The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Is Detaining People for ICE

Louisiana’s hunting and wildlife authority is one of more than 1,000 state and local agencies that have partnered with US immigration authorities this year alone...

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...

Your Data Might Determine How Much You Pay for Eggs

A newly enacted New York law requires retailers to say whether your data influences the price of basic goods like a dozen eggs or toilet paper, but not how...

Flock Uses Overseas Gig Workers to Build Its Surveillance AI

An accidental leak revealed that Flock, which has cameras in thousands of US communities, is using workers in the Philippines to review and classify footage...

The WIRED Guide to Digital Opsec for Teens

Practicing good “operations security” is essential to staying safe online. Here's a complete guide for teenagers and anyone else who wants to button up their digital lives...

Poems Can Trick AI Into Helping You Make a Nuclear Weapon

It turns out all the guardrails in the world won’t protect a chatbot from meter and rhyme...

3 Best VPN for iPhone (2025), Tested and Reviewed

There are dozens of iPhone VPNs at your disposal, but these are the services that will actually keep your browsing safe...

The Destruction of a Notorious Myanmar Scam Compound Appears to Have Been ‘Performative’

Myanmar’s military has been blowing up parts of the KK Park scam compound. Experts say the actions are likely for show...

ICE Offers Up to $280 Million to Immigrant-Tracking ‘Bounty Hunter’ Firms

Immigration and Customs Enforcement lifted a $180 million cap on a proposed immigrant-tracking program while guaranteeing multimillion-dollar payouts for private surveillance firms...

Amazon Is Using Specialized AI Agents for Deep Bug Hunting

Born out of an internal hackathon, Amazon’s Autonomous Threat Analysis system uses a variety of specialized AI agents to detect weaknesses and propose fixes to the company’s platforms...

US Border Patrol Is Spying on Millions of American Drivers

Plus: The SEC lets SolarWinds off the hook, Microsoft stops a historic DDoS attack, and FBI documents reveal the agency spied on an immigration activist Signal group in New York City...

This Hacker Conference Installed a Literal Antivirus Monitoring System

At New Zealand's Kawaiicon cybersecurity convention, organizers hacked together a way for attendees to track CO2 levels throughout the venue—even before they arrived...

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...

A Simple WhatsApp Security Flaw Exposed 3.5 Billion Phone Numbers

By plugging tens of billions of phone numbers into WhatsApp’s contact discovery tool, researchers found “the most extensive exposure of phone numbers” ever—along with profile photos and more...

A Major Leak Spills a Chinese Hacking Contractor’s Tools and Targets

Plus: State-sponsored AI hacking is here, Google hosts a CBP face recognition app, and more of the week’s top security news...

DOJ Issued Seizure Warrant to Starlink Over Satellite Internet Systems Used at Scam Compound

A new US law enforcement initiative is aimed at crypto fraudsters targeting Americans—and now seeks to seize infrastructure it claims is crucial to notorious scam compounds...

DHS Kept Chicago Police Records for Months in Violation of Domestic Espionage Rules

The Department of Homeland Security collected data on Chicago residents accused of gang ties to test if police files could feed an FBI watchlist. Months passed before anyone noticed it wasn’t deleted...

This Is the Platform Google Claims Is Behind a 'Staggering’ Scam Text Operation

Google is suing 25 people it alleges are behind a “relentless” scam text operation that uses a phishing-as-a-service platform called Lighthouse...

The Government Shutdown Is a Ticking Cybersecurity Time Bomb

Many critical systems are still being maintained, and the cloud provides some security cover. But experts say that any lapses in protections like patching and monitoring could expose government systems...

Mexico City Is the Most Video-Surveilled Metropolis in the Americas

Despite 83,000 public cameras, crime in Mexico City remains high—and widespread surveillance raises myriad ethical issues...

Scam Ads Are Flooding Social Media. These Former Meta Staffers Have a Plan

Rob Leathern and Rob Goldman, who both worked at Meta, are launching a new nonprofit that aims to bring transparency to an increasingly opaque, scam-filled social media ecosystem...

Zohran Mamdani Just Inherited the NYPD Surveillance State

In addition to affordability, New York City’s mayor-elect will be forced to reckon with the NYPD’s sweeping mass surveillance operations...

FBI Warns of Criminals Posing as ICE, Urges Agents to ID Themselves

In a bulletin to law enforcement agencies, the FBI said criminal impersonators are exploiting ICE’s image and urged nationwide coordination to distinguish real operations from fakes...

An Anarchist’s Conviction Offers a Grim Foreshadowing of Trump’s War on the ‘Left’

As the Trump administration ramps up its targeting of left-leaning people and groups, the prosecution and harsh sentencing of Casey Goonan may provide a glimpse of things to come...

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...

How to Hack a Poker Game

This week on Uncanny Valley, we break down how one of the most common card shufflers could be altered to cheat, and why that matters—even for those who don’t frequent the poker table...

ICE Wants to Build a Shadow Deportation Network in Texas

A new ICE proposal outlines a 24/7 transport operation run by armed contractors—turning Texas into the logistical backbone of an industrialized deportation machine...

NASA’s Quiet Supersonic Jet Takes Flight

The X-59 successfully completed its inaugural flight—a step toward developing quieter supersonic jets that could one day fly customers more than twice as fast as commercial airliners...

8 Best Password Managers (2025), Tested and Reviewed

Keep your logins locked down with our favorite password management apps for PC, Mac, Android, iPhone, and web browsers...

The Microsoft Azure Outage Shows the Harsh Reality of Cloud Failures

The second major cloud outage in less than two weeks, Azure’s downtime highlights the “brittleness” of a digital ecosystem that depends on a few companies never making mistakes...

Ex-L3Harris Cyber Boss Pleads Guilty to Selling Trade Secrets to Russian Firm

Peter Williams, a former executive of Trenchant, L3Harris’ cyber division, has pleaded guilty to two counts of stealing trade secrets and selling them to an unnamed Russian software broker...

CBP Searched a Record Number of Phones at the US Border Over the Past Year

The total number of US Customs and Border Protection device searches jumped by 17 percent over the 2024 fiscal year, but more invasive forensic searches remain relatively rare...

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...

Hundreds of People With ‘Top Secret’ Clearance Exposed by House Democrats’ Website

A database containing information on people who applied for jobs with Democrats in the US House of Representatives was left accessible on the open web...

Chatbots Are Pushing Sanctioned Russian Propaganda

ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Grok are serving users propaganda from Russian-backed media when asked about the invasion of Ukraine, new research finds...

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...

DHS Wants a Fleet of AI-Powered Surveillance Trucks

US border patrol is asking companies to submit plans to turn standard 4x4 trucks into AI-powered watchtowers—combining radar, cameras, and autonomous tracking to extend surveillance on demand...

How Hacked Card Shufflers Allegedly Enabled a Mob-Fueled Poker Scam That Rocked the NBA

WIRED recently demonstrated how to cheat at poker by hacking the Deckmate 2 card shufflers used in casinos. The mob was allegedly using the same trick to fleece victims for millions...

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...

No, ICE (Probably) Didn’t Buy Guided Missile Warheads

A federal contracting database lists an ICE payment for $61,218 with the payment code for “guided missile warheads and explosive components.” But it appears ICE simply entered the wrong code...

The Long Tail of the AWS Outage

Experts say outages like the one that Amazon experienced this week are almost inevitable given the complexity and scale of cloud technology—but the duration serves as a warning...

What to Know About the Shocking Louvre Jewelry Heist

In just seven minutes, the thieves took off with crown jewels containing with thousands of diamonds along with other precious gems...

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...

Anthropic Has a Plan to Keep Its AI From Building a Nuclear Weapon. Will It Work?

Anthropic partnered with the US government to create a filter meant to block Claude from helping someone build a nuke. Experts are divided on whether its a necessary protection—or a protection at all...

Hackers Dox ICE, DHS, DOJ, and FBI Officials

Plus: A secret FBI anti-ransomware task force gets exposed, the mystery of the CIA’s Kryptos sculpture is finally solved, North Koreans busted hiding malware in the Ethereum blockchain, and more...

Why the F5 Hack Created an ‘Imminent Threat’ for Thousands of Networks

Networking software company F5 disclosed a long-term breach of its systems this week. The fallout could be severe...

One Republican Now Controls a Huge Chunk of US Election Infrastructure

Former GOP operative Scott Leiendecker just bought Dominion Voting Systems, giving him ownership of voting systems used in 27 states. Election experts don't know what to think...