08.08.25 Security News Bites

AI Vendor Perplexity Accused of Scraping Websites That Explicitly Blocked AI Scraping

Oops. Did they do that? They wouldn’t do that, would they? Cloudflare published research that says it actually saw Perplexity scraping sites while explicitly obscuring its identity in an attempt to circumvent the website’s preferences. To the tune of tens of thousands of domains and millions of requests a day. Of course Perplexity denies it and even if it is true, it is not currently illegal, thanks to Congress. Credit: Tech Crunch

Microsoft RECALL Still Captures Sensitive Data in Spite of New Version

RECALL is Microsoft’s AI tool that captures your screen every few seconds and transcribes what it sees so you (and anyone who has hacked your computer) can search your stuff. In theory, as long as your computer is 100 percent secure, that should be safe. How lucky do you feel, punk? Microsoft is, of course, trying to convince you to turn it on. Big brother is watching. If you are in a regulated industry the whole concept could be a lawsuit waiting to be filed. Credit: The Register

Ukraine Stole Specs on Russia’s Newest Nuclear Submarine

A billion Rubles here, a Ukranian hacker there and all of a sudden your nuclear deterrent isn’t so good. The Ukrainians (and likely all of their friends) now have engineering documents including the ship’s combat layout, schematics, survival systems and even crew structure, among even more data. I suspect Vlad is just thrilled to know that ALL of his Borei class nuclear subs are now vulnerable to attack. Credit: Euro Maidan Press

Insurance Denies City of Hamilton $18 Mil Breach Claim due to Lack of COMPLETE MFA

What is unclear is whether they lied on their insurance application and said they had enabled MFA when it only covered some systems or whether the insurance company knew they didn’t have complete MFA. They did say that lack of MFA plus weak credentials was the cause of the breach. Now the taxpayers are on the hook for the $18.3 million it took to recover from the ransomware attack. The hackers were asking for $18.5 million in ransom, roughly what it cost them to fix it without paying the ransom, but likely if they paid the ransom they still would have had to spend the $18 million to fix the vulnerabilities, although it may be less than $18 million + $18 million. So the word to the wise is (a) don’t lie on your cybersecurity insurance application and (b) implement MFA. Credit: Specopssoft

Federal Court System to Tighten Digital Security AFTER Getting Hacked

The federal court system says it is taking additional steps to strengthen protections for sensitive case documents in response to recent escalated cyberattacks of a sophisticated and persistent nature on its case system. What the courts didn’t say is that they are doing this because their case file system was successfully hacked. What was missing from this announcement, likely because it could affect the outcome of cases if it was revealed, is that they are tighten security because their electronic case file (ECF) and document management (PACER) systems were hacked. Minor omission. Credit: US Courts and Bleeping Computer

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