What'd I Miss? May 16-18, 2025
Sherpa Intelligence: Your Guide Up a Mountain of Information!
This Information Security and Data Privacy news roundup includes items from Friday through Sunday, so that you can hit the ground running on Monday morning.
These news roundups are not comprehensive and focus on news that may have been overlooked or under reported, and from lesser-known sources like local press.
This Sherpa Intelligence newsletter is curated by Tracy Z. Maleeff (aka InfoSecSherpa) and is just the tip of the iceberg of the research, OSINT, and information security research services we provide.
Friday, May 16 - Sunday, May 18, 2025
Friday, May 16th
Dairy giant Arla Foods factory in Germany hit by cyber incident
(Just Food)
- “Suspicious activity” had hit the co-op’s IT network as its plant in the German town of Upahl.Email-based Attacks Accounted for Most Cyber Insurance Claims Last Year
(KnowBe4)
- Business email compromise (BEC) attacks and funds transfer fraud (FTF) accounted for 60% of cyber insurance claims in 2024, according to a new report from Coalition.Rite Aid Sale of Customer Health Data Looms as Security Concern
(Bloomberg Law)
- Pending sale of millions of customer health records as part of Rite Aid Corp.‘s bankruptcy proceedings is putting a spotlight on data security protections; a rival pharmacy is expected to acquire its most valuable assets: customers’ prescription information.
Saturday, May 17th
Americans Discover Secret Transmitters in Chinese Solar Inverters: 'Built-in to Destroy the Power Grid'
(VRT News Belgium)
- American researchers have found "unauthorized communication devices" in Chinese inverters. These inverters control solar installations and can even turn them off remotely, via the internet. [Article is in Dutch]Data broker protection rule quietly withdrawn by Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
(Malware Bytes Labs)
- In a Federal Register notice, the CFPB said it “has determined that legislative rulemaking is not necessary or appropriate at this time to address the subject matter”.Polish Prime Minister Tusk blames Russian hackers for cyberattacks ahead of presidential election
(The Kyiv Independent)
- Tusk said the cyberattacks hit the website of his Civic Platform party, as well as those of its coalition partners, the Left and the Polish People's Party (PSL).
Sunday, May 18th
China launches an AI cloud into orbit -12 sats for now, 2,800 in coming years
(The Register)
- Chinese company Guoxing Aerospace last launched a dozen satellites, each packing a 744 TOPS of computing power, in the first step towards creating an orbiting constellation of 2,800 such satellites.Digital War: Pakistan’s Cyber Activity Against India – Analysis
(Eurasia Review)
- On 7 May 2025, exercising its “right to respond”, Indian armed forces launched Operation Sindoor, under which they carried out precision strikes to destroy a network of terror camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir; Pakistani-affiliated hacker groups conducted a range of cyber attacks against Indian targets, even though none of them created any significant disruption.Redcar and Cleveland ransomware: Inside a council under cyber-attack
(BBC England Investigations)
- The cyber-attack in February 2020 caused chaos, disrupting everything from bin collections to social services and decisions about how to keep vulnerable children safe.
