Chicago IT Support & Cyber Security | Forward Technologies
Chicago-based Forward Technologies delivers IT support and cyber security to businesses in the Chicago area and nationwide.
Cyberattacks on U.S. federal courts are no longer just IT problems. They now pose a national security threat.
That is Senator Ron Wyden’s warning in a blunt letter to Chief Justice John Roberts this week, urging the Supreme Court to address repeated breaches of the judiciary’s document filing and email systems. Wyden called the hacks “unacceptable” and said weak practices have left the courts “an inviting target” for foreign adversaries. [Read more…]
Why Shadow AI Slips Past SecurityShadow AI is already inside. The tools sit in browsers and sidebars. Employees paste snippets of code, customer notes, even legal language into chatbots that were never vetted. The answers look helpful. The risk hides in the copy and paste. Data leaves the building without a ticket. Logs do not show it. Policies never saw it. By the time a leak becomes visible, the trail is cold.
IT leaders keep asking the same question. How do you govern what you cannot see? You start by naming it. Shadow AI covers any AI use that bypasses purchase, security review, or monitoring. That includes SaaS chat tools, browser extensions, model endpoints wired into internal scripts, and clever “personal assistants” someone installed on a work laptop. Each of those entry points can move sensitive information to third parties. Some keep prompts. Others store outputs. Many train on uploaded files. You cannot make a clean audit if you do not control any of that. [Read more…]
A new cybersecurity threat is emerging as attackers use DNS records—the very system that directs internet traffic—to hide malware. Instead of relying on email attachments or suspicious downloads, bad actors are embedding malicious payloads into DNS TXT records. This method sneaks malicious code past traditional defenses because security tools often ignore DNS traffic.
DNS, or Domain Name System, acts like the internet’s phonebook, translating domain names into IP addresses. It is so fundamental and routine that most security systems allow it without scrutiny. That makes it a perfect hiding place. According to researchers at Infoblox, attackers are disguising shellcode—malicious binary instructions—inside base64-encoded TXT records. These look like harmless text but are reassembled and executed by compromised devices once fetched. [Read more…]
