Did you hear that Donald Trump got indicted this week? Of course you did. Ridiculous question. The first-ever indictment of a former US president had been looming for weeks. And now that it's happened, the move by a Manhattan grand jury is deepening fissures in America's already-fraught political divide. But while Trump headlines flood your feeds, there were plenty of other big stories this week, none of which have anything to do with any of that.
In Germany, police are cracking down on people who post adult content to websites and platforms that lack age-verification checks, like Twitter. This has resulted in fines and threats of jail time, while some performers are deleting their accounts—or fleeing the country. This is just one of the impacts of a wave of age-verification laws sweeping the global internet.
Meanwhile, in darker corners of the internet, North Korea–backed hackers are using a rare technique to launder their stolen cryptocurrencies: paying to mine clean crypto with loot taken from their victims. The tactic is meant to throw blockchain detectives off the trail of swiped funds. Speaking of ill-gotten gains, Costa Rica is still reeling from a series of ransomware attacks last spring that left swaths of the country's infrastructure devastated. As a result, the US government is sending $25 million in aid to help it recover.
Most victims of cyberattacks don't get help from the US government, however. Fortunately for them, this week Microsoft announced its new system, Security Copilot, which integrates OpenAI's ChatGPT and home-grown artificial intelligence to help incident responders managed breaches. Of course, the best way to protect yourself from getting hacked is to make sure all your systems are fully patched and up to date.
To top it all off, this week we revealed new documents obtained through a public records request which show that Good Smile, a major toy company that creates figurines for companies like Disney, invested $2.4 million in the toxic imageboard 4chan, helping to keep the company online.
But that's not all. Each week, we dive into the stories we weren't able to report on ourselves. Click on the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.
The Russian government and military remain the most aggressive in the world when it comes to disruptive acts of cyber-sabotage against civilian infrastructure. But documents leaked by a whistleblower inside a Russian intelligence contractor seem to reveal some new and alarming pages of the Kremlin’s hybrid war playbook.
A consortium of investigative journalists at 11 news outlets including Paper Trail Media, The Guardian, and The Washington Post obtained a leak of secret documents from a Russian cybersecurity contractor firm called Vulkan, the Russian word for volcano. The documents, which were also analyzed by cybersecurity firm Mandiant, reveal that Vulkan sold software tools to Russian intelligence agencies like the KGB-successor FSB and the GRU military intelligence agency, including its notorious cyberattack-focused team known as Sandworm.
The tools include one piece of software for scanning the internet for security vulnerabilities and another that seemed designed to organize disinformation campaigns and coordinate offensive hacking operations. Perhaps most disturbing of all was a proposal for a third tool that appeared to be designed to allow hackers to train in simulated networks of infrastructure systems like railways and pipelines, with specific references to methods to sabotage those systems with catastrophic effects. But it’s not clear whether that last tool was ever built, and if so, whether it was used primarily for offensive hacking or “red team” defensive training, or whether it led to the development of any actual hacking capabilities targeting critical infrastructure.
Security experts say North Korea–linked hackers have successfully carried out a supply chain attack through compromised versions of 3CX, a video and voice communications platform used by high-profile companies including American Express and Mercedes-Benz. 3CX says it has more than 600,000 customers. The hackers were able to install malware within the Mac and Windows versions of 3CX, which were signed with the company's keys, thus allowing the Trojanized apps to go undetected. The attack is being compared to Russian hackers' SolarWinds supply chain attack, which wrought havoc around the world for months.
As hacker-for-hire firms' tools proliferate to governments around the world, the Biden administration has made clear: The US will not be one of that industry's customers. A new executive order bans US agencies from buying access to that commercial spyware, a key step in a growing effort to curb companies like NSO Group, Cytrox, and Candiru, which have enabled surveillance and human rights abuses from Spain to Mexico to Saudi Arabia. US agencies haven't been confirmed to be past customers of any of those companies, though the FBI did at one point test NSO's Phantom spyware before ultimately walking away from a deal with the company. But the order nonetheless sets a precedent for governments worldwide, assuring that US taxpayer funds won't flow to a dangerous industry whose tools have offered intrusive hacking techniques to repressive regimes targeting activists, journalists, and human rights defenders.
While we're on the subject of dangerous hacker-for-hire firms targeting vulnerable activists: The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Indian hacker-for-hire firm BellTroX targeted climate change activists campaigning against Exxon, including Greenpeace, Public Citizen, 350.org, and the Rockefeller Family Fund. The firm was hired by Israeli private detective Aviram Azari, who has since pleaded guilty to hacking conspiracy charges. Exactly who hired Azari remains unclear, and Exxon denies having any connection to Azari or the hacking campaign. The hackers successfully accessed email accounts for Greenpeace, Public Citizen, and 350.org, but it's not yet clear whether they successfully penetrated the Rockefeller Family Fund, an organization created by Rockefeller heirs that has worked to combat the oil industry's efforts to lobby against climate change solutions.
