Bitfinex Hacker Gets 5 Years for $10 Billion Bitcoin Heist

This WIRED-style roundup highlights recent security and surveillance stories: a novel consumer hardware hack (AirPods), testing of AI-enabled weapons, an 18-year-old pleading guilty to hundreds of swatting attacks, expectations of changes to US cybersecurity policy, the Bitfinex $4.5B cryptocurrency heist and later recoveries and sentencing, scammers adopting AI alongside defenses like an “AI granny,” legal action alleging misuse of NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, and Jamf research linking macOS malware campaigns targeting crypto to infrastructure similar to North Korea’s Lazarus Group—overall a broad overview of cybercrime, state-linked espionage tools, and surveillance concerns.