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This week, WIRED obtained a memo that tied dozens of cyberattacks<\/a> against Minnesota water and wastewater utilities to Iran, the first official documentation of Iran\u2019s likely responsibility for the most impactful campaign of cyberattacks to hit the US in the midst of the war that began nearly six months ago.<\/p>\n In other news, more details have emerged about OpenAI\u2019s \u201crogue\u201d AI agent breach of Hugging Face\u2019s platform. OpenAI disclosed that the AI agent hacked multiple third-party accounts and services<\/a> as it sought to breach Hugging Face\u2019s production database, which contained solutions for the cybersecurity tests OpenAI was evaluating the agent with.<\/p>\n Anthropic, too, disclosed that its AI models gained unauthorized access<\/a> to three organizations\u2019 systems during its own cybersecurity testing. Experts say the incidents underscore the importance of implementing well-known security best practices<\/a> on the part of AI labs.<\/p>\n AI is changing cybersecurity in other ways. Google\u2019s Chrome Browser now receives twice-a-week security updates<\/a> as more bugs are identified and fixed thanks to the security team\u2019s use of AI tools. And a new research study<\/a> found that AI chatbots are effective at reeling victims into pig-butchering scams.<\/p>\n The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is attempting to prevent state oversight<\/a> of four detention facilities, and a Department of Homeland Security official resigned<\/a>, citing the agency\u2019s \u201cwar on immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\n Plus, a GPS jamming exercise<\/a> in New Mexico contributed to the crash of a civilian plane, as drone warfare reshapes how safe the skies are both in the US and abroad. People were surprised to see shared Claude chats<\/a> popping up as search results on major search engines. An innocent gamer was imprisoned for 18 months<\/a> after law enforcement made a typo in a subpoena. Researchers found that the top image-editing models on Hugging Face can easily create explicit deepfakes<\/a>. And attendee badges for this year\u2019s Defcon hacker conference feature a custom hardware security token<\/a> that can be used as a security token after the conference is over.<\/p>\n And there\u2019s more. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn\u2019t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.<\/p>\n The news that more than 30 water utilities across Minnesota were hit with cyberattacks in the last week already represented perhaps the broadest, most disruptive hacking campaign to ever target American industrial control systems\u2014the technology that connects digital software with physical equipment, often in critical infrastructure settings. Now the FBI has warned that the attacks have hit utilities in no fewer than seven states, well beyond Minnesota alone.<\/p>\n In its alert<\/a>, the FBI didn\u2019t name the targeted states or include details about the extent of the disruption or damage the hacking campaign caused. But the bureau said that it and the Environmental Protection Agency were working with affected utilities. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in its own advisory this week, stated that the attacks had in some cases disabled digital controls and \u201cresulted in boil-water notices\u201d\u2014suggesting potential water contamination. Echoing that CISA advisory, the FBI also warned that utilities should immediately take measures to remove from the internet digital devices that connect to physical equipment, known as programmable logic controllers, protect them with strong passwords, and set up allow-lists to only allow authorized devices to connect to them.<\/p>\n The leading suspect behind the wave of attacks remains Iranian-affiliated hackers, as first laid out in a CISA advisory in April, which a leaked memo obtained by WIRED<\/a> confirmed was connected to the more recent Minnesota utility attacks, too. President Donald Trump on Friday instead blamed Minnesota Democratic governor Tim Walz\u2019s administration for the attacks, a partisan response reminiscent of his denial of Russia\u2019s hacking of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, even after US intelligence agencies had squarely pinned that intrusion on the Kremlin.<\/p>\n An FBI request for information, posted in March by the bureau’s procurement arm, lists predictive modeling as one of six requirements for the Threat Screening Center. The system would draw on existing datasets and, as new records arrive, score them for similarity and \u201cpattern alignment\u201d against what the center already holds. The second Trump administration has reoriented the center toward domestic targets, guided by a memorandum directing the national security apparatus to target people defined broadly as anti-capitalist, anti-Christian, and hostile toward traditional views on family and religion.<\/p>\n FBI director Kash Patel told Congress in March that the center had posted double-digit growth in biometric capability and intelligence production. The watch list is reportedly approaching 2 million names. Watch-listing functions without a criminal charge and audits have repeatedly turned up errors in the underlying data. The US Supreme Court has already ruled against the bureau twice over its use of the list as leverage to recruit informants.<\/p>\n As Russia continues to increase its control<\/a> over internet access<\/a>, including banning apps and running local internet shutdowns, the country has also charged the founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, with facilitating terrorism. This week, the Russian Federal Security Service issued an international arrest warrant for Durov,<\/a> saying that Telegram had been used to coordinate sabotage and attacks inside Russia. It also claimed the app had failed to remove content by the \u201cUkrainian special services, terrorist organizations, and extremist organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUnder Russian law, I\u2019m banned from \u2018publishing information on the internet,\u2019\u201d Durov posted online<\/a> following the charges being announced. \u201cRussian officials are clearly confused about who can ban whom from the internet.\u201d The move by Russian authorities comes as part of the country\u2019s long-standing battle against Telegram. It first tried to block Telegram in 2018 and then earlier this year attempted to restrict access to the app<\/a> while pushing citizens toward its home-grown messaging app, Max, which European officials say<\/a> includes \u201cextensive surveillance features.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier this year, lawmakers in Minnesota passed a law<\/a> designed to \u201cprohibit the access, download, or use of nudification technology\u201d unless it requires significant technical skills to operate. Ahead of that law coming into force on August 1, Elon Musk\u2019s xAI said this week that it is suing Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison over the law, which the company claims violates the First Amendment.<\/p>\n The lawsuit, according to The Guardian<\/a>, claims that xAI supports the banning of nonconsensual AI-generated nude images of people but says the law could ban protected free speech and is \u201cwildly overbroad.\u201d The lawsuit<\/a> says xAI has \u201cno practical choice\u201d but to restrict the image editing capabilities of its Grok AI tool in Minnesota when the law takes effect. \u201cSee you in court, creep,\u201d Minnesota governor Tim Walz posted<\/a> online in response to the lawsuit. In January, Grok was used to produce millions of nonconsensual images<\/a> of women \u201cundressed.\u201d<\/p>\n Someone impersonating Democratic National Committee chairman Ken Martin emailed a DNC staffer in February 2025 and got the staffer to hand over nearly $29,000, according to NOTUS, which obtained previously unreported records and confirmed the incident with committee officials. Martin had only been in the job for a matter of days.<\/p>\n The DNC reportedly caught the error within minutes and reported it to Wells Fargo, its financial institution, but recovered only $7,000. The staffer involved has since left the DNC. The committee also referred the matter to law enforcement. An official told NOTUS that the staff receive fraud training and operate under \u201csecurity protocols\u201d to fend off additional fraud.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n