It’s been 15 years since suicides overtook homicides as the second leading cause of death for children ages 10 to 14 years old. Two years since the first Meta whistleblower warned United States senators that America’s children are at risk from “disastrous” decisions being made in Silicon Valley. (And a little over a month since a second Meta whistleblower testified, “They knew and they were not … [Read more...]
Facebook Marketplace Is Being Ruined by Zelle Scammers
This year, I decided to get rid of my Amazon starter couch and buy a real one. So I listed the generic, velvet-green futon on Facebook Marketplace, thinking some college students or recent New York transplants would happily scoop it up at a discounted price.Since September, I have received many inquiries about this couch—nearly all from people who are likely scammers. They respond to the listing … [Read more...]
A Major Ransomware Takedown Suffers a Strange Setback
The United States Department of Justice said Tuesday that it worked with an international group of law enforcement agencies to conduct a takedown of infrastructure related to the notorious ransomware gang Alphv, also known as BlackCat.In recent days researchers began noticing that the group's dark-web communication and leak site was having outages, but the attackers claimed that they had simply … [Read more...]
Scammers Are Tricking Anti-Vaxxers Into Buying Bogus Medical Documents
Kristina Collins didn’t know her photo was being used on Telegram. Over the past few months, an Instagram picture of Collins, a Texas-based doctor and dermatologist, has been used by scammers on the chat app to try to persuade people to buy false proof that they have been vaccinated against Covid-19 and other diseases.“The last thing you want as a physician is for your identity to be used to … [Read more...]
Cybersecurity Industry Baffled by FBI’s Lack of Action on Ransomware Gang
If you work at a spy agency tasked with surveilling the communications of more than 160 million people, it’s probably a good idea to make sure all the data in your possession stays off the open internet. Just ask Bangladesh’s National Telecommunication Monitoring Center, which security researchers found connected to a leaky database that exposed everything from names and email addresses to cell … [Read more...]
Google Just Denied Cops a Key Surveillance Tool
A hacker group calling itself Solntsepek, previously linked to the infamous Russian military hacking unit Sandworm, took credit this week for a disruptive attack on the Ukrainian internet and mobile service provider Kyivstar. As Russia’s kinetic war against Ukraine has dragged on, inflicting what the World Bank estimates to be around $410 billion in recovery costs for Ukraine, the country has … [Read more...]
McDonald’s Ice Cream Machine Hackers Say They Found the ‘Smoking Gun’ That Killed Their Startup
A little over three years have passed since McDonald's sent out an email to thousands of its restaurant owners around the world that abruptly cut short the future of a three-person startup called Kytch—and with it, perhaps one of McDonald's best chances for fixing its famously out-of-order ice cream machines.Until then, Kytch had been selling McDonald's restaurant owners a popular … [Read more...]
Microsoft’s Digital Crime Unit Goes Deep on How It Disrupts Cybercrime
Governments and the tech industry around the world have been scrambling in recent years to curb the rise of online scamming and cybercrime. Yet even with progress on digital defenses, enforcement, and deterrence, the ransomware attacks, business email compromises, and malware infections keep on coming. Over the past decade, Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) has forged its own strategies, both … [Read more...]
Hacker Group Linked to Russian Military Claims Credit for Cyberattack on Kyivstar
Over nearly a decade, the hacker group within Russia's GRU military intelligence agency known as Sandworm has launched some of the most disruptive cyberattacks in history against Ukraine's power grids, financial system, media, and government agencies. Signs now point to that same usual suspect being responsible for sabotaging a major mobile provider for the country, cutting off communications for … [Read more...]
Congress Clashes Over the Future of America’s Section 702 Spy Program
Two surveillance bills are barreling their way through the US House of Representatives this week. Both claim to achieve roughly the same goal: Enact sweeping reforms and save a dying surveillance program beleaguered by “persistent and widespread” abuse.Under this program, Section 702, the US government collects hundreds of millions of phone calls, emails, and text messages each year. An … [Read more...]
Ukraine Is Crowdfunding Its Reconstruction
While Ukraine remains locked in a brutal war with Russia, Ukraine’s government in Kyiv is already looking forward to a day when the country rebuilds itself from the ground up.It will be no small task. The World Bank estimates that, as of early this year, Ukraine’s rebuilding costs surpassed $410 billion. To recover from Russia’s bombing, shelling, and attacks against critical infrastructure, … [Read more...]
Elijah Wood and Mike Tyson Cameo Videos Were Used in a Russian Disinformation Campaign
For around $340, actor Elijah Wood can record you a personalized video wishing you happy birthday. John McGinley, best known for his role in medical TV show Scrubs, will give you a lengthy pep talk for around $475. Priscilla Presley will record a clip talking about everything from Christmas shopping to Graceland for around $200.These celebrities all use the video-sharing platform Cameo to quickly … [Read more...]
End-to-End Encrypted Instagram and Messenger Chats: Why It Took Meta 7 Years
Since 2016, the social behemoth now known as Meta has been working to deploy end-to-end encryption in its communication apps. CEO Mark Zuckerberg even promised in 2019 that the data privacy protection would roll out by default across all of the company's chat apps. In practice, though, it was a wildly ambitious goal fraught with technical and political challenges, and Meta has only been able to … [Read more...]
The Binance Crackdown Will Be an 'Unprecedented' Bonanza for Crypto Surveillance
One attraction of Binance, as the company grew from its 2017 founding into the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, was the firm's freewheeling flouting of rules. As it amassed well over 100 million crypto-trading users globally, it openly told the United States government that, as an offshore operation, it didn't have to comply with the country's financial regulations and … [Read more...]
Police Can Spy on Your iOS and Android Push Notifications
If you have push notifications turned on for sensitive apps, you may want to reconsider your settings.The United States government and foreign law enforcement can demand Apple and Google share metadata associated with push notifications from apps on iOS and Android, according to a US senator and court records reviewed by WIRED. These notifications can reveal which apps a person uses, along with … [Read more...]
The 23andMe Data Breach Keeps Spiraling
More details are emerging about a data breach the genetic testing company 23andMe first reported in October. But as the company shares more information, the situation is becoming even murkier and creating greater uncertainty for users attempting to understand the fallout.23andMe said at the beginning of October that attackers had infiltrated some of its users' accounts and piggybacked off of this … [Read more...]
A New Trick Uses AI to Jailbreak AI Models—Including GPT-4
When the board of OpenAI suddenly fired the company’s CEO last month, it sparked speculation that board members were rattled by the breakneck pace of progress in artificial intelligence and the possible risks of seeking to commercialize the technology too quickly. Robust Intelligence, a startup founded in 2020 to develop ways to protect AI systems from attack, says that some existing risks need … [Read more...]
US Lawmakers Want to Use a Powerful Spy Tool on Immigrants and Their Families
Americans with family overseas who hope to visit the United States may soon face an increased risk of being surveilled by their own government.Support in Congress is growing for intensified vetting procedures at the US border, which would see immigrants and foreign visitors subjected to the same levels of scrutiny as suspected terrorists and spies. A bill introduced last week by members of the … [Read more...]
Inside America's School Internet Censorship Machine
Around dinner time one night in July, a student in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Googled “suicide prevention hotline.” They were automatically blocked. The student tried again, using their Albuquerque Public Schools district-issued laptop to search for "contact methods for suicide." Blocked. They were turned away again a few hours later when attempting to access a webpage on the federally-funded … [Read more...]
How to Not Get Hacked by a QR Code
For every form of communication or messaging out there, you can be sure that scammers and hackers are trying to find a way to take advantage of you—from emails to texts to calls. This threat extends to QR (quick response) codes too.Earlier this year, we saw a QR code scam targeted at a major US energy company, for example, and security analysts are warning that these so-called quishing attacks are … [Read more...]
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