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Microsoft restricts Chinese firms access to its map program Apple patches zero day used in the wild, a scattered spider member gets 10 years in prison and a new exploit broker pops up in the uae. This is the risky bulletin prepared by Catalyn Kim Panu and read by me, Claire aird. Today is the 22nd of August and this podcast episode is brought to you by Kroll by find them@kroll.com Cyber Chinese security firms will have restricted access to Microsoft's Active protections program. According to Bloomberg, MAP access will be limited in countries where security firms have to report vulnerabilities to their governments. Only Chinese companies have been restricted so far. Microsoft will also no longer provide proof of concept code for flaws. Participants in the program will only receive a general description of upcoming patches. The changes follow suspicions that a recent SharePoint zero day leaked out of Map. Apple has patched an actively exploited zero day in iOS and macros. The vulnerability is located in Apple's image processing framework, Image IO. Apple says attackers can abuse malicious media files for memory corruption. The company says the Zero day was used in a sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals. A new exploit broker is offering rewards of up to $20 million for exploit chains in mobile operating systems. The broker, Advanced Security Solutions, launched this month and operates out of the uae. The company is offering the highest prices seen in the open market for zero day exploits. It's also offering $15 million for Android and iOS, zero click exploits, $10 million for both Linux and Windows and and $7 million for macOS. The Office of the Director of National intelligence will fire 40% of its workforce. The agency hopes to cut its annual budget by more than $700 million. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claimed the office was inefficient and it politicised intelligence. The Trump administration has selected Joe Francescan to become the next NSA Deputy director. Francis Franceskin will replace former Deputy director Wendy Noble. She was fired by the White House in April following a request by far right activist Laura Loomer. Franceskin served in the Department of Defence and National Security Council during the first Trump administration. The head of operations at France's anti disinformation agency Vigenoum has left for the private sector. According to Intelligence Online, Urwe Le Tuque will join Finnish anti disinformation company Czech first. Le Tuku has led Vijinum since the agency was established three years ago. China's Great Firewall blocked all HTTPs traffic for one hour on Wednesday. The incident caused significant Internet disruptions in China. It's unclear if this was an intentional test or a technical fault. The US Federal Trade Commission has warned US tech companies against weakening encryption at the request of foreign governments. The FTC specifically mentions the EU's Digital Services act and the UK's Online Safety Act. The commission sent letters to several companies, including Apple, Meta Signal and Google. Europol says it has not offered a reward for information about Killin Ransomware group members. This week it was reported that the agency advertised a $50,000 reward. The offer was posted on a Europol themed Telegram channel. The agency told Security Week it does not have an official presence on Telegram. Hackers have stolen customer data from Orange Telecom in Belgium. The hack occurred at the end of July and impact impacted 850,000 people. Stolen data includes names, telephone numbers, SIM card numbers, puck codes and subscription details. Orange Romania and Orange France also disclosed breaches this year. An Oregon man has been charged with building and operating the WrapperBot DDoS botnet. Ethan Foultz managed the botnet as a DDoS for hire operation. He worked with another individual going by the hacker name of Slaykings. The botnet had been infecting home routers and DVRs since 2021. It had as many as 95,000 infected devices before the FBI took it offline earlier this year, according to court documents. Faltz was identified after he used his PayPal account to pay for command and control servers. The botnet was also used to target Pentagon networks on at least three occasions. A member of the Scattered Spider group has been sentenced in the US to 10 years in prison. Who Noah Michael Urban hacked into major online services, stole customer data and then used the information for sim swapping attacks. Urban used the hacker name Sosa and King Bob. He's one of five Scattered Spider members detained last year. The sentence also included an order to pay $13 million in restitution to past victims. A 26 year old man has been sentenced to four years in a Dutch prison for scams targeting the elderly. He stole €277,000 using sites that impersonated banks and government services. The hacking spree started in 2019 and he was arrested in 2024. Thai and Vietnamese authorities have detained two people accused of driving with SMS blasters. A 35 year old South Korean man was arrested in Bangkok. The second individual was detained in Ho Chi Minh City. Both were paid to drive around and send SMS spam to users who connected to their fake base station. A popular Google Chrome extension is silently taking screenshots of every page its users Visit. The the VPN1 extension has been installed by more than 100,000 users. It does not disclose the behaviour. Once pages are loaded, screenshots are sent to a remote server. Device details and geolocation data are also collected. According to COI Security. The malicious behaviour was added in an update on July 17. The extension is still live on the Chrome Web Store, where it was once featured as a recommended extension. A Russian cyber espionage group is still exploiting a Cisco router vulnerability that was patched in 2018. The bug allows attackers to take over devices and deploy a firmware backdoor known as sinful knock. Cisco and the FBI have urged companies to install patches and mitigations. Attacks have been linked to a cyber unit of the Russian FSB intelligence agency. A threat actor is hacking geospatial database servers to hijack their bandwidth. The hackers target unpatched geoserver systems and add the servers to proxy networks, according to Palo Alto Networks. The attacks have been ongoing since March. Microsoft has silently patched a vulnerability in its Copilot AI agent. It allowed malicious users to instruct Copilot to access files without leaving traces in activity logs. Security firm Pistachio says Microsoft patched the bug this week, but did not disclose it notify customers or issue a cve. Microsoft aims to ship quantum safe encryption algorithms in all products. By 2029, the algorithms will become defaults. By 2033, the migration to quantum safe algorithms will begin with core services next year and finally, Mozilla will host its upcoming thundermail webmail service in Germany. This is Mozilla's first foray into the hosted email business. It's expected to launch later this year as a paid subscript service. And that is all for this podcast edition. Today's show was brought to you by our sponsor, Kroll Cyber. Find them@kroll.com cyber thanks for your company.