In this week, The Justice Department charged a 22-year-old man with forgery of the water installation where he used to work. It is a clear reminder that while the electricity grid is receiving the most attention, it is not the only critical infrastructure vulnerable to potentially devastating attacks.
We also took a look at YouTube’s ongoing issues with moderating child-centered content; a WIRED investigation found dozens of creepy thumbnails on videos for Minecraft and child-centered searches that were in or at the top of the platform’s “Topic” pages. It’s not as serious a situation as the so-called Elsagate controversy of a few years ago, in which the YouTube Kids app was flooded with grotesque videos with popular children’s characters performing indescribable acts. But it still shows that YouTube has a lot of moderation work still ahead.
Tired of receiving unwanted files from strangers, either through AirDrop or through what Android calls its version nowadays? You can make them stop! And you probably should. Follow our guide to check and uncheck the various settings needed to stop over-sharing.
And there are more! Every week we gather all the news that WIRED did not cover in depth. Click on the titles to read the full stories. And stay safe there.
An organization known as the “Chicken Drumstick” reportedly received $ 76 million in revenue from its video game scam service before law enforcement separated them this week. The group had paid $ 10 a month for cheating on games like Overwatch and Call of Duty Mobile. In addition to confiscating $ 46 million in assets – which did not include a small number of luxury cars – police say they destroyed 17 scammers and arrested 10 people during the removal. Chinese technician Tencent, who has a stake in several major gaming companies, collaborated with authorities in the operation.
A whistleblower tells independent security journalist Brian Krebs that a recent breach of the network equipment company Ubiquiti was much more serious than the one originally reported. The source said the hackers “gained full read / write access to Ubiquiti databases on Amazon Web Services,” as well as root administrator access to Ubiquiti’s AWS accounts. This is basically the keys to the kingdom. Ubiquiti said in response that it has no indication that users’ data has been accessed or stolen, although the Krebs source says the company does not keep logs to provide this information. Anyway, it’s a mess!
In January, Google reported that hackers in the North Korean Lazarus Group spent a considerable amount of energy trying to fool security researchers and even had some success in doing so. This week, the search giant’s threat analysis group tracked down, saying the North Korean campaign continued quickly, this time armed with a fake website and fake social media profiles. In a trolling-inspired piece, one of the puppets on Twitter was named Sebastian Lazărescue.
It is safe to say that many, many people are feeling the pandemic depleting these days. But consider the men and women of the US Cyber Security and Infrastructure Agency. After its highly respected leader, Chris Krebs, was fired from the presidential tweet last fall, CISA had to contend with the consequences of SolarWinds and Hafnium, one of the largest hacking campaigns to hit the United States in recent history. Politico reports that the agency’s 2,000 workers are dangerously thin – which could leave the country ill-prepared to deal with the next attack.
Last weekend, the US Strategic Command – they are the ones supervising nuclear weapons – sent a small series of nonsense on Twitter, causing some to understand in a clear way if they were hacked. The good news is, no, they weren’t. The less good news is that, instead, the child of anyone who was connected to the account had a moment on the keyboard. Just the right mix of adorable and alarming!
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