Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: law enforcement

The Singularity Is a Story, Not a Prison: Philosophy Portal Interview

After 300+ interviews on Singularity. FM, I ended up on the other side of the microphone.

Cadell Last invited me to Philosophy Portal and asked the questions that go all the way down. How a Bulgarian army nickname became “Socrates,” and why it started as an insult. How 300 resumes and one failed job interview accidentally started Singularity Weblog. And why, after 17 years of studying the technological singularity, I believe its biggest prophets got the most important thing wrong.

Ray Kurzweil is a genius and a genuinely humble human being. I’ve interviewed him and spent hours in his office. But his six epochs of the singularity converge into a single storyline where the universe literally wakes up. That is creationism in scientific clothing. It promises the same heaven of immortality and abundance, and it treats humanity as the chosen species.

Silicon Valley’s version is no better: the march of technology is inevitable, unstoppable, and there is nothing you can do about it.

That is not a prediction. That is a prison.

I grew up behind the Iron Curtain in Bulgaria. I watched the same technology build socialism in the East, democracy in the West, and fascism before both. The big choices are never technological. They are ethical, which is to say political.

Continue reading “The Singularity Is a Story, Not a Prison: Philosophy Portal Interview” | >

Amadey and StealC Malware Network Disrupted, 27M Stolen Credentials Recovered

A coordinated law enforcement operation, in partnership with private sector companies, including Bitdefender, Bitsight, ESET, and Microsoft, has resulted in the takedown of criminal infrastructure powering Amadey and StealC.

“The main common goal was to disrupt the ‘assembly lines’ cybercriminals use to launch ransomware, financial fraud, and attacks on critical infrastructure,” Europol said in a statement.

The development comes days after authorities from the Netherlands, Canada, Germany, and the U.S. disrupted malicious infrastructure associated with SocGholish and cleaned up nearly 15,000 infected WordPress websites.

Police cleans nearly 15,000 SocGholish-infected sites tied to Evil Corp

International law enforcement agencies cleaned nearly 15,000 malware-infected WordPress websites and took down more than 100 servers linked to the SocGholish botnet and the Evil Corp Russian cybercrime group.

This joint action (supported by Europol and Eurojust) was part of Operation Endgame, a major law enforcement operation targeting cybercrime now aimed at disrupting a key infection chain linked to Evil Corp.

Authorities from the Netherlands (NHCTU), Canada (RCMP), the United States (FBI), and Germany (BKA) cleaned SocGholish malware infections from 14,971 compromised WordPress websites and took 106 servers and domains offline.

Man sent to prison for selling data of 7 millions elderly Americans

A North Carolina man was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for selling the personal information of over 7 million elderly Americans to Jamaican scammers.

57-year-old Troy Murray (who used the Steve Dixon pseudonym) pleaded guilty in January 2026 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was sentenced Thursday to 121 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered to forfeit $5,2 million.

Prosecutors said that Murray’s alias was so widely known among Jamaican scammers that it was referenced in a 2022 song lyric by a Jamaican musical artist.

Ukraine identifies infostealer operator tied to 28,000 stolen accounts

The Ukrainian cyberpolice, working in conjunction with U.S. law enforcement, has identified an 18-year-old man from Odesa suspected of running an infostealer malware operation targeting users of an online store in California.

According to the Ukrainian police, the threat actor used information-stealing malware between 2024 and 2025 to infect users’ devices and steal browser sessions and account credentials.

Infostealers are a popular type of malware that harvests sensitive data, including passwords, browser cookies, session tokens, crypto wallets, and payment information, from infected devices and sends it to cybercriminals for account theft, fraud, and resale.

INTERPOL Operation Ramz Disrupts MENA Cybercrime Networks with 201 Arrests

Group-IB, which was one of the private sector companies that participated in the effort, said it provided “actionable intelligence” on over 5,000 compromised accounts, including those that were associated with government infrastructure, and shared details about active phishing infrastructure across the region.

“Cybercrime is borderless, and the only effective response is one that is equally borderless,” Joe Sander, CEO of Team Cymru, said. “Operation Ramz is exactly that kind of response, law enforcement and trusted private-sector partners pooling intelligence, moving in concert, and dismantling the infrastructure that criminals depend on.”

Countries that took part in Operation Ramz included Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Tunisia, and the U.A.E.

US reportedly charges Scattered Spider hacker arrested in Finland

A 19-year-old dual United States and Estonian citizen arrested in Finland earlier this month faces federal charges in the U.S. alleging he was a prolific member of the notorious Scattered Spider hacking collective.

According to temporarily unsealed court records obtained by the Chicago Tribune, the suspect (who used the online alias “Bouquet”) helped extort millions of dollars from multiple large corporations worldwide.

The suspected Scattered Spider member, who was allegedly arrested by Finnish law enforcement at Helsinki’s airport on April 10 while attempting to board a flight to Japan, is facing wire fraud, conspiracy, and computer intrusion charges.

Former ransomware negotiator pleads guilty to BlackCat attacks

41-year-old Angelo Martino, a former employee of cybersecurity incident response company DigitalMint, has pleaded guilty to targeting U.S. companies in BlackCat (ALPHV) ransomware attacks in 2023.

Together with two other Sygnia and DigitalMint ransomware negotiators (33-year-old Ryan Clifford Goldberg and 28-year-old Kevin Tyler Martin), Martino was charged with conspiracy to interfere with interstate commerce by extortion, interference with interstate commerce by extortion, and intentional damage to protected computers.

Martino was initially identified only as “Co-Conspirator 1” in an October 2025 indictment, but was named in court documents unsealed in March. Martin and Goldberg also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct commerce by extortion and are facing up to 20 years in prison each.

Tycoon2FA phishing platform returns after recent police disruption

The Tycoon2FA phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platform that Europol and partners disrupted on March 4 has already returned to previously observed activity levels.

Microsoft led the technical disruption, which involved seizing 330 domains part of Tycoon2FA’s backbone infrastructure that included control panels and phishing pages used in attacks.

However, the disruption caused by the law enforcement was short-lived, as CrowdStrike noticed the cybercrime service return to normal operational volumes within days.

Florida woman imprisoned for massive Microsoft license fraud scheme

A Florida woman was sentenced to 22 months in prison for running a massive years-long scheme to traffic thousands of stolen Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity (COA) labels.

52-year-old Heidi Richards (also known as Heidi Hastings, Heidi Shaffer, and Heidi Williams), who operated an e-commerce business called Trinity Software Distribution, was also ordered to pay a $50,000 fine.

COA labels are small stickers that authenticate software and carry unique product key codes used to activate products distributed on physical media, such as Microsoft’s Windows operating system and Office productivity suite.

/* */