This week, WIRED reported that a group of prolific scammers known as the Yahoo Boys are openly operating on major platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok, and Telegram. Evading content moderation systems, the group organizes and engages in criminal activities that range from scams to sextortion schemes.
On Wednesday, researchers published a paper detailing a new AI-based methodology to detect the “shape” of suspected money laundering activity on a blockchain. The researchers—composed of scientists from the cryptocurrency tracing firm Elliptic, MIT, and IBM—collected patterns of bitcoin transactions from known scammers to an exchange where dirty crypto could get turned into cash. They used this data to train an AI model to detect similar patterns.
Governments and industry experts are sounding the alarm about the potential for major airline disasters due to increasing attacks against GPS systems in the Baltic region since the start of the war in Ukraine. The attacks can jam or spoof GPS signals, and can result in serious navigation issues. Officials in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania blame Russia for the GPS issues in the Baltics. Meanwhile, WIRED went inside Ukraine’s scrappy and burgeoning drone industry, where about 200 companies are racing to build deadlier and more efficient autonomous weapons.
An Australian firm that provided facial recognition kiosks for bars and clubs appears to have exposed the data of more than 1 million records of patrons. The episode highlights the dangers of giving companies your biometric data. In the United States, the Biden administration is asking tech companies to sign a voluntary pledge to make “good-faith” efforts to implement critical cybersecurity improvements. This week we also reported that the administration is updating its plan for protecting the country’s critical infrastructure from hackers, terrorists, and natural disasters.
And there’s more. Each week, we highlight the news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click on the headlines below to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.
A government procurement document unearthed by The Intercept reveals that two major Israeli weapons manufacturers are required to use Google and Amazon if they need any cloud-based services. The reporting calls into question repeated claims from Google that the technology it sells 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 offices “required to purchase” any cloud services from Amazon and Google. The list includes Israel Aerospace Industries and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, the latter being the manufacturer of the infamous “Spike” missile, reportedly used in the April drone strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers.
In 2021, Amazon and Google entered into a contract with the Israeli government in a joint venture known as Project Nimbus. Under the arrangement, the tech giants provide the Israeli government, including its Israel Defense Forces, with cloud services. In April, Google employees protested Project Nimbus by staging sit-ins at offices in Silicon Valley, New York City, and Seattle. The company fired nearly 30 employees in response.
A report from Notus indicated that a mass surveillance tool called TraffiCatch is being used at the border to track people’s location in real time. This tool eavesdrops on wireless signals from devices like smartwatches, earbuds, and cars. According to the manufacturer, TraffiCatch associates these wireless signals with vehicles indentified by license plate readers in the area. The sheriff’s office in Webb County, Texas, reported that the tool is used for tasks like detecting trespassers.
Devices that mimic cell towers to collect data usually require a warrant from law enforcement agencies before being deployed. However, TraffiCatch is a technology that passively collects wireless signals, but the courts haven’t reached a decision about it. This report points out that signals intelligence technology, previously used only by the military, is now accessible by local governments and the general public.
An officer from India’s intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing, has been reportedly linked to a plot to assassinate a top critic of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the United States, according to The Washington Post. The White House has taken this issue very seriously, as Indian foreign ministry criticized the Post report. The plot to assassinate the Sikh separatist, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who is also a citizen of the United States and Canada, was first brought to light by US authorities in November.
In contrast, Canadian authorities had previously disclosed that they have “credible” information linking the Indian government to the death of another separatist leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was killed outside a Sikh temple in a suburb of Vancouver last summer.
US lawmakers have introduced a bill aimed at establishing a new wing of the National Security Agency dedicated to investigating threats aimed at AI systems—or “counter-AI.” The bipartisan bill, introduced by Mark Warner and Thom Tillis, a Senate Democrat and Republican, respectively, would further require agencies including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to track breaches of AI systems, whether successful or not. (The NIST currently maintains the National Vulnerability Database, a repository for vulnerability data, while the CISA oversees the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures Program, which similarly identifies and catalogues 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 that is essentially synonymous with “counter-AI”—which serves to subvert AI systems and “poison” their data using techniques vastly dissimilar to traditional modes of cyberwarfare.
Written by: Lauren Goode
and Matt Simon
Paresh Dave
Jordan Pearson
