When Yevgeny Prighozin, the head of the infamous mercenary army known as the Wagner Corporation; staged an aborted coup against the Russian government; his brief uprising resulted in the deaths of 13 fighter pilots. Russia and dealt a heavy blow to Vladimir Putin’s sense of invulnerability. Now, the aftermath of that bizarre story has apparently also taken another casualty: the world’s most notorious troll farm, known as the Internet Research Agency.
But we will get there. First, Elon Musk is having a rough week. Following Twitter’s puzzling decision to temporarily limit the number of tweets users can read per day, Mark Zuckerberg has dealt a major blow to the self-sabotaging platform by: launch theme. The Instagram-linked microblogging app has shot to the top of the app store charts, amassing a staggering 30 million users in 24 hours—a clear sign that many are willing to skip the sites. Meta’s way of invading privacy.
If you want to participate in the Theme action but don’t want to share all your data with Meta, there is a better way: Don’t join. Instead, wait until Threads connect to the broader decentralized social media ecosystem enabled by the ActivityPub protocol, which is also used by mastodons. It will allow you to interact with Themes without registering an account or downloading an app. And if you’re still trying to choose which Twitter alternative to start with—or just want to see the data each platform collects—we’ve got you covered. Break down the privacy policies of Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, etc..
Even if you do not share your data with Meta, information about you that already exists may still be for sale. But it’s not just companies buying your personal information—police and spies are buying it too. That is, unless the US Congress stops it. A bipartisan group of lawmakers has submitted an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which Congress must pass every year that would bans intelligence agencies from buying sensitive data on Americans. The amendment must go through a lengthy debate before it can become law, but if Congress upholds it, US spies will no longer be able to purchase location data and search history. you on the open market.
Finally, our partners at Grist investigate the risks posed by electric vehicle charging stations. Due to multiple security holes and the lack of industry standards to protect electric vehicle chargers from hackers, both motorists and the entire power grid can be at risk.
But that’s not all. Each week, we compile security news that we do not personally report in depth. Click on the title to read the full story. And stay safe out there.
For many years, the St. Petersburg embodies many Americans’ worst fears about Russia’s disinformation influence on Western social media. The operation, created by Vladimir Putin’s ally and oligarch Yevgeny Prighozin, has caused scandals, disinformation and interference in US elections deep enough to warrant an election. indictment from the Department of Justice against a group of its employees and even a Disruptive hacking activity from US Cyber Command its network targeting.
Now, after the US government’s efforts to cripple or destroy Prighozin’s troll factory, he’s done it himself. After a brief, bizarre rebellion by Prighozin’s mercenary Wagner Corporation, contracted to take part in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Prighozin was stripped of his Russian assets, including the media group that the Agency had established. Internet Research is a part. Initially, the troll farm was looking for a new owner, but Reuters reported ahead of the 4th of July holiday that the infamous influence machine would be disbanded instead. Prighozin, meanwhile, is said to have been exiled to Belarus—but now back to Russiaaccording to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
A controversial surveillance bill in France, which is being passed by the country’s parliament, would allow law enforcement to stealthily monitor criminal suspects through the cameras and microphones on their devices. Laws that apply to smartphones, connected cars, laptops and other devices were passed by the French National Assembly earlier this week as part of broader changes to the justice system. France. Responding to criticism, French president Emmanuel Macron’s party made changes to the law allowing its use only “when proven by the nature and seriousness of the crime”, in just one month. appropriate period and up to six months. , regardless of the suspected offense. Both the country’s right-wing and left-wing political parties continue to oppose the bill.
In recent years, U.S. credit cards have become much less vulnerable to fraud as banks have added security features like authentication chips. But the EBT card, the debit card provided to many of the poorest Americans in the welfare system, fell behind in those protections, instead continuing to store their numbers in a magnetic stripe. simplicity. As a result, millions of dollars were irreversibly stolen from some of the country’s most impoverished and vulnerable families, like being caught in a Bloomberg Business Week feature in this week’s “Heist Issue” magazine. California alone, according to the report, saw an average of $10 million stolen each month during the first three months of this year. The scam scheme is carried out by criminals installing “skimmer” devices on grocery store point-of-sale systems and ATMs that record credit card numbers, which are then used to withdraw money from their accounts. accounts as soon as they are refreshed at midnight. first of the month. Business week tells the story of a mother of five whose welfare funds were stolen this way four times in less than a year.
Japan’s Port of Nagoya—the country’s largest cargo port. handles about 10 percent of its total shipments — it was revealed on Tuesday that it had been the victim of a ransomware attack. The attack, apparently carried out by Russia-linked ransomware group LockBit, has prevented companies like Toyota from unloading manufactured parts from ships and has resulted in traffic congestion for truckers unloading containers at the port. However, to the credit of the shipping port of Nagoya, it recovered quickly from the attack, resuming operations just two days later.
