Category: Communication and Connectivity

Medical billing giant Episource is notifying millions of people across the United States that their personal and health information was stolen in a cyberattack earlier this year.

The breach affects more than 5.4 million people, according to a listing with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, making it one of the largest healthcare breaches of the year so far. 

Episource, owned by health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group’s subsidiary Optum, provides billing adjustment to the doctors, hospitals, and other organizations that work in the healthcare industry. As such, the company handles large amounts of patients’ personal and medical data to process claims through their health insurance.

In notices filed in California and Vermont on Friday, Episource said a criminal was able to “see and take copies” of patient and member data from its systems during the weeklong breach ending February 6.

The stolen information includes personal information, such as names, postal and email addresses, and phone numbers, as well as protected health data, including medical record numbers, and data relating to doctors, diagnoses, medications, test results, imaging, care, and other treatment. The stolen data also contains health insurance information, like health plans, policies, and member numbers.

Episource did not describe the nature of the incident, but Sharp Healthcare, one of the companies that works with Episource and was affected by the cyberattack, told its customers that the Episource hack was caused by ransomware. 

This is the latest cybersecurity incident to hit UnitedHealth in recent years. 

Change Healthcare, one of the largest companies in the U.S. healthcare industry that processes billions of health transactions each year, was hacked by a ransomware gang in February 2024, leading to the theft of more than 190 million Americans’ personal and health information. The cyberattack was the largest healthcare data breach in U.S. history. 

Several months later, UnitedHealth’s Optum unit left an internal chatbot used by employees to ask about claims exposed to the internet.

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Huawei has won a contract to provide digital storage for the Spanish GovernmentThe Chinese tech giant will store and classify court-ordered wiretaps This contrasts other western states that now largely avoid Huawei, and Chinese techAny Spanish government wiretaps carried out by law enforcement agencies will soon be managed by Chinese telecom giant Huawei thanks to a recently-won contract.The €12.3 million contract was awarded to Huawei after a standard public procurement procedure – and the contract includes digital storage of judicially-ordered wiretaps, reports The Objective.Huawei will supply its own high performance storage servers, OceanStor 6800 V5 for the project, which will store and classify intercepted communications and data collected through state agencies.

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Mixed messagesSectors of the National Police in Spain have grown uneasy with Huawei’s involvement in sensitive systems, with sources expressing concern over strategic inconsistencies regarding China and the state’s access to data and a potential threat to national security.Huawei points out that no backdoor has ever been identified within its telecommunications equipment, and the company asserts that it would not answer CCP requests for intelligence, nor would its equipment be used to spy (unless you count government wiretapping contracts).Spain’s PM Pedro Sánchez has been one of the least combative towards Huawei’s presence, with Spain remaining a close partner within the EU for the company – holding several contracts with public administrations.Interestingly enough though, the recent procurement comes in contrast to Spain’s de facto banishment of the Chinese telecom giant from all critical infrastructure, having reduced Huawei’s presence in the 5G cores of the largest three Spanish operators to 0%, according to Euronews.Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!European and American governments have been increasingly distancing themselves from Chinese technology firms in recent months, primarily citing national security concerns and the threat of exfiltrated data.An ongoing trade war between the US and China has seen firms on both sides cut off from the opposing market, with market leaders like chipmaker Nvidia saying US tariffs mean it faces a multi-billion dollar hit.You might also like

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France is launching a criminal investigation into Elon Musk’s X over alleged instances of algorithm manipulation for foreign interference purposes. The national gendarmerie will be tasked with the investigation, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced. 

In a statement, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said that the investigation is looking at X as a legal entity as well as unnamed individuals. 

Within the investigation’s scope, she highlighted the two following potential offenses: “alteration of the operation” and “fraudulent extraction of data” of an automated data processing system “by an organized group.”

Beccuau added that the move followed “verifications, contributions from French researchers and elements brought by various public institutions.”

In February, her office opened an initial probe into X following two reports made by the cybercrime section of the Paris prosecutor’s office over the social network’s alleged use of algorithm manipulation for foreign interference purposes.

These reports were made by an unnamed senior official from a French public institution, which French journalists described as a cybersecurity manager, and by a member of parliament, Éric Bothorel.

In a statement, Bothorel welcomed news of the investigation moving forward, which he said “comes at a time when the new Grok update seems to be tipping over to the dark side of the force, with a predominance of questionable, even nauseating, content.”

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On July 9, X took the automated account for its AI chatbot offline after it spent Tuesday afternoon pushing antisemitic narratives, which weren’t a first. The European Commission is “in touch” with X over this very topic it said; but Bothorel’s concern is broader.

“I was convinced that information bias, which is particularly strong on the X platform, was serving Elon Musk’s political opinions, and that this could only be achieved through algorithmic manipulation,” the elected official stated.

Bothorel said he filed his report as an MP, but also as “a citizen who does not want Moscow, Silicon Valley, or anyone else to distort our democratic conversations.” He praised “the work of an efficient prosecutor’s office, particularly its cyber section, which will likely need to be strengthened at a time when cyber threats continue to increase.”

As Paris prosecutor, Beccuau has coordinated prosecutions related to the hacking forum BreachForums. She is also overseeing the ongoing judicial investigation into Telegram and its CEO Pavel Durov, who was arrested for alleged facilitation of criminal activity on the platform. Durov has since obtained court approval to leave France for Dubai, but the investigation continues.

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U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA says hackers are actively exploiting a critical-rated security flaw in a widely used Citrix product, and has given other federal government departments just one day to patch their systems.

Security researchers have dubbed the bug “Citrix Bleed 2” for its similarity to a 2023 security flaw in Citrix NetScaler, a networking product that large companies and governments rely on for allowing their staff to remotely access apps and other resources on their internal networks. Much like the earlier bug, Citrix Bleed 2 can be remotely exploited to extract sensitive credentials from an affected NetScaler device, allowing the hackers broader access to a company’s wider network.

In an alert on Thursday, CISA said it had evidence that the bug was being actively used in hacking campaigns, adding to the raft of research and findings pointing to widespread exploitation, with some reporting hacks dating back as far as mid-June. Akamai said it saw a “drastic increase” in efforts to scan the internet for affected devices after details of the NetScaler exploit were published earlier this week.

CISA said the NetScaler bug poses a “significant risk” to the federal government’s systems, and ordered federal government agencies to patch any Citrix device affected by the bug by Friday.

For its part, Citrix has not yet acknowledged that the vulnerability is being exploited. The company’s security advisory urges customers to update affected devices as soon as possible. 

Citrix representatives did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

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Apolink, a Y Combinator-backed space-tech startup founded by a 19-year-old Indian-origin entrepreneur, has raised $4.3 million in an “oversubscribed” seed round at a $45 million post-money valuation to build a real-time connectivity network for satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO).

The startup is tackling a persistent problem in space communications. Satellites frequently go offline during parts of their orbit due to dead zones — periods when they are not in the line of sight of a ground station. While relay satellites and global ground station networks help reduce this downtime, they only provide partial solutions.

That gap has become critical as the space industry evolves. For years, NASA relied on its Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) system to maintain near-continuous contact with satellites in geostationary orbit. But in 2022, the agency announced it would gradually phase out TDRS and transition to commercial providers for satellite communications. Most of these commercial systems still focus on geostationary or medium Earth orbits. Apolink, formerly known as Bifrost Orbital, aims to change that by providing 24/7 connectivity to LEO satellites — with each orbital ring designed to handle 256 users at 9.6kbps.

“LEO has its own advantages,” said Apolink founder Onkar Singh Batra in an exclusive interview. “It’s much closer than geostationary orbit, which means closing the link between the customer satellite and our constellation is way easier… that’s where you make the power requirements limited, and that’s where the compatibility comes in as well.”

Apolink’s approach stems from Batra’s early recognition of this connectivity challenge. At the age of 14 in 2020, he developed an interest in space. In 2022, when he was in 12th grade at a defense school in the northern Indian city of Jammu, he created a satellite system named InQube, which emerged as India’s first open source satellite. He also taught space ecosystems to engineering students as a guest professor at IIT Jammu between 2022-23.

Apolink team, with founder Onkar Singh Batra second from Left Image Credits:Apolink

While working on his first satellite system, Batra recognized the satellite connectivity problem and noticed that existing solutions did not provide backward compatibility, requiring specific hardware to enable network access in orbit.

According to Batra, the issue remains because all other inter-satellite links (ISLs) lack interoperability and are not compliant with the Space Development Agency’s requirements.

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“We solve this [through] our hybrid-RF optical architecture and no user terminal, hardware-independent approach,” he stated.

Some startups have tried to address dark zones by building new ground stations. However, Batra noted that ground stations are “very cumbersome to work with and can’t guarantee a 24/7 link.”

“The maximum you can afford is a reliable continuous link to the ground during the window,” he said.

Founded in 2024, the Palo Alto-based startup plans to solve the problem with a constellation of 32 satellites that include lasers and radios to enable connectivity even for satellites that lack specific hardware.

Apolink, which literally means Apogee-plus-link, aims to offer almost 99% uptime and 10-15 seconds of latency. The latency will be further reduced to 2-3 seconds once the network is established.

Companies, including Amazon’s Kuiper and SpaceX’s Starlink, are also building inter-satellite links to address connectivity issues for satellite customers. However, Batra said that most players with multipurpose constellations do not dedicate them to virtual relays, resulting in limited bandwidth available for customers. They also require customers to have an optical terminal installed on their site for connectivity.

“Other ISL players focus on Ku/Ka-band and use optical terminals for EO image downlink, and we don’t,” he told TechCrunch.

The startup has its own FCC license, eliminating the need for customers to fulfill additional licensing requirements. Furthermore, it produces satellite components, including lasers and radios, in-house to ensure they are compatible with its algorithms.

In Q2 2026, Apolink aims to launch its initial demo mission via a SpaceX rideshare. The mission will feature a 3U technology demonstration satellite, LinkONE/IPoS, designed to confirm the backward-compatible radio-frequency relay in low Earth orbit, Batra said.

A second demo is expected in June 2027, featuring two satellites. In 2028, the startup will roll out its commercial constellation, with the entire constellation of 32 satellites expected to be launched in 2029.

Despite being in the early stages, the startup has already secured more than $140 million in letters of intent from companies in the Earth observation, communication, and spatial data sectors, including Astro Digital, Hubble Network, and Star Catcher Industries.

Its new seed round was backed by Y Combinator, 468 Capital, Unshackled Ventures, Rebel Fund, Maiora Ventures, and several angel investors, including Laura Crabtree (CEO of Epsilon3), Benjamin Bryant (co-founder of Pebble Tech), and Kanav Kariya (president of Jump Crypto).

Apolink operates with a core team of four (each with more than five years of industry experience and from companies including Maxar, Audacy, and Astra), located within a 4,000-square-foot R&D facility. The company currently focuses on spacecraft integration and testing and is working with early partners to validate its system in orbit.

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