Congress Again Fails to Limit Scope of Spy Powers in New Defense Bill
The US Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Wednesday after congressional leaders earlier this month stripped the bill of provisions designed to…
Category: Wired
Intel Officials Warned Police That US Cities Aren’t Ready for Hostile Drones
In the memo obtained by WIRED, DHS displays less confidence in its ability to detect menacing drones. The document, which authorities were instructed not to…
Stop Calling Online Scams ‘Pig Butchering,’ Interpol Warns
Workers set up legitimate-looking social media accounts they can use to target potential victims, and they follow scripts for interacting with targets. Managers of the…
Drug Dealers Have Moved Onto Social Media
“We were wondering if you will be interested in having a trip with our products,” one Instagram account messaged me recently. On X, meanwhile, posts…
The Top Cybersecurity Agency in the US Is Bracing for Donald Trump
A second CISA employee predicts that “compliance efforts like secure-by-design may not have the support that they currently benefit from.” That retreat from corporate oversight…
Hackers Can Jailbreak Digital License Plates to Make Others Pay Their Tolls and Tickets
Digital license plates, already legal to buy in a growing number of states and to drive with nationwide, offer a few perks over their sheet…
The Simple Math Behind Public Key Cryptography
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. For thousands of years, if you wanted to send a secret message, there was basically…
Microsoft’s AI Recall Tool Is Still Sucking Up Credit Card and Social Security Numbers
What a week! On Monday, police arrested 26-year-old Luigi Mangione and charged him in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Mangione’s five-day run from…
The New Jersey Drone Mystery May Not Actually Be That Mysterious
Across New Jersey, reports of mysterious drone sightings have been rising for weeks, with people contacting authorities and posting on social media about aerial vehicles…
Why the US Military Can’t Just Shoot Down the Mystery Drones
“By all indications, [small unmanned aerial systems] will present a safety and security risk to military installations and other critical infrastructure for the foreseeable future,”…
Human Misuse Will Make Artificial Intelligence More Dangerous
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expects AGI, or artificial general intelligence—AI that outperforms humans at most tasks—around 2027 or 2028. Elon Musk’s prediction is either 2025…
As the Mastermind of Far-Right ‘Active Clubs’ Goes to Prison, His Violent Movement Goes Global
American neo-Nazi Robert Rundo’s six-year “battle with the feds”—a fight that spans two dismissals, three appellate reversals, and an extradition and deportation from at least…