China Secretly (and Weirdly) Admits It Hacked US Infrastructure

The Israeli spyware maker NSO Group has been on the US Department of Commerce "blacklist" since 2021 over its business of selling targeted hacking tools. But a WIRED investigation has found that the company now appears to be working to stage a comeback in Trump's America, hiring a lobbying firm with the ties to the administration to make its case. As the White House continues its massive gutting of the United States federal government, remote and hybrid workers have been forced back to the office in a poorly coordinated effort that has left critical employees without 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 could act as a bridge between software systems for accessing and sharing IRS data more easily. Meanwhile, new research this week indicates that misconfigured sexual fantasy-focused AI chatbots are leaking users' chats on the open internet--revealing explicit prompts and conversations that in some cases include descriptions of child sexual abuse.