Another IoT cyberattack, this one in France:

Hackers gained control of the software that regulates the temperatures of the refrigeration units, forcing some to warm to 50C (120F) overnight, according to one supermarket chain affected.

[…]

Normally, supermarket freezers go through a short period of defrosting overnight, in which temperatures rise slightly. But the hackers ordered the units to heat up and stay hot, although Danfoss did not confirm any reports about just how warm the fridges and freezers could become in that process.

Danfoss said the affected cold units were older models whose security software could not be updated to ward off a risk they had identified.

Any IoT device that can’t be updated is vulnerable. And, probably, any IoT device that can be updated is also vulnerable.

In September, hackers from a group called ShinyHunters announced that they stole a trove of FBI data about its own agents. It was an intelligence disaster.

Last week, the FBI arrested (alternate link) someone associated with that crime.

OpenAI disrupted a social engineering group from Cambodia that used ChatGPT. Its scope is impressive:

The network simultaneously conducted multiple types of scams, often blending elements from different schemes. For instance, operators used dating personas to build trust before introducing fraudulent investment opportunities involving cryptocurrencies and spot gold trading. Other users engaged in lengthy romantic conversations with targets using fictitious identities, posed as representatives of online gambling platforms offering fake bonuses and winnings, or impersonated law enforcement agencies to tell targets they needed to pay fines for committing serious criminal offenses.

Although the narratives varied, users across the network consistently displayed the same underlying pattern of deceptive behavior. For example, they created and operated fake dating profiles, fictitious investment experts, and fraudulent law enforcement personas. They also generated images of forged documents, including passports, legal notices, stock-purchase confirmations, and gambling platform interfaces.

Interesting paper:

Abstract: With entrepreneurial fraud cases on the rise, we investigate how entrepreneurs carry out criminal deception, employing deceptive means to defraud audiences. Analyzing court data from Silicon Valley ventures and their founders prosecuted for fraud between 2000 and 2023, our findings reveal that entrepreneurs carry out criminal deception through a process of façading: Entrepreneurs construct, perform, and protect illusory appearances (façades) that externally project high-growth performance to audiences while masking ventures’ actual underperformance. We identify three forms of façading—­surface, reinforced, and deep façading­—that are contingent on the severity of the gap that entrepreneurs face between audiences’ performance expectations and ventures’ performance reality. Our theoretical framework captures how entrepreneurs facing minor, wide, and extreme expectation-reality gaps engage in evermore sophisticated efforts to detach the venture’s externally projected appearance from its actual operational reality. Practically, we propose several approaches to deter and detect criminal deception, including the extension of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission surveillance and whistleblower program, investor due diligence reform, and dedicated entrepreneurship education interventions that clearly demarcate when entrepreneurs transgress into criminal deception. We make contributions to literatures on cultural entrepreneurship, organizational wrongdoing, and the social effects of entrepreneurship.