Israeli spyware manufacturer NSO Group has been in the US Department of Trade “Blacklist” since 2021 over its business to sell targeted hacking instruments. But a wired investigation found that the company now seems to be working to set up a return in Trump’s America and appoint a lobby firm with the ties with the administration to make his case.
While the White House continues with the massive onslaught of the US federal government, remote and hybrid workers were forced to the office in a poorly coordinated effort that left critical employees without the necessary resources-even reliable Wi-Fi. And Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) held a ‘Hackathon’ in Washington, DC, this week to work on developing a ‘mega-API’ that can easily serve as a bridge between software systems for access to and part of IRS data.
Meanwhile, new research this week indicates that incorrectly configured sexual fantasy-focused AI-Chatbots are leaking users on the open Internet-which includes explicit directions and conversations that in some cases include descriptions of sexual abuse of children.
And there is more. Every week we make the security and privacy news that we do not cover in depth ourselves. Click on the headings to read the full stories and stay safe out there.
In a secret December meeting between the US and China, Beijing officials demanded credit for a broad Hacking campaign that jeopardized US infrastructure and upset US officials, according to Wall Street Journal sources. The tensions between the two countries have increased sharply over the past few weeks due to President Donald Trump’s trade war.
During public and private meetings, Chinese officials are typically stuck in their denials on all accusations of offensive burglary. This makes it all the more unusual for the Chinese delegation to specifically confirm that years of attacks on US water tools, ports and other targets are the result of the US policy support from Taiwan. Safety researchers refer to the collective activity that they were done by the actor “volt typhoon”.
Meanwhile, the National Counter Intelligence and Security Center, together with the FBI and Pentagon’s counterintelligence service, issued a warning this week that China’s intelligence services worked to recruit current and former US federal employees by posing as private organizations such as consulting firms and thinking.
US citizenship and immigration services said on Wednesday that it began to monitor immigrants’ social media activity for signs of anti -Semitic activities and ‘physical harassment of Jewish individuals’. The agency, which works under the Department of Home Security, said such behavior would be grounds for the “refusing requests to refuse immigration benefits.” The new policy applies to people who apply for permanent residence in the US, as well as students and other subsidiaries of “educational institutions linked to anti -Semitic activities.” The move comes because immigration and Customs handling controversial arrests of pro-Palestinian student activists, including Mahmoud Khalil of the University of Columbia and Rumeysa Ozturk of Tufts University, made about alleged anti-Semitic activities. Their lawyers deny the allegations.
President Trump ordered a federal investigation into the former director of US cyber security and director of infrastructure safety this week, Chris Krebs. An executive order on Wednesday revoked the safety clearance of Krebs and also ordered the Department of Home Security and the US Attorney General to do the review. Krebs was fired by Trump in November 2020 during his first term after Krebs’s claims of election fraud during the presidential election in the year in public. The executive order claims that by depriving false claims about the election during office, Krebs violated the prohibition of the first amendment to the government’s interference in freedom of expression.
In addition to the removal of Krebs’s approval, the order also revokes the cleanup of anyone working at Krebs’s current employer, security firm Sentinelone. The company said in a statement this week that it will “actively work together on any review of security clearances held by any of our staff” and emphasizes that the order will not result in a significant operational disruption because the company only has a handful of employees with approval.
Dave Luber, director of the cyber security division in cyber security, and Cyber Command’s executive director Morgan Adamski will no longer speak at the prominent RSA security conference, which will start in San Francisco on April 28. Both appeared at the conference last year. A source told NextGov/FCW that the cancellations are the result of agency restrictions on non -essential journey. RSA typically contains top US national security and cyber security officials with players and researchers in the industry. President Trump recently fired General Timothy Haugh, who led both the NSA and the US cyber assignment.