as a slap A spree spread across the U.S., where false reports of active shooters sent police into schools, and WIRED investigated more than 90 incidents and found potential connections between many of them. “In talking to the many people who have been through it, I can tell you that the anxiety and fear were real to them for 15 minutes,” said Amanda S., program director and co-founder of the Educators School Safety Network. Klinger told Wired. “There was a period of time in these events where people were literally running for their lives and law enforcement was responding with their weapons and people thought it was real.”
Even in the wake of broad sanctions aimed at isolating Russia from the global economy in Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine, investigators around the world are struggling to stem the influx of capital into Russian military and paramilitary groups. Former Uber executive Joe Sullivan was convicted this week of obstructing an FTC investigation and failing to report a felony, a development that the tech industry is watching closely as it could be the first time a company executive has faced charges related to: Criminally charged with data breach. The Biden administration’s new executive order on privacy seems more like a Band-Aid than a panacea, as it seeks to reassure Europeans that their data is safe when stored in the United States despite government surveillance.
Meanwhile, Meta released the findings of its investigation into more than 400 malicious Android and iOS apps that it said were obtaining Facebook credentials to take over users’ accounts. We examine the cost of living online, the potential erosion of privacy from constant social media posting, and how it affects your sense of self.
Plus, there’s more. Every week, we highlight stories that we don’t cover in depth ourselves. Click on the title below to read the full story. And stay safe outside.
Just another day and another massive hack in the cryptocurrency industry. But this one is weird.
Binance revealed on Friday that unidentified hackers managed to exploit a flaw in the company’s BNB chain encrypted token, allowing them to mint 2 million of the company’s decentralized tokens, worth a total of $569 million. In other words, the money was not actually stolen from Binance, but was fabricated out of thin air due to security flaws in the Binance cryptocurrency. But despite this, the hackers appear ready to flood the market with BNB, thereby reducing its value to legitimate owners, while giving the hackers $5 billion.
Unfortunately for those hackers, even they don’t seem ready for a sudden windfall. Cryptocurrency tracking firm Elliptic found that they quickly swapped some of their tokens for various other cryptocurrencies. This allowed them to acquire about $53 million in ethereum-based tokens. But other cryptocurrencies they trade with BNB, such as Tether and USDC, are more centrally controlled, allowing funds to be frozen. Meanwhile, Binance managed to temporarily shut down its BNB blockchain to prevent further movement of the newly mined currency by the hackers. “So we had a very sophisticated vulnerability that managed to generate $569 million for ourselves,” said Thibaud Madelin, head of research at Elliptic. “But honestly, it was a mess.”
