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In an eye-popping investigation, Reuters has revealed that Meta had projected its 2024 advertisements for scams and banned goods would bring in about USD$16 billion or 10% of its total revenue. 

The report is based on a cache of documents reviewed by Reuters.

In one of those documents, Meta's safety staff estimated that the company's platforms were "involved" in a third of all successful scams in the US. That's a stunning figure. But we do wonder how much of that involvement is simply WhatApp being used to talk to victims. If advertisements weren't the bait that lured victims, it hardly seems fair to blame Meta for running an end-to-end encrypted messaging app. 

More than 12,000 internal documents were leaked online from Chinese security firm KnownSec.

The files were uploaded last week on GitHub by an unknown individual and later removed before the repo got any widespread circulation.

According to analyses from Mrxn and NetAskari, who got their hands on the leak, the most recent documents are from 2023. This suggests this was likely when the files were stolen/exfiltrated from the company's network, or at least someone intentionally truncated the leak to keep the most recent files for themselves.

A Russian man has pleaded guilty to hacking US companies and selling access to ransomware groups.

Aleksei Olegovich Volkov went online under the hacker name of chubaka.kor, and worked as an initial access broker (IAB) for the Yanluowang ransomware.

Volkov used various techniques to breach a corporate employee's account, escalate access to the employer's network, and then sold that access to other cyber criminals.

Law enforcement agencies from Europe, Asia, and North America have dismantled a massive credit card fraud network that stole money from users using unwanted online subscriptions.

Eighteen suspects were arrested for defrauding users of more than €300 million since 2016.

According to Europol and Eurojust, the group stole credit card data, created accounts on online websites with the stolen information, and subscribed users to premium services.

Disruptive US cyber operations against Venezuela during President Trump's first term achieved their operational goals, according to new reporting from CNN. But they failed to meet the president's broader goal of ousting Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro

Sources told CNN that during Trump's first term a CIA operation to disable the computer network of Maduro's intelligence service was perfectly successful. A separate Cyber Command operation interrupted the satellite communications of Wagner Group mercenaries who were sent to Venezuela to protect Maduro.   

This adds to previous reporting from Wired late last year that revealed the CIA had temporarily disrupted the Venezuelan military's payroll system in the same campaign. 

The US Department of Justice has charged employees at two cybersecurity firms with hacking US companies and deploying ransomware.

According to court documents, charges have been levied against Kevin Tyler Martin, a former ransomware negotiator at DigitalMint, and Ryan Clifford Goldberg, a former incident response manager at cybersecurity company Sygnia.

The two worked with a third suspect to hack into US companies, steal their data, encrypt computers, and then ask for huge ransoms in the realm of millions of US dollars.

Oslo's public transportation agency conducted a security audit of its electric buses and, to nobody's surprise, found that its Chinese models could be remotely disabled by their manufacturer.

According to a report from local newspaper Aftenposten, the agency, Ruter, tested and took two electric bus models inside a Faraday cage room.

Ruter found that electric buses from Chinese company Yutong could be remotely disabled via remote control capabilities found in the bus software, diagnostics module, and battery and power control systems.

Russian authorities have arrested three individuals believed to have created and sold the Meduza infostealer.

The suspects were arrested this week in the Moscow metropolitan area, according to Russia's Interior Ministry. A video from the raids is available on the Ministry's media portal.

The Ministry's spokesperson, Irina Volk, said the malware was used in attacks against at least one government network in the Astrakhan region.

The former general manager of a US defence contractor, Peter Williams, has pleaded guilty to selling "eight sensitive and protected cyber-exploit components" to Russian 0day broker Operation Zero*.

The broker claims to buy exploits from developers and resell them to non-NATO buyers, including the Russian government.

Williams, an Australian national, was previously employed by Australia's signals intelligence agency ASD, from around 2007 to the mid-2010s. He later joined Linchpin Labs, which was acquired alongside Azimuth Security to form what eventually became L3Harris Trenchant, the vulnerability and exploit development subsidiary of L3Harris. By the time of his arrest, Williams had become the general manager there.

The company that formed from the remnants of Italian spyware vendor HackingTeam is now allegedly involved in hacking all sorts of private and public sector targets in Belarus and Russia.

Memento Labs has targeted media outlets, universities, research centers, government organizations, financial institutions, and other organizations.

The company operates a spyware platform named Dante, through which it deploys infrastructure, exploits, and its final payload—the LeetAgent implant/agent.