From “The Underworld” podcast, a conversation about casino towns, gangster owners, and a new twist on scamming operations. Nathan Paul Southern and Lindsey Kennedy took a trip along the Mekong River and revealed new details about southeast Asia’s latest scourge: cyber slaves. ADDITIONAL READING: https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3195932/laos-criminal-casino-empire-chinese-gangsters ..read more

When the FBI and Justice Department took down a collective of cybercriminals known as Hive earlier this year, it targeted a group that made a name for itself, in part, by holding hospital and healthcare systems for ransom during the pandemic. What made the group so effective was its own twist on WeWork-style collaboratives… and it led to their demise ..read more

The Department of Justice says last month’s effort to bring down the Genesis Marketplace represents a departure from traditional law enforcement actions. ‘Operation Cookie Monster' wasn’t about nabbing masterminds. It was about making it harder for JV hackers to enter the world of cybercrime ..read more

The Iraqi government has unveiled an app that helps ordinary citizens report “indecent” content online. Since its introduction, the Ballegh app has received some 144,000 reports. And the Iraqi app isn’t the only one: A roster of similar morality apps have popped up across the region, raising new questions about the future of free speech in the Middle East ..read more

What makes a hacker tick? That’s what we wanted to find out when we reached out to Bassterlord, a 27-year-old hacker in Ukraine who joined some of the most infamous hacking crews of our time. Researcher Jon DiMaggio of Analyst1 has released a report about him, and he gave Click Here an exclusive first look. Then, we spoke to Bassterlord ourselves ..read more

We go behind the scenes of the new book by WIRED’s Andy Greenberg, "Tracers in the Dark." It explains how a handful of entrepreneurs and investigators demystified cryptocurrency tracking. Recently, we spoke with Andy and some crypto tracers onstage at the Links 2023 conference in New York City. Plus, North Korea’s ingenious effort to launder its stolen crypto.  ..read more

We go behind the scenes of the new book by WIRED’s Andy Greenberg, "Tracers in the Dark." It explains how a handful of entrepreneurs and investigators demystified cryptocurrency tracking. Recently, we spoke with Andy and some crypto tracers onstage at the Links 2023 conference in New York City. Plus, North Korea’s ingenious effort to launder its stolen crypto.  ..read more

When cryptocurrency burst on the scene in 2008, it was touted as anonymous — a boon to cyber criminals all over the world. Then a few mathematicians and some federal agents proved otherwise, in a way so big it birthed an industry. With a tip of the hat to Andy Greenberg’s new book “Tracers in the Dark,” we talk to them about how they did it ..read more

Six months after demonstrators took to the streets of Iran hoping to end its draconian hijab laws and push for a change in the leadership, the protests have moved online — into a quiet civil disobedience campaign that leadership is finding hard to control ..read more

In a recent conversation on WAMU’s nationally syndicated show 1A, we talked about lessons learned one year into the world’s first truly hybrid war. The conversation happened amid a report from Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center that found new worrying signs on the Russia-Ukraine cyber front. They believe Sandworm, a cyber military unit of Russia’s intelligence service, has been launching new phishing campaigns, cyber espionage operations, and is stepping up coordination with hacktivists groups ..read more