Chris Wray

Photo: Win McNamee (Getty Images)In one of the FBI’s most sophisticated cybercrime operations to date, agents infiltrated and spent approximately six months embedded in a prominent ransomware gang’s network, Justice Department officials announced Thursday. That gang, known as Hive, was disrupted earlier this week when agents seized its server infrastructure and also took down its website.Speaking Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland characterized Hive as “an international ransomware network responsible for…

Alabama and Utah joined other US states prohibiting the use of Chinese-owned short-video sharing app TikTok on state government devices and computer networks due to national security concerns. The actions follow warnings from FBI Director Chris Wray last month who said the Chinese government could use the ByteDance-owned app to control data collection on millions of US users or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations. "Disturbingly, TikTok harvests vast amounts of data, much of…

Photo: Alex Wong (Getty Images)The FBI came very close to using commercial spyware to aid in its domestic criminal investigations, the New York Times has reported. The spyware was developed by the NSO Group, the notorious surveillance vendor from Israel whose products have been tied to spying scandals all over the world.In January, the Times broke the news that the FBI had been considering procuring a surveillance system called “Phantom” from NSO that could reportedly hack any phone in the United States. The toolwas a…