The US government banned the use of NSO’s Pegasus spyware 18 months ago, but a new report today says that at least one government agency is using very similar malware from a rival company: Paragon Graphite. Graphite reportedly has the same capabilities as Pegasus, and the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is said to be using it … more… The post US govt banned NSO’s Pegasus, but said to buy rival spyware Paragon Graphite appeared first on 9to5Mac.

Innocent-seeming apps can be trojan horses for your information. | Image: Amar Toor / The Verge An Android recording app called iRecorder Screen Recorder began as an innocent screen recording app but turned evil nearly a year after it was first released, as detailed by Ars Technica. The app first came out in September 2021, but after an update the following August, it began recording a minute of audio every 15 minutes and forwarding those recordings, through an encrypted link, to the developer’s server. The whole thing is documented in a blog post from Essential Security against Evolving Threats (ESET) researcher Lukas Stefanko. In the post, Stefanko said the app was updated in August 2022 to include malicious code “based…

Illustration: The Verge A former Apple engineer and the executive at an electric vehicle startup owned by the Chinese tech giant Baidu has been charged with stealing Apple’s self-driving technology, as reported earlier by CNBC. On Tuesday, the US Department of Justice indicted and charged Weibo Wang with the “theft and attempted theft” of Apple’s autonomous driving tech. As noted by the indictment, Wang started working at Apple as a software engineer in 2016, where he signed a confidentiality agreement and worked on the company’s secretive autonomous driving project. Wang resigned from his role in 2018, but unbeknownst to Apple, Wang accepted employment at “the U.S.-based subsidiary of another company that was headquartered in the People’s Republic of China and…

Apple co-founder Steve “Woz” Wozniak has warned that artificial intelligence (A.I.) could make scams and misinformation harder to spot. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak Philippa Wain for The Beeb: Mr Wozniak says he fears the technology will be harnessed by “bad actors”. Speaking to Zoe Kleinman, the BBC’s Technology Editor, he talked about both the benefits of AI, and his concerns. He said: “AI is so intelligent it’s open to the bad players, the ones that want to trick you about who they are.” Mr Wozniak doesn’t believe AI will replace people because it lacks emotion, but he did warn that, in his view, it will make bad actors even more convincing, because programmes like ChatGPT can create text which “sounds…

Police tracked down two Chicago men accused in connection with an armored truck robbery Tuesday, thanks to the help of an Apple AirTag hidden inside a container of stolen money. Apple’s AirTag Two Brink’s guards were in the parking lot of a Jewel-Osco store for a pickup. They entered the store, and then while one guard used the washroom, the other guard returned to the truck. That’s when Singleton, described as wearing all black and being thin and about 5-foot-6, allegedly approached the guard from behind, pointed a green and silver gun at him and told him not to move, the complaint said. Davis, who is about 6-foot-2 and was wearing light clothing, also was armed, authorities said. He joined…

New York City police recently gave out free AirTags to cut down on vehicle theft, and just days after that announcement San Antonio law enforcement has advised against using the trackers.Be cautious when using AirTags to track stolen itemsVehicle thefts are on the rise in some states, so much so that New York City handed out free AirTags to residents so they can track their vehicles. Vehicles are also being stolen in San Antonio, Texas, but police urge caution when using Apple's tracking technology. Read more...