Trump: "We heard in Minnesota there was a cyberattack and they blame it on Iran. I don't think so. I blame it on Minnesota because they're grossly incompetent. Iran's got bigger problems than worrying about Minnesota."
Kim Zetter
@kimzetter.bsky.social
Journalist - cyber/natn'l security. Speaker. Georgetown adjunct prof. Author - COUNTDOWN TO ZERO DAY: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon Signal: KimZ.42 https://www.zetter-zeroday.com
Exclusive: Guess who designed this year's Defcon badges? None other than famed hardware hacker Andrew "bunnie" Huang. The badges feature a new, secure and open-source chip Huang created, which doubles as a security token after the con. Hardware hackers will love the specs bsky.app/profile/defc...
The New Defcon Badges Pack a Unique Open Source Chip That Doubles as a Security Key
Created by legendary hardware hacker Andrew “bunnie” Huang, the badges for this year’s famed security conference aim to push the boundaries of security and transparency.
wired.com
Friendly #DEFCON34 reminder: Meta-style glasses with recording capabilities are prohibited at DEF CON. Surreptitious filming is an invasion of privacy, and will be treated as a CoC violation. There is no exception for recording glasses with prescription lenses […] [Original post on defcon.social]
👀 one of my fav #CyberSecurity reporters on one of my fav #cybercrime warriors: 'Tracking Peter Stokes and The Com: @nixonnixoff.bsky.social and Her Work Unmasking Cybercriminals.' I feel like the term of FAFO was made for cybercriminals who want to test Nixon. www.zetter-zeroday.com/tracking-pet...
Tracking Peter Stokes and The Com: Allison Nixon and Her Work Unmasking Cybercriminals
Any time a member of The Com gets arrested, there’s a good chance Allison Nixon played a role in it. Nixon is chief research officer at the cyber investigations firm Unit221B, named after the apartmen...
zetter-zeroday.com
NEW: Months after FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty cast a decisive vote approving Paramount’s historic $8 billion merger with Skydance Media, she and a guest accepted Kennedy Center gala tickets from the company worth more than $12,000.
FCC Officials Took Pricey Gifts From Paramount as the Company Needed Approval for Billion-Dollar Deals
Accepting tickets to the Kennedy Center honors gala compromised the commissioners’ impartiality, ethics experts told ProPublica. FCC Chair Brendan Carr has been gifted at least $63,000 worth of ticket...
propublica.org
The arrest last week of an Iranian hacker in Montenegro spotlights how Iran has moved into economic espionage and IP theft in recent years, emulating China. www.zetter-zeroday.com/arrest-of-ir...
Arrest of Iranian Hacker Spotlights Iran’s Movement into Economic Espionage and IP Theft
A lot has been written in the last decade about China’s economic espionage through its theft of intellectual property. Former FBI Director Christopher Wray once referred to these thefts as “one of the...
zetter-zeroday.com
"Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Congress would oversee Mr. Pulte’s office to ensure 'they report on legitimate foreign threats to elections, not Donald Trump’s imaginary ones.'" www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/u...
Bill Pulte Picks G.O.P. Election Operative for Spy Agency Job
nytimes.com
Supreme Court rejects Trump's bid to overturn a $5 million civil judgment against him after a jury found in 2023 that he sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll. @abbievansickle.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/06/29/u...
Supreme Court Lets $5 Million Sex Abuse Verdict Against Trump Stand
nytimes.com
Medical privacy is not only a personal right, but also a legal right. But what about when you're a politician and your job and your constituents depend on you showing up to do the job - or at least being transparent about why you can't?
Oriana González@oriana.bsky.social · 3mo agoNEW from @josepagliery.bsky.social: Tom Kean Jr. hasn’t been seen in Washington for over 75 days and has missed 88 House votes His neighbors in New Jersey say they haven’t seen him either Kean’s wife declined to comment when asked about her husband’s whereabouts www.notus.org/congress/tom...
I've received about 20 variations of this email in the last two months. Each of them is written by AI, and the aim always is to push a service on authors to promote their books - for a price, of course. They never mention this directly, however. I finally responded to one of the emails
Catching up with email and social media after two weeks in Europe. There must be a word (maybe a really long German one) for that feeling you have when you emerge from that blissful fog of ignorance that comes from being (mostly) disconnected and get hit with reality again.
In 2007, Bezos, already a multibillionaire at the time, did not pay anything in federal income taxes. He also did not pay a penny in federal taxes in 2011, due to claimed business losses. He currently pays just 1.1 percent of his income in federal taxes.
The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax
ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of IRS information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth — sometimes, ev...
propublica.org
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3mo agoSORKIN: Why lay people off at the Post? Why fire people? BEZOS: The Post needs to be a profitable enterprise that stands on its own 2 feet S: Does it? Some people say it should be a trust BEZOS: Yes. It's a measure of its relevance. If people aren't paying for our product, it's not good enough
Sir, another graduation ceremony in which the students booed AI has dropped. "College graduates were pissed after their school used AI to announce graduates’ names and missed hundreds of names" (via @/FearedBuck on Twitter)
“But as Trump turns 80 next month, his recent behavior should prompt even more questions than usual about his stability, judgment, and mental sharpness” www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
A Different Kind of Fading President
Joe Biden became quieter, while Donald Trump grows even louder.
theatlantic.com
These days, everyone uses AI to make up numbers left, right and center. Two decades ago, you needed a foreign government to do that for you.
Kim Zetter@kimzetter.bsky.social · 3mo agoExclusive: Fast16 malware has raised questions about what it was designed to do. Researchers at Symantec finally confirm it was subverting software used to simulate nuclear weapons explosions. Nuclear experts also tell me Iran was the likely target and explain how it impacted nuclear weapons tests
Malware archeology never stops digging up new and interesting artifacts.
Kim Zetter@kimzetter.bsky.social · 3mo agoFast16 wasn't aimed at sabotaging nuclear weapons themselves, but was only designed to alter data being fed to engineers from software used to simulate nuclear explosions tests. The goal was to trick engineers into believing their tests were failing to create confusion and slow down weapons program
quantum computing is to encryption algorithms as AI is to nation-state obfuscated malware
Kim Zetter@kimzetter.bsky.social · 3mo agoExclusive: Fast16 malware has raised questions about what it was designed to do. Researchers at Symantec finally confirm it was subverting software used to simulate nuclear weapons explosions. Nuclear experts also tell me Iran was the likely target and explain how it impacted nuclear weapons tests
Exclusive: Fast16 malware has raised questions about what it was designed to do. Researchers at Symantec finally confirm it was subverting software used to simulate nuclear weapons explosions. Nuclear experts also tell me Iran was the likely target and explain how it impacted nuclear weapons tests
Experts Confirm the Fast16 Malware Was Sabotaging Nuclear Weapons Tests, Likely in Iran
Fast16 didn't predate Stuxnet but was contemporaneous with it. It also wasn't aimed at altering nuclear weapons but was simply feeding false data to engineers about the nuclear detonation tests they w...
zetter-zeroday.com
NEW: Google is rolling out a new feature for Android called Intrusion Logging, designed specifically to help researchers investigate attacks done with spyware and forensic tools. Amnesty says this is “a fundamental shift in the amount and quality of forensic data available on Android devices.”
Google launches new Android security feature to help uncover spyware attacks | TechCrunch
Intrusion Logging is a new part of Android’s Advanced Protection Mode, which aims to help protect human rights activists, journalists, and dissidents from government spyware attack and law enforcement...
techcrunch.com
And it wouldn't even lead to lower prices at the pump! Here's the legendary @pkrugman.bsky.social writing in 2000.
Mike Nellis@mikenellis.bsky.social · 3mo agoThe White House floating a suspension of the national gas tax is the first real admission from the Trump admin of how much worse things are going to get.
Hm. Academics need to publish their work and get it distributed. But Elsevier, a giant in academic publishing, *requires* academics to sign over copyright to their papers to publish them. Now Elsevier is suing AI firms to get big payoff for work that Elsevier should never get to own in first place
Nature@nature.com · 3mo agoScience publishing giant Elsevier has joined the dozens of firms and individuals suing artificial intelligence companies over their alleged use of copyrighted works in training AI models go.nature.com/4eFGLZK
𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 𝐉𝐔𝐋𝐈𝐄 𝐊 𝐁𝐑𝐎𝐖𝐍 On winning the Museum of Political Corruption's 2026 Nellie Bly Award AND a Pulitzer! Well-deserved honors for your impactful and courageous reporting. @jkbjournalist.bsky.social #NellieBlyAward2026 #MuseumofPoliticalCorruption
Trenchant exec, Peter Williams, who stole zero-day exploits from his employer and sold them to a Russian buyer (known to sell exploits to the Russian government) has been ordered to pay $10 million in restitution to his former employer www.zetter-zeroday.com/trenchant-ex...
Trenchant Exec Who Sold Zero Days to Russian Buyer Ordered to Pay $10 Million in Restitution to Former Employers
Peter Joseph Williams, the former L3 Trenchant executive recently convicted of stealing zero-day exploits from his employer and selling them to a Russian broker, has been ordered to pay $10 million to...
zetter-zeroday.com
Every single sentence of this article is more insane than the last, but the standout was this: "When I reached a former longtime senior FBI official to ask whether he’d ever seen personally branded liquor bottles distributed by a previous FBI director, he burst out laughing."
TrumpsTaxes@trumpstaxes.com · 3mo agoOn the same day it was announced that the FBI was investigating journalist Sarah Fitzpatrick after her devastating article on Kash Patel and alcohol…Sarah Fitzpatrick publishes yet another article on Kash Patel and alcohol. GIFT ARTICLE to read/share. www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
Shut down by US regulators in 2022, Polymarket moved to Panama. Except ...
Bobby Allyn@bobbyallyn.bsky.social · 3mo agoWe looked into Polymarket's presence in Panama, obtained its government paperwork and visited its headquarters in Panama City. There was no sign of Polymarket. Nobody had heard of Polymarket there. www.npr.org/2026/05/05/n...
🎉🏆 Such awesome news. Even more awesome because @yaelwrites.com is a freelancer who brought the story to AP and worked with them on the reporting for three years.
Yael Grauer@yaelwrites.com · 3mo agoI am honored to share the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Best International Reporting with Dake Kang, Byron Tau, Aniruddha Ghosal and Garance Burke for our reporting revealing how Silicon Valley largely designed and built China's surveillance state and enabled human rights abuses.
I am honored to share the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Best International Reporting with Dake Kang, Byron Tau, Aniruddha Ghosal and Garance Burke for our reporting revealing how Silicon Valley largely designed and built China's surveillance state and enabled human rights abuses.
"Three providers account for 63 percent of the market share of data centers: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. The United Kingdom already has deemed data centers as a standalone critical infrastructure sector."
CyberScoop@cyberscoop.bsky.social · 3mo agoA hearing of the House Homeland Security panel’s cyber subcommittee weighed whether to designate data centers as a standalone critical infrastructure sector. cyberscoop.com/congress-ind...
NEW: A Russian hacker who broke into and damaged critical oil and gas infrastructure facilities in the US, Ukraine and other countries was arrested and pleaded guilty to charges that carry up to 27 years in prison. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Russian Charged in Oil and Gas Facility Hacks Pleads Guilty
A Russian hacker who helped to breach critical oil and gas facilities in the US, Ukraine and other countries pleaded guilty to charges that carry as many as 27 years in prison.
bloomberg.com