Joe Tidy BBC News
@joetidy
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Cyber Correspondent at BBC News. Not posting here much. Find me on https://t.co/jikJY3J3r1
Joined September 2008
Partly because of this story and many others like it, I'm not going to post much on Twitter anymore. I'll be on Bluesky and Threads. Still on here for DMs etc.
In case you needed any reminding of how much Twitter's 'verification' system has changed, see this from Fahima Abdulrahman and myself:
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I’m on a flight in US and an old lady has caused confusion, hilarity and then amazement as the crew expected her to be an infant. She is actually 101 and the computer can’t handle an age that high so just put her down as a 1 year old on the manifest. She laughed it off. Legend.
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This lovely old lady is like a walking Millennium Bug just casing havoc where she goes with her computer-befuddling age. What a hero.
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It gets better! Her daughter tells me this is the second time a computer has failed to believe her mum’s 1922 date of birth. Earlier on their connecting flight the crew didn’t come and help them off the plane with a wheelchair as the records showed she would be a babe in arms 🙃.
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Congratulations to the two lads who sneakily ruined my best piece to camera from a recent filming assignment in Germany. Honestly I’m not even mad, this is inspired. Didn’t even spot it until in the edit. 👏 👏 👏 😂
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NEW: Anonymous: How hackers are trying to undermine Putin. I spoke directly to 5 of the main Anon groups about their ‘cyber war’ on Putin and why they are escalating their attacks in the coming days.
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It's incredible that AI systems built largely by young men are getting really good at drawing beautiful women. But struggling with basics like fire safety.
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This video shows probably the most eye-catching thing Anonymous has done so far - a 'broadcast signal intrusion' on Russian TV. Almost all channels were made to play Ukraine war footage. I was sceptical it happened but spoke to the original source of the video and confirmed it.
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BREAK: Julius Kivimaki AKA Zeekill sentenced to 6 years & 3 months in prison after hacking and blackmailing 30,000 therapy patients with their stolen notes. One of the cruellest cyber attacks ever. Zeekill's imprisonment ends a near 10 year cyber crime spree started as a teen.
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Inside the largest and closest mosque to the Grenfell Tower. What a response. Some people have driven down from Leicester to help.
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I’m at a London event billed as the ‘unveiling of the true legal identity of Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto’. An odd set up to the press conference as the organiser asked me to pay £500 to attend and appear on stage to ask questions of the billionaire mystery man.
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Jennifer Lawrence nude photo hacker jailed for eight months. George Garofano accessed 200 iCloud accounts with a phishing attack.
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Two observations I expand upon in this piece - .Anonymous has probably never been bigger with groups around the world rallying to the Ukraine cause and the collective. And their tactics have evolved from disrupting & embarrassing their target to speaking direct to Russia people.
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Telegram repeatedly refused to join child protection schemes. The BBC has learned that Telegram - whose boss has been arrested in France - refuses to join international programmes aimed at detecting and removing child abuse material online.
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This an extraordinary response to a ransomware attack. And a commendable one. - Good backup systems in place ✅.- Transparent with the public ✅.- Not paying hackers ✅.- Release the ransom note fo researchers! ✅. 💪🤖 @CDPROJEKTRED.
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BREAKING: Oxford teen accused of being multi-millionaire cyber-criminal as police arrest 7 teenagers linked to the Lapsus$ gang.
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He actually does though!! He’s had some training for sure. Throws down better than most people you see in the gym. 💣 🔥 🥊.
The heir to the throne Prince William knows how to pack a punch and is showing off his boxing skills in Stratford #royals #princewilliam #royalfamily @KensingtonRoyal
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@ruskin147 Mr Mollah is showing a series of easy to fake screenshots. I asked if he will move some of the Genesis bitcoins to finally prove he is Satoshi. He said he will in the next few months. I have left the conference.
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SEC just fined 4 cyber firms millions for deliberately misleading the public about the infamous SolarWinds cyber attack incident in 2020. Unisys, CheckPoint, Mimecast, Avaya failed to admit they too had been breached in the huge espionage attack allegedly carried about by Russia
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The 15yr old millionaire Fortnite player Jaden Ashman and his mum Lisa Dallman. He came second with his teammate on the duos and will split $2.25m! His mum says accepting him as an e-sports player has been very hard and she’s even thrown out an X-Box in past!! #FortniteWorldCup
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Video game culture is fascinating. A streamer has been trying to get his 100th win on Fortnite for nearly 5hrs. He's stuck on 99. 150k people are watching. Fans are 'stream sniping' him (gatecrashing his game) to attack whilst others are protecting him.
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‘Satoshi’ and his organiser cannot get their laptop working so are doing the event offline for now.
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The internet really is marvellous. The two teen boys who pranked me have just contacted me on Insta to say 'sorry if we caused you any inconvenience'! I told them: 'yes you did but you gave us a big laugh too so fair play!'.
Congratulations to the two lads who sneakily ruined my best piece to camera from a recent filming assignment in Germany. Honestly I’m not even mad, this is inspired. Didn’t even spot it until in the edit. 👏 👏 👏 😂
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We just posted this around our street. So important - a friend did the same nearby today and an elderly lady phoned her immediately in tears saying she really needed a prescription collected, but all her friends were also elderly and she didn’t know what to do. She got help. 😁
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BREAKING: A London court has found 2 teenagers from the UK carried out a hacking spree as part of the international cyber crime gang Lapsus$. The hacks of Nvidia, Uber, Revolut and most famously Rockstar Games shocked the cyber security word in 2021/22.
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NEW: Spam website set up to reach millions of Russians. More than 22m emails about the war have been sent by volunteers to random Russian email addresses. The Norwegian who set it up tells me it’s “a modern version of dropping leaflets from planes”.
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Very interesting - NCA says that whilst searching through seized servers of LockBit they found data belonging to some victims who had already paid the gang's ransom. So - more evidence that paying these criminals does not mean that your data is deleted as they promise.
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Evil Corp: 'My hunt for the world's most wanted hackers'. Many people on the FBI's Cyber Most Wanted list are Russian. If they left Russia they'd be arrested but at home they appear to be given free rein. Me and @skazal_on went to try to find them
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BREAKING: 2 of the 7 teenagers arrested in connection with a police investigation into the Lapsus$ hacking group have been charged. A 16yr-old and 17yr-old charged and remain in police custody. Both charged with multiple counts unauthorised access to a computers. More to come.
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A man called Stephen Mollah has taken to the stage. He claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto - the mystery inventor of Bitcoin. He’s claimed this before and is currently in legal dispute about it. He will now provide evidence, he says.
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The job layoffs keep coming in cyber security with Proofpoint, Rapid7 and Secureworks announcing mass job cuts in the last few months. But I’ll give it 3 months until the press releases start complaining again about a ‘skills shortage crisis’ in cyber.
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Scene at a mosque near Grenfell Tower. More and more supplies arriving. Food for everyone and beds laid out. Incredible support.
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‘Microsoft killed my online life after I called Gaza.’ We spoke to 20 Palestinians living abroad who say Microsoft, which owns Skype, kicked them off the app and their email accounts after calling home. “My email was 15 years old, I’ve lost everything”
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@alwaystry2bfair @SkyNews I am alive and well! Face has been washed, clothes and hair - not so much!
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Some of documents we’ve seen are marked as NATO SECRET - the second highest security label. I also learned that the highest rating of NATO classification has a hilariously geeky name:
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Personal news: extremely excited to be (re)joining the BBC as its first ever full-time Cyber Security Specialist. Leaving Sky News in a couple of weeks after 5 brilliant years. Looking forward to investigating cyber issues for the World Service and other outlets. Start late Oct!.
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We’ve made a ‘5 Minutes On’ podcast about this too. You can hear from Squad 303 in their own words and find out how I verified the TV hack.
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NEW: Microsoft has reversed its irreversible decision to ban scores of Palestinians from their email and Skype accounts. The people affected by the moderation error were told the decision was final. But then myself and @shpanda9 reported on it and their accounts are now restored.
Our story for the BBC today - Microsoft destroyed my online life after I called Gaza. Played on BBC News Channel every hour today if you caught it. With @joetidy & @GolnooshGolshan
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A bizarre one from Reading courts - an IT Security worker pleads guilty to piggy-backing off a cyber attack against his own firm. Liles switched the ransom payment details to his own Bitcoin wallet and changed the hacker's email to secretly apply pressured on bosses to pay up.
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EXCLUSIVE: Disney shuts down all unofficial versions of its former hit childrens' game Club Penguin after BBC investigation finds 'appalling' activity. Kids being exposed to 'penguin e-sex', racism, anti-Semitism. #clubpenguin #CPO
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Bernard is back! War veteran has returned to his care home from Normandy D-Day events to flags and cheers from staff. http://t.co/XFwGAAwGdS.
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Confirmed by Facebook. These 2 breaches in 2019 were indeed separate. So there was one in April that led to 500m users data exposed and another in September (the one we are all taking about now) which was initially 400m users. 🤯.
But hang on. Facebook says this 'old breach' relates to this September 2019 case. So am I right in thinking that there were two separate Facebook data breaches in 2019 involving hundreds of millions of customer records? I literally can't keep up.
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Trump Twitter ‘hack’: Police accept attacker's claim. Dutch prosecutors have found a hacker did successfully log in to Donald Trump's Twitter account by guessing his password - "MAGA2020!"
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This is very significant. But we can’t say why because of reporting restrictions….
On the evening of Thursday 22 September 2022, the City of London Police arrested a 17-year-old in Oxfordshire on suspicion of hacking, as part of an investigation supported by the @NCA_UK’s National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU). He remains in police custody.
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Why is it so rare to hear about Western cyber-attacks? A hack that took over iPhones at a Russian tech firm is being blamed on US government hackers. Could the attack and the response be rewriting the narrative of the ‘good guys and bad guys’ of cyber?
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Only 3 days in and Fortnite has raised more money than some countries for Ukraine. I think the most of any private company in the world too. Still 10 days left of this unbelievable campaign.
As of today, we’ve raised $50 million USD together in humanitarian relief funds to support people affected by the war in Ukraine. To see more about how the funds are being distributed visit
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Here’s me and @KasiaMadera talking about the unprecedented hacking we are seeing from Anonymous and other pro-Ukraine groups .
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🧵State of play in the social media info wars between Russia and Silicon Valley:. YouTube (Alphabet) has demonetised and algorithmically demoted Russian state-owned media “in light of extraordinary circumstances in Ukraine”. Russia is demanding 'access' to its channels returned.
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This is wrong. Heathrow tells me everything is running fine. BA has 'had IT issues' but apparently under control. Waiting for confirmation from BA but good reporters who've checked say it's just an IT issue.
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Scene in MGM Grand according to a TikTok user who said slots machines down and casino floor empty after cyber attack. She also says staff had to make and distribute physical room keys and an admin error caused her to walk in on another guest. Source:
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Incredible work by @kaspersky researchers on this saga. They discover an apparent US espionage attack on their own staff. Then find and help Apple patch not 1, not 2, but 3 major vulnerabilities to protect users around the world from the attacks.
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Prosecution: “Rashid’s suggestions included injecting poison into ice creams stocked in super market freezers and targeting #PrinceGeorge as he attended his first day of school.”.
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BREAKING: 7 Russians have been named as being behind some of the most infamous cyber crime groups of recent years. The UK’s FCO has sanctioned the alleged members of notorious gangs Conti and Ryuk which have hacked 149 British organisations according to UK authorities.
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I'm sat in a restaurant in Paris and a guy next to me is on a very serious conference call about a major ongoing databreach at his company. Trying not to drop any eaves but it is hard! 👂You never know who you're sat next to!.
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Judge now praising Muslim Welfare House Imam Mohamed Mahmoud, the man who stopped people beating Osborne and told an "angry crowd of about 100 people to not seek vengeance. this shows true leadership." #FinsburyPark.
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So hard to keep up with and crucially, verify all the DDoSing, defacing and leaking taking place. It might not be 'cYB3r W4r' but it is certainly cyber chaos right now.
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@ruskin147 Tried to film the demonstration but it doesn’t seem to be forthcoming. Here’s Mr Mollah:
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In case you're lost, here's all Facebook's data breaches that affected more than 1m users. - June 2013: 6m users.- 2016: 90m (Cambridge A).- May 2018: 14m .- Sept 2018: 50m.- March 2019: 600m.- April 2019: 540m .- Sept 2019: 419m.- Dec 2019: 309m . What were they doing in 2019?.
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BREAK: Ongoing NHS cyber attack confirmed as being ransomware. IT firm Advanced says 7 of its products used by health services are disrupted and it could take 4 weeks to recover. Firm not saying what data hackers have or if they are negotiating.
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Yesterday I got a tip (thanks - you know who you are) about IHG Hotel Group being hacked. I contacted the company and they claimed to know nothing about it. They’ve just disclosed it to the London Stock Exchange…
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Prosecution laying out their case against Rachid: “He provided an unstoppable and hatefilled flow of encouragement for others to commit acts of terror. attacks with vehicles, explosive devices, bombs, chemicals, any attack you can imagine one person committing on their own.”.
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Interesting shift appearing to happen. China is now starting to publicly attribute cyber attacks to US. 2 stories so far this month in the Global Times about western nation-state hacking:
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In November last year I travelled to Russia to try to track down and speak to alleged members of the hacking group Evil Corp. We travelled thousands of miles and got close, but ultimately, we failed. But perhaps I should have gone to Sochi. 🧵
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(I, of course, paid nothing to attend this event by the way).
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I'm at the long-delayed sentencing of GTA hacker Arion Kurtaj and his 17 year old accomplice who joined him on a hacking spree of tech giants last year for the Lapsus gang. For the first time during the court case Kurtaj is appearing via video link.
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BREAK: The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has fined Clearview AI Inc £7,552,800 for using images of people in the UK collected from the web. The ICO has also issued an enforcement notice, ordering the company to stop obtaining and using the personal data of UK residents.
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I was just described by a radio presenter as “the BBC’s Cider Security Correspondent”. 🍻 🙃🤣 #careergoals.
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Walmer road near Grenfell Tower. Hundreds of people still helping. Donations still coming. Piled 5ft high in places.
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Romania's ongoing hospital ransomware attack is getting worse. Cyber security centre said last night that 21 hospitals have had computers encrypted. A chidren's hospital was the first to get hit but now it's spread. Computers in 79 other medical facilities have been unplugged
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At Wembley Stadium where a replica of the Truce Statue has been erected for the EnglandVGermany friendly on the eve of remembrance weekend.
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@ruskin147 Journalists (including myself) have interrupted Mr Mollah’s long backstory and asked for him to show the promised evidence. Been here nearly an hour and people are restless and increasingly rude. Mr Mollah’s cheek is twitching rapidly as he stares down a sceptical crowd.
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Nice moment. Parade pauses at London Fire Station to praise and cheer firefighters. "These people saved so many". #carnival2017 #Grenfell
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France bans not just TikTok but ALL social media/ gaming apps from government devices. Feels like a landmark moment in data privacy. “No recreational apps have sufficiently robust security for them to be deployed on government-owned devices.”
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Someone from the prestigious Front Line Club where this event is being held has interrupted to insist that Charles makes it clear that this not an affiliated or endorsed event for the club. A reporter has walked out.
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Just had this confirmed by Coop Sweden - roughly 500 stores closed due to this cyber attack. It's taken point of sale tills offline as well as self-service checkouts.
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Despite the signs, the donations keep coming by foot, taxi and bike. Incredible support here for victims of Grenfell Tower fire.
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NEW: The mysterious 'Robin Hood' hackers donating stolen money. Darkside hackers claim to have extorted millions of dollars from companies, but say they now want to "make the world a better place". A strange first for cyber-crime that's puzzling experts.
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Organiser Charles Anderson takes to the stage. Says he’s only had 2 hours sleep in 48hrs since they announced this event. Been bombarded with calls from all over the world. He also claims to have invented ‘energy recovery systems’ in cars. And the show Britain’s Got Talent.
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Putting finishing touches to a report for tomorrow about a 19 yr old hacker who’s made a $1m. legally. A rare positive story about a teen hacker. Santiago Lopez is the first bug bounty hunter to hit the money milestone on @Hacker0x01 by finding 1600 different 🐛s! #hacking
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Metropolitan Police confirm one man involved in the website @_CPOnline has been arrested on suspicion of possession of indecent images of children and possession of indecent images of children. The man from London is on bail pending further enquiries.
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SCOOP on the IHG hotels hack: 'Vindictive' couple deleted hotel chain data for fun. Cyber crime couple from Vietnam launched destructive wiper attack deleting huge amounts of data after defenders foiled their ransomware attempt.
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Confirmed: influential hacker forum Raid Forums was seized by US/ Europol. The site mysteriously went offline last month and now cops confirm they were involved. Another big hit to cyber crime in what is proving to be a stellar 2022 for enforcement.
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If the windows outage is indeed a bug in Crowdstrike cyber security products it would be something we’ve not seen yet. Insurers would have a headache as the organisations affected did the *right* thing by having cyber protection which led to today’s disaster. Ouch.
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Bounty hunter hackers earn more than $40m thanks to pandemic boost. HackerOne saw 9 new hackers cross the £1m earnings mark in 2020. Other platforms also saw massive growth thanks to lockdowns and an abundance of bugs from corporations rushing to digitise
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Prosecution says Rashid was in contact with Omar Ali Hussain, the high profile jihadi who was a Morrison’s security guard from High Wycombe. Now in Syria with IS. #PrinceGeorgeTerror
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At Royal Courts of Justice to find out if this couple have won the right to have a civil partnership. They've campaigned for 3yrs.
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Hackers accessed the FTSE 100 firm's most critical databases after finding the login for the companies password vault. The password for the vault was extremely weak: Qwerty1234.
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Police bust 'world's biggest' video-game-cheat operation. Roughly $76m (£55m) in revenue was made by the organisation which charged a subscription fee to clients. Police seized assets worth $46m, including several luxury cars.
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$600m Crypto hacker is still going on the Q n As and is now offering a gift/ reward to any hackers who can identify him. He seems to be enjoying drip-feeding clues about himself and says it's 'a game'.
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Installed in my new newsroom! Day 1 as the BBC’s first dedicated Cyber Security Reporter. Looking for things to investigate worldwide around cybercrime, hacking, data handling and internet safety. Get in touch! (Encrypted channels coming ASAP).
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