NEW: Hacked crypto exchange Bybit is offering $140 million in bounties to anyone who can help locate and freeze the stolen ethereum. Bybit also disclosed preliminary results of investigations, which reveal hackers breached a developer’s device at a wallet platform Safe Wallet.

TechCrunch

Hacked crypto exchange Bybit offers $140M bounty to trace stolen funds | TechCrunch

Bybit has already paid more than $4 million to bounty hunters who helped trace and freeze some of the stolen funds.

Updates on Paragon scandal in Italy via Guardian: -Journalist union filed criminal complaint due to Meloni's government not answering Qs. <li>President of 🇮🇹 parliament invoked rule to not respond Qs claiming all unclassified info has been made public.</li> -Italy's foreign intelligence agency AISE, confirmed it is a customer of Paragon in Parliament, and that the the contract is suspended. Still lots of unanswered questions.

the Guardian

Journalists launch legal action against Italian government over spyware claims

Union submits criminal complaint to prosecutors as ministers refuse to answer questions about alleged hacks

NEW: We have curated a list of people who are working, or are at least associated, with the Department Of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. There have been a few lists like these, and they are great. We have some new details here. https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/18/the-people-in-elon-musk-doge-universe/

NEW: Apple released a fix for a zero-day bug for iOS and iPadOS that “may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals.” AFAIK this is the first time Apple uses "extremely sophisticated attack" in an official release. At this point, we don't know who abused the flaw, nor against whom.

TechCrunch

Apple fixes iPhone and iPad bug used in an &#039;extremely sophisticated attack&#039; | TechCrunch

Unknown attackers may have exploited a zero-day bug to access data on locked phones, according to Apple.

NEW: We spoke to the Italian journalist who was targeted on WhatsApp with government spyware made by Paragon.  “I feel violated,” Francesco Cancellato told me. “It is actually quite strange for a journalist to be spied on in a Western democracy.” Cancellato is the director of Fanpage.it, which last year published a damning investigation on the youth wing of the current far-right government in Italy.  Full story, which includes the text of the notification he received from WhatsApp, here:

TechCrunch

Journalist targeted on WhatsApp by Paragon spyware: &#039;I feel violated&#039; | TechCrunch

An Italian investigative journalist said he was the target of a spyware attack disclosed by WhatsApp.

NEW: WhatsApp says it has notified 90 victims, including journalists and members of civil society, that they were targeted with spyware made by Paragon. The company said the technique used in the campaign, which relied on malicious PDFs sent via chat groups, has now been fixed. This is the first time that Paragon is linked to alleged abuse of its products.

TechCrunch

WhatsApp says it disrupted a hacking campaign targeting journalists with Paragon spyware | TechCrunch

The Meta-owned company said the campaign was linked to Israeli spyware maker Paragon.

With iOS 18.3, Apple is switching Apple Intelligence on by default (for newer devices). Given how faulty it is, and maybe for other concerns (environment, ethical), you may want to switch it off. Here's how to do it:

TechCrunch

How to switch off Apple Intelligence on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac | TechCrunch

Here&#039;s a step-by-step guide on how to turn off and disable Apple Intelligence from your devices.

NEW: Facebook awarded a researcher $100,000 for finding a bug in an ad platform that gave access to FB's internal infrastructure. Ben Sadeghipour told TechCrunch that online advertising platforms make for juicy targets because, “there's so much that happens in the background of making these 'ads' — whether they are video, text or images."  "But at the core of it all it's a bunch of data being processed on the server-side and it opens up the door for a ton of vulnerabilities,” he said.

TechCrunch

Exclusive: Facebook awards researcher $100,000 for finding bug that granted internal access

A security researcher found a bug in a Facebook ad platform, which gave him access to the company’s internal infrastructure.

NEW: Cybersecurity experts, who work with human rights defenders and journalists, agree that Apple is doing the right thing by sending notifications to victims of mercenary spyware — and at the same time refusing to forensically analyze the devices. “These notifications have been a game changer for spyware accountability research," said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab, who has been investigating government spyware for more than a decade.

TechCrunch

Apple sends spyware victims to this nonprofit security lab | TechCrunch

Cybersecurity experts, who work with human rights defenders and journalists, agree that Apple is doing the right thing by sending notifications to ...

NEW: Amnesty International has documented two cases where Serbian authorities used Cellebrite to unlock the phones of a journalist and an activist. And then they installed spyware on the devices. In a way, this is a return to the old days of government spyware, where remote attacks were rare and impractical, and cops needed to get their hands on target's computers.

TechCrunch

Serbian police used Cellebrite to unlock, then plant spyware on, a journalist&#039;s phone | TechCrunch

Amnesty said it found NoviSpy, an Android spyware linked to Serbian intelligence, on the phones of several members of Serbian civil society followi...