Plus: A 22-year-old former intern gets put in charge of a key anti-terrorism program, threat intelligence firms finally wrangle their confusing names for hacker groups, and more.

Since it’s already chaos out there, this week, we thought we’d lean into the madness by envisioning the future threats that you’re not ready for. From cyberattacks on the US grid to GPS blackouts, rampant deepfake scams, AI-powered super hackers, and widespread communication system collapse, there’s a whole spectrum of scenarios that could take things from bad to worse.

All is not lost, however—at least if you’re Ross Ulbricht. The creator of the Silk Road dark web market, who was pardoned by President Donald Trump earlier this year, received a mysterious $31 million bitcoin donation last weekend. Crypto-tracing firm Chainalysis now suspects the lavish gift may have come from a vendor at another now-defunct black market, AlphaBay.

A trove of public records reviewed by WIRED this week reveal a years-long effort by a farming industry group to get the FBI to treat animal rights activists as a “bioterrorist” threat. The Animal Agriculture Alliance (AAA) was repeatedly in contact with the bureau’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate about the activities of groups like Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE. The records show that AAA fed intelligence about DxE to the FBI and used corporate spies to infiltrate the group’s activities.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently updated its guidance for agents who carry out courthouse raids and other “enforcement actions” in and nearby court houses, according to an agency document reviewed by WIRED. The updated policy removes language that explicitly instructed agents to ensure they followed local and state laws.

Anyone who was trying to play a new video game on Christmas Day in 2014 likely remembers the infamous Lizardsquad hack of Xbox Live and Playstation Network. Now, more than a decade later, we finally have the full story.

But that’s not all! Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

**Mysterious iPhone Crashes Hint at a Chinese Hacks. Apple Denies It**

The security firm iVerify this week brought to light a series of suspicious iPhone crashes that researchers say might just indicate a stealthy, unprecedented Chinese zero-click hacking campaign victimizing American phones, including even those of staffers for the Harris-Walz presidential campaign. Or it’s a random, not-particularly-dangerous bug that Apple has already squashed.

In a report released Thursday, iVerify assessed with “moderate confidence” that China-linked hackers may have targeted a series of iPhones with a sophisticated exploit, going after activists and dissidents critical of China, an EU government official, tech executives at AI firms competing with Chinese ones, and US political staffers—revealed by NBC News to be employees of the Harris-Walz campaign. iVerify didn’t have a sample of the malware that might have infected those phones or other definitive proof that any hacking occurred. But it pointed to signs that seem like more than coincidences: The staffers whose phones had experienced the crashes had also been warned by the FBI that they’d already been targeted in China’s Salt Typhoon hacking campaign against US telecoms. Another owner of the devices that crashed in the same way was later warned by Apple itself that he or she had been targeted by sophisticated hackers.

All of that would represent a serious threat to national security. Except that, strangely, Apple flatly denies it happened. “We strongly disagree with the claims of a targeted attack against our users,” Apple’s head of security engineering, Ivan Krstić, wrote in a statement to WIRED. Apple has patched the issue that iVerify highlighted in its report, which caused iPhones to crash in certain cases when a message sender changed their own nickname and avatar. But it calls those crashes the result of a “conventional software bug,” not evidence of a targeted exploitation. (That blanket denial certainly isn’t Apple’s usual response to confirmed iPhone hacking. The company has, for instance, sued hacking firm NSO group for its targeting of Apple customers.)

The result is that what might have been a four-alarm fire in the counterintelligence world is reduced—for now—to a very troubling enigma.

**A 22-Year-Old Is Running a Key US Anti-Terrorism Program**

A 22-year-old former intern at the Heritage Foundation with no national security experience has reportedly been appointed to a key Department of Homeland Security role overseeing a major program designed to combat domestic terrorism.

According to Propublica, Thomas Fugate last month assumed leadership of the Center for Programs and Partnerships (CP3), a DHS office tasked with funding nationwide efforts to prevent politically motivated violence—including school shootings and other forms of domestic terrorism.

Fugate, a 2024 graduate of the University of Texas at San Antonio, replaced the former CP3 director, Bill Braniff, an Army veteran with 20 years of national security experience who resigned in March following staff cuts ordered by the Trump administration.

According to CP3’s most recent report to Congress, the office has funded more than 1,100 initiatives aimed at disrupting violent extremism. In recent months, the US has seen a string of high-profile targeted attacks, including a car bombing in California and the shooting of two Israeli Embassy aids in Washington, DC. Its $18 million grant program, designed to support local prevention efforts, is reportedly now under Fugate’s supervision.

**Threat Intelligence Firms (Finally) Agree to a Glossary of Hacker Group Names**

Hacker group names have long been an unavoidable absurdity in the cybersecurity industry. Every threat intelligence company, in a scientifically defensible attempt to not make any assumption that they’re tracking the same hackers as another firm, comes up with their own code name for any group they observe. The result is a somewhat silly profusion of overlapping naming systems based on elements, weather, and zoology: “Fancy Bear” is “Forest Blizzard” is “APT28” is “Strontium.” Now, several major threat intelligence players, including Google, Microsoft, CrowdStrike, and Palo Alto Networks, have finally shared enough of their internal research to agree to a glossary that confirms that they’re referring to the same entities. The companies did _not,_ however, agree to consolidate their naming systems into a single taxonomy. So this agreement doesn’t mean the end of sentences in security reporting such as “the hacker group Sandworm, also known as Telebots, Voodoo Bear, Hades, Iron Viking, Electrum, or Seashell Blizzard.” It just means we cybersecurity reporters can write that sentence with a little more confidence.

**Phone-Hacking Firm Corellium Acquired for $200 Million—After Trump Pardons Its Founder**

Chris Wade, the founder and CTO of mobile device reverse-engineering company Corellium, has had a wild last few decades: In 2005, he was convicted on criminal charges of enabling spammers by providing them proxy servers, and agreed to work undercover for law enforcement while avoiding prison. Then in 2020, he mysteriously received a pardon from President Donald Trump. He also settled a major copyright lawsuit from Apple. Now his company, which creates virtual images of Android and iOS devices so that customers can find ways to break into them, is being acquired by phone-hacking firm Cellebrite, a major law enforcement contractor, for $200 million—a significant payday for a hacker who has found himself on both sides of the law.

The Mystery of iPhone Crashes That Apple Denies Are Linked to Chinese Hacking

In an effort to evade detection, cybercriminals are increasingly turning to “residential proxy” services that cover their tracks by making it look like everyday online activity.

For years, gray-market services known as “bulletproof” hosts have been a key tool for cybercriminals looking to anonymously maintain web infrastructure with no questions asked. But as global law enforcement scrambles to crack down on digital threats, they have developed strategies for getting customer information from these hosts and have increasingly targeted the people behind the services with indictments. At the cybercrime-focused conference Sleuthcon in in Arlington, Virginia, today, researcher Thibault Seret outlined how this shift has pushed both bulletproof hosting companies and criminal customers toward an alternative approach.

Rather than relying on web hosts to find ways of operating outside law enforcement's reach, some service providers have turned to offering purpose-built VPNs and other proxy services as a way of rotating and masking customer IP addresses and offering infrastructure that either intentionally doesn't log traffic or mixes traffic from many sources together. And while the technology isn't new, Seret and other researchers emphasized to WIRED that the transition to using proxies among cybercrminals over the last couple of years is significant.

“The issue is, you cannot technically distinguish which traffic in a node is bad and which traffic is good,” Seret, a researcher at the threat intelligence firm Team Cymru, told WIRED ahead of his talk. “That's the magic of a proxy service—you cannot tell who’s who. It's good in terms of internet freedom, but it's super, super tough to analyze what’s happening and identify bad activity.”

The core challenge of addressing cybercriminal activity hidden by proxies is that the services may also, even primarily, be facilitating legitimate, benign traffic. Criminals and companies that don't want to lose them as clients have particularly been leaning on what are known as “residential proxies,” an array of decentralized nodes that can run on consumer devices—even old Android phones or low-end laptops—offering real, rotating IP addresses assigned to homes and offices. Such services offer anonymity and privacy, but can also shield malicious traffic.

By making malicious traffic look like it comes from trusted consumer IP addresses, attackers make it much more difficult for organizations' scanners and other threat detection tools to spot suspicious activity. And, crucially, residential proxies and other decentralized platforms that run on disparate consumer hardware reduce a service provider's insight and control, making it more difficult for law enforcement to get anything useful from them.

“Attackers have been ramping up their use of residential networks for attacks over the last two to three years,” says Ronnie Tokazowski, a longtime digital scams researcher and cofounder of the nonprofit Intelligence for Good. “If attackers are coming from the same residential ranges as, say, employees of a target organization, it's harder to track.”

Criminal use of proxies isn't new. In 2016, for example, the US Department of Justice said that one of the obstacles in a years-long investigation of the notorious “Avalanche” cybercriminal platform was the service's use of a “fast-flux” hosting method that concealed the platform's malicious activity using constantly changing proxy IP addresses. But the rise of proxies as a gray-market service rather than something attackers must develop in-house is an important shift.

“I don’t know yet how we can improve the proxy issue,” Team Cymru's Seret told WIRED. “I guess law enforcement could target known malicious proxy providers like they did with bulletproof hosts. But in general, proxies are whole internet services used by everyone. Even if you take down one malicious service, that doesn't solve the larger challenge.”

Cybercriminals Are Hiding Malicious Web Traffic in Plain Sight

Popular Chrome extensions exposed user data by sending it over unencrypted HTTP, raising privacy concerns. Symantec urges caution for users.

A recent investigation has revealed that several widely used Google Chrome extensions are transmitting sensitive user data over unencrypted HTTP connections, exposing millions of users to serious privacy and security risks.

The findings, published by cybersecurity researchers and detailed in a blog post by Symantec, reveal how extensions such as:

PI Rank (ID: ccgdboldgdlngcgfdolahmiilojmfndl)

Browsec VPN (ID: omghfjlpggmjjaagoclmmobgdodcjboh)

MSN New Tab (ID: lklfbkdigihjaaeamncibechhgalldgl)

SEMRush Rank (ID: idbhoeaiokcojcgappfigpifhpkjgmab)

DualSafe Password Manager & Digital Vault (ID: lgbjhdkjmpgjgcbcdlhkokkckpjmedgc)

There are other extensions as well that are handling user data in ways that open the door to eavesdropping, profiling, and other attacks.

****Extensions That Promise Privacy Are Doing the Opposite****

Although these extensions are legitimate and meant to help users monitor web rankings, manage passwords, or improve their browsing experience, behind the scenes, they are making network requests without encryption, allowing anyone on the same network to see exactly what’s being sent.

In some cases, this includes details like the domains a user visits, operating system information, unique machine IDs, and telemetry data. More troubling, several extensions were also found to have hardcoded API keys, secrets, and tokens inside their source code which is a piece of valuable information that attackers can easily exploit.

****Real Risk on Public Networks****

When extensions transmit data using HTTP rather than HTTPS, the information travels across the network in plaintext. On a public Wi-Fi network, for example, a malicious actor can intercept that data with little effort. Worse still, they can modify it mid-transit.

This opens the door to attacks that go far beyond spying. According to Symantec’s blog post, in the case of Browsec VPN, a popular privacy-focused extension with over six million users, the use of an HTTP endpoint during the uninstall process sends user identifiers and usage stats without encryption. The extension’s configuration allows it to connect to insecure websites, further widening the attack surface.

****Data Leaks Across the Board****

Other extensions are guilty of similar issues. SEMRush Rank and PI Rank, both designed to show website popularity, were found to send full URLs of visited sites over HTTP to third-party servers. This makes it easy for a network observer to build detailed logs of a user’s browsing habits.

MSN New Tab and MSN Homepage, with hundreds of thousands of users, transmit machine IDs and other device details. These identifiers remain stable over time, allowing adversaries to link multiple sessions and build profiles that persist across browsing activity.

Even DualSafe Password Manager, which handles sensitive information by nature, was caught sending telemetry data over HTTP. While no passwords were leaked, the fact that any part of the extension uses unencrypted traffic raises concerns about its overall design.

Patrick Tiquet, Vice President, Security & Architecture at Keeper Security commented on this, stating, _“_This incident highlights a critical gap in extension security – even popular Chrome extensions can put users at risk if developers cut corners. Transmitting data over unencrypted HTTP and hard-coding secrets exposes users to profiling, phishing and adversary-in-the-middle attacks – especially on unsecured networks._“_

He warned of consequences for unsuspecting users and advised that _“_Organizations should take immediate action by enforcing strict controls around browser extension usage, managing secrets securely and monitoring for suspicious behaviour across endpoints._“_

****Privacy and Data Security Threat****

Although none of the extensions were found to leak passwords or financial data directly, the exposure of machine identifiers, browsing habits, and telemetry is far from harmless. Attackers can use this data to track users across websites, deliver targeted phishing campaigns, or impersonate device telemetry for malicious purposes.

While theoretical, NordVPN’s latest findings spotted more than 94 billion browser cookies on the dark web. When combined with the data leaks highlighted by Symantec, the potential for damage is significant.

Developers who include hardcoded API keys or secrets inside their extensions add another layer of risk. If an attacker gets hold of these credentials, they can misuse them to impersonate the extension, send forged data, or even inflate service usage leading to financial costs or account bans for the developers.

****What Users Can Do****

Symantec has contacted the developers involved, and only DualSafe Password Manager has fixed the issue. Yet, users who have installed any of the affected extensions are advised to remove them until the developers fix the issues. Even popular and well-reviewed extensions can make unsafe design choices that go unnoticed for years.

Hackread.com recommends checking the permissions an extension asks for, avoiding unknown publishers, and using a trusted security solution. Above all, any tool that promises privacy or security should be examined carefully for how it handles your data.

Popular Chrome Extensions Found Leaking Data via Unencrypted Connections

How to update Chrome on every Operating System (Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, Android, iOS)

We often write about important updates for the most popular browser, Google Chrome. Since it would be out of scope to post elaborate update instructions for every possible platform and operating system (OS)—like iOS, macOS, Windows, Android, etc.—we decided to turn this topic into a separate post that is easy to find (and link to). Also, keep in mind that not every update will be available for every platform or at the same time. You can find when the latest update for your operating system was released on this Google Chrome releases website.

Keeping your Google Chrome browser up to date is essential for security, performance, and access to the latest features. Whether you’re on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, or iOS, updating Chrome is straightforward, if you know where to look.

But first a few words about the version numbers, because they can be confusing at times.

The Chrome version number consists of four parts separated by dots, like this:

**MAJOR.MINOR.BUILD.PATCH**

Each part has a specific meaning. In order of relevance they are:

*   **MAJOR**: This number increases with significant releases that may include major new features or changes. It usually raises in increments about 7 – 8 times per year, roughly every 6 weeks, reflecting Chrome’s release cycle.
*   **MINOR**: This number is typically zero and rarely changes. It mainly supports the versioning scheme but doesn’t usually affect how users track updates.
*   **BUILD**: This number increases steadily and represents a specific snapshot of Chrome’s source code at a given time. It advances with each new build candidate and is the key indicator of how recent the core code is.
*   **PATCH**: This number changes in increments for smaller fixes and security patches applied to a particular build. It resets with each new build and helps identify minor updates within the same build.

For example, a version like **137.0.7151.56** means:

*   Major version 137 (the milestone release)
*   Minor version 0 (standard)
*   Build number 7151 (the code snapshot)
*   Patch number 56 (the latest fix on that build)

**Why does the version number matter?**

The **BUILD** and **PATCH** numbers together uniquely identify the exact code you are running. Even if two versions share the same major number, a higher build or patch number means you have a newer, more up-to-date Chrome version.

Sometimes you might see slightly different patch numbers on the same major build, for example, **118.0.5993.117** vs. **118.0.5993.118**. This usually happens because Google released a quick fix or minor patch shortly after the initial release. Both are part of the same major update, but the higher patch number is newer.

**How to check if you have the latest version**

To verify your Chrome version:

1.  Open Chrome.
2.  Click the three-dot menu (⋮) in the top-right corner.
3.  Go to **Help** > **About Google Chrome**.

Chrome will display your current version and automatically check for updates. If a newer version is available, it will download and prompt you to relaunch once it’s ready updating.

Chrome is updating

**Update Chrome on Windows**

Method 1: Use Chrome’s built-in update feature

1.  Open Chrome.
2.  Click the three-dot menu icon (⋮) in the top-right corner.
3.  Hover over **Help**, then click **About Google Chrome**.
4.  Chrome will automatically check for updates and download them if available.
5.  Once downloaded, click **Relaunch** to complete the update.

To enable automatic updates for Google Chrome on Windows, ensure that the “**Automatically update Chrome for all users**” option is enabled in Chrome’s settings. You can find this setting by going to “**About Google Chrome**” within the Chrome settings. Closing and restarting Chrome may be required to apply the update. 

Method 2: using Windows Update (for Chrome Enterprise)

If your organization manages Chrome updates via Windows Update or group policies, updates may be automatic. Contact your IT admin if you don’t see updates.

Method 1: For each device

1.  Open Chrome.
2.  Click the three-dot menu icon (⋮) at the top-right.
3.  Select **Help** > **About Google Chrome**.
4.  Chrome will check for updates and install them automatically.
5.  Click **Relaunch** to finish updating.

You can also set up automatic browser updates for all users of your computer if Google Chrome is installed in your Applications folder. Go to “**About Google Chrome**,” and click **Automatically update Chrome for all users**.

Method 2: For Chrome Enterprise

As a Mac administrator, you can use Google Software Update to manage Chrome browser and Chrome apps updates on your users’ Mac computers.

**Update Chrome on Linux**

Chrome updates on Linux depend on your distribution and how you installed it.

For Debian/Ubuntu-based systems:

1.  Open a terminal.
2.  Run:

sudo apt update

sudo apt --only-upgrade install google-chrome-stable

3.  Restart Chrome to apply updates.

For Fedora/openSUSE:

1.  Open a terminal.
2.  Run:

sudo dnf upgrade google-chrome-stable

3.  Restart Chrome.

If you installed Chrome via a package manager, it should handle updates automatically when you update your system.

**Update Chrome on Android**

Chrome updates on Android are handled through the Google Play Store:

1.  Open the **Google Play Store** app.
2.  Tap your profile icon (top right).
3.  Select **Manage apps & device**.
4.  Under **Updates available**, look for **Chrome**.
5.  Tap **Update** next to Chrome if available.

Alternatively, if you have auto-updates enabled, Chrome updates automatically. To enable auto-updates for Android apps, open the Google Play Store, tap your profile picture, go to “Manage apps and device,” and then tap “Manage.” Select the app you want to update automatically, tap the “More” button, and toggle on “Enable auto-update.”

**Update Chrome on iOS (iPhone and iPad)**

Chrome updates on iOS come through the Apple App Store:

1.  Open the **App Store**.
2.  Tap your profile icon at the top right.
3.  Scroll down to **Available Updates**.
4.  Find **Google Chrome** and tap **Update**.

If auto-updates are enabled on your device, Chrome updates automatically.

Chrome in App Store’s recently updated section

**Updating Chrome on Chrome OS**

Chrome OS updates include Chrome browser updates:

1.  Click the time in the bottom-right corner.
2.  Click the **Settings** gear icon.
3.  In the left menu, select **About Chrome OS**.
4.  Click **Check for updates**.
5.  If an update is available, it will download and install automatically.
6.  Restart your Chromebook to complete the update.

Summary table of update methods

**Platform**

**Update Method**

**Notes**

Windows

Chrome Menu > Help > About Chrome

Manual or automatic update

macOS

Chrome Menu > Help > About Chrome

Manual or automatic update

Linux

Package manager commands

Varies by distro

Android

Google Play Store

Manual or automatic update

iOS

Apple App Store

Manual or automatic update

Chrome OS

Settings > About Chrome OS

System update

If you still have questions about updating the Chrome browser, let us know in the comments and allow us to update this article.

 How to update Chrome on every operating system 

Deserialization of Untrusted Data vulnerability in Apache InLong. This issue affects Apache InLong: from 1.13.0 before 2.1.0, this issue would allow an authenticated attacker to read arbitrary files by double writing the param. Users are recommended to upgrade to version 2.1.0, which fixes the issue.

**Exploitability Metrics**

Attack Vector: This metric reflects the context by which vulnerability exploitation is possible. This metric value (and consequently the resulting severity) will be larger the more remote (logically, and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerable system. The assumption is that the number of potential attackers for a vulnerability that could be exploited from across a network is larger than the number of potential attackers that could exploit a vulnerability requiring physical access to a device, and therefore warrants a greater severity.

Attack Complexity: This metric captures measurable actions that must be taken by the attacker to actively evade or circumvent existing built-in security-enhancing conditions in order to obtain a working exploit. These are conditions whose primary purpose is to increase security and/or increase exploit engineering complexity. A vulnerability exploitable without a target-specific variable has a lower complexity than a vulnerability that would require non-trivial customization. This metric is meant to capture security mechanisms utilized by the vulnerable system.

Attack Requirements: This metric captures the prerequisite deployment and execution conditions or variables of the vulnerable system that enable the attack. These differ from security-enhancing techniques/technologies (ref Attack Complexity) as the primary purpose of these conditions is not to explicitly mitigate attacks, but rather, emerge naturally as a consequence of the deployment and execution of the vulnerable system.

Privileges Required: This metric describes the level of privileges an attacker must possess prior to successfully exploiting the vulnerability. The method by which the attacker obtains privileged credentials prior to the attack (e.g., free trial accounts), is outside the scope of this metric. Generally, self-service provisioned accounts do not constitute a privilege requirement if the attacker can grant themselves privileges as part of the attack.

User interaction: This metric captures the requirement for a human user, other than the attacker, to participate in the successful compromise of the vulnerable system. This metric determines whether the vulnerability can be exploited solely at the will of the attacker, or whether a separate user (or user-initiated process) must participate in some manner.

**Vulnerable System Impact Metrics**

Confidentiality: This metric measures the impact to the confidentiality of the information managed by the VULNERABLE SYSTEM due to a successfully exploited vulnerability. Confidentiality refers to limiting information access and disclosure to only authorized users, as well as preventing access by, or disclosure to, unauthorized ones.

Integrity: This metric measures the impact to integrity of a successfully exploited vulnerability. Integrity refers to the trustworthiness and veracity of information. Integrity of the VULNERABLE SYSTEM is impacted when an attacker makes unauthorized modification of system data. Integrity is also impacted when a system user can repudiate critical actions taken in the context of the system (e.g. due to insufficient logging).

Availability: This metric measures the impact to the availability of the VULNERABLE SYSTEM resulting from a successfully exploited vulnerability. While the Confidentiality and Integrity impact metrics apply to the loss of confidentiality or integrity of data (e.g., information, files) used by the system, this metric refers to the loss of availability of the impacted system itself, such as a networked service (e.g., web, database, email). Since availability refers to the accessibility of information resources, attacks that consume network bandwidth, processor cycles, or disk space all impact the availability of a system.

**Subsequent System Impact Metrics**

Confidentiality: This metric measures the impact to the confidentiality of the information managed by the SUBSEQUENT SYSTEM due to a successfully exploited vulnerability. Confidentiality refers to limiting information access and disclosure to only authorized users, as well as preventing access by, or disclosure to, unauthorized ones.

Integrity: This metric measures the impact to integrity of a successfully exploited vulnerability. Integrity refers to the trustworthiness and veracity of information. Integrity of the SUBSEQUENT SYSTEM is impacted when an attacker makes unauthorized modification of system data. Integrity is also impacted when a system user can repudiate critical actions taken in the context of the system (e.g. due to insufficient logging).

Availability: This metric measures the impact to the availability of the SUBSEQUENT SYSTEM resulting from a successfully exploited vulnerability. While the Confidentiality and Integrity impact metrics apply to the loss of confidentiality or integrity of data (e.g., information, files) used by the system, this metric refers to the loss of availability of the impacted system itself, such as a networked service (e.g., web, database, email). Since availability refers to the accessibility of information resources, attacks that consume network bandwidth, processor cycles, or disk space all impact the availability of a system.

GHSA-62gc-8jr5-x9pm: Apache InLong Deserialization of Untrusted Data Vulnerability

Cybercriminals are abusing the hospitality industry and its booking platforms to defraud the travelers that visit them

Robert Woodford, a recruitment marketing specialist, recently shared on LinkedIn how he fell victim to a highly sophisticated scam while booking a hotel in Verona through Booking.com, providing a striking example of how attacks on the hospitality industry affect travelers.

After completing a legitimate booking—and trading some communications with the hotel—Woodford received a separate message that he believed came from the official Booking.com messaging system. This message requested “missing details” and a prepayment.

But to be safe, Woodford logged into Booking.com directly rather than clicking any links. There, he found the same message in the _same thread_ as his earlier communications with the hotel. The payment link also looked official, as it contained “bookingcom” in the URL. Woodford didn’t realize until after making the payment that the merchant’s name was incorrect and the payment was fraudulent.

Woodford’s story falls in line with a blog I wrote a few months ago about how phishers use fake CAPTCHAs to trick hotel staff into downloading malware. It also demonstrates how travelers can be deceived by increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals exploiting real booking data and trusted platforms.

The Swiss National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) reported similar attacks where hotel staff were tricked into installing malware through fake CAPTCHAs and malicious clipboard commands. These infections compromise hotel booking systems, allowing attackers to manipulate guest communications and payments.

To be clear, these types of online scams are so effective because the hotel itself has been compromised, and travelers log into official, verified websites and services only to receive malicious messages from cybercriminals who are secretly in control. These aren’t fake websites—these are fake representatives for real hotels using the hotels’ own messaging platforms to speak with customers.

Once the criminals infect the booking system, they can access guest data, and payment information, enabling them to impersonate hotels and reach guests directly.

Adding to this picture is a warning from Arcona Hotels & Resorts who discovered “technical irregularities” and disconnected several locations from the central IT services as a precautionary measure to limit potential damage. ResponseOne GmbH, a company specializing in IT forensics, was brought in to conduct a technical analysis and manage the situation.

Arcona Hotels & Resorts is a German-based company specializing in operating and developing hotels, particularly focusing on leisure and holiday hotels, boutique hotels, and 5-star properties. While we have no direct information about what happened there, the timing and nature of their advisory suggest that this incident might be part of a wider campaign targeting the hospitality industry’s digital infrastructure.

**Advice for travelers**

 Cybercriminals are no longer just targeting guests. They are infiltrating hospitality systems themselves, turning trusted platforms into vectors for fraud.

Robert lost a few hundred quid and the trust in his bank, the travel platform he used, and a bit of trust in his own judgement. While Robert was vigilant and still became a victim, there are some tips to keep in mind:

*   Always access booking platforms by typing URLs directly into your browser rather than clicking links in emails or messages.
*   Verify any payment requests by contacting the hotel or booking platform through official channels. You can also call the hotel directly.
*   Be suspicious of urgent payment demands or requests for unusual payment methods.
*   Use credit cards for bookings where possible, or other options that provide fraud protection.
*   Report suspicious messages to the booking platform immediately.
*   Use browser protection against scams, credit card skimmers, and other malicious sites.

Be aware of the fact that the systems you trust might be compromised. Vigilance and proactive security measures are essential for both travelers and hotels to mitigate these risks.

**We don’t just report on threats—we remove them**

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your devices by downloading Malwarebytes today.

 Booking.com reservation abused as cybercriminals steal from travelers 

Cybersecurity involves both playing the good guy and the bad guy. Diving deep into advanced technologies and yet also going rogue in the Dark Web. Defining technical policies and also profiling attacker behavior. Security teams cannot be focused on just ticking boxes, they need to inhabit the attacker’s mindset.
This is where AEV comes in.
AEV (Adversarial Exposure Validation) is an advanced

Inside the Mind of the Adversary: Why More Security Leaders Are Selecting AEV

Ukraine has seen nearly one-fifth of its Internet space come under Russian control or sold to Internet address brokers since February 2022, a new study finds. The analysis indicates large chunks of Ukrainian Internet address space are now in the hands of proxy and anonymity services nested at some of America's largest Internet service providers (ISPs).

Image: Mark Rademaker, via Shutterstock.

Ukraine has seen nearly one-fifth of its Internet space come under Russian control or sold to Internet address brokers since February 2022, a new study finds. The analysis indicates large chunks of Ukrainian Internet address space are now in the hands of shadowy proxy and anonymity services that are nested at some of America’s largest Internet service providers (ISPs).

The findings come in a report examining how the Russian invasion has affected Ukraine’s domestic supply of **Internet Protocol Version 4** (IPv4) addresses. Researchers at **Kentik**, a company that measures the performance of Internet networks, found that while a majority of ISPs in Ukraine haven’t changed their infrastructure much since the war began in 2022, others have resorted to selling swathes of their valuable IPv4 address space just to keep the lights on.

For example, Ukraine’s incumbent ISP **Ukrtelecom** is now routing just 29 percent of the IPv4 address ranges that the company controlled at the start of the war, Kentik found. Although much of that former IP space remains dormant, Ukrtelecom told Kentik’s **Doug Madory** they were forced to sell many of their address blocks “to secure financial stability and continue delivering essential services.”

“Leasing out a portion of our IPv4 resources allowed us to mitigate some of the extraordinary challenges we have been facing since the full-scale invasion began,” Ukrtelecom told Madory.

Madory found much of the IPv4 space previously allocated to Ukrtelecom is now scattered to more than 100 providers globally, particularly at three large American ISPs — **Amazon** (AS16509), **AT&T** (AS7018), and **Cogent** (AS174).

Another Ukrainian Internet provider — **LVS** (AS43310) — in 2022 was routing approximately 6,000 IPv4 addresses across the nation. Kentik learned that by November 2022, much of that address space had been parceled out to over a dozen different locations, with the bulk of it being announced at AT&T.

IP addresses routed over time by Ukrainian provider LVS (AS43310) shows a large chunk of it being routed by AT&T (AS7018). Image: Kentik.

Ditto for the Ukrainian ISP **TVCOM**, which currently routes nearly 15,000 fewer IPv4 addresses than it did at the start of the war. Madory said most of those addresses have been scattered to 37 other networks outside of Eastern Europe, including Amazon, AT&T, and **Microsoft**.

The Ukrainian ISP **Trinity** (AS43554) went offline in early March 2022 during the bloody siege of Mariupol, but its address space eventually began showing up in more than 50 different networks worldwide. Madory found more than 1,000 of Trinity’s IPv4 addresses suddenly appeared on AT&T’s network.

Why are all these former Ukrainian IP addresses being routed by U.S.-based networks like AT&T? According to **spur.us**, a company that tracks VPN and proxy services, nearly all of the address ranges identified by Kentik now map to commercial proxy services that allow customers to anonymously route their Internet traffic through someone else’s computer.

From a website’s perspective, the traffic from a proxy network user appears to originate from the rented IP address, not from the proxy service customer. These services can be used for several business purposes, such as price comparisons, sales intelligence, web crawlers and content-scraping bots. However, proxy services also are massively abused for hiding cybercrime activity because they can make it difficult to trace malicious traffic to its original source.

IPv4 address ranges are always in high demand, which means they are also quite valuable. There are now multiple companies that will pay ISPs to lease out their unwanted or unused IPv4 address space. Madory said these IPv4 brokers will pay between $100-$500 per month to lease a block of 256 IPv4 addresses, and very often the entities most willing to pay those rental rates are proxy and VPN providers.

A cursory review of all Internet address blocks currently routed through AT&T — as seen in public records maintained by the Internet backbone provider **Hurricane Electric** — shows a preponderance of country flags other than the United States, including networks originating in Hungary, Lithuania, Moldova, Mauritius, Palestine, Seychelles, Slovenia, and Ukraine.

AT&T’s IPv4 address space seems to be routing a great deal of proxy traffic, including a large number of IP address ranges that were until recently routed by ISPs in Ukraine.

Asked about the apparent high incidence of proxy services routing foreign address blocks through AT&T, the telecommunications giant said it recently changed its policy about originating routes for network blocks that are not owned and managed by AT&T. That new policy, spelled out in a February 2025 update to AT&T’s terms of service, gives those customers until Sept. 1, 2025 to originate their own IP space from their own autonomous system number (ASN), a unique number assigned to each ISP (AT&T’s is AS7018).

“To ensure our customers receive the best quality of service, we changed our terms for dedicated internet in February 2025,” an AT&T spokesperson said in an emailed reply. “We no longer permit static routes with IP addresses that we have not provided. We have been in the process of identifying and notifying affected customers that they have 90 days to transition to Border Gateway Protocol routing using their own autonomous system number.”

Ironically, the co-mingling of Ukrainian IP address space with proxy providers has resulted in many of these addresses being used in cyberattacks against Ukraine and other enemies of Russia. Earlier this month, the European Union sanctioned **Stark Industries Solutions Inc.**, an ISP that surfaced two weeks before the Russian invasion and quickly became the source of large-scale DDoS attacks and spear-phishing attempts by Russian state-sponsored hacking groups. A deep dive into Stark’s considerable address space showed some of it was sourced from Ukrainian ISPs, and most of it was connected to Russia-based proxy and anonymity services.

According to Spur, the proxy service IPRoyal is the current beneficiary of IP address blocks from several Ukrainian ISPs profiled in Kentik’s report. Customers can chose proxies by specifying the city and country they would to proxy their traffic through. Image: Trend Micro.

Spur’s Chief Technology Officer **Riley Kilmer** said AT&T’s policy change will likely force many proxy services to migrate to other U.S. providers that have less stringent policies.

“AT&T is the first one of the big ISPs that seems to be actually doing something about this,” Kilmer said. “We track several services that explicitly sell AT&T IP addresses, and it will be very interesting to see what happens to those services come September.”

Still, Kilmer said, there are several other large U.S. ISPs that continue to make it easy for proxy services to bring their own IP addresses and host them in ranges that give the appearance of residential customers. For example, Kentik’s report identified former Ukrainian IP ranges showing up as proxy services routed by **Cogent** **Communications** (AS174), a tier-one Internet backbone provider based in Washington, D.C.

Kilmer said Cogent has become an attractive home base for proxy services because it is relatively easy to get Cogent to route an address block.

“In fairness, they transit a lot of traffic,” Kilmer said of Cogent. “But there’s a reason a lot of this proxy stuff shows up as Cogent: Because it’s super easy to get something routed there.”

Cogent declined a request to comment on Kentik’s findings.

Proxy Services Feast on Ukraine’s IP Address Exodus

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Crypto-tracing firm Chainalysis says the mysterious 300-bitcoin donation to the pardoned Silk Road creator appears to have come from someone associated with a different defunct black market: AlphaBay.

When Ross Ulbricht received a $31 million bitcoin donation last weekend from an unknown source, many observers saw it as more than a very nice welcome-home gift. Rumors swirled that the creator of the Silk Road, less than five months after receiving a pardon from Donald Trump that saved him from a lifetime in prison, was sending himself a trove of his stashed criminal proceeds from his days running the dark web's first black market more than a decade prior.

Now cryptocurrency tracing investigators say they've arrived at a stranger explanation: The money wasn't originally Ulbricht's, and didn't come from the Silk Road. Instead, they suspect it came from a _different_ long-defunct dark-web black market: AlphaBay.

The crypto tracing firm Chainalysis tells WIRED that, based on blockchain analysis, it has tied the origin of the 300 bitcoins sent to Ulbricht on Sunday to someone involved in AlphaBay, a dark web market that sold a wide variety of drugs and cybercriminal contraband from 2014 to 2017 and eventually grew to be 10 times the size of the Silk Road, according to the FBI.

Chainalysis says the funds appear to have emerged from AlphaBay around 2016 and 2017. Given the amount of the donation, Chainalysis suggests it might have come from someone who acted as a large-scale seller on the market. “We have reasonable grounds to suspect that these funds originated in AlphaBay,” says Phil Larratt, Chainalysis's director of investigations and a former official at the UK's National Crime Agency. “Looking at the amount, that would suggest they came from someone who was possibly a vendor on AlphaBay back in the early days.”

WIRED reached out to Ulbricht for comment about the donation's origin via contacts at the Free Ross campaign that lobbied for his pardon, but didn't immediately receive a response.

Prior to Chainalysis’ finding that the $31 million donation appears to have originated at AlphaBay, the independent crypto-tracing investigator known as ZachXBT had already posted to his account on X his own findings that the money didn't appear to have come from the Silk Road. ZachXBT found that, despite the donor's use of multiple Bitcoin “mixers” that take in users' coins and return others to obfuscate their trail on the blockchain, he was able to trace the funds to an address that had been flagged in Chainalysis’ software tool Reactor as tied to illicit activity. That analysis suggested that the money was a “legitimate donation but not legitimate funds,” ZachXBT wrote in a text message to WIRED.

ZachXBT also found that the same individual who controlled the funds had cashed out other cryptocurrency at an exchange in small, distributed quantities rather than in a single sum, suggesting he or she may have been trying to prevent them being seized or flagged—another sign that the money may have come from criminal origins. “Usage of multiple mixers, spreading out CEX deposits, etc,” ZachXBT writes to WIRED, using the term CEX to mean a centralized exchange, “that is done typically if you are trying to avoid getting illicit funds frozen.”

Chainalysis declined to offer more information on how exactly it identified the funds as originating at AlphaBay. But the company has built a business around identifying illicit services like digital black markets out of the morass of billions of cryptocurrency addresses. Chainalysis’ identification of the AlphaBay cluster of bitcoin addresses, in fact, played a key role in the takedown of the market in a law enforcement investigation known as Operation Bayonet that spanned 2016 and 2017.

AlphaBay certainly produced plenty of crypto kingpins who would have the kind of eight-figure sum donated to Ulbricht. Before it was torn offline in an elaborate sting operation in July 2017, the site was facilitating $2 million a day in sales, largely of illegal drugs although it also offered malware, stolen data, and other cybercriminal wares. AlphaBay's creator and administrator, Alexandre Cazes, died in a Bangkok jail cell under mysterious circumstances following his arrest, but the site's second-in-command, who went by the handle Desnake, appears to have remained at large. Any bitcoins an AlphaBay seller or administrator managed to hold onto since the site’s closure would have since appreciated more than 40-fold.

Exactly why one of AlphaBay's crypto moguls would donate $31 million to Ulbricht, however, remains a mystery. Speculation on social media has ranged from a fellow black marketeer repaying a favor to a more principled gift intended to thank Ulbricht for blazing a trail with his invention of the Silk Road's crypto-enabled anonymous transactions.

That gratitude may also take into account that, while many got rich on the dark-web markets that Ulbricht pioneered, he instead spent over a decade in prison, speculates Taylor Monahan, a crypto tracer and security researcher at crypto firm MetaMask. “People donate when they’re deeply inspired by someone and/or grateful and/or have some sort of remorse for the situation,” says Monahan. “Survivor's guilt is wild.”

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