Cybercriminals Have a Weird New Way to Target You With Scam Texts

Scammers are now using “SMS blasters” to send out up to 100,000 texts per hour to phones that are tricked into thinking the devices are cell towers. Your wireless carrier is powerless to stop them...

Highly Sensitive Medical Cannabis Patient Data Exposed by Unsecured Database

Nearly a million records, which appear to be linked to a medical-cannabis-card company in Ohio, included Social Security numbers, government IDs, health conditions, and more...

The First Federal Cybersecurity Disaster of Trump 2.0 Has Arrived

The breach of the US Courts records system came to light more than a month after the attack was discovered. Details about what was exposed—and who’s responsible—remain unclear...

Data Brokers Are Hiding Their Opt-Out Pages From Google Search

Dozens of companies are hiding how you can delete your personal data, The Markup and CalMatters found...

It Looks Like a School Bathroom Smoke Detector. A Teen Hacker Showed It Could Be an Audio Bug

A pair of hackers found that a vape detector often found in high school bathrooms contained microphones—and security weaknesses that could allow someone to turn it into a secret listening device...

Age Verification Laws Send VPN Use Soaring—and Threaten the Open Internet

A law requiring UK internet users to verify their age to access adult content has led to a huge surge in VPN downloads—and has experts worried about the future of free expression online...

At Least 750 US Hospitals Faced Disruptions During Last Year’s CrowdStrike Outage, Study Finds

Of those, more than 200 appear to have had outages of services related to patient care following CrowdStrike’s disastrous crash, researchers have revealed...

Android May Soon Warn You About Fake Cell Towers

Plus: Iran-linked hackers threaten to release Trump campaign emails, Chinese hackers still in US telecoms networks, and an abusive deepfake website plans an expansion...

CBP's Predator Drone Flights Over LA Are a Dangerous Escalation

Customs and Border Protection flying powerful Predator B drones over Los Angeles further breaks the seal on federal involvement in civilian matters typically handled by state or local authorities...

Here’s What Marines and the National Guard Can (and Can’t) Do at LA Protests

Pentagon rules sharply limit US Marines and National Guard activity in Los Angeles, prohibiting arrests, surveillance, and other customary police work...

What Really Happened in the Aftermath of the Lizard Squad Hacks

On Christmas Day in 2014 hackers knocked out the Xbox and PlayStation gaming networks, impacting how video game companies handled cybersecurity for years...

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...

Who Even Is a Criminal Now?

WIRED loves a rogue. Except rogues ruined the internet. Is there any salvaging the rebellious spirit without destroying everything?...

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...

Mike Waltz Has Somehow Gotten Even Worse at Using Signal

A photo taken this week showed Mike Waltz using an app that looks like—but is not—Signal to communicate with top officials. "I don't even know where to start with this," says one expert...

Here’s What Happened to Those SignalGate Messages

A lawsuit over the Trump administration’s infamous Houthi Signal group chat has revealed what steps departments took to preserve the messages—and how little they actually saved...

China Secretly (and Weirdly) Admits It Hacked US Infrastructure

Plus: The Department of Homeland Security begins surveilling immigrants' social media, President Donald Trump targets former CISA director who refuted his claims of 2020 election fraud, and more...

How to Delete Your Data From 23andMe

DNA-testing company 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy, which means the future of the company’s vast trove of customer data is unknown. Here’s what that means for your genetic data...

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...

A Hacker Group Within Russia’s Notorious Sandworm Unit Is Breaching Western Networks

A team Microsoft calls BadPilot is acting as Sandworm's “initial access operation,” the company says. And over the last year it's trained its sights on the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia...

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...

A New Jam-Packed Biden Executive Order Tackles Cybersecurity, AI, and More

US president Joe Biden just issued a 40-page executive order that aims to bolster federal cybersecurity protections, directs government use of AI—and takes a swipe at Microsoft’s dominance...

The Invisible Russia-Ukraine Battlefield

In Russia’s war against Ukraine, electronic warfare, including signal-jamming, anti-drone weapons, and innovative protections for critical military systems, has become a key piece of the conflict...

Intel Officials Warned Police That US Cities Aren’t Ready for Hostile Drones

In a previously unreported August memo, the Department of Homeland Security urged state and local police to conduct exercises to test their ability to respond to weaponized drones...

Florida Man Accused of Hacking Disney World Menus, Changing Font to Wingdings

Plus: Cops take down a notorious infostealer, Strava leaks world leaders’ locations, and a hacking scandal is causing chaos in Italy...

A Trump Win Could Unleash Dangerous AI

Donald Trump's opposition to “woke” safety standards for artificial intelligence would likely mean the dismantling of regulations that protect Americans from misinformation, discrimination, and worse...

What Google's U-Turn on Third-Party Cookies Means for Chrome Privacy

Earlier this year, Google ditched its plans to abolish support for third-party cookies in its Chrome browser. While privacy advocates called foul, the implications for users is not so clear cut...

The FBI Still Hasn’t Cracked NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ Phone

Plus: Harvard students pack Meta’s smart glasses with privacy-invading face-recognition tech, Microsoft and the DOJ seize Russian hackers’ domains, and more...

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...

Your Phone Won’t Be the Next Exploding Pager

Thousands of beepers and two-way radios exploded in attacks against Hezbollah, but mainstream consumer devices like smartphones aren’t likely to be weaponized the same way...

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 Project 2025 Would Put US Elections at Risk

Experts say the “nonsensical” policy proposal, which largely aligns with Donald Trump’s agenda, would weaken the US agency tasked with protecting election integrity, critical infrastructure, and more...

Sensitive Illinois Voter Data Exposed by Contractor’s Unsecured Databases

Social Security numbers, death certificates, voter applications, and other personal data were accessible on the open internet, highlighting the ongoing challenges in election security...

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...

A North Korean Hacker Tricked a US Security Vendor Into Hiring Him—and Immediately Tried to Hack Them

KnowBe4 detailed the incident in a recent blog post as a warning for other potential targets...

Europe Is Pumping Billions Into New Military Tech

The European Commission is allocating €7.3 billion for defense research over the next seven years. From drones and tanks of the future to battleships and space intelligence, here's what it funds...

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...

How Russia-Linked Malware Cut Heat to 600 Ukrainian Buildings in Deep Winter

The code, the first of its kind, was used to sabotage a heating utility in Lviv at the coldest point in the year—what appears to be yet another innovation in Russia’s torment of Ukrainian civilians...

Spyware Users Exposed in Major Data Breach

Plus: The Heritage Foundation gets hacked over Project 2025, a car dealership software provider seems to have paid $25 million to a ransomware gang, and authorities disrupt a Russian bot farm...

Judges Block US Extradition of WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange—for Now

A high court in London says the WikiLeaks founder won’t be extradited “immediately” and the US must provide more “assurances” about any extradition...

The 4 Big Questions the Pentagon’s New UFO Report Fails to Answer

The Pentagon says it’s not hiding aliens, but it stops notably short of saying what it is hiding. Here are the key questions that remain unanswered—some answers could be weirder than UFOs...

Change Healthcare Ransomware Attack: BlackCat Hackers Quickly Returned After FBI Bust

Two months ago, the FBI “disrupted” the BlackCat ransomware group. They're already back—and their latest attack is causing delays at pharmacies across the US...

SpaceX Launched Military Satellites Designed to Track Hypersonic Missiles

The prototype satellites hitched a ride on a Falcon 9 rocket...

A Backroom Deal Looms Over Section 702 Surveillance Fight

Top congressional lawmakers are meeting in private to discuss the future of a widely unpopular surveillance program, worrying members devoted to reforming Section 702...

2054, Part V: From Tokyo With Love

“Had this all been contrived? Had his life become a game in which everyone knew the rules but him?” An exclusive excerpt from 2054: A Novel...

The SEC’s Official X Account Was ‘Compromised’ and Used to Post Fake Bitcoin News

The US financial regulator says its official @SECGov account was “compromised,” resulting in an “unauthorized” post about the status of Bitcoin ETFs...

Google Just Denied Cops a Key Surveillance Tool

Plus: Apple tightens anti-theft protections, Chinese hackers penetrate US critical infrastructure, and the long-running rumor of eavesdropping phones crystallizes into more than an urban legend...

Congress Clashes Over the Future of America’s Section 702 Spy Program

Competing bills moving through the House of Representatives both reauthorize Section 702 surveillance—but they pave very different paths forward for Americans’ privacy and civil liberties...