US Hackers Reportedly Caused a Blackout in Venezuela

Plus: AI reportedly caused ICE to send agents into the field without training, Palantir’s app for targeting immigrants gets exposed, and more...

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...

Hackers Are Finding New Ways to Hide Malware in DNS Records

Newly published research shows that the domain name system—a fundamental part of the web—can be exploited to hide malicious code and prompt injection attacks against chatbots...

Social Media Is Now a DIY Alert System for ICE Raids

The undocumented migrant community in the United States is using social networks and other digital platforms to send alerts about raids and the presence of immigration agents around the US...

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...

Car Subscription Features Raise Your Risk of Government Surveillance, Police Records Show

Records reviewed by WIRED show law enforcement agencies are eager to take advantage of the data trails generated by a flood of new internet-connected vehicle features...

NSA Chief Ousted Amid Trump Loyalty Firing Spree

Plus: Another DOGE operative allegedly has a history in the hacking world, and Donald Trump’s national security adviser apparently had way more Signal chats than previously known...

End-to-End Encrypted Texts Between Android and iPhone Are Coming

Plus: A nominee to lead CISA emerges, Elon Musk visits the NSA, a renowned crypto cracking firm’s secret and problematic cofounder is revealed, and more...

US Charges 12 Alleged Spies in China’s Freewheeling Hacker-for-Hire Ecosystem

The Justice Department claims 10 alleged hackers and two Chinese government officials took part in a wave of cyberattacks around the globe that included breaching the US Treasury Department and more...

The US Is Considering a TP-Link Router Ban—Should You Worry?

Several government departments are investigating TP-Link routers over Chinese cyberattack fears, but the company denies links...

The Loneliness Epidemic Is a Security Crisis

Romance scams cost victims hundreds of millions of dollars a year. As people grow increasingly isolated, and generative AI helps scammers scale their crimes, the problem could get worse...

US Funding Cuts Are Helping Criminals Get Away With Child Abuse and Human Trafficking

Services supporting victims of online child exploitation and trafficking around the world have faced USAID and State Department cuts—and children are suffering as a result, sources tell WIRED...

Despite Catastrophic Hacks, Ransomware Payments Dropped Dramatically Last Year

Ransomware gangs continued to wreak havoc in 2024, but new research shows that the amounts victims paid these cybercriminals fell by hundreds of millions of dollars...

Trump Frees Silk Road Creator Ross Ulbricht After 11 Years in Prison

Donald Trump pardoned the creator of the world’s first dark-web drug market, who is now a libertarian cause célèbre in some parts of the crypto community...

US Names One of the Hackers Allegedly Behind Massive Salt Typhoon Breaches

Plus: New details emerge about China’s cyber espionage against the US, the FBI remotely uninstalls malware on 4,200 US devices, and victims of the PowerSchool edtech breach reveal what hackers stole...

Hackers Likely Stole FBI Call Logs From AT&T That Could Compromise Informants

A breach of AT&T that exposed “nearly all” of the company’s customers may have included records related to confidential FBI sources, potentially explaining the bureau’s new embrace of end-to-end encryption...

Californians Say X Blocked Them From Viewing Amber Alert About Missing 14-Year-Old

Many people reported they hit a screen preventing them from seeing the alert unless they signed in...

Congress Again Fails to Limit Scope of Spy Powers in New Defense Bill

The National Defense Authorization Act passed today, but lawmakers stripped language that would keep the Trump administration from wielding unprecedented authority to surveil Americans...

Police Arrest UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooting Suspect, App Developer Luigi Mangione

Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, was apprehended on Monday after visiting a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania...

US Officials Recommend Encryption Apps Amid Chinese Telecom Hacking

Plus: Russian spies keep hijacking other hackers’ infrastructure, Hydra dark web market admin gets life sentence in Russia, and more of the week’s top security news...

She Escaped an Abusive Marriage—Now She Helps Women Battle Cyber Harassment

Inspired by her own experience of abuse, Nighat Dad fights for women’s social and digital rights in Pakistan and beyond...

Malicious Ads in Search Results Are Driving New Generations of Scams

The scourge of “malvertising” is nothing new, but the tactic is still so effective that it's contributing to the rise of investment scams and the spread of new strains of malware...

Russia’s Ballistic Missile Attack on Ukraine Is an Alarming First

This is the first time Russia has used its so-called Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile in combat. The launch also serves as a warning to the West...

Teen Behind Hundreds of Swatting Attacks Pleads Guilty to Federal Charges

Alan Filion, believed to have operated under the handle “Torswats,” admitted to making more than 375 fake threats against schools, places of worship, and government buildings around the United States...

ICE Started Ramping Up Its Surveillance Arsenal Immediately After Donald Trump Won

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement put out a fresh call for contracts for surveillance technologies before an anticipated surge in the number of people it monitors ahead of deportation hearings...

Exposed United Nations Database Left Sensitive Information Accessible Online

The 115,000-plus files related to UN Women included detailed financial disclosures from organizations around the world—and personal details and testimonials from vulnerable individuals...

The FBI Made a Crypto Coin Just to Catch Fraudsters

Plus: New details emerge in the National Public Data breach, Discord gets blocked in Russia and Turkey over alleged illegal activity on the platform, and more...

Stealthy Malware Has Infected Thousands of Linux Systems for Years

Perfctl malware is hard to detect, persists after reboots, and can perform a breadth of malicious activities...

The Pig Butchering Invasion Has Begun

Scamming operations that once originated in Southeast Asia are now proliferating around the world, likely raking in billions of dollars in the process...

The US Could Finally Ban Inane Forced Password Changes

Plus: The US Justice Department indicts three Iranians over Trump campaign hack, EU regulators fine Meta $100 million for a password security lapse, and the Tor Project enters a new phase...

Amid Air Strikes and Rockets, an SMS From the Enemy

As Israel intensifies its attacks on Lebanon, eerie messages have been arriving on the phones of civilians on both sides of the border, with authorities in each country accusing the other of psychological warfare...

Apple Vision Pro’s Eye Tracking Exposed What People Type

The Vision Pro uses 3D avatars on calls and for streaming. These researchers used eye tracking to work out the passwords and PINs people typed with their avatars...

YubiKeys Are a Security Gold Standard—but They Can Be Cloned

Security researchers have discovered a cryptographic flaw that leaves the YubiKey 5 vulnerable to attack...

Google Researchers Found Nearly a Dozen Flaws in Popular Qualcomm Software for Mobile GPUs

The vulnerabilities, which have been patched, may have novel appeal to attackers as an avenue to compromising phones...

‘Sinkclose’ Flaw in Hundreds of Millions of AMD Chips Allows Deep, Virtually Unfixable Infections

Researchers warn that a bug in AMD’s chips would allow attackers to root into some of the most privileged portions of a computer—and that it has persisted in the company’s processors for decades...

USPS Text Scammers Duped His Wife, So He Hacked Their Operation

The Smishing Triad network sends up to 100,000 scam texts per day globally. One of those messages went to Grant Smith, who infiltrated their systems and exposed them to US authorities...

A New Plan to Break the Cycle of Destructive Critical Infrastructure Hacks

As digital threats against US water, food, health care, and other vital sectors loom large, a new project called UnDisruptable27 aims to help fix cybersecurity weaknesses where other efforts have failed...

How Infostealers Pillaged the World’s Passwords

Infostealer malware is swiping millions of passwords, cookies, and search histories. It’s a gold mine for hackers—and a disaster for anyone who becomes a target...

Stop X’s Grok AI From Training on Your Tweets

Plus: More Pegasus spyware controversy, a major BIOS controversy, and more of the week’s top security news...

At the Olympics, AI Is Watching You

A controversial new surveillance system in Paris foreshadows a future where there are too many CCTV cameras for humans to physically watch...

Don’t Fall for CrowdStrike Outage Scams

Swindlers are spinning up bogus websites in an attempt to dupe people with “CrowdStrike support” scams following the security firm's catastrophic software update...

J.D. Vance Left His Venmo Public. Here’s What It Shows

The Republican VP nominee's Venmo network reveals connections ranging from the architects of Project 2025 to enemies of Donald Trump—and the populist's close ties to the very elites he rails against...

The Sweeping Danger of the AT&T Phone Records Breach

Telecom giant AT&T says a major data breach has exposed the call and text records of “nearly all” of its customers, epitomizing the dire state of data security...

AI-Powered Super Soldiers Are More Than Just a Pipe Dream

The US military has abandoned its half-century dream of a suit of powered armor in favor of a “hyper enabled operator,” a tactical AI assistant for special operations forces...

Proton Is Launching Encrypted Documents to Take On Google Docs

Proton is adding an end-to-end encrypted documents editor to its privacy tools, boosting its competition with Google’s suite of productivity apps...

The Problem the US TikTok Crackdown and Kaspersky Ban Have in Common

While Kaspersky and TikTok make very different kinds of software, the US has targeted both over national security concerns. But the looming bans have larger implications for internet freedom...

Amazon Is Investigating Perplexity Over Claims of Scraping Abuse

AWS hosted a server linked to the Bezos family- and Nvidia-backed search startup that appears to have been used to scrape the sites of major outlets, prompting an inquiry into potential rules violations...

HP CEO Says They Brick Printers That Use Third-Party Ink Because of … Hackers

The company says it wants to protect you from “viruses.” Experts are skeptical...

How to Stop Your X Account From Getting Hacked Like the SEC's

The US Securities and Exchange Commission and security firm Mandiant both had their X accounts breached, possibly due to changes to X’s two-factor authentication settings. Here’s how to fix yours...