In December 2020, security giant Mandiant revealed that it had been hacked. His disclosure was the first public sign of the SolarWinds hack, a Russian-orchestrated supply chain attack that is widely considered one of the biggest spy hacks in history. Among its victims were the United States Departments of Homeland Security, Energy and Justice. This step-by-step account of the historic SolarWinds attack by Kim Zetter traces the ways the hackers carried out the attack and how they were ultimately caught.
The anti-abortion group American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) suffered a major data breach this week. The doctors’ organization, which sued the US government to ban the abortion drug mifepristone, left an unsecured Google Drive on its website, exposing a decade of email exchanges, financial and tax records and more sensitive data. The details give unprecedented insight into the organization, which has been described as a “hate group” for its views on LGBTQ people. While ACPeds, which is not a school at all, characterizes itself as a “scientific organization,” the leaked records show its deeply evangelical Christian mission.
Security experts have promised a future in which passwords will cease to exist for the better part of a decade. However, that reality took a big step forward this week—really!—as Google rolled out passcode logins to billions of people. The technique uses cryptographic keys that are stored on your devices to replace your old and insecure passwords.
Elsewhere, police in the US, Europe and nine other countries have arrested 288 people for their involvement in dark web drug markets, including the Monopoly Market site, which was quietly taken offline in 2021. The owner of Facebook, Meta, added new tools to its business accounts in an attempt to thwart bad guys who abuse them, including who can become an account manager and access lines of credit.
But that is not all. Every week, we round up the news that we don’t report in depth ourselves. Click on the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.
Russian ships with underwater operations teams have been identified near the sites of the Nord Stream pipeline explosions in the days before the explosions, according to a joint investigation by national stations in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. Journalists for the publications combined intercepted radio transmissions from the ships with satellite imagery to identify their locations and trace their routes. It is the latest example of researchers piecing together different data sources, from various unconnected sources, to reveal new details about real-world events.
According to the investigation, three ships sailed from naval bases in Russia to near the sites of the explosions in June and September 2022. All the ships had disabled their AIS location tracking services, an act often described as “going dark.” ” and is commonly used. to conceal the activity. Among the vessels were the navy research vessel Sibiryakov and a tugboat called the SB-123, which is said to be capable of launching mini-submarines. (In November 2022, WIRED reported on the presence of “ghost ships” at the time of the explosions, but had no information on their identity.)
On the other hand, another Russian ship, the SS-750, was close to the pipelines four days before they exploded. In response to a public records request, the Danish Defense Command confirmed to the Informationa Danish news site, which had 26 photos of the SS-750 near the sites.
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