have you heard Donald Trump impeached this week? Of course they did. Funny question. The first indictment against a former US president has been brewing for weeks. And now that it has happened, the action by the Manhattan grand jury is fueling tensions across America’s already fraught political divide. But while Trump headlines flooded your feed, there were plenty of other big stories this week, none of which had anything to do with any of them. That’s what he said..
In Germany, the police are cracking down on people who post adult content on sites and platforms without age verification, such as Twitter. This has led to fines and threats of jail time, but some performers are deleting their accounts — or fleeing the country. This is one of the effects of age verification laws sweeping the global internet.
Meanwhile, in the dark corners of the Internet, North Korean-backed hackers are using an unusual method to launder their stolen cryptocurrencies: extortion from their victims. The strategy is to throw blockchain investigators off the trail of counterfeit money. Speaking of illegal profits, Costa Rica was devastated by a series of ransomware attacks last spring that destroyed the country’s infrastructure. As a result, the US government is sending $25 million in aid for recovery.
Most victims of cyber attacks, however, do not receive help from the US government. Fortunately, this week Microsoft announced its new system, Security Copilot, which uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT and in-house artificial intelligence to help disaster responders manage breaches. Of course, the best way to protect yourself from being hacked is to make sure all of your systems are fully armed and up-to-date.
To top it all off, this week we released new documents obtained through a public records request that show Good Smile, a major toy company whose image board for companies like Disney, invested $2.4 million in 4chan to help keep the company afloat. Online.
But that’s not all. Every week we run into stories that we can’t report on ourselves. Click on headlines to read full stories. And stay safe out there.
The Russian government and military continue to be among the most aggressive in the world when it comes to cyber attacks against civilian infrastructure. But documents leaked by a driver at a Russian intelligence contractor appear to reveal new and shocking pages in the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare playbook.
A coalition of investigative journalists at 11 news outlets, including Paper Trail Media; The guardAnd The Washington Post He obtained classified documents from a Russian cyber security contractor called Vulkan, which is the Russian word for it Volcano. The documents, analyzed by cyber security firm Mandiant, show that Vulcan sold software tools to the likes of the KGB-successor FSB and the GRU military intelligence agency, including a group focused on cyber attacks known as Sandworm.
