In perhaps the most fascinating hacker story of the year, a trio of technologists in India discovered an innovative way Avoid Apple's location restrictions on AirPod Pro 2s So that they can enable the hearing aid feature of earbuds for their grandmothers. The hack involved a homemade Faraday cage, a microwave, and a lot of trial and error.
On the other end of the tech-advancement spectrum, the US military is currently testing An AI-enabled machine gun Which is capable of auto-targeting a swarm of drones. Bullfrog, manufactured by Allen Control Systems, is one of several advanced weapons technologies working to combat the growing threat of cheap, small drones on the battlefield.
The US Justice Department announced this week that an 18-year-old California man Admitted to carrying out or plotting more than 375 attacks. Throughout the United States.
Then, of course, there's Donald Trump. This week, we published A Practical Guide to Protecting Yourself from Government SurveillanceOf course, WIRED has covered the dangers of government surveillance for decades. But when the President-elect is apparently threatening to jail his political enemies – whoever they are – now is probably a good time to improve on your digital best practices.
In addition to potential dragnet surveillance of US citizens, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement began expanding its surveillance arsenal The day after Trump won re-election. Meanwhile, experts are expecting the incoming administration Roll back cybersecurity rules established under President Joe Biden Taking a tough stance against adverse state-sponsored hackers. And if all this political turmoil has you in a protesting mood, be careful :N Investigation republished by WIRED and The Marshall Project found that mask bans imposed in many states add a complex new layer to the exercise of free speech.
and that's not all. Each week, we round up privacy and security news that we haven't covered in depth ourselves. Click on the titles to read the full stories and stay safe out there.
In August 2016, approximately 120,000 Bitcoins – worth approximately $71 million at the time – were stolen in a hack on the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange. Then in 2022, as the value of cryptocurrencies skyrocketed, law enforcement officials got involved New York arrested husband and wife Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan In connection with the hacking and laundering of $4.5 billion of stolen cryptocurrency. (At that time, $3.6 billion of the money had been recovered by law enforcement investigators.)
This week, after being convicted in 2023, Lichtenstein was convicted sentenced to five years in prison To hack and loot the profits. With the subsequent surge in cryptocurrencies and additional seizures related to the hack, the US government has now been able to recover more than $10 billion worth of assetsA Series of operational safety failures Lichtenstein made it easier for authorities to seize most of the illicit cryptocurrencies, but investigators also applied sophisticated crypto-tracing methods to trace how the funds were stolen and subsequently moved around.
In addition to the sheer scale of the robbery, Lichtenstein and Morgan gained online fame and ridicule after their arrest due to a series of Forbes articles written by Morgan. rap videos posted on youtube By the name of “Razlekhan”. Morgan, who also pleaded guilty, will be sentenced on Nov. 18.
Scammers are increasingly adopting AI as part of their criminal toolkit – using the technology create deepfakes, Translate scripts, and make their operation more efficientBut artificial intelligence is also being pitted against scammers. British telecoms firm Virgin Media and its mobile operator O2 have created a new “AI granny” that can answer Keep up with phone calls and conversations from scammersAccording to The Register, the system uses various AI models, which listen to what the scammer says and respond immediately. In one case, the company says it kept a scammer on the line for 40 minutes and gave others fake personal information. Unfortunately, the system (at least at the moment) cannot answer calls made to your phone directly; Instead, O2 created a unique phone number for the system, which the company says has managed to get added to the list of numbers that scammers call.
In a new legal strategy for those attempting to hold commercial spyware vendors accountable, lawyer Andreu Van den Eynde, who was allegedly hacked with NSO Group spyware, is directly suing the company's two founders, Omri Lavi and Shalev Hulio. And accusing one of its officers. , Yuval Somekh, in a trial for hacking crimes. Barcelona-based human rights nonprofit Iridia announced this week that it had filed a complaint in a Catalan court. Van den Eynde was reportedly the victim of a hacking campaign in which NSO's notorious Pegasus spyware was used against at least 65 Catalans. Van den Eynde and Iridia originally sued NSO Group in a Barcelona court in 2022, along with affiliates Ossi Technologies and Q Cyber Technologies. “Those responsible for NSO Group must explain their concerted activities,” a legal representative for Iridia and Van den Eynde wrote in the complaint. The complaint was written in Catalan and translated by TechCrunch.
Research published this week by mobile device management firm Jamf found that hackers linked to North Korea are working to implant malware inside macOS applications built with a special open-source software development kit. The operations focused on cryptocurrency-related targets and involved infrastructure similar to systems used by North Korea's notorious Lazarus Group. It is unclear whether the activity resulted in an actual victim settlement or whether it was still in the testing phase.
Financially motivated and state-backed hackers have less opportunity to use malware targeting Apple's Mac computers than hacking tools that infect Microsoft Windows or Linux desktops and servers. So when Mac malware emerges, it's usually a specific point in time, but it can also be a revealing indicator of trends and priorities among hackers.