Cyber News Bytes: What’s Happening in Cybersecurity This Week

The latest cybersecurity news and industry updates

Author

Sandra Liu
October 28, 2025

This week, we’ve got three huge stories shaping the cybersecurity landscape, from nation state breaches to AI driven cyberwars and a major data privacy fine that should make every company pause and reflect.

Let’s dive in. 👇

1. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Outage: Digital Infrastructure Hit Hard
What Happened:
On October 20, 2025, AWS suffered a major outage that disrupted a wide array of online services globally. The incident began in the US-East-1 (Northern Virginia) region and was caused by a fault in DNS resolution related to the DynamoDB service.

Many apps, websites and services including popular gaming platforms, smart-home systems, banking apps and social media either failed entirely or were partially impaired. AWS reported that the “underlying DNS issue” had been “fully mitigated” by 6:35 a.m. ET, though some services faced a backlog of queued messages and continued performance issues for several hours.

Why It Matters:

  • This outage underscores how central AWS’s infrastructure is to so many digital services: banking, smart-home devices, gaming, SaaS, airlines, the ripple effects were immense.

  • The root cause being an internal DNS / automation bug in DynamoDB reveals the fragility of even the most robust cloud services. A single point of failure in a major region cascaded across thousands of platforms.

  • For organizations relying on AWS for critical services, the incident highlights the need for resilient architecture, region diversification and robust fail-over strategies.

  • Because large parts of the internet depend on a handful of cloud providers, outages like this expose systemic risk and the potential for broader disruption.

How to Turn It Into an Advantage:
✅ Review your cloud architecture: Ensure that critical workloads are not confined to a single region (e.g., AWS US-East-1) and consider multi-region or multi-cloud fail-over.
✅ Test your resilience & recovery plans: Simulate outages of major cloud regions or services; validate how your DNS, data flows and dependencies behave under failure conditions.
✅ Monitor dependencies and external services: Identify which of your systems rely on services hosted by AWS (or any single provider) and evaluate the impact of their failure.
✅ Implement robust error-handling and back-pressure controls: When services go into queue backlogs (as AWS reported) your systems need to tolerate latency, throttle, retry strategies.

2. F5 Breach Exposes BIG-IP Source Code: Nation State Hackers Strike Deep

What Happened:

F5 confirmed a major breach where nation state hackers (linked to China) stole BIG IP source code and info on unpatched vulnerabilities. The attackers lingered undetected for over 12 months, yikes!
CISA has now issued an emergency directive requiring all U.S. agencies to patch affected F5 devices by October 22, 2025.

Why It Matters:

This isn’t just an isolated incident. Source code theft gives attackers insider knowledge to develop zero days faster than ever. That’s a direct threat to critical infrastructure and enterprise systems everywhere.

How to Turn It Into an Advantage:

✅ Patch and update F5 products immediately (BIG-IP, BIG-IQ, APM clients)
✅ Segment networks to limit lateral movement
✅ Simulate breaches to test your detection speed

3. Microsoft: Russia & China Are Using AI to Supercharge Cyberattacks

What Happened:

Microsoft’s annual threat report dropped a bombshell AI powered attacks have skyrocketed. Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are using generative AI to craft fake content, deepfakes, and highly convincing phishing campaigns.
Over 200 AI based deception incidents were detected this July, 10x more than in 2023.

Why It Matters:

AI is officially part of cyber warfare. Attackers now use it to write flawless phishing emails, mimic executives’ voices, and scale deception campaigns faster than ever before.

How to Turn It Into an Advantage:

✅ Train your team to spot AI enhanced phishing.
✅ Use AI defensively for threat detection, behavior analysis, and anomaly spotting.
✅ Monitor your brand online for deepfakes and impersonation attempts.

4. Experian Fined $3.2M for Illegally Harvesting Personal Data

What Happened:

Experian Netherlands got hit with a €2.7M fine ($3.2M) for collecting personal data from public and private sources without users’ consent. The company used this data for credit scoring, which in turn affected people’s access to services and loans.

Why It Matters:

It’s a clear reminder that data privacy isn’t just a compliance checkbox. It’s a moral and business necessity. People want transparency, and regulators are done being patient.

How to Turn It Into an Advantage:

✅ Audit your data collection and consent processes.
✅ Be transparent about how you use customer data.
✅ Treat privacy as a trust advantage, not a burden

Cybersecurity isn’t just about firewalls and patches; it’s about people, decisions, and discipline.
Every breach, every AI exploit, and every fine is a lesson in resilience.

So, let me ask you this week:
👉 What’s one action you’ll take to strengthen your cyber defenses or boost awareness in your circle?

Hit reply or drop your thoughts in the comments. Let’s learn and grow together, as always. 💙

🌟 Want to break into cybersecurity?

I always recommend CourseCareers’ IT course, it’s one of the fastest and most affordable ways to build your tech foundation and break into cybersecurity faster.

Stay safe, stay curious, and I’ll see you next week for more cyber stories 👀

— Sandra