TechCrunch looks back at the biggest data breaches, disruptive cyberattacks, and damaging hacks of 2025, from the raiding of U.S. government databases to a hack every month in South Korea.

As a leftist Muslim immigrant from Somalia, radical Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is wonderfully blessed with a DEI press. She is perennially assumed to be a victim of racism, sexism, and xenophobia whenever she is criticized, and especially when she's verbally targeted by President Trump. At the end of a typically syrupy interview with Esme Murphy from the local CBS station WCCO in Minneapolis on Sunday, Omar claimed her 19-year-old son Adnan Hirsi was pulled over by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement personnel. "Yesterday, after he made a stop at Target, he did get pulled over by ICE agents, and once he was able to produce his passport ID, they did let him go," Omar asserted. She said her son "always carries" his passport with him, because she tells him ICE agents "are racially profiling, they are looking for young men who look Somali that they think are undocumented."

President Donald Trump's unhinged reaction to the stabbing deaths of Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner, which the president gleefully attributed to "the anger" the legendary director "caused others" via his anti-Trump activism in a Monday morning Truth Social post, triggered some of the most unified criticism from the right of Trump's second term. On social media, conservative pundits and Fox News stars used words like "disgraceful," "appalling," "disgusting," "unnecessary," "inappropriate," "gross," "awful," "cruel," and "insane" to describe Trump gloating about brutal killings. CNN's MAGA commentators, whose jobs depend on their willingness to defend the president at his most indefensible, were unwilling or unable to back Trump's self-centered rantings about Reiner. On Fox, coverage of Trump's comment was nearly nonexistent outside of Special Report; star host Jesse Watters gave a lengthy monologue about the killings and interviewed Reiner friend James Woods, but he a…

U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth hosted the first-ever Pentagon Christmas worship service on Wednesday. Many gathered here in the center courtyard to sing songs of praise led by top Christian music artists and hear a powerful message of hope from Franklin Graham. U.S. Navy Admiral and Chaplain Carey Cash kicked off the event by talking about "the greatest rescue operation of all time... the coming of Jesus into this world!" "The scripture says that, 'In Him was life, and that life was the light of the world,'" Cash continued. "We celebrate that light today."

In past Decembers, pastor Paul Maina's congregation at Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN) Njilang in Chibok, Borno state, Nigeria, spent the week before Christmas celebrating. They often went house to house, singing in the local Cibak language, dancing, bearing gifts, and sharing meals. Maina prepared a midnight Christmas Eve service at church. Non-Christian neighbors joined in the festivities. "These were happy times," Maina told CT. "But that is no more."

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem late Thursday night paused the Diversity Visa Program, saying it allowed the Brown University shooting suspect to enter the U.S. and receive a green card. In an X post, Noem said the suspected shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, "entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card," adding, "This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country."

President Donald Trump blitzed through a prime-time address to the nation on Dec. 17, but while short, Trump's speech contained a number of inaccurate or misleading claims, many of which he has repeated in public speeches for months. Trump mentioned several items, such as cars and plane tickets, that he said experienced price increases under former President Joe Biden and price decreases during Trump's own presidency. We found support for some of Trump's statistics but not others, such as the price of Thanksgiving turkeys. The president made the misleading claim that "for the first time in years, wages are rising much faster than inflation." Year-over-year wages have been rising faster than inflation since June 2023, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures.

In a phone interview with NBC News' Kristen Welker on Thursday, President Donald Trump said it is possible that the U.S. could go to war with Venezuela, as his administration continues to up the pressure on Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. "I don't rule it out, no," he told the network. Trump did not want to offer further details and declined to say whether his ultimate goal was regime change. "He knows exactly what I want," Trump said of Maduro. "He knows better than anybody."