An Optical Spy Trick Can Turn Any Shiny Object Into a Bug

Anything from a metallic Rubik’s cube to an aluminum trash can inside a room could give away your private conversations...

The FTC Wants Companies to Find Log4j Fast. It Won't Be Easy

The critical vulnerability is buried among endless open source code, and many cyber experts are stumped...

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...

Researchers Have a Method to Spot Reddit’s State-Backed Trolls

Academics claim they can sniff out the telltale signs of troll-like behavior. But is it really as simple as monitoring cute animal postings?...

Someone Snuck a Card Skimmer Into Costco to Nab Shopper Data

Plus: A Robinhood breach, NSO Group spyware, and more of the week's top security news...

Parents Built a School App. Then the City Called the Cops

Stockholm’s official app was a disaster. So annoyed parents built their own open source version—ignoring warnings that it might be illegal...

An Apparent Ransomware Hack Puts the NRA in a Bind

The group behind the reported attack is under sanctions from the US Treasury, which means a payout could come with penalties for the victim...

How to Permanently Delete Your Facebook Account

If you've finally hit your breaking point, here's how to say goodbye to Mark Zuckerberg's empire...

How to Get Your Family to Actually Use a Password Manager

Whether it's about sharing your Netflix login or getting your affairs in order, here are tips for convincing your loved ones to organize and protect their accounts too...

A Simple Bug Is Leaving AirTag Users Vulnerable to an Attack

Apple has reportedly known about the exploit for months...

'Watch Dogs: Legion' Tackles Surveillance Without Humanity

The game envisions a near future full of techno-dystopian surveillance, but it doesn't have much to say about the people it affects...

The Mueller Report Is Out. Read It Here

Attorney general William Barr has released the redacted Mueller report to Congress. You can read all 300-plus pages of it right here...

How Google Chrome Spent a Decade Making the Web More Secure

Ten years after Chrome debuted, a look back at how the browser redefined security online...

Suing to See the Feds’ Encrypted Messages? Good Luck

Conservative watchdog Judicial Watch is suing the EPA for staffers' Signal messages. It may hit the encrypted limits of federal transparency. The post Suing to See the Feds' Encrypted Messages? Good Luck appeared first on WIRED...

Meta Contractors Posed as Teens to Prompt Rival Chatbots About Suicide, Sex, and Drugs

Hundreds of contractors working on a project for Meta pretended to be kids in order to see how other chatbots like Gemini and ChatGPT would respond to high-risk subjects, WIRED found...

Drug Sites Hijacked Spotify’s Search Ranking Through Fake Podcasts

A joint congressional report describes a spam operation that turned tens of thousands of fake podcasts into search-engine bait for illegal pharmacy and scam sites...

Wrongful Arrest Exposes Failures in One of the Oldest Police Face-Recognition Tools in the US

The ACLU is suing two Florida police departments over the arrest of a Fort Myers man in a child-abduction case, saying officers treated a flawed face-recognition match as a near-certain ID...

Meta Silently Added Face-Recognition Code for Its Smart Glasses to Millions of Phones

Code reviewed by WIRED uncovered an unreleased face-recognition system embedded in Meta’s smart glasses platform. It’s designed to identify people via biometric data stored on users’ phones...

xAI Asks Court to Strip Alleged Grok Deepfake Nudes Victims of Anonymity

Four people suing Elon Musk's AI firm under pseudonyms due to the risks of being identified may face a difficult choice: Reveal your real names, or drop the lawsuit...

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...

The FBI Wants ‘Near Real-Time’ Access to US License Plate Readers

Plus: Google publishes a live exploit for an unpatched flaw, the feds arrest two men accused of creating thousands of nonconsensual deepfake nudes, and more...

A Hacker Group Is Poisoning Open Source Code at an Unprecedented Scale

GitHub is just the latest victim of TeamPCP, a gang that has carried out a spree of software supply chain attacks that has impacted hundreds of organizations...

A New York Cop Got Injured at a Boxing Match. Now Madison Square Garden Is Banning His Lawyer

Attorney John Scola is representing a police officer who is suing over injuries allegedly sustained while working security at an MSG property in 2025...

Foxconn Ransomware Attack Shows Nothing Is Safe Forever

Famous for helping build Apple’s iPhones, Foxconn just suffered another cyberattack, highlighting the perils of warehousing some of the world’s most valuable data...

The Canvas Hack Is a New Kind of Ransomware Debacle

Thousands of schools around the US were paralyzed on Thursday after education tech firm Instructure shut down access to its Canvas platform following a breach by hackers going by the name ShinyHunters...

Newly Deciphered Sabotage Malware May Have Targeted Iran’s Nuclear Program—and Predates Stuxnet

Researchers have finally cracked Fast16, mysterious code capable of silently tampering with calculation and simulation software. It was created in 2005—and likely deployed by the US or an ally...

The Most Dangerous People on the Internet in 2025

From Donald Trump to DOGE to Chinese hackers, this year the internet’s chaos caused outsize real-world harm...

Metadata Shows the FBI’s ‘Raw’ Jeffrey Epstein Prison Video Was Likely Modified

There is no evidence the footage was deceptively manipulated, but ambiguities around how the video was processed may further fuel conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death...

Deepfake Scams Are Distorting Reality Itself

The easy access that scammers have to sophisticated AI tools means everything from emails to video calls can’t be trusted...

UK Secret Order Demands That Apple Give Access to Users’ Encrypted Data

Plus: Benjamin Netanyahu gives Donald Trump a golden pager, Hewlett Packard Enterprise blames Russian government hackers for a breach, and more...

DeepSeek’s Safety Guardrails Failed Every Test Researchers Threw at Its AI Chatbot

Security researchers tested 50 well-known jailbreaks against DeepSeek’s popular new AI chatbot. It didn’t stop a single one...

Scammers Are Creating Fake News Videos to Blackmail Victims

“Yahoo Boy” scammers are impersonating CNN and other news organizations to create videos that pressure victims into making blackmail payments...

Facebook and Instagram Ads Push Gun Silencers Disguised as Car Parts

A network of Facebook pages has been advertising “fuel filters” that are actually meant to be used as silencers, which are heavily regulated by US law. Even US military officials are concerned...

Microsoft’s AI Recall Tool Is Still Sucking Up Credit Card and Social Security Numbers

Plus: The US indicts North Koreans in fake IT worker scheme, file-sharing firm Cleo warns customers to patch a vulnerability amid live attacks, and more...

Inside Sophos' 5-Year War With the Chinese Hackers Hijacking Its Devices

Sophos went so far as to plant surveillance “implants” on its own devices to catch the hackers at work—and in doing so, revealed a glimpse into China's R&D pipeline of intrusion techniques...

Notorious Iranian Hackers Have Been Targeting the Space Industry With a New Backdoor

In addition to its long-standing password spraying attacks, Microsoft says Iran-backed hacker group Peach Sandstorm—or APT 33—has developed custom malware dubbed “Tickler.”...

Hackers Claim to Have Leaked 1.1 TB of Disney Slack Messages

A hacker group called “NullBulge” says it stole more than a terabyte of Disney’s internal Slack messages and files from nearly 10,000 channels in an apparent protest over AI-generated art...

The Mystery of AI Gunshot-Detection Accuracy Is Finally Unraveling

How accurate are gunshot detection systems, really? For years, it's been a secret, but new reports from San Jose and NYC show these systems have operated well below their advertised accuracy rates...

Perplexity Is a Bullshit Machine

A WIRED investigation shows that the AI-powered search startup Forbes has accused of stealing its content is surreptitiously scraping—and making things up out of thin air...

AI Is Your Coworker Now. Can You Trust It?

Generative AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot are becoming part of everyday business life. But they come with privacy and security considerations you should know about...

A Vast New Data Set Could Supercharge the AI Hunt for Crypto Money Laundering

Blockchain analysis firm Elliptic, MIT, and IBM have released a new AI model—and the 200-million-transaction dataset it's trained on—that aims to spot the “shape” of bitcoin money laundering...

The Dangerous Rise of GPS Attacks

Thousands of planes and ships are facing GPS jamming and spoofing. Experts warn these attacks could potentially impact critical infrastructure, communication networks, and more...

Change Healthcare Finally Admits It Paid Ransomware Hackers—and Still Faces a Patient Data Leak

The company belatedly conceded both that it had paid the cybercriminals extorting it and that patient data nonetheless ended up on the dark web...

The Trump Jury Has a Doxing Problem

One juror in former US president Donald Trump’s criminal case in New York has been excused over fears she could be identified. It could get even messier...

Change Healthcare Faces Another Ransomware Threat—and It Looks Credible

Change Healthcare ransomware hackers already received a $22 million payment. Now a second group is demanding money, and it has sent WIRED samples of what they claim is the company's stolen data...

‘Malicious Activity’ Hits the University of Cambridge’s Medical School

Multiple university departments linked to the Clinical School Computing Service have been inaccessible for a month. The university has not revealed the nature of the “malicious activity.”...

Glassdoor Wants to Know Your Real Name

Anonymous, candid reviews made Glassdoor a powerful place to research potential employers. A policy shift requiring users to privately verify their real names is raising privacy concerns...

Airbnb Bans All Indoor Security Cameras

Starting at the end of April, Airbnb will no longer allow hosts to have security cameras inside their rental properties, citing a commitment to prioritizing guest privacy...

Meta Abandons Hacking Victims, Draining Law Enforcement Resources, Officials Say

A coalition of 41 state attorneys general says Meta is failing to assist Facebook and Instagram users whose accounts have been hacked—and they want the company to take “immediate action.”...

The Mysterious Case of the Missing Trump Trial Ransomware Leak

The notorious LockBit gang promised a Georgia court leak "that could affect the upcoming US election.” It didn't materialize—but the story may not be over yet...