Uber faces an €825M GDPR fine for automatically suspending drivers without human review, highlighting the risks of AI decisions affecting workers. The Dutch Data Protection Authority handed Uber its largest privacy fine yet, and this one isn’t about data transfers or cookie consent. The regulator imposed an 825 million euro penalty, roughly $964 million, over Uber’s use of fully automated software to suspend driver accounts, sometimes permanently, with no human ever reviewing whether the system got it right. The violation is clear under EU law. The GDPR limits fully automated decisions when they can significantly affect a person’s life. An algorithm that can take away someone’s ability to earn a living, without any human review, falls directly into this category. The regulator also found that Uber failed to properly tell drivers when automated systems made these decisions, which the GDPR requires companies to disclose. “The Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (AP), the Dutch data protection authority, imposes a fine of 824,990,000 euros on Uber. The reason for this is that the AP has ruled that Uber made fully automated decisions about drivers. In case of suspicions of fraud or customer reviews that were too low, drivers’ accounts were automatically temporarily deactivated or, in case of persistent low customer reviews, permanently deactivated. As a result, their income was lost via Uber during the deactivation.” reads the statement published by the Dutch data protection authority. “According to the AP, Uber has violated the prohibition of fully automated decision-making under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The AP also found that Uber did not sufficiently inform drivers about automatic decision-making. Uber has now stopped the violations.” The fine covers Uber’s practices from 2018 to 2022, so it concerns systems the company has already discontinued. Uber highlighted this point in its response, arguing that the regulator examined old policies rather than practices still in use today. “Uber used software to track drivers’ (driving) behaviour and to track customer reviews. If that software detected a suspicion of fraud or customer reviews were too low, the accounts of the drivers concerned were automatically deactivated.” continues the Dutch authority. “There was no human assessment here. This occurred between 2018 and 2022.” Uber also said it takes decisions that affect drivers’ income seriously. The company pointed to human reviews, safeguards and an appeals process for drivers who believe the system made a mistake. The appeal will have to determine whether these protections existed during the period covered by the fine or came later. And Uber is appealing. The company has stated it disagrees with both the decision and the size of the fine, setting up another round in what’s become a recurring pattern between Uber and Dutch regulators specifically. This is the fourth time the Dutch authority has fined Uber, which on its own says something about the relationship here. The previous record holder was a 290 million euro fine in 2024 over transferring European drivers’ personal data to the US without adequate protections, a case Uber also appealed at the time. Four fines from a single regulator isn’t really a pattern of bad luck anymore; it’s a pattern of a company and a privacy regulator that keep disagreeing about the same basic question, how much human judgment has to sit between an algorithm’s decision and a person’s actual income. The case goes beyond Uber. Many gig-economy platforms in Europe use algorithms to manage workers, routes and account status. This ruling shows the cost of relying on automated decisions without human oversight. For companies that use algorithms to make decisions affecting people’s accounts or income, saying “the algorithm decided” is no longer enough. The €825 million fine makes that lesson very clear. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, newsletter)
Healthcare and services provider Nutex is investigating a data breach incident where an unauthorized third party exfiltrated information from company servers. The organization has disclosed the cyberattack in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), noting that the stolen data includes details that may be private or confidential. “Based on preliminary findings from the Company’s ongoing investigation, the Company believes that certain information maintained on the Company’s servers was accessed and exfiltrated by an unauthorized third party, including some information that may be private and/or confidential,” Nutex says. Nutex Health is a for-profit healthcare company that operates 28 facilities across 12 states, including the Bayou City ER & Hospital in Texas and Green Bay ER & Hospital in Wisconsin.
Microsoft updated its Windows PowerToys toolset with a new utility dubbed "Window Hopper" that lets users switch between an app's windows more quickly. The Window Hopper added in this release works like the standard ALT + TAB Windows feature, but it only works for the currently focused app, helping users switch back and forth between its windows. "Once the utility is enabled, press the configurable Alt + backtick shortcut to cycle through that app's windows without stepping through everything else on your desktop," Microsoft explains. "It is especially useful when you're juggling multiple browser windows, terminals, File Explorer windows, or editor instances." Those who want to customize the default activation keyboard shortcut can also do so in PowerToys settings to switch to the next and previous app window.
Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock (LockA locked padlock) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Staying Secure at Eventsno-cost Cyber ServicesCybersecurity Awareness MonthKnown Exploited Vulnerabilities CatalogReport A Cyber Issue WASHINGTON – Today, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published an advisory about lessons learned from red team assessments performed at the request of two critical infrastructure organizations to help organizations strengthen detection, response and protections in information technology (IT), cloud, and operational technology (OT) environments.
Explore Unit 42 research on AI-enabled malware. Learn how existing behavioral detection and endpoint analytics stop AI-authored code before execution. The post The State of AI-Enabled Malware August 2026: From Brand Abuse to Agentic Execution appeared first on Unit 42.
WeedHack Minecraft Malware Survives C2 Takedown: Fake Client Sites Still Active, SEO Poisoning Puts Malicious Downloads at the Top of Google McAfee Labs published a follow-up report on the WeedHack Malware-as-a-Service campaign this week, documenting ten active malicious sites and multiple file-hosting accounts that are still spreading the infostealer despite a disruption to its command-and-control infrastructure. Over the past month alone, McAfee WebAdvisor blocked more than 6,300 user attempts to reach these sites. WeedHack was first spotted in early June 2026 when McAfee researcher Aayush Tyagi documented a Malware-as-a-Service operation that had been running since January and had logged 116,464 infected systems, adding between 2,000 and 3,000 new victims every day. The operation offered a free tier that anyone with a Discord account could access, a premium tier with webcam surveillance capability for $5 a month, and a dashboard letting operators view stolen credentials, configure custom payloads, and monitor victims in real time. It spread through fake Minecraft client websites, YouTube videos linking to malicious downloads, and SEO poisoning that pushed those fake sites to the top of search results for popular Minecraft tool names. The malware stole session cookies, passwords, browser data, and cryptocurrency wallet contents, and used EtherHiding, a technique that fetches the attacker’s active server address from the Ethereum blockchain, to maintain contact with its infrastructure even when individual servers were shut down. “During our investigation of this campaign, we observed that most of these websites appear legitimate, as they are well-crafted and often mimic legitimate websites. We observed a series of dedicated brand-impersonation attacks targeting several popular Minecraft clients.” reads the report published by McAfee. “We published the original article in the first week of July, and, as a result, we’ve seen a disruption in WeedHack’s campaign: its C2 server is no longer active. Consequently, we have observed a shift in tactics by these attackers. “ The dashboard is gone. The distribution sites are not. Each fake website copies the real tool’s features, FAQs, installation steps, developer information and even links to legitimate GitHub repositories. The sites look detailed and convincing, so most users have little reason to suspect anything. The attackers also use search rankings to reach victims. Researchers found that the first two Google results for “Xenon Client,” a popular Minecraft client, led to fake sites distributing WeedHack. The sites offered installation guides, free and paid downloads, and links to the real Xenon Client GitHub repository. A player searching for the tool, clicking the first result and downloading the file could easily end up installing malware. The campaigns exploit a structural weakness in the Minecraft modding community: many popular tools don’t have official websites, only GitHub pages and Discord servers. Nova-client.com is a fake website for a client that has no real website; the attackers built one and ranked it above the genuine GitHub repository. 22qq-client.com does the same for a Crystal PVP mod. For nova-client.com, the researchers specifically noted that the credits section lists generic team names instead of anyone who actually worked on the project, which is one of the cleaner ways to spot an impersonation if you know who the real developers are. One site in the campaign was built using lovable.app, an AI-powered web application builder that accepts natural language instructions and produces working sites. The platform is legitimate; the use here is not. The ready availability of tools like this means the cost and technical skill required to launch a new convincing fake gaming site is now close to zero. McAfee found that most malicious links came through Discord (49.6%), followed by MediaFire (23.4%), GitHub (8.2%) and Dropbox (4.6%). One Discord channel promoting fake DonutSMP clients had more than 1,900 members, while another site offered eight different mods that all delivered the same malware. The campaign also spread through trusted Minecraft communities such as Planet Minecraft and EndMods, making the scams harder to spot because users already trusted these platforms. McAfee recommends downloading mods and clients only from official developer repositories or trusted platforms such as Modrinth and CurseForge. If a tool asks you to disable antivirus protection, treat it as malware. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, malware)
The U.S. Department of Justice announced a $400 million settlement with TikTok, ByteDance, and affiliated companies over allegations that they violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The TikTok social media platform, owned by the Chinese technology company ByteDance, allows users to create, watch, and share short-form videos. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against TikTok and its parent company, alleging violations of COPPA dating back to 2019. In 2019, Musical.ly, TikTok’s predecessor, agreed to a $5.7 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over allegations of illegally collecting personal data from users under 13 without parental consent. Last year, the FTC referred a new investigation to the DoJ, claiming that TikTok continued to breach COPPA rules despite its 2019 commitment to comply with the rules.
A breach at South Korea's government-backed startup platform exposed encrypted personal data after an encryption key was included in an API. Penta Security explains why encryption keys must be securely managed and kept separate from the data they protect.
A package gets installed. A login prompt opens. A box sits exposed to the internet. Nothing looks unusual yet. That’s roughly the mood this week. Trusted tools turn hostile, old weak spots get fresh attention, AI makes exploit work cheaper, and researchers keep finding attacks that sound harder than they actually are. Plenty to clean up. Here’s the short version. ⚡ Threat of the Week U.S.
Cybersecurity researchers have flagged two new malware families called WordlistLoader and SynkLoader that's used to deliver next-stage payloads and likely sell access to ransomware groups. According to findings from Gen Digital, WordlistLoader is being used to deliver Amatera Stealer (aka ACR Stealer or AcridRain Stealer) via ClearFake campaigns, which employ the ClickFix (aka FakeCaptcha)
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