The perpetrators allegedly acquired a list of gig workers and tricked them into sharing one-time passcodes, before buying gift cards, the FBI says.| Thomas Fox-Brewster
Sextortion is killing American teenagers and often the scammers are part of sprawling criminal operations.| Thomas Fox-Brewster
Security researchers found that Max, which Russia will require to be pre-installed on all phones, is designed to track users, confirming fears the app will be used for surveillance.| Thomas Fox-Brewster
The DEA is now looking to recover bitcoin used to launder cartel drug money, which has gone from being worth $150,000 to $1.5 million today.| Thomas Fox-Brewster
Sanaz Yashar spent 15 years in Israel’s vaunted Unit 8200 intelligence division after immigrating from Iran. Now she’s got billionaires backing her to be cyber’s next big thing.| Thomas Fox-Brewster
ICE purchased more than $20 million worth of mobile surveillance tools just months before the election of a president who has vowed to undertake the largest mass deportation effort in U.S. history.| Forbes
The GrayKey promises access to locked iPhones. And ICE is its biggest fan.| Forbes
Plus: Flock Safety faces Congressional scrutiny; new vulnerabilities revealed at DEF CON and Black hat conferences.| Thomas Fox-Brewster
With a $31 million raise, Fable is aiming to take on multi-billion companies with its AI-generated security training targeted at employees who need it.| Forbes
Social Links, a surveillance company that had thousands of accounts banned for mass-scraping Facebook and Instagram, is now using ChatGPT to make sense of data it grabs from social media.| Forbes
Users of underground forums start sharing malware coded by OpenAI’s viral sensation and dating scammers are planning on creating convincing fake girls with the tool. Cyber prognosticators predict more malicious use of ChatGPT is to come.| Forbes
It did so for more than a decade, drawing scores of lawsuits over alleged child grooming on the app.| Forbes
A Forbes investigation finds that despite years of complaints, Kik can't shake its severe child exploitation problem.| Forbes
China-linked group said to target Microsoft Sharepoint flaw, now patched.| Thomas Fox-Brewster
Trump is going to boost American cyber offensive capabilities in his Big Beautiful Bill.| Thomas Fox-Brewster
CISA staff await more layoffs but are at least optimistic about their new director.| Forbes
DHS is using facial recognition and AI to find child abusers and rescue victims in a major new operation underway to solve thousands of cold cases.| Forbes
An Ohio man has his identity was stolen and used to spread child sexual abuse material. Then the FBI raided his home.| Thomas Fox-Brewster
Mexico cartels know how to hack and it can be the difference between life and death.| Thomas Fox-Brewster
Google's Veo 3 video and photo AI generation tool is being used in information warfare in the Iran-Israel conflict.| Thomas Fox-Brewster
CISA staff await more layoffs but are at least optimistic about their new director.| Forbes
AI image generator Stable Diffusion was used to turn thousands of GoPro’d photographs of children visiting the park into child sexual abuse material that was traded online.| Forbes
At a time when suspicions over Russia are at fever pitch, these Russian security firms are now a part of the U.S. government’s surveillance apparatus and sit on some of the nation’s most sensitive networks.| Forbes
Google fought one of the most sprawling geofence orders to date and the government backed down.| Forbes
In 2019, federal investigators in Wisconsin were hunting men they believed had participated in the trafficking and sexual abuse of a minor.| Forbes
A former intelligence operative in Israel’s military warned of Iran’s cyber capabilities. But the U.S.’s cyber agency may struggle to respond.| Thomas Fox-Brewster
A mother says her ten-year-old repeatedly tried to take her own life after being harassed by a man she met on Roblox.| Thomas Fox-Brewster
The White House wants to slash the $85 million budget to $0 for the inspector general’s office that focuses on investigating fraud in foreign aid.| Thomas Fox-Brewster
The Trump administration has announced plans to reorganize the U.S. AI Safety Institute (AISI) into the new Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI).| Forbes
Concerned citizens have turned to the Neighbors app, once used largely to look for lost deliveries, to make public service announcements about ICE raids in their communities.| Forbes
Musk’s "Fork in the Road" email goes out to global staff on Wednesday morning, giving them two working days to decide if they’d like to commit to a “hardcore” Twitter.| Forbes
Corellium founder and CEO Chris Wade is selling his startup to Cellebrite, law enforcement’s favorite cellphone forensics business.| Thomas Fox-Brewster
Amid fears it’s created a mass surveillance system, Flock is turning its license plate readers into fully-fledged surveillance cameras, taking on what it claims is a monopoly on police tech by Axon.| Thomas Fox-Brewster
Insider spies that steal data are posing an ever-larger threat to businesses. This startup believes AI can root them out.| Thomas Fox-Brewster
The Trump administration has announced plans to reorganize the U.S. AI Safety Institute (AISI) into the new Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI).| Thomas Fox-Brewster
A YouTuber flew drones over Guam-based bases twice, FBI says.| Forbes
The widely viewed AI-generated videos, which offer free upgrades to premium services from Spotify and Microsoft, are being used to install malicious code that can spy on users’ PCs.| Forbes
Axon, a major tech provider to border and immigration cops, is warning it may have to increase prices as a result of Trump’s China tariffs. It isn’t the only ICE contractor worried about the trade war.| Forbes
If you’re putting pictures of your children on social media, there’s an increasing risk AI will be used to turn them into sexual abuse material.| Forbes
Cyberhaven, which just raised $100 million at a $1 billion valuation, offers AI tools designed to prevent employees from putting proprietary information into tools like ChatGPT.| Forbes
After Google laid off part of the team responsible for ensuring government requests for users’ private information are legal, it turned to AI to pick up the slack. Employees tell Forbes it hasn’t.| Forbes
USAID and SpaceX worked together to support Ukraine’s war effort against Russia, and provided internet to multiple African countries.| Forbes
In the wake of Trump’s victory, scammers sought to exploit supporters, telling them just photos of their memorabilia were enough proof they were in line for a huge payday.| Forbes
Google says Russia increased its targeting of encrypted apps like Signal as Ukraine ramped up its counteroffensive.| Forbes
Billionaire Axon chief Rick Smith says he’s “embarrassed” to have recommended Flock’s car surveillance tools to cops.| Forbes
A judge in Kansas slaps down a government attempt to capture information on all phones in a given area over a short period of time. Courts are catching on to the privacy implications and the possibility innocents will be ensnared.| Forbes
Feds tell Google to search four areas for suspected arsonists' phones. Google gives it 1,500 device IDs.| Forbes
As rivals search for the secret to the company’s sudden AI success, others are sounding the alarm about security concerns — national ones.| Forbes
DeepSeek can be abused by hackers to write malicious code than steals credit card data, researchers claim.| Forbes
Huge police databases armed with Amazon’s facial recognition are harvesting online sex ads of exploited children and consenting sex workers alike. Forbes finds that even when wielding a mass surveillance arsenal, cops can and do fail to keep sex workers and trafficking victims safe.| Forbes
The Twitter and Block billionaire made Cash App into a $700 million monster. Now police officers, nonprofit critics and current and former employees say it’s struggling to fight “rampant” criminality.| Forbes
Apple spent years trying to design a system to stop the spread of child sexual abuse material on iPhones and iCloud. When the company scrapped it, child protection investigators were frustrated. But Apple’s privacy-first approach gained plenty of fans in the process.| Forbes
Kenosha was covered in Google dragnets after the 2020 riots, meaning hundreds of innocent protesters likely had their phone data handed to the U.S. government, a lawyer warns.| Forbes
Google is being sent repeated "reverse location" orders from federal agents. Privacy activists warn they threaten the privacy of thousands of innocent people.| Forbes
The FBI is getting creative with how it obtains data from Google. And it has privacy ramifications for all users of Google services.| Forbes
Life360’s CEO says he’s never heard of his parenting app being used by sex traffickers to monitor the location of their victims. But Forbes obtained evidence that the app and others like it have been used as digital “leashes.”| Forbes
An alleged killer joined a Facebook group for passing on kids’ items to find pregnant mothers and possibly kidnap them, according to a search warrant. Some moms in the group say neither the FBI nor Meta informed them that their data was caught up in a murder investigation.| Forbes
Plus: Roblox ‘Fails To Protect Children,’ Shortseller Warns| Forbes
At Apple’s secretive Global Police Summit, cops from 7 countries learned how to use Apple products like the iPhone, Vision Pro and CarPlay for surveillance and policing.| Forbes
The Orange County Sheriff’s Department is piloting the VR headsets to create a virtual version of its crime centers, where cops monitor surveillance data in real time.| Forbes
Founded and backed by former Palantir execs, Peregrine hopes to turbocharge local police's access to surveillance data, while curbing cops’ abuses of their technologies.| Forbes
Weaknesses in Chrome, Firefox and Safari gave hackers a route into internal networks, even those protected by firewalls, security researchers warn.| Forbes
Plus: North Korean Indicted For Ransomware Attacks On Hospitals| Forbes
Artificial intelligence is helping American cops look for “suspicious” patterns of movement using license plate databases.| Forbes
Founded by Google veterans and backed by $340 million from major VCs, Skydio is creating drones that seem straight out of science fiction—and they could be flying around your neighborhood soon.| Forbes
Google shrunk the team that has helped police save lives and investigate major crimes, even as it promised the DOJ it would keep it adequately staffed.| Forbes
FedEx is using AI car surveillance technology made by Flock Safety, a $4 billion startup. Its own private police force is accessing local cops’ Flock camera feeds too.| Forbes
Italy-based surveillance company Leonardo says its tool creates a fingerprint of drivers and passengers by scanning for anything that emits a signal from their car, from smartphones to library books.| Forbes
$50 billion retail behemoth Simon Property has granted police access to its AI car surveillance feeds via startup Flock Safety, monitoring vehicles visiting its malls, public records requests reveal.| Forbes
A cyber startup founded by an ex-Defense Department hacker announces a $20 million raise and a presidential candidate as a customer.| Forbes
Axon says its AI will help get more police out of the office and on the streets. Critics worry it’ll make cops lazy and potentially introduce errors into crucial evidence.| Forbes
The company removed more than 100 YouTube videos after Forbes found the platform was promoting AI nudifiers used by school bullies and a convicted pedophile.| Forbes
Cyberattacks target AI compute power to mine cryptocurrency using a vulnerability in popular open source software called Ray, according to researchers at Oligo Security.| Forbes
A Moscow legal battle strongly indicates that phone forensics tools used by both the FBI and FSB are exploiting security loopholes in Apple’s operating system.| Forbes
The federal government asked Google to turn over information on anyone who viewed multiple YouTube videos. Privacy experts say the orders are unconstitutional.| Forbes
Credit reporting giant says WhatsApp is refusing to respond to subpoenas. Meta says it doesn’t have the user data Experian wants.| Forbes
AI voice cloning is used in a huge heist in the U.A.E., amidst warnings about cybercriminal use of the new technology.| Forbes
Flock became a law enforcement juggernaut with its AI-powered license plate readers. But officials in multiple states told Forbes Flock had violated state laws designed to guarantee driver safety.| Forbes
After Google made “geofence” data warrants on its users technically infeasible, feds are still making similar demands on telecoms giants, even if the location data is, by law enforcement’s own admission, often inaccurate.| Forbes
Nearly 1,000 fake profiles with AI-generated images have been posing as protesters, journalists and young women, Meta warns, and they appeared to be targeted at reporters and political activists.| Forbes
