Jenna McLaughlin

The International Committee of the Red Cross has revealed that hackers have stolen data on over 515,000 "highly vulnerable people," recipients of aid and services from at least 60 affiliates of the charitable organization worldwide.

During the investigation into the extent of the attack, which targeted a contractor in Switzerland that was storing the data, the Red Cross has been forced to temporarily halt a program that reunites families torn apart by violence, migration or other tragedies.

Top U.S. and Russian diplomats said they had constructive talks Monday in Geneva, but they did not achieve a breakthrough in their attempt to defuse tensions regarding the Russian troop buildup on the Ukraine-Russia border.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov emerged from the nearly eight hours of talks and declared, "There are no plans or intentions to attack Ukraine." He went on to say, "There is no reason to fear some kind of escalatory scenario."

But the Russian troops remain in place, and Ukraine and its supporters describe them as a serious threat.

Late last week, the staff of the popular world-building video game Minecraft published an unusual blog post announcing that a version of the game had a digital flaw that hackers could exploit to take over players' computers. The gaming company released a patch and encouraged players who run their own servers to do the same.

But the cybersecurity community quickly realized that the vulnerability, embedded in an incredibly popular and common software tool, could potentially impact billions of devices.

Criminal groups have been sending threatening messages in the past couple of months to companies that manage broadband phone services all over the world, promising they'll flood the digital phone lines with traffic and take them offline unless the targets pay a ransom.

What those extortionists have discovered is that the number of phone calls that take place at least partially over the internet has quietly and dramatically increased in recent years — and there's a lot at stake when major providers go down.

The White House kicked off a virtual series of meetings Wednesday focused on fighting back against a barrage of ransomware attacks with representatives from over 30 countries.

While many criminal hackers are suspected to live and work in adversarial nations like Russia and China, those countries were left off the guest list. For this summit, one of many planned gatherings, the U.S. included "like-minded nations," said National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan during the opening session — or as he put it — nations that "recognize the urgency of the ransomware threat."