Location data sold by the ad industry has reportedly helped adversaries target US troops. The Pentagon has responded by switching off ad tracking on its devices - and you can do the same on yours. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

You've had your iPhone stolen. A day later, you get a text from Apple saying they've found it, and a very helpful woman called Alice from Apple Support calls to walk you through recovering it. She's polite. She's professional. But she is not from Apple. She's not even human. And she's about to break into your iPhone. Meanwhile, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta have all announced - with varying degrees of drama - that their AI agents have "broken out of the sandbox" and gone hacking. James takes a step back and asks the awkward question: is this really an emergent AI apocalypse, or did they just leave the door open? All this and more in episode 483 of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, and special guest James Ball.

A hacker calling themselves "CYBERLEEK" has been leaking gameplay footage from GTA 6 ahead of its official reveal this week - but they're not asking Rockstar Games for a ransom. Instead, they've launched their own cryptocurrency, promising to release ever more juicy clips from a virtual strip club... Meanwhile, your smart TV might be doing more than binge-watching Netflix while you sleep. We explore the shadowy world of "residential proxies" - how they end up inside home routers, smart TVs, and IoT devices, and why an entire criminal economy is quietly running through your internet connection. All this and more in episode 482 of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, and special guest Paul Ducklin.

According to the newly-published study, phishing and social engineering are becoming more expensive to recover from, trickier to detect, and increasingly augmented by artificial intelligence. Read more in my article on the Fortra blog.

For years, North Korea's state-trained hackers have been one of the world's most prolific robbers of banks - stealing huge sums of money from foreign financial instituions, draining cryptocurrency exchanges of billions, and funnelling the proceeds into the country's weapons programme. But now, in a remarkable twist, some of the same elite hackers appear to have decided to rob their own government instead. And, it doesn't sound as if it has ended that well for them. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

You can't have failed to hear the news headlines about "rogue" OpenAI models hacking into another AI organisation, Hugging Face. But what has actually happened, who is to blame, and is it as serious as some of the reports suggest? Find out in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

An app has appeared in India that lets anyone with a smartphone stop a passing e-rickshaw dead in its tracks - no login, no passwords, no permissions needed. Meanwhile, Geoff - swimming in money and Lamborghinis, as all published authors are - has been on the receiving end of a slew of AI-generated scam pitches from fake book marketing experts. Rather than ignore them, he's been playing them at their own game... All this and more in this episode of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, and special guest Geoff White.

Scammers wasted no time exploiting Venezuela's devastating earthquake, with researchers uncovering 212 newly-registered relief-themed domains in just five days. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

Someone is pretending to be your bank, your government, or your local planning office. And according to the FTC, they're making billions doing it. Read more in my article on the Fortra blog.

For almost 20 years, stolen credentials have been the most common route for attackers into organizations, according to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR). But that's no longer the case. Read more in my article on the Fortra blog.

Lesson one for aspiring dark web kingpins: don't have your laundered gold bars shipped to your home address. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

Pay up, or we'll pay someone to pay you a visit. Cybercrime gangs are increasingly turning to real-world threats - and even hiring local muscle to deliver the message. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

One in eight UK workers admits to selling their company login credentials - or knowing someone who has - in the past 12 months. The really alarming bit? Their bosses are even more relaxed about it. Read more in my article on the Fortra blog.