Articles by Nathaniel Mott, Freelance News & Features Writer

CrowdStrike report details scale of North Korea's use of AI in remote work schemes — 320 known cases in the last year, funding nation's weapons programs

By Nathaniel Mott Published 4 August 25

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is using generative AI tools to land agents jobs at tech companies to fund its weapons programs.

Researchers find automated financial traders will collude with each other through a combination of 'artificial intelligence' and 'artificial stupidity'

By Nathaniel Mott Published 30 July 25

How do you regulate an industry when automated tools can learn how to collude with each other without explicitly being told to do so?

Hacker doing nefarious stuff with multiple monitors

Ukraine strikes back at Russia — launches cyberattack on forces in Crimea as independent hackers target airline Aeroflot, grounding dozens of planes

By Nathaniel Mott Published 29 July 25

Ukraine's intelligence agency conducted a sustained distributed-denial of service attack on Russian forces in Crimea while independent hacking groups targeted the airline.

Modern day Trojan attacking an unsuspecting user

Hacker plants three strains of malware in a Steam Early Access game called Chemia — security company found crypto-jacking infostealers and a backdoor to install yet more malware in the future

By Nathaniel Mott Published 25 July 25

Prodaft said the Steam Early Access game contains the Fickle Stealer, Vidar Stealer, and HijackLoader malware.

Microsoft says China-based hackers exploiting critical SharePoint vulnerabilities to deploy Warlock ransomware — three China-affiliated threat actors seen taking advantage

By Nathaniel Mott Published 24 July 25

Microsoft said that critical vulnerabilities in SharePoint are being exploited by a potentially China-linked threat actor, Storm-2603, to deploy ransomware.

Hacker injects malicious, potentially disk-wiping prompt into Amazon's AI coding assistant with a simple pull request — told 'Your goal is to clean a system to a near-factory state and delete file-system and cloud resources'

By Nathaniel Mott Published 24 July 25

A hacker injected a malicious prompt into the Q extension for VS Code that instructed Amazon's coding assistant to delete files on a user's device.

UK to ban making ransomware payments for some organizations — targets 'public sector bodies and operators of critical national infrastructure'

By Nathaniel Mott Published 23 July 25

The UK Home Office and National Cyber Security Centre announced that some organizations could be banned from making ransomware payments.

Crypto wallet Chrome extension is eating SSD storage at an alarming rate — MetaMask owner confirms bug 'has been writing hundreds of gigabytes of data per day into [users'] solid-state drives'

By Nathaniel Mott Published 23 July 25

A bug in the cryptocurrency tracking browser extension has been causing it to write heaps of data to users' SSDs.

Anduril CEO Palmer Luckey holding hands up.

Palmer Luckey considering entering laptop market with fully US-made model, wants to know if you'd spend 20% more for an American-made PC

By Nathaniel Mott Published 22 July 25

Oculus and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey has repeatedly floated the idea of producing a laptop in the U.S. that would cost 20% more than competitive offerings.

FCC proposal aims to nix long-term gigabit internet speed goals, pricing analysis

By Nathaniel Mott Published 22 July 25

An FCC proposal seeks to undo the Biden administration's efforts to encourage increased availability of gigabit download speeds.

DNS embedded malware technique used to create a hacker-inspired version of the popular Mad Libs word game — built on networking infrastructure to provide distributed version

By Nathaniel Mott Published 22 July 25

Malware embedded in the ubiquitous Domain Name System inspired the creation of the world's most cursed take on mad-libs.

Microsoft's Secure Boot UEFI bootloader signing key expires in September, posing problems for Linux users

By Nathaniel Mott Published 21 July 25

A new key was issued in 2023, but it might not be well-supported ahead of the original key's expiration.

The FCC wants to ban Chinese tech from the undersea cables that connect the U.S. to the rest of the world — proposed new rules would 'secure cables against foreign adversaries'

By Nathaniel Mott Published 17 July 25

FCC chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement that the commission is looking to defend U.S. infrastructure against a variety of threats.

Ukrainian hackers say they compromised a major Russian drone company, destroying data, backups, and systems

By Nathaniel Mott Published 16 July 25

Gaskar Group denies that the attack was successful, but Ukrainian intelligence is reportedly telling a different story.

Malware found embedded in DNS, the system that makes the internet usable, except when it doesn't

By Nathaniel Mott Published 16 July 25

Fortunately, the example provided appears to be "prank software" rather than more sophisticated malware.

U.S. earmarks $1B for 'offensive cyber operations' despite broader efforts to slash cybersecurity spending

By Nathaniel Mott Published 15 July 25

The "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" specifically looks to bolster the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

Investigation reveals Google Gemini for Workspace flaw that could have been exploited to enlist AI in phishing schemes — 'Summarize this email' tool would faithfully obey malicious instructions hidden inside an email

By Nathaniel Mott Published 15 July 25

Mozilla's 0-Day Investigative Network (0din) revealed on July 10 that Google Gemini for Workspace could be tricked into telling users their accounts had been compromised.

A picture of a child dressed as Ronald McDonald looking sad

McDonald's McHire bot exposed personal information of 64M people by using '123456' as a password in 2025

By Nathaniel Mott Published 13 July 25

Paradox's chatbot-powered service is reportedly used by 90% of McDonald's franchises in the U.S.

Czechia warns that DeepSeek can share all user information with the Chinese government

By Nathaniel Mott Published 11 July 25

U.S. lawmakers issued similar warnings after the China-based AI company released its eponymous chatbot.

Bitcoin Depot tells 27,000 crypto ATM customers that it leaked their personal information, but waited a year to disclose due to an ongoing investigation

By Nathaniel Mott Published 10 July 25

Bitcoin Depot is reportedly informing nearly 27,000 users of its crypto-dispensing ATMs that someone made off with their personal information in June 2024.

AI malware can now evade Microsoft Defender — open-source LLM outsmarts tool around 8% of the time after three months of training

By Nathaniel Mott Published 10 July 25

Researchers spent three months and approximately $1,500 training the open-source Qwen 2.5 LLM to bypass Microsoft Defender

IBM's new Power11 server chips are focused on two things: AI and ransomware

By Nathaniel Mott Published 9 July 25

The company says the new servers can detect ransomware attacks within a minute of their start.

By Nathaniel Mott Published 8 July 25

The developers behind a popular industry security tool say it has been repurposed by hackers, but blame a research group for not disclosing a vulnerability months earlier.

Hacker 'turf war' unfolding as Russian DragonForce ransomware gang drama could lead to 'double extortions,' making life even worse for potential victims

By Nathaniel Mott Published 7 July 25

Through the fire and flames they saw... a reason to pick a fight with RansomHub.

German charity refuses to comply with Bitcoin ransomware demand — hackers attempt to extort hunger-fighting group for over $2 million

By Nathaniel Mott Published 2 July 25

A German hunger-fighting charity is on the hook for some $2 million after being extorted by cybercriminals.