M&S cyber attack should be ‘wake up call’, maker of Pegasus Spyware ordered to pay WhatsApp $167m

The cyber attacks on M&S, Co-op and Harrods should be a “wake-up call”, a cabinet minister has warned as he announced a cybersecurity investment boost. The attacks have seen empty shelves and an inability to pay by contactless card or place online orders over the past fortnight. Cabinet minister Pat McFadden spoke at CyberUK on Wednesday, a government-organised gathering of tech experts and business leaders in Manchester. He said: “Cyber attacks are not a game. Not a clever exercise. They are serious organised crime. Sky News 

Investors who put £10,000 into Marks and Spencer shares before the cybergang struck would have been able to buy 2,431 shares. Today, that position would have shrunk to £8,710.27. That’s a painful loss of nearly £1,300 in under three weeks. The Marks and Spencer share price is still up 37% over 12 months and 277% over five years. In this context, the cyberattack has yet to inflict really serious damage on long-term shareholders. Nevertheless, I think there’s a strong chance things could get worse. The Motley Fool 

Amazon said it has made a “fundamental leap forward in robotics” after developing a robot with a sense of touch that will be capable of grabbing about three-quarters of the items in its vast warehouses. Vulcan – which launches at the US firm’s “Delivering the Future” event in Dortmund, Germany, on Wednesday and is to be deployed around the world in the next few years – is designed to help humans sort items for storage and then prepare them for delivery as the latest in a suite of robots which have an ever-growing role in the online retailer’s extensive operation. The Guardian 

The firm behind the Pegasus spyware has been ordered to pay WhatsApp $167m (£125m) for hacking 1,400 people in 2019. Pegasus is malicious software which can be installed remotely on mobile phones to access, among other things, people’s microphones and cameras. NSO Group, which sells the tech, has been accused of enabling authoritarian regimes to monitor journalists, activists and even political figures. WhatsApp owner Meta said it marked the “first victory against the development and use of illegal spyware”.NSO said it would “carefully examine the verdict’s details and pursue appropriate legal remedies, including further proceedings and an appeal“. BBC 

GTA VI’s second trailer has finally dropped. Just days after making the decision to delay the video game’s release to 2026, Rockstar has released the game’s second trailer, a year and a half since the first one. According to the game developer, we can expect its release on 26 May, 2026. Video game fans have been left hanging since the first trailer was released at the back end of 2023, and even though GTA 6 has been delayed by a number of months, there’s the peace of mind that the company have a date they aim to stick to. In the second trailer, we can see the two main protagonists of the story, Jason and Lucia, in a Bonnie and Clyde-type of relationship, with crime being very much the name of the game. LadBible