Knifings, firebombings, shootings, and murder-for-hire plots—all linked to a splinter group of the 764 crime network called “No Lives Matter.” According to its own manifesto, the group seeks to “purify mankind through endless attacks” and has released at least two “kill guides” tied to violent plots in the US and Europe. Intelligence documents reviewed by WIRED reveal growing concern among … [Read more...]

Over the past decade, encrypted communication has become the norm for billions of people. Every day, Signal, iMessage, and WhatsApp keep billions of messages, photos, videos, and calls private by using end-to-end encryption by default—while Zoom, Discord, and various other services all have options to enable the protection. But despite the technology’s mainstream rise, long-standing threats to … [Read more...]

Mass layoffs and weak leadership are taking a severe toll on the US government’s cyber defense agency, undermining its ability to protect America from foreign adversaries bent on crippling infrastructure and ransomware gangs that are bleeding small businesses dry.Inside the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, vital support staff are gone, international partnerships have been … [Read more...]

In times of uncertainty, people rightly often turn to the encrypted messaging app Signal. Whether it’s to protect sensitive conversations while attending a protest or to keep your communications private from government surveillance, Signal represents most people’s best way to communicate safely.Signal’s popularity often spikes in times of strife or when alternatives seem more precarious. In May … [Read more...]

The kids are all grown up. In the face of international law enforcement pressure, dozens of prosecutions, and worldwide disrepute, the network of young sadists, misanthropes, child predators, and extortionists known as Com and 764 has not shrunk away into obscurity.Rather, its members have progressed from online extortion and crimes related to child sexual abuse material, to real-world violence, a … [Read more...]

The social network X suffered intermittent outages on Monday, a situation owner Elon Musk attributed to a “massive cyberattack.” Musk said in an initial X post that the attack was perpetrated by “either a large, coordinated group and/or a country.” In a post on Telegram, a pro-Palestinian group known as “Dark Storm Team” took credit for the attacks within a few hours. Later on Monday, though, Musk … [Read more...]

As Donald Trump’s administration continues its relentless reorganization of the United States federal government, documents obtained by WIRED showed this week that the Department of Defense is looking at cutting as much as three-quarters of its workforce that’s specifically focused on stopping proliferation of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the US Army is using its “CamoGPT” … [Read more...]

A newly discovered network botnet comprising an estimated 30,000 webcams and video recorders—with the largest concentration in the US—has been delivering what is likely to be the biggest denial-of-service attack ever seen, a security researcher inside Nokia said.The botnet, tracked under the name Eleven11bot, first came to light in late February when researchers inside Nokia’s Deepfield … [Read more...]

Former US congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s ascendance to director of national intelligence last month signaled a major shift in views towards government surveillance at the highest rung of the United States intelligence community. While backing down from some of her more extreme anti-surveillance views in the run-up to her confirmation, Gabbard nevertheless held fast to a few promises of reform that … [Read more...]

US agencies responsible for preventing the global proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and building security capacity around the world are facing deep cuts, perhaps total abolition, as the Trump administration continues its assault on any and all spending going overseas.According to a draft working paper provided to WIRED, the Department of Defense is asking all its agencies and services … [Read more...]

The United States Army is employing a prototype generative artificial intelligence tool to identify references to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) for removal from training materials in line with a recent executive order from President Donald Trump.Officials at the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC)—the major command responsible for training soldiers, developing … [Read more...]

Only rarely does the West get a glimpse inside the vast hacker-for-hire contractor ecosystem that enables China's digital intrusion campaigns worldwide. Now a new set of criminal charges against a dozen Chinese men, including two government officials, accuses them of a vast espionage campaign that included breaching the US Treasury, and goes as far as revealing the internal communications of some … [Read more...]

Cheap TV streaming boxes seem like one of the most straightforward gadgets out there, but they can come with hidden costs. In 2023, researchers revealed that tens of thousands of Android TV boxes being used in homes, schools, and businesses were equipped with secret backdoors that allowed them to be used in a host of cybercrime and online fraud. Now, the same researchers have found that the … [Read more...]

As scam compounds in Southeast Asia continue to drive massive campaigns targeting victims around the world, WIRED took a deeper look at how Elon Musk’s satellite internet service provider Starlink is keeping many of those compounds in Myanmar online. Meanwhile, FTC complaints obtained by WIRED allege that an “OpenAI” job scam used Telegram to recruit workers in Bangladesh for months before the … [Read more...]

The plea for help arrived last summer. “I am in Myanmar and work for a fraud company,” a Chinese human-trafficking victim wrote in a short email sent from within the Tai Chang scam compound. Like thousands of others in the region, they were promised legitimate work only to find themselves tricked into modern slavery and forced to scam people online for hours every day. Tai Chang, which backs on to … [Read more...]

While working on internet-of-things security in the mid-2010s, Alex Zenla realized something troubling.Unlike PCs and servers that touted the latest, greatest processors, the puny chips in IoT devices couldn't support the cloud protections other computers were using to keep them siloed and protected. As a result, most embedded devices were attached directly to the local network, potentially … [Read more...]

A Bangladeshi worker was eager to get started at their new OpenAI job—completing basic online tasks in exchange for consistent income, while getting into cryptocurrency investing at the same time. After connecting with the startup on Telegram and creating an account through a ChatGPT-branded app, they invested crypto into the platform and began a months-long job working for “Aiden” from … [Read more...]

Vladislav Klyushin was having, by any measure, an awful day. The judge in his case had brushed aside his lawyers’ arguments and his friends’ appeals for leniency. She handed down a tough sentence: nine more years in US federal prison, on top of an order to forfeit a fortune, $34 million.But if Klyushin was upset about the ruling, he didn’t show it. The then 42-year-old tech executive from Moscow … [Read more...]

In late January, a warning spread through the London-based Facebook group Are We Dating the Same Guy?—but this post wasn’t about a bad date or a cheating ex. A connected network of male-dominated Telegram groups had surfaced, sharing and circulating nonconsensual intimate images of women. Their justification? Retaliation.On January 23, users in the AWDTSG Facebook group began warning about hidden … [Read more...]

Federal employees at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) were greeted this morning by television sets at the agency’s Washington, DC headquarters playing what appears to be an AI-generated video of President Donald Trump kissing the feet of Elon Musk, accompanied by the words: “LONG LIVE THE REAL KING.”A person at HUD headquarters on Monday morning shared a video with WIRED … [Read more...]