As the 2024 US presidential election comes to a close, and with Donald Trump on the ballot once again, Russian actors are spreading disinformation with unprecedented and alarming intensity—and US officials say that the Kremlin’s efforts to undermine confidence in the election and foment unrest are likely to continue into January.Russian disinformation operations have had a prominent presence in … [Read more...]
Man Arrested for Snowflake Hacking Spree Faces US Extradition
For much of this summer, a mysterious group of hackers carried out a landmark spree of major data breaches, all targeting customers of the cloud data storage company Snowflake. Now one alleged hacker—whom experts believe to be the ringleader of that group—has been arrested in Canada, and he may be on his way to a US court.On Monday, Bloomberg and 404 Media reported that a Canadian man named … [Read more...]
Inside the Massive Crime Industry That’s Hacking Billion-Dollar Companies
On October 20, a hacker who calls themselves Dark X said they logged in to a server and stole the personal data of 350 million Hot Topic customers. The following day, Dark X listed the data, including alleged emails, addresses, phone numbers, and partial credit card numbers, for sale on an underground forum. The day after that, Dark X said Hot Topic kicked them out.Dark X told me that the apparent … [Read more...]
Florida Man Accused of Hacking Disney World Menus, Changing Font to Wingdings
With just days to go until the 2024 presidential election in the United States, WIRED reported on documents that revealed US government assessments about multiple components of election security and stability. First obtained by the national security transparency nonprofit Property of the People, one report distributed by the US Department of Homeland Security in October assessed that financially … [Read more...]
Zero-Click Flaw Exposes Potentially Millions of Popular Storage Devices to Attack
A popular device and application used by millions of individuals and businesses around the world to store documents is vulnerable to a zero-click flaw, a group of Dutch researchers have discovered.The vulnerability, which is called zero-click because it doesn’t require a user to click on anything to be infected, affects a photo application installed by default on popular network-attached storage … [Read more...]
Inside Sophos' 5-Year War With the Chinese Hackers Hijacking Its Devices
For years, it's been an inconvenient truth within the cybersecurity industry that the network security devices sold to protect customers from spies and cybercriminals are, themselves, often the machines those intruders hack to gain access to their targets. Again and again, vulnerabilities in “perimeter” devices like firewalls and VPN appliances have become footholds for sophisticated hackers … [Read more...]
The Untold Story of Trump's Failed Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela's President
On September 26, 2018, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro approached the lectern at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. Hulking and mustachioed, wearing a black suit and a bright red tie, Maduro was in a bilious mood.At home, Maduro’s political position was deteriorating. The former bus driver turned autocrat had ruled Venezuela for five years, and had recently “won” reelection … [Read more...]
'We're a Fortress Now': The Militarization of US Elections Is Here
Drones, snipers, razor wire, sniffer dogs, body armor, bulletproof glass, and 24-hour armed security.This is not a list of protections in place for a visit by the president of the United States nor the contents of a shipment to frontline troops fighting in Ukraine. This is a list of the security measures election officials in counties across the US have had to implement ahead of Tuesday’s vote as … [Read more...]
Cybercriminals Pose a Greater Threat of Disruptive US Election Hacks Than Russia or China
Russian, Chinese, and Iranian state-backed hackers have been active throughout the 2024 United States campaign season, compromising digital accounts associated with political campaigns, spreading disinformation, and probing election systems. But in a report from early October, the threat-sharing and coordination group known as the Election Infrastructure ISAC warned that cybercriminals like … [Read more...]
Chinese Hackers Target Trump Campaign via Verizon Breach
With the United States presidential election less than two weeks away, Microsoft warned on Wednesday that Russia, Iran, and China are continuing to deploy a diverse array of influence operations against both the Trump and Harris campaigns as well as down-ballot races. One of the areas of policy that the new president will shape is the US’s approach to regulating AI, and experts say that a second … [Read more...]
Meet ZachXBT, the Masked Vigilante Tracking Down Billions in Crypto Scams and Thefts
On August 19, a twentysomething man who goes by the online handle ZachXBT was walking into an airport to board a flight home—which airport, his real name, where home is, he’d rather not say—when he saw an alert on his phone. A sum of bitcoins had just been transferred to a small cryptocurrency exchange, one of many whose transactions he constantly monitors on Bitcoin’s blockchain for signs of … [Read more...]
Microsoft Warns Foreign Disinformation Is Hitting the US Election From All Directions
As November 5 draws closer, the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) warned on Wednesday that malicious foreign influence operations launched by Russia, China, and Iran against the US presidential election are continuing to evolve and should not be ignored even though they have come to feel inevitable. In the group's fifth report, researchers emphasize the range of ongoing activities as well as … [Read more...]
Nigeria Drops Charges Against Tigran Gambaryan, Jailed Binance Exec and Former IRS Agent
For eight months, the criminal investigator who pioneered cryptocurrency tracing as a law enforcement technique has, in a bizarre twist of fate, been detained and then jailed in Nigeria facing charges of money laundering and tax evasion. Now, he may finally be coming home.On Wednesday in Abuja, a court ruled that criminal charges against Gambaryan, a Binance executive who previously served as an … [Read more...]
Exposed United Nations Database Left Sensitive Information Accessible Online
A database containing sensitive, sometimes personal information from the United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women was openly accessible on the internet, revealing more than 115,000 files related to organizations that partner with or receive funding from UN Women. The documents range from staffing information and contracts to letters and even detailed financial audits about … [Read more...]
The Shitposting Cartoon Dogs Sending Trucks, Drones, and Weapons to Ukraine’s Front Lines
In May 2022, just months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a disparate group of people from across the globe decided that they wanted to fight back.This turned into the North Atlantic Fella Organization (NAFO), a decentralized online activist network designed to combat pro-Kremlin propaganda, primarily focusing on the platform then known as Twitter. The members, identified by cartoon … [Read more...]
ICE's $2 Million Contract With a Spyware Vendor Is Under White House Review
A $2 million contract that United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement signed with Israeli commercial spyware vendor Paragon Solutions has been paused and placed under compliance review, WIRED has learned.The White House’s scrutiny of the contract marks the first test of the Biden administration’s executive order restricting the government’s use of spyware.The one-year contract between … [Read more...]
How a Trump Win Could Unleash Dangerous AI
If Donald Trump wins the US presidential election in November, the guardrails could come off of artificial intelligence development, even as the dangers of defective AI models grow increasingly serious.Trump’s election to a second term would dramatically reshape—and possibly cripple—efforts to protect Americans from the many dangers of poorly designed artificial intelligence, including … [Read more...]
US Government Says Relying on Chinese Lithium Batteries Is Too Risky
Analysts at the US Department of Homeland Security shared an internal report to local agencies in August, warning them about the economic risks of using Chinese utility storage batteries. It warns that the dependence on Chinese batteries could hurt developing a secure supply chain in the US.The document, first obtained by national security transparency nonprofit Property of the People and seen by … [Read more...]
Google Chrome’s uBlock Origin Purge Has Begun
In what may be a first, the US Department of Justice this week charged a hacker with attempting to cause injury and death by launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against hospitals. Ahmed Omer and his brother Alaa are accused of carrying out a cyberattack spree that targeted hundreds of victims under the hacktivist banner Anonymous Sudan. The group’s DDoS victims included … [Read more...]
The Disinformation Warning Coming From the Edge of Europe
A TikTok video of actor Brian Baumgartner, from the American version of The Office, calling for the overthrow of the president of a small European country was an early sign that this would be no ordinary election.Late last year, Baumgartner appeared among a lineup of American celebrities addressing Maia Sandu, the current, pro-European president of Moldova and proclaiming in bad Russian: “We, … [Read more...]
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