The Internet Archive is under attack. In addition to multiple annihilating lawsuits against the organization that created and maintains the Wayback Machine, hackers broke into the Internet Archive this week, stealing details of 31 million user accounts and defacing its website. Meanwhile, archive.org was struggling to stay online thanks to: A barrage of distributed denial-of-service attacks. As of Friday, the site remained “temporarily offline.”
In a dark twist of fate, a judge this week cleared the way for the US Treasury to take possession of 69,000 bitcoins stolen from the Silk Road dark web market. Meanwhile, Tigran Gambarian, the former IRS investigator who personally seized the Bitcoin, remains in a Nigerian prison on charges related to the actions of his current employer, the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Lawmakers and other officials have urged the U.S. government to secure Gambarian's release given his direct role in a series of high-profile criminal cases and in pioneering cryptocurrency investigative techniques. is calling for further measures to be taken. The seized Silk Road Bitcoins are currently worth $4.4 billion and will likely be auctioned.
Security researchers this week detailed a harmful malware that infiltrates Linux machines and uses a variety of techniques to evade detection. The malware, called Perfctl, uses tricks to hide itself, including creating files that match those normally found within a Linux instance and preventing administrative tools from recording its activity. All this is done with the aim of remaining on the infected machine and continuing to perform various malicious activities. Researchers estimate that millions of Linux devices could be vulnerable.
Finally, we analyzed how Google's decisions were made. do not have Deleting third-party tracking cookies in your Chrome browser may continue to impact your privacy.
That's not all. Every week, we round up security and privacy news that we haven't covered in detail ourselves. Click on the heading to read the full text. And stay safe outside.
Police using honeypots to catch cybercriminals red-handed is nothing new. But creating an entirely new cryptocurrency to catch pump-and-dump schemers? That's something special. The U.S. Department of Justice revealed this week that the FBI has created a new Ethereum-based cryptocurrency token, NexFundAI, with the goal of deceiving and bringing down people manipulating the cryptocurrency market.
As a result of the investigation, 18 people and other entities were ultimately indicted on suspicion of fraud and virtual currency market manipulation, but the scope of this scheme was limited to some ordinary individual investors who were not charged with any crime. were also affected, but U.S. authorities did not provide details about these individuals. investment. However, a US prosecutor involved in the case told reporters that the investigation resulted in a total of $25 million in funds, which will be returned to investors. Trading on NexFundAI was subsequently disabled.
National Public Data, a Florida-based data broker, has been in a slump this year. In August, hackers released 2.9 billion records stolen from NPD last December, including names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, Social Security numbers, and more. It was a huge record that they claim “affected the entire population of the United States, California, and the United Kingdom.” ” Then came the inevitable lawsuit against NPD, which has now filed for bankruptcy. These proceedings revealed new details, including the fact that NPD was run by a single person, Salvatore Verini Jr., who operated the business from his home with approximately $2,500 worth of equipment. has become clear. A bankruptcy court filing by one of NPD's debtors says the violations could have affected “hundreds of millions” of people.
Discord users in Russia and Turkey found themselves suddenly unable to connect to the online chat application this week. Later, authorities in both countries revealed that Discord had been blocked on suspicion of facilitating illegal activities. Russia's internet regulator Roskomnadzor said in a statement that the block was designed to “prevent the use of messengers for terrorist and extremist purposes, related to the publication of illegal information, the recruitment of citizens for missions, and the sale of drugs. It's necessary.'' ” Meanwhile, Turkish authorities banned the messaging app following a court ruling over alleged child abuse content hosted on Discord servers. According to BleepingComputer, some Discord users in these countries were able to access the app using a VPN that routes their connections through external IP addresses. This could be good news for the Russian military, which has reportedly been disrupted by the bloc.
Law enforcement's use of facial recognition technology to identify crimes against Americans is far more widespread than previously known, according to a new Washington Post study. That's what it means. Records obtained by the newspaper show police in 15 states have used facial recognition tools in “more than 1,000 investigations over the past four years.” Despite its seeming widespread use, police often try to hide their use of this technology, which can inaccurately identify people who are charged with crimes they did not actually commit. It is clear that An assistant public defender in Minnesota told a Post reporter that police are likely hiding their use of facial recognition because they “want to avoid litigation over the reliability of the technology.”
