cybersecurity

Silicon Valley crosswalk buttons hacked to imitate Musk, Zuckerberg voices

Security /

Audio-enabled traffic control crosswalk buttons across Silicon Valley were hacked over the weekend to include audio snippets imitating the voices of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.  Videos taken by locals in Menlo Park, Palo Alto, and Redwood City in California show the crosswalk buttons were playing AI-generated speech designed to sound like the two billionaires. […]

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Trump orders federal investigation into former CISA director Chris Krebs

Security /

President Trump on Wednesday ordered a federal investigation into Chris Krebs, the former director of U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA. In a new executive order, Trump instructed the Department of Homeland Security, which houses CISA, and the U.S. Attorney General to investigate Krebs, who was fired by the Trump administration in November 2020 soon after publicly

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Court document reveals locations of WhatsApp victims targeted by NSO spyware

Security /

NSO Group’s notorious spyware Pegasus was used to target 1,223 WhatsApp users in 51 different countries during a 2019 hacking campaign, according to a new court document.  The document was published on Friday as part of the lawsuit that Meta-owned WhatsApp filed against NSO Group in 2019, accusing the surveillance tech maker of exploiting a

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Senator puts hold on Trump’s nominee for CISA director, citing telco security ‘cover up’

Security /

Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden has put a hold on the Trump administration’s nomination of Sean Plankey to head the federal government’s top cybersecurity agency, citing a “multi-year cover up” of security flaws at U.S. telecommunication companies. Wyden said in remarks, seen by TechCrunch and confirmed by the senator’s spokesperson, that he will block the nomination

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UK’s demand for Apple backdoor should not be heard in secret, says court

Security /

The U.K. government has lost its bid to keep secret the details of a surveillance order it brought against Apple, according to a newly released decision by the U.K. surveillance powers’ court. The decision, posted on Monday by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in London, means that parts of the legal case will be held in

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Trump fires head of National Security Agency and Cyber Command

Security /

The Trump administration has fired Timothy Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency and Cyber Command, several news publications reported overnight into Friday.  Haugh, a career military official, led the National Security Agency, the U.S.’ main wiretapping and intelligence gathering agency, for little more than a year after his appointment in February 2024 following

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Ted Schlein’s Ballistic Ventures is raising $100M for a new fund

Venture /

Ballistic Ventures, the VC firm co-founded by Ted Schlein (known for his years at Kleiner Perkins), is raising $100 million for a new fund, TechCrunch has learned through a regulatory filing. This week, the San Francisco-based VC firm filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to raise the new fund, just over a year after

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This sneaky Android spyware needs a password to uninstall. Here’s how to remove it without one

Security /

Consumer-grade phone surveillance apps aren’t only intended to stay stealthy; some of these apps are also making it increasingly difficult to remove them.  TechCrunch has identified a stealthy phone monitoring app for Android that requires a password to uninstall, effectively blocking Android device owners from being able to remove the app. The spyware app, which

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