This essay was written with Seva Gunitsky, and originally appeared in Foreign Affairs. Two weeks after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in March 2022, the Russian TV Channel One editor Marina Ovsyannikova burst onto the set of the evening newscast. She held up a hand-drawn sign behind the anchor’s head that read: “Stop the war. Don’t believe propaganda. They’re lying to you!” She shouted, “No to war!” until she was dragged away. No one has protested the war on Russian television since then, partly as a result of tighter security and a general climate of fear. But in October 2024, Margarita Simonyan, one of Russia’s chief propagandists, gave another explanation. A growing number of the RT network’s anchors, she explained to an interviewer, are not real. “That face doesn’t exist. We generated the voice and everything else.” They were, she meant, produced by artificial intelligence. In a follow-up interview with the newspaper ...

Hackers associated with the Chinese government used a Trojaned version of Notepad++ to deliver malware to selected users. > Notepad++ said that officials with the unnamed provider hosting the update > infrastructure consulted with incident responders and found that it remained > compromised until September 2. Even then, the attackers maintained credentials > to the internal services until December 2, a capability that allowed them to > continue redirecting selected update traffic to malicious servers. The threat > actor “specifically targeted Notepad++ domain with the goal of exploiting > insufficient update verification controls that existed in older versions of > Notepad++.” Event logs indicate that the hackers tried to re-exploit one of > the weaknesses after it was fixed but that the attempt failed...

There’s a new report about two AI coding assistants, used by 1.5 million developers, that are surreptitiously sending a copy of everything they ingest to China. Maybe avoid using them.

The latest article on this topic. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Blog moderation policy.

Wired is reporting on Chinese darknet markets on Telegram. > The ecosystem of marketplaces for Chinese-speaking crypto scammers hosted on > the messaging service Telegram have now grown to be bigger than ever before, > according to a new analysis from the crypto tracing firm Elliptic. Despite a > brief drop after Telegram banned two of the biggest such markets in early > 2025, the two current top markets, known as Tudou Guarantee and Xinbi > Guarantee, are together enabling close to $2 billion a month in > money-laundering transactions, sales of scam tools like stolen data, fake > investment websites, and AI deepfake tools, as well as other black market > services as varied as ...

Scammers are generating images of broken merchandise in order to apply for refunds.

New report: “The Party’s AI: How China’s New AI Systems are Reshaping Human Rights.” From a summary article: > China is already the world’s largest exporter of AI powered surveillance > technology; new surveillance technologies and platforms developed in China are > also not likely to simply stay there. By exposing the full scope of China’s AI > driven control apparatus, this report presents clear, evidence based insights > for policymakers, civil society, the media and technology companies seeking to > counter the rise of AI enabled repression and human rights violations, and > China’s growing efforts to project that repression beyond its borders...

This quote is from House of Huawei: The Secret History of China’s Most Powerful Company. > “Long before anyone had heard of Ren Zhengfei or Huawei, Wan Runnan had been > China’s star entrepreneur in the 1980s, with his company, the Stone Group, > touted as “China’s IBM.” Wan had believed that economic change could lead to > political change. He had thrown his support behind the pro-democracy > protesters in 1989. As a result, he had to flee to France, with an arrest > warrant hanging over his head. He was never able to return home. Now, decades > later and in failing health in Paris, Wan recalled something that had happened > one day in the late 1980s, when he was still living in Beijing...

Google has filed a complaint in court that details the scam: > In a complaint filed Wednesday, the tech giant accused “a cybercriminal group > in China” of selling “phishing for dummies” kits. The kits help unsavvy > fraudsters easily “execute a large-scale phishing campaign,” tricking hordes > of unsuspecting people into “disclosing sensitive information like passwords, > credit card numbers, or banking information, often by impersonating well-known > brands, government agencies, or even people the victim knows.” > > These branded “Lighthouse” kits offer two versions of software, depending on > whether bad actors want to launch SMS and e-commerce scams. “Members may > subscribe to weekly, monthly, seasonal, annual, or permanent licenses,” Google > alleged. Kits include “hundreds of templates for fake websites, domain set-up > tools for those fake websites, and other features designed to dupe victims > into believing they are entering sensitive information on a legitimate > website.”...

Good Wall Street Journal article on criminal gangs that scam people out of their credit card information: > Your highway toll payment is now past due, one text warns. You have U.S. > Postal Service fees to pay, another threatens. You owe the New York City > Department of Finance for unpaid traffic violations. > > The texts are ploys to get unsuspecting victims to fork over their credit-card > details. The gangs behind the scams take advantage of this information to buy > iPhones, gift cards, clothing and cosmetics. > > Criminal organizations operating out of China, which investigators blame for > the toll and postage messages, have used them to make more than $1 billion > over the last three years, according to the Department of Homeland Security...