A Possible US Government iPhone-Hacking Toolkit Is Now in the Hands of Foreign Spies and Criminals

Plus: Apple’s Lockdown mode keeps the FBI out of a reporter’s phone, Elon Musk’s Starlink cuts off Russian forces, and more.

Plus: The cybersecurity community grapples with Epstein files revelations, the US State Department plans an online anti-censorship “portal” for the world, and more.

A database left accessible to anyone online contained billions of records, including sensitive personal data that criminals appear to have not yet exploited.

After more than 15 years of draconian measures, culminating in an ongoing internet shutdown, the Iranian regime seems to be staggering toward its digital surveillance endgame.

Suspected Chinese state-backed hackers hijacked the Notepad++ update infrastructure to deliver a backdoored version of the popular free source code editor and note-taking app for Windows.

As Israeli airstrikes hit Tehran this morning, Iranians received mysterious push notifications saying that “help is on the way,” promising amnesty if they surrender.

After strikes killed senior Iranian officials, Iran cut off internet access. Journalists are relying on satellite links, encrypted apps, and smuggled footage to report from inside the country.

The use of cryptocurrency in sales of human beings for prostitution and scam compounds nearly doubled in 2025, according to a conservative estimate. Many of the deals are happening in plain sight.

A WIRED analysis shows that ICE and CBP have collectively spent at least $515 million on products from Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Palantir in the last few years alone.

Plus: Meta plans to add face recognition to its smart glasses, Jared Kushner named as part of whistleblower’s mysterious national security complaint, and more.

Prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi are big business, and some Big Tech employees are testing boundaries by making trades based on insider knowledge.

A report copublished by WIRED sparked a probe into opt-out pages hidden by data brokers. Now congressional Democrats say breaches tied to the industry have cost people tens of billions of dollars.