The Wire

A prolific hacking group known as Cl0p claimed on Wednesday it had stolen large volumes of data from nearly 50 companies worldwide, including energy giant Shell, medical equipment maker Philips, industrial conglomerate GE and financial services firm Fiserv, according to a posting on the group's website.

Shell said it was aware of a recent "possible incident" and was investigating with security teams. Philips said it had "identified and contained an attempted cybersecurity compromise of a specific enterprise server related to internal data", adding the breach did not affect customer environments. Fiserv said it had found no evidence that customer, banking, transaction or personal data had been compromised.

Reuters could not independently verify the hacking group's claims about what data was stolen or how much, Channel NewsAsia business reports.

Australia's Telstra Group announced a A$1 billion share buyback on Thursday and reported annual profit of A$2.24 billion for the year ended June 30, up 3.2 per cent from the prior year. The result was slightly below analyst consensus of A$2.30 billion. Revenue in Telstra's mobile segment, which accounts for about 44 per cent of group income, grew 3.2 per cent to A$11.37 billion, driven by higher average revenue per user and mobile service revenue growth from a series of tariff increases implemented over the year.

Telstra declared a final dividend of 10.5 Australian cents per share, up from 9.5 cents last year, and forecast 2027 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation after leases of A$8.5 billion to A$8.8 billion. Chief Executive Vicki Brady said the company would continue investing in network resilience under its Connected Future 30 strategy. The announcement comes as Australia's telecommunications sector faces heightened scrutiny following a July software fault that triggered a nationwide outage affecting phone services, wireless payments and some rail services, Channel NewsAsia business reports.

More than 737 fake Chrome VPN extensions impersonating Proton VPN, NordVPN, Surfshark and ExpressVPN routed users' traffic through SOCKS5 proxies operated by a single provider, researchers at application security company Socket found. The extensions were downloaded nearly 75,000 times, mainly by Russian users seeking to bypass blocked services, and were published through 40 accounts using a shared analytics account.

Socket identified three threat behaviors: 520 extensions configured Chrome to route all browser traffic through the operator's proxies; 104 extensions used DNS-over-HTTPS to hide the proxy destination; and some advertised nonexistent premium servers in Japan, Singapore, Canada, Australia and Turkey for subscription fraud. The researchers said the extensions impersonated established brands, used nonfunctional payment mechanisms and added remote configuration after approval — indicators of intentional deception.

Google removed more than 200 extensions, but over 500 remain available on the Chrome Web Store, Socket reports.

The Albanese government has committed $2.5 billion to keep Rio Tinto's Tomago aluminium smelter operating near Newcastle, protecting 1000 jobs at a cost of $2.5 million per position, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The figure exceeds support for other ageing industrial facilities, including a $240 million zinc and lead smelter bailout in South Australia and Tasmania, a $600 million Mount Isa copper smelter package, and a $2 billion Gladstone aluminium smelter support scheme.

The government frames the Tomago support as critical to Australia's clean energy transition, arguing that keeping smelters operational allows them to be modernised and made environmentally sustainable, securing domestic supply of materials essential to battery production. Without the bailout, the Herald notes, Australia would rely on smelters in China and other nations for these materials.

The investment contrasts sharply with the government's approach to artificial intelligence disruption, which it predicts will eventually cause major job losses. The government's AI policy relies on an office within the Prime Minister's department with no new laws or dedicated regulator, the Herald reports.

A combination of two Android malware tools—WindRelay and the SpyNote remote administration tool—is being used to steal payment card data and fraudulently take out loans, cybersecurity firm Group-IB reports. In an investigated incident, an attacker impersonating a bank employee called a victim, instructed them to sideload the malicious SpyNote app, then remotely installed WindRelay and used the banking app to take out a loan in the victim's name.

The attacker instructed the victim to tap their payment card against the phone and enter their PIN. WindRelay converted the phone into a fraudulent contactless reader and relayed the card's near-field communication data—including transaction-specific authentication codes—to the attacker's device in real time, allowing fraudulent purchases at genuine payment terminals. The entire fraud occurred during a 13-minute call, Group-IB said.

Group-IB identified nearly two dozen WindRelay samples between November 2025 and July 2026 communicating with four command-and-control servers, with targeting appearing focused on Czechia, Slovakia and Slovenia, Bill Toulas reports for BleepingComputer.

Google said its Chrome browser blocked more than 7 billion unwanted notifications daily on Android during the first quarter of 2026, as notification abuse has been increasingly used to distribute scams, malware and phishing attempts.

The company uses overlapping defense systems to catch abuse at different stages, including automatically revoking notification permissions from sites users have not recently visited and those that repeatedly trigger suspicious warnings. Chrome also limits sites classified as disruptive to 1,000 messages per minute, with excess requests returning an error, Mayank Parmar reports for BleepingComputer.

New Zealand's Commerce Commission has fined Auckland-based online retailer The TV Shop $1.1 million for publishing false customer reviews, according to the NZ Herald. The fine marks enforcement action against deceptive trading practices in e-commerce, Herald Reporters reports for NZ Herald business.

Intel raised $20 billion in an upsized share offering to fund the expansion of its chip contract manufacturing business, Reuters reports.

The US chipmaker priced the stock sale at $95 per share, representing a 2.6% discount to its previous close, after initially aiming to raise $15 billion.

Intel raised its capital expenditure forecast to $20 billion in July amid rising demand for artificial intelligence processors, and plans high-volume production using its 14A manufacturing process by 2028, The Straits Times reports.

Costs incurred by businesses across Southeast Asia due to data breaches reached a record high in 2026, jumping 12 percent to an average of $4.12 million, according to IBM's 2026 Cost of a Data Breach Report. The increase was driven partly by artificial intelligence making cyberattacks cheaper and faster to carry out, said IBM Asean general manager Catherine Lian.

Financial services firms in the region incurred the highest average breach costs at $6.53 million, followed by industrial organizations at $5.99 million and communications firms at $4.28 million. The findings were based on data from 26 organizations across the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

Organizations that extensively used AI and security automation reported a lower average breach cost of $3.66 million compared with $4.86 million among those without these tools, and contained breaches 123 days faster. Nearly three in four organizations in the region said they planned to increase investments in security tools and governance following a breach, Inquirer business (PH) reports.

Scammers are sending fake messages claiming you have made a purchase of $300 to $2,000 and urging you to call a number to stop or reverse the payment, the ACCC's Scamwatch service warned on Tuesday. The messages, which arrive by text, email, app notification or calendar invitation, often impersonate payment services such as PayPal or companies including Apple, Google, Microsoft and Norton, and may include personal details such as your name, email or address to appear legitimate.

If you call the number, scammers may ask for bank or card details, request you send money claiming overpayment, install software to access your accounts, or trick you into buying gift cards. Scamwatch advises checking whether any payment is real by logging into your official account through the real website or app, rather than using contact details in the message, and not calling the number or sharing financial information or one-time codes, scamwatch.gov.au reports.

ASIC has released a review finding that car insurance premiums rose 8 per cent in the year to July 2025, far exceeding inflation, after complaints about the product topped the corporate regulator's complaints register in 2024-25.

The watchdog examined eight brands under five insurers representing nearly three-quarters of the market and found their renewal notices did not clearly explain why premiums were rising beyond inflation. "Insurers tell us there are a range of reasons for these significant increases, but the problem is they're not explaining the reasons for those increases," ASIC commissioner Alan Kirkland said. "That's important because people need to understand how much their premium has actually gone up."

ASIC found that nearly 40 per cent of people who renewed their policy did not contact their provider or compare quotes, yet almost one in three of those who questioned their premiums ended up with a better deal. Insurers also failed to make clear in renewal notices that customers paying in instalments could save between 10 and 20 per cent by paying annually. "Loyalty doesn't pay," Mr Kirkland said, ABC business (AU) reports.

The FBI and South Korea's National Policy Agency have warned of a ransomware gang called Gunra that is breaching critical infrastructure organizations through firewall vulnerabilities, according to a joint cybersecurity advisory released Monday. The group, which emerged in April 2025 using source code from the leaked Conti ransomware, has been exploiting two known Fortinet firewall vulnerabilities to gain access to networks in the healthcare, financial services and government sectors globally, stealing and encrypting data before demanding ransoms often exceeding $10 million.

The agencies said Gunra actors have attempted to contact victim company management directly by email to solicit payments, with limited success, The Record reports.

A threat actor compromised BdThemes' upstream infrastructure and modified a remote JSON feed to create rogue administrator accounts on WordPress sites running the company's plugins, according to security firm Defiant's Wordfence division. The attack exploited a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the Biggop Library component responsible for fetching promotional banners, allowing the attacker to inject malicious JavaScript that used legitimate administrators' sessions to create hidden admin accounts and install webshells, BleepingComputer reports.

Wordfence detected the attacks starting August 7, with evidence suggesting the campaign began as early as June 23. The affected plugins—including Element Pack, which has over 100,000 active installations—were removed from WordPress.org on August 8 pending review. The vulnerability was assigned a "medium" severity score and remains unpatched as of publication, Defiant said. Researchers traced the command-and-control infrastructure to the same attacker behind recent compromises of Advanced Responsive Video Embedder and OptinMonster.

Nearly a third of British manufacturers have experienced a cyber-incident in the past 12 months, according to a survey by MakeUK, a lobby group for the sector. The findings highlight growing hacking risks to companies, with attacks often leading to lost production time and increased costs, yet only half of manufacturers have a plan in place to respond to an attack.

The rise in attacks comes almost a year after JLR, Britain's largest automotive employer, was hit by a cyber-attack that forced production halts for weeks. The independent Cyber Monitoring Centre said that incident cost the UK economy at least £1.9bn, probably making it the most expensive cyber incident ever in Britain. The New York Times reported in June that Russian hackers were behind the JLR attack.

Jonathon Ellison, director of national resilience at the National Cyber Security Centre, said: "In today's landscape, no manufacturer can afford to treat cybersecurity as anything other than a business-critical priority." The UK government has said cybercrime costs the economy £14.7bn a year, with the rise of generative AI systems adding urgency to efforts to upgrade defences.

Unlimited Technology Systems, which processes financial and revenue cycle data for US specialty healthcare providers, disclosed on July 20 that hackers accessed patient files for five days in October 2025. The breach, detected on October 19, 2025, exposed personal information of 3.8 million patients, including full names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, driver's license scans, insurance details and medical records, according to a notice filed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on July 1.

The company serves 4,500 clinics and 6,500 specialty healthcare providers and processes more than $70 billion in net healthcare charges annually. The unauthorized access occurred between October 5 and October 10, 2025. No ransomware or extortion group has claimed responsibility, and Unlimited Technology Systems said it has not identified the attackers. Affected patients were offered identity monitoring services through Kroll, Bill Toulas reports for BleepingComputer.

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Levi Strauss & Co. said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday that hackers accessed employee computers and exfiltrated corporate data.

The breach involved a social‑engineering attack that compromised three company‑issued devices, the filing said. Levi Strauss added that the incident did not disrupt operations and it saw no evidence that consumer data was affected.

"The company does not believe the incident has had, or is reasonably likely to have, a material impact on its business strategy, operations, financial condition, or results of operations," the filing stated.

The company did not identify the attackers, confirm ransomware involvement or report a ransom demand, and the investigation remains ongoing, The Record reports.