US Bans Kaspersky Software

Using a Trump-era authority, the US Commerce Department has banned the sale of Kaspersky’s antivirus tools to new customers in the US, citing alleged threats to national security...

This Is What Would Happen if China Invaded Taiwan

The new book World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the 21st Century lays out what might actually happen if China were to invade Taiwan in 2028...

Russia Vetoed a UN Resolution to Ban Space Nukes

A ban on weapons of mass destruction in orbit has stood since 1967. Russia apparently has other ideas...

The Mystery of the $400 Million FTX Heist May Have Been Solved

An indictment against three Americans suggests that at least some of the culprits behind the theft of an FTX crypto fortune may be in custody...

End-to-End Encrypted Instagram and Messenger Chats: Why It Took Meta 7 Years

Mark Zuckerberg personally promised that the privacy feature would launch by default on Messenger and Instagram chat. WIRED goes behind the scenes of the company’s colossal effort to get it right...

The CDC's Gun Violence Research Is in Danger

In a year pocked with fights over US government funding, Republicans are quietly trying to strip the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of its ability to research gun violence...

How Your Real Flight Reservation Can Be Used to Scam You

Scammers use a booking technicality, traveler confusion, and promises of dirt-cheap tickets to offer hot deals that are anything but...

Docs Show FBI Pressures Cops to Keep Phone Surveillance Secrets

Newly released documents highlight the bureau's continued secrecy around cell-site simulators—spying tech that everyone already assumes exists...

How the Most Popular Cars in the US Track Drivers

Vehicles from Toyota, Honda, Ford, and more can collect huge volumes of data. Here’s what the companies can access...

Kaspersky Says New Zero-Day Malware Hit iPhones—Including Its Own

On the same day, Russia’s FSB intelligence service launched wild claims of NSA and Apple hacking thousands of Russians...

WhatsApp Launches a Proxy Tool to Fight Internet Censorship

Amid internet shutdowns in Iran, the encrypted messaging app is introducing proxy connections that can help people get online...

Twitter’s Ex-Election Chief Is Worried About the US Midterms

Edward Perez says that “manufactured chaos” by bad actors will be even riskier thanks to Elon Musk’s own mayhem...

The Most Vulnerable Place on the Internet

Underwater cables keep the internet online. When they congregate in one place, things get tricky...

This Chatbot Aims to Steer People Away From Child Abuse Material

Pornhub is trialing a new automated tool that pushes CSAM-searchers to seek help for their online behavior. Will it work?...

A Phone Carrier That Doesn’t Track Your Browsing or Location

The new Pretty Good Phone Privacy service for Android hides the data linking you to your mobile device...

The Fight Against Robocall Spam and Scams Heats Up in India

A new proposal by India's telecom regulator aims to make accurate caller ID mandatory, but critics say it may be fundamentally flawed...

Shutdown of Russia's Hydra Market Disrupts a Crypto-Crime ATM

More than just a market for illegal drugs, the dark-web site allowed criminals to launder or cash out hundreds of millions in stolen cryptocurrencies...

War Is Calling Crypto’s ‘Neutrality’ Into Question

War in Ukraine and Western sanctions against Russia have made cryptocurrency a hot potato for international politics...

An Internet Troll Gives Nonalcoholic Spirits Startups the Spins

From false press releases to misleading domain names, one man has allegedly gone to great lengths to sabotage his competitors...

Mueller Report Fallout Pressures Democrats to Impeach Trump

Congressional Democrats have punted on the question of impeaching Donald Trump. The Mueller report makes that calculus much harder...

OpenAI’s Hacking Debacle Comes Down to Human Error

If the generative AI giant had followed well-known security best practices, it’s likely that its AI agent would never have escaped to the open internet and hacked multiple companies...

OpenAI’s Rogue AI Agent Hacked More Than Just Hugging Face

In a new disclosure, OpenAI says its agent used exposed logins to gain access to at least four “publicly available services” in its unhinged quest to solve a test...

States Want ICE Agents to Show Their Faces. The Trump Administration Is Blocking Them

Federal lawyers say anti-mask laws would endanger immigration agents, citing an ICE face-recognition art project that doesn’t actually work...

ICE’s Internal Watchdog Is Now Investigating Online Critics

The Office of Professional Responsibility has opened more than 100 cases over what ICE officials call “incidents of doxing and threats” against ICE employees...

‘Dangerous’ AI Models Are Coming No Matter What

The US government crackdown on Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 hides a glaring truth: AI models with advanced hacking capabilities will soon be the norm...

The Hack That Exposed Syria’s Sweeping Security Failures

When Syrian government accounts were hijacked in March, the breach looked chaotic. But it revealed something more troubling: a state struggling with the most basic layer of cybersecurity...

Meta Pauses Work With Mercor After Data Breach Puts AI Industry Secrets at Risk

Major AI labs are investigating a security incident that impacted Mercor, a leading data vendor. The incident could have exposed key data about how they train AI models...

When Satellite Data Becomes a Weapon

As war reshapes the Gulf, the satellite infrastructure the world relies on to see conflict clearly is being delayed, spoofed, and privately controlled—and nobody is sure who is responsible...

ICE Is Paying Salaries and More for This Town’s Entire Police Force

Under a Homeland Security program, police departments around the US are signing up to assist in immigration enforcement. The cops of Carroll, New Hampshire, are going all in—and they’re likely not alone...

A Top Democrat Is Urging Colleagues to Support Trump’s Spy Machine

Congressman Jim Himes claims a sweeping surveillance authority should stay intact because he hasn't seen abuses by Kash Patel's FBI, according to internal messaging obtained by WIRED...

US Takes Down Botnets Used in Record-Breaking Cyberattacks

The Aisuru, Kimwolf, JackSkid, and Mossad botnets had infected more than 3 million devices in total, many inside home networks, according to the US Justice Department...

Livestream Replay: The War Machine

A panel of WIRED experts dissected the defense tech industry’s impact on modern warfare...

Sears Exposed AI Chatbot Phone Calls and Text Chats to Anyone on the Web

Customer conversations with chatbots can include contact information and personal details that make it easier for scammers to launch phishing attacks and commit fraud...

A Hacker Accidentally Broke Into the FBI’s Epstein Files

Plus: A porn-quitting app exposed the masturbation habits of hundreds of thousands of users, Russian hackers are trying to take over people’s Signal accounts, and more...

Hacked Prayer App Sends ‘Surrender’ Messages to Iranians Amid Israeli and US Strikes

As Israeli airstrikes hit Tehran this morning, Iranians received mysterious push notifications saying that “help is on the way,” promising amnesty if they surrender...

Judge Delays Minnesota ICE Decision While Weighing Whether State Is Being Illegally Punished

A federal judge ordered a new briefing due Wednesday on whether DHS is using armed raids to pressure Minnesota into abandoning its sanctuary policies, leaving ICE operations in place for now...

The Age of the All-Access AI Agent Is Here

Big AI companies courted controversy by scraping wide swaths of the public internet. With the rise of AI agents, the next data grab is far more private...

Microsoft Will Finally Kill an Encryption Cipher That Enabled a Decade of Windows Hacks

The weak RC4 for administrative authentication has been a hacker holy grail for decades...

Doxers Posing as Cops Are Tricking Big Tech Firms Into Sharing People’s Private Data

A spoofed email address and an easily faked document is all it takes for major tech companies to hand over your most personal information...

Russia Wants This Mega Missile to Intimidate the West, but It Keeps Crashing

One of Vladimir Putin’s favorite sabers to rattle seems to have lost its edge...

4 People Indicted in Alleged Conspiracy to Smuggle Supercomputers and Nvidia Chips to China

A federal prosecutor alleged that one defendant boasted that his father “had engaged in similar business for the Chinese Communist Party.”...

With the Rise of AI, Cisco Sounds an Urgent Alarm About the Risks of Aging Tech

Generative AI is making it even easier for attackers to exploit old and often forgotten network equipment. Replacing it takes investment, but Cisco is making the case that it’s worth it...

WIRED Roundup: DHS’s Privacy Breach, AI Romantic Affairs, and Google Sues Text Scammers

In this episode of Uncanny Valley, we discuss our scoop about how the Department of Homeland Security illegally collected Chicago residents’ data for months, as well as the news of the week...

Vaping Is ‘Everywhere’ in Schools—Sparking a Bathroom Surveillance Boom

Schools in the US are installing vape-detection tech in bathrooms to thwart student nicotine and cannabis use. A new investigation reveals the impact of using spying to solve a problem...

Hack Exposes Kansas City’s Secret Police Misconduct List

A major breach of the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department reveals, for the first time, a list of alleged officer misconduct including dishonesty, sexual harassment, excessive force, and false arrest...

This Is the Nuclear-Powered Ship Deployed in Trump’s War on Drug Boats

The USS Gerald R. Ford is a $13 billion aircraft carrier sailing to the Caribbean with nuclear propulsion, an electromagnetic plane launcher, and 90 aircraft onboard...

Amazon Explains How Its AWS Outage Took Down the Web

Plus: The Jaguar Land Rover hack sets an expensive new record, OpenAI’s new Atlas browser raises security fears, Starlink cuts off scam compounds, and more...

This ‘Privacy Browser’ Has Dangerous Hidden Features

The Universe Browser is believed to have been downloaded millions of times. But researchers say it behaves like malware and has links to Asia’s booming cybercrime and illegal gambling networks...

DHS Has Been Collecting US Citizens’ DNA for Years

Newly released data shows Customs and Border Protection funneled the DNA of nearly 2,000 US citizens—some as young as 14—into an FBI crime database, raising alarms about oversight and legality...

A Cyberattack on Jaguar Land Rover Is Causing a Supply Chain Disaster

The UK-based automaker has been forced to stop vehicle production as a result of the attack—costing JLR tens of millions of dollars and forcing its parts suppliers to lay off workers...