At a tech forum in Beijing last week, a Chinese company unveiled a “homegrown” brain-computer interface that allowed a monkey to seemingly control a robotic arm just by thinking about it. In a video shown at the event, a monkey with its hands restrained uses the interface to move a …
Read More »The Dangerous Rise of GPS Attacks
The disruption to GPS services started getting worse on Christmas Day. Planes and ships moving around southern Sweden and Poland lost connectivity as their radio signals were interfered with. Since then, the region around the Baltic Sea—including neighboring Germany, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—has faced persistent attacks against GPS systems. …
Read More »The White House Reveals New Master Plan to Stop Everything From Cyberattacks to Terrorism
The Biden administration is updating the US government’s blueprint for protecting the country’s most important infrastructure from hackers, terrorists, and natural disasters. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden signed a national security memorandum overhauling a 2013 directive that lays out how agencies work together, with private companies, and with state and …
Read More »Russia Vetoed a UN Resolution to Ban Space Nukes
Russia vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution Wednesday that would have reaffirmed a nearly 50-year-old ban on placing weapons of mass destruction into orbit, two months after reports Russia has plans to do just that. Russia's vote against the resolution was no surprise. As one of the five permanent …
Read More »School Employee Allegedly Framed a Principal With Racist Deepfake Rant
Controversial gunshot-detection company ShotSpotter has deployed more than 25,000 microphones across 170 cities worldwide. This week, WIRED and South Side Weekly revealed the company may continue to provide gunshot data to police in cities even after contracts have ended. Internal emails seen by the publications suggest ShotSpotter sensors may have …
Read More »Cyberspies Hacked Cisco Firewalls to Access Government Networks
Network security appliances like firewalls are meant to keep hackers out. Instead, digital intruders are increasingly targeting them as the weak link that lets them pillage the very systems those devices are meant to protect. In the case of one hacking campaign over recent months, Cisco is now revealing that …
Read More »ShotSpotter Keeps Listening for Gunfire After Contracts Expire
When Mayor Brandon Johnson announced in February that Chicago would stop using the gunshot-detection system known as ShotSpotter by year’s end, local activists were elated. Ever since 2021, when the police fatally shot 13-year-old Adam Toledo while responding to a ShotSpotter alert, the Stop ShotSpotter Campaign has been pressuring the …
Read More »Change Healthcare Finally Admits It Paid Ransomware Hackers—and Still Faces a Patient Data Leak
More than two months after the start of a ransomware debacle whose impact ranks among the worst in the history of cybersecurity, the medical firm Change Healthcare finally confirmed what cybercriminals, security researchers, and Bitcoin's blockchain had already made all too clear: that it did indeed pay a $22 million …
Read More »North Koreans Secretly Animated Amazon and Max Shows, Researchers Say
For almost a decade, Nick Roy has been scanning North Korea’s tiny internet presence, spotting new websites coming online and providing a glimpse of the Hermit Kingdoms’ digital life. However, at the end of last year, the cybersecurity researcher and DPRK blogger stumbled across something new: signs North Koreans are …
Read More »The Next US President Will Have Troubling New Surveillance Powers
The ability of the United States to intercept and store Americans’ text messages, calls, and emails in pursuit of foreign intelligence was not only extended but enhanced over the weekend in ways likely to remain enigmatic to the public for years to come. On Saturday, US president Joe Biden signed …
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