Security News

Friday, May 8, 2026

• Hackers just stole data from 9,000 schools and unis around the world. How can we protect student privacy?
  This week, US-based education technology provider Instructure announced a significant cybersecurity incident affecting its Canvas system. This is used by schools and universities around the world, including in Australia.
  
• A Canvas outage tied to a cyberattack has wreaked havoc on colleges' final exam season
  Schools and universities across the country are recovering from an outage that knocked down Canvas, an online platform that manages exams, course notes, lecture videos and grades. The disruption tied to a cyberattack hit in the middle of finals period for many colleges, a high-stress time when students and instructors rely heavily on the platform.
  

Thursday, May 7, 2026

• Why digital devices and online accounts need spring cleaning
  If the spring season has brought an urge to scrub your living space from top to bottom, why not clear out the digital detritus cluttering your electronic devices and online accounts at the same time?
  
• On-body tech could expose users to new privacy and safety risks
  Compared to the possibilities offered by on-body interaction techniques such as wearables, smartphones and computers are increasingly beginning to look like technologies of the past. But what risks arise when mini-computers worn continuously on the body become part of everyday life? This question was investigated by CISPA researcher Dañiel Gerhardt. His central finding is that privacy and security issues are closely intertwined, creating significant risks for users.
  
• Your conversations with AI may not be as private as you think
  A study conducted by researchers at IMDEA Networks Institute has revealed that ChatGPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), Grok, and Perplexity AI use different types of trackers from Meta, Google, TikTok and other companies, potentially exposing data about users' conversations and activity.
  

Wednesday, May 6, 2026

• White House wants to vet powerful AI models for risks—a computer scientist explains why AI safety is so difficult
  The Trump administration is looking to develop a process that would have the federal government review the safety of powerful artificial intelligence models before approving their release, according to a report in The New York Times on May 4, 2026. The move would stand in contrast to the administration's generally anti-regulatory approach to industry and comes in the wake of Anthropic voluntarily postponing the release of its latest AI model, Mythos.
  

Tuesday, May 5, 2026

• Can AI ascertain our personality traits from our ChatGPT history?
  Large language models (LLMs), the computational models underpinning the functioning of ChatGPT, Gemini, and similar conversational platforms, are now used daily by many people worldwide. As these models can rapidly answer queries about most topics, many users use them to source information related to their personal and professional lives, sometimes sharing information about themselves.
  

Monday, May 4, 2026

• No digital content is safe from generative AI, researchers say
  A research team led by Virginia Tech cybersecurity expert Bimal Viswanath has found a critical blind spot in today's image protection techniques designed to prevent bad actors from stealing online content for unauthorized artificial intelligence training, style mimicry, and deepfake manipulations. The study is published on the arXiv preprint server.
  
• AI fails to make inroads with cybercriminals, study finds
  Cybercriminals have been struggling to adopt AI in their work, reports the first-of-its-kind study that analyzed a dataset of 100 million posts from underground cybercrime communities. The study is published on the arXiv preprint server.
  
• New identity wallet stores biometric proof on phones, not corporate servers
  In our increasingly online lives, convenience has come at a cost. The average person has more than 100 online accounts, and creating a new one often requires handing over personal information like an email address or a birthdate. Researchers at the Applied Social Media Lab at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society say the current system puts your privacy at risk and makes you more vulnerable to identity theft, and they have a plan to fix it.
  
• Mythos AI is a cybersecurity threat, but it doesn't rewrite the rules of the game
  The cybersecurity community went on alert when Anthropic announced on April 7, 2026, that its latest and most capable general-purpose large language model, Claude Mythos Preview, had demonstrated remarkable—and unintended—capabilities. The artificial intelligence system was able to find and exploit software vulnerabilities—the most serious type of software bugs—at a rate not seen before.
  
• Think online ads are harmless? They could be revealing your private life, say researchers
  A new study has uncovered a significant and largely invisible privacy risk in the online advertising ecosystem: the ads you see may be enough to reveal sensitive personal information.
  

Sunday, May 3, 2026

• Portable detector spots GPS spoofing in real time, even on move
  In a world where cell phones and cars guide us everywhere, we've come to trust global positioning as much as we trust our own senses. What happens when that trust is broken?
  

Saturday, May 2, 2026

• Stacked intelligent surfaces could boost wireless reliability and security for 6G
  Wireless communication is about to get stronger, clearer, and more secure, thanks to a new idea from UBC Okanagan researchers. Dr. Anas Chaaban and his team in the School of Engineering are exploring a method to improve the way stacked intelligent surfaces (SIS) can process electromagnetic waves more efficiently.
  

Thursday, April 30, 2026

• Who invited whom? A new method protects privacy in online platforms
  Research conducted by Dr. Sanaz Taheri Boshrooyeh, a Ph.D. graduate of Koç University, Computer Science and Engineering Program, together with Prof. Dr. Alptekin Küpçü and Prof. Dr. Öznur Özkasap, has led to the development of a new scalable method designed to protect user privacy on online platforms that rely on invitation-based registration. The system, called "Anonyma," prevents even system administrators from identifying who invited a particular user to join the platform, addressing a significant privacy concern in such systems. The research and analysis results were published in Journal of Network and Computer Applications.
  

Wednesday, April 29, 2026

• Evolving AI may arrive before AGI and create hard-to-control risks
  Evolutionary biology holds clues for the future of AI, argue researchers from the HUN-REN Centre for Ecological Research, Eötvös Loránd University, and the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts. In a new Perspective published April 20 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team warn that evolvable AI (eAI) systems that can undergo Darwinian evolution may soon emerge, and they will generate special risks that can be understood, and mitigated, based on insights from evolutionary biology.
  

Tuesday, April 28, 2026

• Facial recognition data is a key to your identity. If stolen, you can't just change the locks
  A woman strolls into a grocery store, thinking about grabbing some apples. Before she even reaches the produce aisle, a security camera has scanned her face. Whether the system is checking for shoplifters or simply logging her arrival, her face has joined a digital ledger, a trace she can't easily erase. Retailers, banks, airports, stadiums and office buildings are doing the same.
  
• UK biobank records listed for sale in China: Why open data might be the answer
  The chief executive of the UK Biobank, one of the world's largest biomedical databases, recently wrote to more than 500,000 participants telling them that some of their data had been made available for sale online through a Chinese website. This wasn't a data breach or hack, but rather researchers who had legitimately accessed the data trying to sell it.
  
• 'Not just an IT issue': The human threat to cybersecurity
  Organizations could be better protected from cybercrime by investing in more leadership and staff decision-making, a University of Queensland study has found.
  

Friday, April 24, 2026

• Germany launches spying probe into Signal attacks targeting MPs
  German prosecutors Friday launched a spying investigation into phishing attacks targeting lawmakers on the Signal messaging app, with an MP saying the latest Russia-directed plot against Germany was a "wake-up call."
  

Thursday, April 23, 2026

• AI has crossed a threshold. What Claude Mythos means for the future of cybersecurity
  The limit of what artificial intelligence can achieve, known as frontier AI, has crossed another threshold. AI can now plan and execute sophisticated cyber operations with minimal guidance at speeds far beyond human capability.
  
• Needle-tip chip can secure pacemakers and insulin pumps against quantum attacks
  As quantum computers advance, they are expected to be able to break tried-and-true security schemes that currently keep most sensitive data secure from attackers. Scientists and policymakers are working to design and implement post-quantum cryptography to defend against these future attacks.
  
• One Tech Tip: Logging on at a cafe? Privacy and security guidelines for remote workers
  For digital nomads, logging on to work from a cafe, co-working space, hotel lobby or airport lounge is a way of life.
  

Wednesday, April 22, 2026

• Generative AI may cut costs in machine-learning systems, but it increases risks of cyberattacks and data leaks
  Using generative AI to design, train, or perform steps within a machine-learning system is risky, argues computer scientist Micheal Lones in a paper appearing in Patterns. Though large language models (LLMs) could expand the capabilities of machine-learning systems and decrease costs and labor needs, Lones warns that using them reduces transparency and control for the people developing and using these systems and increases the risk of malicious cyberattacks, data leaks, and bias against underrepresented groups.
  
• North Korean hackers suspected of $300 mn crypto heist
  A notorious North Korean hacking group is likely behind the theft of nearly $300 million in cryptocurrency over the weekend, an affected party has said, in the biggest known crypto heist this year.
  

Tuesday, April 21, 2026

• Industrial electrification is now a security imperative, finds analysis
  Industrial electrification is becoming a matter of economic security as well as decarbonization, according to new Oxford analysis. Continued reliance on fossil fuels leaves 75% of global industry exposed to recurring price shocks, while electrification offers a pathway to stable and resilient energy costs.
  
• From floppy disks to Claude Mythos, how ransomware grew into a multibillion‑dollar industry
  When evolutionary biologist Joseph Popp coded the first documented piece of ransomware in 1989, he had little idea it would become a major criminal business model capable of bringing economies to their knees.
  

Friday, April 17, 2026

• What could your voice give away?
  With AI, the voice has acquired a new significance. Behind the words lies data that can be used both to diagnose a health problem and to steal someone's identity. Speaking to machines is no longer the stuff of science fiction. Alexa (Amazon) has been present in homes for over a decade, and an increasing number of users now favor voice interactions with chatbots.
  

Thursday, April 16, 2026

• AI is a gold mine for spammers and scammers, but Google is using it as a tool to fight back
  From an advertisement for an herbal remedy that promises to cure all to a video featuring a voice that sounds just like a movie star, you've surely encountered spam and scam advertisements online. And they have likely been created with artificial intelligence.
  
• Making AI safer for victims of intimate partner violence
  Conversational AI tools denied blunt requests for harmful content by researchers posing as intimate partner abusers, but these guardrails were easily circumvented when they requested the content under false pretenses, a new Cornell Tech study has found.
  

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