The Bare Metal Cyber — Friday Edition is your end-of-week cybersecurity intelligence wrap, turning five days of breaking threats into one fast, actionable update. For the week ending October 17th, 2025, we unpack everything from nation-state intrusions and zero-day exploits to record-setting DDoS attacks, policy moves, and vendor fallout — all explained in plain English for business leaders, defenders, and technology teams alike.

This week’s episode dives into F5’s confirmed breach where attackers stole BIG-IP source code and vulnerability data, the UK’s £14-million fine against Capita for poor breach response, and the discovery of a six-billion-record data leak from an unsecured Elasticsearch cluster. You’ll also hear how phishing campaigns spoofed LastPass and Bitwarden to install remote-control tools, why the massive “ClickFix” campaign tricked users into running malicious commands, and how Microsoft’s October patch cycle delivered 172 fixes — including six exploited zero-days — just as Windows 10 reached its support deadline.

We’ll explain how Chinese threat groups turned ArcGIS servers into backdoors, why VPNs and backup configurations became attacker blueprints, and how North Korea seeded npm with malicious packages to target developers. Plus, researchers exposed satellite traffic leaking unencrypted calls and telemetry, Apple doubled its bug bounty to $2 million, and the Aisuru botnet reached nearly thirty terabits per second in record-breaking denial-of-service floods.

Each story includes three things: what happened, why it matters, and one clear action you can take now. Whether you manage risk, run IT, or lead a security program, you’ll walk away knowing exactly where to focus your attention next week.

For more cybersecurity insights, visit BareMetalCyber.com for the full written wrap, or subscribe to the daily newsletter and podcast at DailyCyber.news — news you can use, and a daily podcast you can commute with.