As the United States-Israel war with Iran barrels into its second month, President Donald Trump is reportedly plotting a potential mission to send US special forces into the country to take Tehran’s enriched uranium. Experts WIRED spoke to say such a plan would be extremely risky, likely putting the lives of troops in peril with a low chance of success.
Since the war with Iran started at the end of February, a mysterious radio station has been broadcasting seemingly random numbers in Persian. It’s unclear who is running the so-called number station, or who its intended audience is. But many speculate that it’s an intelligence operation using cipher technology that dates back more than a century.
In addition to the conflict with Iran, WIRED explored combat from many angles with our War Machine package of coverage, including the saga of one teenager who went missing amid the destruction of Gaza, the Kafkaesque challenges Palestinians face when they’re unable to get a death certificate for a loved one, a family forced into hiding over fears of US immigration agents, a peek inside the challenges at Anduril as it attempts to disrupt the defense industry, and more.
Beyond the many battles, WIRED revealed how one small New Hampshire town is having its police department’s salaries and other costs covered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Nearly a thousand other police departments around the US appear to be doing the same thing.
Think using a VPN gives you more privacy? Think again. A letter from US lawmakers this week questioned director of national security Tulsi Gabbard over whether US surveillance authorities allow the National Security Agency to target people who use a VPN. Due to the ways in which US law allows the targeting of people outside the US, it may not even matter if the VPN you use connects to servers overseas.
Also this week, WIRED published an excerpt from author Andrew Guthrie Ferguson’s new book, Your Data Will Be Used Against You, about the ways in which fitness trackers and biometric surveillance are further degrading your right to privacy.
Finally, the United Kingdom imposed sanctions against Xinbi Guarantee, a black market that researchers estimate has facilitated $20 billion in illicit sales. Xinbi, like other markets linked to the global scamming industry, operated on Telegram, where it managed to evade previous bans. It’s unclear whether the new sanctions will negatively impact its business in the long run.
That’s not all! Each week we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines (except the one that has no link) to read the full story. And stay safe out there.
Iranian Hackers Breached Kash Patel’s Email—but Not the FBI’s
The Iranian hacker group Handala—perhaps the most public and chaotic face of Iran’s efforts at cyber retaliation in the midst of the US and Israeli war against the country—today announced it had hacked an email account belonging to FBI director Kash Patel. “The so-called ‘impenetrable’ systems of the FBI were brought to their knees within hours by our team,” the group wrote in a statement on its website.
The first of those claims appears to be true: A collection of emails posted to the hackers’ site and labeled with the name of Patel’s apparent Gmail address appears to contain years of Patel’s messages and photos, from hotel reservations and business deals to photos of his travels and his family, mostly dated from 2010 to 2019. A Justice Department official confirmed to Reuters that Patel’s email had been breached, and that the leaked emails appeared to be real.
Handala’s second claim, however—that it hacked the FBI—seems, for now, to be fiction. All evidence points to Handala having breached Patel’s older, personal Gmail account. Widely believed to be a “hacktivist” front for Iran’s intelligence agency the MOIS, Handala suggested on its website that the emails contained classified information, but the messages initially reviewed by WIRED didn’t appear to be related to any government work. TechCrunch did find, however, that Patel appears to have forwarded some emails from his Justice Department email account to his Gmail account in 2014.
Handala, which cybersecurity experts have described to WIRED as an “opportunistic” hacker group whose cyberattacks and breaches are often calculated more for their propaganda value than their tactical impacts, has nonetheless made the most of Patel’s embarrassing breach. “To the whole world, we declare: the FBI is just a name, and behind this name, there is no real security,” the group wrote in its statement. “If your director can be compromised this easily, what do you expect from your lower-level employees?”
Handala Hackers Put $50 Million Bounty on Trump and Netanyahu’s Heads
For further evidence of Handala’s bombastic rhetoric, look no further than another post on its website earlier this week (we’re intentionally not linking to it) that offered a $50 million bounty to anyone who could “eliminate” US president Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “This substantial prize will be awarded, directly and securely, to any individual or group bold enough to show true action against tyranny,” the hackers’ statement read, along with an invitation to any would-be assassins to reach out via the encrypted messaging app Session. “All our communication and payment channels utilize the latest encryption and anonymization technologies, your safety and confidentiality are fully guaranteed.”
That bounty, Handala explained, was posted in answer to a statement about Handala published on the US Department of Justice website last week that offered $10 million for information leading to the identity or location of anyone who carries out “malicious cyber activities against US critical infrastructure” on behalf of a foreign government.
“Our message is clear: If you truly have the will and the power, come and find us!” Handala wrote in its response. “We fear no challenge and are prepared to respond to every attack with even greater force.”
In yet another post on its website this week, Handala also claimed to have doxed 28 engineers at military contractor Lockheed Martin working in Israel and threatened them with personal harm if they didn’t leave the country within 48 hours. When WIRED tried calling the phone numbers included in Handala’s leaked data, however, most of them didn’t work.
4 Years in, Apple’s Pegasus-Killer Remains Undefeated, Company Says
Apple says no device with its Lockdown Mode security feature enabled has ever been successfully compromised by mercenary spyware in the nearly four years since its launch. Amnesty International’s security lab head, Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, also says his team has seen no evidence of a successful attack against a Lockdown Mode–enabled iPhone. And Citizen Lab, which has documented several successful spyware attacks against iPhones, says none involve a Lockdown Mode bypass, while in two cases its researchers found the feature actively blocked attacks against NSO Group’s Pegasus and Intellexa’s Predator. Google researchers, meanwhile, found one spyware strain that simply abandons infection attempts when it detects the feature is enabled.
Lockdown Mode works by disabling commonly exploited iPhone features, such as most message attachment types and features like links and link previews. Incoming FaceTime calls are blocked unless the user has previously called that person within the past 30 days. When the iPhone is locked, it blocks connections with computers and accessories. The device will not automatically join nonsecure Wi-Fi networks, and 2G and 3G support is disabled. Apple has also doubled bounties for researchers who detect any Lockdown Mode bypass, with payouts up to $2 million.
Security researcher Patrick Wardle tells TechCrunch that Lockdown Mode is the most aggressive consumer-facing hardening feature ever shipped, noting that it eliminates entire exploit classes instead of patching individual flaws. Apple has reportedly sent spyware notifications to users in 150 countries. While it remains possible a bypass has gone undetected, Amnesty and Citizen Lab backing up Apple’s claims is a strong sign the feature is working as intended.
Russia Is Planning to Use Its Own Encryption for 5G
A proposed Russian law currently moving through the country’s legislative process would require that telecoms implement an encryption algorithm developed in Russia for all domestic 5G mobile networks. If the bill succeeds, all 5G mobile devices sold in Russia would need to support the homegrown encryption, known as NEA-7, to be able to connect to 5G. The bill includes a provision to phase out support for foreign algorithms by 2032—including the US’s AES, China’s ZUC, and the EU’s SNOW. The law seems focused, at least in part, on making it harder for Ukrainian drones (or those of other enemies) to use Russian SIM cards to aid infrastructure targeting. It also fits into the Kremlin’s years-long effort to isolate and exert control over the Russian internet. If passed, though, the law could severely hinder 5G expansion in Russia given that there currently isn’t cell tower equipment that supports NEA-7.
33 Data Brokers Admitted They Sell Americans’ Data to China, Russia, and Iran
The California Privacy Protection Agency updated its data broker registry on Tuesday with a concerning revelation: At least 33 data brokers self-reported selling or sharing Californians’ personal information with entities in China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran—the four nations California’s data broker law treats as foreign adversaries. (The registry doesn’t distinguish between sales to those nations’ governments and sales to private companies headquartered or incorporated there.)
The registry is significant even for users throughout the US, as California is the only state that statutorily requires this disclosure. China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran all have legal frameworks that can compel domestic companies to share data with state intelligence services, and all are active cyber adversaries of the United States. The US government considers even routine commercial data sales to private entities in those jurisdictions to be a national security risk.
Named companies include Cision, CoStar, Epsilon, HubSpot, Healthcare Inc., and Moody's, among others. Some of the 33 brokers have since claimed they incorrectly declared their own sales to entities in those countries on their filings, but as the Electronic Privacy Information Center noted, the reporting errors could cut both ways: If some brokers overstated their foreign sales, others may have understated theirs.
