% are VPs and 27% directors. Over half report that their remit has expanded to include SecOps, security architecture, GRC, app security, IAM and supplier risk. Despite greater boardroom influence and wider accountability, 52% say their scope is no longer fully manageable, risking delayed strategy and reactive security.

⚠️ The controversial ICE List doxxing site, launched after an alleged DHS whistleblower provided details on thousands of ICE and Border Patrol officials, has been taken offline by a sustained DDoS attack. Founder Dominick Skinner reported that overwhelming traffic appears to originate from Russian IP addresses routed through proxies, complicating attribution. Skinner and his team are attempting server migrations to restore access but expect the site to remain a target.

🎤 This page lists confirmed speaking engagements and a book-signing appearance scheduled for early 2026, spanning universities, public libraries, conventions, and major cybersecurity conferences. Included are talks at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science (Waterloo) and the Université de Montréal, a combined talk and signing at the Chicago Public Library, and appearances at Capricon 46, the Munich Cybersecurity Conference, Tech Live: Cybersecurity, the Ross Anderson Lecture at Cambridge, and RSAC. Dates and times are provided where available; some speaking slots remain TBD and the list is maintained on the page.

⚠️ The White House renominated seasoned Coast Guard and Energy Department cyber official Sean Plankey to lead CISA, a step that eases an urgent leadership gap but does not resolve broader legislative gridlock. Experts cite both executive deprioritization and congressional dysfunction—blocked confirmations, holds, and delayed reports—as drivers of a hollowed-out agency. Quick Senate confirmation, reauthorization of CISA 2015, and restored grant funding are needed to begin rebuilding capacity.

🌐 Cloudflare observed a near-total Internet blackout in Iran beginning on January 8, 2026, as national traffic fell to effectively zero in a matter of hours. Measured indicators included a 98.5% reduction in announced IPv6 address space and rapid losses at major providers such as MCCI, IranCell, and TCI. Brief, localized restorations — including access to Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 resolver and several university networks — were transient. Cloudflare continues to monitor the situation through Cloudflare Radar and will report updates.

🎮 Players of Apex Legends faced in-match disruptions over the weekend as external actors reportedly took control of characters, forced disconnects, and changed player nicknames. Respawn acknowledged "an active security incident" but said initial investigation found no evidence of an RCE or malware infection. The publisher reported the issue was resolved within hours and suggested cheating tools were involved while the investigation continues.

🔐 CISA has formally closed ten Emergency Directives issued between 2019 and 2024 after finding their objectives were met and required remediations implemented across federal civilian agencies. The agency said many issues were absorbed into Binding Operational Directive 22-01 and are now tracked via the known exploited vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. A subset of directives were closed because requirements no longer matched current risk posture, while Emergency Directives remain available for urgent threats.

🔒 Germany and Israel have formalized a cyber and security pact aimed at deepening cooperation against growing digital and physical threats. Signed in Jerusalem by Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the agreement emphasizes closer networking of security authorities and joint work on cybercrime, AI and drone defense. Germany will also assume leadership of the U.S.-led OSC role in Jerusalem and plans to leverage Israeli technologies and experience to strengthen German security.

🔍Anthropic says a widely shared screenshot claiming its Claude AI permanently banned an account and reported the user to authorities is fake. The company told BleepingComputer the image does not match any real Claude notification and that similar fabricated screenshots 'circulate every few months.' Anthropic noted it can restrict accounts for repeated policy violations, including attempts to misuse AI for illegal activities. Users should verify alarming posts with official channels before sharing.

📰 The Trump administration has suspended US support for the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise (GFCE) and the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE) as part of a wider exit from 66 international organizations following an executive order signed on January 7. The move, described as being 'contrary to the interests of the United States', will affect cooperation on cybersecurity capacity building, incident response and efforts to counter hybrid threats. GFCE is a multi-stakeholder forum focused on cyber capacity, while Hybrid CoE is a Helsinki-based hub addressing disinformation, cyber-attacks and related tactics.

📉 New data from SimilarWeb shows ChatGPT's web market share fell to 64.5% in January 2026, down from 86.7% a year earlier, while Gemini rose to 21.5%. The report's timeline highlights steady gains for Gemini and smaller increases for Grok and DeepSeek, alongside a seasonal dip in usage over the holidays. Independent tests cited in the coverage praise Claude Code for complex coding and Gemini for image quality, and OpenAI is reportedly considering ads for ChatGPT amid rising competition.

🔐 The UK government has launched a Government Cyber Unit and a Software Security Ambassador Scheme under a £210m Cyber Action Plan to boost public sector resilience. The unit, led by the Government Chief Information Security Officer within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, will coordinate risk management and incident response across departments. The ambassador scheme promotes the voluntary Software Security Code of Practice and has drawn participants such as Cisco and Santander. While welcomed by many, some experts warn the funding may be insufficient to address the scale of threats exposed by recent 2025 incidents.

🤖 Google Public Sector summarizes a year of AI, cloud, and security milestones, spotlighting Gemini for Government, Vertex AI, and FedRAMP High authorizations for productivity and analytics offerings. The post highlights DoD IL6 and CMMC Level 2 certifications, partnerships with DLA and GDIT, and large-scale deployments such as GenAI.mil. It emphasizes secure, agentic workflows, edge-capable deployments, and a focus on delivering accredited commercial cloud services to accelerate mission impact.

🚀 Azure says its long-range datacenter strategy already accommodates NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 racks, enabling rapid, large-scale rollouts across current Fairwater sites and planned AI superfactories. Microsoft highlights prior experience with Ampere, Hopper, GB200 and GB300 generations and claims its power, cooling, networking, and memory upgrades align with Rubin’s NVLink, ConnectX‑9, and HBM4 requirements. The post frames co-design work as reducing deployment risk and accelerating customer access to higher-performance inference and training at scale.

🚀 Amazon Web Services has launched Amazon EC2 G5 instances powered by NVIDIA A10G Tensor Core GPUs in the Asia Pacific (Hong Kong) region to support graphics-intensive and machine learning workloads. These instances scale to eight A10G GPUs with 2nd-generation AMD EPYC processors, up to 192 vCPUs, 100 Gbps networking and 7.6 TB of NVMe local storage across eight size options. Customers can tune performance with NVIDIA drivers for compute, gaming, or workstation workloads and purchase capacity as On-Demand or Reserved Instances to meet cost and operational needs.

📄 IT leaders are preparing strategies for 2026 that prioritize agility, flexibility, and measurable business outcomes. The January 2026 Enterprise Spotlight, produced by editors from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World, synthesizes trends and technologies — from cloud-native operations and automation to cybersecurity and workforce enablement — expected to drive IT agendas. It outlines practical priorities, investment areas, and the metrics organizations should track to deliver tangible results.

🔒 New York City's 2026 mayoral inauguration published an official FAQ that explicitly names the Flipper Zero and Raspberry Pi among prohibited items for the event. The list also bans large bags, drones, weapons, coolers and other common public-event items. Organizers have not explained why those two devices were singled out while laptops and phones remain permitted, prompting criticism from security professionals. The Mamdani campaign's press office was contacted for comment.

📰OpenAI is exploring a new ad format for ChatGPT — 'sponsored content' — that could be prioritized within model responses and shown in a sidebar or carousel. References to the feature appeared in an Android beta and in mockups reported by The Information. An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the company is researching ads and said any approach would be designed to respect user trust.