Hackers breached the European Commission (The Next Web) [LWN.net]

LWN recently reported on the Trivy compromise that led, in turn, to the compromise of the LiteLLM system; that article made the point that the extent of the problem was likely rather larger than was known. The Next Web now reports that the Trivy attack was used to compromise a wide range of European Commission systems.

The European Union's computer emergency response team said on Thursday that a supply chain attack on an open-source security scanner gave hackers the keys to the European Commission's cloud infrastructure, resulting in the theft and public leak of approximately 92 gigabytes of compressed data including the personal information and email contents of staff across dozens of EU institutions.

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Hackers or criminals?

Posted Apr 7, 2026 13:05 UTC (Tue) by BuboBubo (guest, #183107) [Link] (5 responses)

I don't understand why journalists still use the term hacker to refer to criminals.

Hackers or criminals?

Posted Apr 7, 2026 14:58 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

For the same reason that Computer Professors use the term "real time" to mean "online". (And yes I have met such.)

They either don't understand the difference, or don't care - and they also don't care about communicating clearly and unambiguously, but that's your typical journalist!

Cheers,
Wol

Hackers or criminals?

Posted Apr 7, 2026 16:49 UTC (Tue) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (2 responses)

Definition 6 of "Hacker" in the original Jargon file (before ESR's takeover) included:

6. A malicious or inquisitive meddler who tries to discover information by poking around. Hence "password hacker", "network hacker".

"Hacker" has basically always covered the criminal aspects of things as well, and it's kind of weirdly revisionist to pretend otherwise

Hackers or criminals?

Posted Apr 15, 2026 6:57 UTC (Wed) by cypherpunks2 (guest, #152408) [Link] (1 responses)

> inquisitive meddler

Hackers or criminals?

Posted Apr 15, 2026 7:00 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

Malicious *or* inquisitive. Hacking is not necessarily a malicious act, and nor is it necessarily a criminal one. But the use of "hacker" to describe malicious individuals performing criminal acts is a documented part of our community history, no matter how much we might wish otherwise.

Hackers or criminals?

Posted Apr 9, 2026 9:24 UTC (Thu) by vuji (guest, #182841) [Link]

because like everyone they dont want to jeopardise future of dependants also ! as long as message is relayed to common folks without any ambiguity, there is no issue. frankly, do we follow what we preach ?