Hacktivist group reportedly breaches DHS service exposing 41,000 employees

A hacktivist group reportedly breached a Homeland Security single-sign-on service, exposing personal and job information for more than 41,000 employees, while Polymarket paused trading after attackers used a compromised third-party service to deliver cryptocurrency-stealing code; about $2.5 million was traced to a suspected attacker wallet. Separately, incident-response data found that exploitation of known vulnerabilities—especially in edge devices—accounted for 14% of initial access cases in the third quarter, up from 4% in the second quarter. An Australian cybersecurity report and commentary warn that state-backed actors are targeting critical infrastructure and may be positioning themselves inside networks for future disruption, prompting calls to treat government-sponsored intrusions more like physical attacks and respond more forcefully. Reporting also highlights Chinese government hackers’ covert efforts to penetrate critical networks using novel methods.