This week WIRED reported that a group of prolific scammers called the Yahoo Boys are openly operating on major platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok and Telegram. The group circumvents content moderation systems and organizes and engages in criminal activities ranging from fraud to sextortion schemes.
On Wednesday, researchers published a paper detailing a new AI-based method for detecting the “shape” of suspected money laundering activity on a blockchain. The researchers – made up of scientists from cryptocurrency tracking company Elliptic, MIT and IBM – collected samples of Bitcoin transactions from known fraudsters to an exchange where dirty cryptocurrencies could be converted into cash. They used this data to train an AI model to recognize similar patterns.
Governments and industry experts are warning of the risk of major aviation disasters due to increasing attacks on GPS systems in the Baltics since the start of the war in Ukraine. The attacks can disrupt or spoof GPS signals and cause serious navigation problems. Officials in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania blame Russia for GPS problems in the Baltics. Meanwhile, WIRED looked at Ukraine’s shattered and emerging drone industry, where some 200 companies are racing to build deadlier and more efficient autonomous weapons.
An Australian company that provided facial recognition kiosks for bars and clubs has apparently exposed the data of more than a million customers. The episode highlights the dangers associated with sharing your biometric data with companies. In the United States, the Biden administration is asking tech companies to sign a voluntary commitment to make “good faith” efforts to implement critical cybersecurity improvements. This week we also reported that the government is updating its plan to protect the country’s critical infrastructure from hackers, terrorists and natural disasters.
And there is more. Every week we highlight the news that we haven’t covered in detail ourselves. Click on the headlines below to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.
A government procurement document unearthed by The Intercept shows that two major Israeli weapons manufacturers must use Google and Amazon when they need cloud-based services. The reporting challenges Google’s repeated claims that technology sold to Israel is not used for military purposes – including the ongoing bombardment of Gaza that has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians. The document contains a list of Israeli companies and government entities “required to purchase” cloud services from Amazon and Google. The list includes Israel Aerospace Industries and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. The latter is the manufacturer of the infamous “Spike” missile that was reportedly used in the April drone attack that killed seven World Central Kitchen employees.
In 2021, Amazon and Google entered into a contract with the Israeli government for a joint venture called Project Nimbus. Under the agreement, the tech giants will provide cloud services to the Israeli government, including its Israel Defense Forces. In April, Google employees protested Project Nimbus by staging sit-ins at offices in Silicon Valley, New York City and Seattle. In response, the company laid off nearly 30 employees.
A mass surveillance tool that listens to wireless signals from smartwatches, earbuds and cars is currently being used at the border to track people’s location in real time, a report from Notus revealed on Monday. According to its manufacturer, the TraffiCatch tool matches wireless signals sent by commonly used devices to vehicles identified by license plate readers in the area. A captain with the sheriff’s office in Webb County, Texas – whose jurisdiction includes the border city of Laredo – told the publication that the agency uses TraffiCatch to detect devices in areas where they shouldn’t be, such as tracking intruders.
Several states require law enforcement to obtain warrants before deploying devices that mimic cell towers to obtain data from the devices tricked into connecting to them. But in the case of TraffiCatch, a technology that passively harvests ambient wireless signals from the air, the courts have not yet weighed in. The report highlights that signals intelligence technology, once reserved only for the military, is now available for purchase by both local governments and the general public.
The Washington Post reports that an official from India’s intelligence agency’s Research and Analysis Wing was allegedly involved in a botched plot to assassinate one of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s biggest critics in the United States. The White House said on Monday that it was taking the matter “very, very seriously,” while India’s foreign ministry sharply criticized it post report as “unwarranted” and “unhelpful”. The alleged plot to murder Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a dual citizen of the United States and Canada, was first disclosed by U.S. authorities in November.
Canadian authorities previously said they had received “credible” information allegedly linking the Indian government to the death of another separatist leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was shot last summer outside a Sikh temple in a Vancouver suburb .
US lawmakers have introduced a bill aimed at creating a new branch of the National Security Agency dedicated to investigating threats targeting AI systems – or “counter-AI”. The bipartisan bill, introduced by Mark Warner and Thom Tillis, a Democrat and Republican in the Senate, respectively, would also require agencies such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Violations of AI systems can be tracked, whether successful or not. (NIST currently maintains the National Vulnerability Database, a repository of vulnerability data, while CISA oversees the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures Program, which also identifies and catalogs publicly disclosed malware and other threats.)
The Senate bill, known as the Secure Artificial Intelligence Act, aims to expand the government’s threat monitoring to include “adversarial machine learning” – a term essentially synonymous with “counter-AI” – designed to: Infiltrate and “poison” AI systems. their data using techniques that differ greatly from traditional cyberwarfare methods.