Bitfinex Hacker Gets 5 Years for $10 Billion Bitcoin Heist

In possibly the astir adorable hacker communicative of the year, a trio of technologists successful India recovered an innovative mode to circumvent Apple’s determination restrictions connected AirPod Pro 2s truthful they could alteration the earbuds’ proceeding assistance diagnostic for their grandmas. The hack progressive a homemade Faraday cage, a microwave, and a batch of proceedings and error.

On the different extremity of the tech-advancements spectrum, the US subject is presently investigating an AI-enabled instrumentality gun that is susceptible of auto-targeting swarms of drones. The Bullfrog, built by Allen Control Systems, is 1 of respective precocious weapons technologies successful the works to combat the increasing menace of cheap, tiny drones connected the battlefield.

The US Department of Justice announced this week that an 18-year-old from California has admitted to making oregon orchestrating much than 375 swatting attacks crossed the United States.

Then, of course, there’s the Donald Trump of it all. This week, we published a applicable usher to protecting yourself from authorities surveillance. WIRED has covered the dangers of authorities surveillance for decades, of course. But erstwhile the president-elect is explicitly threatening to jailhouse his governmental enemies—whoever that whitethorn be—now’s astir apt a bully clip to brushwood up connected your integer champion practices.

In summation to imaginable dragnet surveillance of US citizens, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement started ramping up its surveillance arsenal the time aft Trump won reelection. Meanwhile, experts are expecting the incoming medication to roll backmost cybersecurity rules instituted nether president Joe Biden portion taking a harder enactment against adversarial state-sponsored hackers. And if each this governmental upheaval has you successful the temper to protest, beware: An investigation copublished by WIRED and The Marshall Project recovered that disguise bans instituted successful respective states adhd a analyzable caller furniture to exercising state of speech.

And that’s not all. Each week, we circular up the privateness and information quality we didn’t screen successful extent ourselves. Click the headlines to work the afloat stories, and enactment harmless retired there.

Bitfinex Hacker Gets 5 Years for $10 Billion Bitcoin Heist

In August 2016, astir 120,000 bitcoin—at the clip worthy astir $71 million—were stolen successful a hack connected the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange. Then successful 2022, arsenic the worth of cryptocurrency had rocketed skywards, instrumentality enforcement officials successful New York arrested hubby and woman Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan successful narration to the hack and laundering the much-inflated $4.5 cardinal of stolen cryptocurrency. (At the time, $3.6 cardinal of the funds were recouped by instrumentality enforcement investigators.)

This week, aft pleading blameworthy successful 2023, Lichtenstein was sentenced to 5 years of jailhouse time for conducting the hack and laundering the profits. With consequent cryptocurrency spikes and further seizures related to the hack, the US authorities has present been capable to retrieve much than $10 cardinal successful assets. A series of operational information failures by Lichtenstein made overmuch of the illicit cryptocurrency casual for officials to seize, but investigators besides applied blase crypto-tracing methods to unpick however the funds had been stolen and subsequently moved around.

Aside from the brazen standard of the heist, Lichtenstein and Morgan gained online prominence and ridicule aft their arrests owed to a bid of Forbes articles written by Morgan and rap videos posted to YouTube nether the sanction of “Razzlekhan.” Morgan, who besides pleaded guilty, is owed to beryllium sentenced connected November 18.

An ‘AI Granny’ Is Wasting Phone Scammers’ Time

Scammers are progressively adopting AI arsenic portion of their transgression toolkits—using the exertion to create deepfakes, translate scripts, and marque their operations much efficient. But artificial quality is besides being turned against the scammers. British telecoms steadfast Virgin Media and its mobile relation O2 person created a caller “AI granny” that tin reply phone calls from scammers and support them talking. The strategy uses antithetic AI models, according to The Register, that perceive to what a scammer says and respond immediately. In 1 case, the institution says it kept a scammer connected the enactment for 40 minutes and has fed others fake idiosyncratic information. Unfortunately, the strategy (at slightest astatine the moment) can’t straight reply calls made to your phone; instead, O2 created a circumstantial telephone fig for the system, which the institution says it has managed to get placed successful lists of numbers that scammers call.

Alleged NSO Group Spyware Victim Adds NSO Founders and Executive to Lawsuit

In a caller ineligible strategy for those attempting to clasp commercialized spyware vendors responsible, lawyer Andreu Van den Eynde, who was allegedly hacked with NSO Group spyware, is straight accusing 2 of the company’s founders, Omri Lavie and Shalev Hulio, and 1 of its executives, Yuval Somekh, of hacking crimes successful a lawsuit. The Barcelona-based quality rights nonprofit Iridia announced this week that it filed the ailment successful a Catalan court. Van den Eynde was reportedly a unfortunate of a hacking run that utilized NSO’s notorious Pegasus spyware against astatine slightest 65 Catalans. Van den Eynde and Iridia primitively sued NSO Group successful a Barcelona tribunal successful 2022 on with affiliates Osy Technologies and Q Cyber Technologies. “The radical liable for NSO Group person to explicate their factual activities,” a ineligible typical for Iridia and Van den Eynde wrote successful the complaint, which was written successful Catalan and translated by TechCrunch.

North Korea-Backed Hackers Are Exploring New macOS Malware

Research published this week by the mobile instrumentality absorption steadfast Jamf recovered that hackers who person been linked to North Korea person been moving to implant malware wrong macOS applications built with a peculiar open-source bundle improvement kit. The campaigns focused connected cryptocurrency-related targets and progressive infrastructure akin to systems that person been utilized by North Korea’s notorious Lazarus Group. It’s unclear if the enactment resulted successful existent unfortunate compromise oregon if it was inactive successful a investigating phase.

Financially motivated and state-backed hackers person little juncture to usage malware targeting Apple’s Mac computers than hacking tools that infect Microsoft Windows oregon Linux desktops and servers. So erstwhile Mac malware crops up, it’s typically a niche point, but it tin besides beryllium a revealing indicator of trends and priorities among hackers.