Jessica Lyons Hardcastle

Santa Cruz

Cybersecurity Editor at The Register

Cybersecurity Editor @TheRegister / @SitPub Not posting on X but you can find me at Bluesky: @jessicalyons.bsky.social

Articles

RSAC wrap: AI and China everywhere

1 week ago | theregister.com | Jessica Lyons Hardcastle

RSAC Another RSAC has come and gone, with almost 44,000 attendees this year spread across San Francisco's Moscone Center and the surrounding facilities, according to conference organizers. Hopefully, all of us made it home safely, didn't get deported to a Venezuelan prison, and didn't end up bringing home a virus - computer or corona. You can read all of The Register's coverage here, and as with previous years' conferences, some key trends and themes emerged throughout the week. The most obvious?
Amazon CISO: How AWS red-teamed Alexa+ AI assistant

1 week ago | theregister.com | Jessica Lyons Hardcastle

RSAC If Amazon's Alexa+ works as intended, it could show how an AI assistant helps with everyday tasks like making dinner reservations or arranging an oven repair. Or things could go terribly wrong: it might turn on the oven and turn dinner plans into a house fire. This is why the e-commerce giant brought in security engineers, including both red teams and penetration testers, to work alongside product developers from the beginning, according to Amazon CISO Amy Herzog.
Ex-NSA cyber boss: AI will soon be a great exploit dev

2 weeks ago | theregister.com | Jessica Lyons Hardcastle

RSAC Former NSA cyber-boss Rob Joyce thinks today's artificial intelligence is dangerously close to becoming a top-tier vulnerability exploit developer.
Homeland Security boss vows to put CISA back 'on mission'

2 weeks ago | theregister.com | Jessica Lyons Hardcastle

RSAC Uncle Sam's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, aka CISA, has gone off the rails by trying to dispel disinformation, according to US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
FBI: This is how China uses AI in attack chains

2 weeks ago | theregister.com | Jessica Lyons Hardcastle

RSAC The biggest threat to US critical infrastructure, according to FBI Deputy Assistant Director Cynthia Kaiser, can be summed up in one word: "China."In an interview with The Register during RSA Conference, she said Chinese government-backed crews are testing out AI in every stage of the attack chain. This isn't to say that they're succeeding, but it does make them "more efficient, or might make them a little faster," Kaiser added.
NSA, CISA top brass absent from RSA Conference

2 weeks ago | theregister.com | Jessica Lyons Hardcastle

RSAC There's a notable absence from this year's RSA Conference that kicked off today in San Francisco: The NSA's State of the Hack panel. The annual talk by current and former chiefs of Uncle Sam's surveillance super-agency is a favorite among the cybersecurity conference's attendees and is always filled to capacity with a waiting list to get in the door. Until this year.
Signalgate: Security culture? America's screwed

2 weeks ago | theregister.com | Jessica Lyons Hardcastle

Opinion Just when it seems they couldn't be that careless, US officials tasked with defending the nation go and do something else that puts American critical infrastructure, national security, and troops' lives in danger. In Signalgate part 3, or possibly 4 — we've lost track — on Thursday it came to light that US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had an insecure internet connection set up in his office so that he could use Signal on a personal computer.
CVE board 'kept in the dark' on funding, members say

2 weeks ago | theregister.com | Jessica Lyons Hardcastle

Kent Landfield, a founding member of the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program and member of the board, learned through social media that the system he helped create was just hours away from losing funding. "Another board member gave me a call and said: 'What the heck?'" Landfield recalled in an interview with The Register, although "heck" wasn't exactly the term used, he added.
Darcula adds AI to its DIY phishing kits

2 weeks ago | theregister.com | Jessica Lyons Hardcastle

Darcula, a cybercrime outfit that offers a phishing-as-a-service kit to other criminals, this week added AI capabilities to its kit that help would-be vampires spin up phishing sites in multiple languages more efficiently. Netcraft security researchers spotted the update on April 23 along with a demo video showing a cloned Google homepage and an attacker using the AI to generate a phishing form in Chinese, then add more fields and translate it into English.
Yale New Haven Health alerts 5.5M+ patients of data breach

2 weeks ago | theregister.com | Jessica Lyons Hardcastle

Yale New Haven Health has notified more than 5.5 million people that their private details were likely stolen by miscreants who broke into the healthcare system's network last month. The organization is affiliated with Yale University and Yale School of Medicine. It is Connecticut's largest provider of its kind, with five hospitals and medical clinics throughout the US state as well as New York and Rhode Island.