As analysts and governments around the world continue to call attention to North Korean digital fraud, researchers this week published 1,000 email addresses they claim are linked to North Korean IT worker scams perpetrated against Western companies, along with photos of people allegedly involved in the fraud. Xinbi Guarantee, a marketplace and platform used by Chinese-speaking crypto scammers for money laundering grew into an $8.4 billion hub before a crackdown by Telegram this week. And following a WIRED inquiry, messaging app Telegram banned thousands of accounts used for money laundering in cryptocurrency scams. The takedowns included prominent names like Haowang Guarantee, a black market known for enabling $27 billion in transactions.
The acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Russell Vought, quietly eliminated a plan to more tightly regulate the sale of Americans’ sensitive personal data. CFPB had originally launched the initiative in response to increasingly far reaching and reckless behavior from data brokers. And with the rise of widely available generative AI services—and corresponding fraud—people are increasingly looking for ways to verify and vet their digital interaction online.
Meanwhile, ahead of Google’s Android 16 launch next week, the company announced expanded capabilities for its Android Scam Detection tool that uses local AI analysis to flag potential scam texts in Google Messages. The company also launched a new, extra-secure mode for Android 16, Advanced Protection, that will allow vulnerable or highly targeted users to lock their devices down and utilize advanced scanning features for catching potentially suspicious activity.
But there’s more. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.
The cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase said this week that it suffered a data breach in which attackers stole data including customers’ names, physical and email addresses, phone numbers, government IDs like driver’s licenses and passports, last four digits of Social Security numbers, and other financial information. The company said that “criminals targeted our customer support agents overseas. They used cash offers to convince a small group of insiders to copy data in our customer support tools for less than 1 percent of Coinbase monthly transacting users.” The company said the attackers’ goal was to collect customer data to then contact those Coinbase users, impersonate Coinbase, and trick them into giving away their cryptocurrency. The attackers also contacted the company and attempted to extort the company for $20 million. Coinbase currently has about 9.7 million total users. The company said in an Securities and Exchange Commission breach disclosure notification that it expects that it will cost between $180 million and $400 million to remediate the breach and reimburse customers for stolen funds.
A four-count superseding indictment charged 12 additional people this week in an alleged criminal spree including more than $263 million in cryptocurrency theft, money laundering, and even physical break-ins. Several suspects were arrested this week in California in connection with the case. The indictment accuses the defendants of using stolen cryptocurrency for things like $500,000 nights out at clubs, hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on luxury handbags, watches, and clothes, private jet rentals, and “a fleet of at least 28 exotic cars ranging in value from $100,000 to $3.8 million.” The superseding indictment also alleges that some defendants used shell companies to register their “exotic cars” and “shipped bulk cash through US mail to members of the enterprise hidden in squishmallow stuffed animals.”
On Thursday, former FBI director James Comey posted and then deleted an Instagram photo of seashells arranged to spell out the numbers “8647” captioned: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.” Within hours, Republicans fixated on the post, claiming it was a call to violence against Donald Trump, the United States’ 47th president. Now, the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service are investigating.
If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant, you’ve probably heard someone in the kitchen shout that an item is “86’d”—a colloquialism meaning the kitchen is out of a particular menu item, like a cheeseburger. While most people don’t interpret that as a threat of violence against the cheeseburger, that’s apparently not how the president and his allies understood Comey’s post.
On Thursday, Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem wrote on X that both the DHS and Secret Service were investigating. “Disgraced former FBI Director James Comey just called for the assassination of @POTUS Trump,” she wrote. Later that night on Fox News, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard accused Comey of “issuing a hit” on Trump and argued he should be “put behind bars.”
“That meant assassination, and it says it loud and clear,” Trump told Fox News in an interview referring to the post, on Friday. Trump survived two assassination attempts last year.
Comey addressed the backlash in a follow-up post on Instagram, writing: “I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind, so I took the post down.”
Comey served as FBI director from 2013 until he was fired by President Trump in 2017 during an ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
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