A United States Customs and Border Protection request for information this week revealed the agency’s plans to find vendors that can supply face recognition technology for capturing data on everyone entering the US in a vehicle like a car or van, not just the people sitting in the front seat. And a CBP spokesperson later told WIRED that the agency also has plans to expand its real-time face recognition capabilities at the border to detect people exiting the US as well—a focus that may be tied to the Trump administration’s push to get undocumented people to “self-deport” and leave the US.
WIRED also shed light this week on a recent CBP memo that rescinded a number of internal policies designed to protect vulnerable people—including pregnant women, infants, the elderly, and people with serious medical conditions—while in the agency’s custody. Signed by acting commissioner Pete Flores, the order eliminates four Biden-era policies.
Meanwhile, as the ripple effects of “SignalGate” continue, the communication app TeleMessage suspended “all services” pending an investigation after former US national security adviser Mike Waltz inadvertently called attention to the app, which subsequently suffered data breaches in recent days. Analysis of TeleMessage Signal’s source code this week appeared to show that the app sends users’ message logs in plaintext, undermining the security and privacy guarantees the service promised. After data stolen in one of the TeleMessage hacks indicated that CBP agents might be users of the app, CBP confirmed its use to WIRED, saying that the agency has “disabled TeleMessage as a precautionary measure.”
A WIRED investigation found that US director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reused a weak password for years on multiple accounts. And researchers warn that an open source tool known as “easyjson” could be an exposure for the US government and US companies, because it has ties to the Russian social network VK, whose CEO has been sanctioned.
And there’s more. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.
ICE’s Deportation Airline Hack Reveals Man “Disappeared” to El Salvador
Hackers this week revealed they had breached GlobalX, one of the airlines that has come to be known as “ICE Air” thanks to its use by the Trump administration to deport hundreds of migrants. The data they leaked from the airline includes detailed flight manifests for those deportation flights—including, in at least one case, the travel records of a man whose own family had considered him “disappeared” by immigration authorities and whose whereabouts the US government had refused to divulge.
On Monday, reporters at 404 Media said that hackers had provided them with a trove of data taken from GlobalX after breaching the company’s network and defacing its website. “Anonymous has decided to enforce the Judge’s order since you and your sycophant staff ignore lawful orders that go against your fascist plans,” a message the hackers posted to the site read. That stolen data, it turns out, included detailed passenger lists for GlobalX’s deportation flights—including the flight to El Salvador of Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a Venezuelan man whose whereabouts had become a mystery to even his own family as they sought answers from the US government. US authorities had previously declined to tell his family or reporters where he had been sent—only that he had been deported—and his name was even excluded from a list of deportees leaked to CBS News. (The Department of Homeland Security later stated in a post to X that Prada was in El Salvador—but only after a New York Times story about his disappearance.)
The fact that his name was, in fact, included all along on a GlobalX flight manifest highlights just how opaque the Trump administration’s deportation process remains. According to immigrant advocates who spoke with 404 Media, it even raises questions about whether the government itself had deportation records as comprehensive as the airline whose planes it chartered. “There are so many levels at which this concerns me. One is they clearly did not take enough care in this to even make sure they had the right lists of who they were removing, and who they were not sending to a prison that is a black hole in El Salvador,” Michelle Brané, executive director of immigrant rights group Together and Free, told 404 Media. “They weren’t even keeping accurate records of who they were sending there.”
The Computer of a DOGE Staffer With Sensitive Access Reportedly Infected With Malware
Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency has raised alarms not just due to its often reckless cuts to federal programs, but also the agency’s habit of giving young, inexperienced staffers with questionable vetting access to highly sensitive systems. Now security researcher Micah Lee has found that Kyle Schutt, a DOGE staffer who reportedly accessed the financial system of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, appears to have had infostealer malware on one of his computers. Lee discovered that four dumps of user data stolen by that kind of password-stealing malware included Schutt’s passwords and usernames. It’s far from clear when Schutt’s credentials were stolen, for what machine, or whether the malware would have posed any threat to any government agency’s systems, but the incident nonetheless highlights the potential risks posed by DOGE staffers’ unprecedented access.
Grok AI Will “Undress” Women in Public on X
Elon Musk has long marketed his AI tool Grok as a more freewheeling, less restricted alternative to other large language models and AI image generators. Now X users are testing the limits of Grok’s few safeguards by replying to images of women on the platform and asking Grok to “undress” them. While the tool doesn’t allow the generation of nude images, 404 Media and Bellingcat have found that it repeatedly responded to users’ “undress” prompts with pictures of women in lingerie or bikinis, posted publicly to the site. In one case, Grok apologized to a woman who complained about the practice, but the feature has yet to be disabled.
A Hacked School Software Company Paid a Ransom—but Schools Are Still Being Extorted
This week in don’t-trust-ransomware-gangs news: Schools in North Carolina and Canada warned that they’ve received extortion threats from hackers who had obtained students’ personal information. The likely source of that sensitive data? A ransomware breach last December of PowerSchool, one of the world’s biggest education software firms, according to NBC News. PowerSchool paid a ransom at the time, but the data stolen from the company nonetheless appears to be the same info now being used in the current extortion attempts. “We sincerely regret these developments—it pains us that our customers are being threatened and re-victimized by bad actors,” PowerSchool told NBC News in a statement. “As is always the case with these situations, there was a risk that the bad actors would not delete the data they stole, despite assurances and evidence that were provided to us.”
A Notorious Deepfake Porn Site Shuts Down After Its Creator Is Outed
Since its creation in 2018, MrDeepFakes.com grew into perhaps the world’s most infamous repository of nonconsensual pornography created with AI mimicry tools. Now it’s offline after the site’s creator was identified as a Canadian pharmacist in an investigation by CBC, Bellingcat, and the Danish news outlets Politiken and Tjekdet. The site’s pseudonymous administrator, who went by DPFKS on its forums and created at least 150 of its porn videos himself, left a trail of clues in email addresses and passwords found on breached sites that eventually led to the Yelp and Airbnb accounts of Ontario pharmacist David Do. After reporters approached Do with evidence that he was DPFKS, MrDeepFakes.com went offline. “A critical service provider has terminated service permanently. Data loss has made it impossible to continue operation,” reads a message on its homepage. “We will not be relaunching.”
