CIRCLE WITH A DOT

Whoa, that escalated quickly. This just got sent out by the press folks at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC says it has decided that all foreign-made consumer-grade Internet routers are henceforth prohibited from receiving FCC authorization and are therefore prohibited from being imported for use or sale in the United States.

"Update Follows Determination by Executive Branch Agencies that Consumer-Grade Routers Produced in Foreign Countries Threaten National Security

WASHINGTON, March 23, 2026—Today, the Federal Communications Commission updated its Covered List to include all consumer-grade routers produced in foreign countries. Routers are the boxes in every home that connect computers, phones, and smart devices to the internet. This followed a determination by a White House-convened Executive Branch interagency body with appropriate national security expertise that such routers “pose unacceptable risks to the national security of the United States or the safety and security of United States persons.”

"The Executive Branch determination noted that foreign-produced routers (1) introduce “a supply chain vulnerability that could disrupt the U.S. economy, critical infrastructure, and national defense” and (2) pose “a severe cybersecurity risk that could be leveraged to immediately and severely disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure and directly harm U.S. persons.”

"This action does not affect any previously-purchased consumer-grade routers. Consumers can continue to use any router they have already lawfully purchased or acquired."

"Producers of consumer-grade routers that receive Conditional Approval from DoW or DHS can continue to receive FCC equipment authorizations. Interested applicants are encouraged to submit applications to conditional-approvals@fcc.gov."

Not sure how many consumer-grade routers will be left for sale if it really is a ban on approvals for any foreign-made consumer routers like they said, and not just a bunch of already restricted Chinese makers like Huawei and ZTE.

https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-updates-covered-list-include-foreign-made-consumer-routers

FCC's "covered list" of "thou shalt not entities": https://www.fcc.gov/supplychain/coveredlist

The Kimwolf botmaster Dort is currently spamming the living crap out of this Mastodon instance with messages claiming i'm a monster. Sorry @jerry. That's a lot of junk accounts and messages. I guess the visit he got from law enforcement didn't deter him much.

@a2_4am It's consistent with my belief that we routinely let drunk drivers back on the road via a variety of too lenient enforcement schemes. DUI should IMO lead to automatic license suspension for a meaningful amount of time, several years.

This is a crazy, developing story. And here you thought *your* organization's patch management routines were strict: From Christopher Kunz at Heise:

"A serious security vulnerability in the Windchill and FlexPLM products prompted a nationwide police response over the weekend. At the behest of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), officers from across Germany were dispatched to alert affected companies – an unprecedented move. Administrators, whose weekends were disrupted, expressed their irritation – some of whom don't even use the compromised software."

"When the editorial team received a tip late Sunday morning about a critical security vulnerability in Windchill and FlexPLM , it sounded like a routine report: A deserialization vulnerability in specialized software, even with a CVSS score of 10, doesn't cause any alarm at heise security. The situation was apparently quite different at the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA): By that time, they had already alerted the state criminal police offices (LKA) in various federal states, which dispatched police officers to affected companies during the night. As several readers reported to us in the forum , police officers were standing outside company and private premises in the dead of night."

WTF: Polizei rückte Samstagnacht wegen Zero-Day aus

Wegen der Sicherheitslücke in Windchill und FlexPLM schickten mehrere Landeskriminalämter Polizeibeamte zu betroffenen Unternehmen. Die sind irritiert.

Security (www.heise.de)

@jik That is undoubtedly true. At least they will save on gas right now.

@markstos Booze Cruisers Blue After Intoxalox Locked

ICYMI (from the not-all-cyber-news-is-horrible dept), a cyberattack on a U.S. vehicle breathalyzer company has left drivers across the United States stranded and unable to start their vehicles. This story positively cries out for a headline-writing contest. TechCrunch reports:

"The company, Intoxalock, says on its website that it is “currently experiencing downtime” after a cyberattack on March 14. Intoxalock sells breathalyzer devices that fit into vehicle ignition switches, and is used by people who are required to provide a negative alcohol breath sample to start their car."

Cyberattack on vehicle breathalyzer company leaves drivers stranded across the US | TechCrunch

A cyberattack on a U.S. car breathalyzer company has left drivers across the United States reportedly stranded and unable to start their vehicles.

TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)

New, breaking: Feds Disrupt IoT Botnets Behind Huge DDoS Attacks

The U.S. Justice Department joined authorities in Canada and Germany in dismantling the online infrastructure behind four highly disruptive botnets that compromised more than three million Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as routers and web cameras. The feds say the four botnets — named Aisuru, Kimwolf, JackSkid and Mossad — are responsible for a series of recent record-smashing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks capable of knocking nearly any target offline.

No word yet on which botmasters got a visit from feds, but the DOJ statement references law enforcement actions against against botmasters in Canada and Germany. Last month, I reported on a likely identity behind Dort, the main individual behind the Kimwolf botnet. The other suspect was a 15 y/o from Germany.

Feds Disrupt IoT Botnets Behind Huge DDoS Attacks – Krebs on Security

(krebsonsecurity.com)

Ever wondered how they came up with the value of the Bionic Man? I mean, $6 million is an oddly specific number. I guess back in 1973 that was an awful lot of money. I do wonder how much he would cost if he was made today, and if the new improved Steve Austin still goes "bwa-na-na-na-na" when he runs in slowmo.

- YouTube

Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.

(www.youtube.com)

Added this as an update to the story on the wiper attack on medtech giant Stryker, which doesn't just sell medical devices: A number of hospitals have opted to disconnect from Stryker's online services to minimize risk from the attack, including LifeNet, a service used by countless hospitals to send EKGs etc. from emergency responders to the emergency room in advance of the patient arriving (to speed up treatment, minimize heart tissue damage, etc). Some states, e.g., Maryland, actually require the transmission of this information, and are asking providers who have disconnected from LifeNet to start using the phone to describe the results of EKGs recorded by emergency personnel in the field.

@Elmar_Iachi hahahahahah. thanks for the laugh. i needed that.

Breaking, new, by me: Iran-backed Hackers Claim Wiper Attack on Medtech Firm Stryker

A hacktivist group with links to Iran's intelligence agencies is claiming responsibility for a data-wiping attack against Stryker, a global medical technology company based in Michigan. News reports out of Ireland, Stryker's largest hub outside of the United States, said the company sent home more than 5,000 workers there today. Meanwhile, a voicemail message at Stryker's main U.S. headquarters says the company is currently experiencing a building emergency.

From the story:

"Wiper attacks usually involve malicious software designed to overwrite any existing data on infected devices. But a trusted source with knowledge of the attack who spoke on condition of anonymity told KrebsOnSecurity the perpetrators in this case appear to have used a Microsoft service called Microsoft Intune to issue a ‘remote wipe’ command against all connected devices."

"Intune is a cloud-based solution built for IT teams to enforce security and data compliance policies, and it provides a single, web-based administrative console to monitor and control devices regardless of location. The Intune connection is supported by this Reddit discussion on the Stryker outage, where several users who claimed to be Stryker employees said they were told to uninstall Intune urgently."

Iran-Backed Hackers Claim Wiper Attack on Medtech Firm Stryker – Krebs on Security

(krebsonsecurity.com)

#stryker #handala #intune #wiper #cybersecurity

So one of the guys I wrote about in this story -- Matt Schlicht, the creator of Moltbook, a bizarre Reddit-like platform for AI agents that Schlicht said he vibe coded with OpenClaw -- has just had his bot social network acquired by Meta (for undisclosed terms).

Interestingly, Schlicht said he didn't write a single line of code for the project. From the story:

"AI assistants like OpenClaw have gained a large following because they make it simple for users to “vibe code,” or build fairly complex applications and code projects just by telling it what they want to construct."

"Less than a week after its creation, Moltbook had more than 1.5 million registered agents that posted more than 100,000 messages to each other. AI agents on the platform soon built their own porn site for robots, and launched a new religion called Crustafarian with a figurehead modeled after a giant lobster. One bot on the forum reportedly found a bug in Moltbook's code and posted it to an AI agent discussion forum, while other agents came up with and implemented a patch to fix the flaw."

"“I just had a vision for the technical architecture and AI made it a reality,” Schlicht said. “We’re in the golden ages. How can we not give AI a place to hang out.”

Axios story on acquisition: https://www.axios.com/2026/03/10/meta-facebook-moltbook-agent-social-network

Good YouTube vid on Moltbook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y_u0fY-AbA

@Natasha_Jay that is one mushroom cloud layin mf! thanks for sharing.

We've been weaning ourselves off ordering things from Amazon, so my wife went and ordered something big from a different retailer, who was actually advertising it at a lower price than Amazon. Well, after a week of waiting for the item to ship, it suddenly just arrived. Turns out the order was fulfilled through Amazon anyway.

@gibwar if it matters, we are also one of the few news sites left on the interwebs that includes a full text RSS feed.

@gibwar Are you using a VPN or perhaps an ad blocker on my site url? I don't have any scripts or 3rd party content, but in the past ad blockers have been the cause of weirdness on my site, and Google (which protects my site from incessant ddos attacks) has been somewhat hostile to VPN services accessing the site for some reason.

New, by me: How AI Assistants are Moving the Security Goalposts

AI-based assistants or “agents” — autonomous programs that have access to the user’s computer, files, online services and can automate virtually any task — are growing in popularity with developers and IT workers. But as so many eyebrow-raising headlines over the past few weeks have shown, these powerful and assertive new tools are rapidly shifting the security priorities for organizations, while blurring the lines between data and code, trusted co-worker and insider threat, ninja hacker and novice code jockey.

Read more (and boost please!):

How AI Assistants are Moving the Security Goalposts – Krebs on Security

(krebsonsecurity.com)

#openclaw #AI #agentic #aiagents #lethaltrifecta

With the recent heavy rains around here, the spring peepers are going nuts today with the warm weather we're enjoying. I don't know why -- maybe it's because their little froggy peeps are some of the first hopeful signs of Spring -- but hearing them sing in unison this early makes me unreasonably happy.

Whoops. The data broker giant LexisNexis has suffered another data breach. LN says the data taken was no big deal. The group claiming credit for the breach claims otherwise, of course.

LexisNexis confirms data breach as hackers leak stolen files

American data analytics company LexisNexis Legal & Professional has confirmed to BleepingComputer that hackers breached its servers and accessed some customer and business information.

BleepingComputer (www.bleepingcomputer.com)

This brings back memories of previous breach stories. One of my first big scoops that made the WaPo dead tree edition's front page involved a breach at LexisNexis in 2005 that exposed >300k consumer records. That breach was from a group of 15-18y/os in the US who also social engineered T-Mobile into giving them access to Paris Hilton's cell phone and the nudes w/in.

Data Thefts May Be Linked

A computer break-in at database giant LexisNexis Group may be linked to members of a group of young hackers involved in the theft of revealing photos and celebrity contact numbers from the cell phone of hotel heiress Paris Hilton, a senior federal law enforcement official said.

(web.archive.org)

In 2013, I published a scoop about a LexisNexis breach that came from group of criminal hackers who had seized control over ssndob[.]ru, then the largest ID theft service in the underground. In that months-long investigation, we found the hackers had installed backdoors on servers at LexisNexis, Dun & Bradstreet, and Kroll and were using them as part of a small and custom data broker botnet.

Data Broker Giants Hacked by ID Theft Service – Krebs on Security

(krebsonsecurity.com)