Apple May Owe You $20 in Siri Privacy Lawsuit

It might be New Years, though hacks, scamsand dangerous people Hiding on the Internet didn’t go anywhere.

The day before the ball drops, The US Treasury Department said it was hacked. Authorities believe the attackers are an as-yet-unidentified Advanced Persistent Threat group with links to the Chinese government and are exploiting flaws in remote technical support software developed by BeyondTrust to carry out what the Treasury Department described as a “massive” breach. The company told Treasury on Dec. 8 that attackers stole an authentication key, which eventually gave them access to the department’s computers. Although the Treasury said the attackers were only able to steal “certain classified documents,” new details have already begun to emerge, which we’ll discuss in more detail below.

First Last month’s killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompsongun silencers were mostly something you came across in Hollywood movies or if you looked closely, Facebook and Instagram ads. WIRED discovered that someone was on the run Thousands of ads for “fuel filters” are actually used as gun silencersStrictly governed by US law. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has since removed many of the ads, but new ones continue to appear. So if you see one, keep swiping—having an unregistered muffler can result in criminal charges.

When an Amber Alert push notification pops up on your phone, getting all the information you need to find a stolen child can literally be a matter of life and death. That’s a lesson the California Highway Patrol learned this week Linked to the post on X posted an Amber Alert and people can’t log in if they don’t.. While the CHP said it contacted the social media posts from 2018 until this week without issue, a spokesperson told WIRED they are “now investigating.”

If you added better privacy and security practices to your list of 2025 goals, one easy place to start is your old chat history. You might be surprised how much sensitive information is out there, maybe forgotten, but definitely not gone.

That’s not all. Each week, we summarize security and privacy news that we don’t cover in detail ourselves. Click on the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

Apple this week agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit over wiretapping of its Siri voice assistant. claim, Lopez et al Apple Inc.It accused Apple of recording conversations without people’s knowledge and sharing that information with third parties to serve ads. The problem stemmed from Siri’s voice activation feature — “Hey, Siri” — which the two plaintiffs said resulted in secretly recorded conversations that resulted in ads for Nike shoes and Olive Garden. One claimant claimed he was advertised for treatment after talking to his doctor. People who qualify as part of a class covered by the settlement, which must be approved by a federal judge in California, can receive up to $20 per device for up to five devices. The settlement amounts to roughly nine hours of profit for Apple, which earned about $94 billion in its last fiscal year, Reuters noted. The Company will not accept any errors as part of the contract.

Newly unsealed court documents reveal that the FBI uncovered “the largest seizure of improvised explosive devices in FBI history” during a search for an illegal firearm. An explosives arsenal was found at Brad Spafford’s Virginia home, where investigators found more than 150 pipe bombs and other explosive devices, according to court documents. Prosecutors say the FBI found a backpack containing pipe bombs and emblazoned with a grenade-like patch with the hashtag #NoLivesMatter. “accelerator” group, This was reported by The New York Times. While prosecutors say Spafford, who allegedly used a photo of US President Joe Biden to target him, was aiming to “pay back political conspiracies”, his lawyer says he is a harmless “family man” who should be released.

Following revelations earlier this week that Chinese state-backed hackers breached the US Treasury in early December, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the hackers specifically targeted the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Attackers may be seeking information about the Office’s plans to impose sanctions on Chinese entities. In addition, Bloomberg informed On Thursday, attackers targeted the computers of senior Treasury officials, where they were able to access unclassified material. So far, investigators have reportedly identified about 100 computers stolen by the hackers. Sources told Bloomberg that the attack appeared to be more of a crime of opportunity than a secret, long-planned operation like China’s recent infiltration of US telecommunications companies.

As the hacking of the Chinese Treasury comes into focus, the impact of its hacking of American telecommunications firms is still widening. Two days after Christmas, Anne Neuberger, the White House deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, held a briefing with reporters and suggested that the number of telecoms breached by the Chinese hackers known as Typhoon Salt had been raised from eight to nine. At least some of these breaches are due to the companies’ own inadequate security. “The reality is that, based on what we’ve seen with the level of cybersecurity implemented in the telecommunications sector, these networks are not as secure as they need to be to defend against a well-resourced, skilled attacking cyber actor like China.” Neuberger said. He added that the hackers targeted the communication histories of fewer than 100 people — mostly in Washington, including President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance. Neuberger said the spying incident necessitated new Federal Communications Commission cybersecurity rules, which he said could have limited the scope of the breaches if they had existed.

Cars collect and transmit highly sensitive location data, like any modern digital device, and the privacy pitfalls of all this tracking become all too clear. Case in point: A whistleblower alerted Germany’s Chaos Computer Club and the country’s Der Spiegel news outlet that Cariad, a subsidiary of Volkswagen, had leaked the location information of 800,000 electric cars online. Among the leaks are not only Volkswagen, but also cars sold by other brands such as Seat, Audi and Skoda. For the Audi and Skoda, this location data was only accurate to within six miles, but the Volkswagen and Seats could be located within about four inches. The leaked information has since been protected, but the incident nonetheless demonstrates how far automakers have gone to collect data.