Police Dismantle World’s ‘Most Dangerous’ Criminal Hacking Network

International law enforcement agencies said on Wednesday they had dismantled a criminal hacking scheme used to steal billions of dollars from businesses and private citizens worldwide. Reuters reports: Police in six European countries, as well as Canada and the United States, completed a joint operation to take control of Internet servers used to run and control a malware network known as…

House Votes To Impeach President Trump a Historic Second Time

A House majority, including several Republicans, on Wednesday voted to impeach President Trump for “incitement of insurrection.” The New York Times reports: The House had enough votes on Wednesday to impeach President Trump for inciting a violent insurrection against the United States government, as more than a half-dozen members of the president’s party joined Democrats to charge him with high crimes…

German Investigators Shut Down Biggest Illegal Marketplace On the Darknet

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Associated Press: German prosecutors said Tuesday that they have taken down what they believe was the biggest illegal marketplace on the darknet and arrested its suspected operator. The site, known as DarkMarket, was shut down on Monday, prosecutors in the southwestern city of Koblenz said. All sorts of drugs, forged money, stolen or…

Ukraine Government Picks Stellar To Help Build National Digital Currency

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CoinDesk: Ukraine’s government has chosen the Stellar blockchain network as a platform to build a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Announced Monday, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to build out a “virtual assets ecosystem and national digital currency of Ukraine.” The…

Microsoft, SolarWinds Face New Criticism Over Russian Breach of US Networks

After Russia’s massive breach of both government and private networks in the U.S., American intelligence officials “have expressed anger that Microsoft did not detect the attack earlier But new criticisms are also falling on SolarWinds: Some of the compromised SolarWinds software was engineered in Eastern Europe, and American investigators are now examining whether the incursion originated there, where Russian intelligence operatives…

Tips on choosing telescopes and binoculars for beginners

Tips for beginners: how to choose binoculars or your first telescope. Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/how-to-choose-1st-telescope-binoculars…

Microsoft Engineer Gets Nine Years For Stealing $10 Million From Microsoft

A former Microsoft software engineer from Ukraine has been sentenced to nine years in prison for stealing more than $10 million in store credit from Microsoft’s online store. Ars Technica reports: From 2016 to 2018, Volodymyr Kvashuk worked for Microsoft as a tester, placing mock online orders to make sure everything was working smoothly. The software automatically prevented shipment of physical…

‘How 30 Lines of Code Blew Up a 27-Ton Generator’

After the U.S. unveiled charges against six members of the Sandworm unit in Russia’s military intelligence agency, Wired re-visited “a secret experiment in 2007 proved that hackers could devastate power grid equipment beyond repair — with a file no bigger than a gif.” It’s an excerpt from the new book SANDWORM: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the…