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Last week, I listened to a fascinating talk by K. Melton on cognitive security, cognitive hacking, and reality pentesting. The slides from the talk are here, but—even better—Menton has a long essay laying out the basic concepts and ideas. The whole thing is important and well worth reading, and I hesitate to excerpt. Here’s a taste: The NeuroCompiler is where raw sensory data gets interpreted before you’re consciously aware of it. It decides what things mean, and it does this fast, automatic, and mostly invisible. It’s also where the majority of cognitive exploits actually land, right in this sweet spot between perception and conscious thought...

The 2026 US “Cyber Strategy for America” document is mostly the same thing we’ve seen out of the White House for over a decade, but with a more aggressive tone. But one sentence stood out: “We will unleash the private sector by creating incentives to identify and disrupt adversary networks and scale our national capabilities.” This sounds like a call for hackback: giving private companies permission to conduct offensive cyber operations. The Economist noticed (alternate link) this, too. I think this is an incredibly dumb idea: In warfare, the notion of counterattack is extremely powerful. Going after the enemy­—its positions, its supply lines, its factories, its infrastructure—­is an age-old military tactic. But in peacetime, we call it revenge, and consider it dangerous. Anyone accused of a crime deserves a fair trial. The accused has the right to defend himself, to face his accuser, to an attorney, and to be presumed innocent until proven guilty...

Sam Clark / Politico: EU legislation allowing voluntary CSAM scanning by tech and social media companies expired April 3 after lawmakers failed to agree on the terms of an extension  —  Scanning private online spaces for child abuse material becomes illegal in Europe on Saturday.

The maintainers of the popular Axios HTTP client have published a detailed post-mortem describing how one of its developers was targeted by a social engineering campaign believed to have been conducted by North Korean threat actors. [...]

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Report Reveals Growing Trend of Fraudsters Intercepting SMS-Based VerificationFinancial institutions have historically relied on one-time passcodes as a primary authentication control for their accountholders. But OTP verification is less reliable as fraudsters increasingly exploit SMS-based verification weaknesses to carry out account takeover and payment fraud schemes.

Robert McMillan / Wall Street Journal: A profile of Benjamin Brundage, a 22-year-old college senior who helped uncover the Kimwolf botnet, which launched 26,000+ DDoS attacks targeting 8,000+ victims  —  A flurry of powerful attacks had internet experts baffled.  Benjamin Brundage had a few tricks to help solve the mystery.

Russia’s attempts to restrict the use of virtual private networks amid a clampdown on the Telegram messaging platform triggered the widespread banking outage seen across the country this week, the service’s billionaire founder Pavel Durov said.

Mikko Hyppönen is one of the most recognizable faces of the cybersecurity industry. After fighting computer viruses, worms, and malware, for more than 35 years, he tells TechCrunch why he is now working on systems to stop killer drones.

A large-scale credential theft campaign targeting senior executives has been linked to a previously unknown automated phishing platform called Venom

Iran-linked hackers claim to have breached Israeli air defence contractor PSK Wind, which develops command and control systems. Pro-Iran Handala group announced on April 2 that it breached PSK Wind Technologies, an Israeli engineering and IT firm specializing in integrated systems for defense and critical communications, including command and control solutions. Handala appears as a […]

Utah is allowing an AI system to prescribe psychiatric drugs without a doctor. It's only the second time the state - and the country - has delegated this kind of clinical authority to AI. State officials say it could bring costs down and ease care shortages, but physicians warn the system is opaque, risky, and […]