Bank of America has a message for its customers: please, for the love of God, stop handing your banking passwords to your AI assistant. And if your robot does something daft with your money? That's your problem, not theirs. Meanwhile, a company that promised to rescue ransomware victims without paying the criminals stands accused of... paying the criminals. ProPublica's Renee Dudley was on the case years before the indictment. Plus, Dropzone AI's Edward Wu asks what happens when AI models break out of their test environment and go hacking, and whether AI agents can help overstretched security teams keep up. All this and more in episode 491 of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, and special guest Renee Dudley.

The US Department of Homeland Security has had the details of more than 41,000 staff, including ICE and CBP agents, published online. Not ideal for an organisation with "Security" in its name. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

Ambulances were diverted, surgeries cancelled, and medical students sent home from classes after a ransomware group attacked the University of New Mexico's Health Sciences Center (HSC) this week. Read more in my article on the Fortra blog.

A Ukrainian man who carried out ransomware attacks for both the Nefilim and Hive gangs, including attacks on law firms and a healthcare provider during the COVID-19 pandemic, has been sentenced to 70 months in a US prison. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

The AfD has confirmed that hackers breached its hosting provider. A leak site now claims to offer 421,179 of the party’s internal emails, and shows AI-written summaries rather than the emails themselves. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

A 28-year-old Russian man has been arrested by German police, suspected of being a key member of the Qilin ransomware gang. Detectives have linked the man to the attack against blood-testing firm Synnovis, that disrupted London hospitals, and resulted in the death of a patient. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

A ransomware negotiator attended a cybersecurity conference, only to be arrested by the FBI in connection with its investigation into the ShinyHunters gang. Meanwhile, hackers get the keys to ASOS's app and the chance to message every single customer. What did they say? And how did the company respond? We have thoughts. All this and more is discussed in episode 488 of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, and special guest Paul Ducklin.

The hacker behind a high-profile string of leaks involving the upcoming release of the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) 6 videogame has threatened to release a complete, playable build. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

The US State Department is offering up to US $10 million for information about the whereabouts of Zhang Yu, a 44-year-old Chinese national who is accused of being a key figure in China's state-sponsored hacking group, Hafnium. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

N0n is a newly-emerged cyber extortion gang. The group was first spotted in the middle of September 2026, and within days it had published on its dark web leak site details of what it claimed to be around a dozen victims. Since then, the tally has continued to grow. Read more in my article on the Fortra blog.

The FBI has a very simple message for the ShinyHunters gang: give yourselves up. On Tuesday, FBI cyber division assistant director Brett Leatherman released a video, thanking the Dutch police for arresting a 24-year-old man they believe to be a member of the group, and and who is separately suspected of attempting to arrange two murders. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

An alleged key figure in the ShinyHunters cybercrime group has been arrested in the Netherlands, and - in a sinister twist - the 24-year-old suspect is also being investigated for attempting to arrange two murders. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

A Pentagon personnel database was breached for nine months without anyone noticing. Over three million people are affected. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

A court in Zurich has sentenced a Ukrainian man to 12 years and nine months in prison, and banned him from Switzerland for ten years, for developing ransomware that blackmailed companies around the world. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

When a chap called Matt noticed his Bluetooth headphones wouldn't switch to his phone, he was surprised to realise the reason was a single AliExpress webpage sitting open in his browser - playing nothing at all, at zero volume. And yet somehow his hardware could hear it. Audio fingerprinting is one of the sneakiest tracking tricks on the web. Meanwhile, the intelligence agencies of the "Five Eyes" (not Five Guys) have got together and published advice on how companies should communicate after a cyber attack. The summary? For the love of God, stop calling every breach "sophisticated." All this and more in episode 484 of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, and special guest Danny Palmer.

If you ever linked your Dropbox account to a Lenovo ID - perhaps to make life easier when logging in via a Lenovo laptop - you might want to take heed. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

A hacker calling themselves "CYBERLEEK" has been leaking gameplay footage from GTA 6 ahead of its official reveal this week - but they're not asking Rockstar Games for a ransom. Instead, they've launched their own cryptocurrency, promising to release ever more juicy clips from a virtual strip club... Meanwhile, your smart TV might be doing more than binge-watching Netflix while you sleep. We explore the shadowy world of "residential proxies" - how they end up inside home routers, smart TVs, and IoT devices, and why an entire criminal economy is quietly running through your internet connection. All this and more in episode 482 of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, and special guest Paul Ducklin.

The ransomware gang Gunra has been creating havoc - exploiting unpatched VPNs and firewalls to steal data, encrypt systems, and extort victims across healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and more. Read more in my article on the Fortra blog.

When Cameron Curry discovered that his contract as a data analyst wasn't going to be renewed, he could have updated his LinkedIn profile. He could have started sending out his resume. But what the 27-year-old from Charlotte, North Carolina, did instead was turn to extortion. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

Graham gets a phone call from the police. Well, someone who sounds convincingly like the police. There's just one small problem: what they really want is the 24-word seed key to Graham's cryptocurrency wallet. Meanwhile, if you've stayed in a hotel recently, the free Wi-Fi you connected to might have come with an unexpected extra: an all-you-can-eat buffet of "Captive Crunch" for a Russian intelligence-linked hacking group. And a group calling itself the "ExFilSquad" has walked off with 600,000 records of the UK's teachers and head teachers from the Department for Education — sending an unusually polite ransom demand. All this and more in episode 479 of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, and special guest Danny Palmer.