The UK's national technical authority on cyber security, part of GCHQ, which advises government and industry and helps respond to major cyber incidents.
The FBI and six other governments said on October 8 that hackers tied to Integrity Technology Group run a portal giving third parties access to stolen email. The firm, sanctioned by the US and UK, denies the accusations.
Reality
Apparent hackers sent an extortion note through ASOS's app to UK customers, claiming to have "fully compromised" its Snowflake instance. ASOS has not confirmed a breach, so the only compromise anyone has seen is that outsiders could message its app users.
Perspective Coverage
15 publishersReality
The UK's Report Fraud service is urging the public onto passkeys after email and social media takeover losses rose to £6.3m in 2025/6 from £1.2m. The NCSC is backing the switch as a defence against phishing.
Reality
Labour MP Graeme Downie's report puts the yearly cost of Russian cyberattacks and sabotage to Britain at £2bn to £2.5bn, a figure it calls a floor. It arrives before a budget expected later this month, arguing the harm cannot be weighed against defence spending while government does not count it.
Reality
Hackers used the Asos app on Tuesday to send UK users an extortion demand claiming they had compromised the retailer's Snowflake instance. Because the demand went to shoppers, the attackers decided when Asos had to speak to customers, before it could say what data, if any, was taken.
Reality
Ofqual found that 9% of teachers in England see senior leadership as primarily responsible for cyber security, while 46% name the IT team. The regulator says backups and response plans belong to leaders, a duty most staff assign elsewhere.
Reality
Robert Half says 47% of UK employers plan to grow tech teams by year-end, led by demand for cyber security and agentic AI skills. Official figures show thin supply, so leaders will have to split that demand between scarce hires and staff retrained to check AI output.
Reality
ShinyHunters claims it holds fitness-for-work medical records, including blood and urine results, on about 60,000 current and former FBI staff. Test results and home addresses cannot be reset like a password, so containment now depends on the files staying unpublished.
Reality
Dave Chismon argues that offence gets a pass/fail signal and defence does not, so every automated remediation still needs a person to weigh it and answer for it, even as his agency builds Cyber Shield.
Reality
A joint NCSC, FBI and AIVD advisory traces the implant's exfiltration to Telegram and three object storage hosts. The same advisory tells defenders not to read traffic to those services as malicious on its own.
Reality
City of London Police recorded a 417% rise in account-hack losses to £6.3m in the year to March. The arithmetic underneath it shows the average loss per victim halving as small cases got recorded for the first time.
Reality
Lumen's Black Lotus Labs spent a year mapping a four-part framework sold to Chinese espionage operators. Its indicators belong to a supplier, so hunt the service rather than one group's habits.
Reality
The government confirmed the July outage and formally blamed nobody. The site sat below the level at which reporting cyber activity becomes a legal duty.
Reality