Hackers dox ICE, DHS, DOJ, and FBI officials
In a stunning In a new study, researchers from the University of California San Diego and the University of Maryland showed this week that satellites leak vast amounts of sensitive data, not fully encrypted, from T-Mobile calls and texts to in-flight Wi-Fi browsing sessions to military and police communications. And they did it with only $800 worth of equipment.
Facial recognition systems are seemingly everywhere. But what happens when the surveillance technology doesn’t recognize your face as a face? WIRED spoke with six people with disabilities who say the flaws in these systems prevent them from accessing essential services.
US and UK authorities this week announced the seizure of nearly 130,000 bitcoins from a Cambodian fraud empire. At the time of the seizure, the digital currency was valued at $15 billion, the largest amount of money ever seized in the United States.
Control of a significant portion of the US election infrastructure is now in the hands of a former Republican operative named Scott Lindecker, who recently bought the voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems and owns Knowink, an electronic poll book company. Election security experts are currently more confused about the implications than concerned about any possibility of foul play.
While a new type of attack could allow hackers to steal two-factor authentication codes from Android phones, the biggest cybersecurity development of the week was the breach of security firm F5. The attack, carried out by a “sophisticated” threat actor reportedly linked to China, poses an “imminent threat” of breaches to government agencies and Fortune 500 companies. Finally, we’ve sifted through the mess of VPNs for iPhones and found just three worth using.
But that’s not all! Each week, we round up security and privacy news that we haven’t covered in depth ourselves. Click on the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe there
In recent years, perhaps no group of hackers has been more involved than “Com,” a loose group of cybercriminal gangs whose sub-groups such as Lapus$ and Scattered Spider have carried out cyberattacks and ransomware, targeting victims from MGM casinos to Marks & Spencer grocery stores. Now they have turned their sites over to US federal law enforcement.
On Thursday, a member of the FreeCom group began posting a collection of identification documents of federal officials on Telegram. According to 404 Media, one spreadsheet contained the personal information of 680 Department of Homeland Security officials, while another contained the personal information of 170 FBI officials, and another confirmed 190 Justice Department officials. The data in some cases included names, email addresses and phone numbers, and addresses – in some cases from officials’ homes rather than their workplaces. In his messages, the user who posted the data referenced a statement from DHS that Mexican cartels had offered thousands of dollars for information on agents, apparently mocking the unverified claim.
The user who posted the files, using the acronym ‘Hit Me’ and apparently demanding $1 million, wrote: “Mexican cartels hmu we drop all dex where 1 million is mine.” “I want my money in Mexico.”
For the past year — at least — the FBI has operated a “covert” task force that may have been working to disrupt Russian ransomware, according to reports this week in France’s Le Monde and Germany’s Die Zeit. The publications claim that at the end of last year, the mysterious group 78 presented its strategy to two different meetings of European officials, including law enforcement officials and those working in the judicial service. Little is known about this group. However, its potentially controversial tactics appear to be causing European officials to remain tight-lipped about the Group of 78’s existence and tactics.
At the end of last year, Group 78 reportedly focused on the Russian-language Black Basta ransomware and outlined two approaches: conducting operations inside Russia to disrupt gang members and trying to persuade them to leave the country. And also the “manipulation” of the Russian authorities to try the Black Basta members. Over the past few years, Western law enforcement officials have taken increasingly destructive actions against Russian ransomware — including infiltrating their technical infrastructure, trying to destroy their reputation, and issuing a wave of sanctions and arrest warrants — but covert action inside Russia against ransomware (at least publicly) would be unprecedented. The Black Basta group has been shut down in recent months after 200,000 internal messages were leaked and its alleged leader was identified.
Over the past few years, AI-powered license plate recognition cameras — placed on the side of the road or in police cars — have collected billions of images of people’s vehicles and their specific locations. The technology is a powerful surveillance tool that, unsurprisingly, has been embraced by law enforcement officials across the United States — raising questions about how authorities are abusing access to cameras and data.
This week, a letter from Sen. Ron Wyden revealed that a division of ICE, the Secret Service and criminal investigators in the Navy all had access to data from Flock Safety cameras. “I now believe that abuses of your product are not only probable but inevitable, and that Flock is unable and unwilling to prevent them,” Wyden’s letter to Flock reads. Wyden’s letter comes amid mounting reports that government agencies, including CBP, have access to Flock’s 80,000 cameras. “In my view, local elected officials can protect their constituents from the inevitable abuse of Flock’s cameras by removing Flock from their communities,” Wyden wrote.
