Security Archives - Technology, review, product, AI and more...

14 Jan

Verizon’s wireless network is down for many people nationwide

hightechz.net0 CommentsSecurity, Technology

The first big outage of 2026 is here, as Verizon customers across the US, including several of our phones, complain that service has been spotty or nonexistent starting at around noon ET, with phones switching to SOS Mode and being unable to connect. This cell service outage follows a "software issue" that cut off service for many people in August for several hours, and while Verizon has acknowledged the issue, there is no word yet on when it will be fixed. Verizon: We are aware of an issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers. Our engineers are…

11 Jan

Instagram says it fixed the issue that let someone send all those password reset emails

hightechz.net0 CommentsBusiness, Security

If you're one of the many, many people who received a password reset email from Instagram the other day, the company says it fixed the issue. What was the issue? Unclear. We reached out to Meta for clarification and have yet to receive a response. All we know is that an "external party" triggered the emails, and Instagram says you can safely ignore them. The company posted on X that the issue had been fixed and also claimed there was no breach of its systems. This seemingly contradicts reports from Malwarebytes, which said that information on 17.5 million Instagram accounts,…

10 Jan

Betterment’s financial app sends customers a $10,000 crypto scam message

hightechz.net0 CommentsSecurity

Betterment, a financial app, sent a sketchy-looking notification on Friday asking users to send $10,000 to Bitcoin and Ethereum crypto wallets and promising to "triple your crypto," according to a thread on Reddit. The Betterment account says in an X thread that this was an "unauthorized message" that was sent via a "third-party system." Here's the notification that some people got, per a screenshot in the Reddit thread (some reported getting a similar notification over email, too): We'll triple your crypto! (Limited Time) Bryan: Betterment is giving back! We're celebrating our best-performing year yet by tripling Bitcoin and Ethere ……

31 Dec

Net neutrality was back, until it wasn’t

hightechz.net0 CommentsSecurity

The fight for net neutrality never seems to be truly won or lost. Federal net neutrality rules have been on and off for the past 15 years. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed the Open Internet Order under President Barack Obama in 2010, prohibiting ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful internet traffic, the baseline rule of net neutrality. Then, at the request of those ISPs, a court blocked its rules. An updated framework was passed by the FCC in 2015, only to be overturned in 2017 under President Donald Trump's first administration. It seemed poised for a comeback in 2024,…

30 Dec

Two cybersecurity employees plead guilty to carrying out ransomware attacks

hightechz.net0 CommentsSecurity

Two former employees at cybersecurity firms - one of whom was a ransomware negotiator - have pleaded guilty to carrying out a series of ransomware attacks in 2023. The Department of Justice announced the guilty pleas on Tuesday, saying 40-year-old Ryan Goldberg and 36-year-old Kevin Martin extorted $1.2 million in Bitcoin from a medical device company and targeted several others. Goldberg, Martin, and an unnamed co-conspirator were indicted for the attacks in October, which involved using ALPHV / BlackCat ransomware to encrypt and steal data from their victims. As reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, Martin and the third conspirator worked…

30 Dec

The FCC has probably killed a plan to improve smart home security

hightechz.net0 CommentsProducts, Security

The US Cyber Trust Mark Program, an Energy Star-style certification for smart home security, could be winding down less than a year after it launched. Safety testing company UL Solutions has announced that it is stepping down as the program's lead administrator, just a few months after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began investigating it over ties to China. The Cyber Trust Mark Program hasn't been officially shut down yet, but the loss of its lead administrator leaves it in limbo. It wouldn't be the first security program the FCC axed this year. In November, the FCC rolled back cybersecurity…

28 Dec

Ubisoft shuts down ‘Rainbow Six Siege’ servers following hack

hightechz.net0 CommentsBusiness, Security

Yesterday, Ubisoft confirmed that Rainbow Six Siege had been compromised and that it had shut down the game's servers and marketplace while it resolved the issue. The hackers managed to gain control over a significant chunk of the game's systems, including the ability to ban and unban users, sending custom messages to ban ticker, unlocking all in-game items, and granting every player 2 billion R6 Credits and Renown. Ubisoft sells R6 credits in its store, pricing 15,000 of them at $99.99. That means the actual cash value of 2 billion R6 credits is about $13.33 million. Ubisoft made it clear…

19 Nov

Cloudflare explains Tuesday’s outage that temporarily took down ChatGPT

hightechz.net0 CommentsSecurity, Trending

A blog post published Tuesday night by Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince has details on what caused its “worst outage since 2019,” pinning the issue to a problem in the Bot Management system that is supposed to control which automated crawlers are allowed to scan particular websites using its CDN. Cloudflare said last year that about 20 percent of the web runs through its network, which is supposed to share the load to keep websites online in the face of traffic spikes and DDoS attacks. But today’s crash disconnected many of them, knocking out everything from X to ChatGPT…

05 Nov

Google Gemini’s Deep Research can look into your emails, drive, and chats

hightechz.net0 CommentsAI, Security

Gemini can now draw from your emails and documents while performing “deep research” queries. Google’s announcement blog called this “one of our most-requested features” for Gemini Deep Research, which is an agentic feature styled specifically for creating research reports rather than just answering questions. The chatbot starts by creating a multi-step research plan, then it performs a series of web searches to create a report that you can ask it to tweak with additional info, or export the whole thing into a Google Doc or AI-generated podcast. Google says of the new connection between Deep Research and Workspace products: Now…

29 Oct

Microsoft says it’s recovering after Azure outage took down 365, Xbox, and Starbucks

hightechz.net0 CommentsSecurity

Microsoft Azure, the company’s cloud computing service, has experienced an outage just one week after issues with AWS took out swaths of the internet. The issues impacted Microsoft’s services that run on Azure, including Microsoft 365, Xbox, and even Minecraft. Other companies, like Capital One, Alaska Airlines, and Starbucks, also had outages that were linked to the problems with Azure. On Azure’s status page, Microsoft’s messages have linked the outage to an “inadvertent configuration change” and DNS problem. As Microsoft reported its earnings on Wednesday afternoon, its main website continued to load slowly as the outage dragged on. An update…