For many years, AlphaBay rule the dark web. If you go to a market to buy drugs or a stolen credit card, the digital marketplace is the place to go. At its peak, more than 350,000 products were for sale — estimated to be 10 times the size of the infamous Silk Road market — and the site proved to be a worldwide law enforcement site. That was until the police took AlphaBay offline in 2017.
This week, WIRED published the first in a six-part series detailing the hunt for Alpha02, the alleged mastermind behind AlphaBay and the massive international takedown operation that wiped the market off the web. Every week, we’ll be publishing a new installment of the series, drawn from WIRED reporter Andy Greenberg’s new book, Traces in the dark.
Schools across the US have faced dozens of prank calls about mass shootings in recent months. After a call was made, police rushed to the scene fearing the worst, only to discover there was no shooter. The current Hoax call recordings obtained by WIRED and conversations with law enforcement officials revealed how the calls were made and shows that law enforcement officials are wrapping up the alleged hoax. Police are looking for a male “with a heavy accent described as Middle Eastern or African” and have made phone calls to Ethiopia.
Elsewhere, a bug in Apple’s new macOS 13 Ventura operating system is causing problems with malware scanners and security monitoring tools. With the new software update, Apple has inadvertently crippled third-party security products in a way that users may not notice. The company is planning to fix the bug in an upcoming software release.
We also reviewed a Chinese influence operations targeting US elections—Though it didn’t have much success. And now Elon Musk owns Twitterthis is how you should think about your privacy and security on the bird website. [LINK TKTK]
But wait a minute! Every week we highlight news that we don’t cover in depth. Click on the title below to read the full story. And it’s safe out there.
Officials in Canada and Netherlands is investigating allegations that the Chinese police force has operated a network of illegal police stations in the country. According to reports that surfaced this week, China’s police force has been operating out of secret bases and using their presence to spy on and intimidate dissidents. The Dutch government has called such locations “illegal” and said they are “investigating exactly what they are doing here”, while officials in Canada have said they are investigating. so-called ‘police station’.”
However, that is only the tip of the iceberg. Spanish civil rights group Safeguard Defenders announced for the first time that Chinese police forces from the cities of Fuzhou and Qingtian are operating “overseas police service stations” across the West. in a report published in September. Since 2018, the group claims, more than 38 police service stations have appeared in “dozens of countries” spread across five different continents. Such foreign police ‘service stations’ have been used by police in China to carry out ‘persuasion to return’ operations on foreign soil, including in Europe, the report said. Europe.” Lawmakers in both England and Scotland are also planning to investigate the stations, the report said.
