Top 5 Cybersecurity News Stories April 4, 2025

By Editorial Team | April 4, 2025

Cybersecurity threats are constantly evolving as threat actors seek access to your data and money. To help you stay secure, we have searched the internet for the top five cybersecurity news stories of the week that we think you should be aware of. No story is too big or small as we look at threats from espionage to security flaws in everyday devices:

1. Microsoft Warns of Tax-Themed Email Attacks Using PDFs and QR Codes to Deliver Malware

Microsoft has identified a wave of phishing campaigns exploiting tax season to deliver malware and steal credentials. Attackers use URL shorteners, QR codes, and fake DocuSign pages via the RaccoonO365 phishing-as-a-service platform.

Malware like BRc4, Latrodectus, Remcos RAT, AHKBot, and GuLoader is being spread. These campaigns primarily target U.S. sectors like IT and consulting.

2. Apple Fined €150 Million by French Regulator Over Discriminatory ATT Consent Practices

Apple has been fined €150 million ($162M) by France’s competition watchdog for abusing its market dominance via its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework.

The regulator said Apple’s double-standard—demanding more consent from third-party apps than its own—creates an unfair advantage. While ATT’s goal isn’t in question, its implementation violates French data protection rules, the authority ruled.

3. Recent GitHub supply chain attack traced to leaked SpotBugs token

A March 2025 supply chain attack targeting Coinbase has been traced back to a single stolen GitHub token from a SpotBugs maintainer. The breach cascaded through Reviewdog and tj-actions, ultimately exposing secrets in 218 repositories.

While Coinbase was targeted, no secrets were leaked. The incident highlights serious flaws in GitHub Actions’ security model and underscores the need to pin dependencies and audit CI logs.

4. ChatGPT is down worldwide with something went wrong error

Millions of ChatGPT users worldwide faced outages today, encountering errors when attempting follow-up messages.

The issue, affecting regions including the U.S., Europe, India, and Japan, caused the AI to stop responding after the first message, with users seeing persistent “Something went wrong” errors. OpenAI confirmed the problem and swiftly implemented a fix.

5. Hunters International shifts from ransomware to pure data extortion

Hunters International, once a prolific ransomware group with over 280 global attacks, has rebranded as World Leaks, shifting to extortion-only attacks using a custom data exfiltration tool.

The move comes amid declining ransomware profits and increased law enforcement pressure. Victims of the original group included Tata Technologies, AutoCanada, and the U.S. Marshals Service.