Ransomware negotiator caught secretly assisting BlackCat extortion scheme

Recent reporting highlights a wave of high-impact cyber incidents and emerging risks: a former ransomware negotiator pleaded guilty to secretly assisting the BlackCat extortion group; North Korea–linked Lazarus stole $290M from Kelp DAO via LayerZero (with a second $95M attempt stopped); and a third‑party AI compromise of Context.ai led to a Vercel breach exposing limited internal environments. Other notable items include CISA adding multiple vendor flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (Cisco Catalyst, Kentico Xperience, PaperCut NG/MF, Synacor ZCS, Quest KACE SMA, JetBrains ·