Modern households have started adopting internet-connected devices, ranging from cameras and speakers to locks and routers. However, with this technological advancement, the risk of a smart home breach has grown. While preventive guidance is widely available, residents often find themselves uncertain about what to do after an attack, according to new research led by Leipzig University. The study also highlights widespread Wi-Fi vulnerability concerns, which remain a common entry point for attackers.  Researchers Victor Jüttner and Erik Buchmann from Leipzig University examined official government cybersecurity guidance across 11 countries, including Australia, Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Their study, Cybersecurity Guidance for Smart Homes: A Cross-National Review of Government Sources, focuses on how governments support households after a cyberattack, rather than just offering preventive advice. 

Limited Support After a Smart Home Breach 

The study found an imbalance in government guidance. Most resources focus on prevention, securing devices, strengthening passwords, updating firmware, and providing minimal support once a smart home breach occurs. Only two of the examined sources offered structured, step-by-step recovery advice suitable for non-experts: France’s GIP ACYMA provides a 12-step recovery plan, while Singapore’s CSA offers a simplified workflow, including disconnecting devices, resetting credentials, and contacting manufacturers.  “While governments provide trusted reporting channels and preventive measures, residents often lack practical guidance during incidents,” the study notes. Users frequently turn to these agencies for advice, but in most cases, instructions stop short of actionable steps for real-world recovery. 

Methodology: User-Centered Approach 

To understand the accessibility and usefulness of government guidance, Jüttner and Buchmann employed a user-focused methodology. They conducted a web-based review in December 2025, simulating how a typical household would search for help after a cyberattack. This process identified 101 unique sources from 49 government institutions, including cybersecurity agencies, consumer protection bodies, and law enforcement.  Sources were included only if they were: 

• From an official national authority  
• Targeted at households or individuals  
• Provided actionable guidance  
• Focused on smart home devices, IoT, or home network security  

After careful screening, 35 sources were retained and categorized into three clusters: 21 general security recommendations, 12 incident reporting resources, and only 2 incident response guides. This reveals the persistent gap between preventive guidance and actionable recovery support. 

Key Findings on Smart Home Security 

Across the 11 countries, the study identified several consistent recommendations for mitigating Wi-Fi vulnerability and securing smart homes: 

Router-focused guidance: 

• Change admin credentials and SSID passwords  
• Enable WPA2/WPA3 encryption  
• Update devices regularly, including automatic updates  
• Use guest Wi-Fi networks to isolate smart devices  
• Disable remote management and unnecessary features  

Smart device guidance: 

• Change default passwords  
• Enable automatic updates  
• Keep devices physically secure  

General online safety: 

• Use strong passwords and password managers  
• Enable multi-factor authentication  
• Limit unnecessary internet connections and insecure interfaces  

Despite this clear consensus on preventive measures, the research highlights that structured guidance for incident response, such as assessing whether a smart home breach has been fully resolved, is extremely limited. 

Recommendations for Improvement 

The study revealed that governments provide accessible reporting channels, including online forms, hotlines, and email addresses. However, these channels are rarely tailored to smart home incidents specifically. Recovery guidance is even rarer, leaving households to navigate complex post-breach scenarios largely on their own.  The researchers suggest that governments could enhance post-incident support without introducing new advice. Key improvements include: 

1. Step-by-step workflows: Organize guidance into phased procedures, containment, remediation, and hardening, to help users act under stress.  
2. Validation mechanisms: Offer lightweight checks, such as detecting unknown devices or verifying updates, to confirm that recovery is complete.  

By structuring existing advice into clear, actionable steps, residents could handle a smart home breach more confidently, reducing the impact of attacks on daily life. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) agents, once touted as the next frontier of corporate efficiency, are increasingly exhibiting deceptive and rogue behaviors that could overwhelm traditional cybersecurity. New research shows autonomous systems are now capable of collaborating to smuggle sensitive data, forge credentials, and even peer-pressure other AIs into bypassing safety protocols. According to findings from Irregular,..

The post AI Agents Present ‘Insider Threat’ as Rogue Behaviors Bypass Cyber Defenses: Study appeared first on Security Boulevard.

ASEC Blog publishes Ransom & Dark Web Issues Week 1, Fabruary 2026         Qilin Targets South Korean Public Broadcaster with Ransomware Confidential Military Data from U.S. Aerospace Composites Manufacturer Sold on BreachForums ShinyHunters Leaks Data from Two Prestigious U.S. Private Universities

ASEC Blog publishes Ransom & Dark Web Issues Week 1, January 2026         South Korean University Website Data Shared on DarkForums Saudi Arabian Employment Platform Data Sold on BreachForums and DarkForums Recent Security Activity Involving the Ransomware Group Vect

A sprawling academic cheating network turbocharged by Google Ads that has generated nearly $25 million in revenue has curious ties to a Kremlin-connected oligarch whose Russian university builds drones for Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The link between essay mills and Russian attack drones might seem improbable, but understanding it begins with a simple question: How does a human-intensive academic cheating service stay relevant in an era when students can simply ask AI to write their term papers? The answer – recasting the business as an AI company – is just the latest chapter in a story of many rebrands that link the operation to Russia’s largest private university.

Search in Google for any terms related to academic cheating services — e.g., “help with exam online” or “term paper online” — and you’re likely to encounter websites with the words “nerd” or “geek” in them, such as thenerdify[.]com and geekly-hub[.]com. With a simple request sent via text message, you can hire their tutors to help with any assignment.

These nerdy and geeky-branded websites frequently cite their “honor code,” which emphasizes they do not condone academic cheating, will not write your term papers for you, and will only offer support and advice for customers. But according to This Isn’t Fine, a Substack blog about contract cheating and essay mills, the Nerdify brand of websites will happily ignore that mantra.

“We tested the quick SMS for a price quote,” wrote This Isn’t Fine author Joseph Thibault. “The honor code references and platitudes apparently stop at the website. Within three minutes, we confirmed that a full three-page, plagiarism- and AI-free MLA formatted Argumentative essay could be ours for the low price of $141.”

Google prohibits ads that “enable dishonest behavior.” Yet, a sprawling global essay and homework cheating network run under the Nerdy brands has quietly bought its way to the top of Google searches – booking revenues of almost $25 million through a maze of companies in Cyprus, Malta and Hong Kong, while pitching “tutoring” that delivers finished work that students can turn in.

When one Nerdy-related Google Ads account got shut down, the group behind the company would form a new entity with a front-person (typically a young Ukrainian woman), start a new ads account along with a new website and domain name (usually with “nerdy” in the brand), and resume running Google ads for the same set of keywords.

UK companies belonging to the group that have been shut down by Google Ads since Jan 2025 include:

–Proglobal Solutions LTD (advertised nerdifyit[.]com);
–AW Tech Limited (advertised thenerdify[.]com);
–Geekly Solutions Ltd (advertised geekly-hub[.]com).

Currently active Google Ads accounts for the Nerdify brands include:

-OK Marketing LTD (advertising geekly-hub[.]net⁩), formed in the name of Olha Karpenko, a young Ukrainian woman;
–Two Sigma Solutions LTD (advertising litero[.]ai), formed in the name of Olekszij (Alexey) Pokatilo.

Mr. Pokatilo has been in the essay-writing business since at least 2009, operating a paper-mill enterprise called Livingston Research alongside Alexander Korsukov, who is listed as an owner. According to a lengthy account from a former employee, Livingston Research mainly farmed its writing tasks out to low-cost workers from Kenya, Philippines, Pakistan, Russia and Ukraine.

Pokatilo moved from Ukraine to the United Kingdom in Sept. 2015 and co-founded a company called Awesome Technologies, which pitched itself as a way for people to outsource tasks by sending a text message to the service’s assistants.

The other co-founder of Awesome Technologies is 36-year-old Filip Perkon, a Swedish man living in London who touts himself as a serial entrepreneur and investor. Years before starting Awesome together, Perkon and Pokatilo co-founded a student group called Russian Business Week while the two were classmates at the London School of Economics. According to the Bulgarian investigative journalist Christo Grozev, Perkon’s birth certificate was issued by the Soviet Embassy in Sweden.

Around the time Perkon and Pokatilo launched Awesome Technologies, Perkon was building a social media propaganda tool called the Russian Diplomatic Online Club, which Perkon said would “turbo-charge” Russian messaging online. The club’s newsletter urged subscribers to install in their Twitter accounts a third-party app called Tweetsquad that would retweet Kremlin messaging on the social media platform.

Perkon was praised by the Russian Embassy in London for his efforts: During the contentious Brexit vote that ultimately led to the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, the Russian embassy in London used this spam tweeting tool to auto-retweet the Russian ambassador’s posts from supporters’ accounts.

Neither Mr. Perkon nor Mr. Pokatilo replied to requests for comment.

A review of corporations tied to Mr. Perkon as indexed by the business research service North Data finds he holds or held director positions in several U.K. subsidiaries of Synergy University, Russia’s largest private education provider. Synergy has more than 35,000 students, and sells T-shirts with patriotic slogans such as “Crimea is Ours,” and “The Russian Empire — Reloaded.”

The president of Synergy University is Vadim Lobov, a Kremlin insider whose headquarters on the outskirts of Moscow reportedly features a wall-sized portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the pop-art style of Andy Warhol. For a number of years, Lobov and Perkon co-produced a cross-cultural event in the U.K. called Russian Film Week.

Mr. Lobov was one of 11 individuals reportedly hand-picked by the convicted Russian spy Marina Butina to attend the 2017 National Prayer Breakfast held in Washington D.C. just two weeks after President Trump’s first inauguration.

While Synergy University promotes itself as Russia’s largest private educational institution, hundreds of international students tell a different story. Online reviews from students paint a picture of unkept promises: Prospective students from Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and other nations paying thousands in advance fees for promised study visas to Russia, only to have their applications denied with no refunds offered.

“My experience with Synergy University has been nothing short of heartbreaking,” reads one such account. “When I first discovered the school, their representative was extremely responsive and eager to assist. He communicated frequently and made me believe I was in safe hands. However, after paying my hard-earned tuition fees, my visa was denied. It’s been over 9 months since that denial, and despite their promises, I have received no refund whatsoever. My messages are now ignored, and the same representative who once replied instantly no longer responds at all. Synergy University, how can an institution in Europe feel comfortable exploiting the hopes of Africans who trust you with their life savings? This is not just unethical — it’s predatory.”

This pattern repeats across reviews by multilingual students from Pakistan, Nepal, India, and various African nations — all describing the same scheme: Attractive online marketing, promises of easy visa approval, upfront payment requirements, and then silence after visa denials.

Reddit discussions in r/Moscow and r/AskARussian are filled with warnings. “It’s a scam, a diploma mill,” writes one user. “They literally sell exams. There was an investigation on Rossiya-1 television showing students paying to pass tests.”

The Nerdify website’s “About Us” page says the company was co-founded by Pokatilo and an American named Brian Mellor. The latter identity seems to have been fabricated, or at least there is no evidence that a person with this name ever worked at Nerdify.

Rather, it appears that the SMS assistance company co-founded by Messrs. Pokatilo and Perkon (Awesome Technologies) fizzled out shortly after its creation, and that Nerdify soon adopted the process of accepting assignment requests via text message and routing them to freelance writers.

A closer look at an early “About Us” page for Nerdify in The Wayback Machine suggests that Mr. Perkon was the real co-founder of the company: The photo at the top of the page shows four people wearing Nerdify T-shirts seated around a table on a rooftop deck in San Francisco, and the man facing the camera is Perkon.

Where are they now? Pokatilo is currently running a startup called Litero.Ai, which appears to be an AI-based essay writing service. In July 2025, Mr. Pokatilo received pre-seed funding of $800,000 for Litero from an investment program backed by the venture capital firms AltaIR Capital, Yellow Rocks, Smart Partnership Capital, and I2BF Global Ventures.

Meanwhile, Filip Perkon is busy setting up toy rubber duck stores in Miami and in at least three locations in the United Kingdom. These “Duck World” shops market themselves as “the world’s largest duck store.”

This past week, Mr. Lobov was in India with Putin’s entourage on a charm tour with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Although Synergy is billed as an educational institution, a review of the company’s sprawling corporate footprint (via DNS) shows it also is assisting the Russian government in its war against Ukraine.

The website bpla.synergy[.]bot, for instance, says the company is involved in developing combat drones to aid Russian forces and to evade international sanctions on the supply and re-export of high-tech products.

KrebsOnSecurity would like to thank the anonymous researcher NatInfoSec for their assistance in this investigation.

Update, Dec. 8, 10:06 a.m. ET: Mr. Pokatilo responded to requests for comment after the publication of this story. Pokatilo said he has no relation to Synergy nor to Mr. Lobov, and that his work with Mr. Perkon ended with the dissolution of Awesome Technologies.

“I have had no involvement in any of his projects and business activities mentioned in the article and he has no involvement in Litero.ai,” Pokatilo said of Perkon.

Mr. Pokatilo said his new company Litero “does not provide contract cheating services and is built specifically to improve transparency and academic integrity in the age of universal use of AI by students.”

“I am Ukrainian,” he said in an email. “My close friends, colleagues, and some family members continue to live in Ukraine under the ongoing invasion. Any suggestion that I or my company may be connected in any way to Russia’s war efforts is deeply offensive on a personal level and harmful to the reputation of Litero.ai, a company where many team members are Ukrainian.”

Update, Dec. 11, 12:07 p.m. ET: Mr. Perkon responded to requests for comment after the publication of this story. Perkon said the photo of him in a Nerdify T-shirt (see screenshot above) was taken after a startup event in San Francisco, where he volunteered to act as a photo model to help friends with their project.

“I have no business or other relations to Nerdify or any other ventures in that space,” Mr. Perkon said in an email response. “As for Vadim Lobov, I worked for Venture Capital arm at Synergy until 2013 as well as his business school project in the UK, that didn’t get off the ground, so the company related to this was made dormant. Then Synergy kindly provided sponsorship for my Russian Film Week event that I created and ran until 2022 in the U.K., an event that became the biggest independent Russian film festival outside of Russia. Since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022 I closed the festival down.”

“I have had no business with Vadim Lobov since 2021 (the last film festival) and I don’t keep track of his endeavours,” Perkon continued. “As for Alexey Pokatilo, we are university friends. Our business relationship has ended after the concierge service Awesome Technologies didn’t work out, many years ago.”