Zack Whittaker

@zackwhittaker.com

17278 Followers 340 Following

Security editor, TechCrunch Signal: zackwhittaker.1337 My stories: techcrunch.com/author/zack-whittaker My newsletter/blog: this.weekinsecurity.com

a photo of my grey cat, Theo, asleep and half-upside down on a large cushion in our living room. the sun is shining right on him, and there are plants surrounding him.
my cat Theo snoozing on the couch, with his paw over his face asleep.
a very smoggy photo from outside of my office, facing Manhattan, seen in shot is the top of 1 World Trade Center with a low-flying plane with a banner ad traiiling from the back of it that says "BritBox.
A screenshot from my iPhone of the weather app showing the weather in Manhattan, the temperature is 95°, it shows it's windy, and that there's a thunderstorm with heavy rain under way, and that the air quality is "unhealthy for sensitive groups."
a Maine license plate on a red Honda that reads: "UGHHH", followed by a bumper sticker that just reads: "[SCREAMING INTERNALLY]"
a screenshot of a tweet from Damien Owens, which reads: "I'm 50. All celebrity news looks like this: CURTAINS FOR ZOOSHA? K-SMOG AND BATBOY CAUGHT FLIPPING A GRUNT."
my grey fluffy cat Theo can be seen stood on my wooden office desk, directly in front of the camera, with my laptop and other computer in the background. he's blocking my way to both computers.
a very cute but also very guilty-looking pigeon on my balcony in the distance looking at her two eggs that she laid in front of her, on our green astroturf, surrounded by a few twigs as a makeshift, albeit quite shit nest.
a screenshot of a table showing the first few rows of the Fortune 100 companies, featuring Apple, Amazon, Walmart, UnitedHealthGroup, and others, and whether they have a security.txt file on their website, as well as a vulnerability disclosure program and/or a paid bug bounty.
my grey russian blue cat Theo, sat on top of my sofa cushions, with a blood pressure cuff on his arm next to a blood pressure machine.
a photo of the spire of One World Trade Center in Manhattan; it's dark and there are lights on in the buildings on the skyline. The spire is lit up in rainbow colors.
a screenshot from Posthog's status page, which reads: "We are rotating keys after a security research team was able to confirm an exploit in one of our AWS environments. We're working with the security research team on the issue. No keys were publicly available, and no data has been compromised. You may see impacts on exports, reverse proxies, and other services. We'll have more updates as we continue to work on this incident."
a screenshot from the Hollywood Reporter piece, which reads: " Now, nearly half a year later, the union has reached a settlement with Condé Nast over the discipline, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. As part of the deal, the status of three of the four workers was changed from fired to being allowed to resign as active employees. They were each given nearly two years’ pay and furnished with positive letters of recommendation."
a screenshot of BasedApparel.com on Thursday, May 21, displaying a fake CAPTCHA designed to look like a Cloudflare page, but actually asks the user to copy code from the website and paste it into their computer's terminal, which hacks them.
a photo of a ginger cat in a local eatery seen with its front paws against the inside glass of the front door, and looking out at people walking past on the street. a sign on the door says: "bathroom for paying customers only."
a screenshot showing trying to search anything in my Messages folder, and it just says "no results."
A screenshot of a quote from a White House pool report, which reads: Q: To what extent is the average American's finances motivating you to make a deal with Iran? "The only thing that matters when I'm talking about Iran, they can't have a nuclear weapon. I don't think about Americans' financial situation. I don't think about anybody. I think about one thing, we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That's all."'
a screenshot of a real Microsoft email account notification being abused to send spam/phishing messages to users.
my large handsome adult cat sons Theo (left, a grey russian blue) and Toby (right, a tabby) snuggling on some blankets and holding each others' paws; Theo is looking (begrudingly) at the camera while Toby is trying to pretend that he hates it.
a screenshot from my article, which reads: "From there, the stolen goods can either be sold on, or held indefinitely until the shipper pays the hackers a ransom. Or, maybe some criminal mastermind somewhere desperately wanted a lifetime supply of KitKats? I don't know — and I try not to judge."
a screenshot from a movie, a character is on the gallows with a rope around his neck, and turns to the guy next to him, in the same situation, and jokingly says, "First time?"
a screenshot from Bloomberg's story, which reads: "The users relied on a mix of tactics to get into Mythos. These included using access the person had as a worker at a third-party contractor for Anthropic and trying commonly used internet sleuthing tools often employed by cybersecurity researchers, the person said. The users are part of a private Discord channel that focuses on hunting for information about unreleased models, including by using bots to scour for details that Anthropic and others have posted on unsecured websites such as GitHub."
the "teenage ninja mutant turtles" logo but spelled out as "mark zuckerberg's pervert glasses"
my tabby cat Toby laying on a blanket looking very handsome.
a photo looking from above of my cat, Theo, a grey Russian blue with white socks/feet, who has fallen asleep upside down on the carpeted floor of my office at home.
my cat, Theo, grey and white Russian blue, laying on the floor, almost collapsed, on my foot, curled up with his paws up and looking me straight in the camera, like "draw me like one of your french girls"
a snippet from Conduent's data breach notice, which contains "noindex" code so that it can't be found in search engine results.
an iPhone notification saying: "Home: Birdcam is offline," to show that the birdcam is no longer streaming after the pigeons left.
a video of the last baby pigeon on the table outside on our balcony, then flying off.
one of the birds can be seen outside the nest, purched on a chair propped up against the window. the pigeon is a little over a month old.
the red light from the birdcam can be seen reflecting in the face of one of the baby pigeons, and you can see the pigeon up close.
in this video you can see the baby pigeons, now about a month old, flapping more and exploring the nest a lot more.
a screenshot from my iPhone showing the "Birdcam" camera, featuring a live shot from the baby pigeons.
the pigeon babies can be seen here stretching their wings and flapping a little bit as they get older, their feathers are still early and sparse but getting there.
the two adult pigeons, seen on the neighbor's balcony ledge, just sitting there patiently waiting. one of them is cleaning their feathers.
the pigeon parent can be seen entering their nest, then the baby pigeons are very excited and loud, flapping, and making lots of noise.
the parent pigeon sitting at the edge of the nest, away from the baby pigeons, as if to say, "I need some space."
the parent pigeon can be seen leaving the nest, as the two baby pigeons can be seen much bigger and gaining size.
two pigeons swapping, with the incoming pigeon now sitting on the two pigeon babies to keep them warm.
a frankly quite unpleasant video of a pigeon feeding its young by throwing up into their mouths.
a pigeon sat nesting on the two baby pigeons, occasionally moving a little bit, but mostly just sitting patiently.
a sunrise video of birdcam, showing a parent pigeon leaving the nest and two tiny baby pigeons sitting there moving slightly in the nest
two pigeons are seen in the video under nightvision, and you can see one of the pigeons take out another piece of broken eggshell from the hatched egg.
a tiny hatched baby pigeon moves a little bit while the parent pigeon comes back into the nest after dropping off an eggshell outside.
a nightvision camera video showing a pigeon picking up a broken eggshell and carrying it out of the nest in their mouth.
a close-up photo of a pigeon, outside, under our patio furniture, with a few twigs and feathers as a make-shift "nest."
two pigeons, swapping shift with each other under our garden furniture, cooing at each other and dancing around each other.
a pigeon sitting on two eggs, then another pigeon showing up and swapping with the other pigeon.
my cat Theo sat at the window, staring at a pigeon, staring right back at him, sitting next to two bright white eggs.
a pigeon walking under my patio furniture, with two eggs on the astroturf, then going over and nesting on them.
text from the NYT story, which reads: Tom Homan, who was later named President Trump’s border czar, was recorded in September 2024 accepting a bag with $50,000 in cash in an undercover F.B.I. investigation, according to people familiar with the case, which was later shut down by Trump administration officials. The cash payment, which was made inside a bag from the food chain Cava, grew out of a long-running counterintelligence investigation that had not been targeting Mr. Homan, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the case.
an AP headline, which reads: "White House backs 'border czar' after reports he accepted cash during undercover FBI probe last"
a photo of my cat Theo, a grey and white russian blue kitten, half tucked-into bed, asleep, exposing a tiny little fang.
two screenshots side by side of a WhatsApp message, showing a malicious link to whatsapp-meeting.duckdns.org.
an AP headline from 2023, which reads: "Donald Trump stored, showed off and refused to return classified documents, indictment says"
a screenshot of Betterment's data breach web page source code, showing a "noindex" tag in the code, which instructs search engines to ignore the page and not make it returnable in search results.
a screenshot of the Uzbek license plate scanning web dashboard, showing a license plate reader identifying and clocking a vehicle as violating traffic rules.
an autonomous Uber Eats delivery robot, on the snow, stuck, frozen and unable to move.
questions we asked Mixpanel by email: We understand Mixpanel was targeted by a SMS phishing attack; can you provide more details about the attack, and whether this SMS phishing attack targeted Mixpanel employees? How many employees were targeted? When did the SMS phishing attack begin targeting Mixpanel employees, if known? Were staff accounts compromised as part of the cyberattack? If so, how many? What percentage of employee accounts were protected by multi-factor authentication prior to November 8? Has Mixpanel called in an external incident response firm to investigate and advise Mixpanel? If so, which company is this? We understand that Mixpanel notified customers, such as OpenAI, that the stolen data includes users' names, email addresses, coarse location data (based on device usage), and device data, such as browser or operating system. Can Mixpanel confirm? Were any other specific types of data exfiltrated from Mixpanel's systems? Does Mixpanel have a complete list of file types affected by this data breach? Does Mixpanel have the technical means, such as logs, to determine what specific data was exfiltrated? Does the exfiltrated data include unique device identifiers, such as Apple IDFA or Android advertising ID? We understand that Mixpanel collects information from mobile apps and websites via its API (api.mixpanel.com/track). Can Mixpanel confirm or deny that data collected this way was affected by the Mixpanel breach? How much of this data was exfiltrated from Mixpanel's systems? We understand Mixpanel has around 8,000 paying customers (let me know if you have a more accurate figure). How many Mixpanel customers had data compromised during the cyberattack? Has Mixpanel received any communication from the hackers, such as a demand for payment? Is Mixpanel aware of the identities of the hackers, or able to attribute to a particular hacking group at this time? What specific "additional controls" has Mixpanel implemented since the cyberattack?
a search of the Ring founder's book of "police," showing 12 results.