WIRED collaborated with Der Spiegel, Recorder, and The Washington Post on this reporting. Each wrote separate stories that the news organizations agreed to publish in tandem. This story contains descriptions of abuse, self-harm, murder, and suicide. Reader discretion is advised. It sounds like a cheap true-crime conspiracy: An international network …
Read More »US Lawmaker Cited NYC Protests in a Defense of Warrantless Spying
At a private meeting about the reauthorization of a major United States surveillance program late last year, the Republican chairman of the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) presented an image of Americans protesting the war in Gaza while implying possible ties between the protesters and Hamas, an …
Read More »Binance’s Top Crypto Crime Investigator Is Being Detained in Nigeria
Editor's note: Nigerian authorities have charged Binance and two company executives with tax evasion. See more in the update below. In his years as a US federal agent, Tigran Gambaryan helped to lead landmark investigations that took down cryptocurrency thieves and money launderers, dark-web drug dealers, and even crypto-funded child …
Read More »Google Is Getting Thousands of Deepfake Porn Complaints
The number of nonconsensual deepfake porn videos online has exploded since 2017. As the harmful videos have spread, thousands of women—including Twitch streamers, gamers, and other content creators—have complained to Google about websites hosting the videos and tried to get the tech giant to remove them from its search results. …
Read More »The 4 Big Questions the Pentagon’s New UFO Report Fails to Answer
After a year of eyebrow-raising headlines about government whistleblowers alleging that the military was running secret programs focused on alien spaceships and a months-long study and dogged investigative work through the shadows of classified Pentagon programs, the United States Defense Department announced Friday that it found no evidence that the …
Read More »Airbnb Bans All Indoor Security Cameras
Airbnb will soon ban hosts from watching their guests with indoor security cameras, as the company is reversing course on its surveillance policies. As of April 30, hosts around the world must remove indoor cameras and disclose other outdoor monitoring tech to guests before they book. Airbnb previously allowed hosts …
Read More »Security News This Week: Russian Hackers Stole Microsoft Source Code—and the Attack Isn’t Over
For years, Registered Agents Inc.—a secretive company whose business is setting up other businesses—has registered thousands of companies to people who appear to not exist. Multiple former employees tell WIRED that the company routinely incorporates businesses on behalf of its customers using what they claim are fake personas. An investigation …
Read More »Meta Abandons Hacking Victims, Draining Law Enforcement Resources, Officials Say
Forty-one state attorneys general penned a letter to Meta’s top attorney on Wednesday saying complaints are skyrocketing across the United States about Facebook and Instagram user accounts being stolen, and declaring “immediate action” necessary to mitigate the rolling threat. The coalition of top law enforcement officials, spearheaded by New York …
Read More »Inside the Shadowy Firm Pushing the Limits of Business Privacy
Inside a drab one-story office building in Post Falls, Idaho, a little-known American company has built the machinery that enables hundreds of thousands of businesses to operate in near-total secrecy. The company, Registered Agents Inc., is a one-stop shop for people seeking to incorporate a business in any US state, …
Read More »Hackers Behind the Change Healthcare Ransomware Attack Just Received a $22 Million Payment
The ransomware attack targeting medical firm Change Healthcare has been one of the most disruptive in years, crippling pharmacies across the US—including those in hospitals—and leading to serious snags in the delivery of prescription drugs nationwide for 10 days and counting. Now, a dispute within the criminal underground has revealed …
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