Ofcom has warned that the use of artificial intelligence in Britain's telecoms networks could lead to catastrophic failures, urging operators including BT, Vodafone and Virgin Media O2 to proceed with caution. The regulator highlighted that while AI can help detect and repair issues faster, network automation carries the risk of serious outages if it fails. The warning comes amid broader concerns over frontier AI models that could enable hackers to exploit vulnerabilities, with Ofcom's infrastructure head Natalie Black writing to firms in April to assess security risks. Under the Telecoms Security Act, operators face potential fines if they fail to manage AI-related risks, following a £17.5 million penalty against BT for a 10.5-hour 999 emergency network blackout in 2023 that affected nearly 14,000 calls.
Ofcom warns AI could cause catastrophic network failures; BT faces potential fines under Telecoms Security Act, following a £17.5M penalty for a 2023 outage.
Ofcom warns AI could cause catastrophic network failures; Vodafone urged to proceed with caution and faces potential fines under Telecoms Security Act.
Ofcom warns AI could cause catastrophic network failures; Virgin Media O2 urged to proceed with caution and faces potential fines under Telecoms Security Act.
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Palo Alto Networks Fair Value Estimate Raised 17% to US$395.38
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Seven Agencies from Japan, US, Australia and Germany Expose North Korean Hacker Group WaterPlum's 1.7 Billion Yen Cryptocurrency Theft
Seven agencies from Japan, the United States, Australia and Germany — the National Police Agency, the National Cyber Security Center, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, the US Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center, the Australian Cyber Security Centre, Germany's Federal Intelligence Service and Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution — jointly announced on the 18th the details of cryptocurrency theft by the North Korea-linked cyberattack group WaterPlum. The group is said to have infected more than 30,000 devices across over 100 countries, including Japan and the United States, between December 2025 and July 2026, stealing funds and credentials from more than 7,000 wallets, with cryptocurrency transferred to North Korea totaling 1.7 billion yen, equivalent to 10.71 million dollars. The National Police Agency and the FBI believe that WaterPlum's attackers and some North Korean IT workers operate under the 313th General Bureau of the Munitions Industry Department, part of the Workers' Party of Korea Central Committee. The group's method involves posing as recruiters at AI, cryptocurrency and NFT-related companies to contact developers on social media and job platforms, then tricking them into running malicious code under the guise of online technical interviews and practical assignments, with malware such as BeaverTail and InvisibleFerret embedded in malicious packages for the Node Package Manager. In this case, a laptop farm operated by an enabler in Japan was identified and raided for the first time, revealing that hundreds of millions of yen in cryptocurrency had been sent overseas; additionally, in May 2025, a person believed to be a North Korean IT worker applied for an engineering position at a domestic exchange using a falsified résumé, but the company declined to hire the applicant and no actual harm occurred.
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