All news with #pii tag

Google Says Chinese Group Sells Phishing 'Lighthouse' Kits

🔍 Google filed a court complaint alleging a "cybercriminal group in China" sold branded "Lighthouse" phishing kits that let unsophisticated fraudsters run large-scale SMS and e-commerce scams. The kits bundle hundreds of fake-website templates, domain setup tools, and subscription licenses offered weekly, monthly, seasonal, annual, or permanent. Campaigns often begin with texts about overdue tolls or package redelivery and sometimes appear as ads (including ads that persisted until Google suspended accounts). Victims who click are redirected to fraudulent sites that solicit passwords, credit card numbers, or payments purportedly accepted via wallets such as Google Pay.

Black Friday Cybercrime Surge: Rise in Fraudulent Domains

🔒 Check Point Research reports a significant increase in Black Friday–themed domain registrations, with about 1 in 11 newly registered domains classified as malicious. Brand impersonation is a primary tactic: roughly 1 in 25 new domains referencing marketplaces like Amazon, AliExpress, and Alibaba are flagged. Attackers create convincing fake storefronts that copy logos, layouts, and imagery to harvest credentials and payment data, with recent campaigns impersonating HOKA and AliExpress demonstrating active phishing tied to seasonal promotions.

WhatsApp flaw allowed discovery of 3.5B registered numbers

🔍 Researchers from the University of Vienna and SBA Research found a flaw in WhatsApp's contact discovery that let them enumerate valid numbers globally, confirming about 3.5 billion registered accounts. By abusing the lookup mechanism they could probe numbers across 245 countries at rates exceeding 100 million checks per hour from a single IP. The technique also exposed public (non-private) keys, timestamps, profile photos and About text, enabling inference of device OS, account age and linked secondary devices, prompting Meta to add rate limits and tighter visibility rules.

Amazon Bedrock Guardrails Expand Code-Related Protections

🔒 Amazon Web Services expanded Amazon Bedrock Guardrails to cover code-related use cases, enabling detection and prevention of harmful content embedded in code. The update applies content filters, denied topics, and sensitive information filters to code elements such as comments, variable and function names, and string literals. The enhancements also include prompt leakage detection in the standard tier and are available in all supported AWS Regions via the console and APIs.

French Pajemploi Reports Data Breach Affecting 1.2M

🔒 French social security service Pajemploi disclosed a data breach detected on November 14 that may have exposed personal information for up to 1.2 million registered home-based childcare workers and parents. Potentially exfiltrated data includes full names, place of birth, postal addresses, social security numbers, names of banking institutions, Pajemploi numbers, and accreditation numbers. The agency says IBANs, email addresses, phone numbers, and passwords were not accessed. Pajemploi notified CNIL and ANSSI, will inform affected individuals, and URSSAF warned of increased phishing and social engineering risks.

Generative AI Drives Rise in Deepfakes and Digital Forgeries

🔍 A new report from Entrust analyzing over one billion identity verifications between September 2024 and September 2025 warns that fraudsters increasingly use generative AI to produce hyper-realistic digital forgeries. Physical counterfeits still account for 47% of attempts, but digital forgeries now represent 35%, while deepfakes comprise 20% of biometric frauds. The report also highlights a 40% annual rise in injection attacks that feed fake images directly into verification systems.

Half a Million FTSE 100 Credentials Discovered Online

🔒 Security researchers from Socura and Flare found around 460,000 compromised credentials tied to FTSE 100 domains across clear- and dark-web crime communities, including 28,000 entries from infostealer logs. The report notes many companies had thousands of leaks and that password hygiene remains poor, with 59% having at least one user using 'password'. It recommends MFA, passkeys, password managers, conditional access and proactive leak monitoring.

Princeton discloses data breach affecting donors, alumni

🔒 Princeton University disclosed a November 10 cyberattack in which threat actors phished an employee and accessed a database used for fundraising and alumni engagement. The attackers exfiltrated biographical information such as names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and home and business addresses for alumni, donors, faculty, staff, and students. University officials say the compromised system did not contain financial data, passwords, or Social Security numbers, and they have blocked the intruders' access while investigating. Affected individuals are urged to verify any communications claiming to be from the university and to avoid sharing sensitive information.

India DPDP Rules 2025 Make Privacy an Engineering Challenge

🔒 India’s new Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Rules, 2025 impose strict consent, verification, and fixed deletion timelines that require large platforms and enterprises to redesign how they collect, store, and erase personal data. The rules create Significant Data Fiduciaries with added audit and algorithmic-check obligations and formalize certified Consent Managers. Organizations have 12–18 months to adopt automated consent capture, verification, retention enforcement, and data-mapping across cloud, on‑prem, and SaaS environments.

Five Plead Guilty to Enabling DPRK Remote IT and Hacks

🔒 Five individuals have pleaded guilty to serving as facilitators for North Korean cyber operations, the US Department of Justice said. They used false or stolen identities and hosted employer laptops in US residences to create the appearance of domestic remote IT workers, aiding APT38-linked efforts. The DoJ said the activity impacted more than 136 US organizations, generated over $2.2m for Pyongyang and compromised the identities of 18 US residents, and authorities seized $15m in Tether tied to related heists.

Five Americans Plead Guilty to Enabling North Korea IT Fraud

⚖️ The U.S. Department of Justice announced five U.S. citizens pleaded guilty for facilitating North Korea’s illicit IT worker and revenue-generation schemes. The defendants hosted company-issued laptops, supplied or sold U.S. identities, and helped overseas IT workers pass vetting to obtain jobs at American firms. DOJ says the schemes impacted more than 136 U.S. companies, generated over $2.2 million for the DPRK, and compromised the identities of more than 18 U.S. persons.

Shadow IT and Shadow AI: Risks Across Every Industry

🔍 Shadow IT — any software, hardware, or resource introduced without formal IT, procurement, or compliance approval — is now pervasive and evolving into Shadow AI, where unsanctioned generative AI tools expand the attack surface. The article outlines how these practices drive operational, security, and regulatory risk, citing IBM’s 2025 breach-cost data and industry examples in healthcare, finance, airlines, insurance, and utilities. It recommends shifting from elimination to smarter control by improving continuous visibility through real‑time network analysis and vendor integrations that turn hidden activity into actionable intelligence.

DoorDash Discloses October Data Breach Exposing Contacts

🔔 DoorDash disclosed an October data breach after an employee fell for a social engineering scam, allowing an unauthorized third party to access certain user contact information. Notified users were told exposed data varied by person and could include names, physical addresses, phone numbers and email addresses; the company said Social Security Numbers were not accessed. DoorDash said it shut off access, engaged a forensic firm, notified law enforcement, and warned users to watch for phishing; affected users can call a helpline and cite reference code B155060.

Russian Phishing Campaign Creates 4,300 Fake Travel Sites

💳 A Russian-speaking threat actor has registered more than 4,300 domains since early 2025 to host convincing fake travel and hotel booking pages that harvest payment card data. According to Netcraft researcher Andrew Brandt, the campaign—active since February—uses a customizable phishing kit that serves branded pages for platforms like Booking, Expedia, and Airbnb and supports 43 languages. The kit requires a unique AD_CODE in the URL to render targeted branding (otherwise visitors see a blank page), employs fake Cloudflare-style CAPTCHA, and persists state in a cookie so subsequent pages maintain consistent impersonation. Victims are prompted to pay a deposit; entered card numbers, expiry and CVV are processed in the background while a bogus support chat guides users through a sham 3D Secure step to complete the theft.

Synnovis Notifies NHS Clients After 2024 Ransomware

🔔 Synnovis has begun notifying its NHS customers and affected data controllers about the volume of patient information compromised in a June 2024 ransomware attack. The incident, attributed to a Qilin affiliate, saw roughly 400GB of data published and caused widespread disruption to blood services, cancelled appointments and at least one reported death. Synnovis said notifications will be completed by 21 November, citing the 'exceptional scale and complexity' of an unstructured and fragmented dataset, a delay that has drawn sharp criticism from security experts.

Google Sues to Dismantle Lighthouse Phishing Platform

🛡️ Google has filed a lawsuit seeking to dismantle Lighthouse, a China-linked phishing-as-a-service platform accused of powering global SMS phishing ("smishing") campaigns that impersonate USPS and E-ZPass. Google says Lighthouse has impacted more than 1 million victims across 120 countries and that phishing templates even display Google's branding to trick users. The company is pursuing federal claims including RICO, the Lanham Act, and the CFAA while expanding AI and product protections.

GlobalLogic Confirmed as Victim of Cl0p Oracle EBS Exploit

🔒 GlobalLogic has notified 10,471 current and former employees that their data was exposed after a zero-day in Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) was exploited in early October 2025. The company says it patched the vulnerability after confirming data exfiltration on 9 October. Stolen records reportedly include HR and payroll details such as names, dates of birth, passport numbers, salary, bank account and routing numbers, creating a high risk of follow-on phishing and identity fraud. GlobalLogic did not confirm contact by the extortion group, while security firms link the incident to Cl0p, which has targeted dozens of organizations including Harvard and Envoy Air.

EU Commission proposes GDPR changes for AI and cookies

🔓 The European Commission's leaked "Digital Omnibus" draft would revise the GDPR, shifting cookie rules into the regulation and allowing broader processing based on legitimate interests. Websites could move from opt-in to opt-out tracking, and companies could train AI on personal data without explicit consent if safeguards like data minimization, transparency and an unconditional right to object are applied. Privacy groups warn the changes would weaken protections.

ID Verification Laws Fueling a New Wave of Breaches

🔒 The proliferation of age and identity verification laws is forcing organizations to retain sensitive government-issued IDs, increasing breach risk. A recent Discord incident exposed ID images via a compromised third-party provider, showing how regulatory mandates can create high-value data stores. The article advises that MSPs and affected organizations adopt natively integrated platforms and a single-agent, single-console approach to reduce attack surface, simplify operations and centralize visibility to mitigate these new risks.

Email Blackmail and Scams: Regional Trends and Defenses

🔒 Most email blackmail attempts are mass scams that exploit leaked personal data and fear to extort cryptocurrency from victims. The article outlines common themes — fake device hacks, sextortion, and even fabricated death threats — and describes regional campaigns where attackers impersonate law enforcement in Europe and CIS states. It highlights detection signs and practical defenses, urging verification, use of reliable security solutions, and reporting threats through official channels.