Thalha Jubair, 20, and Owen Flowers, 19, sentenced to five and a half years each for cyber-attack that cost Transport for London £39m

The data of millions of commuters was stolen, Londoners were left out of pocket and 27,000 Transport for London staff were forced to reset their passwords.

Over four days in 2024 a pair of teenage hackers had London’s transport network at their mercy. Thalha Jubair and Owen Flowers had burrowed into the heart of Transport for London’s IT systems and held the “keys to the kingdom”.

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© Photograph: William Barton/Alamy

© Photograph: William Barton/Alamy

© Photograph: William Barton/Alamy

Whistleblower suggests internal security services deployed spyware from 2017 against key domestic and foreign targets

A former member of Morocco’s domestic intelligence service has helped to provide an unprecedented insight into how the north African state used hacking software – including Pegasus spyware – to target journalists, human rights defenders, French politicians and Spanish cabinet ministers and police officers.

Pegasus, which is manufactured by the Israel-based NSO Group, allows its operator to access everything on a target’s mobile phone, including emails, text messages and photographs. It can also activate the phone’s recorder and camera, turning it into a listening device.

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© Photograph: Amir Cohen/Reuters

© Photograph: Amir Cohen/Reuters

© Photograph: Amir Cohen/Reuters

The vulnerability in the decades-old game could have allowed hackers to take over victims’ computers with a malicious game invite.

An alleged Russian-speaking group of cybercriminals is reportedly compromising and targeting several major companies that use Fortinet Firewalls and VPNs through previously known passwords.

The tech giant warned of a security flaw that a cybercrime gang said it's exploiting as part of a mass-hacking campaign. Google said it notified more than 100 organizations that had potentially vulnerable servers.

The ShinyHunters hacking gang claims to have compromised the Oracle PeopleSoft servers of more than 100 organizations, including many universities.

Operating system makers take many steps to prevent their wares from accepting commands from remote devices. The safeguards, designed to thwart malicious attacks, typically require hackers to jump through all kinds of hoops to bypass the measures. But what if remote code execution were as simple as being within Bluetooth range of a speaker connected to the targeted device?

It turns out it can, at least when the speaker is a Sound Blaster Katana V2X sold by Singapore-based Creative Technologies. The speaker, which sells for $283, is widely acclaimed with numerous reviews showering praise on the sound and performance of it and its predecessor, the Sound Blaster V2.

A PC-pwning proxy

Researcher Rasmus Moorats stumbled on the hack by accident, after he purchased a Katana V2X, a soundbar that connects to PCs, Macs, and Linux devices over USB or Bluetooth. Moorats was curious if he could create a Linux tool that communicated with his speaker. He discovered he could do so through CTP, a proprietary mechanism he guesses is short for Creative Transport Protocol.

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