Stablecoins, cryptocurrencies pegged to a stable value like the US dollar, were created with the promise of bringing the frictionless, border-crossing fluidity of Bitcoin to a form of digital money with far less volatility. That combination has proved to be wildly popular, rocketing the total value of stablecoin transactions since …
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For those who trade in child sexual exploitation images and videos in the darkest recesses of the internet, cryptocurrency has been both a powerful tool and a treacherous one. Bitcoin, for instance, has allowed denizens of that criminal underground to buy and sell their wares with no involvement from a …
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If you’ve been creeping around underground tech forums lately, you might have seen advertisements for a new program called WormGPT. The program is an AI-powered tool for cybercriminals to automate the creation of personalized phishing emails; although it sounds a bit like ChatGPT, WormGPT is not your friendly neighborhood AI. …
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The United States Department of Justice said Tuesday that it worked with an international group of law enforcement agencies to conduct a takedown of infrastructure related to the notorious ransomware gang Alphv, also known as BlackCat. In recent days researchers began noticing that the group's dark-web communication and leak site …
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Kristina Collins didn’t know her photo was being used on Telegram. Over the past few months, an Instagram picture of Collins, a Texas-based doctor and dermatologist, has been used by scammers on the chat app to try to persuade people to buy false proof that they have been vaccinated against …
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Governments and the tech industry around the world have been scrambling in recent years to curb the rise of online scamming and cybercrime. Yet even with progress on digital defenses, enforcement, and deterrence, the ransomware attacks, business email compromises, and malware infections keep on coming. Over the past decade, Microsoft's …
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One attraction of Binance, as the company grew from its 2017 founding into the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, was the firm's freewheeling flouting of rules. As it amassed well over 100 million crypto-trading users globally, it openly told the United States government that, as an offshore operation, it …
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A crowd had gathered at a village temple in Kesapuri, in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, when Vikas Patil plugged a hard drive into his laptop to begin his show. First, he showed them an explicit video of a cow being killed. The animals are considered sacred to “upper …
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For years, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, has been dogged by rumors of malfeasance and federal investigations. Today, in a set of accusations that will rock the already tumultuous world of crypto, the US Department of Justice revealed criminal charges against the company and its chief executive, Changpeng Zhao, …
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A report compiled by the Republican majority members of the US House Intelligence Committee says that agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation should be required under the law to obtain a “probable cause warrant” before scouring the database of a controversial foreign intelligence surveillance program for information related to …
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