Black Mirror to reality: AI errors, hospital hacks, and the password crisis

Last week, I had a little bit of fun listing some of the disturbing technology trends portrayed in Black Mirror Season 7. This week, I’m back to listing the sneaky and dangerous digital trends that come to haunt us in real life.

We kicked off last week by describing security flaws plaguing one of the smartest AI-powered AI engines out there, Perplexity AI. The way our journalist Paulina Okunytė puts it, when researchers pulled back the curtain, what they found was straight out of a digital horror story. The Android app might be even more dangerous than DeepSeek.

But flaws and security issues aren’t exclusive to Perplexity AI or DeepSeek. ChatGPT, with approximately 600 million unique monthly users, reportedly experienced a glitch last week. Users claimed that their chats had been swapped. For example, a question about what was wrong with the user code was answered like this: “Yes, Hamas is officially designated as a terrorist organization by the following entities.”

Last week, as per usual, many companies were either breached, hacked, or rumoured to be breached and hacked. Among the bigger stories, we had 4Chan being down after an alleged hack. But this was far from the worst case or the most vulnerable platform. Unfortunately, we observe things like mental health institutions and education organizations being targeted more and more often. I don't want to repeat myself, but criminals are scumbags, and desperate lying liars, too.

Here are a few nasty breaches. Medical Express Ambulance (MedEx), one of Illinois’ largest private ambulance services, disclosed a major data breach last week, saying the cyberattack compromised the personal, medical, and financial data of nearly 120,000 people.

It also emerged that a major kidney dialysis service provider in the US, DaVita, had fallen victim to a ransomware attack. While details are scarce, this incident again showcases that criminals are after the most vulnerable organisations and have no mercy (or clue) whatsoever.

In fact, our research team analyzed the 100 largest US hospitals and health systems websites to evaluate their cybersecurity posture. Guess what, it’s not great. Last year, data breaches reached an all-time high, with nearly 280 million records compromised.

And it’s a lot clearer to us why.

According to the data presented by Cybernews Business Digital Index, 79% of the 100 largest US hospitals and health systems scored D or worse for their cybersecurity efforts. In addition, 30% have critical vulnerabilities, and 65% have had recent data breaches.

Another curious piece of information that we fished out of our Business Digital Index is the frightening fact that the employees of the most trusted US companies reuse passwords, essentially putting your data at risk.

All the companies we analyzed had data breaches in the past. Nearly half of the companies are vulnerable because they reuse breached passwords.

With World Password Day approaching (the first Thursday of May), you’ll see more and more articles and experts trying to educate you on how to protect your accounts by setting up good passwords, etc.

Whatever you hear or read, be wary of any solution that promises you 100% protection. As with condoms, nothing is ever 100% safe, as even the most complicated protection layer can be cracked.