Florida Man Enters the Encryption Wars

Just three months into the Trump administration’s promised crackdown on immigration to the United States, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement now has a $30 million contract with Palantir to build a “near-real time” surveillance platform called ImmigrationOS that would track information about people self-deporting (electing to leave the US). Meanwhile, theContinue Reading

‘Stupid and Dangerous’: CISA Funding Chaos Threatens Essential Cybersecurity Program

In an eleventh-hour scramble before a key contract was set to expire on Tuesday night, the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency renewed its funding for the longtime software-vulnerability-tracking project known as the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures Program. Managed by the nonprofit research-and-development group MITRE, the CVE Program isContinue Reading

Suspected 4chan Hack Could Expose Longtime, Anonymous Admins

The anonymous image board 4chan has survived years of controversy. It weathered user and advertiser boycotts as well as damning accusations that it incubated hate speech that may have fueled mass shootings. Users have convened on 4chan to plan hacks like DDoS attacks, and conspiracy theories that festered on 4chanContinue Reading

TraderTraitor: The Kings of the Crypto Heist

On February 21, the largest crypto heist ever started to unfold. Hackers gained control of a crypto wallet belonging to the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, Bybit, and stole almost $1.5 billion of digital tokens. They quickly shunted the money between dozens of cryptocurrency wallets and services to try and obscureContinue Reading

Brass Typhoon: The Chinese Hacking Group Lurking in the Shadows

As China continues its digital gambit around the world, researchers are warning that hacking activity from long-tracked groups is evolving and blending together. On top of that, attackers are hiding their campaigns more effectively and blurring the lines between cybercriminals and state-backed hacking. Last year, revelations rocked the United StatesContinue Reading

Gamaredon: The Turncoat Spies Relentlessly Hacking Ukraine

Russian state hackers, perhaps more than those of any other nation, tend to show off. The notorious Sandworm unit within Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, for instance, has triggered unprecedented blackouts and released destructive, self-replicating code. The FSB’s ingenious Turla group has hijacked satellite internet connections to steal victims’ dataContinue Reading

Black Basta: The Fallen Ransomware Gang That Lives On

The pecking order of ransomware gangs is always shifting and evolving, with the most aggressive and reckless groups netting big payouts from vulnerable targets—but often ultimately flaming out. Russian-speaking group Black Basta is the latest example of the trend having stalled out in recent months due to takedowns by lawContinue Reading

CyberAv3ngers: The Iranian Saboteurs Hacking Water and Gas Systems Worldwide

That initial wave of CyberAv3ngers hacking, both real and fabricated, appears to have been part of a tit-for-tat with another highly aggressive hacker group that is widely believed to work on behalf of Israeli military or intelligence agencies. That rival group, known as Predatory Sparrow, repeatedly targeted Iranian critical infrastructureContinue Reading

Smishing Triad: The Scam Group Stealing the World’s Riches

One of the most prominent of the smishing actors is often referred to as the Smishing Triad—although security researchers group Chinese-speaking threat actors and affiliates in different ways—which has impersonated organizations and brands in at least 121 countries, according to recent research by security company Silent Push. Around 200,000 domainsContinue Reading

China Secretly (and Weirdly) Admits It Hacked US Infrastructure

The Israeli spyware maker NSO Group has been on the US Department of Commerce “blacklist” since 2021 over its business of selling targeted hacking tools. But a WIRED investigation has found that the company now appears to be working to stage a comeback in Trump’s America, hiring a lobbying firmContinue Reading