Articles by Nathaniel Mott, Freelance News & Features Writer

Nathaniel has been writing about various aspects of the technology industry, from startups and cybersecurity to social media and enthusiast hardware, since 2011. Lately, he spends his time writing and spending time with his family.

Articles by: Nathaniel Mott

JavaScript packages with billions of downloads were injected with malicious code in world's largest supply chain hack, geared to steal crypto — a phishing email is all it took to undermine npm packages

By Nathaniel Mott published 9 September 25

JavaScript packages with billions of downloads were compromised by an unknown threat actor looking to steal cryptocurrency.

Vehicles are checked before moving to the next stage of production at the Jaguar Land Rover factory on March 1, 2017 in Solihull, England.

Jaguar Land Rover production stopped for four days and counting due to ransomware attack, company has now officially shut down — teenaged hackers from Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters take responsibility

By Nathaniel Mott published 5 September 25

Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters is claiming responsibility for a cyberattack that has completely disrupted Jaguar Land Rover's production.

AI-powered PromptLocker ransomware is just an NYU research project — the code worked as a typical ransomware, selecting targets, exfiltrating selected data and encrypting volumes

By Nathaniel Mott published 5 September 25

ESET's discovery of the first AI-powered ransomware turned out to be an NYU research project.

100 dollar bill and 5,000 ruble bill on a map

US offers $10M reward for snitching on trio of Russians that hacked critical infrastructure

By Nathaniel Mott published 4 September 25

The U.S. Department of State offered a $10 million bounty via the Rewards for Justice program for information related to a trio of Russian hackers.

Report says North Korea is also posting fake jobs to steal crypto — because using AI to get fake employees real jobs at US tech firms wasn't enough

By Nathaniel Mott published 4 September 25

North Korea is reportedly posting fake jobs in the cryptocurrency sector as part of a bid to steal applicants' crypto assets.

Cloudflare blocks record-setting 11.5Tbps DDoS attack two months after the previous record-setting DDoS attack

By Nathaniel Mott published 3 September 25

Cloudflare said it blocked a record-setting 11.5Tbps DDoS attack that appeared to originate from Google Cloud's infrastructure.

cowboy on horse in front of American flag

Google is getting ready to 'hack back' as US considers shifting from cyber defense to offense — new 'Scam Farms' bill opens up new retaliatory hacking actions

By Nathaniel Mott published 28 August 25

Google is reportedly planning to form a "disruption unit" that will target foreign hackers.

White House reveals nebulous plans to put government data on the blockchain — 'The Department of Commerce is going to start issuing its statistics on the blockchain because you are the crypto president'

By Nathaniel Mott published 27 August 25

The White House announced plans to put statistics on 'the blockchain' for... reasons.

The first AI-powered ransomware has been discovered — "PromptLock" uses local AI to foil heuristic detection and evade API tracking [Updated]

By Nathaniel Mott published 26 August 25

Hackers finally discover a practical use for local AI models

Ransomware attack disrupts Maryland's public transit service for disabled travelers — MTA says it is investigating cybersecurity incident but core services operating normally

By Nathaniel Mott published 26 August 25

The service, Mobility, was unable to accept requests for rides or changes to already-booked rides following a ransomware attack.

Perplexity's AI-powered Comet browser leaves users vulnerable to phishing scams and malicious code injection — Brave and Guardio's security audits call out paid AI browser

By Nathaniel Mott published 25 August 25

Brave and Guardio have revealed serious vulnerabilities in the AI-powered Comet browser.

Person in jail, with data scrolling around them

Dev plants kill switch in ex-employer's network that crashed servers and deleted files, gets four years in the slammer — kill switch triggered by dev's removal from Active Directory when fired

By Nathaniel Mott published 22 August 25

A software engineer called Davis Lu was sentenced to four years in prison for creating a kill switch in his former employer's network.

China is known for its draconian control over its local Internet

China's Great Firewall blocked all traffic to a common HTTPS port for over an hour, severing connection to the outside world — with no hint as to its intention

By Nathaniel Mott published 21 August 25

Forged TCP RST+ACK packets disrupted port 443, but not common ports like 22, 80 or 8443

Popular VPN extension for Google Chrome is a security nightmare, screenshots every page users visit and sends them to anonymous developer — FreeVPN.One flagged over enormous privacy concerns

By Nathaniel Mott published 20 August 25

Koi Security discovered that the popular FreeVPN extension for Google Chrome has been silently taking screenshots of every website its users visit.

Security researcher driven by free nuggets unearths McDonald's security flaw — changing 'login' to 'register' in URL prompted site to issue plain text password for a new account

By Nathaniel Mott published 19 August 25

A security researcher called "BobDaHacker" revealed how they repeatedly gained access to a McDonald's platform that's supposed to be closed off to the public.

Report claims 'the era of AI hacking has arrived' — good and bad actors leveraging AI in cybersecurity arms race

By Nathaniel Mott published 18 August 25

The security industry and the hackers they're supposed to defend against have both increased their use of AI as publicly available agents become more capable.

Booking.com customers learn the hard way that Unicode is tricky

By Nathaniel Mott published 15 August 25

A phishing campaign targeting Booking.com users relies on a technique involving the ambiguity of Unicode characters.

Bizarre cyberattack blamed on Russia and China-linked hackers permanently breaks dozens of speed cameras in the Netherlands — authorities decline to reveal location of affected cameras, for obvious reasons

By Nathaniel Mott published 15 August 25

A hack reportedly left "dozens" of speed cameras in the Netherlands inoperable and unrecoverable.

AI's soaring energy consumption is causing skyrocketing power bills for households across the US — States reporting spikes in energy costs of up to 36%

By Nathaniel Mott published 12 August 25

Americans are footing the bill for the sheer amount of electricity required to operate the data centers responsible for providing access to AI tools and services.

Google's AI could be tricked into enabling spam, revealing a user's location, and leaking private correspondence with a calendar invite — 'promptware' targets LLM interface to trigger malicious activity

By Nathaniel Mott published 11 August 25

Google's AI could be tricked into enabling spam, revealing a user's location, and leaking private correspondence, among other things, with just a calendar invite.

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.

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