CyberSecure Specialist

IonQ to Acquire Zero Trust Firm Elisity for Up to $1.3 Billion

IonQ on Monday said it signed a definitive agreement to buy Elisity in a stock-only transaction worth up to $1.3 billion. Up to $150 million of that amount is earnout consideration, contingent on how Elisity’s business performs. IonQ expects to complete the acquisition in the fourth quarter of 2026. The number of IonQ shares issued will depend on the company’s volume-weighted average price over 20 trading days ending shortly before closing, but the price will…

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Insider Cyber Extortion Plot Against Industrial Firm Lands Engineer in Prison

A Kansas City, Missouri man has been sentenced to 32 months in jail for crimes related to a ransom attack against his own company. The DOJ has announced the sentencing of Daniel Rhyne. He had already pleaded guilty to ‘extortion in relation to a threat to cause damage to a protected computer’ and ‘intentional damage to a protected computer’. Fifty-nine-year-old Rhyne had been a core infrastructure engineer at an industrial firm headquartered in Somerset County,…

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MATCHBOIL: New tricks, same old evil intentions

ESET researchers have documented the evolution of the MATCHBOIL malware, a custom C# downloader wielded by the Russia-aligned UAC-0099 APT group. The malware is used to download a payload from the group’s C&C server, install it, and establish its persistence. Although MATCHBOIL was first documented by CERT-UA in August 2025, our research indicates that it has been in development since at least 2024. The earliest versions of the malware that we analyzed are from April…

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FBI Arrests Executive at Ransomware Negotiation Firm

Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Thursday arrested an executive at a Canadian cybersecurity firm in connection with an investigation into the ShinyHunters hacking group that recently relieved the FBI of sensitive data on thousands of agents, multiple sources tell KrebsOnSecurity. The New York Times reported today that the FBI has arrested a Canadian man in Pennsylvania on suspicion of assisting ShinyHunters. The Times story did not identify the man, nor did…

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OpenAI Fires 3 Safety Researchers in Dispute Over AI Risks

OpenAI said on Friday that it fired three safety researchers for a “breach of trust,” defending the dismissals after the trio accused the company of putting its corporate interests before safety as the reason for removing them. The ChatGPT maker said in a post on X that it “parted ways” with the researchers after an investigation found “they violated clear policies on handling sensitive information.” The statement comes after the three researchers, Tomek Korbak, Jasmine…

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In Other News: AI Used in Korean Bank Breaches, Poem-Guided Botnet, Empire Admin Gets 40 Years

SecurityWeek’s weekly cybersecurity news roundup offers a concise overview of important developments that may not receive full standalone coverage yet remain relevant to the broader threat landscape. This curated summary highlights key stories across vulnerability disclosures, emerging attack methods, policy updates, industry reports, and other noteworthy events to help readers stay well-informed about the evolving cybersecurity environment. Here are this week’s highlights:  PoeLLM malware finds its C&C server hidden in a GitHub poem Black Lotus…

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Inside a brand deal scam targeting YouTube creators

Social Media A plausible-sounding sponsorship offer could mask an attempt to compromise your Google account Christian Ali Bravo 07 Oct 2026  •  , 6 min. read For a YouTuber, the approach may look like routine business: a personalized sponsorship email from a global brand and a brief negotiation over rates, followed by an invitation to visit a slick collaboration platform. In some cases, however, the sequence can mask a scam that could part social media…

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Cisco Patches a Dozen Critical Vulnerabilities

Cisco on Wednesday announced patches for 35 vulnerabilities across its products, including over a dozen critical-severity bugs. A fresh Meraki security hardening release fixes multiple bugs grouped together under seven CVEs, based on the underlying weakness type. The most severe of these is CVE-2026-76464, which covers memory issues such as buffer overflows and out-of-bounds writes. Cisco also resolved eight bugs in License On-Prem, including five critical-severity issues. Two of them could lead to unauthorized access…

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The quest for simplicity: Why SMBs want advanced protection without the complexity

Cybersecurity has never been easy. Threats evolve at breakneck speed. Corporate attack surfaces continue to expand with each new digital investment. Regulatory requirements add extra pressure on stretched teams. And behind it all, the unpredictability of human nature means there is no such thing as 100% security. But the market for security solutions doesn’t make things any easier for SMBs. Smaller organizations usually have fewer resources and less expertise to throw at the problem than…

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Georgia Power, Alabama Power Data Breach Hits 400,000 Accounts

Southern Company is notifying roughly 400,000 customers that their utility account information was accessed by an unauthorized third party through its online customer portal. The Atlanta-based energy holding company serves more than 9 million customers through electric utilities in three states and natural gas distribution businesses in four. Its electric subsidiaries are Georgia Power, Alabama Power and Mississippi Power. Roughly 300,000 of the affected accounts belong to Georgia Power customers. According to Southern Company, the…

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