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Databases that Elon Musk’s team is trying to access include more than 300 personal details about members of the U.S. public.The federal government knows your mother’s maiden name and your bank account number. The student debt you hold. Your disability status. The company that employs you and the wages you earn there. And that’s just a start. More
The additions included companies that are customers of Intel and Nvidia, and one firm that was the focus of a New York Times investigation last year.The Trump administration on Tuesday added 80 companies and organizations to a list of companies that are barred from buying American technology and other exports because of national security concerns.The move, which targeted primarily Chinese firms, cracks down on companies that have been big buyers of American chips from Nvidia, Intel and AMD. It also closed loopholes that Trump administration officials have long criticized as allowing Chinese firms to continue to advance technologically despite U.S. restrictions.One company added to the list, Nettrix Information Industry, was the focus of a 2024 investigation by The New York Times that showed how some Chinese executives had bypassed U.S. restrictions aimed at cutting China off from advanced chips to make artificial intelligence.Nettrix, one of China’s largest makers of computer servers that are used to produce artificial intelligence, was started by a group of former executives from Sugon, a firm that provided advanced computing to the Chinese military and built a system the government used to surveil persecuted minorities in the western Xinjiang region.In 2019, the United States added Sugon to its “entity list,” restricting exports over national security concerns. The Times investigation found that, six months later, the executives formed Nettrix, using Sugon’s technology and inheriting some of its customers. Times reporters also found that Nettrix’s owners shared a complex in eastern China with Sugon and other related companies.After Sugon was singled out and restricted by the United States, its longtime partners — Nvidia, Intel and Microsoft — quickly formed ties with Nettrix, the investigation found.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
The departure of the acting commissioner is the latest backlash to the Department of Government Efficiency’s efforts to access sensitive data.The top official at the Social Security Administration stepped down this weekend after members of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency sought access to sensitive personal data about millions of Americans held by the agency, according to people familiar with the matter.The resignation of Michelle King, the acting commissioner, is the latest abrupt departure of a senior federal official who refused to provide Mr. Musk’s lieutenants with access to closely held data. Mr. Musk’s team has been embedding with agencies across the federal government and seeking access to private data as part of what it has said is an effort to root out fraud and waste.Social Security payments account for about $1.5 trillion, or a fifth, of annual federal spending in the United States. President Trump has pledged not to enact cuts to the program’s retirement benefits, but he has indicated that he is willing to look for ways to cut wasteful or improper spending from the retirement program that pays benefits to millions of Americans.An audit produced by the Social Security Administration’s inspector general last year found that from 2015 to 2022, the agency paid almost $8.6 trillion in benefits and made approximately $71.8 billion, or less than 1 percent, in improper payments that usually involved recipients getting too much money.Mr. Musk’s team at the Social Security Administration was seeking access to an internal data repository that contains extensive personal information about Americans, according two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. The agency’s systems contain financial data, employment information and addresses for anyone with a Social Security number.“S.S.A. has comprehensive medical records of people who have applied for disability benefits,” said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, a group that promotes the expansion of Social Security. “It has our bank information, our earnings records, the names and ages of our children, and much more.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
Speaking in Paris at an artificial intelligence summit, the vice president gave an America First vision of the technology — with the U.S. dominating the chips, the software and the rules.Vice President JD Vance told European and Asian leaders in Paris on Tuesday that the Trump Administration was adopting an aggressive, America First approach to the race to dominate all the building blocks of artificial intelligence, and warned Europeans to dismantle regulations and get aboard with Washington.On his first foreign trip since taking office, Mr. Vance used his opening address at an A.I. summit meeting hosted by France and India to describe his vision of a coming era of American technological domination. Europe, he said, would be forced to chose between using American-designed and manufactured technology or siding with authoritarian competitors — a not-very-veiled reference to China — who would exploit the technology to their detriment.“The Trump administration will ensure that the most powerful A.I. systems are built in the U.S. with American design and manufactured chips,” he said, quickly adding that “just because we are the leader doesn’t mean we want to or need to go it alone.”But he said that for Europe to become what he clearly envisions as a junior partner, it must eliminate much of its digital regulatory structure — and much of its policing of the internet for what its governments define as disinformation.For Mr. Vance, who is on a weeklong tour that will take him next to the Munich Security Conference, Europe’s premier meeting of leaders, foreign and defense ministers and others, the speech was clearly intended as a warning shot. It largely silenced the hall in a wing of the Grand Palais in the center of Paris. Leaders accustomed to talking about “guardrails” for emerging artificial intelligence applications and “equity” to assure the technology is available and comfortable for underserved populations heard none of those phrases from Mr. Vance.He spoke only hours after President Trump put new 25 percent tariffs on foreign steel, essentially negating trade agreements with Europe and other regions. Mr. Vance’s speech, precisely composed and delivered with emphasis, seemed an indicator of the tone Mr. Trump’s national security leaders plan to take to Europe this week.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
A federal judge’s order that Elon Musk’s team temporarily cease boring into the Treasury Department’s payment systems raises a far larger question: whether what Elon Musk has labeled the Department of Government Efficiency is creating a major cyber and national security vulnerability.The activities of Mr. Musk’s government cost-cutting effort, U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said in his order on Saturday, risk “the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information” and render the Treasury’s systems “more vulnerable than before to hacking.”It is a risk that cybersecurity experts have been sounding alarms over in the past 10 days, as Mr. Musk’s band of young coders demanded access to the Treasury’s innermost systems. That access was ultimately granted by Scott Bessent, the newly confirmed Treasury secretary.But other than vague assurances that the new arrivals at the Treasury’s door had proper clearances, there was no description of how their work would be secured — and plenty of reason to believe that it would make it easier for Chinese and Russian intelligence services to target the Treasury’s systems.That was the central argument made by 19 attorneys general as they sought a temporary restraining order to get Mr. Musk’s workers out of the Treasury systems. And Judge Engelmayer endorsed it on Saturday, limiting access to existing Treasury officials until a hearing next week in front of a different federal judge.The government has maintained that Mr. Musk’s team has been limited to reviewing “read-only” data in the Treasury Department’s systems, though the administration is now placing appointees in positions where they could do much more.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
Partial passwords for election machines that were accidentally leaked on the Colorado secretary of state’s website pose no threat to the system’s security, the secretary’s office said in a statement on Tuesday night.The passwords, which were exposed on a hidden tab in a spreadsheet online, were first revealed in a letter by Hope Scheppelman, the vice chair of the Colorado Republican Party. The passwords became visible when a user downloaded a voting systems inventory spreadsheet and clicked “unhide.”According to an affidavit that accompanied Ms. Scheppelman’s letter, the passwords had been exposed since at least August.But while the breach of password data is likely to erode confidence and invite disinformation in Colorado, there are multiple layers of security to protect the integrity of election machines in the state.Election machines are not connected to the internet, and they are required to be kept in secure rooms that require ID badges for entry. They also have “24/7 video camera recording on all election equipment,” according to the secretary of state’s office.Even if a person were to somehow gain access to a machine, the passwords revealed would not be sufficient.“There are two unique passwords for every election equipment component, which are kept in separate places and held by different parties,” Jack Todd, a spokesman for the Colorado secretary of state, Jena Griswold, said in a statement. “Passwords can only be used with physical in-person access to a voting system.”The statement also said the exposure would not affect how ballots are counted.The department contacted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Department of Homeland Security, whose officials told the office that they would monitor the situation.A representative for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday night.Chris Krebs, the former director of the security agency, said the breach of passwords “highlights the critical importance of the various compensating controls in place that protect our nation’s election systems.”“While this is an extremely unfortunate leak that may serve to undermine confidence in some circles and feed into conspiracy theories in others, it nonetheless has negligible if any technical impact on Colorado’s systems,” Mr. Krebs added.The breach of password data resonates in Colorado, a state where Tina Peters, an election official from Mesa County, concocted a brazen and bizarre breach of election machines after the 2020 election.She was recently sentenced to nine years in federal prison for her scheme. More
The British authorities are investigating after commuters at 19 train stations saw an Islamophobic message when they tried to log on to a public Wi-Fi system.The British authorities are investigating a cyberattack on Wednesday that they said displayed an anti-Muslim message on a public Wi-Fi system serving more than a dozen train stations around the country.Commuters who connected to a Wi-Fi service at stations for Network Rail, Britain’s national rail operator, were met with “Islamophobic messaging,” according to the British Transport Police, who oversee law enforcement on British rail networks. The police said they had received reports of the cyberattack just after 5 p.m. local time, and that they were leading an investigation into the incident. The service was quickly taken down, Network Rail said, and would remain down until security checks were completed.The issue emerged at 19 stations across Britain, including major transportation hubs in London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bristol and other cities, a spokesman for Network Rail said in a statement.Commuters attempting to log onto Wi-Fi at the stations were met with a webpage that said “We love you, Europe,” along with information related to terror attacks in Europe, The Manchester Evening News reported.The Wi-Fi was a “click-and-connect” service that did not collect any personal data and was operated by a third-party company, Telent, Network Rail’s statement said.Telent, a technology and communications company, on Thursday pointed to Global Reach, a provider that ran the Wi-Fi service’s landing page. Telent said in a statement that it had found that an “unauthorized change was made to the Network Rail landing page from a legitimate Global Reach administrator account.”British Transport Police were investigating the matter as a criminal case, Telent said, and no personal data was affected by the incident. But, as a precaution, it said, it had temporarily suspended all use of Global Reach services to confirm that none of its other customers had been impacted.Global Reach did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.Britain’s crime and cybersecurity agencies were also helping with the investigation, the Transport Police said on Thursday.The disruption follows another “cybersecurity incident” on Sept. 1 that targeted Transport for London, the agency that runs the city’s public transit network, in which hackers accessed the contact details of the agency’s customers, and potentially could view bank account details for some commuters. The cyberattack also affected the broadcasting of live train schedules online and payment systems.A 17-year-old was arrested in Walsall, a town in the West Midlands county of England, as part of the investigation into that attack, cybercrime authorities said this month. More
The man, Jesse Kipf, hacked into state death registry systems to fake his own death in part to avoid paying more than $100,000 in child support, federal prosecutors said.A Kentucky man who prosecutors say hacked into state death registry systems to fake his own death — in part to avoid paying more than $100,000 in child support — was sentenced on Monday to 81 months in federal prison, the authorities said.According to federal prosecutors, the man, Jesse Kipf, 39, of Somerset, Ky., hacked into the Hawaii Death Registry System in January 2023 with the username and password of a doctor living in another state to create and certify his own death certificate.“This resulted in Kipf being registered as a deceased person in many government databases,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Kentucky said in a news release on Tuesday. “Kipf admitted that he faked his own death, in part, to avoid his outstanding child support obligations.”In an arrangement with prosecutors, Mr. Kipf pleaded guilty in April to one count of computer fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. Under the deal, other charges against him were dropped.Prosecutors, who cited Mr. Kipf’s criminal history, recommended a sentence of 84 months in prison, while his lawyer recommended 72 months. Both sides agreed that Mr. Kipf should pay $195,758.65 to cover child support he had failed to pay as well as damages related to government and corporate computer systems.Mr. Kipf, who was born in Hawaii, was divorced in 2008 in California and owed more than $116,000 in child support obligations to his daughter and her mother, according to court documents.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
For the third presidential election in a row, the foreign hacking of the campaigns has begun in earnest. But this time, it’s the Iranians, not the Russians, making the first significant move.On Friday, Microsoft released a report declaring that a hacking group run by the intelligence unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had successfully breached the account of a “former senior adviser” to a presidential campaign. From that account, Microsoft said, the group sent fake email messages, known as “spear phishing,” to “a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign” in an effort to break into the campaign’s own accounts and databases.By Saturday night, former President Donald J. Trump was declaring that Microsoft had informed his campaign “that one of our many websites was hacked by the Iranian Government — Never a nice thing to do!” but that the hackers had obtained only “publicly available information.” He attributed it all to what he called, in his signature selective capitalization, a “Weak and Ineffective” Biden administration.The facts were murkier, and it is unclear what, if anything, the Iranian group, which Microsoft called Mint Sandstorm, was able to achieve.Mr. Trump’s campaign was already blaming “foreign sources hostile to the United States” for a leak of internal documents that Politico reported on Saturday that it had received, though it is unclear whether those documents indeed emerged from the Iranian efforts or were part of an unrelated leak from inside the campaign.The New York Times received what appears to be a similar if not identical trove of data from an anonymous tipster purporting to be the same person who emailed the documents to Politico.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
