daily plain-text briefing: security, markets, business, and pittsburgh
Data extortion tore through governments and corporate giants as France's tax service and Shell disclosed intrusions, while police in Germany and Brazil arrested a crew that looted 30 million euros from Commerzbank customers.
Latest developments: France's Directorate General of Public Finances confirmed intruders reached its systems in late June after misusing someone's identity, with a hacker claiming 600,000 victims, while Shell opened an investigation after the Clop ransomware gang claimed it stole 89 gigabytes, and Scotland's Crown Office breach showed signs of spreading through its third-party supplier.
Three fresh intrusions hit major institutions: France's tax authority, oil giant Shell, and Scotland's prosecution service. Affected organizations are investigating scope and notifying regulators; individuals tied to these entities should watch for fraud and phishing.
Sources: The Record · BleepingComputer · Dark Reading · ↑ top
Latest developments: Germany's Bundeskriminalamt charged three suspects picked up in Europe and Brazil's federal police arrested four more over a scheme that abused a service-provider vulnerability to withdraw money from Commerzbank customers' accounts, totaling roughly 30 million euros.
Investigators in Germany and Brazil dismantled a cross-border ring that exploited a flaw at a payment service provider to drain Commerzbank customer accounts. Seven suspects now face fraud charges.
Sources: The Record · BleepingComputer · ↑ top
Latest developments: New York City lawmakers, musicians, and privacy advocates rallied outside Madison Square Garden to push a Ban the Scan measure curbing biometric surveillance at public venues, the same week a Meta patent surfaced describing AI glasses that use facial recognition to identify people and stitch highlight reels of a night out.
Facial recognition is expanding from ticketed venues like Madison Square Garden into wearable devices Meta is designing. Legislators and privacy groups want limits on where and how venues and vendors scan faces.
Sources: Wired Security · 404 Media · ↑ top
Latest developments: Attackers began hitting a maximum-severity SAP Commerce Cloud remote-code-execution flaw within three days of its patch, threat-intelligence firm Defused reported.
SAP Commerce Cloud is SAP's enterprise e-commerce platform. The critical remote-code-execution bug, patched three days ago, now draws active exploitation, so administrators should apply the fix at once.
Sources: BleepingComputer · ↑ top
Latest developments: SecurityWeek reported that exposed instances of Trivy, Aqua Security's open-source vulnerability scanner, drove the 2,500-organization compromise blamed on malicious LiteLLM packages, with more than 95% of victims exposed before those packages ever appeared.
A compromise first pinned on rogue LiteLLM packages actually traces to exposed Trivy scanners across roughly 2,500 organizations. Teams running Trivy should audit their deployments and rotate any exposed credentials.
Sources: SecurityWeek · ↑ top
Latest developments: Apple pushed a fresh round of Threat Notification alerts warning select iPhone owners that it detected a mercenary spyware attack aimed at their devices.
Apple periodically warns individuals it believes commercial spyware operators, the kind sold to governments, are targeting them. Recipients should enable Lockdown Mode, update iOS, and seek expert help.
Sources: BleepingComputer · ↑ top
Latest developments: The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times reported August 14 that Jane Street posted its worst month on record in July, dropping about $15 billion.
Jane Street, one of Wall Street's largest and most secretive trading firms, lost roughly $15 billion after positions tied to Leopold Aschenbrenner's hedge fund, Situational Awareness, unraveled in July's artificial-intelligence stock rout, the firm's steepest monthly loss ever and a jolt to a major provider of market liquidity.
Sources: WSJ Markets · FT World · ↑ top
Tonight: Partly Cloudy, low 65F.
Saturday: Mostly Sunny, high 86F.
Saturday Night: Slight Chance Showers And Thunderstorms then Showers And Thunderstorms Likely, low 70F.
Latest developments: Duquesne University broke ground August 14 on an 82,000-square-foot, $68 million Health Sciences facility along Forbes Avenue.
Duquesne University started building an 82,000-square-foot Health Sciences facility on Forbes Avenue, a $68 million project officials say will strengthen the university's medical reputation regionally and nationally.
Sources: TribLive · WPXI · ↑ top
Latest developments: A developer working with Switch submitted plans August 14 for a data center campus at the former Pittsburgh International Race Complex in Big Beaver Borough, Beaver County.
Switch filed plans to build a data center campus at Pitt Race, the shuttered racetrack in Big Beaver Borough, Beaver County, the latest power-hungry data center proposal drawing scrutiny across Western Pennsylvania.
Sources: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette · ↑ top
Latest developments: WPXI reported August 14 that residents of the Cloverleaf community in Carnegie joined Delmont neighbors protesting steep land-rent increases.
Residents of Cloverleaf manufactured-home communities in Carnegie and Delmont say their land rents jumped sharply, leaving fixed-income owners who lease their lots feeling stuck.
Latest developments: A judge ruled August 14 that Allegheny County voters won't decide November ballot questions on term limits for county officials.
A judge struck down ballot questions that would have let Allegheny County voters impose term limits on county council members and elected row officers, keeping the measures off the November ballot.
Sources: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette · TribLive · ↑ top
Latest developments: A state audit released August 14 found the Pennsylvania Turnpike lost at least $229 million in uncollected or unbillable tolls.
State auditors found the Pennsylvania Turnpike failed to collect at least $229 million in tolls, with the losses climbing after the system switched fully to electronic tolling in 2020.
Latest developments: The Post-Gazette reported August 14 that Pennsylvania eliminated all deputy game wardens, ending a 123-year tradition.
Pennsylvania cut its entire corps of deputy game wardens, closing out a 123-year practice of citizen volunteers assisting the state's wildlife-enforcement officers.
Sources: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette · ↑ top
Latest developments: On Footbahlin episode 135, posted August 14, Ben Roethlisberger said the Steelers' new scheme created cleaner passing windows in the preseason opener.
Ben Roethlisberger, on his Footbahlin podcast, praised the play design of the Steelers' revamped offense after the preseason opener, saying it finally looked like an NFL scoring plan rather than survival football.
Sources: Ben Roethlisberger / Channel Seven (YouTube) · ↑ top
Latest developments: The Post-Gazette reported August 14 that tight end Robert Tonyan looked like another receiving target in the preseason opener.
Veteran tight end Robert Tonyan showed he could give quarterback Aaron Rodgers another reliable receiving option, the Post-Gazette wrote after the Steelers' preseason opener against Green Bay.
Sources: Post-Gazette Steelers · ↑ top
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