Tag: Microsoft
UK backs AI and intelligence modernization – June 12th
The UK government has announced its plans to invest in digital and artificial intelligence (AI) in public services, including the NHS, aiming to build strong technology foundations and tackle urgent cybersecurity risks.
Teenage hackers run rings around cyber-defenses
The recent UK retail cyberattacks that impacted Marks & Spencer and the Co-Op supermarket chain are only the tip of a very large iceberg that now threatens organizations on both sides of the Atlantic. Although media reports have attributed the attacks to a group named “Scattered Spider,” the actual threat is far bigger. For a start, there is no criminal group that actually calls itself “Scattered Spider”, which is just a made-up name attributed by cybersecurity researchers. These attacks and many others in the US and the UK are now known to be the work of a vast sprawling network of hackers, some as young as 14, spread across the US and the UK. They call themselves “the Community”, or “the Com” for short, and are essentially a vast teenage subculture of criminal hackers.
Russia orchestrates vast cyber-espionage campaign
A new Russian threat actor, Void Blizzard, also known as Laundry Bear, is gathering intelligence from Western states on an industrial scale unseen since the end of the Cold War. According to Microsoft Threat Intelligence, Void Blizzard primarily targets NATO member states, particularly those supporting Ukraine, and Ukraine.
Microsoft 365 accounts are being compromised worldwide
A vast botnet of over 130,000 compromised devices is now attacking Microsoft 365 accounts worldwide. A botnet is a network of computing devices that have been surreptitiously taken over by hackers and are being controlled remotely without the owners’ knowledge. Microsoft 365 accounts are suffering from ‘password spray attacks’ by the botnet. This involves mass attempts to use large numbers of common passwords to infiltrate users’ Microsoft accounts, targeting basic authentication procedures and thereby bypassing multi-factor authentication.
Companies must identify the value of their data
Most organizations have no clear idea of the value of the data they hold on themselves and their customers. According to technology research and consulting firm Gartner, 30 percent of chief data and analytics officers (CDAOs) say that their top challenge is the inability to measure data, analytics, and AI's impact on business outcomes. Gartner also reports that only 22 percent of organizations surveyed have defined, tracked, and communicated business impact metrics for the bulk of their data and analytics (D&A) use cases. “There is a massive value vibe around data, where many organizations talk about the value of data, desire to be data-driven, etc., but there are few who can substantiate it,” said Michael Gabbard, senior director analyst at Gartner.
New ransomware threat emerges in 2025
A new and unusually dangerous and sophisticated gang of cybercriminals, named BlackLock, has emerged as a major ransomware threat in 2025. Cybersecurity company Reliaquest observed a staggering 1,425 percent increase in the gang’s activities in the last quarter of 2024. Its ransomware is built to target Windows, VMWare ESXi, and Linux environments and is designed as a double-extortion attack, which involves not only locking the target organization’s critical data by encrypting it, but also by identifying sensitive information and threatening to expose it. “BlackLock’s rise has been both swift and strategic, targeting organizations across a wide range of sectors and geographies,” reports Reliaquest.
GenAI speeds up cybercrime
While Silicon Valley is finding that artificial intelligence (AI) is proving a tough sell to businesses and consumers, cybercriminals worldwide have lost little time in adapting the technology to cybercrime. The latest rogue AI offering is GhostGPT. According to Abnormal Security, Ghost GPT follows hard on the heels of earlier illicit AI offerings: WormGPT, WolfGPT, and EscapeGPT. To test its capabilities, Abnormal Security researchers asked GhostGPT to create a Docusign phishing email. The chatbot produced a convincing template with ease, demonstrating its ability to trick potential victims
Scammers circling Black Friday shoppers
Scammers have stolen £11.4 billion from UK citizens over the last 12 months. According to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance’s (GASA) latest report, The State of Scams in the UK, conducted in association with the UK’s leading fraud prevention service, Cifas, this represents an increase of £4 billion over the previous year. With the Black Friday sales bonanza looming on both sides of the Atlantic, the findings come as a timely warning to online shoppers. GASA and Cifas anticipate a further spike in scam attempts this week and re-urging consumers to remain vigilant. The warning comes as 1 in 7 (15 percent) consumers surveyed said they lost cash to criminals in 2024, an increase from 10 percent in 2023. The average loss per victim was £1,400, and only 18 percent of victims recovered all their money.
Russian secret service steps up cyber-attacks on the West
Software giant Microsoft has made an urgent public announcement that the Russian secret service is currently sending thousands of weaponized spear-phishing emails to key individuals in over 100 organizations in countries including the US and the UK. According to Microsoft: “The emails were highly targeted, using social engineering lures relating to Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS)… In some of the lures, the actor attempted to add credibility to their malicious messages by impersonating Microsoft employees.”
Can MSN’s new AI Copilot replace human workers?
In a matter of days, Microsoft will unveil the much-heralded new version of its Copilot software to a business world already severely disappointed by Big Tech’s initial AI offerings. It also comes hard on the heels of a stern warning from Gartner to organizations across all sectors that the cost of introducing artificial intelligence (AI) to the workplace could easily balloon by a staggering 500 -1,000 percent. But Microsoft’s current marketing push for its latest AI offering, a souped up version of its Copilot service, is rapidly gathering momentum, in spite of commercial AI’s dismal performance to date. Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella is currently touring 39 cities around the world with new products and use cases for AI. He predicts that the performance of AI systems will double approximately every six months, and the AI revolution is about to be led by a souped-up version of the company’s existing Copilot software, part of the 365 package. "The question now is how do we transfer this to the real world…Think of Copilot as a user interface for AI," Nadella told an audience in Berlin.
Big tech goes nuclear
America’s leading technology companies are now engaged in their own nuclear power race. Advertising and search giant Google has announced that it has signed the world’s first corporate agreement to purchase nuclear energy from multiple small modular reactors (SMR), to be developed by Kairos Power. By investing in its own nuclear energy facilities, Google has now joined the ranks of Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle in investing heavily in nuclear facilities to power the rollout of new services based around their prematurely launched artificial intelligence (AI) services. According to a recent report from US Madison Avenue investment bankers, Jeffries: “If it feels like Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are suddenly everywhere, it’s because they are. GPUs drive computation across a wide range of industries and applications, from big data analytics to machine learning [AI].”
Cost of AI could rise tenfold – warns Gartner
Gartner issued a stern warning this week to organizations across all sectors that the cost of introducing artificial intelligence (AI) to the workplace could easily balloon by 500 -1,000 percent. Speaking at Gartner's flagship Symposium event in Australia, VP analyst Mary Mesaglio said: “Factors contributing to these inflated costs include vendor price increases and neglecting the expense of utilizing cloud-based resources.”