Nathaniel Mott

Staff Writer

Freelance News & Features Writer

Articles by: Nathaniel Mott

Bitcoin price tracker

$7.3 billion worth of cryptocurrency recovered from newly convicted 'Bitcoin Queen' — funds from fraudster thought to be the largest seizure to date

By Nathaniel Mott published

The Metropolitan Police announced a conviction against the so-called "Bitcoin Queen" from whom they seized approximately $7.3 billion worth of cryptocurrency.

Tile trackers

Tile exploit could let stalkers follow you with your own tracker — Bluetooth broadcasting flaw is relatively simple to exploit, researchers discover

By Nathaniel Mott last updated

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers found design flaws in Tile location trackers that can be abused to stalk their owners.

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies as physical coins, because that's more tangible or something

Twitch streamer raising money for cancer treatment has funds stolen by malware-ridden Steam game — BlockBlasters title stole $150,000 from hundreds of players

By Nathaniel Mott published

Twitch streamer "RastalandTV" had $32,000 worth of cryptocurrency stolen via malware hidden in a Steam game.

A broken lock on a PCB.

A wireless device exploit uncovered 11 years ago still hasn't been fixed by some manufacturers — six vendors and 24 devices found harbouring vulnerable firmware across routers, range extenders, and more

By Nathaniel Mott published

Welcome to Never-patched-land.

Cyberattack concept

Shai-Hulud malware campaign dubbed 'the largest and most dangerous npm supply-chain compromise in history' — 'hundreds' of JavaScript packages affected

By Nathaniel Mott published

Security researchers are tracking a malware campaign that has compromised hundreds of packages distributed via the npm ecosystem.

shutterstock_2210295717

JavaScript packages with billions of downloads were injected with malicious code in world's largest supply chain hack, geared to steal crypto — a phishing email is all it took to undermine npm packages

By Nathaniel Mott published

JavaScript packages with billions of downloads were compromised by an unknown threat actor looking to steal cryptocurrency.

Vehicles are checked before moving to the next stage of production at the Jaguar Land Rover factory on March 1, 2017 in Solihull, England.

Jaguar Land Rover production stopped for four days and counting due to ransomware attack, company has now officially shut down — teenaged hackers from Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters take responsibility

By Nathaniel Mott published

Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters is claiming responsibility for a cyberattack that has completely disrupted Jaguar Land Rover's production.

Virus

AI-powered PromptLocker ransomware is just an NYU research project — the code worked as a typical ransomware, selecting targets, exfiltrating selected data and encrypting volumes

By Nathaniel Mott published

ESET's discovery of the first AI-powered ransomware turned out to be an NYU research project.

100 dollar bill and 5,000 ruble bill on a map

US offers $10M reward for snitching on trio of Russians that hacked critical infrastructure

By Nathaniel Mott published

The U.S. Department of State offered a $10 million bounty via the Rewards for Justice program for information related to a trio of Russian hackers.

Cryptocurrency Bitcoin shopping cart

Report says North Korea is also posting fake jobs to steal crypto — because using AI to get fake employees real jobs at US tech firms wasn't enough

By Nathaniel Mott published

North Korea is reportedly posting fake jobs in the cryptocurrency sector as part of a bid to steal applicants' crypto assets.

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Cloudflare blocks record-setting 11.5Tbps DDoS attack two months after the previous record-setting DDoS attack

By Nathaniel Mott published

Cloudflare said it blocked a record-setting 11.5Tbps DDoS attack that appeared to originate from Google Cloud's infrastructure.

cowboy on horse in front of American flag

Google is getting ready to 'hack back' as US considers shifting from cyber defense to offense — new 'Scam Farms' bill opens up new retaliatory hacking actions

By Nathaniel Mott published

Google is reportedly planning to form a "disruption unit" that will target foreign hackers.

Blockchain illustration

White House reveals nebulous plans to put government data on the blockchain — 'The Department of Commerce is going to start issuing its statistics on the blockchain because you are the crypto president'

By Nathaniel Mott published

The White House announced plans to put statistics on 'the blockchain' for... reasons.

AI hacking

The first AI-powered ransomware has been discovered — "PromptLock" uses local AI to foil heuristic detection and evade API tracking [Updated]

By Nathaniel Mott published

Hackers finally discover a practical use for local AI models

White Wi-Fi logo on a computer icon overlaid by a skull over a red background

Ransomware attack disrupts Maryland's public transit service for disabled travelers — MTA says it is investigating cybersecurity incident but core services operating normally

By Nathaniel Mott published

The service, Mobility, was unable to accept requests for rides or changes to already-booked rides following a ransomware attack.

chatgpt claude and perplexity logo on an iPhone

Perplexity's AI-powered Comet browser leaves users vulnerable to phishing scams and malicious code injection — Brave and Guardio's security audits call out paid AI browser

By Nathaniel Mott published

Brave and Guardio have revealed serious vulnerabilities in the AI-powered Comet browser.

Person in jail, with data scrolling around them

Dev plants kill switch in ex-employer's network that crashed servers and deleted files, gets four years in the slammer — kill switch triggered by dev's removal from Active Directory when fired

By Nathaniel Mott published

A software engineer called Davis Lu was sentenced to four years in prison for creating a kill switch in his former employer's network.

China is known for its draconian control over its local Internet

China's Great Firewall blocked all traffic to a common HTTPS port for over an hour, severing connection to the outside world — with no hint as to its intention

By Nathaniel Mott published

Forged TCP RST+ACK packets disrupted port 443, but not common ports like 22, 80 or 8443

FreeVPN.one

Popular VPN extension for Google Chrome is a security nightmare, screenshots every page users visit and sends them to anonymous developer — FreeVPN.One flagged over enormous privacy concerns

By Nathaniel Mott published

Koi Security discovered that the popular FreeVPN extension for Google Chrome has been silently taking screenshots of every website its users visit.

McDonalds storefront

Security researcher driven by free nuggets unearths McDonald's security flaw — changing 'login' to 'register' in URL prompted site to issue plain text password for a new account

By Nathaniel Mott published

A security researcher called "BobDaHacker" revealed how they repeatedly gained access to a McDonald's platform that's supposed to be closed off to the public.

AI

Report claims 'the era of AI hacking has arrived' — good and bad actors leveraging AI in cybersecurity arms race

By Nathaniel Mott published

The security industry and the hackers they're supposed to defend against have both increased their use of AI as publicly available agents become more capable.

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Booking.com customers learn the hard way that Unicode is tricky

By Nathaniel Mott published

A phishing campaign targeting Booking.com users relies on a technique involving the ambiguity of Unicode characters.

Speed camera

Bizarre cyberattack blamed on Russia and China-linked hackers permanently breaks dozens of speed cameras in the Netherlands — authorities decline to reveal location of affected cameras, for obvious reasons

By Nathaniel Mott published

A hack reportedly left "dozens" of speed cameras in the Netherlands inoperable and unrecoverable.

Overloaded plug sockets

AI's soaring energy consumption is causing skyrocketing power bills for households across the US — States reporting spikes in energy costs of up to 36%

By Nathaniel Mott published

Americans are footing the bill for the sheer amount of electricity required to operate the data centers responsible for providing access to AI tools and services.

The Google logo on a background of circles

Google's AI could be tricked into enabling spam, revealing a user's location, and leaking private correspondence with a calendar invite — 'promptware' targets LLM interface to trigger malicious activity

By Nathaniel Mott published

Google's AI could be tricked into enabling spam, revealing a user's location, and leaking private correspondence, among other things, with just a calendar invite.