The open source software easyjson is used by the US government and American companies. But its ties to Russia’s VK, whose CEO has been sanctioned, have researchers sounding the alarm.

Since Russian troops invaded Ukraine more than three years ago, Russian technology companies and executives have been widely sanctioned for supporting the Kremlin. That includes Vladimir Kiriyenko, the son of one of Vladimir Putin’s top aides and the CEO of VK Group, which runs VK, Russia’s Facebook equivalent that has increasingly shifted towards the regime’s repressive positioning.

Now cybersecurity researchers are warning that a widely used piece of open source code—which is linked to Kiriyenko’s company and managed by Russian developers—may pose a “persistent” national security risk to the United States. The open source software (OSS), called easyjson, has been widely used by the US Department of Defense and “extensively” across software used in the finance, technology, and healthcare sectors, say researchers at security company Hunted Labs, which is behind the claims. The fear is that Russia could alter easyjson to steal data or otherwise be abused.

“You have this really critical package that’s basically a linchpin for the cloud native ecosystem, that’s maintained by a group of individuals based in Moscow belonging to an organization that has this suspicious history,” says Hayden Smith, a cofounder at Hunted Labs.

For decades, open source software has underpinned large swathes of the technology industry and the systems people rely on day to day. Open source technology allows anyone to see and modify code, helping to make improvements, detect security vulnerabilities, and apply independent scrutiny that’s absent from the closed tech of corporate giants. However, the fracturing of geopolitical norms and the specter of stealthy supply chain attacks has led to an increase in questions about risk levels of "foreign" code.

Easyjson is a code serialization tool for the Go programming language and is often used across the wider cloud ecosystem, being present in other open source software, according to Hunted Labs. The package is hosted on GitHub by a MailRu account, which is owned by VK after the mail company rebranded itself in 2021. The VK Group itself is not sanctioned. Easyjson has been available on Github since 2016, with most of its updates coming before 2020. Kiriyenko became the CEO of VK Group in December 2021 and was sanctioned in February 2022.

Hunted Labs’ analysis shared with WIRED shows the most active developers on the project in recent years have listed themselves as being based in Moscow. Smith says that Hunted Labs has not identified vulnerabilities in the easyjson code.

However, the link to the sanctioned CEO’s company, plus Russia’s aggressive state-backed cyberattacks, may increase potential risks, Smith says. Research from Hunted Labs details how code serialization tools could be abused by malicious hackers. “A Russian-controlled software package could be used as a ‘sleeper cell’ to cause serious harm to critical US infrastructure or for espionage and weaponized influence campaigns,” it says.

“Nation states take on a strategic positioning,” says George Barnes, a former deputy director at the National Security Agency, who spent 36 years at the NSA and now acts as a senior advisor and investor in Hunted Labs. Barnes says that hackers within Russia’s intelligence agencies could see easyjson as a potential opportunity for abuse in the future.

“It is totally efficient code. There’s no known vulnerability about it, hence no other company has identified anything wrong with it,” Barnes says. “Yet the people who actually own it are under the guise of VK, which is tight with the Kremlin,” he says. “If I’m sitting there in the GRU or the FSB and I’m looking at the laundry list of opportunities… this is perfect. It’s just lying there,” Barnes says, referencing Russia’s foreign military and domestic security agencies.

VK Group did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment about easyjson. The US Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment about the inclusion of easyjson in its software setup.

“NSA does not have a comment to make on this specific software,” a spokesperson for the National Security Agency says. “The NSA Cybersecurity Collaboration Center does welcome tips from the private sector—when a tip is received, NSA triages the tip against our own insights to fully understand the threat and, if corroborated, share any relevant mitigations with the community.” A spokesperson for the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which has faced upheaval under the second Trump administration, says: “We are going to refer you back to Hunted Labs.”

GitHub, a code repository owned by Microsoft, says that while it will investigate issues and take action where its policies are broken, it is not aware of malicious code in easyjson and VK is not sanctioned itself. Other tech companies’ treatment of VK varies. After Britain sanctioned the leaders of Russian banks who own stakes in VK in September 2022, for example, Apple removed its social media app from its App Store.

Dan Lorenc, the CEO of supply chain security firm Chainguard, says that with easyjson, the connections to Russia are in “plain sight” and that there is a “slightly higher” cybersecurity risk than those of other software libraries. He adds that the red flags around other open source technology may not be so obvious.

“In the overall open source space, you don’t necessarily even know where people are most of the time,” Lorenc says, pointing out that many developers do not disclose their identity or locations online, and even if they do, it is not always possible to verify the details are correct. “The code is what we have to trust and the code and the systems that are used to build that code. People are important, but we’re just not in a world where we can push the trust down to the individuals,” Lorenc says.

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has unfolded, there has been increased scrutiny on the use of open source systems and the impact of sanctions upon entities involved in the development. In October last year, a Linux kernel maintainer removed 11 Russian developers who were involved in the open souce project, broadly citing sanctions as the reason for the change. Then in January this year, the Linux Foundation issued guidance covering how international sanctions can impact open source, saying developers should be cautious of who they interact with and the nature of interactions.

The shift in perceived risk is coupled with the threat of supply chain attacks. Last year, corporate developers and the open source world were rocked as a mysterious attacker known as Jia Tan stealthily installed a backdoor in the widely used XZ Utils software, after spending two years diligently updating it without any signs of trouble. The backdoor was only discovered by chance.

“Years ago, OSS was developed by small groups of trusted developers who were known to one another,” says Nancy Mead, a fellow of the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute. “In that time frame, no one expected a trusted developer of being a hacker, and the relatively slower pace provided time for review. These days, with automatic release, incorporation of updates, and the wide usage of OSS, the old assumptions are no longer valid.”

Scott Hissam, a senior member of technical staff also from the Carnegie Software Engineering Institute, says there can often be consideration about how many maintainers and the number of organizations that work on an open source project, but there is currently not a “mass movement” to consider other details about OSS projects. “However, it is coming, and there are several activities that collect details about OSS projects, which OSS consumers can use to get more insight into OSS projects and their activities,” Hissam says, pointing to two examples.

Hunted Lab’s Smith says he is currently looking into the provenance of other open source projects and the risks that could come with them, including scrutinizing countries known to have carried out cyberattacks against US entities. He says he is not encouraging people to avoid open source software at all, more that risk considerations have shifted over time. “We’re telling you to just make really good risk informed decisions when you're trying to use open source,” he says. “Open source software is basically good until it's not.”

Security Researchers Warn a Widely Used Open Source Tool Poses a 'Persistent' Risk to the US

Fake Qantas emails in a sophisticated phishing scam steal credit card and personal info from Australians, bypassing major…

Fake Qantas emails in a sophisticated phishing scam steal credit card and personal info from Australians, bypassing major email security filters.

Australian airline Qantas is being targeted by criminals with fake emails claiming to be from the airline. Security experts at Cofense Intelligence, who discovered this attack, found that these convincing emails trick users into giving away their credit card information and personal information like phone numbers and addresses.

These fake Qantas emails mimic real marketing emails, using the same colours, and layout as real ones and “with appropriate branding and functional links.” One clever trick the criminals used was to include an “unsubscribe” link in the emails, just like real marketing emails do.

However, the links in the fake emails didn’t go to Qantas’s official website. Instead, they went to other websites. Experts believe the criminals might have used these fake unsubscribe links to see which email addresses were real and active.

Interestingly, according to Cofense’s report, the fake emails mentioned that Qantas was celebrating its 103rd anniversary. However, Qantas’s 103rd anniversary was actually in 2023, two years ago. This was one of the few mistakes in the otherwise very convincing emails.

Source: Cofense Intelligence

The emails tricked people into clicking on links to fake websites, often containing the phrase “auth/auhs1” followed by random words related to Qantas or coupons. These websites generally disappeared within a day and asked for personal information in a multi-step process, including name, phone number, email address, and home address. This collected contact information, along with the date of birth, could be used for targeted scams or password guessing.

These fake websites allegedly attempted to set up multi-factor authentication after a user entered their credit card information, but this failed. Experts believe that this extra step was added to deceive victims into believing there was a problem with their end rather than the website.

Researchers observed that cybercriminals behind this campaign seemed to be particularly targeting people in Australia. Even though some people in the United States also received these emails, the offers were in Australian dollars, and Qantas is based in Australia.

This suggests the attackers preferred Australian victims. Moreover, they highlighted that the campaign successfully bypassed multiple Secure Email Gateways (SEGs), including Microsoft APT, Proofpoint, and Mimecast, indicating a sophisticated approach by the attackers.

This campaign started around February 2025 but seemed to slow down in mid-March 2025. It shows how criminals are constantly trying new and sophisticated ways to trick people online, making it important for everyone to be very careful about the emails they receive and the websites they visit.

Phishing Emails Impersonating Qantas Target Credit Card Info

Plus: France blames Russia for a series of cyberattacks, the US is taking steps to crack down on a gray market allegedly used by scammers, and Microsoft pushes the password one step closer to death.

Researchers unveiled a cluster of vulnerabilities in Apple’s wireless media streaming platform AirPlay this week that leave millions of third-party devices like speakers and TVs vulnerable to takeover if an attacker is on the same Wi-Fi network as the victim gadget. These “AirBorne” vulnerabilities have all been patched—including some that potentially impacted Apple’s Mac computers—but, in practice, third-party devices may not all get fixes, and even if they do, patch adoption could be low.

Records reviewed by WIRED show that utilizing car subscription features can substantially raise your risk of being subjected to government surveillance, because such services generate troves of data that are valuable to law enforcement. WIRED also did a deep dive on North Korea’s yearslong campaign to place IT workers inside companies in North American, the United Kingdom, and Europe. The schemes are more effective than ever as scammers incorporate AI into their workflows.

WhatsApp designed a special cloud processing platform called Private Processing to allow new AI tools to work in the secure messenger without compromising its end-to-end encryption. Experts warn, though, that it could create enticing targets for hackers. And we have a guide for navigating the privacy risks of using ChatGPT’s new image generator to do seemingly fun and innocuous projects like making an action figure version of yourself.

But wait, there's more! Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

**Three British Retailers Hacked in Spate of Cyberattacks**

Three separate retailers in the UK—including the supermarket Co-op and thedepartment stores Marks & Spencer and Harrods—have all revealed they have recently been subject to cyberattacks, with the intrusions and widespread impact seemingly ongoing. Toward the end of April, Marks & Spencer revealed it had been the victim of a “cyber incident.” Over the following two weeks, it has been forced to pause online orders within its apps, some food has been missing from its shelves, and it has paused recruitment and other “normal processes.” Staff at Co-op have been told to keep webcams turned on during remote meetings and check who is attending calls, after shutting down parts of its IT systems in response to its own hack. Harrods, meanwhile, told customers to “not do anything differently at this point.”

At the time of writing, none of the retailers have detailed the specific nature of the cyberattacks or the full scale of the impacts. It is also unclear if the attacks are linked. Bloomberg has reported a ransomware cartel dubbed DragonForce has claimed it and its partners were behind the attacks. The so-called cartel provides “infrastructure and tools” to hackers but “doesn't require affiliates to deploy its ransomware,” according to research from security firm Secureworks. The hacked companies did not respond to Bloomberg about the claims.

Bleeping Computer originally reported that the threat actors known as Scattered Spider were allegedly behind the attack on Marks & Spencer. The publication reported that the company’s servers were encrypted by ransomware, with the intrusion beginning as early as February. The attribution to Scattered Spider has not been confirmed by Marks & Spencer.

Over the past two years, Scattered Spider has emerged as one of the most prolific and dangerous sets of hackers currently operating. The threat actors are not a well-defined group of hackers. Instead, they’re more a loose collective that uses social engineering—such as phishing and voice calls—to gain initial access into company networks. Scattered Spider members are often English-speaking, teenaged, and can be members of the heinous criminal group the Com. The hackers have been active since June 2022 and have targeted more than 100 companies—including the high-profile hacks on Caesar's Entertainment and MGM Resorts in 2023.

**France (Finally) Names Russian Hackers for the First Time**

French authorities have condemned Russia’s military intelligence agency, accusing it of orchestrating a series of high-profile cyberattacks—including the hacking of Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 presidential campaign, a brazen 2015 assault on the TV channel TV5 Monde, and recent intrusion attempts targeting organizations involved in preparing the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

French authorities have also disclosed the name and location of a GRU unit tied to the notorious hacking group APT28—information that had never before been officially released. Unit 20728 is based in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and operates out of the "166th Information Research Center."

This marks the first time French officials have publicly assigned blame to a foreign intelligence service following an internal attribution process. The timing is significant, coming as Paris positions itself at the forefront of Europe’s support for Ukraine.

**US Moves to Crack Down on ‘Largest Illicit Marketplace’**

The Trump administration has taken the first step toward blacklisting a Cambodian financial conglomerate at the center of a global money laundering network. On Thursday, the Treasury Department designated Huione Group as a money-laundering operation, alleging that the company and its affiliates have laundered more than $4 billion for criminals, including North Korean hackers and online scammers.

These scammers—who defraud victims through bogus investments and other schemes—rely on Huione and its affiliates to move funds abroad to evade both law enforcement and anti-money-laundering systems. The proposed action represents the most significant effort yet to crack down on Huione, which is tied to what experts believe to be the “largest illicit marketplace”: Huione Guarantee. According to WIRED’s January report, the marketplace has likely facilitated over $24 billion in gray-market transactions. Experts believe the platform operates as a one-stop shop for scammers, offering everything from victim contact lists and deepfake tools to fake investment websites and other illicit services.

**New Microsoft Accounts Won’t Need Passwords Anymore**

Slowly but surely, the password is dying. Over the past two years, passkeys—a stronger method of authentication that doesn’t require you to remember or use a password—have become more common. The rollout of the technology has been piecemeal, but big tech companies have worked for years to create the alternative, which is more secure than passwords. This week, Microsoft announced that people setting up new accounts with the company won’t have to create passwords at all. “New Microsoft accounts will now be ‘passwordless by default,’” the company wrote in a blog post. Microsoft is also pushing people further away from passwords and will “detect” the best way for people to lo in to their accounts if they have set up alternatives to passwords.

Hacking Spree Hits UK Retail Giants

Passwords are becoming things of the past. Passkeys are more secure, easier to manage, and speed up the log in process

And we agree. If there is a cybersecurity themed day that we would like to get rid as soon as possible it’s world password day. Sorry, old friend, but you’re outdated, and it looks like your days are numbered. Let’s switch to passkeys.

To quote Microsoft:

> “As the world shifts from passwords to passkeys, we’re excited to join the FIDO Alliance in leaving World Password Day behind to celebrate the very first World Passkey Day.”

In 2013, Intel introduced World Password Day to remind people of the importance of strong passwords. But over time, the number of passwords we use, and the necessary strengths have grown so much that the system has become practically unusable without a password manager. So, only a few years later, Microsoft introduced Windows Hello, a new way for users to securely sign in to their accounts with their face, fingerprint, or PIN.

For several good reasons we want to say goodbye to passwords, especially for the important sites and services. Passwords are:

*   Hard to create
*   Easy to forget
*   Often reused across sites
*   Vulnerable to hacking techniques like brute-force attacks and phishing.

**The alternative: passkeys**

Passkeys are an alternative, more modern authentication method designed to replace passwords with a safer, simpler alternative. Despite their clear advantages, many people hesitate to switch to passkeys due to unfamiliarity and misconceptions. This blog post will try to explain what passkeys are, how to use them, and why they are better than passwords, helping you embrace this next step in online security.

A passkey is a digital credential that replaces traditional passwords by using cryptographic keys stored locally, and securely, on your device, such as your phone or computer.

At your demand, a program on your device will create a passkey automatically when you set up an account or enable a passkey login. Basically, it’s a unique key that identifies you without ever leaving your device.

When you log in with a passkey, your device proves you are the legitimate user by using the passkey to solve a challenge without actually providing the passkey itself. As with passwords, it’s a way to prove you know the answer and with that who you are. But the difference is that, unlike passwords, passkeys can’t be stolen by fake or malicious websites.

OK. I heard some sighs in the back from the I-know-this-already crowd. There are plenty of technical explanations to be found. Feel free to try explaining cryptographic public and private keys to the people you do tech support for.

Because passkeys are tied to your device and cannot be shared or stolen like passwords, they offer a safer login experience.

**It’s not hard to use passkeys. Really!**

Using passkeys is straightforward and really not that hard:

*   **Create a passkey:** When you sign up or log into a website or app that supports passkeys, the system prompts you to create one. Your device automatically generates the cryptographic keys. This means there is truly no need to struggle with inventing a complicated 12-character password that meets confusing requirements for a site you might never use again. Your device does _all the work_.
*   **Log in:** Instead of typing a password, unlock your device using biometrics or a PIN. Your device then securely verifies your identity and tells the site or service it can trust you, without ever sending sensitive secrets over the internet.
*   **Sync across devices:** You can securely sync passkeys across your devices using encrypted cloud services or password managers. This lets you log in effortlessly from multiple devices and prevents the hassle of losing access if your device goes missing.

Having to create and memorize hundreds of complex, unique passwords is difficult and stressful. Passkeys remove this burden entirely. You don’t need to create anything or remember a lot. The authentication process is as simple as unlocking your device.

And it’s faster. Microsoft has seen that on average passkey sign-ins to their services take only 8 seconds, compared with 69 seconds to sign in using a traditional password and second factor. 

**Common misconceptions**

Many people shy away from using passkeys for the wrong reasons.

*   Your biometrics, like fingerprints or facial scans are not stored externally, the site you’re visiting never gets to see them. They are just meant for your device to verify it’s really you.
*   Using passkeys is not complicated as we explained above. Sure, the theory behind it is, but the user-experience may actually be simpler than password creation and management.
*   You are not losing the extra layer of 2FA security you set up for important sites and services. Passkeys inherently support two-factor authentication (2FA) without extra steps, since possession of your device plus biometric or PIN verification is required.

**There are downsides**

I have to be honest here. Some things are not ideal yet. But as we move forward and more people start using passkeys, these will improve soon enough.

As I hinted earlier, losing your device can pose a problem, since your key got lost along with it, unless you synchronize it. This is a problem that’s actively being worked on.

Many websites and services also don’t support passkeys yet. Developers and service providers are actively working to make passkey adoption smoother and more widespread, so you will see more websites and apps supporting passkeys soon.

Not every passkey system is equal. Due to the history of their development which is still ongoing, there are currently multiple flavors of passkey. These range from device-bound and physical token passkeys (that never leave the device) to synchronized passkeys that offer the option to use a device’s Credential Manager to back up and synchronize passkeys across the user’s other devices. This can confuse or frustrate users who just want the authentication to work, without having to worry about the nuances of the underlying technology. Industry groups (including the FIDO Alliance and W3C) are working on standards, guides, and tools to improve this situation for developers and users.

**Give it a try**

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to convince yourself of the benefits of passkeys.

Passkeys are created on, saved to, and synchronized across devices through a password manager. For example, passkeys created on a website on Chrome on Android are stored to the Google Password Manager by default, and then synchronized to different environments where Google Password Manager is available, such as Chrome on macOS, Windows, Linux, and ChromeOS. It’s up to the user which password manager to store a passkey to or to authenticate a passkey from depending on the environment.

To save a passkey to Google Password Manager, ensure you’re signed into your Google Account on an eligible device (Android, Chrome, or other supported platforms). When prompted by a website supporting passkeys, agree to create a passkey and follow the on-screen instructions.

MacOS allows you to save passkeys either in Google Password Manager or iCloud Keychain if you’re using macOS 13.5 or higher.

*   **Try passkeys today:** Look for websites and apps that offer passkey login options and give them a try. You’ll likely find the experience faster and easier than passwords.
*   **Educate yourself and others:** Share what you learn about passkeys with friends and family, especially those who find passwords confusing or frustrating.
*   **Advocate for passkey support:** Encourage your favorite sites and services to support passkeys to help make the internet safer for everyone.
*   **Use secure device authentication:** Enable biometrics or PINs on your devices to fully benefit from passkey security.

**We don’t just report on phone security—we provide it**

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your mobile devices by downloading Malwarebytes for iOS, and Malwarebytes for Android today.

 On world password day, Microsoft says fewer passwords, more passkeys 

A year after Microsoft announced passkeys support for consumer accounts, the tech giant has announced a big change that pushes individuals signing up for new accounts to use the phishing-resistant authentication method by default.
"Brand new Microsoft accounts will now be 'passwordless by default,'" Microsoft's Joy Chik and Vasu Jakkal said. "New users will have several passwordless options for

Microsoft Sets Passkeys Default for New Accounts; 15 Billion Users Gain Passwordless Support

**What is the version information for this release?**

Microsoft Edge Version

Date Released

Based on Chromium Version

136.0.3240.50

5/1/2025

136.0.7103.49

CVE-2025-4052: Chromium: CVE-2025-4051 Insufficient data validation in DevTools

CVE-2025-4051: Chromium: CVE-2025-4050 Out of bounds memory access in DevTools

CVE-2025-4050: Chromium: CVE-2025-4096 Heap buffer overflow in HTML

CVE-2025-4096: Chromium: CVE-2025-4052 Inappropriate implementation in DevTools

Enterprise data backup platform Commvault has revealed that an unknown nation-state threat actor breached its Microsoft Azure environment by exploiting CVE-2025-3928 but emphasized there is no evidence of unauthorized data access.
"This activity has affected a small number of customers we have in common with Microsoft, and we are working with those customers to provide assistance," the company

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#microsoft