Chinese Spies Hacked a Livestock App to Breach US State Networks

Vulnerabilities in animal tracking software USAHERDS and Log4j gave the notorious APT41 group a foothold in multiple government systems...

Ukraine’s Defense—and Hacktivists—Have Raised Over $4M in Crypto

Russia’s invasion into the country sparked a surge of crypto donations to resistance groups...

Russia’s Sandworm Hackers Have Built a Botnet of Firewalls

Western intelligence services are raising alarms about Cyclops Blink, the latest tool at the notorious group’s disposal...

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...

If Russia Invades Ukraine, TikTok Will See It Up Close

As troops amass on Ukraine’s border, civilians capture it all on camera. Online sleuths are now unpacking the details...

Is Firefox OK?

Mozilla’s privacy-heavy browser is flatlining. What it does next is crucial for the future of the web...

An Insidious Mac Malware Is Growing More Sophisticated

When UpdateAgent emerged in late 2020, it utilized basic infiltration techniques. Its developers have since expanded it in dangerous ways...

A DDoS Attack Wiped Out Andorra's Internet

Plus: Securing US water systems, the FBI's NSO Group dealings, and more of the week's top security news...

A Bug in iOS 15 Is Leaking User Browsing Activity in Real Time

Apple has known about the vulnerability, which also affects iPadOS 15 and Safari 15, since late November...

Russia Takes Down REvil Hackers—as Ukraine Tensions Mount

Over a dozen alleged members of the notorious ransomware group have been arrested, but the Kremlin's critics are wary of the underlying motivation...

How to Read Your iOS 15 App Privacy Report

Your iPhone now gives you lots of transparency into what your downloads are up to. Here's what to look out for...

Buckle Up for More Log4j Madness

Plus: An alleged spy, a ransomware arrest, and more of the week's top security news...

How to Opt Out of Verizon’s Custom Experience Tracking

Unless you manually opt out of the program, Verizon will store personal information and create user interest profiles...

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?...

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...

They Hacked McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines—and Started a Cold War

Secret codes. Legal threats. Betrayal. How one couple built a device to fix McDonald’s notoriously broken soft-serve machines—and how the fast-food giant froze them out...

Facebook's Zuckerberg Says He's Got Election Stuff Under Control

Facebook rolls out its plan to protect the US from November mayhem...

The FCC's Push to Purge Huawei From US Networks

The rural carriers who rely on Huawei are wary of a costly “rip and replace” effort...

How to Keep Your Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant Voice Recordings Private

Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant now all give you ways to opt out of human transcription of your voice snippets. Do it...

The Mueller Report Is Much Worse For Trump Than Barr Let On

The Mueller report clearly shows that Donald Trump attempted to obstruct justice, regardless of what the attorney general says...

How Trump Could Trigger Armageddon With a Tweet

Times have changed. The president is being held in check by terrified aides who are trying to keep his worst impulses in check. But disaster may only be a tweet away. Here's how it could happen...

Watch Workers Learn How to Filter Obscene and Violent Photos From Dating Sites

Directors Adrian Chen and Ciaran Cassidy give WIRED a first look at their disturbing short documentary on content moderation. The post Watch Workers Learn How to Filter Obscene and Violent Photos From Dating Sites appeared first on WIRED...

Landmark Deal Would Officially Add Laser Weapons to US Army Arsenal

Facing a growing drone threat, the Pentagon is poised to sign a first-of-its-kind contract for “Enduring High Energy Lasers”—and make directed energy weapons an official part of the Army’s kit...

Scammers Are Using Your Real Hotel Reservations to Trick You With Spear-Phishing Attacks

Customer data from more than 350 hotels around the world may have been accessed as part of realistic reservation-hijacking scams...

How to Disable Google's Gemini in Chrome

Chrome users were caught off guard by a 4-GB Google AI model baked into Chrome, sparking privacy concerns. The good news: You can easily uninstall it. The bad? You might not want to...

Why Sharing a Screenshot Can Get You Jailed in the UAE

The war in Iran has drawn attention to arrests in the United Arab Emirates over online content, but the legal framework behind that enforcement has existed for years...

The Latest Push to Extend Key US Spy Powers Is Still a Mess

A US surveillance program that lets the FBI view Americans’ communications without a warrant is up for renewal. A new bill aims to address mounting lawmaker concerns—with smoke and mirrors...

Mozilla Used Anthropic’s Mythos to Find and Fix 271 Bugs in Firefox

The Firefox team doesn’t think emerging AI capabilities will upend cybersecurity long term, but they warn that software developers are likely in for a rocky transition...

Meta Is Sued Over Scam Ads on Facebook and Instagram

A lawsuit from the Consumer Federation of America accuses Meta of misleading consumers about its efforts to combat scams advertisements on its platforms...

The FCC Has a Fast Lane for Complaints About Trump’s Media Critics

Internal emails obtained by WIRED reveal how a conservative legal group with a direct line into FCC chairman Brendan Carr’s office built the case against Jimmy Kimmel and his employees...

Men Are Buying Hacking Tools to Use Against Their Wives and Friends

In Telegram groups, men are sharing thousands of nonconsensual images of women and girls, buying spyware, and engaging in doxing and sexual abuse...

Iran-Linked Hackers Are Sabotaging US Energy and Water Infrastructure

As Trump threatens Iranian infrastructure, the US government warns that Iran has carried out its own digital attacks against US critical infrastructure...

Border Patrol Agents Sold Challenge Coins With ‘Charlotte’s Web’ Characters in Riot Gear

Nonprofits run out of US Border Patrol stations are also selling other “operation”-themed coins that include a phrase popularized by the Proud Boys, potentially in violation of government rules...

How Trump’s Plot to Grab Iran's Nuclear Fuel Would Actually Work

Experts say that an American ground operation targeting nuclear sites in Iran would be incredibly complicated, put troops’ lives at great risk—and might still fail...

‘Get Down! Get Down! They’re Gonna See Us!’: Six Months of Hiding From ICE

A family in Chicago has been terrified to leave their apartment. Agents could be anywhere...

Here’s Every Country Directly Impacted by the War on Iran

As the conflict in the Middle East continues to escalate, more than a dozen countries in the region have reportedly been affected by air strikes...

This Is the System That Intercepted Iran’s Missiles Over the UAE

As Iranian missiles targeted US-linked sites across the Gulf, the UAE’s missile shield was activated in real time...

DHS Wants a Single Search Engine to Flag Faces and Fingerprints Across Agencies

Homeland Security aims to combine its face and fingerprint systems into one big biometric platform—after dismantling centralized privacy reviews and key limits on face recognition...

X Didn’t Fix Grok's ‘Undressing’ Problem. It Just Makes People Pay for It

X is allowing only “verified” users to create images with Grok. Experts say it represents the “monetization of abuse”—and anyone can still generate images on Grok’s app and website...

What the Huge AWS Outage Reveals About the Internet

Amazon Web Services experienced DNS resolution issues on Monday morning, taking down wide swaths of the web—and highlighting a long-standing weakness in the internet's infrastructure...

North Korean Scammers Are Doing Architectural Design Now

New research shows that North Koreans appear to be trying to trick US companies into hiring them to develop architectural designs using fake profiles, résumés, and Social Security numbers...

Jeffrey Epstein’s Yahoo Inbox Revealed

Plus: ICE deploys secretive phone surveillance tech, officials warn of Chinese surveillance tools in US highway infrastructure, and more...

Data Brokers Face New Pressure for Hiding Opt-Out Pages From Google

After reporters found dozens of firms hiding privacy tools from search results, US senator Maggie Hassan insists the companies explain their practices—and pledge to improve access to privacy controls...

Telegram Purged Chinese Crypto Scam Markets—Then Watched as They Rebuilt

Last month, Telegram banned black markets that sold tens of billions of dollars in crypto scam-related services. Now, as those markets rebrand and bounce back, it’s done nothing to stop them...

Airlines Don’t Want You to Know They Sold Your Flight Data to DHS

A contract obtained by 404 Media shows that an airline-owned data broker forbids the feds from revealing it sold them detailed passenger data...

The US Is Storing Migrant Children’s DNA in a Criminal Database

Customs and Border Protection has swabbed the DNA of migrant children as young as 4, whose genetic data is uploaded to an FBI-run database that can track them if they commit crimes in the future...

Trump Signs Controversial Law Targeting Nonconsensual Sexual Content

The Take It Down Act requires platforms to remove instances of “intimate visual depiction” within two days. Free speech advocates warn it could be weaponized to fuel censorship...

Customs and Border Protection Confirms Its Use of Hacked Signal Clone TeleMessage

CBP says it has “disabled” its use of TeleMessage following reports that the app, which has not cleared the US government’s risk assessment program, was hacked...

This ‘College Protester’ Isn’t Real. It’s an AI-Powered Undercover Bot for Cops

Massive Blue is helping cops deploy AI-powered social media bots to talk to people they suspect are anything from violent sex criminals all the way to vaguely defined “protesters.”...