Security

Security Roundup

AI Found a Root Bug in Linux That Everyone Missed for 15 Years

Plus: The Pentagon is training amateurs to become part of its hacker army, a Flock license plate reader error led to cops surrounding a car reviewer, and more.

Dell Cameron and Lily Hay Newman

Chat Control’s Back

A Majority of European Lawmakers Voted Against Letting Big Tech Read Our Messages. They’re Going to Anyway

Isabella Ward

Risky Business

Madison Square Garden Kept a List of Gay Celebrities

Noah Shachtman and Maddy Varner

Cyberattacks and Hacks

OnlyFans Models Are Accidentally Making Hacked Government Websites Disappear

Scammers are hijacking government websites to upload ads for “leaked” OnlyFans content. Thousands of copyright complaints from adult creators are helping people avoid malicious links.

Matt Burgess

What Happens if China Hacks the US Water Supply? I Went to a Secret War Game to Find Out

Burst water mains. Evacuated hospitals. In a closed-door simulation, insurers played out their response to a mass disruption by China’s Volt Typhoon hackers—and found a nightmare scenario.

Andy Greenberg

EU Politicians Investigated Pegasus Spyware. Then It Ended Up on One of Their Phones

“It is a direct attack on the rule of law,” says one European Parliament member of the new findings from Citizen Lab.

Lily Hay Newman and Matt Burgess

Claude Helped a Hacker Find a Way to Issue Tickets to Almost Every US Music Festival

A researcher found that using Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.7, he could break into the website of Front Gate—used by every festival from Lollapalooza to Bonnaroo—and freely issue any ticket he chose.

Andy Greenberg

Privacy

Apple’s Hide My Email Service Fails to Hide Your Email

Plus: Alleged Scattered Spider hacking member extradited, dozens of license plate reader errors, and Indian officials are concerned about WhatsApp’s username rollout.

Matt Burgess and Lily Hay Newman

Top Google Security Staff Warn Search Data Could Be Hacked if EU Rules Change

Europe’s pro-competition proposals could see Google Search and Android systems opened up. The company claims there are serious privacy flaws.

Matt Burgess

LastPass Users Had Their Data Stolen—Again

Plus: Former national security advisor John Bolton pleads guilty in classified-materials case, Microsoft helps take down major infostealer infrastructure, and more.

Lily Hay Newman

The Pentagon Is Looking Into the Dialog Data Exposure for Unmasking National Security Officials

Exposed records from the private group included the personal information of a senior White House intelligence official and an active-duty special operations officer.

Dell Cameron and Dhruv Mehrotra

Security Advice

You Can Disable Gemini in Chrome if It’s Freaking You Out

Chrome users were caught off guard by a 4-GB Google AI model baked into Chrome, sparking privacy concerns. The good news: You can easily uninstall it. The bad? You might not want to.

Lily Hay Newman

How the Internet Broke Everyone’s Bullshit Detectors

From AI-generated images to restricted satellite data, the systems used to verify what’s real online are struggling to keep up.

Gia Chaudry

How to Organize Safely in the Age of Surveillance

From threat modeling to encrypted collaboration apps, we’ve collected experts’ tips and tools for safely and effectively building a group—even while being targeted and tracked by the powerful.

Andy Greenberg and Lily Hay Newman

How to Protest Safely in the Age of Surveillance

Law enforcement has more tools than ever to track your movements and access your communications. Here’s how to protect your privacy if you plan to protest.

Andy Greenberg and Lily Hay Newman

Security News

Meta Contractors Posed as Teens to Prompt Rival Chatbots About Suicide, Sex, and Drugs

Hundreds of contractors working on a project for Meta pretended to be kids in order to see how other chatbots like Gemini and ChatGPT would respond to high-risk subjects, WIRED found.

Dhruv Mehrotra and Joel Khalili

Dialog Claims It Was Hacked. A Misconfigured Website Left Its Members Exposed

The private events group, cofounded by Peter Thiel, says a “criminal” hacker is behind a breach that exposed members’ personal details. WIRED found no evidence a break-in was needed to access the files.

Dell Cameron and Dhruv Mehrotra

OpenAI Launches Full-Scale Effort to Patch Open-Source Bugs as It Takes on Anthropic’s Mythos

Amid concerns about AI models’ cybersecurity capabilities, OpenAI revealed an improved version of GPT-5.5-Cyber and its “Patch the Planet” initiative to fix open-source software bugs.

Lily Hay Newman