A cyberattack at U.S. health tech giant Change Healthcare has ground much of the U.S. healthcare system to a halt for the second week in a row. Hospitals have been unable to check insurance benefits of in-patient stays, handle the…
Tag: Security News | TechCrunch
Spyware makers express concern after US sanctions spyware veteran
Earlier this week, the U.S. government announced sanctions against the founder of a controversial government spyware maker, Tal Dilian, and his business associate, Sara Aleksandra Fayssal Hamou. In announcing the sanctions, U.S. Treasury officials accused Dilian and Hamou of developing…
Russian spies keep hacking into Microsoft in ‘ongoing attack,’ company says
On Friday, Microsoft said Russian government hackers continue to break into its systems using information obtained during a hack last year. This time, the Russian hackers dubbed Midnight Blizzard have targeted Microsoft’s source code and other internal systems, the company…
India’s Election Commission fixes privacy flaws that exposed citizens’ information-seeking data
India’s federal election commission has fixed flaws on its website that exposed data related to citizens’ requests for information related to their voting eligibility status, local political candidates and parties, and technical details about electronic voting machines. India is heading…
Reach Security taps a company’s existing tools to fight cyber threats
Thanks to an uncertain economy, cybersecurity budgets are in a tight spot. According to a 2023 survey from IANS and recruiting firm Artico Search, more than a third of chief information security officers (CISOs) kept their security spending the same…
Anonymous social apps face another reckoning as UNC System to ban Yik Yik, Fizz, Sidechat & Whisper
Anonymous social apps are in for a reckoning. Yes, again. This week, University of North Carolina (UNC) System President Peter Hans announced a plan to block the use of popular anonymous social apps on campus, including Yik Yak, Fizz, Whisper,…
Zama’s homomorphic encryption tech lands it $73M on a valuation of nearly $400M
Homomorphic encryption, a complex technique that uses cryptographic algorithms to keep data secure as it travels around networks and to third parties, continues to elude mass-market scalability and thus adoption — not least because currently, the complexity that makes it…
US sanctions founder of spyware maker Intellexa for targeting Americans
The U.S. government announced Tuesday sanctions against the founder of the notorious spyware company Intellexa and one of his business partners. This is the first time the U.S. government has targeted specific people, in addition to companies, with sanctions related…
Axonius, a specialist in cyber asset managment, secures $200M at a flat $2.6B valuation
Axonius, one of the bigger players in the world of enterprise asset management — understanding and monitoring the digital assets and infrastructure that make up an organization’s network — has raised $200 million more in funding to expand its business…
Elon Musk switched on X calling by default: Here’s how to switch it off
In his quest to turn a simple and functioning Twitter app into X, the everything app that doesn’t do anything very well, Elon Musk launched audio and video calling on X last week — and this new feature is switched…
Why Signal ‘turned our architecture inside out’ for its latest privacy feature
Adding usernames to a messaging app may seem like a standard feature, but for Signal, such identifiers were anathema to its mission of total privacy and security — until now. The upcoming 7.0 version adds usernames, but the company’s president,…
Should we ban ransom payments?
As cybercriminals continue to reap the financial rewards of their attacks, talk of a federal ban on ransom payments is getting louder. U.S. officials have long urged against paying ransom demands. But while several U.S. states — including North Carolina…
Thoma Bravo takes critical event management software company Everbridge private in $1.8B deal
Everbridge, a critical event management (CEM) software company, is going private in a $1.8 billion all-cash deal that will see it taken over by private equity giant Thoma Bravo — 20% more than what was originally announced last month.* Founded…
NSA says it’s tracking Ivanti cyberattacks as hackers hit US defense sector
The U.S. National Security Agency has confirmed that hackers exploiting flaws in Ivanti’s widely used enterprise VPN appliance have targeted organizations across the U.S. defense sector. NSA spokesperson Edward Bennett confirmed in an emailed statement to TechCrunch on Friday that…
A leaky database spilled 2FA codes for the world’s tech giants
A technology company that routes millions of SMS text messages across the world has secured an exposed database that was spilling one-time security codes that may have granted users’ access to their Facebook, Google and TikTok accounts. The Asian technology…
A government watchdog hacked a US federal agency to stress-test its cloud security
A U.S. government watchdog stole more than one gigabyte of seemingly sensitive personal data from the cloud systems of the U.S. Department of the Interior. The good news: The data was fake and part of a series of tests to…
UnitedHealth confirms ransomware gang behind Change Healthcare hack amid ongoing pharmacy outages
U.S. health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group has confirmed a ransomware attack on its health tech subsidiary Change Healthcare, which continues to disrupt hospitals and pharmacies across the United States. “Change Healthcare can confirm we are experiencing a cyber security issue…
Popular video doorbells can be easily hijacked, researchers find
Several internet-connected doorbell cameras have a security flaw that allows hackers to take over the camera by just holding down a button, among other issues, according to research by Consumer Reports. On Thursday, the non-profit Consumer Reports published research that…
Silence Laboratories, a cryptographic security startup, secures funding
Silence Laboratories, a startup that builds infrastructure using multiparty computation (MPC) to help enterprises keep data private and safe, said it has raised a $4.1 million funding round. Pi Ventures and Kira Studio co-led the recent funding, which brings its total raised…
OpenCTI maker Filigran raises $16 million for its cybersecurity threat management suite
Paris-based cybersecurity startup Filigran is capitalizing on the success of OpenCTI to build a suite of open-source threat management products. The company has already found some early traction with OpenCTI, its open-source threat intelligence platform. That’s why the company recently…