ICYMI: Last year, Security Minister Dan Jarvis pledged the government would introduce a statutory defense protecting cybersecurity researchers from the extremely broad prohibitions of the Computer Misuse Act. Researchers say the plans, which we revealed here, don't do much protecting at all ⤵️

Scoop: We can reveal the details of the UK's planned Computer Misuse Act reform: ▶️ A statutory defence will only cover scanning internet-facing systems ▶️ Activity must stop once vulnerability is found ▶️ Only available to UK nationals accredited by Cyber Security Council (currently about 300 people)

Cheshire & Warrington is the most southern part of the North geographically, but also economically? Warrington was recently cited as such by the Guardian. As shown below it also has the highest productivity rate across the North. (See Substack link below for clickable maps) 🧵 1/4

Scoop: An attack exploiting a previously unknown vulnerability in Huawei enterprise router software caused a nationwide telecoms outage in Luxembourg last year, according to multiple sources briefed on the matter, disrupting mobile, landline and emergency communications for more than three hours.

One league title and one FA Cup?

Huawei has not explained why no CVE has been issued for the vulnerability that caused Luxembourg’s nationwide telecoms outage. Ten months later, it remains unclear whether the vuln was ever fully patched, how many operators may have been exposed or whether similar systems remain vulnerable today.

ICYMI

Scoop: An attack exploiting a previously unknown vulnerability in Huawei enterprise router software caused a nationwide telecoms outage in Luxembourg last year, according to multiple sources briefed on the matter, disrupting mobile, landline and emergency communications for more than three hours.

A brief break from news posts because we've just missed the 49th anniversary of this paper, which explains how the universe could end at literally any moment. We wouldn't, and couldn't, see it coming - the laws of physics would just ✨change✨ Paper: www2.physik.uni-muenchen.de/lehre/vorles...

New: The British government announced Wednesday it will rewrite key cybercrime laws after years of warnings that outdated legislation was hindering security researchers and weakening the country’s cyber defenses.

Microsoft on Tuesday issued patches for more than 130 security vulnerabilities, putting it on pace to break its own annual record, with the company's security leadership acknowledging that AI tools are driving a surge in vulnerability discovery across the industry.

I believe there is an audience for this hilarious line and that's who I want to follow me. If you haven't laughed at it, if you haven't immediately shared it on the several UK cyber and natsec policy group chats you're in, then I don't want you to read any of my skeets ever again.

TPIMs for e-crims

New: A British utilities company supplying drinking water to 1.6 million people failed to discover hackers hidden inside its computer network for nearly two years before the intrusion came to light through an IT performance slowdown, the UK's data protection regulator has found.

Poland’s domestic intelligence service said attackers breached water treatment facilities in five towns in 2025, in some cases gaining access to industrial control systems that could have disrupted water supplies.

Australia announced Monday it is establishing a board to conduct independent reviews following major cyberattacks, joining a small number of other jurisdictions that have created similar programs.

It's taken me far too long to try mashed avocado with a dash of soy sauce in a chicken and rice salad bowl 😚🤌 Yes, I could have let the rice steam dry more but it didn't really change things at all.

Britain’s cyber agency warned Friday that organizations should prepare for a surge of urgent software updates as artificial intelligence accelerates the discovery of security flaws, raising the risk of widespread exploitation.

Another to add to the growing list of AI-assisted vulnerability discoveries: Security researchers and European cybersecurity officials are urging administrators to address the risk posed by Copy Fail, a newly discovered security flaw that has been hiding in the Linux kernel for nearly a decade.

One of my colleagues has recently received a warning by Google: Hackers were trying to infiltrate their inbox. Comes after an investigation into Beijing’s tactics to threaten, coerce and intimidate regime critics overseas. Here's the link to the German story www.derstandard.at/story/300000...

Sounds like a really interesting talk at Black Hat Asia!

This is a truly watershed assessment. Dutch military intelligence believes China has, as of 2025, drawn level with the United States in offensive cyber capabilities, leading to a situation where only a fraction of Chinese operations against Dutch interests are ever detected...

New: Britain's cybersecurity chief warned Tuesday that the country is handling four nationally significant cyber incidents every week, with the majority now traced back to hostile foreign governments rather than criminal hackers.

I'm quite sorry not to be at Cyber UK this week, but thoroughly enjoying General Sir Rob Magowan's aiguillette on his No1s.

Sure am looking forward to flying to southern Europe in a few weeks time to get away from this news cycle.

Ukrainian authorities have dismantled a so-called “bot farm” that police say was supplying thousands of fake social media accounts to Russian intelligence services for use in disinformation campaigns against Ukraine. ✍️ @darynant.bsky.social

This is just crazy. What are we seeing here? Some kind of spontaneous domestic terror threat, or something more akin to Russia's gig economy saboteurs being organised and coordinated online by a hostile state hell-bent on terrorising British Jews?

Breaking: Elon Musk has failed to appear for police questioning in France, the Paris prosecutor's office has confirmed. He was to be questioned about X producing and distributing child sexual abuse material.

ICYMI: Nearly two years on from the devastating ransomware attack affecting hospitals in South East London, the ongoing - yes, ongoing - impact to blood testing has led to more than 120 patient safety incidents in which incorrect, unavailable or delayed pathology results have impacted care.

NEW: More than 18 months after a ransomware attack disrupted care at hospitals in South East London, internal documents show at least one NHS trust is still working without fully restored systems and managing large backlogs of delayed test results.

Pope Leo XIV quoting Bob Dylan?

NEW: The British government warned businesses in an open letter Wednesday to strengthen their cyber defenses, reinforcing longstanding guidance as concern grows over how advances in artificial intelligence could reshape the threat landscape.

Hot damn. This is fascinating. “It appeared on a single machine in the United Kingdom, ran for about a year, and disappeared... Was it a targeted operation that achieved its objective and was burned? A test deployment that was abandoned? A contractor's proof of concept? We don't know.”

This paper represents a small but deeply impressive and genuinely important achievement by the much maligned British state in what is probably the most important global issue of our era. Hear me out ( 🧵) 1/ www.aisi.gov.uk/blog/our-eva...

While I'm on my soapbox, humanoid robots are also not going to happen. Why do we need robots to be humanoid? Are we expecting some kind of general-purpose robot? Where's the economic benefit? Feels like more of that weird Muskified futurism that will dissolve when its adherents go outside again.

“Humanoid robot able to steal money from bank vault when alarm turned off, vault equipped with basic locks, there are no guards or active responders trying to stop it, and the bank vault is designed to be freely accessible to humanoid robots.”

Great headline and story in El País: elpais.com/espana/2026-...

Please share your favourite newspaper corrections.

“The FSB said the man, a resident of Chita in eastern Siberia who was born in 1960, had supplied information via Telegram to Ukrainian intelligence on a local print publication and about a ⁠critical infrastructure object in the region.” Anecdote #924 indicating Russian access to Telegram chats.

Is there any confirmation about whether this Russian activity was around data cables in the GIUK Gap (I don't think there are any pipelines there) or energy infrastructure in the North Sea (which isn't really north of the United Kingdom)?

New: Days before polls open in Hungary’s closely-watched parliamentary elections, the social media platform TikTok said it removed covert networks attempting to sway the result — highlighting concerns about disinformation ahead of a consequential vote.

A cyberattack on a centralized school IT network in Northern Ireland has disrupted access to educational systems for hundreds of thousands of students, with authorities still working to fully restore services and determine whether any personal data was compromised.

Really valuable framing of “transparency as a strategic requirement, not just a challenge to be overcome,” in this paper by Riam Kim-Mcleod. It’s specific to the UK’s National Cyber Force but I think should ring true across many security and intelligence organisations.

ICYMI: A newly-proposed cybercrime service is promising to turn stolen data from ransomware attacks into a more profitable commodity, raising fresh concerns about whether hackers could begin systematically exploiting at scale the enormous volume of personal information they have hoarded.

NEW: The European Commission on Monday sought to play down the impact of a cyberattack on parts of its public web infrastructure, saying there was no evidence its internal systems had been compromised and suggesting the data obtained by hackers may already be in the public domain.

Interesting from @jgreig.bsky.social, w/ confirmation of "historical" data from FBI. Imagine attempting to conduct hostile operations in the U.S. and **you have access to the personal email account** of the counterintelligence agency's director. What would you burn that access for? A cheap info op?

ICYMI: Last week the British government said it would tighten rules on political donations after two major reports warned that foreign interference in U.K. democracy is becoming more complex and harder to counter. There are questions over whether the rules are being tightened enough.

How it started: How it's going:

The European Commission on Thursday opened an investigation into Snapchat and warned four pornographic platforms they could face penalties for failing to follow child safety laws.

New: The British government sanctioned Xinbi, a Chinese-language cryptocurrency marketplace accused of enabling large-scale online fraud and human exploitation, in a move on Thursday targeting the financial infrastructure behind global scam networks.