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Zeroday Cloud hacking contest offers $4.5 million in bounties

6 October 2025 at 13:12
A new hacking competition called Zeroday Cloud,ย focused onย open-source cloud and AI tools,ย announced a total prize pool of $4.5 million in bug bounties for researchers that submit exploits for various targets. [...]

OpenAI and Oracle Ink Historic $300 Billion Cloud Computing Deal

By: BeauHD
11 September 2025 at 20:30
Amid yesterday's news of Oracle's soaring stock, which propelled founder Larry Ellison to the top of the world's richest list, the Wall Street Journal reported that the cloud giant and OpenAI have struck one of the largest cloud contracts ever signed. Under the deal, OpenAI will purchase $300 billion worth of compute power from Oracle over roughly five years, with purchases beginning in 2027. "This move away from Microsoft was timed with OpenAI's involvement with the Stargate Project, in which OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle have committed to invest $500 billion into domestic data center projects over the next four years," notes TechCrunch. OpenAI also recently signed a cloud deal with Google. "The deal ... underscores the fact that the two are willing to overlook heavy competition between them to meet the massive computing demands," wrote analyst in Reuter's report.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinaโ€™s โ€˜Typhoonsโ€™ changing the way FBI hunts sophisticated threats

10 September 2025 at 15:33

Major cyber intrusions by the Chinese hacking groups known as Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon have forced the FBI to change its methods of hunting sophisticated threats, a top FBI cyber official said Wednesday.

U.S. officials, allied governments and threat researchers have identified Salt Typhoon as the group behind the massive telecommunications hack revealed last fall but that could have been ongoing for years. Investigators have pointed at Volt Typhoon as a group that has infiltrated critical infrastructure to cause disruptions in the United States if China invades Taiwan and Americans intervene.

Those hacks were stealthier than in the past, and more patient, said Jason Bilnoski, deputy assistant director of the FBIโ€™s cyber division. The Typhoons have focused on persistent access and gotten better at hiding their infiltration by using โ€œliving off the landโ€ techniques that involve using legitimate tools within systems to camouflage their efforts, he said. That in turn has complicated FBI efforts to share indicators of compromise (IOCs).

โ€œWeโ€™re having to now hunt as if theyโ€™re already on the network, and weโ€™re hunting in ways we hadnโ€™t before,โ€ he said at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit. โ€œTheyโ€™re not dropping tools and malware that we used to see, and perhaps thereโ€™s not a lot of IOCs that weโ€™d be able to share in certain situations.โ€

The hackers used to be โ€œnoisy,โ€ with an emphasis on hitting a target quickly, stealing data and then escaping, Bilnoski said. But now for nation-backed attackers, โ€œweโ€™re watching exponential leapsโ€ in tactics, techniques and procedures, he said.

Jermaine Roebuck, associate director for threat hunting at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said his agency is also seeing those kinds of changes in the level of stealth from sophisticated hackers, in addition to โ€œa significant changeโ€ in their intentions and targeting.

โ€œWe saw a lot of espionage over the last several years, but here lately, thereโ€™s been a decided shift into computer network attack, prepositioning or disruption in terms of capabilities,โ€ he said at the same conference.

The targeting has changed as organizations, including government agencies, have shifted to the cloud. โ€œWell, guess what?โ€ he asked. โ€œThe actors are going toward the cloudโ€ in response.

Theyโ€™ve also focused on โ€œedge devices,โ€ like devices that supply virtual private network connections or other services provided by managed service providers, Roebuck said. Organizations have less insight into the attacks those devices and providers are facing than more direct intrusions, he said.

The post Chinaโ€™s โ€˜Typhoonsโ€™ changing the way FBI hunts sophisticated threats appeared first on CyberScoop.

Signal Rolls Out Encrypted Cloud Backups, Debuts First Subscription Plan at $1.99/Month

By: msmash
8 September 2025 at 14:45
Signal has begun rolling out end-to-end encrypted cloud backups in its latest Android beta release. The opt-in feature allows users to restore message history if their phone is lost or damaged. Free backups include all text messages and 45 days of media attachments. A $1.99 monthly subscription extends media storage to 100GB. Users generate a 64-character recovery key on their device that Signal's servers never access. Backups refresh daily, excluding view-once messages and those set to disappear within 24 hours. The nonprofit cited storage costs as the reason for its first paid tier. iOS and Desktop support will follow the Android rollout. Signal said it stores backup archives without linking them to specific user accounts or payment information.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SAP To Invest Over 20 Billion Euros In 'Sovereign Cloud'

By: BeauHD
2 September 2025 at 18:40
SAP will invest over 20 billion euros ($23 billion) in European sovereign cloud infrastructure over the next decade. "Innovation and sovereignty cannot be two separate things -- it needs to come together," said Thomas Saueressig, SAP's board member tasked with leading customer services and delivery. CNBC reports: The company said it was expanding its sovereign cloud offerings to include an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform enabling companies to access various computing services via its data center network. IaaS is a market dominated by players like Microsoft and Amazon. It will also roll out a new on-site option that allows customers to use SAP-operated infrastructure within their own data centers. The aim of the initiative is to ensure that customer data is stored within the European Union to maintain compliance with regional data protection regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. [...] Saueressig said that SAP is "closely" involved in the creation of the new AI gigafactories but would not be the lead partner for the initiative. He added that the company's more than 20-billion-euro investment in Europe's sovereign cloud capabilities will not alter the company's capital expenditure for the next year and has already been baked into its financial plans.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Salesloft Drift attacks hit Cloudflare, Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler

2 September 2025 at 16:05

Multiple security and technology companies have been swept up in a far-reaching attack spree originating at Salesloft Drift, including Cloudflare, PagerDuty, Palo Alto Networks, SpyCloud and Zscaler.ย 

Victim organizations continue to come forward as customers of the third-party AI chat agent hunt for evidence of compromise or receive notices from Salesloft and other companies involved in response, recovery and ongoing attack investigations.ย 

Salesloft initially claimed exposure was limited to customers integrated with Salesforce. Yet, Google Threat Intelligence Group and Mandiant Consulting โ€” Googleโ€™s incident response firm which is now working with Salesloft โ€” said any platform integrated with Drift is potentially compromised.ย 

The root cause of the attacks, specifically how the threat group that Google tracks as UNC6395 gained initial access to Salesloft Drift, remains unconfirmed. โ€œThere is no evidence of any unusual or malicious activity with the Salesloft platform,โ€ Salesloft said in an update Saturday.

On Monday, the company said โ€œDrift will be taken offline in the very near future,โ€ rendering the platform inaccessible and the Drift chatbot unavailable on customer websites. โ€œThis will provide the fastest path forward to comprehensively review the application and build additional resiliency and security in the system to return the application to full functionality,โ€ the company added.

Salesloft, which acquired Drift in February 2024, has not responded to requests for comment since news of the attacks first surfaced last week.ย 

The company announced an agreement to merge with Clari, a competitor in the customer-relationship management space, one day before the attacks started Aug. 8. In the merger announcement, the combined companies said they will serve more than 5,000 organizations globally across all industries.

The exposure caused by the attacks has cast widespread concern, as customers seek clarity about the unfolding disaster. Salesloft customers are assessing if they were impacted, and then sifting through data to determine the extent to which they or their customers were compromised.ย 

The attacks did not hit every Salesloft Drift customer. Some Salesloft Drift customers, when contacted by CyberScoop, confirmed they were not implicated by the attacks and found no evidence that corporate or customer data was compromised.ย 

Okta said it was not impacted by the incident, but confirmed it was a target based on indicators of compromise Google Threat Intelligence Group shared last week. โ€œThe threat actor attempted to use a compromised token to access our Salesforce instance, but the attack failed because the connection originated from an unauthorized IP address,โ€ the company said in a blog post Tuesday.

Many other businesses were less fortunate.

Sam Curry, chief information security officer at Zscaler, said the companyโ€™s Salesloft Drift integration with Salesforce was the point of unauthorized access. The company was using Salesloft Drift integrated with other platforms, but they were not impacted, he added.ย 

Data on a large number of Zscalerโ€™s customers was exposed, including names, business email addresses, job titles, phone numbers, location details, Zscaler product licensing and commercial information, and plain text content from some support cases.ย 

โ€œNo product, service, or infrastructure was affected,โ€ Curry said. โ€œWe are looking to hear from Salesloft Drift and from Salesforce if there are any other findings since this happened in their infrastructure.โ€

Curry said Zscaler was already in the process of ending its relationship with Salesloft Drift for unrelated reasons.ย 

Palo Alto Networks on Tuesday confirmed that it, too, was one of hundreds of organizations impacted by the supply chain attack. The companyโ€™s incident response business Unit 42 confirmed the incident was limited to its Salesforce environment, adding that no Palo Alto Networks products or services were impacted.ย 

โ€œMost of the exfiltrated data was business contact information,โ€ a Palo Alto Networks spokesperson told CyberScoop in an email. โ€œHowever, a small number of customers who included sensitive information, such as credentials, in their recent case notes might also have had that data compromised.โ€

Cloudflare said any information customers shared with the companyโ€™s support system โ€” including logs, tokens or passwords โ€” should be considered compromised. The company said it found 104 Cloudflare API tokens in the compromised data and, while it found no evidence of abuse, rotated the tokens out of an abundance of caution.

The company also maintained that no Cloudflare services or infrastructure were compromised.ย 

โ€œWe are responsible for the choice of tools we use in support of our business,โ€ a group of Cloudflare security leaders said in a blog post Tuesday. โ€œThis breach has let our customers down. For that, we sincerely apologize.โ€

Former Salesloft Drift customers were impacted as well. In a blog post announcing some data contained in its Salesforce environment was exposed, SpyCloud said it was previously a customer of Salesloft and Drift, but not currently.

Google previously said the data theft campaign occurred over a 10-day period last month, potentially impacting more than 700 organizations.

The post Salesloft Drift attacks hit Cloudflare, Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler appeared first on CyberScoop.

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