2 Sudanese brothers charged with running cyberattack-for-hire gang
CBSN
A federal grand jury unsealed an indictment against two Sudanese brothers Wednesday, charging them with running "Anonymous Sudan," one of the most prolific cyberattack-for-hire gangs of all time and allegedly behind tens of thousands of attacks.
Federal prosecutors accused Ahmed Salah Yousif Omer, 22, and Alaa Salah Yusuuf Omer, 27, of carrying out 35,000 denial-of-service attacks against hundreds of organizations in just one year, taking down websites and other networks as part of an ideologically motivated extortion scheme affecting thousands of customers.
According to prosecutors, the pair targeted a long list of high-profile victims worldwide and across the U.S., including Microsoft, ChatGPT, PayPal, X, Yahoo, airports, the Pentagon, the Department of Justice, Alabama's state government, as well as at least one hospital: Cedars-Sinai in the Los Angeles area.
Princeville, North Carolina — On a single-lane road in Eastern North Carolina, surrounded by farmland, the congregation at Mark Chapel Baptist Church listens to a sermon on faith — and the importance of their vote as part of the "Black Belt," a stretch of majority-Black congressional districts in the South.
As Hurricane Milton slammed Florida's west coast, dozens of misleading or AI-generated videos spread on social media, racking up millions of views across platforms. One video, falsely said to show Milton, was actually filmed from a 2021 nor'easter in Massachusetts. Another montage, which had 1.5 million views on X, contained AI-generated footage. Julia Feerrar, an associate professor at Virginia Tech, said search engines are helpful in this instance: "Describing the image and adding the phrase 'fact check' to your search is often the fastest way to get more information and debunk misleading content." For example, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety published fact checks on AI-generated content and other misinformation that swirled online amid Hurricane Helene.