UnknowingFool writes: In November 2021, Roblox sued YouTuber, Benjamin Simon aka "Ruben Sim" for $1.6M accusing him of griefing: harassment of users, harassment of employees, and disrupting the October 2021 Roblox Developers Conference by posting a false bomb threat. Ruben Sim has settled the suit with actions including: paying $150,000, staying off the platform [for several years], staying away from all Roblox facilities, and taking down all his YouTube videos regarding Roblox [if they make false statements, encourage violence, or glamorize Roblox rule-breaking].

tThe Washington Post reports: Clearview AI is telling investors it is on track to have 100 billion facial photos in its database within a year, enough to ensure "almost everyone in the world will be identifiable," according to a financial presentation from December obtained by The Washington Post.

Those images — equivalent to 14 photos for each of the 7 billion people on Earth — would help power a surveillance system that has been used for arrests and criminal investigations by thousands of law enforcement and government agencies around the world. And the company wants to expand beyond scanning faces for the police, saying in the presentation that it could monitor "gig economy" workers and is researching a number of new technologies that could identify someone based on how they walk, detect their location from a photo or scan their fingerprints from afar.

The 55-page "pitch deck," the contents of which have not been reported previously, reveals surprising details about how the company, whose work already is controversial, is positioning itself for a major expansion, funded in large part by government contracts and the taxpayers the system would be used to monitor. The document was made for fundraising purposes, and it is unclear how realistic its goals might be. The company said that its "index of faces" has grown from 3 billion images to more than 10 billion since early 2020 and that its data collection system now ingests 1.5 billion images a month.

With $50 million from investors, the company said, it could bulk up its data collection powers to 100 billion photos, build new products, expand its international sales team and pay more toward lobbying government policymakers to "develop favorable regulation."
The article notes that major tech companies like Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft have all limited or ended their own sales of facial recognition technology — adding that Clearview's presentation simple describes this as a major business opportunity for themselves.

In addition, the Post reports Clearview's presentation brags "that its product is even more comprehensive than systems in use in China, because its 'facial database' is connected to 'public source metadata' and 'social linkage' information."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: The delayed 5G BlackBerry phone is dead, OnwardMobility has confirmed on its website. "It is with great sadness that we announce that OnwardMobility will be shutting down, and we will no longer be proceeding with the development of an ultra-secure smartphone with a physical keyboard," OnwardMobility said in a message posted Friday, as spotted earlier by CrackBerry. "Please know that this was not a decision that we made lightly or in haste. We share your disappointment in this news and assure you this is not the outcome we worked and hoped for." Android Police and CrackBerry originally reported the phone had been cancelled on Feb. 11, saying OnwardMobility, a Texas-based startup seeking to revitalize the iconic brand through an Android-based, next-gen Wi-Fi device, lost the license from BlackBerry Ltd. to use the BlackBerry brand name. OnwardMobility did not expand on why it is shutting down and cancelling production of the phone. The news comes after BlackBerry ended service for its legacy devices in early January. "Before OnwardMobility picked up the license, Chinese manufacturer TCL was the most recent maker of BlackBerry-branded phones," adds CNET.

Most recently, the company sold its prized patent portfolio to "Catapult IP Innovations Inc." for $600 million.

Microsoft last month received a US patent covering modifications to a data-encoding technique called rANS, one of several variants in the Asymmetric Numeral System (ANS) family that support data compression schemes used by leading technology companies and open source projects. The Register reports: The creator of ANS, Jaroslaw Duda, assistant professor at Institute of Computer Science at Jagiellonian University in Poland, has been trying for years to keep ANS patent-free and available for public use. Back in 2018, Duda's lobbying helped convince Google to abandon its ANS-related patent claim in the US and Europe. And he raised the alarm last year when he learned Microsoft had applied for an rANS (range asymmetric number system) patent.

Now that Microsoft's patent application has been granted, he fears the utility of ANS will be diminished, as software developers try to steer clear of a potential infringement claim. "I don't know what to do with it -- [Microsoft's patent] looks like just the description of the standard algorithm," he told The Register in an email. The algorithm is used in JPEG XL and CRAM, as well as open source projects run by Facebook (Meta), Nvidia, and others. "This rANS variant is [for example] used in JPEG XL, which is practically finished (frozen bitstream) and [is] gaining support," Duda told The Register last year. "It provides ~3x better compression than JPEG at similar computational cost, compatibility with JPEG, progressive decoding, missing features like HDR, alpha, lossless, animations. "There is a large team, mostly from Google, behind it. After nearly 30 years, it should finally replace the 1992 JPEG for photos and images, starting with Chrome, Android."

With people more wary than ever about clicking on suspicious links in emails and text messages, zero-click hacks are being used more frequently by government agencies to spy on activists, journalists and others, according to more than a dozen surveillance company employees, security researchers and hackers interviewed by Bloomberg News. From a report: Once the preserve of a few intelligence agencies, the technology needed for zero-click hacks is now being sold to governments by a small number of companies, the most prominent of which is Israel's NSO Group. Bloomberg News has learned that at least three other Israeli companies -- Paragon, Candiru and Cognyte Software -- have developed zero-click hacking tools or offered them to clients, according to former employees and partners of those companies, demonstrating that the technology is becoming more widespread in the surveillance industry.

There are certain steps that a potential victim can take that might reduce the chances of a successful zero-click attack, including keeping a device updated. But some of the more effective methods -- including uninstalling certain messaging apps that hackers can use as gateways to breach a device -- aren't practical because people rely on them for communication, said Bill Marczak, a senior research fellow at Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Toronto that focuses on abuses of surveillance technology.

Federal investigators spent years hunting for clues in the 2016 hacking of the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange, when thieves stole bitcoin now worth $4.5 billion. In the end, what helped lead them to two suspects was something much more quotidian: a $500 Walmart gift card. From a report: That card and more than a dozen others like it, including for Uber, Hotels.com and PlayStation, were linked to emails and cloud service providers belonging to a young Manhattan couple, Ilya "Dutch" Lichtenstein and Heather R. Morgan, according to a criminal complaint. Authorities arrested the couple after seizing $3.6 billion worth of bitcoin allegedly in their control -- the Justice Department's largest financial seizure ever. New details have since emerged about the investigation, in particular how it took advantage of not only advanced forensic tools but also the growing push to rein in crypto crime, including by the industry itself. The discoveries would have been less likely to happen around the time of the hack, when bitcoin was far outside the mainstream of the financial world.

Senators Jim Risch, Bob Menendez, and Bill Cassidy's Accountability for Cryptocurrency in El Salvador (ACES) Act would require a State Department report on mitigating risks to the U.S. financial system from El Salvador's adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender. CoinDesk reports: "El Salvador recognizing Bitcoin (BTC) as official currency opens the door for money laundering cartels and undermines U.S. interests," said Bill Cassidy (R-La.). "If the United States wishes to combat money laundering and preserve the role of the dollar as a reserve currency of the world, we must tackle this issue head on." If passed, the bill would require the State Department to report on a laundry list of subjects with respect to El Salvador and Bitcoin, including the flow of remittances from the U.S. to El Salvador, bilateral and international efforts to combat transnational illicit activities, and the potential for reduced use by El Salvador of the greenback.

The move quickly drew a partly comic, partly angry response from El Salvador President Nayib Bukele: "OK boomers ... You have zero jurisdiction on a sovereign and independent nation. We are not your colony, your back yard or your front yard. Stay out of our internal affairs. Don't try to control something you can't control."

The Federal Communications Commission has voted to ban the exclusive revenue-sharing deals between landlords and Internet service providers that prevent broadband competition in apartment buildings and other multi-tenant environments. The new ban and other rule changes were adopted in a 4-0 vote announced yesterday. Ars Technica reports: Although the FCC "has long banned Internet service providers from entering into sweetheart deals with landlords that guarantee they are the only provider in the building," evidence submitted to the commission "made it clear that our existing rules are not doing enough and that we can do more to pry open the door for providers who want to offer competitive service in apartment buildings," FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in her statement on the vote. The broadband industry has sidestepped rules that already exist with "a complex web of agreements between incumbent service providers and landlords that keep out competitors and undermine choice," she said.

With the new rules, "we ban exclusive revenue sharing agreements, where the provider agrees with the building that only it and no other provider can give the building owner a cut of the revenue from the building. We also ban graduated revenue sharing agreements, which increase the percentage of revenue that the broadband provider directs to the landlord as the number of tenants served by the provider go up," Rosenworcel said. Rosenworcel had circulated the proposal to commissioners in late January. The new prohibitions on graduated and exclusive revenue-sharing agreements apply retroactively. "The rules we adopt thus prohibit providers from (1) executing new graduated or exclusive revenue sharing agreements and (2) enforcing existing graduated or exclusive revenue sharing agreements on a going forward basis," the FCC said.

Exclusive marketing agreements are still allowed, but the FCC is requiring broadband providers to disclose those agreements to tenants. "Such disclosure must be included on all written marketing material directed at tenants or prospective tenants of an MTE [multiple tenant environment] subject to the arrangement and must explain in clear, conspicuous, legible, and visible language that the provider has the right to exclusively market its communications services to tenants in the MTE, that such a right does not suggest that the provider is the only entity that can provide communications services to tenants in the MTE, and that service from an alternative provider may be available," the FCC order said. The FCC vote also closes a loophole that ISPs used to enter into exclusive wiring deals with landlords. "We clarify that sale-and-leaseback arrangements violate our existing rules that regulate cable wiring inside buildings," Rosenworcel said. "Since the 1990s, we have had rules that allow buildings and tenants to exercise choice about how to use the wiring in the building when they are switching cable providers, but some companies have circumvented these rules by selling the wiring to the building and leasing it back on an exclusive basis. We put an end to that practice today."

FriendlySolipsist writes: After using the Otter.ai automated transcription service for a recorded interview with an Uyghur human rights activist, Politico journalist Phelim Kine received a disturbing survey from the company asking the purpose of the interview. This was cause for alarm, as the Chinese government is known to aggressively persecute members of the oppressed ethnic and religious minority. Had Chinese intelligence somehow gained access to the recording? Otter eventually provided assurance they do not share uploaded data except pursuant to a valid U.S. subpoena, but journalists need to consider the risk of compromise. Otter does not even allow two-factor authentication except for upper-tier business accounts. "The Freedom of the Press Foundation report recommends that users protect the integrity of data that they commit to transcription app cloud servers with strong passwords and choosing providers that offer two-factor authentication," says Kine. "And it advises users to download and then delete their audio transcripts -- cutting and pasting it to another platform such as Word or Google docs -- to remove them from company servers to reduce exposure risk. But those are individual stopgap solutions in the absence of what cybersecurity experts say is a much-needed federal data privacy law that covers all corporate use of consumer data."

"Until those laws change, journalists and others who rely on transcription apps need to carefully consider the potential dangers."

The Markup reports: When Kurt Wilson, a computer science student at the University of Central Florida, heard that his university was using a controversial online proctoring tool called Honorlock, he immediately wanted to learn more. The company, whose business has boomed during the pandemic, promises to ensure that remote students don't cheat on exams through AI-powered software used by students that "monitors each student's exam session and alerts a live, US-based test proctor if it detects any potential problems." The software can scan students' faces to verify their identity, track specific phrases that their computer microphone captures, and even promises to search for and remove test questions that leak online.

One feature from Honorlock especially piqued Wilson's interest. The company, according to its materials, provides a way to track cheating students through what Honorlock calls "seed sites" or others call "honeypots" -- fake websites that remotely tattle on students who visit them during exams. Wilson pored over a patent for the software to learn more, finding example sites listed. By looking for common code and the same test questions over the past year, Wilson eventually turned up about a dozen honeypots apparently linked to Honorlock, five of which are still operating.

[...] While several companies offer services that tap into students' webcams to track them, setting up fake sites to catch potential cheaters appears to be an innovation -- one that crosses an ethical line for some experts. Before, students searching online for answers may simply have turned up nothing, while now, a potentially incriminating website will be there to tempt them. Ceceilia Parnther, an associate professor at St. John's University who has studied remote proctoring, said the situation is ironic: Students "are being set up" through honeypots, she said, in an attempt to detect academic integrity violations, a practice that's itself ethically questionable.

Apple and Google face a potential class action lawsuit in the Netherlands over app store charges, after a foundation headed by Dutch entrepreneur Alexander Klopping began gathering claimants. Reuters reports: Klopping is a co-founder of Blendle, a digital platform that enables users to buy individual news articles, which he sold in 2020. He told Reuters his determination to pursue the tech giants grew out of his experience at Blendle. "The reason it's getting so much attention right now is that everyone feels in their gut that there's this imbalance of power when it comes to big tech companies." He said while developers have complained most about app store practices, costs are ultimately passed on to consumers.

Klopping's App Store Claims Foundation is being represented by law firm Hausfeld, with funding from Fortress Investment Group. Klopping's App Store Claims Foundation is being represented by law firm Hausfeld, with funding from Fortress Investment Group. Hausfeld lawyer Rob Okhuijsen said the next step will be submitting evidence to the Amsterdam District Court in April. If a judge agrees, the court would then begin weighing the merits of the complaint.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The San Francisco Police Department's crime lab has been checking DNA collected from sexual assault victims to determine whether any of the victims committed a crime, according to District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who called for an immediate end to the alleged practice. "The crime lab attempts to identify crime suspects by searching a database of DNA evidence that contains DNA collected from rape and sexual assault victims," Boudin's office said in a press release yesterday. Boudin's release denounced the alleged "practice of using rape and sexual assault victims' DNA to attempt to subsequently incriminate them."

"Boudin said his office was made aware of the purported practice last week, after a woman's DNA collected years ago as part of a rape exam was used to link her to a recent property crime," the San Francisco Chronicle reported yesterday. The woman "was recently arrested on suspicion of a felony property crime, with police identifying her based on the rape-kit evidence she gave as a victim, Boudin said." That was the only example provided, and Boudin gave few details about the case to protect the woman's privacy. But the database may include "thousands of victims' DNA profiles, with entries over 'many, many years,' Boudin said," according to the Chronicle. "We should encourage survivors to come forward -- not collect evidence to use against them in the future. This practice treats victims like evidence, not human beings. This is legally and ethically wrong," Boudin said.

San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said the department will investigate and that he is "committed to ending the practice" if Boudin's allegation is accurate. But Scott also said the suspect cited by Boudin may have been identified from a different DNA database. "We will immediately begin reviewing our DNA collection practices and policies... Although I am informed of the possibility that the suspect in this case may have been identified through a DNA hit in a non-victim DNA database, I think the questions raised by our district attorney today are sufficiently concerning that I have asked my assistant chief for operations to work with our Investigations Bureau to thoroughly review the matter and report back to me and to our DA's office partners," Scott said in a statement published by KRON 4. Scott also said, "I am informed that our existing DNA collection policies have been legally vetted and conform with state and national forensic standards," but he noted that "there are many important principles for which the San Francisco Police Department stands that go beyond state and national standards." "We must never create disincentives for crime victims to cooperate with police, and if it's true that DNA collected from a rape or sexual assault victim has been used by SFPD to identify and apprehend that person as a suspect in another crime, I'm committed to ending the practice," Scott said. Even though the alleged practice may already be illegal under California's Victims' Bill of Rights, State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen are planning legislation to stop the alleged misuse of DNA.

Wiener said that "if survivors believe their DNA may end up being used against them in the future, they'll have one more reason not to participate in the rape kit process. That's why I'm working with the DA's office to address this problem through state legislation, if needed."

New Yorkers who live in areas where controversial stop-and-frisk searches happen most frequently are also more likely to be surveilled by facial recognition technology, according to research by Amnesty International and other researchers. From a report: Research also showed that in the Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens boroughs of the city there was a direct correlation between the proportion of non-white residents and the concentration of controversial facial recognition technology. "Our analysis shows that the NYPD's use of facial recognition technology helps to reinforce discriminatory policing against minority communities in New York City," said Matt Mahmoudi, artificial intelligence and human rights researcher at Amnesty International. The research is a part of the global anti-facial recognition technology campaign, Ban the Scan, investigating increasing use of surveillance initiatives in the New York police department (NYPD). Using thousands of digital volunteers through the Decode NYC Surveillance project, more than 25,500 CCTV cameras were mapped across New York City. Data scientists and researchers from Amnesty International compared the data on the camera placement with statistics on police stop-and-frisk. "We have long known that stop-and-frisk in New York is a racist policing tactic. We now know that the communities most targeted with stop-and-frisk are also at greater risk of discriminatory policing through invasive surveillance," said Mahmoudi.

NSO Group's controversial Pegasus spyware should be banned in the European Union, the bloc's in-house privacy watchdog warned on Tuesday. From a report: "The ban on the development and the deployment of spyware with the capability of Pegasus in the EU would be the most effective option to protect our fundamental rights and freedoms," the European Data Protection Supervisor said in a statement on Tuesday. The warning comes amid increasing scrutiny of abuses of surveillance technologies meant to help intelligence and law enforcement agencies fight serious crime and terrorism. While the EU regulator doesn't make decisions for member countries, its influence at the top echelons of the bloc's institutions may encourage other authorities to crack down on surveillance software.

Reuters reports: The White House is warning the chip industry to diversify its supply chain in case Russia retaliates against threatened U.S. export curbs by blocking access to key materials, people familiar with the matter said.

The potential for retaliation has garnered more attention in recent days after Techcet, a market research group, published a report on February 1 highlighting the reliance of many semiconductor manufacturers on Russian and Ukrainian-sourced materials like neon, palladium and others. According to Techcet estimates, over 90 percent of U.S. semiconductor-grade neon supplies come from Ukraine, while 35 percent of U.S. palladium is sourced from Russia. Peter Harrell, who sits of the White House's National Security Council, and his staff have been in touch with members of the chip industry in recent days, learning about their exposure to Russian and Ukrainian chipmaking materials and urging them to find alternative sources, the people said.
A "senior official" told Reuters, "We understand that other sources of key products are available and stand ready to work with our companies to help them identify and diversify their supplies."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the story.

What's the lesson after $3.6 billion in stolen bitcoin was seized by America's Justice Department from the couple who laundering it?

Wired argues it all just shows how hard it is to launder cryptocurrency: In the 24 hours since, the cybersecurity world has ruthlessly mocked their operational security screwups: Lichtenstein allegedly stored many of the private keys controlling those funds in a cloud-storage wallet that made them easy to seize, and Morgan flaunted her "self-made" wealth in a series of cringe-inducing rap videos on YouTube and Forbes columns. But those gaffes have obscured the remarkable number of multi-layered technical measures that prosecutors say the couple did use to try to dead-end the trail for anyone following their money.

Even more remarkable, perhaps, is that federal agents, led by IRS Criminal Investigations, managed to defeat those alleged attempts at financial anonymity on the way to recouping $3.6 billion of stolen cryptocurrency. In doing so, they demonstrated just how advanced cryptocurrency tracing has become — potentially even for coins once believed to be practically untraceable.

Ari Redbord, the head of legal and government affairs for TRM Labs, a cryptocurrency tracing and forensics firm...points to the couple's alleged use of "chain-hopping" — transferring funds from one cryptocurrency to another to make them more difficult to follow — including exchanging bitcoins for "privacy coins" like monero and dash, both designed to foil blockchain analysis. Court documents say the couple also allegedly moved their money through the Alphabay dark web market — the biggest of its kind at the time — in an attempt to stymie detectives....Lichtenstein and Morgan appear to have intended to use Alphabay as a "mixer" or "tumbler," a cryptocurrency service that takes in a user's coins and returns different ones to prevent blockchain tracing....

In July 2017, however — six months after the IRS says Lichtenstein moved a portion of the Bitfinex coins into AlphaBay wallets — the FBI, DEA, and Thai police arrested AlphaBay's administrator and seized its server in a data center in Lithuania. That server seizure isn't mentioned in the IRS's statement of facts. But the data on that server likely would have allowed investigators to reconstruct the movement of funds through AlphaBay's wallets and identify Lichtenstein's withdrawals to pick up their trail again, says Tom Robinson, a cofounder of the cryptocurrency tracing firm Elliptic.
The arrests and "largest financial seizure ever show that cryptocurrency is not a safe haven for criminals..." Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco said in a press release. "Thanks to the meticulous work of law enforcement, the department once again showed how it can and will follow the money, no matter what form it takes."

Or, as Wired puts it, "Even if your rap videos and sloppy cloud storage accounts don't get you caught, your clever laundering tricks may still not save you from the ever-evolving sophistication of law enforcement's crypto-tracers."

Remember when more than 100,000 Social Security numbers of Missouri teachers were revealed in the HTML code of a state web site? The St. Louis Post-Dispatch's reporter informed the state government and delayed publishings his findings until they'd fixed the hole — but the state's governor then demanded the reporter's prosecution, labelling him "a hacker." In the months that followed, throughout a probe — which for some reason was run by the state's Highway Patrol — the governor had continued to suggest that prosecution of that reporter was imminent.

But it's not. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports: A St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalist will not be charged after pointing out a weakness in a state computer database, the prosecuting attorney for Cole County said Friday. Prosecutor Locke Thompson issued a statement to television station KRCG Friday, saying he appreciated Gov. Mike Parson for forwarding his concerns but would not be filing charges....

Parson, who had suggested prosecution was imminent throughout the probe, issued a statement saying Thompson's office believed the decision "was properly addressed...." Post-Dispatch Publisher Ian Caso said in a statement Friday: "We are pleased the prosecutor recognized there was no legitimate basis for any charges against the St. Louis Post-Dispatch or our reporter. While an investigation of how the state allowed this information to be accessible was appropriate, the accusations against our reporter were unfounded and made to deflect embarrassment for the state's failures and for political purposes...."

There is no authorization required to examine public websites, but some researchers say overly broad hacking laws in many jurisdictions let embarrassed institutions lob hacking allegations against good Samaritans who try to flag vulnerabilities before they're exploited....

A political action committee supporting Parson ran an ad attacking the newspaper over the computer incident, saying the governor was "standing up to the fake news media."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader UnknowingFool for submitting the story.

"Apple said Thursday it plans to add more safeguards to AirTags to cut down on unwanted tracking," reports CNN, "following reports that the devices have been used to stalk people and steal cars." In a blog post, Apple said it has worked with safety groups and law enforcement agencies to identify more ways to update its AirTag safety warnings, including alerting people sooner if the small Bluetooth tracker is suspected to be tracking someone. (Right now, it can take hours for an AirTag to chirp if it has been separated from its owner.)

Other updates coming later this year include tweaking the tracker's tone sequence so the device is louder and easier to find, and allowing someone to see its distance and direction of an AirTag through the iOS precision finding tool. In addition, Apple will warn AirTag users during the setup process that tracking people without their consent is a crime.
That warning also reminds users "that law enforcement can request identifying information about the owner of the AirTag," Apple writes in their blog post: We have been actively working with law enforcement on all AirTag-related requests we've received. Based on our knowledge and on discussions with law enforcement, incidents of AirTag misuse are rare; however, each instance is one too many. Every AirTag has a unique serial number, and paired AirTags are associated with an Apple ID. Apple can provide the paired account details in response to a subpoena or valid request from law enforcement. We have successfully partnered with them on cases where information we provided has been used to trace an AirTag back to the perpetrator, who was then apprehended and charged.
"We condemn in the strongest possible terms any malicious use of our products," Apple's blog post adds.

Daring Fireball supplies some analysis: The same features that help prevent AirTags from being used to stalk people without their knowing could also alert a thief that whatever it is they've stolen has an AirTag attached. There's no way for AirTags to serve both purposes, so Apple is increasing the protections against unwanted tracking, and emphasizing that AirTags are solely intended for finding your own lost items.

A "shadowy hacker group" named Modified Elephant has been targeting people throughout India "for at least a decade," reports Gizmodo, "sometimes using its digital powers to plant fabricated evidence of criminal activity on their devices. That phony evidence has, in turn, often provided a pretext for the victims' arrest."

They cite a new report from cybersecurity firm Sentinel One "illuminating the way in which its digital dirty tricks have been used to surveil and target "human rights activists, human rights defenders, academics, and lawyers" throughout India. The most prominent case involving Elephant centers around Maoist activist Rona Wilson and a group of his associates who, in 2018, were arrested by India security services and accused of plotting to overthrow the government. Evidence for the supposed plot — including a word document detailing plans to assassinate the nation's prime minister, Narendra Modi — was found on the Wilson's laptop. However, later forensic analysis of the device showed that the documents were actually fake and had been artificially planted using malware. According to Sentinel researchers, it was Elephant that put them there.

This case, which gained greater exposure after being covered by the Washington Post, was blown open after the aforementioned laptop was analyzed by a digital forensics firm, Boston-based Arsenal Consulting. Arsenal ultimately concluded that Wilson and all of his so-called co-conspirators, as well as many other activists, had been targeted with digital manipulation....

According to the Sentinel One's report, Elephant uses common hacking tools and techniques to gain a foothold in victims' computers. Phishing emails, typically tailored to the victim's interests, are loaded with malicious documents that contain commercially available remote access tools (RATs) — easy-to-use programs available on the dark web that can hijack computers....

An entirely different group is believed to have conducted similar operations against Baris Pehlivan, a journalist in Turkey who was incarcerated for 19 months in 2016 after the Turkish government accused him of terrorism. Digital forensics later revealed that the documents used to justify Pehlivan's charges had been artificially implanted, much like those on Wilson's laptop.

A U.S. district judge "sentenced a Nintendo Switch hacker to 40 months in federal prison," reports the Independent: Gary Bowser, 52, is one of the leaders of the "Team Xecuter" hacker criminal enterprise, a notorious video game piracy gang, authorities said. The gang sold software to hack and download stolen games to various consoles. Besides the Nintendo Switch console, Team Xecuter also targeted the Nintendo 3DS, the Nintendo Entertainment System Classic Edition, the Sony PlayStation Classic and Microsoft's Xbox.

Bowser, a Canadian citizen, was the public face of the group and handled Team Xecuter's public relations and operated its websites. He was arrested in October 2020 in the Dominican Republic and extradited to the US to stand trial in New Jersey. He pleaded guilty in October 2021 to two criminal counts — conspiracy to circumvent technological measures and to traffic in circumvention devices, and trafficking in circumvention devices. As part of his plea deal, Bowser agreed to pay $4.5m in restitution to Nintendo.

Federal agents said that he caused a loss of about $65m (about £48m) to gaming companies.
"The hacking group was initially adamant that its hardware and software modifications that circumvented copyright protections were intended for homebrew application development, not to enable users to steal software..." notes Hot Hardware.

"Following the guilty plea, Bowser settled a civil lawsuit with Nintendo to the tune of $10 million, on top of the $4.5 million in restitution he already owed."