Experts React: Coinbase Discloses Breach, Faces Up to $400 Million in Losses

Coinbase, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has disclosed a significant data breach that exposed sensitive customer information, including government-issued IDs. The attackers contacted Coinbase on May 11, demanding a $20 million ransom to prevent the public release of the stolen data.

The breach could result in losses of up to $400 million, depending on regulatory fines, legal actions, and customer compensation. Coinbase has launched an internal investigation and is cooperating with law enforcement. It has also notified affected customers and offered support.

The implications of the Coinbase breach are significant for crypto users and investors, spanning financial, regulatory, and trust-related concerns.

For crypto users, the risks are substantial. If government-issued IDs and personal data were stolen, users could face identity theft, phishing attacks, or SIM swapping. This could lead to unauthorized access to other financial accounts or crypto wallets. Users may lose confidence in Coinbase’s ability to protect their data, prompting them to move assets to other platforms or cold storage. Coinbase might implement stricter security protocols or temporarily limit certain services, affecting user experience. Affected users might be eligible for compensation or become part of class-action lawsuits.

For investors, the breach could lead to stock price volatility. Publicly traded companies like Coinbase (COIN) often see sharp stock price drops after breaches due to shaken investor confidence. The breach could trigger investigations by the SEC or other regulators, potentially leading to fines or new compliance requirements. Coinbase will likely need to invest heavily in cybersecurity upgrades, legal defense, and customer support. Long-term brand damage could reduce user acquisition and retention, impacting revenue growth.

David Stuart, Cybersecurity Evangelist at Sentra, commented on the breach, saying, “The Coinbase breach highlights the growing challenge of protecting sensitive customer data in highly interconnected digital ecosystems. Financial platforms, in particular, carry an outsized responsibility to safeguard personal and financial information against increasingly sophisticated threats. Full visibility into where sensitive data resides, how it moves, and who can access it is essential, especially as data spans cloud, SaaS, and third-party environments. Without continuous monitoring, access governance, and proactive risk management, even well-defended systems can become vulnerable. Organizations must prioritize a data-first security model that ensures sensitive information remains protected at every layer, beyond just perimeter defenses.”

Clyde Williamson, Senior Product Security Architect at Protegrity, added, “Coinbase says the affected customer base impacted in this attack is less than 1% of its 9.7 million customers to minimize the impact. That’s still around 1 million people whose sensitive information has been compromised, and the financial damage to Coinbase itself isn’t small. Malicious actors can do significant damage with your name and contact information; imagine what they’ll do with masked bank information and Social Security numbers. This attack was only possible because contractors and support personnel were allowed access to this information. This was an entirely avoidable situation on Coinbase’s part, and now they’re expecting the customers who trusted the organization with their highly sensitive information to perform damage control. It’s great that Coinbase was legally required to disclose this attack quickly, but those customers will be haunted by this breach. Disclosure without real action is data security’s ‘thoughts and prayers.’ Consumers deserve better than to live in constant fear of their data.”

The breach underscores the critical need for robust cybersecurity measures to protect sensitive customer information..

 

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[Webinar] From Code to Cloud to SOC: Learn a Smarter Way to Defend Modern Applications

Modern apps move fast—faster than most security teams can keep up. As businesses rush to build in the cloud, security often lags behind. Teams scan code in isolation, react late to cloud threats, and monitor SOC alerts only after damage is done.
Attackers don’t wait. They exploit vulnerabilities within hours. Yet most organizations take days to respond to critical cloud alerts. That delay isn’t

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New Amazon EC2 P6-B200 instances powered by NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs to accelerate AI innovations

Today, we’re announcing the general availability of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) P6-B200 instances powered by NVIDIA B200 to address customer needs for high performance and scalability in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and high performance computing (HPC) applications.

Amazon EC2 P6-B200 instances accelerate a broad range of GPU-enabled workloads but are especially well-suited for large-scale distributed AI training and inferencing for foundation models (FMs) with reinforcement learning (RL) and distillation, multimodal training and inference, and HPC applications such as climate modeling, drug discovery, seismic analysis, and insurance risk modeling.

When combined with Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFAv4) networking, hyperscale clustering by EC2 UltraClusters, and advanced virtualization and security capabilities by AWS Nitro System, you can train and serve FMs with increased speed, scale, and security. These instances also deliver up to two times the performance for AI training (time to train) and inference (tokens/sec) compared to EC2 P5en instances.

You can accelerate time-to-market for training FMs and deliver faster inference throughput, which lowers inference cost and helps increase adoption of generative AI applications as well as increased processing performance for HPC applications.

EC2 P6-B200 instances specifications
New EC2 P6-B200 instances provide eight NVIDIA B200 GPUs with 1440 GB of high bandwidth GPU memory, 5th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Emerald Rapids), 2 TiB of system memory, and 30 TB of local NVMe storage.

Here are the specs for EC2 P6-B200 instances:

Instance size GPUs (NVIDIA B200) GPU
memory (GB)
vCPUs GPU Peer to peer (GB/s) Instance storage (TB) Network bandwidth (Gbps) EBS bandwidth (Gbps)
P6-b200.48xlarge 8 1440 HBM3e 192 1800 8 x 3.84 NVMe SSD 8 x 400 100

These instances feature up to 125 percent improvement in GPU TFLOPs, 27 percent increase in GPU memory size, and 60 percent increase in GPU memory bandwidth compared to P5en instances.

P6-B200 instances in action
You can use P6-B200 instances in the US West (Oregon) AWS Region through EC2 Capacity Blocks for ML. To reserve your EC2 Capacity Blocks, choose Capacity Reservations on the Amazon EC2 console.

Select Purchase Capacity Blocks for ML and then choose your total capacity and specify how long you need the EC2 Capacity Block for p6-b200.48xlarge instances. The total number of days that you can reserve EC2 Capacity Blocks is 1-14 days, 21 days, 28 days, or multiples of 7 up to 182 days. You can choose your earliest start date for up to 8 weeks in advance.

Now, your EC2 Capacity Block will be scheduled successfully. The total price of an EC2 Capacity Block is charged up front, and the price doesn’t change after purchase. The payment will be billed to your account within 12 hours after you purchase the EC2 Capacity Blocks. To learn more, visit Capacity Blocks for ML in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

When launching P6-B200 instances, you can use AWS Deep Learning AMIs (DLAMI) to support EC2 P6-B200 instances. DLAMI provides ML practitioners and researchers with the infrastructure and tools to quickly build scalable, secure, distributed ML applications in preconfigured environments.

To run instances, you can use AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) or AWS SDKs.

You can integrate EC2 P6-B200 instances seamlessly with various AWS managed services such as Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Services (Amazon EKS), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), and Amazon FSx for Lustre. Support for Amazon SageMaker HyperPod is also coming soon.

Now available
Amazon EC2 P6-B200 instances are available today in the US West (Oregon) Region and can be purchased as EC2 Capacity blocks for ML.

Give Amazon EC2 P6-B200 instances a try in the Amazon EC2 console. To learn more, refer to the Amazon EC2 P6 instance page and send feedback to AWS re:Post for EC2 or through your usual AWS Support contacts.

Channy


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Proofpoint to acquire Hornetsecurity for over $1 billion

Proofpoint has entered into an agreement to acquire Hornetsecurity Group, a Germany-based provider of Microsoft 365 security services, in a deal reportedly valued at more than $1 billion.

The acquisition, described as the largest in Proofpoint’s history, comes amid accelerating consolidation in the cybersecurity industry as companies seek to broaden their offerings to enterprise customers of all sizes. While Proofpoint did not disclose terms, CNBC reports the deal is “well over” $1 billion. 

Hornetsecurity, headquartered in Hannover, Germany, serves more than 12,000 managed service providers (MSPs) and 125,000 small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) primarily across Europe. According to a press release announcing the deal, Hornetsecurity brings in $160 million in annual recurring revenue, with growth exceeding 20% year over year. 

For Proofpoint, the acquisition provides an entry point into the SMB market through Hornetsecurity’s established MSP network.

“As attackers grow more sophisticated and people remain the primary target, organizations need security that protects them wherever they work — across email, cloud applications, and every digital channel,” said Sumit Dhawan, CEO of Proofpoint. “With the addition of Hornetsecurity, we’re excited to extend our industry-leading, human-centric security platform to better serve the unique needs of MSPs and SMBs. We look forward to deepening our investment in the European markets as part of our global growth strategy.”

Both companies concentrate on offering products that work within Microsoft’s cloud platform. Hornetsecurity’s flagship product, 365 Total Protection, provides MSPs with a multi-tenant platform that includes email security, backup, security awareness training, access control, and domain fraud protection. Proofpoint, which also touts a security software suite aimed at protecting Microsoft 365 instances, also recently expanded its partnership with Microsoft.

The deal follows several major acquisitions in the cybersecurity sector. In March, Google announced plans to acquire Israeli-founded cloud security startup Wiz for $32 billion, while Palo Alto Networks revealed its intention in April to purchase AI-focused startup Protect AI.

The transaction comes as Proofpoint, which was taken private by Thoma Bravo in 2021 for $12.3 billion, is exploring an IPO, according to the CNBC report

The Hornetsecurity transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2025. 

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Accelerate CI/CD pipelines with the new AWS CodeBuild Docker Server capability

Starting today, you can use AWS CodeBuild Docker Server capability to provision a dedicated and persistent Docker server directly within your CodeBuild project. With Docker Server capability, you can accelerate your Docker image builds by centralizing image building to a remote host, which reduces wait times and increases overall efficiency.

From my benchmark, with this Docker Server capability, I reduced the total building time by 98 percent, from 24 minutes and 54 seconds to 16 seconds. Here’s a quick look at this feature from my AWS CodeBuild projects.

AWS CodeBuild is a fully managed continuous integration service that compiles source code, runs tests, and produces software packages ready for deployment. Building Docker images is one of the most common use cases for CodeBuild customers, and the service has progressively improved this experience over time by releasing features such as Docker layer caching and reserved capacity features to improve Docker build performance.

With the new Docker Server capability, you can reduce build time for your applications by providing a persistent Docker server with consistent caching. When enabled in a CodeBuild project, a dedicated Docker server is provisioned with persistent storage that maintains your Docker layer cache. This server can handle multiple concurrent Docker build operations, with all builds benefiting from the same centralized cache.

Using AWS CodeBuild Docker Server
Let me walk you through a demonstration that showcases the benefits with the new Docker Server capability.

For this demonstration, I’m building a complex, multi-layered Docker image based on the official AWS CodeBuild curated Docker images repository, specifically the Dockerfile for building a standard Ubuntu image. This image contains numerous dependencies and tools required for modern continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, making it a good example of the type of large Docker builds that development teams regularly perform.


# Copyright 2020-2024 Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.
#
# Licensed under the Amazon Software License (the "License"). You may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
# A copy of the License is located at
#
#    http://aws.amazon.com/asl/
#
# or in the "license" file accompanying this file.
# This file is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, express or implied.
# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
FROM public.ecr.aws/ubuntu/ubuntu:20.04 AS core

ARG DEBIAN_FRONTEND="noninteractive"

# Install git, SSH, Git, Firefox, GeckoDriver, Chrome, ChromeDriver,  stunnel, AWS Tools, configure SSM, AWS CLI v2, env tools for runtimes: Dotnet, NodeJS, Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, Go, .NET, Powershell Core,  Docker, Composer, and other utilities
COMMAND REDACTED FOR BREVITY
# Activate runtime versions specific to image version.
RUN n $NODE_14_VERSION
RUN pyenv  global $PYTHON_39_VERSION
RUN phpenv global $PHP_80_VERSION
RUN rbenv  global $RUBY_27_VERSION
RUN goenv global  $GOLANG_15_VERSION

# Configure SSH
COPY ssh_config /root/.ssh/config
COPY runtimes.yml /codebuild/image/config/runtimes.yml
COPY dockerd-entrypoint.sh /usr/local/bin/dockerd-entrypoint.sh
COPY legal/bill_of_material.txt /usr/share/doc/bill_of_material.txt
COPY amazon-ssm-agent.json /etc/amazon/ssm/amazon-ssm-agent.json

ENTRYPOINT ["/usr/local/bin/dockerd-entrypoint.sh"]

This Dockerfile creates a comprehensive build environment with multiple programming languages, build tools, and dependencies – exactly the type of image that would benefit from persistent caching.

In the build specification (buildspec), I use the docker buildx build . command:

version: 0.2
phases:
  build:
    commands:
      - cd ubuntu/standard/5.0
      - docker buildx build -t codebuild-ubuntu:latest .

To enable the Docker Server capability, I navigate to the AWS CodeBuild console and select Create project. I can also enable this capability when editing existing CodeBuild projects.

I fill in all details and configuration. In the Environment section, I select Additional configuration.

Then, I scroll down and find Docker server configuration and select Enable docker server for this project. When I select this option, I can choose a compute type configuration for the Docker server. When I’m finished with the configurations, I create this project.

Now, let’s see the Docker Server capability in action.

The initial build takes approximately 24 minutes and 54 seconds to complete because it needs to download and compile all dependencies from scratch. This is expected for the first build of such a complex image.

For subsequent builds with no code changes, the build takes only 16 seconds and that shows 98% reduction in build time.

Looking at the logs, I can see that with Docker Server, most layers are pulled from the persistent cache:

The persistent caching provided by the Docker Server maintains all layers between builds, which is particularly valuable for large, complex Docker images with many layers. This demonstrates how Docker Server can dramatically improve throughput for teams running numerous Docker builds in their CI/CD pipelines.

Additional things to know
Here are a couple of things to note:

  • Architecture support – The feature is available for both x86 (Linux) and ARM builds.
  • Pricing – To learn more about pricing for Docker Server capability, refer to the AWS CodeBuild pricing page.
  • Availability – This feature is available in all AWS Regions where AWS CodeBuild is offered. For more information about the AWS Regions where CodeBuild is available, see the AWS Regions page.

You can learn more about the Docker Server feature in the AWS CodeBuild documentation.

Happy building! —

Donnie Prakoso


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Accelerate the modernization of Mainframe and VMware workloads with AWS Transform

Generative AI has brought many new possibilities to organizations. It has equipped them with new abilities to retire technical debt, modernize legacy systems, and build agile infrastructure to help unlock the value that is trapped in their internal data. However, many enterprises still rely heavily on legacy IT infrastructure, particularly mainframes and VMware-based systems. These platforms have been the backbone of critical operations for decades, but they hinder organizations’ ability to innovate, scale effectively, and reduce technical debt in an era where cloud-first strategies dominate. The need to modernize these workloads is clear, but the journey has traditionally been complex and risky.

The complexity spans multiple dimensions. Financially, organizations face mounting licensing costs and expensive migration projects. Technically, they must untangle legacy dependencies while meeting compliance requirements. Organizationally, they must manage the transition of teams who’ve built careers around legacy systems and navigate undocumented institutional knowledge.

AWS Transform directly addresses these challenges with purpose-built agentic AI that accelerates and de-risks your legacy modernization. It automates the assessment, planning, and transformation of both mainframe and VMware workloads into cloud based architectures, streamlining the entire process. Through intelligent insights, automated code transformation, and human-in-the-loop workflows, organizations can now tackle even the most challenging modernization projects with greater confidence and efficiency.

Mainframe workload migration
AWS Transform for mainframe is the first agentic AI service for modernizing mainframe workloads at scale. The specialized mainframe agent accelerates mainframe modernization by automating complex, resource-intensive tasks across every phase of modernization — from initial assessment to final deployment. It streamlines the migration of legacy applications built on IBM z/OS Db2, including COBOL, CICS, DB2, and VSAM, to modern cloud environments–cutting modernization timelines from years to months.

Let’s look at a few examples of how AWS Transform can help you through different aspects of the migration process.

Code analysis – AWS Transform provides comprehensive insights into your codebase, automatically examining mainframe codebases, creating detailed dependency graphs, measuring code complexity, and identifying component relationships

Documentation – AWS Transform for mainframe creates comprehensive technical and functional documentation of mainframe applications, preserving critical knowledge about features, program logic, and data flows. You can interact with the generated documentation through an AI-powered chat interface to discover and retrieve information quickly.

Business rule extraction – AWS Transform extracts and presents complex logic in plain language so you can gain visibility into business processes embedded within legacy applications. This enables both business and technical stakeholders to gain a greater understanding of application functionality.

Code decomposition – AWS Transform offers sophisticated code decomposition tools, including interactive dependency graphs and domain separation capabilities, enabling users to visualize and modify relationships between components while identifying key business functions. The solution also streamlines migration planning through an interactive wave sequence planner that considers user preferences to generate optimized migration strategies.

Modernization Wave Planning – With its specialized agent, AWS Transform for mainframe creates prioritized modernization wave sequences based on code and data dependencies, code volume, and business priorities. It enables modernization teams to make data-driven, customized migration plans that align to their specific organizational needs.

Code refactoring – AWS Transform can refactor millions of lines of mainframe code in minutes, converting COBOL, VSAM, and DB2 systems into modern Java Spring Boot applications while maintaining functional equivalence and transforming CICS transactions into web services and JCL batch processes into Groovy scripts. The solution provides high-quality output through configurable settings and bundled runtime capabilities, producing Java code that emphasizes readability, maintainability, and technical excellence.

Deployments – AWS Transform provides customizable deployment templates that streamline the deployment process through user-defined inputs. For added efficiency, the solution bundles the selected runtime version with the migrated application, enabling seamless deployment as a complete package.

By integrating intelligent documentation analysis, business rules extraction, and human-in-the-loop collaboration capabilities, AWS Transform helps organizations accelerate their mainframe transformation while reducing risk and maintaining business continuity.

VMware modernization
With rapid changes in VMware licensing and support model, organizations are increasingly exploring alternatives despite the difficulties associated with migrating and modernizing VMware workloads. This is aggravated by the fact that the accumulation of technical debt typically creates complex, poorly documented environments managed by multiple teams, leading to vendor lock-in and collaboration challenges that hinder migration efforts further.

AWS Transform is the first agentic AI service for VMware modernization of its kind that helps you to overcome those difficulties. It can offset risk and accelerate the modernization of VMware workloads by automating application discovery, dependency mapping, migration planning, network conversion, and EC2 instance optimization, reducing manual effort and accelerating cloud adoption.

The process is organized into four phases: inventory discovery, wave planning, network conversion, and server migration. It uses agentic AI capabilities to analyze and map complex VMware environments, converting network configurations into AWS built-in constructs and helps you to orchestrate dependency-aware migration waves for seamless cutovers. In addition, it also provides a collaborative web interface that keeps AWS teams, partners, and customers aligned throughout the modernization journey.

Let’s take a quick tour to see how this works.

Setting up
Before you can start using the service, you must first enable it by navigating to the AWS Transform console. AWS Transform requires AWS IAM Identity Center (IdC) to manage users and setup appropriate permissions. If you don’t yet have IdC set up it will ask you to configure it first and return to the AWS Transform console later to continue the process.

With IdC available, you can then proceed to choosing the encryption settings. AWS Transform gives you the option to use a default AWS managed key or you can use your own custom keys through AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS).

After completing this step, AWS Transform will be enabled. You can manage admin access to the console by navigating to Users and using the search box to find them. You must create users or groups in IdC first if they don’t already exist. The service console will help admins provision users who will get access to the web app. Each provisioned user receives an email with a link to set password and get their personalized URL for the webapp.

You interact with AWS Transform through a dedicated web experience. To get the url, navigate to Settings where you can check your configurations and copy the links to the AWS Transform web experience where you and your teams can start using the service.

Discovery
AWS Transform can discover your VMware environment either automatically through AWS Application Discovery Service collectors or you can provide your own data by importing existing RVTools export files.

To get started, choose the Create or select connectors task and provide the account IDs for one or more AWS accounts that will be used for discovery. This will generate links that you can follow to authorize each account for usage within AWS Transform. You can then move on to the Perform discovery task, where you can choose to install AWS Application Discovery Service collectors or upload your own files such as exports from RVTools.

Provisioning
The steps for the provisioning phase are similar to the ones described earlier for discovery. You connect target AWS accounts by entering their account IDs and validating the authorization requests which will then enable the next steps such as the Generate VPC configuration step. Here, you can import your RVTools files or NSX exports from Import/Export from NSX, if applicable, and enable AWS Transform to understand your networking requirements.

You should then continue working through the job plan until you reach the point where it’s ready to deploy your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC). All the infrastructure as code (IaC) code is stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) buckets in the target AWS account.

Review the proposed changes and, if you’re happy, start the deployment process of the AWS resources to the target accounts.

Deployment
AWS Transform requires you to set up AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) in the target AWS accounts to automate the migration process. Choose the Initiate VM migration task and use the link to navigate to the service console, then follow the instructions to configure it.

After setting up service permissions, you’ll proceed to the implementation phase of the waves created by AWS Transform and start the migration process. For each wave, you’ll first be asked to make various choices such as setting the sizing preference and tenancy for the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances. Confirm your selections and continue following the instructions given by AWS Transform until you reach the Deploy replication agents stage, where you can start the migration for that wave.

After you start the waves migration process, you can switch to the dashboard at any time to check on progress.

With its agentic AI capabilities, AWS Transform offers a powerful solution for accelerating and de-risking mainframe and VMware modernization workloads. By automating complex assessment and transformation processes, AWS Transform reduces the time associated with legacy system migration while minimizing the potential for errors and business disruption enabling more agile, efficient, and future-ready IT environments within your organization.

Things to know
Availability –  AWS Transform for mainframe is available in US East (N. Virginia) and Europe (Frankfurt) Regions. AWS Transform for VMware offers different availability options for data collection and migrations. Please refer to the AWS Transform for VMware FAQ for more details.

Pricing –  Currently, we offer our core features—including assessment and transformation—at no cost to AWS customers.

Here are a few links for further reading.

Dive deeper into mainframe modernization and learn more about about AWS Transform for mainframe.

Explore more about VMware modernization and how to get started with your VMware migration journey.

Check out this interactive demo of AWS Transform for mainframe and this interactive demo of AWS Transform for VMware.

Matheus Guimaraes | @codingmatheus


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AWS Transform for .NET, the first agentic AI service for modernizing .NET applications at scale

I started my career as a .NET developer and have seen .NET evolve over the last couple of decades. Like many of you, I also developed multiple enterprise applications in .NET Framework that ran only on Windows. I fondly remember building my first enterprise application with .NET Framework. Although it served us well, the technology landscape has significantly shifted. Now that there is an open source and cross-platform version of .NET that can run on Linux, these legacy enterprise applications built on .NET Framework need to be ported and modernized.

The benefits of porting to Linux are compelling: applications cost 40 percent less to operate because they save on Windows licensing costs, run 1.5–2 times faster with improved performance, and handle growing workloads with 50 percent better scalability. Having helped port several applications, I can say the effort is worth the rewards.

However, porting .NET Framework applications to cross-platform .NET is a labor-intensive and error-prone process. You have to perform multiple steps, such as analyzing the codebase, detecting incompatibilities, implementing fixes while porting the code, and then validating the changes. For enterprises, the challenge becomes even more complex because they might have hundreds of .NET Framework applications in their portfolio.

At re:Invent 2024, we previewed this capability as Amazon Q Developer transformation capabilities for .NET to help port your .NET applications at scale. The experience is available as a unified web experience for at-scale transformation and within your integrated development environment (IDE) for individual project and solution porting.

Now that we’ve incorporated your valuable feedback and suggestions, we’re excited to announce today the general availability of AWS Transform for .NET. We’ve also added new capabilities to support projects with private NuGet packages, port model-view-controller (MVC) Razor views to ASP .NET Core Razor views, and execute the ported unit tests.

I’ll expand on the key new capabilities in a moment, but let’s first take a quick look at the two porting experiences of AWS Transform for .NET.

Large-scale porting experience for .NET applications
Enterprise digital transformation is typically driven by central teams responsible for modernizing hundreds of applications across multiple business units. Different teams have ownership of different applications and their respective repositories. Success requires close coordination between these teams and the application owners and developers across business units. To accelerate this modernization at scale, AWS Transform for .NET provides a web experience that enables teams to connect directly to source code repositories and efficiently transform multiple applications across the organization. For select applications requiring dedicated developer attention, the same agent capabilities are available to developers as an extension for Visual Studio IDE.

Let’s start by looking at how the web experience of AWS Transform for .NET helps port hundreds of .NET applications at scale.

Web experience of AWS Transform for .NET
To get started with the web experience of AWS Transform, I onboard using the steps outlined in the documentation, sign in using my credentials, and create a job for .NET modernization.

Create a new job for .NET Transformation

AWS Transform for .NET creates a job plan, which is a sequence of steps that the agent will execute to assess, discover, analyze, and transform applications at scale. It then waits for me to set up a connector to connect to my source code repositories.

Setup connector to connect to source code repository

After the connector is in place, AWS Transform begins discovering repositories in my account. It conducts an assessment focused on three key areas: repository dependencies, required private packages and third-party libraries, and supported project types within your repositories.

Based on this assessment, it generates a recommended transformation plan. The plan orders repositories according to their last modification dates, dependency relationships, private package requirements, and the presence of supported project types.

AWS Transform for .NET then prepares for the transformation process by requesting specific inputs, such as the target branch destination, target .NET version, and the repositories to be transformed.

To select the repositories to transform, I have two options: use the recommended plan or customize the transformation plan by selecting repositories manually. For selecting repositories manually, I can use the UI or download the repository mapping and upload the customized list.

select the repositories to transform

AWS Transform for .NET automatically ports the application code, builds the ported code, executes unit tests, and commits the ported code to a new branch in my repository. It provides a comprehensive transformation summary, including modified files, test outcomes, and suggested fixes for any remaining work.

While the web experience helps accelerate large-scale porting, some applications may require developer attention. For these cases, the same agent capabilities are available in the Visual Studio IDE.

Visual Studio IDE experience of AWS Transform for .NET
Now, let’s explore how AWS Transform for .NET works within Visual Studio.

To get started, I install the latest version of AWS Toolkit extension for Visual Studio and set up the prerequisites.

I open a .NET Framework solution, and in the Solution Explorer, I see the context menu item Port project with AWS Transform for an individual project.

Context menu for Port project with AWS Transform in Visual Studio

I provide the required inputs, such as the target .NET version and the approval for the agents to autonomously transform code, execute unit tests, generate a transformation summary, and validate Linux-readiness.

Transformation summary after the project is transformed in Visual Studio

I can review the code changes made by the agents locally and continue updating my codebase.

Let’s now explore some of the key new capabilities added to AWS Transform for .NET.

Support for projects with private NuGet package dependencies 
During preview, only projects with public NuGet package dependencies were supported. With general availability, we now support projects with private NuGet package dependencies. This has been one of the most requested features during the preview.

The feature I really love is that AWS Transform can detect cross-repository dependencies. If it finds the source code of my private NuGet package, it automatically transforms that as well. However, if it can’t locate the source code, in the web experience, it provides me the flexibility to upload the required NuGet packages.

AWS Transform displays the missing package dependencies that need to be resolved. There are two ways to do this: I can either use the provided PowerShell script to create and upload packages, or I can build the application locally and upload the NuGet packages from the packages folder in the solution directory.

Upload packages to resolve missing dependencies

After I upload the missing NuGet packages, AWS Transform is able to resolve the dependencies. It’s best to provide both the .NET Framework and cross platform .NET versions of the NuGet packages. If the cross platform .NET version is not available, then at a minimum the .NET Framework version is required for AWS Transform to add it as an assembly reference and proceed for transformation.

Unit test execution
During preview, we supported porting unit tests from .NET Framework to cross-platform .NET. With general availability, we’ve also added support for executing unit tests after the transformation is complete.

After the transformation is complete and the unit tests are executed, I can see the results in the dashboard and view the status of the tests at each individual test project level.

Dashboard after successful transformation in web showing exectuted unit tests

Transformation visibility and summary
After the transformation is complete, I can download a detailed report in JSON format that gives me a list of transformed repositories, details about each repository, and the status of the transformation actions performed for each project within a repository. I can view the natural language transformation summary at the project level to understand AWS Transform output with project-level granularity. The summary provides me with an overview of updates along with key technical changes to the codebase.

detailed report of transformed project highlighting transformation summary of one of the project

Other new features
Let’s have a quick look at other new features we’ve added with general availability:

  • Support for porting UI layer – During preview, you could only port the business logic layers of MVC applications using AWS Transform, and you had to port the UI layer manually. With general availability, you can now use AWS Transform to port MVC Razor views to ASP.NET Core Razor views.
  • Expanded connector support – During preview, you could connect only to GitHub repositories. Now with general availability, you can connect to GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket repositories.
  • Cross repository dependency – When you select a repository for transformation, dependent repositories are automatically selected for transformation.
  • Download assessment report – You can download a detailed assessment report of the identified repositories in your account and private NuGet packages referenced in these repositories.
  • Email notifications with deep links – You’ll receive email notifications when a job’s status changes to completed or stopped. These notifications include deep links to the transformed code branches for review and continued transformation in your IDE.

Things to know
Some additional things to know are:

  • Regions – AWS Transform for .NET is generally available today in the Europe (Frankfurt) and US East (N. Virginia) Regions.
  • Pricing – Currently, there is no additional charge for AWS Transform. Any resources you create or continue to use in your AWS account using the output of AWS Transform will be billed according to their standard pricing. For limits and quotas, refer to the documentation.
  • .NET versions supported – AWS Transform for .NET supports transforming applications written using .NET Framework versions 3.5+, .NET Core 3.1, and .NET 5+, and the cross-platform .NET version, .NET 8.
  • Application types supported – AWS Transform for .NET supports porting C# code projects of the following types: console application, class library, unit tests, WebAPI, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) service, MVC, and single-page application (SPA).
  • Getting started – To get started, visit AWS Transform for .NET User Guide.
  • Webinar – Join the webinar Accelerate .NET Modernization with Agentic AI to experience AWS Transform for .NET through a live demonstration.

– Prasad


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Who needs VC funding? How cybercriminals spread their ill-gotten gains to everyday business ventures

Cybercriminals aren’t so different from the rest of us — they live in the real world, and their spending and investment habits, though funded through crime, can look surprisingly ordinary. Luxury cars and lavish vacations may still grab headlines, but those perks are reserved for the most elite cybercriminals.

In reality, everyday businesses — like pizza delivery, construction supplies, or tattoo parlors — are supported by the fruits of the labor that comes from a life of cybercrime.

An extensive investigation by Sophos X-Ops, pulled from thousands of posts on two Russian-language and three English-language cybercrime forums, uncovered the dark underbelly of illegal schemes cybercriminals use to reinvest their money. Yet, researchers also discovered a vast community of chatty cybercriminals seeking to help each other launder their money with more common business pursuits.

According to John Shier, field chief information security officer of threat intelligence at Sophos, alleged cybercriminals on these forums are pursuing an immense range of businesses, investment proposals and startup ideas.

“A lot of this cybercrime is fueled by crypto, and it’s kind of useless in the real world,” Shier told CyberScoop. “So, they need to be able to move that cryptocurrency into some sort of fiat, some sort of valuable something that they can actually spend in the real world.”

The discussion of legitimate businesses as a vehicle for laundering money is brazen, he said. Some guides and detailed instructions shared on these forums also reveal how extensively cybercriminals collaborate to diversify and develop specialized ways to funnel their money. 

Sticking to what they know

Businesses that cybercriminals prop up with their ill-gotten gains include everything from drive-thru coffee shops to real estate, education, pharmaceuticals, construction, software development and — wait for it — cybersecurity companies and services. 

Users on these forums proposed selling spyware to pentesters and corporations, developing exploits or finding vulnerabilities in local businesses’ networks to then turn that into an opportunity to sell protective services. “I accidentally found myself in this situation, raised a lot of money and got a regular client,” an unnamed user wrote, according to Sophos.

Researchers also observed proposals for security startups specializing in vulnerability research and a hash decryption service using a commercial cloud provider. One user recommended an investment in a prominent cybersecurity vendor.

“Irony aside, this raises the concerning possibility that threat actors could become shareholders of a company that tracks and disrupts threat actors,” Sophos X-Ops researchers said in the report

“It is concerning that you’d have people with motivations that are criminal, that are investing in businesses that are supposed to be helping organizations withstand cybercrime,” Shier said.

While it’s a positive when someone leaves a life of cybercrime behind, Shier said he doubts that’s the case for individuals communicating within the criminal underground. The potential for insider-type activity is real, where “the protectors are actually the ones that are in the ski masks and pointing a gun at you,” he said.

Crime begets more crime

Some of the guides Sophos found covered step-by-step methods for investing in gold or diamonds, establishing shell companies, money laundering, and importing and exporting.

Researchers described some business interests as “gray,” including pornography and gambling. 

Outright illegal activities were abundant on these forums as well. This includes bots, pyramid schemes, sex work, drugs, tax evasion, insider trading and reinvesting in cybercrime. 

“Invest it in the business that brought you this income. It’s obvious,” one user said in a forum, according to Sophos. 

Researchers observed multiple investment opportunities for malware and campaigns already in progress or development, including botnets, infostealers, phishing tools, SIM-swapping and a year-old DDoS-related project.

In one especially striking post, an alleged cybercriminal shared how they bought properties solely for the purpose of burying large sums of cash underground. 

A screenshot of the post Sophos shared with CyberScoop included detailed instructions for preparing the cash and selecting site locations. It was recommended that bank notes should be dry and free of any sign of mildew, arranged in piles, vacuum sealed into plastic bags, and then placed into large airtight bags with silica gel packets, before being sealed into a PVC drum and buried at least five feet deep, away from roots and on higher ground.

“Cover the hole when you’re done and write down the GPS coordinates so you or your descendants can easily find the location in the future,” the post explained. 

“If you’ve got so much money that you just need to start burying it like that, that, to me, is a pretty big red flag,” Shier said. “Are they building generational wealth here? Like, how much money are we talking about?”

Follow the money to what end?

Threat intelligence spans both physical and digital realms to help organizations detect and prevent malicious activity. While most of this research focuses on identifying  new attacks, and post-compromise activities, far less attention is placed on tracking the money once cybercriminals acquire it.

“We know that money enters the system very often through fraud or through things like ransomware, computer crime, but how it exits the system helps us maybe have a better idea of how we can monitor those different avenues,” Shier said.

“If we can just shine lights on absolutely everything, then it becomes a lot more difficult for them to hide,” he said. 

The legitimate businesses and gray-area pursuits that cybercriminals squeeze for additional profit ultimately implicate innocent people, creating more downstream victims, according to Shier.

“Cybercriminals are no different than the mafia, than other organized criminals. They’re going to use every avenue at their disposal,” he said. “We need to be able to shine as many lights on that as possible, so that then law enforcement and the judicial system can do what they need to do to prosecute these people.”

The post Who needs VC funding? How cybercriminals spread their ill-gotten gains to everyday business ventures appeared first on CyberScoop.

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Data Protection Market: Endless Possibilities to Ensure a Secure Future

Do you know that the average cost of a data breach is expected to reach over USD 4 million by the end of 2025, having already reached around USD 4.86 million globally in 2024. Data leaks and cyberattacks have increased in frequency, affecting more than 342 million people in 2023. Here are a few recent data breach cases in prominent fields.

Thus, in the modern world, data protection becomes crucial to protect individual rights, foster trust in digital interactions, and preserve personal integrity. According to Research Nester’s analysis, the market for data protection is expected to reach USD 1.12 trillion by 2037, up from USD 158.77 billion in 2024. The need for data protection and recovery, the increased organizational awareness of data integrity, and increasing cybersecurity threats are some important factors that will support the growth of the global data protection market. Further, in this blog post, let’s explore evolving trends and identify future opportunities in the data protection market.

1.Growth of Remote Work Culture and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Policies

As of March 2025, more than 35 million Americans, or around 21% of all employees, worked remotely to some extent. Due to the growing accessibility of technology and the recognition that working remotely can be more effective and efficient, the workforce is increasingly moving toward remote arrangements. As a result, strong data protection measures are required as remote workers have long been viewed by hackers as weak points in their attempts to access systems and steal data. For instance, in 2023, the average cost of a data breach was around USD 5 million, and breaches related to remote work cost an extra USD 173,073 on average per occurrence. Moreover, fostering a culture of security and compliance in remote work situations is crucial since remote work presents a wide range of cybersecurity challenges.

2.Adoption of Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA)

Zero Trust is an integrated, proactive strategy that offers quick improvements in security controls and risk mitigation. To improve cybersecurity and preserve the integrity of federal agency networks, organizations are increasingly using ZTA in response to the growing prevalence of remote work, cloud computing, and sophisticated cyber threats. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are exposed to a growing range of security vulnerabilities, making ZTA an essential strategy to protect SMBs. For instance, SMBs were the target of over 60% of cyberattacks in 2023. In fact, in 2023, about 94% of cybersecurity events that affect SMBs cost between USD 825 and USD 653,586. 

3.Shift to Cloud Computing

According to the European Commission, in 2023, 45.2% of EU businesses purchased cloud computing services, primarily for office software, electronic file storage, and email system hosting. Moreover, by the end of 2025, more than 90% of all businesses globally will rely on cloud computing services to support their operations, around 13% in 2020. This shift has necessitated robust data protection strategies as it also introduces the risk of data breaches. For instance, data stored on the cloud was the cause of over 75% of data breaches in 2023, making the cloud a susceptible area. This is further boosting spending on cloud security to protect cloud-based systems from changing cyber threats, illegal access, and data breaches. 

4.Presence of Stringent Data Privacy Laws

Almost all nations have passed some kind of data privacy legislation to safely shield data from breaches, illegal access, and online dangers. Businesses that prioritize data privacy should adhere to legal requirements, protect assets, build trust, and promote sustainability. With rising concerns over data breaches, countries around the world are doubling down on data privacy regulations. Let’s look at how several nations are emphasizing data privacy laws.

  1. The Indian Parliament passed the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 20236, at the beginning of August 2023, which is the country’s first data protection law. The fines for breaking the DPDP Act can range from around ₹49 crore to over ₹240 crore for each infraction.
  2. Under the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), the state government of California established the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) to strengthen consumer data rights while informing customers by encouraging openness, enforcement, and education. For a single CCPA violation, civil penalties can vary from over USD 2400 to USD 7400.
  3. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into force throughout the European Union on May 25, 2018, impacting any organization that handles the data of people who reside in EU member states. Those that break the GDPR’s privacy and security rules might face severe fines of around 9 million euros, or over 1% of a company’s global yearly turnover from the prior year, whichever is higher.

In a Nutshell,

Every business should place a high premium on data protection to maintain the confidentiality and integrity of the data. As a result of increased rules, technical improvements, and an increasing emphasis on individual rights and control, data privacy is set to undergo major change in the future. Towards the end, the global data protection market is poised for significant growth in the evolving cybersecurity landscape.

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The post Data Protection Market: Endless Possibilities to Ensure a Secure Future first appeared on Cybersecurity Insiders.

The post Data Protection Market: Endless Possibilities to Ensure a Secure Future appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.

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