The words “RIP America” trended on X minutes after a jury in Manhattan found former president Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts for falsifying business records in connection to a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Images of an upside-down American flag—a symbol of distress …
Read More »‘Largest Botnet Ever’ Tied to Billions in Stolen Covid-19 Relief Funds
The United States Department of Justice on Wednesday announced charges against a 35-year-old Chinese national, Yunhe Wang, accused of operating a massive botnet allegedly linked to billions of dollars in fraud, child exploitation, and bomb threats, among other crimes. Wang, identified by numerous pseudonyms—Tom Long and Jack Wan, among others—was …
Read More »He Trained Cops to Fight Crypto Crime—and Allegedly Ran a $100M Dark-Web Drug Market
Two months ago, Lin Rui-siang, a young Taiwanese man wearing black-rimmed glasses and a white polo shirt, stood behind a lectern emblazoned with the crest of the St. Lucia police, giving a presentation titled “Cyber Crime and Cryptocurrency” in nearly fluent English to a roomful of cops from the tiny …
Read More »Teslas Can Still Be Stolen With a Cheap Radio Hack—Despite New Keyless Tech
For at least a decade, a car theft trick known as a “relay attack” has been the modern equivalent of hot-wiring: a cheap and relatively easy technique to steal hundreds of models of vehicles. A more recent upgrade to the radio protocol in cars' keyless entry systems known as ultra-wideband …
Read More »Eventbrite Promoted Illegal Opioid Sales to People Searching for Addiction Recovery Help
This June, approximately 150 motorcycles will thunder down Route 9W in Saugerties, New York, for Ryan’s Ride for Recovery. Organized by Vince Kelder and his family, the barbecue and raffle will raise money to support their sober-living facility and honor their son who tragically died from a heroin overdose in …
Read More »Android Can Now Detect When Your Phone Is Stolen
Billions of Android phones are getting new tools to stop phone thieves from accessing your information and to slow down their criminal behavior, Google announced today at its I/O developer conference. Android phones will soon use artificial intelligence to automatically detect when they have been snatched from your hand and …
Read More »Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2 Billion of Crypto
A panel of judges in the Netherlands has found Alexey Pertsev, one of the developers behind crypto anonymizing tool Tornado Cash, guilty of money laundering. Over the course of two days in March, the Russian national was tried on the allegation that the tool he developed had allowed criminals—among them …
Read More »The $2.3 Billion Tornado Cash Case Is a Pivotal Moment for Crypto Privacy
Updated 9 am ET, May 14, 2024: A Dutch court has found Tornado Cash cofounder Alexey Pertsev guilty of money laundering and sentenced him to 64 months in prison. In the fall of 2020, as crypto scammers and thieves began to realize the full potential of a financial privacy tool …
Read More »How A Controversial Gun-Detection Technology Found Its Way to NYC
In February 2022, a meeting was set up between New York City mayor Eric Adams’ team and an artificial intelligence gun-detection company called Evolv. An email thread from Evolv representatives included an accompanying brochure, which listed opportunities to partner together: in the Port Authority Bus Terminal, NYC schools, hospitals, and …
Read More »A (Strange) Interview With the Russian-Military-Linked Hackers Targeting US Water Utilities
When the activities of Russian hacker groups are exposed in a major public report and tied to a government agency—such as the Russian military's Sandworm unit, which has targeted Ukrainian electrical utilities to trigger three blackouts over the past decade, or the Russian foreign intelligence service's APT29, which is believed …
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