While no one has disputed the authenticity of the threat, WIRED has learned that the leak was part of a behind-the-scenes campaign to block privacy-focused reforms of a major US surveillance program known as Section 702.
The leak, instigated by an email from top lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee, followed a week of backroom negotiations that pitted White House national security advisers against reproductive rights advocates, who backed reforms to Section 702 that would have banned the sale of Americans' private data to the FBI and US intelligence agencies.
Finally, we detailed the ways in which cyberattacks disproportionately impact communities of color and other vulnerable people in ways that often fly under the radar.
Each week, we round up the security news we didn't cover in depth ourselves.
Having the bravery to tell the world exactly how hard you got duped is far more rare.
In a harrowing essay for The Cut, freelance finance writer Charlotte Cowles details how she was manipulated into putting $50,000 in a shoebox and handing it to a stranger in a white Mercedes on the instructions of someone who claimed to be a CIA agent.
The Amazon employee forwarded her call to a Federal Trade Commission official, who in turn put her in touch with a CIA agent.
The scammer, posing as a CIA agent named Michael, kept Cowles on the phone for hours, all the while scaring her into thinking she had arrest warrants for various serious crimes linked to the identity theft, and that the only way she could stop from having all her assets frozen was to withdraw the majority of her life savings and give it to the CIA, which would then issue her a check for her own money.
Throughout the ordeal, nearly everyone involved in the scam convinced Cowles to isolate herself-tell no one, they said.
Even in the moment, Cowles suspected she was being scammed.
Like the fact that they knew the last four digits of her Social Security number, made Cowles doubt her better judgement.
This Cyber News was published on www.wired.com. Publication date: Sat, 17 Feb 2024 14:43:04 +0000