Governments around the world are rushing to embrace the algorithms that breathed some semblance of intelligence into ChatGPT, apparently enthralled by the enormous economic payoff expected from the technology. Two new reports out this week show that nation-states are also likely rushing to adapt the same technology into weapons of …
Read More »US and UK Mount Aggressive Crackdown on Trickbot and Conti Ransomware Gangs
The United States Department of Treasury and United Kingdom Foreign Office announced today that they have sanctioned 11 people for their alleged involvement in the Trickbot cybercriminal gang. The US Department of Justice also unsealed indictments against nine people whom it says are connected to Trickbot and its sibling organization …
Read More »The Strange Afterlife of Wagner’s Yevgeny Prigozhin
Yveneny Prigozhin’s wartime atrocities propelled the brutal mercenary into the limelight. But Prigozhin—who was once Russian president Vladimir Putin’s chef and a small-time criminal—also held a title as one of the world’s biggest disinformation peddlers. For years, Prigozhin operated the notorious Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm that meddled …
Read More »2 Polish Men Arrested for Radio Hack That Disrupted Trains
A monthslong WIRED investigation published this week revealed the inner workings of the Trickbot ransomware gang, which has targeted hospitals, businesses, and government agencies around the world. The investigation stemmed from a mysterious leak publish on X (formerly Twitter) last year by an anonymous account called Trickleaks. The document trove …
Read More »It Costs Just $400 to Build an AI Disinformation Machine
In May, Sputnik International, a state-owned Russian media outlet, posted a series of tweets lambasting US foreign policy and attacking the Biden administration. Each prompted a curt but well-crafted rebuttal from an account called CounterCloud, sometimes including a link to a relevant news or opinion article. It generated similar responses …
Read More »The Cheap Radio Hack That Disrupted Poland’s Railway System
Since war first broke out between Ukraine and Russia in 2014, Russian hackers have used some of the most sophisticated hacking techniques ever seen in the wild to destroy Ukrainian networks, disrupt the country’s satellite communications, and even trigger blackouts for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens. But the mysterious …
Read More »The Last Hour of Prigozhin’s Plane
At around 5:30 pm Moscow time on August 23, the Embraer Legacy 600 private business jet took to the skies. Launching from an airport near the Russian capital, the 13-seater plane, which has a white body and blue tail, has been linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the brutal …
Read More »India’s Lander Touches Down on the Moon. Russia’s Has Crashed
Today, India’s Chandrayaan-3 became the first spacecraft to successfully land near the lunar south pole, and India became the fourth country to make a soft landing anywhere on lunar soil, following the former Soviet Union, the United States, and China. The robotic vehicle touched down at 8:33 am Eastern time, …
Read More »The Space Force Is Launching Its Own Swarm of Tiny Satellites
Four years after it was formed, the US Space Force has begun deploying its first satellite network. For the military, it marks a significant shift from relying on a handful of powerful, expensive satellites to a swarm of smaller, cheaper ones. From the Pentagon’s perspective, they’ll be a harder target …
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