Champion ethical hacker warns AI tools like Mythos will make competing harder. Valentina 'Chompie' Palmiotti won $70,000 for finding 2 serious bugs at the prestigious Pwn2Own Berlin contest. She said she had to enter full 'zombie hacker mode' to work through the night www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

If Mr Farage wants people to believe his phone was hacked by hostile actors “almost certainly linked to Moscow”, normal practice would be for the experts who examined the phone to be named (or at least their company) alongside some published technical evidence 1/2 www.dailymail.com/news/article...

I’ve dealt with several thousand cyber incidents over the past 5 years, and currently lead a global emerging threat team. Amount of those being GenAI incidents: zero. Amount being foundational causes: every single one.

Great round up of the intrigues and newslines from the Musk vs Altman trial here from @lilyjamali.bsky.social www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Canvas hack: company pays criminals to delete students' stolen data. "While there is never complete certainty when dealing with cyber criminals, we believe it was important to take every step within our control," the company said. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The criminals have offered “assurance”. Ffs Also they’ve offered assurance that no one will be extorted. They haven’t mentioned not selling on the data for scams

As my mum always helpfully reminds me - [in a Dudley accent] "cyber is bloody boring!". But I spoke to a student who's exam was literally interrupted by the Canvas hack and it was one of those rare visual incidents that make you sit up and take notice: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Instagram privacy tech is turned off today - what does this mean for your DMs? I'm reporting on this change today across BBC News. A small change to users but a major shift in policy for Meta as it abandons the much heralded end to end encryption future. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Did you see the viral video of President Zelenskyy claiming that Ukraine had, for the first time, taken territory from Russia using battlefield robots and no human soldiers? It's a landmark moment that we decided to explore in this YouTube video: youtu.be/l-XpuKcIlV8?...

[In old man voice] 👨‍🦳 "They get younger every year". www.theregister.com/2026/04/30/f...

As a reporter I don't follow the Top of the Pops rankings of ransomware crews and my perception was wrong about some of the groups fading away. According to Europol these are the top groups: 1. Qilin 2. Akira 3. LockBit (still refusing to die) 4. DragonForce www.europol.europa.eu/cms/sites/de...

On the train back from Glasgow and saw this guy’s amazing sticker. Of course he was at CyberUK. And of course it’s always DNS.

Great to have the BBC's @joetidy.bsky.social join me on this week's "Smashing Security" podcast! * How a firm that ran anonymous tip lines for 35,000 American schools, boasted it had never been breached in over 20 years, only for a hacker called Internet Yiff Machine to put them to the test...

Just found my fav headline about Claude Mythos. The hysteria is like nothing I have experienced before in my decade+ of covering cyber.

This won't get as much attention as the scary articles and industry commentary we've seen lately but NCSC's head giving a more upbeat take on Claude Mythos today. In Richard Horne's speech at CyberUK he'll be attempting to calm the hysteria with a glass half full take www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Tyler Buchanan, a Scottish Scattered Spider hacker has pleaded guilty to conspiring to hack the computers of at least a dozen companies and to steal $8m crypto from individuals. I wrote about his arrest in my book. Looks like we have our 2nd SS conviction now... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

🤩 My book has been chosen as a 'Best True Crime Book of 2026' by Crime Reads! 'Essential nonfiction explorations of cultural flashpoints, historic mysteries, and contemporary tragedies.' 📖 crimereads.com/best-true-cr...

More warnings to Booking. com customers after a new data breach is making it easier than ever for fraudsters to carry out 'reservation hijack scams'. The company has reset passwords and is asking customers to be extra alert but customers already being scammed. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Journalists know that losing the Wayback Machine would be a nightmare: www.wired.com/story/the-in...

GTA-maker Rockstar Games hacked again but downplays impact. Rockstar says there will be no impact on its business as the hackers ShinyHunters tell me they will publish data soon. Hack comes just a few years after infamous Lapsus$ breach. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Just read a convincing debunk of the New York Times investigation that claims Adam Back is the inventor of Bitcoin - Satoshi Nakamoto. It's a newsletter so I can't share the link but the article details the reasons why the NYT is probably wrong. But then it ends with the attached sentence...

Electronic Frontier Foundation is quitting X - but not for the normal 'moral/ ethical' reasons we often hear about. The actual reason is even more interesting - they don't see it as worth it anymore. The platform doesn't get the reach they used to get. www.theverge.com/tech/909550/...

Iranian ‘hacktivist’ group Handala calling a cyber ceasefire on their Telegram now. Not against Israel though. Also interesting to see the language as it really spells out that these are not volunteer hackers acting alone. They are not hiding their links to the regime very well…

Great fun chatting about my book and teenage hackers with @johnhammond.bsky.social on his YouTube channel. Fascinating to hear John's own experience as a teen and how he stayed on the right path in cyber! youtu.be/GUzD_ShRKYE?...

Brit says he is not elusive Bitcoin creator named by New York Times. Another 'Satoshi is unmasked' story - they are every six months or so! This time it's a lengthy (and compelling) NYT's story about Adam Back. But Back replied to me on Twitter with his rebuttal: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Anthropic's 'Project Glasswing' is an interesting tool for cyber security - but also another SUPERB marketing strategy from these AI firms... www.anthropic.com/glasswing

What a headline. What a story. Gotta love science!! sc.mp/p1ex3?utm_so...

Hah! Nice subscribers gift from Wired.

A day after this FBI Director hack, Handala is now claiming to have hacked a large US supermarket called Good Food Store. It's a bit of a random attack but it gets better - I called Good Food Store and the confused front desk employee said everything is normal!

The group chat is making fun of me today.

For this week's Tech Decoded newsletter I wrote about the big crypto news that almost got lost with the Iran War and everything else that's going on. The 20 millionth coin has been mined - what a moment! I have always found Bitcoin utterly fascinating. www.bbc.co.uk/newsletters/...

Exclusive: Child seen in sex abuse videos identified after researcher spots school badge. An uplifting story in a usually horrible area of news. It was incredible to speak to 'Mabel' the IWF analyst who found the girl after years of seeing her in predator content. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

-Meta disrupts Mexican cartels -Instagram will disable support for E2EE DMs -New Chinese APT targets militaries across SE Asia -Supply chain attack at AppsFlyer -Kazakhstan APT spies on neighbors water infrastructure Podcast: risky.biz/RBNEWS538/ Newsletter: news.risky.biz/risky-bullet...

'Human-made', 'AI Free', 'Proudly Human', 'No AI Used'. Have you seen any of these types of disclaimers and boasts on films, books, websites and other products lately? There's a growing race on to establish globally recognised 'AI-free' logo. My latest story for BBC: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

We did a Global News Pod about this too which is up now: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4En8...

What role has cyber warfare played in Iran? I look at what we are being told, and what we're NOT being told. And ask - where is Iran in the cyber fight? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

What role has cyber warfare played in Iran? I look at what we are being told, and what we're not being told. And ask - where is Iran? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I was waiting for this kind of scare mongering but good grief this is bad.

Bizarre story from City of London Police. A man has been jailed for assaulting a colleague whilst wrapped in a bedsheet to hide his identity. The perp - Javier De Brito Jardim - forgot that London has cameras everywhere that caught him getting into and out of his bizarre cartoon ghost costume...

Decent payday for the security researcher who hacked all those robot vacuums! 👏 www.theverge.com/news/890982/...

"At the time the company only disclosed that "some" customers had been affected, but has now confirmed that millions of people had their personal data taken." Well, TEN MILLION is "some" I suppose... yikes, TFL. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... via @joetidy.bsky.social

TfL hack in 2024 affected around 10m people, BBC can reveal. I was contacted by someone who shared the hacked database and was stunned by this. TfL only ever said that 'some' people were affected which of course affects the media/public response and attention that we give to a hack lnkd.in/e3q27fXh

New from me: TikTok won't protect DMs with controversial privacy tech, saying it would put users at risk. This came about from a safety briefing at TikTok where execs say a deliberate decision was taken to protect users, especially young ones from grooming & other harm www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Great transparency here. Told the customers how many are impacted, give good advice about what to do and publicly refused to pay hackers. www.theregister.com/2026/02/27/o...

Funniest book signing request yet: Reader: "can you do a special message to my boss Richard please?" Me: "sure, whatever you like"......

ANOTHER twist in the story of the Vastaamo hack (the focus of my book Ctrl+Alt+Chaos) - the Finnish Court of Appeal has rejected Kivimaki's appeal to be aquited of the hack and INCREASED his sentence. He might now have to go back to prison. But no one knows where is is. Again... yle.fi/a/74-20211792

First 2 mins of my book. Sit back and 🧘‍♂️

Some more excellent E&T books out in paperback this year - all now available with 25% off with code FEB26 on the @waterstones.bsky.social website! 📖 Ctrl+ Alt+ Chaos by @joetidy.bsky.social 📚 Just F**king Say It by Susie Ashfield 📖 Our Last Resort by Clémence Michallon Pre-order: bit.ly/4rlYNDA

AI coding platform's flaws allow BBC reporter (me) to be hacked. The BBC has been shown a significant - and unfixed - cyber-security risk in popular AI coding platform Orchids. The case highlights the potential risks of the ongoing vibe-coding gold rush. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...