United States immigration authorities are moving to dramatically expand their social media surveillance, with plans to hire nearly 30 contractors to sift through posts, photos, and messages—raw material to be transformed into intelligence for deportation raids and arrests. Federal contracting records reviewed by WIRED show that the agency …
US Senator Ron Wyden accused the federal judiciary of “negligence and incompetence” following a recent hack, reportedly by hackers with ties to the Russian government, that exposed confidential court documents. The breach of the judiciary’s electronic case filing system first came to light in a report by Politico …
In May 2020, Sacramento, California, resident Alfonso Nguyen was alarmed to find two Sacramento County Sheriff’s deputies at his door, accusing him of illegally growing cannabis and demanding entry into his home. When Nguyen refused the search and denied the allegation, one deputy allegedly called him a liar …
Cybersecurity practitioners are voicing concerns over a recent executive order issued by the White House that guts requirements for: securing software the government uses, punishing people who compromise sensitive networks, preparing new encryption schemes that will withstand attacks from quantum computers, and other existing controls. The executive order (EO …
Login credentials belonging to an employee at both the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Department of Government Efficiency have appeared in multiple public leaks from info-stealer malware, a strong indication that devices belonging to him have been hacked in recent years. Kyle Schutt is a 30-something-year-old software …
A jury has awarded WhatsApp $167 million in punitive damages in a case the company brought against Israel-based NSO Group for exploiting a software vulnerability that hijacked the phones of thousands of users. The verdict, reached Tuesday, comes as a major victory not just for Meta-owned WhatsApp but also …
The FBI is offering $10 million for information about the China-state hacking group tracked as Salt Typhoon and its intrusion last year into sensitive networks belonging to multiple US telecommunications companies. Salt Typhoon is one of a half-dozen or more hacking groups that work on behalf of the People …
Russian military personnel are being targeted with recently discovered Android malware that steals their contacts and tracks their location. The malware is hidden inside a modified app for Alpine Quest mapping software, which is used by, among others, hunters, athletes, and Russian personnel stationed in the war zone in …
Microsoft is accusing three individuals of running a "hacking-as-a-service" scheme that was designed to allow the creation of harmful and illicit content using the company’s platform for AI-generated content. The foreign-based defendants developed tools specifically designed to bypass safety guardrails Microsoft has erected to prevent the creation of …