Cops Just Revealed a Record-Breaking Dark Web Dragnet

Operation SpecTor likely drew on leads from multiple dark web market busts, including the secret takedown of Monopoly Market in 2021...

Online Sleuths Untangle the Mystery of the Nord Stream Sabotage

Open source intelligence researchers are verifying and debunking opaque claims about who ruptured the gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea...

This Is the New Leader of Russia's Infamous Sandworm Hacking Unit

Evgenii Serebriakov now runs the most aggressive hacking team of Russia’s GRU military spy agency. To Western intelligence, he’s a familiar face...

A Privacy Hero's Final Wish: An Institute to Redirect AI's Future

Peter Eckersley did groundbreaking work to encrypt the web. After his sudden death, a new organization he founded is carrying out his vision to steer artificial intelligence toward “human flourishing.”...

The High-Stakes Blame Game in the White House Cybersecurity Plan

The Biden administration’s new strategy would shift the liability for security failures to a controversial target: the companies that caused them...

The Chinese Spy Balloon Shows the Downsides of Spy Balloons

A popular military tool during the Cold War, spy balloons have since fallen out of favor—for good reason...

In the Fight Against Scams, ‘Cyber Ambassadors’ Enter the Chat

Police in the Indian state of Telangana have found a novel way to help people avoid getting swindled online: grassroots education...

Update Android Right Now to Fix a Scary Remote-Execution Flaw

Plus: Patches for Apple iOS 16, Google Chrome, Windows 10, and more...

Log4j’s Log4Shell Vulnerability: One Year Later, It’s Still Lurking

Despite mitigation, one of the worst bugs in internet history is still prevalent—and being exploited...

Twitter’s SMS Two-Factor Authentication Is Melting Down

Problems with the important security feature may be some of the first signs that Elon Musk’s social network is fraying at the edges...

The Queen’s Funeral Sets Off the Biggest UK Police Operation Ever

Snipers on buildings. Drone no-fly zones. Temporary CCTV. The security plan is even more complex than it was for the London 2012 Olympics...

The Twitter Whistleblower Report’s Most Damning Allegation

Peiter “Mudge” Zatko’s claims about the company’s lax security are all bad. But one clearly captures the extent of systemic issues...

Inside the World’s Biggest Hacker Rickroll

As a graduation prank, four high school students hijacked 500 screens across six school buildings to troll their classmates and teachers...

The Low Threshold for Face Recognition in New Delhi

Police in India's capital say they only require an 80 percent accuracy rate for matches, raising new alarm bells for civil liberty advocates...

Janet Jackson’s ‘Rhythm Nation’ Can Crash Old Hard Drives

Plus: The Twilio hack snags a reporter, a new tool to check for spyware, and the Canadian weed pipeline gets hit by a cyberattack...

Google's Android Red Team Had a Full Pixel 6 Pwn Before Launch

Before the flagship phone ever landed in users’ hands, the security team thoroughly hacked it by finding bugs and developing exploits...

A Long-Awaited IoT Reverse Engineering Tool Is Finally Here

Ten years after it was first unveiled, the powerful firmware analysis platform Ofrak is now available to anyone...

A Slack Bug Exposed Some Users’ Hashed Passwords for 5 Years

The exposure of cryptographically scrambled passwords isn’t a worst-case scenario—but it isn’t great, either...

Apple Just Patched 39 iPhone Security Bugs

Plus: A Google Chrome patch licks the DevilsTongue spyware, Android’s kernel gets a tune-up, and Microsoft fixes 84 flaws...

The Worst Hacks and Breaches of 2022 So Far

From cryptocurrency thefts to intrusions into telecom giants, state-backed attackers have had a field day in the year’s first half...

Welcome to the Burner Phone Olympics

China’s Winter Games are overshadowed by human rights problems and overreaching state surveillance...

The Biggest Deepfake Abuse Site Is Growing in Disturbing Ways

A referral program and partner sites have spurred the spread of invasive, AI-generated “nude” images...

A Software Bug Let Hackers Drain $31M From a Crypto Service

An attacker exploited a vulnerability in MonoX Finance's smart contract to inflate the price of its digital token and then cash out...

Malicious Google Play Apps Stole User Banking Info

Using tricks to sidestep the app store's restrictions, malware operators pillaged passwords, keystrokes, and other data...

What Is a Watering Hole Attack?

It's a technique that can hit thousands of victims—through no fault of their own...

Ignore China’s New Data Privacy Law at Your Peril

The Personal Information Protection Law gives authorities the power to impose huge fines and blacklist companies. But the biggest impact may be felt outside the country...

The Stealthy iPhone Hacks That Apple Still Can't Stop

After another “zero-click” attack, security experts say it's time for more extreme measures to keep iMessage users safe...

I Am Not a Soldier, but I Have Been Trained to Kill

A sprawling tactical industry is teaching American civilians how to fight like Special Ops forces. By preparing for violence at home, are they calling it into being?...

'Where Law Ends' Review: How the Mueller Investigation Fell Flat

Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann's Where Law Ends doesn't fill the hole at the center of the Trump-Russia probe, but does help explain why it's there...

The Best Privacy-Friendly Alternatives to Google Maps

Google Maps is arguably the easiest mapping service to use, but that doesn't mean it's the most secure...

A Former Uber Exec's Indictment Is a Warning Shot

Prosecutors allege that former Uber security chief Joseph Sullivan covered up a major breach, in the first high-profile case of its kind...

How Facebook and Other Sites Manipulate Your Privacy Choices

Social media platforms repeatedly use so-called dark patterns to nudge you toward giving away more of your data...

How Thousands of Misplaced Emails Took Over This Engineer's Inbox

Kenton Varda gets dozens of messages a day from Spanish-speakers around the world, all thanks to a Gmail address he registered 16 years ago...

How to Switch to Signal and Bring All your Texts With You

Thinking of boosting your SMS security by switching to Signal? These tips make sure your messages come with you—even to a new phone...

Spies Can Eavesdrop by Watching a Light Bulb's Vibrations

The so-called lamphone technique allows for real-time listening in on a room that's hundreds of feet away...

Clever Cryptography Could Protect Privacy in Covid-19 Contact-Tracing Apps

Researchers are racing to achieve the benefits of location-tracking without the surveillance...

How Microsoft Dismantled the Infamous Necurs Botnet

A years-long investigation and global cooperation disrupted one of the biggest botnets ever...

The Infrastructure Mess Causing Countless Internet Outages

You may not have heard of the Border Gateway Protocol, but you definitely know when it goes wrong...

Cyberspies Hijacked the Internet Domains of Entire Countries

A mysterious new group called Sea Turtle targeted 40 organizations in a DNS hijacking spree...

Don't Buy the Trump Administration's China Misdirection

The White House keeps accusing China of election interference—but it's nothing like Russia in 2016...

Security News This Week: LastPass Users Had Their Data Stolen—Again

Plus: Former national security advisor John Bolton pleads guilty in classified-materials case, Microsoft helps take down major infostealer infrastructure, and more...

US Law Enforcement Warns of ‘Anti-Tech Extremism’ as AI Hatred Grows

As Americans stew over the looming risk of job-stealing AI and data centers in their back yards, the feds are raising the alarm about a new category of threat, documents obtained by WIRED show...

Data Brokers’ and AI Firms’ Opt-Out Forms Are Built to Fail, Report Finds

A new study finds AI companies, defense firms, and dating apps are among 38 data collectors allegedly using manipulative design to confuse users while collecting their data...

AI Tools Are Helping Mediocre North Korean Hackers Steal Millions

One group of hackers used AI for everything from vibe coding their malware to creating fake company websites—and stole as much as $12 million in three months...

Hackers Hijacked Google’s Gemini AI With a Poisoned Calendar Invite to Take Over a Smart Home

For likely the first time ever, security researchers have shown how AI can be hacked to create real world havoc, allowing them to turn off lights, open smart shutters, and more...

'No Kings’ Protests, Citizen-Run ICE Trackers Trigger Intelligence Warnings

Army intelligence analysts are monitoring civilian-made ICE tracking tools, treating them as potential threats, as immigration protests spread nationwide...

We Made Luigi Mangione’s 3D-Printed Gun—and Fired It

In the wake of Luigi Mangione’s alleged killing of a health care CEO with a partially 3D-printed pistol, we built and tested the exact same model of weapon ourselves. And it was entirely legal...

The Signal Clone Mike Waltz Was Caught Using Has Direct Access to User Chats

A new analysis of TM Signal’s source code appears to show that the app sends users’ message logs in plaintext. At least one top Trump administration official used the app...

Hacking Spree Hits UK Retail Giants

Plus: France blames Russia for a series of cyberattacks, the US is taking steps to crack down on a gray market allegedly used by scammers, and Microsoft pushes the password one step closer to death...

ICE Is Paying Palantir $30 Million to Build ‘ImmigrationOS’ Surveillance Platform

In a document published Thursday, ICE explained the functions that it expects Palantir to include in a prototype of a new program to give the agency “near real-time” data about people self-deporting...