Quantum computers need vastly fewer resources than thought to break vital encryption
Quantum computers need vastly fewer resources than thought to break vital encryption
No, the sky isn’t falling, but Q Day is coming, and it won’t be as expensive as thought.
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Building a utility-scale quantum computer that can crack one of the most vital cryptosystems—elliptic curves—doesn’t require nearly the resources anticipated just a year or two ago, two independently written whitepapers have concluded. In one, researchers demonstrated the use of neutral atoms as reconfigurable qubits that have free access to each other. They went on to show this approach could allow a quantum computer to break 256-bit elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) in 10 days while using 100 times less overhead than previously estimated. In a second paper, Google researchers demonstrated how to break ECC-securing blockchains for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in less than nine minutes while achieving a 20-fold resource reduction.
Taken together, the papers are the latest sign that cryptographically relevant quantum computing (CRQC) at utility-scale is making meaningful progress. The advances are largely being driven by new quantum architectures developed by physicists and computer scientists in a push to create quantum computers that operate correctly even in the presence of errors that occur whenever qubits—the quantum analog to classical computing bits—interact with their environment. The other key drivers are ever-more efficient algorithms to supercharge Shor’s algorithm, the 1994 series of equations proving that quantum computing could break the ECC and RSA cryptosystems in polynomial time, specifically cubic time, far faster than the exponential time provided by today’s classical computers.
Neither paper has been peer-reviewed.
“The research community continues to make steady progress on both the physical qubits and the quantum algorithms necessary to realize an efficient and practical CRQC,” said Brian LaMacchia, a cryptography engineer who oversaw Microsoft’s post-quantum transition from 2015 to 2022 and now works at Farcaster Consulting Group. “I don’t think either paper gives us a new, hard date for when we’re going to have a practical CRQC (which of course we’ve never had), but they both provide evidence that we are continuing to march down the road to a realizable CRQC and progress toward that goal is not slowing down.”
Trapping atoms in “optical tweezers”
The paper that is getting the most attention takes a relatively new approach to creating fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC) that can reduce the number of physical qubits required to break ECC by a factor of 100. Unlike more common approaches based on superconducting, the researchers built physical qubits out of neutral atoms. Using lasers to cool atoms, the process traps individual atoms into tightly focused beams of light known as “optical tweezers.” Each tweezer snags a single atom. Using optical multiplexing, the researchers can make large arrays of these trapped atoms.
The benefit of this approach is that all physical qubits can interact with all other physical qubits. These “non-local” communications are a major departure from qubit interaction in superconducting approaches, where qubits are laid out on a 2D grid and can interact with only their four immediately adjacent qubit neighbors. The ability for qubits to interact with very far-away qubits makes error correction significantly more efficient, since non-local communication allows for drastically increasing the number and thoroughness of fault checks.
As a result, the researchers’ paper—titled Shor’s algorithm is possible with as few as 10,000 reconfigurable atomic qubits—says a quantum computer needs fewer than 30,000 physical cubits to break ECC-256 in 10 days, orders of magnitude more efficient than previous estimates. A separate research team last year showed that they could build neutral atom trapping arrays exceeding 6,000 qubits. Combined with advances in large-scale quantum operations with high fidelity, neutral atoms have the potential to run fault-tolerant quantum computing.
“While substantial work is needed to integrate these advances into a complete apparatus and scale system sizes to the required levels, our analysis indicates that appropriately designed neutral-atom architectures could support cryptographically relevant implementations of Shor’s algorithm,” the researchers wrote. “This finding underscores the importance of ongoing efforts to transition widely deployed cryptographic systems to post-quantum standards designed to be secure against quantum attacks.”
Google is looking out for the crypto bros
A separate paper released by Google researchers also shows progress in using Shor’s algorithm to break ECC-256, specifically over secp256k1, the elliptic curve that forms the backbone of bitcoin and other blockchain cryptography. The researchers said they have devised improvements to Shor’s algorithm that make it possible to crack the public key in a bitcoin address in under 10 minutes with resources that are 20 times smaller than those achieved in 2003 research.
Specifically, Google said it has compiled two quantum circuits that solve the elliptic-curve discrete logarithm problem. One requires fewer than 1,200 logical qubits and 90 million Toffoli gates, and the other needs fewer than 1,450 logical qubits and 70 million Toffoli gates. A logical qubit is a fault-tolerant qubit that’s encoded using hundreds (or thousands) of physical qubits. The researchers estimate their machine needs roughly 500,000 physical qubits, half of what the same team estimated last June was needed to break 2048-bit RSA, which has a much larger key size. A Toffoli gate is a resource-intensive operation that’s a key driver in the amount of time required to complete an algorithm.
In a move that’s turning heads in security circles, Google isn’t releasing the algorithmic improvements that make this achievement possible. Instead, the researchers released a zero-knowledge proof that mathematically proves the existence of the algorithmic enhancement without disclosing it.
“The escalating risk that detailed cryptanalytic blueprints could be weaponized by adversarial actors necessitates a shift in disclosure practices,” the authors explained. “Accordingly, we believe it is now a matter of public responsibility to share refined resource estimates while withholding the precise mechanics of the underlying attacks.” The researchers, who said they consulted with the US government in forging the new policy, went on to say that “progress in quantum computing has reached the stage where it is prudent to stop publishing details of improved quantum cryptanalysis to avoid misuse.”
The move, recently proposed by influential researcher Scott Aaronson, is a complete turnaround from the strict 90-day disclosure policies Google’s Project Zero pioneered two decades ago and an accepted norm that has driven security research for even longer. Other researchers are already criticizing the lack of details.
“I think it’s alarmist to claim an immediate security risk from an algorithm that requires a computer that doesn’t exist,” Matt Green, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies cryptography, said. “Given that the stakes here are so low (for the same reason) I’d classify it as less harmful, and more on the hype side. I think it’s more of a PR trick than a serious concern anyone has.”
Google is also facing scrutiny for focusing on the harm CRQC poses to cryptocurrencies—an obsession of vocal influencers and the current White House—rather than on TLS implementations, DocuSign signatures, digital certificates, or any other number of more general applications that affect larger populations of people.
“While CRQCs certainly do pose a threat to blockchain-based technologies based on classical ECC algorithms, they are just one of many systems in our modern world that need to transition quickly to PQC,” LaMacchia said, referring to post-quantum cryptography. “Especially when reading some of the policy proposals at the end of the white paper, I am just dumbfounded that Google is focused on policy frameworks for solving problems that seem unique to the cryptocurrency space (e.g., salvaged digital assets) and not the general threat that CRQC pose to all our systems that use public-key cryptography.”
Dan Goodin
Senior Security Editor
Dan Goodin
Senior Security Editor
You can finally change the goofy Gmail address you chose years ago
Someone is celebrating a birthday tomorrow—it's Gmail. The iconic email service debuted 22 years ago on April 1, forever altering what people expected from free email. But 22 years is a long time, and the username you chose when you finally got your hands on an invite in 2004 may not have stood the test of time. Starting today, Google will let US-based users ditch an old username without creating a new account.
Google started testing this option some months ago, both in the US and internationally. Today, the name change feature is rolling out widely in the US. You can check for the option on this account page to get started (you'll have to log in). Some of the accounts we've checked already have the option, but it could take a while for it to appear for everyone.
Over the years, many users have abandoned old Gmail addresses because the handle is too personal or their names have changed. Now, you don't have to abandon anything. When the option appears, you'll be able to change the username portion of your email (the part before @gmail) to anything you desire. However, Google says you can only change your address once every 12 months. The company hasn't explained why you're limited to one change per year, but it may be a measure to combat spam.
AV1’s open, royalty-free promise in question as Dolby sues Snapchat over codec
AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) was invented by a group of technology companies to be an open, royalty-free alternative to other video codecs, like HEVC/H.265. But a lawsuit that Dolby Laboratories Inc. filed this week against Snap Inc. calls all that into question with claims of patent infringement.
Numerous lawsuits are currently open in the US regarding the use of HEVC. Relevant patent holders, such as Nokia and InterDigital, have sued numerous hardware vendors and streaming service providers in pursuit of licensing fees for the use of patented technologies deemed essential to HEVC.
It’s a touch rarer to see a lawsuit filed over the implementation of AV1. The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), whose members include Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Netflix, says it developed AV1 “under a royalty-free patent policy (Alliance for Open Media Patent License 1.0)” and that the standard is “supported by high-quality reference implementations under a simple, permissive license (BSD 3-Clause Clear License).”
Sony is raising PlayStation 5 prices again, this time by between $100 and $150
Memory and storage shortages and price hikes that started hitting PC components late last year have steadily rippled outward across all kinds of consumer tech—some products have disappeared, gone out of stock, or been delayed, and others have undergone multiple rounds of price hikes.
Today's bad news comes from Sony, which is raising prices for PlayStation 5 consoles in the US just eight months after their last price hike. The drive-less Digital Edition will increase from $500 to $600; the base PS5 with an optical drive will increase from $550 to $650; and the PS5 Pro is going up from $750 to a whopping $900. At the beginning of 2025, these consoles cost $450, $500, and $700, respectively.
Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo had all announced one or more price increases for one or more consoles throughout 2025, though these were driven more by the Trump administration's tariffs on imported goods than component shortages. Game console price cuts had already become less common over the course of the 2010s, making consoles like the five-plus-year-old PS5 historically expensive compared to older consoles at this point in their lifespans.
Apple pulls the plug on its high-priced, oft-neglected Mac Pro desktop
After more than a decade of flirting with the idea, Apple has finally discontinued the Mac Pro tower. The company confirmed to 9to5Mac that the latest Mac Pro iteration—an M2 Ultra model first released in mid-2023—would be its last, at least for the time being. There are no plans to make another Mac Pro.
The discontinuation of the Mac Pro should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. Reporting from late last year suggested that the Mac Pro had been put "on the back burner," but the desktop has clearly been in danger of falling off the stove since at least the mid-2010s, during the six-year period where the controversial cylindrical "trash can" Mac Pro design languished without updates.
Apple briefly rededicated itself to its pro desktop in 2019 with a new design that hearkened back to more versatile, upgradeable, be-handled versions of the Power Mac and Mac Pro. But by the time it was updated again with M2 Ultra four years later, it was already clear that the idea of a huge and expandable Mac desktop was out of step with the Apple Silicon era. The desktop's demise confirms that, at least in Apple's estimation, the Mac Pro was trying to fill a niche that no longer exists.
AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition crams 208MB of cache into a single chip
For about four years now, AMD has offered special "X3D" variants of its high-end desktop processors with an extra 64MB of L3 cache attached, an addition that disproportionately benefits games. AMD calls this "3D V-Cache" because it stacks the cache directly on top of (for Ryzen 5000 and 7000) or beneath (for Ryzen 9000) the CPU die.
The 12- and 16-core Ryzen chips have their CPU cores split between two silicon chiplets, which has historically made the 7900X3D, 7950X3D, 9900X3D, and 9950X3D a bit weird. One of their two CPU chiplets has the 64MB of 3D V-Cache attached, and one does not. AMD relies on its driver software to make sure that software that benefits from the extra cache is run on the V-Cache-enabled CPU cores, which usually works well but is occasionally error-prone.
Enter the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition, a mouthful of a chip that includes 64MB of 3D V-Cache on both processor dies, without the hybrid arrangement that has defined the other chips up until now. This gives the chip a grand total of 208MB of cache—16MB of L2 cache, the 32MB of L3 cache built into each of the two CPU dies (for a total of 64MB), and then another 64MB chunk of 3D V-Cache per die. In total, AMD says the new chip should be as much as 10 percent faster than the 9950X3D in games and other apps that benefit from the extra cache.
Netflix increases prices for all plans by up to $2 per month
Netflix isn't preparing for a multibillion acquisition anymore, but it's still raising prices.
As first spotted by Android Authority today, Netflix now lists its ad-supported plan as costing $9 per month, up from $8/month. The Standard, ad-free plan went up from $18/month to $20/month, and the Premium ad-free plan (which supports viewing from four, instead of two, devices simultaneously, 4K, and spatial audio) went from $25/month to $27/month.
For comparison, Disney+ starts at $12/month with commercials and $19/month without.
Intel Core Ultra 270K and 250K Plus review: Conditionally great CPUs
Many of our graphics card reviews early last year and in the early 2020s focused on the difficulties of reviewing and recommending graphics cards when the manufacturer-suggested price points effectively didn't exist. Now, reviews of any new PC component have to contend with the much more broadly awful market for consumer PC parts as AI data center-fueled demand for RAM and flash memory chips drives up prices for DDR5 kits, SSDs, and GPUs.
In our August 2025 system guide, 32GB of DDR5 and a decent 2TB SSD would run you less than $200. Today, you'd pay between three and four times as much for similar components.
This is the context that Intel's Core Ultra 200S Plus chips—the $199 Core Ultra 5 250K Plus and $299 Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, still codenamed Arrow Lake just like the originals—have launched into. They're solid performers, they're reasonably power-efficient, and for heavy multi-threaded workloads, they're a better value than what AMD can offer for the same price (though even years-old non-X3D AMD chips retain a small edge in games).
BRINC's new police drone uses Starlink, carries Narcan, chases vehicles at 60mph
Drone startup BRINC announced Tuesday a significant upgrade for its law enforcement drones. BRINC’s newest model, Guardian, will have Starlink connectivity on every unit—a first for commercially available drones.
This new model, which will enter production later this year, has a flight time of over an hour and can reach a top speed of over 60 miles per hour. BRINC calls it the “first drone that can pursue vehicles.”
Additionally, Guardian can carry numerous payloads from its charging “nest,” including a floatation device, a defibrillator, epipens, the overdose-reversal drug Narcan, and more. The nest can also robotically swap batteries in about a minute, the company claims.
Reddit will require "fishy" accounts to verify they are run by a human
Reddit will require accounts that exhibit “automated or otherwise fishy behavior” to verify that a human runs them, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in a Reddit post today. The verification process aims to combat unwanted bots from flooding Reddit at a time when AI bots are poised to take over the Internet.
“As AI becomes a bigger part of the Internet, we want to make sure that when you’re on Reddit, you know when you’re talking to a person and when you’re not,” Huffman said.
Human verification will only occur if Reddit suspects that an account is a bot. This is “rare” and won’t apply to “most users,” Huffman emphasized. If the account cannot prove that it's human, it “may be restricted,” he said.
Google bumps up Q Day deadline to 2029, far sooner than previously thought
Google bumps up Q Day deadline to 2029, far sooner than previously thought
Company warns entire industry to move off RSA and EC more quickly.
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Google is dramatically shortening its deadline readiness for the arrival of Q Day, the point at which existing quantum computers can break public-key cryptography algorithms that secure decades’ worth of secrets belonging to militaries, banks, governments, and nearly every individual on earth.
In a post published on Wednesday, Google said it is giving itself until 2029 to prepare for this event. The post went on to warn that the rest of the world needs to follow suit by adopting PQC—short for post-quantum cryptography—algorithms to augment or replace elliptic curves and RSA, both of which will be broken.
The end is nigh
“As a pioneer in both quantum and PQC, it’s our responsibility to lead by example and share an ambitious timeline,” wrote Heather Adkins, Google’s VP of security engineering, and Sophie Schmieg, a senior cryptography engineer. “By doing this, we hope to provide the clarity and urgency needed to accelerate digital transitions not only for Google, but also across the industry.”
Estimates for when Q Day will arrive have varied widely since the mid-1990s, when mathematician Peter Shor first showed that a quantum computer of sufficient strength could factor integers in polynomial time, much faster than classical computers. That put the world on notice that RSA’s days were limited. Follow-on research showed quantum computers provided a similar speed-up in solving the discrete log problem that underpins elliptic curves.
The timeline for this arrival is based on when existing quantum computers will contain the required number of qubits that can correct inevitable errors. In 2012, most estimates were that a 2048-bit RSA key could be broken by a quantum computer with a billion physical qubits. By 2019, the estimate was lowered to 20 million physical qubits. A running joke among researchers has been that Q Day has been 20 years away for the past 30 years.
In January, Google published research that once again drastically lowered the expected threshold for breaking RSA. It showed that a 2048-bit RSA integer could be factored in less than a week with a quantum computer with 1 million “noisy qubits,” meaning qubits that are prone to errors resulting from environmental conditions that disrupt the quantum state. The research was led by Craig Gidney, the same scientist behind the 2019 estimate.
In preparation for Q Day, cryptographers have devised new encryption algorithms that rely on problems that quantum computers can’t solve. Rather than factoring the discrete log, the problems involve mathematical structures known as lattices and cryptographic hashes. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has advanced several algorithms that have yet to be broken and are presumed to be secure.
PQC algorithms have made their way into a variety of products and protocols, although largely in piecemeal fashion. Last year, the Signal messenger added ML-KEM-768, an implementation of the CRYSTALS-Kyber algorithm, to its existing encryption engine. Software and services from Google, Apple, Cloudflare, and dozens of others have also done the same.
“Quantum computers will pose a significant threat to current cryptographic standards, and specifically to encryption and digital signatures,” Google’s Wednesday morning post stated. “The threat to encryption is relevant today with store-now-decrypt-later attacks, while digital signatures are a future threat that require the transition to PQC prior to a Cryptographically Relevant Quantum Computer (CRQC). That’s why we’ve adjusted our threat model to prioritize PQC migration for authentication services—an important component of online security and digital signature migrations. We recommend that other engineering teams follow suit.”
Dan Goodin
Senior Security Editor
Dan Goodin
Senior Security Editor
Newly purchased Vizio TVs now require Walmart accounts to use smart features
Prospective Vizio TV buyers should know there’s a good chance the set won’t work properly without a Walmart account. In an attempt to better serve advertisers, Walmart, which bought Vizio in December 2024, announced this week that select newly purchased Vizio TVs now require a Walmart account for setup and accessing smart TV features.
Since 2024, Vizio TVs have required a Vizio account, which a Vizio OS website says is necessary for accessing “exclusive offers, subscription management, and tailored support.” Accounts are also central to Vizio’s business, which is largely driven by ads and tracking tied to its OS.
A Walmart spokesperson confirmed to Ars Technica that Walmart accounts will be mandatory on “select new Vizio OS TVs” for owners to complete onboarding and to use smart TV features. The representative added:
Apple releases iOS, iPadOS, macOS 26.4 with a long list of medium-size tweaks
Apple has released the 26.4 updates to all of its major software platforms today, including iOS, iPadOS, macOS Tahoe, watchOS, tvOS, visionOS, and the HomePod. The most important reason to install each update is the big pile of included security fixes—you can see the ones Apple is disclosing for iOS/iPadOS and macOS on its security website—but the updates also include a few significant new features, a change from the mostly quiet 26.3 release last month.
We covered many of the most notable features when the first versions of these updates were released through Apple's beta testing channels. Those include charging limits for MacBooks, for those who don't want to allow their batteries to charge to their full capacities; the return of the "compact" tab view for Safari running on macOS Tahoe and iPadOS 26; and enabled-by-default Stolen Device Protection.
Other features include the handful of new emoji from the Unicode 17.0 release (see Emojipedia for more); AI-generated Apple Music playlists; new Creator Studio features for the built-in Freeform app; and the ability for adults in a Family Sharing group to use different payment methods from one another when making purchases.
Apple confirms that its Maps app will begin showing ads to users "this summer"
One benefit of most of Apple's hardware and software is that it's relatively privacy-focused and light on advertising, compared to something like modern Windows or the Roku operating system. But ads have still crept into various apps and services over time, and Apple confirmed today that its Maps app would begin showing ads to users in the US and Canada starting "this summer."
Businesses that want to show ads in Apple Maps will be able to claim their physical location and upload photos, and then pay to have their business displayed at the top of search results "based on relevance" and also in a "Suggested Places" section of the app. Apple displays similar relevance-based advertisements when users search for apps in the App Store.
Apple says that users' personal data will still stay on-device and won't be collected by Apple or shared with third parties. The company also says that ads viewed or opened in Maps won't be tied to your Apple account or used to track your physical location.
Self-propagating malware poisons open source software and wipes Iran-based machines
Self-propagating malware poisons open source software and wipes Iran-based machines
Development houses: It’s time to check your networks for infections.
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A new hacking group has been rampaging the Internet in a persistent campaign that spreads a self-propagating and never-before-seen backdoor—and curiously a data wiper that targets Iranian machines.
The group, tracked under the name TeamPCP, first gained visibility in December, when researchers from security firm Flare observed it unleashing a worm that targeted cloud-hosted platforms that weren’t properly secured. The objective was to build a distributed proxy and scanning infrastructure and then use it to compromise servers for exfiltrating data, deploying ransomware, conducting extortion, and mining cryptocurrency. The group is notable for its skill in large-scale automation and integration of well-known attack techniques.
Relentless and constantly evolving
More recently, TeamPCP has waged a relentless campaign that uses continuously evolving malware to bring ever more systems under its control. Late last week, it compromised virtually all versions of the widely used Trivy vulnerability scanner in a supply-chain attack after gaining privileged access to the GitHub account of Aqua Security, the Trivy creator.
Over the weekend, researchers said they observed TeamPCP spreading potent malware that was also worm-enabled, meaning it had the potential to spread to new machines automatically, with no interaction required of victims behind the keyboard. After infecting a machine, the malware scours them for access tokens to the npm repository and compromises any publishable packages available by creating a new version laced with the malicious code. Aikido observed the worm targeting 28 packages in less than 60 seconds.
Initially, an attacker had to manually spread the worm across every package a compromised npm token had access to. Later versions pushed over the weekend removed this requirement, giving it ever more reach.
The worm was controlled by an uncommon mechanism that was designed to be tamper proof. It used an Internet Computer Protocol-based canister, a form of self-enforcing smart contract designed to be impossible for third parties to take down or alter. The canister could point to ever-changing URLs for servers hosting malicious binaries. By giving the attackers a way for the worm to find control servers, the attackers can constantly swap out URLs at any time. Infected machines reported to the canister once every 50 minutes.
In an email, Aikido researcher Charlie Eriksen said the canister was taken down Sunday night and is no longer available.
“It wasn’t as reliable/untouchable as they expected,” Eriksen wrote. “But for a while, it would have wiped systems if infected.”
Like previous TeamPCP malware, CanisterWorm, as Aikido has named the malware, targets organizations’ CI/CD pipelines used for rapid development and deployment of software.
“Every developer or CI pipeline that installs this package and has an npm token accessible becomes an unwitting propagation vector, Eriksen wrote. “Their packages get infected, their downstream users install those, and if any of them have tokens, the cycle repeats.”
As the weekend progressed, CanisterWorm was updated to add an additional payload: a wiper that targets machines exclusively in Iran. When the updated worm infects machines, it checks if the machine is in the Iranian timezone or is configured for use in that country. When either condition was met, the malware no longer activated the credential stealer and instead triggered a novel wiper that TeamPCP developers named Kamikaze. Eriksen said in an email that there’s no indication yet that the worm caused actual damage to Iranian machines, but that there was “clear potential for large-scale impact if it achieves active spread.”
Eriksen said Kamikaze’s “decision tree is simple and brutal.”
- Kubernetes + Iran: Deploy a DaemonSet that wipes every node in the cluster
- Kubernetes + elsewhere: Deploy a DaemonSet that installs the CanisterWorm backdoor on every node
- No Kubernetes + Iran:
rm -rf / --no-preserve-root - No Kubernetes + elsewhere: Exit. Nothing happens.
TeamPCP’s targeting of a country that the US is currently at war with is a curious choice. Up to now the group’s motivation has been financial gain. With no clear connection to monetary profit, the wiper seems out of character for TeamPCP. Eriksen said Aikido still doesn’t know the motive. He wrote:
While there may be an ideological component, it could just as easily be a deliberate attempt to draw attention to the group. Historically, TeamPCP has appeared to be financially motivated, but there are signs that visibility is becoming a goal in itself. By going after security tools and open-source projects, including Checkmarx as of today, they are sending a clear and deliberate signal.
The hack that keeps on giving
Last week’s supply-chain compromise of Trivy was made possible by a previous compromise of Aqua Security in late February. Although the company’s incident response was intended to replace all compromised credentials, the rotation was incomplete, allowing TeamPCP to take control of the GitHub account for distributing the vulnerability scanner. Aqua Security said it was performing a more thorough credential purge in response.
Over the weekend, the hacking group managed to compromise Aqua Security’s Docker Hub account and publish two malicious updates for the scanner. TeamPCP also compromised a second GitHub account belonging to Aqua Security and defaced, renamed, and published 44 internal repositories, including source code for Tracee, internal Trivy forks, CI/CD pipelines, Kubernetes operators, and team knowledge bases. It would appear that the company’s subsequent attempts last week to fully rotate credentials was also unsuccessful.
“The CanisterWorm campaign appears to be a direct extension of the initial Trivy compromise rather than a separate operation,” researchers from security firm Socket wrote in an email. “This is also consistent with the attacker’s continued access following the initial breach, including the ability to publish malicious Trivy images (v0.69.5 and v0.69.6) to Docker Hub and expose internal Aqua repositories, suggesting incomplete containment and ongoing control over release infrastructure.”
With the ability to worm its way through sensitive developer pipelines and machines, CanisterWorm represents a serious escalation of the TeamPCP’s campaign to steal as many credentials as possible. Development organizations should realize that they may have been affected without knowing it. Both Aikido and Socket have published indicators that these organizations can use to determine if they have been targeted or compromised.
Dan Goodin
Senior Security Editor
Dan Goodin
Senior Security Editor