StopICE platform reportedly hit by a breach, 100k users' data exposed to US feds

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The anti-ICE activist app and website StopICE has reportedly suffered a major security breach, exposing the personal information of more than 100,000 users to US federal agencies, including the FBI, ICE, and HSI.

According to social media posts and discussion threads on Reddit, the StopICE hackers delivered sensitive data from the app to multiple federal agencies.

The exposed information reportedly includes full names, user credentials, phone numbers, and precise location data for more than 100,000 registered users. One post indicated that the breach involved detailed GPS coordinates, potentially identifying activists' residences or frequent locations,

Sherman Martin Austin has reportedly been identified as a key figure behind the StopICE platform. Austin previously gained notoriety for his involvement in online activism and his prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 842(p), a federal law against distributing explosive information with the intent to commit violent crime. In 2002, he served one year in federal prison following a plea deal.

Users who relied on the platform to organize protests or share information about immigration enforcement may now be exposed to law enforcement. Civil liberties groups have expressed concern that activist communities may be disproportionately affected by security lapses, particularly when dealing with controversial topics like immigration enforcement. They warn that failure to secure and communicate about user data could undermine both trust and participation in digital organising efforts.

In response to the breach, StopICE users have been urged to change passwords, monitor linked accounts, and exercise caution in using similar platforms. Federal authorities have not publicly confirmed receipt of the leaked data, and Austin has yet to release a detailed statement addressing the breach. (Thea Felicity / International Business Times)

Moltbook, a social media site for AI agents, where AI agents interact independently of human control, and whose posts have repeatedly gone viral, left APIs exposed in an open database that will let anyone take control of those agents to post whatever they want due to a misconfiguration.

Hacker Jameson O'Reilly discovered the misconfiguration and demonstrated it. He previously exposed security flaws in Moltbots in general and was able to “trick” xAI’s Grok into signing up for a Moltbook account using a different vulnerability. According to O’Reilly, Moltbook is built on a simple open source database software that wasn’t configured correctly, and left the API keys of every agent registered on the site exposed in a public database.

O’Reilly said that he reached out to Moltbook’s creator, Matt Schlicht, about the vulnerability and told him he could help patch the security. “He’s like, ‘I’m just going to give everything to AI. So send me whatever you have.’” O’Reilly sent Schlicht some instructions for the AI and reached out to the xAI team.

A day passed without another response from the creator of Moltbook and O’Reilly stumbled across a stunning misconfiguration. “It appears to me that you could take over any account, any bot, any agent on the system and take full control of it without any type of previous access,” he said.

The URL to the Supabase and the publishable key was sitting on Moltbook’s website.

The exposed database has been closed, and O’Reilly said that Schlicht has reached out to him for help securing Moltbook. (Matthew Gault / 404 Media)

Related: WebProNews, Financial Times, moltbook, Marcus on AI, Ars Technica, The Decoder, Implicator.ai, Cyber Security News, New York Post, Livemint, Simon Willison's Newsletter, WinBuzzer, r/cybersecurity, r/OpenAI, r/singularity, r/LocalLLaMA, Paul McCarty, Rico Komenda, Andrea Tessera, Jim Amos, Chris H.

An initial group of 28 malicious skills targeting Claude Code and Moltbot users was published to ClawHub and GitHub between January 27-29, 2026, with a second larger group of 200+ skills published January 31-February 1, bringing the total number of malicious skills to 230+.

The malicious skills were targeted to ByBit, Polymarket, Axiom, Reddit and LinkedIn users in order to install malware.

The skills masquerade as cryptocurrency trading automation tools and deliver information-stealing malware to macOS and Windows systems. All these skills share the same command-and-control infrastructure (91.92.242.30) and use sophisticated social engineering to convince users to execute malicious commands, which then steal crypto assets like exchange API keys, wallet private keys, SSH credentials, and browser passwords.

There is no evidence that the skills listed there are scanned by any security tooling. Many of the payloads found were visible in plain text in the first paragraph of the SKILL.md file.

As of right now, the vast majority of these skills are still available at the official ClawHub/MoltHub GitHub repository:https://github.com/openclaw/skills and the team behind ClawdBot seemingly has no plans to remove the malicious skills. (Open Source Malware)

Related: Tom's Hardware, CNBC, Koi, CyberInsider

Researchers at Truesec observed that the Russian hacker alliance, known as the Russian Legion, has issued a warning targeting Denmark regarding an imminent large-scale cyberattack, codenamed “OpDenmark.”

The Russian Legion, led by the hacker group Cardinal and including The White Pulse, Russian Partizan, and Inteid (the latter having conducted a DDoS attack against sundhed.dk earlier this week), announced their alliance on January 27, 2026.

Russian Legion has issued several statements claiming that Danish companies and public organizations have been targeted by DDoS attacks, with the energy sector being mentioned multiple times. According to their statements, the main cyberattack was scheduled to begin at 6 pm Moscow Time (4 am Danish time) on January 30.

Truesec thinks that The Russian Legion is likely state-aligned but not state-funded. This aligns with Truesec’s broader threat intelligence, which consistently observes that geopolitical events, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, trigger increased cyber intrusion attempts from Russian-linked threat actors.

These groups frequently engage in both psychological operations and disruptive attacks. Historically, Russian hacker groups have used cyber sabotage and hacktivism to amplify information operations, aiming to intimidate and influence Western populations. (Truesec)

Related: Cyberpress

Notepad++ reports that its investigation into a hijacking vulnerability has continued in collaboration with external experts and with the full involvement of its former shared hosting provider after several users have reported security incidents.

According to the analysis provided by the security experts, the attack involved an infrastructure-level compromise that allowed malicious actors to intercept and redirect update traffic destined for notepad-plus-plus.org.

The exact technical mechanism remains under investigation, though the compromise occurred at the hosting provider level rather than through vulnerabilities in Notepad++ code itself. Traffic from certain targeted users was selectively redirected to attacker-controlled servers that served malicious update manifests.

The incident began in June 2025. Multiple independent security researchers have assessed that the threat actor is likely a Chinese state-sponsored group, which would explain the highly selective targeting observed during the campaign.

According to the former hosting provider, the shared hosting server was compromised until September 2, 2025. Even after losing server access, attackers maintained credentials to internal services until December 2, 2025, which allowed them to continue redirecting Notepad++ update traffic to malicious servers.

The attackers specifically targeted Notepad++ domain with the goal of exploiting insufficient update verification controls that existed in older versions of Notepad++. All remediation and security hardening were completed by the provider by December 2, 2025, successfully blocking further attacker activity. (Notepad++)

Related: Notepad++ Community, DoublePulsar

The US Justice Department announced that the US had seized a trio of popular domains in Bulgaria that allegedly distributed pirated content, including movies, TV shows, video games, and other content, as part of a globally coordinated crackdown on copyright infringement.

The sites — zamunda.net, arenabg.com and zelka.org — likely generated significant revenue from ads, officials said. Seizure notices are currently displayed on all three sites, warning visitors that illegal distribution of copyrighted works is a crime.

Officials said the US-registered domains received tens of millions of visits a year, including one that often ranked in the top 10 most visited sites in Bulgaria. Multiple Bulgarian agencies assisted with the investigation alongside Homeland Security Investigations, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi, and the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center.

The sites offered visitors thousands of infringed works, resulting in millions of downloads that carry a collective retail value of millions of dollars, prosecutors said. (Matt Kapko / CyberScoop)

Related: Justice Department, The Record, PCMag, The Cyber Express, Advanced Television, Broadband TV News

A major bread producer in Russia's Vladimir region, The Vladimir Bread Factory, said that its internal digital systems were hit overnight by a cyberattack last week, knocking out office computers, servers, electronic document management tools and the widely used 1C enterprise accounting system.

While production itself was not affected and bakeries continued operating at full capacity, the outage complicated order processing and deliveries. Local residents, retail outlets and food suppliers for social institutions reported difficulties fulfilling existing contracts and temporary shortages of the company’s bakery products in stores.

Large retail chains acknowledged the delivery issues but said there was no widespread shortage of bread on store shelves.

To keep supplies moving, the company shifted all office staff to a round-the-clock schedule and temporarily reverted to manual processing of orders and shipments. The factory has not provided a timeline for fully restoring its digital systems and apologized to partners and consumers for the disruption.

The identity of the attackers and the nature of the incident remain unclear. (Daryna Antoniuk / The Record)

Related: VladTV, ZebraTV, SC Media

A confidential informant told the FBI in 2017 that Jeffrey Epstein had a “personal hacker,” according to a document released by the Department of Justice.

The document, which was released as part of the Justice Department’s legally required effort to publish documents related to its investigation into the late sex offender, does not identify who the alleged hacker was, but does include several details about them.

According to the informant, the hacker was an Italian born in the southern region of Calabria and specialized in finding vulnerabilities in iOS, BlackBerry devices, and the Firefox browser.

The hacker allegedly developed zero-day exploits and offensive cyber tools and sold them to several countries, including an unnamed central African government, the U.K., and the United States. The informant told the FBI that Epstein’s hacker sold a zero-day to Hezbollah, which paid him with “a trunk of cash.”

Per the informant, the hacker “was very good at finding vulnerabilities.” (Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch)

Related: Cyber Daily

SentinelOne and Censys identified AI infrastructure spanning 175,000 exposed Ollama hosts, operating without the typical guardrails and monitoring that providers implement.

Over 293 days of research, the security firms made 7.23 million observations distributed across 130 countries and 4,032 autonomous system numbers (ASNs), with 23,000 hosts accounting for most of the activity.

Roughly half of the identified hosts could execute code, access APIs, and interact with external systems, SentinelOne says.

The firm explains that a small set of transient hosts accounted for most of the observed activity. Specifically, 13% of the hosts appeared in more than 100 observations (generating nearly 76% of the activity).

“Conversely, hosts observed exactly once constitute 36% of unique hosts but contribute less than 1% of total observations,” SentinelOne notes.

The hosts that persistently appeared in observations, SentinelOne says, “provide ongoing utility to their operators and, by extension, represent the most attractive and accessible targets for adversaries.”

 The cybersecurity firm notes that 56% of hosts were found on fixed-access telecom networks, including consumer ISPs.

In terms of geographical distribution, China accounted for the majority of hosts, at approximately 30%, followed by the US, at just over 20%. Virginia accounted for 18% of the hosts in the US.

While the observed behavior pointed toward multi-model deployments, Llama AI models were the most prevalent, followed by Qwen2, Gemma2, Qwen3, and Nomic-Bert, SentinelOne says. (Ionut Arghire / Security Week)

Related: SentinelOne, Cyber Press, SC Media, r/hacking, The Register, Tech Radar, SC Media

Harold Rogers, the interim CEO of Coupang, underwent 12 hours of intensive police questioning over allegations of destruction of evidence linked to a massive data breach at the e-commerce company.

He emerged from the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency on Saturday at 2:22 am, declining to answer reporters' questions on whether he admitted to the charges or intended to leave the country.

Rogers faces accusations of obstructing official investigations into the breach estimated to have affected nearly 33 million users. Coupang had independently announced that data from only 3,000 accounts had been leaked, a figure authorities dispute.

Police, who suspect more than 30 million accounts were affected, are investigating the reliability of Coupang's internal probe. The government has criticized the company's findings as one-sided.

Investigators focused on the company's handling of a laptop allegedly used in the hacking. Coupang recovered the device in China last month from a former employee responsible for the breach and submitted it to police.

However, the company reportedly failed to disclose that it had already conducted its own forensic analysis on the computer. Police questioned Rogers regarding the motives behind the company's undisclosed contact with the suspect and its handling of the evidence. (Yonhap News)

Related: IANS, Asia Business Daily, UPI

According to an inventory released Wednesday of all use cases the Department of Homeland Security had for AI in 2025, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement is leveraging Palantir’s generative artificial intelligence tools to sort and summarize immigration enforcement tips from its public submission form.

The AI Enhanced ICE Tip Processing service is intended to help ICE investigators “to more quickly identify and action tips” for urgent cases, as well as translate submissions not made in English, according to the inventory. It also provides a “BLUF,” defined as a “high-level summary of the tip,” produced using at least one large language model. BLUF, or “bottom line up front,” is a military term that’s also used internally by some Palantir employees.

DHS says that the software is “being actively authorized” in support of ICE operations, adding that the tool helps reduce the “time-consuming manual effort required to review and categorize incoming tips.” The date when the AI-enhanced tip processing “became operational” is listed in the inventory as May 2, 2025.

The DHS inventory does not provide many details about the large language models Palantir uses to generate the BLUFs; however, it does note that ICE uses “commercially available large language models” that were “trained on the public domain data by their providers.” (Caroline Haskins and Makena Kelly / Wired)

Related: DHS, Technology Press, FedScoop, NextGov/FCW, GovTech

Step Finance, a decentralized finance (DeFi) portfolio tracker built on Solana, said some of its treasury wallets were compromised in a security breach in which 261,854 SOL, worth roughly $27 million at current prices, was unstaked and transferred during the incident.

The platform disclosed the breach in a post on X and asked cybersecurity firms to assist with the investigation. It did not specify how the attacker gained access or whether user funds were affected.

The platform's governance token, STEP, dropped over 80% in the 24 hours after the breach, according to SoSoValue data. Step also operates a validator node on Solana and uses validator earnings to fund STEP token buybacks. (The platform disclosed the breach in a post on X and asked cybersecurity firms to assist with the investigation. It did not specify how the attacker gained access or whether user funds were affected. (Francisco Rodrigues augmented with AI / CoinDesk)

Related: Trading View

Cross-chain bridge CrossCurve announced it had suffered a significant attack, losing $3 million across multiple networks.

The DeFi protocol noted that a vulnerability in its smart contracts had been exploited, raising security concerns about cross-chain infrastructure.

“Our bridge is currently under attack,” it wrote on X, warning users to suspend all interactions with CrossCurve.

Per the CrossCurve post, some user addresses received token funds due to the smart contract vulnerability that were “wrongfully taken” from other users.

“We do not believe this was intentional on your part, and there is no indication of malicious intent. We hope for your cooperation in returning the funds,” the platform wrote, identifying a total of 10 addresses.

According to blockchain security account Defimon Alerts, a vulnerable CrossCurve’s smart contracts ReceiverAxelar, allowed anyone to spoof cross-chain message, bypassing the gateway validation. This has triggered unauthorized token unlocks on PortalV2 contract. (cryptonews)

Related: The Cyber Express, CCN

Bangladesh ,today alleged a "deep conspiracy" behind the hacking of the official X (formerly Twitter) account of its Ameer Dr. Shafiqur Rahman and several other senior leaders, claiming the incident was aimed at tarnishing the party's image and creating public confusion.

"The cyberattack was deliberately carried out to publish objectionable and contradictory content, particularly on issues related to women's rights and the party's ideology," Jamaat assistant secretary general Maulana Abdul Halim told a press conference this morning.

According to Jamaat's cybersecurity team, the breach took place on January 31 in the afternoon. An unwanted and offensive post was published from the Ameer's official X account at around 4:37 pm, followed by a similar post in Bengali from the account of the Dhaka City South secretary later.

The party's social media team detected the unauthorized activity at around 4:55 pm and regained control of the compromised accounts by 5:09 pm after changing passwords.

An official clarification was issued at 5:22 pm, stating that the controversial posts were the result of hacking.

Jamaat leaders said preliminary technical findings indicate that the accounts were hacked through phishing emails containing malware.

They claimed that hackers sent emails to official party addresses, including info@jamaat-e-islami.org, disguising them as urgent documents related to election case studies from an official e-mail address from the Bangabhaban.

The party further alleged that at least one of the phishing emails appeared to have originated from a government-related address, though it acknowledged the possibility of spoofing or misuse by third parties. Jamaat called on the authorities to investigate the matter thoroughly.

Party leaders also claimed the incident appeared to be premeditated, noting that screenshots of the fake posts were taken within a minute of publication but were circulated widely by certain groups several hours later, which they said suggested a coordinated effort to spread misinformation. (BSS News)

Related: Prothomalo, New Age BD, The Daily Star

Google breached its own policies that barred use of artificial intelligence for weapons or surveillance in 2024 by helping an Israeli military contractor analyze drone video footage, a former Google employee alleged in a confidential federal whistleblower complaint.

Google’s Gemini AI technology was being used by Israel’s defense apparatus at a time that the company was publicly distancing itself from the country’s military after employee protests over a contract with Israel’s government, according to internal documents included in the complaint.

In July 2024, Google’s cloud-computing division received a customer support request from a person using an Israel Defense Forces email address, according to the documents included in the complaint, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in August. The name on the customer support request matches a publicly listed employee of Israeli tech firm CloudEx, which the complaint to the SEC alleges is an IDF contractor.

The request from the IDF email address asked for help making Google’s Gemini more reliable at identifying objects such as drones, armored vehicles, and soldiers in aerial video footage, according to the internal documents included with the complaint. Staff in Google’s cloud unit responded by making suggestions and doing internal tests, the documents said.

At the time, Google’s public “AI principles” stated that the company would not deploy AI technology in relation to weapons, or to surveillance, “violating internationally accepted norms.” The whistleblower complaint alleges that the IDF contractor’s use contradicted both policies.

The complaint to the SEC alleges that Google broke securities laws because by contradicting its own publicly stated policies, which had also been included in federal filings, the company misled investors and regulators. (Gerrit De Vynck / Washington Post)

Related: Jerusalem Post

Best Thing of the Day: When You Invite Hackers and Few Show Up

Nick Lewis, an editor at How-To Geek, explains how he set up a honey pot on his home server and discovered that he attracted fewer malicious hackers than he expected.

Worst Thing of the Day: The World's Second-Worst Person Does What You Might Expect

Elon Musk intentionally forced xAI to embrace making sexualized material to increase user active seconds.

Closing Thought