November 30, 2025
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Cyber Intelligence > united kingdom
Editorial Team
AI Cybersecurity Events News
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25

InfoSecurity Europe 2025 focuses on weaponized AI

InfoSecurity Europe 2025, which begins in London today, Tuesday, June 2nd, will this year be dominated by the rapidly growing threat posed by the weaponization of artificial intelligence (AI).

New to the conference is an AI and cloud security stage, which will exhibit ways organizations can counter the threat posed by AI. AI-driven cybersecurity also dominated the recent RSA conference in San Francisco. Over the last 12 months, threat actors haven’t wasted a moment capitalizing on the global fascination with Artificial Intelligence. As AI’s popularity surged over the past year, cybercriminals have been quick to exploit the new technology to carry out cyberattacks on an industrial scale.

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Tony Glover
AI deepfake News
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Deepfake news lures new victims

Deepfake videos of TV news presenters are being used to dupe gullible viewers into logging onto illegal gambling sites where malware is then downloaded onto their devices. News anchors on Sky and other channels appear to be quoting Apple CEO Tim  Cook recommending an app where users can easily get rich by winning vast sums of money. The news reports have been identified as deepfake videos. It has been further revealed that thousands of similar videos of deepfakes of journalists have been circulated in the US and the UK. 

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Tony Glover
Government News Telecommunications
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27

UK defence ministry ‘loses’ 269 phones

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has egg all over its face following its admission that over 269 of its phones went missing between January 1 and February 27. This is a record number, even for the MoD, which lost 262 phones in total in 2023 and 2024.

The astonishing total of how many phones were recorded as lost, misplaced or stolen in the first two months of this year only came to light in response to a question asked in the UK parliament by the shadow defence secretary, James Cartlidge. The fact that a security-conscious organization such as the MoD could lose track of so many devices only evidences the increasing overlap between cybersecurity and physical security. Once a device such as a smartphone is in the hands of a threat actor, it can provide a portal to enable all kinds of cyber-attacks.

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Editorial Team
cybercrime Healthcare News
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Healthcare cyber-attacks now “a national security threat”

Search engine giant’s Google Threat Intelligence Group reports that cybercriminal and state-backed cyber-attacks on the healthcare sector in countries such as the US and UK have escalated to a level where they are actually costing lives.

“Healthcare’s share of posts on data leak sites has doubled over the past three years, even as the number of data leak sites tracked by Google Threat Intelligence Group has increased by nearly 50% year over year. The impact of these attacks means that they must be taken seriously as a national security threat, no matter the motivation of the actors behind it,” says Google.

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Editorial Team
Breaking News European Union News
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The rising costs of DORA compliance

The European Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), which came into force on Friday, January 17, is already having unforeseen costs for organizations right across the financial sector. Although the act is the brainchild of the European Union (EU), the financial services industry has been global for some years, and firms in the US and the UK are also impacted. As of Friday, the new regulations now also apply to US companies providing financial services within the EU or catering to EU customers.

California-based cybersecurity company Rubrik has commissioned research that almost half of UK financial businesses report spending over €1 million each over the last two years in trying to comply with the new EU regulation. DORA mandates key provisions such as contractual safeguards and contingency plans to mitigate risks from partners and third parties. DORA compliance also requires regular testing of digital resilience and attack simulations.

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Tony Glover
Arrest cybercrime News North Korea
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$1bn Korean bust is tip of SE Asian cybercrime iceberg

Authorities in Korea and Beijing dismantled a sprawling voice phishing syndicate responsible for financial losses totaling US$ 1.1 billion. But South-East Asian observers believe this to be only the tip of an impenetrable iceberg of cybercrime in South-East Asia that is rapidly starting spread around the globe.

The Korean bust was part of an Interpol-co-ordinated global operation involving law enforcement from 40 countries, territories, and regions and has ended with the arrest of over 5,500 financial crime suspects and the seizure of more than US$400 million in virtual assets and government-backed currencies.

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Editorial Team
cybercrime News Retail
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Seasonal cybercrime bonanza is under way

Cybercriminals now have an unprecedented of highly effective custom-made tools designed to defraud online retailers and shoppers during the holiday season.  

“As we approach the end of 2024, the upcoming holiday season and events like Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas bring millions of shoppers online with attractive discounts and limited-time offers. They also create ideal conditions for cybercriminals to exploit users and shoppers,” warns threat intelligence firm FortiGuard in its report, Threat Actor Readiness for the Upcoming Holiday Season.

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Editorial Team
News Retail Vulnerability
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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.

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Tony Glover
China News Spyware Surveillance
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The Chinese Communist Party is watching you

Research conducted by Which, the consumer watchdog magazine, has confirmed something the smartphone industry has known for years: Chinese electronic products are routinely used to spy on citizens in countries like the US and the UK. 

The latest suspects, domestic air fryers, join a long list of products the Chinese are accused of having used to spy on the West, which already ranges from smart watches to automobiles. Which analyzed three air fryers sold in the UK and found that Aigostar, Xiaomi Mi Smart, and Cosori CAF-LI401S knew their customers’ precise locations and demanded permission to listen in on users’ conversations. The Aigostar air fryer even wanted to know the user’s gender and date of birth when setting up an account. Disturbingly, both the Aigostar and Xiaomi air fryers are reported to have sent personal data to servers in China.

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Tony Glover
News Phishing Russia
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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.”

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Editorial Team
cybercrime News Vulnerability
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Cybercriminals crack MFA defenses

Cybercriminals are now using social engineering techniques developed to crack passwords to break through multi-factor authentication (MFA) defenses, such as sending a code to another device, such as the user’s smartphone.

According to the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) report, Not all types of MFA are created equal…: “Attackers have realized that many of the same social engineering techniques that tricked us into handing over passwords can also be updated to overcome some methods of MFA. We’ve seen the success of attacks against MFA-protected accounts increasing over the past couple of years.”

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Tony Glover
Analysis cybercrime Gen Z
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14

Cybercriminals are now grooming US and UK teens

By adopting such Nineteenth-Century criminal grooming methods to the online world of the Twenty-First Century, today’s threat actors are effectively criminalizing an entire generation not to pick pockets but to rifle fat online crypto wallets instead. When the media reports that a nineteen-year-old hacker has been arrested at his parent’s house for a major hack, such as the one that recently occurred at Transport for London (TfL), the sinister cybercriminals who may have orchestrated the cyber-attack doubtless breathe a sigh of relief.

“What the police should be asking in a case like is who has been grooming the teenage hacker and for how many years?” says Fraser Hay, CEO and co-founder of one-year-old UK start-up The Hacking Games, whose aim is to use online gaming, TV and other media to encourage teenagers away from a life of online crime and towards careers in ethical hacking.

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Tony Glover
Cybersecurity Events News
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Cyber gets physical at Expo ‘24

Chief executives frequently vie with one another for the spotlight when delivering key speeches at major conferences. But the most-talked-about address of the day, given to a packed auditorium at the International Cyber Expo in London’s Olympia showground, forbade any recording or photographing of his talk. He also insisted he be referred to only as “Paul F”.

“Paul F”’s bashfulness became understandable when he explained that the UK’s National Protective Security Authority (NPSA), where he is head of physical security, is now part of Britain’s secret intelligence service MI5. His talk neatly summed up the central theme of the show by providing evidence that the difference between cybercrime and physical crime has become blurred to the point of invisibility. He asked the very relevant question of whether a small drone spying into a City office using a telescopic lens and an 8k camera to read the staff’s log-in details through the window is a physical or a cyber-crime.

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Tony Glover
Government News Russia
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London’s transport cyber-breach is spreading fast

A cyber-attack on the London transport system earlier this month was far more serious than initially reported and is rapidly spreading across the UK. It is also now ringing loud alarm bells on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly in light of the upcoming US elections in November.

Transport for London (TfL) has now admitted that over 5,000 customers’ personal details and, in many cases, their financial details have been stolen. TfL added that the breach is also rapidly starting to affect services outside London.

The London Underground, the UK capital’s vast underground rail network, like most European metros, has a touchpad automatic electronic payment system using prepaid plastic cards. London also allows travelers simply to use their visa or MasterCard on the touchpads at the London underground barriers. This means that organizations such as TfL have become repositories of millions of commuters’ financial details, making them a tempting target for small-time cyber crooks.

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Editorial Team
Breaking News Geopolitics News
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14

German Intelligence warns of Russian cyber-attacks

The cyber cold war just became a little warmer, with German Intelligence now publicly crying foul on Monday at Russia for online attacks stretching back to 2020.

Germany’s Bundesverfassungsschutz has issued a strong warning against a cyber group belonging to Russian military intelligence (GRU) Unit 29155, which was linked to the 2018 poisonings of a former Russian double agent and his daughter in the UK, claiming that the unit has also been active in carrying out cyberattacks against NATO and EU countries.

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Tony Glover
AI Analysis European Union
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EU AI Act to act as a template for other regions

The European Union (EU) Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act, which came into effect earlier this month, is now set to act as a template for other regions, such as the US. The American government has already drafted an AI Bill of Rights, which aims to create a similar framework regulating AI.

However, while governments are rightly concerned about the personal privacy aspect of the universal adoption of AI, some have a dangerously bullish view of the new technology’s potential. Despite a deluge of hilarious howlers, such as Google’s AI-driven images of African Vikings and American founding fathers, politicians anxious not to be left behind in the tech race swallowed Silicon Valley’s AI hype hook, line, and sinker.

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Editorial Team
Breaking News cybercrime News
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Game over for European criminal botnet networks

An international operation coordinated by Europol has resulted in several arrests and the takedown of numerous cybercriminal networks. The operation focused on tackling the growing problem of the weaponization of botnets, which are strings of connected computers. Cybercriminal gangs use botnets to install droppers, a type of malicious software designed to install other malware, such as ransomware, onto a targeted system.

Between 27 and 29 May of this year, Europol’s “Operation Endgame” targeted droppers, including IcedID, SystemBC, Pikabot, Smokeloader, Bumblebee, and Trickbot. The actions focused on disrupting criminal services, making arrests, taking down criminal infrastructures, and freezing illegal proceeds.

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Editorial Team
Cyber Espionage News North Korea
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New cyber threat from North Korea

Microsoft has identified a new North Korean threat actor, Moonstone Sleet. Also known as Storm-1789, Moonstone Sleet has set up fake companies and job opportunities to engage with potential targets and has even created a fully functioning computer game designed to trap the unwary.

The potentially hostile nation-state of North Korea has long been suspected of resorting to cybercrime, targeting the West to fund its military build-up and commit ongoing cyber espionage against countries such as the US and the UK. But Moonstone Sleet is taking cyber-attacks on the West to new levels of sophistication, posing a threat to all organizations.

Microsoft says Moonstone Sleet “uses both a combination of many tried-and-true techniques used by other North Korean threat actors and unique attack methodologies to target companies for its financial and cyberespionage objectives.”

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Tony Glover
Analysis cybercrime
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FBI takes down BreachForums -again!

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating the criminal hacking forum BreachForums after taking down its website last week. This follows the announcement in February of the seizure of the LockBit ransomware gang’s extortion website.

“From June 2023 until May 2024, BreachForums (hosted at breachforums.st/.cx/.is/.vc and run by ShinyHunters) was operating as a clear-net marketplace for cybercriminals to buy, sell, and trade contraband, including stolen access devices, means of identification, hacking tools, breached databases, and other illegal services,” says an FBI advisory.

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Editorial Team
Big Tech Geopolitics News
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US and UK call time on Silicon Valley

A clarion call has gone out on both sides of the Atlantic for digital technologies to be made secure by design rather than by default.

At San Francisco’s RSA cyber conference earlier this month, Jen Easterly, the director of CISA, the US Cyber Defense Agency, called for software to be made far more secure. This week, Ollie Whitehouse, the CTO of the NCSC, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, also echoed her thoughts, demanding that the technology industry make its products more cyber-secure from the start.

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Editorial Team
China Geopolitics News
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22

SSCL named as breached MoD contractor

UK-based Shared Services Connected Limited (SSCL) has been named as the Ministry of Defence (MoD) contractor hacked by, according to senior government sources, China.

British defense minister Grant Shapps has admitted that the personal and financial details of 272,000 service personnel were hacked by “a malign actor.” However, the breach is now being widely attributed to China, despite China’s dismissal of the allegations as “absurd”. But while the compromised payment system has now been taken offline, there are growing fears that the breach may not merely be confined to the MoD, as SSCL handle a number of UK government contracts.

“We’re the largest provider of critical business support services for the Government, the UK Military & Veterans (MoD), Metropolitan Police Service, and the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB),” boasts SSCL on its website.

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admin
News One Minute Roundup
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UK Government Launches Updated Cyber Regulations – April 29th

As a testament to the UK’s £2.6 billion National Cyber Strategy, the UK Government has proactively launched regulations to safeguard UK consumers and businesses from cyber-attacks.

The updated regulations now mandate that manufacturers of consumer electronics adhere to minimum security standards. Additionally, consumers are prohibited from using easily guessable default passwords, a measure aimed at bolstering their personal cyber security.

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admin
News One Minute Roundup
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UK Deputy PM Warns of Chinese Cyber Threats to Government – March 25th

The UK’s Deputy Prime Minister, Oliver Dowden, is expected to formally announce to the press that China is behind a wave of cyber attacks against UK government officials and will urge the protection of voters’ data.

Despite the denial from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the UK government remains on high alert for politically fueled cyber attacks as the election period nears. 

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Editorial Team
cybercrime News Phishing
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20

Beware of fake Google docs

An under-the-radar attack that creates fake Google docs is now playing havoc across multiple sectors in the US and UK, particularly in healthcare. Companies’ increasing reliance on widely-used off-the-shelf external software may save costs and create efficiencies in the short-term, but it also offers new inroads for the current generation  of increasingly devious and skilled cybercriminals

Cybersecurity firm Netskope has identified a new Google Docs threat in the wild, AZORult infostealer. It is designed to steal sensitive information such as user credentials, browser information, credit card details and crypto-wallet data. A comprehensive study conducted by Netskope’s research team has uncovered a campaign where an attacker created fake Google Docs pages on Google sites from which to download malicious payloads.

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admin
News One Minute Roundup
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15

Google’s Improvements to Chrome’s ‘Safe Browsing’ Mode – March 18th

Google announced major security-focused revamps to Chrome’s ‘Safe Browsing’ mode, which enables the service to work while checking against a server-side malware-site list in real-time.

The added safety feature to Google Chrome’s ‘Safe Browsing’ mode is a massive improvement compared to the browsing mode cross-checking against lists of malware-infected sites that were manually added every two hours.

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Editorial Team
Geopolitics Hacktivism News
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Doppleganger mob set to spike US and UK elections

Russian hacktivists named Doppelgänger have been interfering in Germany’s elections with a view to influence the outcome of upcoming European elections, according to a report from SentinelLabs and ClearSky Cyber Security.

“Doppelgänger represents an active instrument of information warfare. We anticipate that Doppelgänger’s activities, targeting not only Germany but also other Western countries, will persist and evolve, particularly in light of the major elections scheduled across the EU and the USA in the coming years,” says the report.

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Editorial Team
cybercrime News Social Media
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90 percent of US users mistrust social media

Nine out of 10 US citizens do not trust social media. In some other developed markets, trust in services such as Facebook is even lower. In the UK, only three percent of consumers trust social media services with their personal data, and in Japan, it is only two percent, about one in fifty.

Thales 2024 Digital Trust Index, which surveyed 12,426 people worldwide, reports that, while the majority of users mistrust social media and online retail and entertainment services, trust in some other services is far higher. Consumers have much more trust in banking, healthcare, and government services when it comes to sharing their personal data – a universal trend witnessed in all the markets surveyed. Banking services are the most highly trusted with 44 percent of users placing their trust in them. This was closely followed by healthcare with 41 percent and government services with 37 percent.

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admin
News One Minute Roundup
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6

UK Claims e-Visas to be an ‘Enhanced Security’ Measure – February 12th

In the UK’s move to phase out physical immigration documents by 2025, the UK’s Home Office claims the implementation of e-Visas to be not only for convenience and cost safety but also for ‘enhanced security’.

Although not much information is known on the newly implemented e-visa, the UK Home Office claims the e-visa to be securely linked with biometric information for enhanced security measures.

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admin
News One Minute Roundup
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The UK Warns on AI-Generated Malware from Nation-States – January 25th

According to the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), AI-generated malware built to avoid detection could be a serious threat inflicted by nation-state threat actors this year.

The NCSC further stated that based on their investigations, they believe nation-state groups hold repositories of malware large enough to effectively train an AI model to bolster ransomware attack capabilities.

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admin
News One Minute Roundup
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9

26 Billion Stolen Record Database Discovered – January 24th

Security Discovery researchers and the Cybernews team discovered the largest data leak ever recorded, containing 26 billion records predominantly stolen from major social media platforms and government agencies.

Dubbed “The Mother of All Breaches”, the 12 terabytes of compromised records were stolen most notably from Tencent QQ (1.5B), Weibo (504M), MySpace (360M), Twitter (281M), LinkedIn (251M), AdultFriendFinder (220M), among government agency data from the United States, Brazil, Germany, the Philippines, Turkey, among others.

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admin
News One Minute Roundup
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9

The UK is at ‘High Risk’ of Ransomware Attacks – December 14th

The Joint Committee on National Security Strategy (JCNSS) published a report “A hostage to fortune: ransomware and UK National Security,” which revealed the UK’s lack of planning against ransomware attacks.

Targeted mainly at the critical cyber infrastructure of the UK government, the JCNSS report warns that a severe attack could disrupt the core of government services, healthcare, and child protection, which could lead to bringing the country to a ‘standstill’.

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admin
News One Minute Roundup
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10

Russian Campaign Targeting UK Politics Exposed – December 8th

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) in collaboration with partners from the US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand revealed the Russian-state-backed threat actors terrorizing UK political systems.

The NCSC identified the group ‘Star Blizzard’ to be a subordinate to Centre 18 from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Star Blizzard targeted UK parliamentarians, UK-US trade documents, UK think tanks, universities, journalists, and NGOs using various sophisticated phishing tactics.

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Tony Glover
China Energy Sector News Russia
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13

Nuclear facility reportedly hacked by Russia and China

In what is an urgent and stark warning to nuclear facilities around the world, UK nuclear facility Sellafield, formerly called Windscale, is reported to have been hacked by groups linked to China and Russia. The 70-year-old sprawling six-square-kilometre facility, located on the North-West coast of England, holds the planet’s largest store of plutonium as a result of processing nuclear waste from decades of atomic power generation and weapons programs.

The UK authorities do not know exactly when the hack originally occurred, according to The Guardian newspaper, although breaches are said to have been detected as long ago as 2015, when sleeper malware, used to attack systems remotely and at will over a long period, was found to have been embedded. In what amounts to a national scandal for the UK, it is still not yet known if the malware has actually been eradicated.

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Tony Glover
AI Analysis cybercrime
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AI “overrated and overhyped” say cybercriminals

The verdict on artificial intelligence (AI) from the real experts is finally in; professional cybercriminal fraternities have judged AI to be “overrated, overhyped and redundant,” according to fresh research from cybersecurity firm Sophos.

It has, hitherto, been accepted wisdom in the cybersecurity industry that cybercriminals, free from any regulatory authority or moral scruples, were among the first to harness the awesome power of AI to create bespoke and virtually unstoppable malware. However, having infiltrated the Dark Web forums where top professional cybercriminals discuss their trade, Sophos reports that the cybercrime sector has thoroughly tested the capabilities of AI and found it wanting.

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