OpenAI Didn’t Notice Its AI Agents Using a Message Board to Plan Their Hacking Spree

At the Black Hat security conference, the AI giant revealed new details about how its agents went rogue, hacked several other companies—and did it all right under the company’s nose...

OpenAI’s Browser Could Be Hijacked to Spam Your WhatsApp Contacts

Researchers at security firm Zenity found more than a dozen flaws in AI browsers—and managed to get OpenAI’s Atlas to make an unauthorized Amazon purchase...

A Security Pro Hacked North Korean Hackers. He Found They’d Breached Hundreds of Networks Worldwide

For nearly two years, researcher Vangelis Stykas has maintained access to North Korean hackers’ servers. His work shows they pulled off intrusions in a shocking number of systems across the globe...

DHS Wants Protesters’ Signal Group Chats

A lawsuit accuses Homeland Security of violating protesters’ free-speech rights—but the agency is using it to try to get access to the plaintiffs’ encrypted communications...

The Most Dangerous AI Hacking Techniques Still Have Humans in the Loop

Security researcher James Kettle tried to push the limit of AI’s hacking abilities—and discovered how effective it can be when combined with human expertise...

DHS Is Hiring Bounty Hunters to Find and Photograph Deported People’s Homes Abroad

Homeland Security told immigrants that leaving the US would wipe out fines it claims they owe. Now it wants private investigators to find them in their home countries and collect...

Meta Ran Ads That Contained AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Imagery

More than 50 offending image and video ads were published across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or Threads, according to Meta’s ad library data. Some ran as recently as this week...

OK, Well, Rogue AI Agents Are Hacking Again

Rogue AI agents from OpenAI and Anthropic have again been caught trying to disrupt servers and software—and leaving instructions for future bad behavior...

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...

ICE Collected Nearly 1 Million People’s DNA Last Year—Including Young Children

Internal documents show ICE's DNA collection has skyrocketed in the second Trump administration. Now hundreds of thousands of people never convicted of a crime are in an FBI criminal database forever...

8 Best Password Managers (2026), Tested and Reviewed

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

7 States’ Water Systems Hit by Cyberattacks Likely Tied to Iran

Plus: The FBI eyes AI-powered tech to detect future crimes, Russia charges Telegram’s founder, xAI sues to stop a state’s “nudification” ban, and the Democrats learn a lesson about getting scammed...

The OpenAI and Anthropic AI Hacking Sprees Are a Messy New Legal Frontier

Both major AI labs’ models broke containment, escaped onto the internet, and hacked other companies. If a human had done that, the law would likely be against them. But a bot?...

The New Defcon Badges Pack a Unique Open Source Chip That Doubles as a Security Key

Created by legendary hardware hacker Andrew “bunnie” Huang, the badges for this year’s famed security conference aim to push the boundaries of security and transparency...

Anthropic Says Claude Hacked Into 3 Organizations During Cybersecurity Tests

In a review triggered by OpenAI’s Hugging Face incident, Anthropic discovered three of its AI models had breached real-world organizations during third-party evaluations...

A Leaked Memo Ties Cyberattacks on Minnesota Water Utilities to Iran

A memo obtained by WIRED, issued by the water utilities information sharing group WaterISAC, links dozens of cyberattacks against Minnesota water utilities to Tehran...

Chrome Needs Twice-a-Week Patching Thanks to AI Bug Hunting

The two Chrome updates in June patched more bugs than the 23 updates before them. Now, Google is ramping up its patching schedule thanks to AI-assisted vulnerability discovery...

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...

A Civilian Plane Crashed in New Mexico. Was the Military’s Tech to Blame?

Drone warfare is making the skies more dangerous, even for airplanes far from the battlefield...

AI Scammers Are Better at Building Trust Than Humans

Researchers pitted a person against a Claude agent and found that, after a week of texting, the AI chatbot was more effective at creating “exploitable trust” with others...

ICE’s New Detention Center Contracts Declare State Laws ‘Shall Not Apply’

One day after a federal judge ordered an ICE detention center opened to state health inspectors, the agency posted new contract terms that would void state oversight at four facilities...

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...

A Typo Landed an Innocent Gamer in Prison for 18 Months

How much could a single underscore in a username really matter? Just ask Brandon Klayme, who served 18 months in prison before realizing how authorities arrested, charged, and convicted the wrong man...

Hugging Face Has a Deepfake Nudes Problem

Researchers tested top image editing models on Hugging Face and found they could easily create explicit deepfakes—and 1,000 image editing prompts show how people use the software...

DHS Official Resigns, Citing ‘War on Immigrants’

The outgoing executive director of the Office of Homeland Security Statistics is one of very few federal officials to speak out against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown...

Private Claude Chats Exposed in Google and Bing Search Results

The screwup shows how tricky it can be to stop web crawlers from making ostensibly private conversations with AI chatbots entirely too public...

The OpenAI Models That Hacked Hugging Face Were ‘Active on the Internet’ for Days

Plus: Russian hackers are trying to steal US nuclear scientists’ emails, the State Department bans known scammers from entering the United States, and more...

Satellite Images Reveal How Suspected Scam Compounds Appear Out of Nowhere

Analysis of satellite images of Myanmar shows dozens of alleged scam compounds have appeared in recent months, despite a purported crackdown on the criminal organizations...

For Taylor Swift, Madison Square Garden’s Controversial Cameras Briefly Went Dark

MSG’s sprawling surveillance system can monitor guests down to the second. Its owners made an exception for the pop star’s rehearsal dinner...

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...

OpenAI Models Escaped Containment and Hacked Hugging Face

The cybersecurity-focused models, including GPT-5.6 Sol, broke out of a testing sandbox, exploited a zero-day, and gained access to the open internet to pull off the attack...

A Sneaky Hacking Tool Targeting AI Infrastructure Is Lurking in Victims’ Blind Spots

A new type of malware can worm deep into AI coding systems to steal data and logins—and can flip a “death switch” to destroy files and keep out real users...

A Device Hidden in Cars Across the US Leaves Them Vulnerable to Hacking and Paralysis. Patch It Now

Dealerships installed alarms in millions of vehicles—and left them in even if the buyer didn’t want them. Now researchers warn they can be hacked to unlock, track, and disable cars...

The ACLU Is Arming Lawyers to Expose State Surveillance Secrets

A new toolkit for attorneys in Massachusetts targets the technologies police use—and conceal—to build criminal cases, from facial recognition to AI-written police reports...

Apps Marketed to US Troops Are Shipping Chinese and Russian Code

A first-of-its-kind analysis found more than one in eight apps built for US service members carried foreign code—some from firms in nations the Pentagon designates as adversaries...

Your Period Tracker Is (Probably) Spying on You

Plus: Russian cyberspies turn to infrastructure hacking, DHS repeatedly fails to realize it’d been hacked, a breach exposes an AI music generator’s scraping ways, and more...

Prompt Injection Attacks Are Thwarting AI Hacking Agents

“Context bombing” tricks malicious AI agents into shutting down before they can do harm...

San Francisco Demands Apple and Google Delete AI ‘Nudify’ Apps From App Stores

The City Attorney’s Office sent the tech giants cease-and-desist letters this week telling them to stop profiting from 13 “face-swap” apps that are overwhelmingly used to target women and girls...

Here’s the Truth About Whether Meta’s NameTag Face Recognition Tech ‘Exists’

Since WIRED reported on Meta’s NameTag face recognition system, company executives have made confusing and conflicting remarks about its very existence...

A Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes the New Reality of Urban Surveillance

The SFPD’s exposure of hours of videos from drone platform Skydio reveals how broadly it’s watching the city from above—and how the results can spill online...

AI Found a Root Bug in Linux That Everyone Missed for 15 Years

Plus: The Pentagon is training amateurs to become part of its hacker army, a Flock license plate reader error led to cops surrounding a car reviewer, and more...

A Majority of European Lawmakers Voted Against Letting Big Tech Read Our Messages. They’re Going to Anyway

Companies will once again be allowed to scan citizens’ personal texts, emails, and social media messages via the “Chat Control” bill to find child abuse material online...

Madison Square Garden Kept a List of Gay Celebrities

An MSG database tracked and categorized hundreds of celebs, famous Knicks superfans, and even some of Taylor Swift’s wedding guests. Labels included “LGBTQIA,” “DO NOT HOST,” and low to high “risk.”...

OnlyFans Models Are Accidentally Making Hacked Government Websites Disappear

Scammers are hijacking government websites to upload ads for “leaked” OnlyFans content. Thousands of copyright complaints from adult creators are helping people avoid malicious links...

What Happens if China Hacks the US Water Supply? I Went to a Secret War Game to Find Out

Burst water mains. Evacuated hospitals. In a closed-door simulation, insurers played out their response to a mass disruption by China’s Volt Typhoon hackers—and found a nightmare scenario...

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...

Security Roundup: Apple’s Hide My Email Service Fails to Hide Your Email

Plus: Alleged Scattered Spider hacking member extradited, dozens of license plate reader errors, and Indian officials are concerned about WhatsApp’s username rollout...

EU Politicians Investigated Pegasus Spyware. Then It Ended Up on One of Their Phones

“It is a direct attack on the rule of law,” says one European Parliament member of the new findings from Citizen Lab...

Claude Helped a Hacker Find a Way to Issue Tickets to Almost Every US Music Festival

A researcher found that using Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.7, he could break into the website of Front Gate—used by every festival from Lollapalooza to Bonnaroo—and freely issue any ticket he chose...

Meta Contractors Posed as Teens to Prompt Rival Chatbots About Suicide, Sex, and Drugs

Hundreds of contractors working on a project for Meta pretended to be kids in order to see how other chatbots like Gemini and ChatGPT would respond to high-risk subjects, WIRED found...