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White House officials concerned by AI chatbots’ potential for societal harm and the Silicon Valley powerhouses rushing them to market are heavily invested in a three-day competition ending Sunday at the DefCon hacker convention in Las Vegas. Some 2,200 competitors tapped on laptops seeking to expose flaws in eight leading large-language models representative of technology’s next big thing. But don’t expect quick results from this first-ever independent “red-teaming” of multiple models. Findings won’t be made…

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SecurityWeek is publishing a weekly cybersecurity roundup that provides a concise compilation of noteworthy stories that might have slipped under the radar. We provide a valuable summary of stories that may not warrant an entire article, but are nonetheless important for a comprehensive understanding of the cybersecurity landscape. Each week, we will curate and present a collection of noteworthy developments, ranging from the latest vulnerability discoveries and emerging attack techniques to significant policy changes and…

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Over a dozen vulnerabilities discovered by Microsoft researchers in Codesys products can be exploited to cause disruption to industrial processes or deploy backdoors that allow the theft of sensitive information. Germany-based Codesys makes automation software for engineering control systems. Its products are used by some of the world’s largest industrial control system (ICS) manufacturers, the vendor claiming that its software is found in millions of devices — roughly 1,000 different types of products made by…

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Network security giant Check Point Software (NASDAQ: CHKP) on Thursday said it has agreed to acquire Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solutions provider Perimeter 81 for roughly $490 million in “cash free, debt free” deal. Perimeter 81 launched in 2018 and offers a platform that helps businesses to secure remote access, network traffic, and endpoint devices with its cloud-delivered Zero Trust Network Access, Firewall as a Service, and Secure Web Gateway (SWG) offerings.…

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The White House on Wednesday launched a competition offering millions of dollars in prize money for creating new artificial intelligence systems that can defend critical software from hackers. Competitors vying for some of the $18.5 million in prize money will need to design novel AI systems that quickly find and fix software vulnerabilities in electric grids, subways or other key networks that could be exploited by hackers, President Joe Biden’s administration said. “This competition will…

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Rapid7 (NASDAQ: RPD) is the latest cybersecurity vendor to announce layoffs, with the Boston-based firm announcing a restructuring plan late Tuesday that will result in an 18% reduction in employee headcount. In total, approximately 500 employees could be impacted based on the roughly 2,700-person headcount at the end of 2022, with more than 700 people in its Boston headquarters. The company also said in and SEC filing that it would close certain office locations, but…

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Resilience Cyber Insurance Solutions has raised $100 million through a Series D funding round to support global expansion of its cyber risk platform that was launched earlier this year. By connecting leaders in finance, risk, and security, the Resilience Solution helps cyberinsurance policyholders to quantify their cyber risk and prioritize their security program based on a return-on-investment (ROI) analysis of their controls. “The increase in ransomware attacks proves that there are longstanding gaps in today’s cybersecurity and cyber…

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A cyberattack has disrupted hospital computer systems in several states, forcing some emergency rooms to close and ambulances to be diverted, and many primary care services remained closed on Friday as security experts worked to determine the extent of the problem and resolve it. The “data security incident” began Thursday at facilities operated by Prospect Medical Holdings, which is based in California and has hospitals and clinics there and in Texas, Connecticut, Rhode Island and…

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SecurityWeek is publishing a weekly cybersecurity roundup that provides a concise compilation of noteworthy stories that might have slipped under the radar. We provide a valuable summary of stories that may not warrant an entire article, but are nonetheless important for a comprehensive understanding of the cybersecurity landscape. Each week, we will curate and present a collection of noteworthy developments, ranging from the latest vulnerability discoveries and emerging attack techniques to significant policy changes and…

Read More

Threat actors have been observed abusing an open source tool named Cloudflared to maintain persistent access to compromised systems and to steal information without being detected, cybersecurity firm GuidePoint Security reports. Cloudflared is a command-line client for Cloudflare Tunnel, a tunneling daemon for proxying traffic between the Cloudflare network and the user’s origin. The tool creates an outbound connection over HTTPS, with the connection’s settings manageable via the Cloudflare Zero Trust dashboard. Through Cloudflared, services…

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