United States went to the polls this week to vote in the midterm elections. With public confidence in the electoral system at an all-time low, the secret ballot is more important now than ever. We also took a look at a far-right hack that has been used to defraud thousands of voter registrations.
Meanwhile, the Department of Justice announced that a Georgia man pleaded guilty to wire fraud nine years after stealing more than 50,000 bitcoins from Silk Road, a popular online marketplace. You may have heard that things have gone awry on Twitter, with a flurry of impersonators plaguing the platform hours after the release of a service that allows anyone who pays $8 a month to receive a check that says they’ve been “verified.” It is a gift to scammers and grifters of all shades.
A new analysis shows that two large, runaway vessels were found near the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the days before the gas leak was detected. Officials suspect sabotage, and NATO is investigating. In addition, Russian military hackers are pursuing a new strategy that favors quick attacks with immediate results.
And there are many. Every week we show stories that we haven’t covered in depth. Click on the topics below to read all the articles.
This week there was more chaos on Twitter as security executives resigned after arguing with their new boss, Elon Musk, over how the company would meet its obligations to the Federal Trade Commission. After two data breaches in 2009, Twitter agreed to provide regular reports on its privacy practices under a 2011 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. The company settled with the FTC earlier this year after it was caught sending advertisements to email addresses and phone numbers, which people provided as part of their security. If Twitter doesn’t follow through on its promises to the agency, the FTC could fine the company billions of dollars.
On Wednesday, just before the deadline for Twitter to file a report with the FTC, Twitter’s chief security officer, chief privacy officer, and chief compliance officer resigned. The company’s Director of Trust and Safety he also left the company the next day.
In a statement sent to Twitter’s Slack that was obtained by The Verge, a lawyer for the privacy group wrote that engineers may need to “convince themselves” that their work is compatible with the implementation, burdening engineers with “personal, professional, and legal risk.” The employee added that Alex Spiro, Musk’s attorney, told employees that “Elon puts rocks in the air — they’re not afraid of the FTC.”
The resignations came as the company began to fight back against activists who tried a new way to verify the company’s payments only hours after it was launched.
About 60 of Maricopa County’s 223 voting precincts reported technical problems on Election Day, frustrating voters and increasing fraud. Technicians were dispatched to polling places in Arizona’s largest state on Tuesday to repair malfunctioning vote counting machines. Election officials urged disenchanted voters to vote elsewhere or leave their ballots in a secure ballot box to be counted later. “Everyone would have voted.” No one has been fired,” Bill Gates, chairman of the Maricopa County board of supervisors, told reporters Tuesday morning.
But that hasn’t stopped right-wing activists, including former US President Donald Trump, from using the glitch to claim voter suppression. Researchers at the University of Washington discovered online chats about tabulator problems started trending after Republican activist Charlie Kirk wrote about them; Later, Trump went on Social Truth to claim, without evidence, that only “Republican constituencies” were affected by the errors. Around 2:30 pm local time, officials in Arizona announced that they would fix the problem by replacing the printer.
A Canadian woman named Mikhail Vasiliev was arrested in Canada on Wednesday for her involvement in the LockBit ransomware campaign, according to the US Department of Justice and Europol. LockBit has claimed at least 1,000 lives, according to Deep Instinct’s 2022 Interim Cyber Threat Report, and is responsible for about 44 percent of ransomware campaigns this year. Vasiliev has been charged with “conspiracy to intentionally destroy a protected computer and disseminate ransom demands” and is currently in Canada awaiting extradition to the United States. If found guilty, he faces up to five years in prison.
A security issue delayed the $2.04 billion Powerball drawing after an unnamed country failed to provide proper information and complete security protocols. According to the Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs Powerball, one of the state lottery commissions failed to complete the registration of sales and tickets in time for Monday night’s drawing. The 10-hour delay ended Tuesday with one winner who bought a ticket at Joe’s Service Center, a gas station in Altadena, California, lottery officials said. he said.
