For years, Registered Agents Inc.—a secretive company whose business is setting up other businesses—has registered thousands of companies to people who appear to not exist. Multiple former employees tell WIRED that the company routinely incorporates businesses on behalf of its customers using what they claim are fake personas. An investigation found that incorporation paperwork for thousands of … [Read more...]
Meta Abandons Hacking Victims, Draining Law Enforcement Resources, Officials Say
Forty-one state attorneys general penned a letter to Meta’s top attorney on Wednesday saying complaints are skyrocketing across the United States about Facebook and Instagram user accounts being stolen, and declaring “immediate action” necessary to mitigate the rolling threat.The coalition of top law enforcement officials, spearheaded by New York attorney general Letitia James, says the “dramatic … [Read more...]
Inside Registered Agents Inc., the Shadowy Firm Pushing the Limits of Business Privacy
Inside a drab one-story office building in Post Falls, Idaho, a little-known American company has built the machinery that enables hundreds of thousands of businesses to operate in near-total secrecy.The company, Registered Agents Inc., is a one-stop shop for people seeking to incorporate a business in any US state, often in those with advantageous tax policies, while obscuring their identities. … [Read more...]
Hackers Behind the Change Healthcare Ransomware Attack Just Received a $22 Million Payment
The ransomware attack targeting medical firm Change Healthcare has been one of the most disruptive in years, crippling pharmacies across the US—including those in hospitals—and leading to serious snags in the delivery of prescription drugs nationwide for 10 days and counting. Now, a dispute within the criminal underground has revealed a new development in that unfolding debacle: One of the … [Read more...]
The Privacy Danger Lurking in Push Notifications
Just days after an international law enforcement operation disrupted LockBit, the ransomware group reemerged with a new dark-web site where it threatened to release documents stolen from Fulton County, Georgia, where Donald Trump and 18 codefendants stand accused of a conspiracy to overturn the 2024 election. But by the time the deadline for Fulton County to pay arrived, all mention of the leak … [Read more...]
Here Come the AI Worms
As generative AI systems like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini become more advanced, they are increasingly being put to work. Startups and tech companies are building AI agents and ecosystems on top of the systems that can complete boring chores for you: think automatically making calendar bookings and potentially buying products. But as the tools are given more freedom, it also increases the … [Read more...]
The UK’s GPS Tagging of Migrants Has Been Ruled Illegal
The way the UK government has been tagging migrants with GPS trackers is illegal, the country’s privacy regulator ruled on Friday, in a rebuke to officials who have been experimenting with migrant-surveillance tech in both the UK and the US.As part of an 18-month pilot that concluded in December, the UK interior ministry, known as the Home Office, forced up to 600 people who arrived in the country … [Read more...]
The Mysterious Case of the Missing Trump Trial Ransomware Leak
This week, the notorious ransomware gang known as LockBit threatened a kind of disruption that would have been a first even for a criminal industry that's crippled hospitals and triggered the shutdown of a gas pipeline: leaking documents from the criminal prosecution of a former president and presidential candidate.Then, without explanation, that threat evaporated, leaving plenty of unanswered … [Read more...]
Here Are the Google and Microsoft Security Updates You Need Right Now
It’s the shortest month of the year, but February updates have been hitting the ground at lightning speed, with Microsoft, Ivanti, and Fortinet all patching zero-day flaws in their products. Zoom and Cisco also just squashed serious bugs, so it’s a good idea to check your software versions and update as soon as possible.Here’s what you need to know about the patches released in … [Read more...]
Russia Attacked Ukraine's Power Grid at Least 66 Times to ‘Freeze It Into Submission’
Last week marked the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a conflict that has been marked by multiple reports that Russia may have committed war crimes by indiscriminately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. During the first winter of the conflict, Russia pursued a strategy that US secretary of state Antony Blinken described as trying to “freeze [Ukraine] … [Read more...]
The White House Warns Cars Made in China Could Unleash Chaos on US Highways
The US government has launched an investigation into the national security risks posed by foreign-made vehicles with internet connectivity—especially those made in China. At a briefing on Wednesday, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo even raised the specter of Beijing remotely triggering mayhem on US highways.“Imagine if there were thousands or hundreds of thousands of Chinese connected vehicles … [Read more...]
A Pornhub Chatbot Stopped Millions From Searching for Child Abuse Videos
For the past two years, millions of people searching for child abuse videos on Pornhub’s UK website have been interrupted. Each of the 4.4 million times someone has typed in words or phrases linked to abuse, a warning message has blocked the page, saying that kind of content is illegal. And in half the cases, a chatbot has also pointed people to where they can seek help.The warning message and … [Read more...]
Biden Executive Order Bans Sale of US Data to China, Russia. Good Luck
US president Joe Biden will sign an executive order on Wednesday aimed at preventing a handful of countries, including China, North Korea, and Russia, from purchasing sensitive information about Americans through commercial data brokers in the United States.Administration officials say categories of sensitive data, including personal identifiers, precise location information, and biometrics—vital … [Read more...]
Dictators Used Sandvine Tech to Censor the Internet. The US Finally Did Something About It
When the Egyptian government shut down the internet in 2011 to give itself cover to crush a popular protest movement, it was Nora Younis who got the word out. Younis, then a journalist with daily newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm, found a working internet connection at the InterContinental Cairo Semiramis Hotel that overlooked Tahrir Square, the heart of the protests. From the balcony, she filmed as … [Read more...]
Change Healthcare Ransomware Attack: BlackCat Hackers Quickly Returned After FBI Bust
Six days before Christmas, the US Department of Justice loudly announced a win in the ongoing fight against the scourge of ransomware: An FBI-led, international operation had targeted the notorious hacking group known as BlackCat or AlphV, releasing decryption keys to foil its ransom attempts against hundreds of victims and seizing the dark web sites it had used to threaten and extort them. “In … [Read more...]
The UK Is GPS-Tagging Thousands of Migrants
Mark Nelson took the call in an immigration detention center—a place that, to him, felt just like prison. It had the same prison windows, the same tiny box rooms. By the time the phone rang, he’d already spent 10 days detained there, and he was wracked with worry that he would be forced onto a plane without the chance to say goodbye to his kids. So when his lawyers relayed the two options … [Read more...]
How the Pentagon Learned to Use Targeted Ads to Find its Targets—and Vladimir Putin
In 2019, a government contractor and technologist named Mike Yeagley began making the rounds in Washington, DC. He had a blunt warning for anyone in the country’s national security establishment who would listen: The US government had a Grindr problem.A popular dating and hookup app, Grindr relied on the GPS capabilities of modern smartphones to connect potential partners in the same city, … [Read more...]
How a Right-Wing Controversy Could Sabotage US Election Security
The meeting between top US election officials and their cybersecurity partners from the federal government almost went off without a hitch. Then Mac Warner spoke up.Warner, West Virginia’s Republican secretary of state, didn’t have a mundane logistical question for the government representatives, who were speaking at the winter meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State in … [Read more...]
A Vending Machine Error Revealed Secret Face Recognition Tech
Canada-based University of Waterloo is racing to remove M&M-branded smart vending machines from campus after outraged students discovered the machines were covertly collecting face recognition data without their consent.The scandal started when a student using the alias SquidKid47 posted an image on Reddit showing a campus vending machine error message, … [Read more...]
A Mysterious Leak Exposed Chinese Hacking Secrets
Today marks two years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This week, we detailed the growing crisis in Eastern Ukraine, which is now littered with deadly mines. As it fights back the invading Russian forces, Ukraine’s government is working to develop new mine-clearing technology that could help save lives around the globe.A leaked document obtained by WIRED has revealed the … [Read more...]
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