French authorities say they wiretapped a server used by the administrator to access their private messages, which revealed activities relating to cybercrime and ransomware attacks.

These are our favorite cybersecurity books, both by fiction authors, as well as journalists and researchers. 

Authorities in Europe have detained five people, including a former Russian professional basketball player, in connection with crime syndicates responsible for ransomware attacks.

Until recently, one of the suspects, Daniil Kasatkin, played for MBA Moscow, a basketball team that’s part of the VTB United League, which includes teams from Russia and other Eastern European countries. Kasatkin also briefly played for Penn State University during the 2018–2019 season. He has denied the charges.

Unrelated ransomware attacks

The AFP and Le Monde on Wednesday reported that Kasatkin was arrested and detained on June 21 in France at the request of US authorities. The arrest occurred as the basketball player was at the de Gaulle airport while traveling with his fiancée, whom he had just proposed to. The 26-year-old has been under extradition arrest since June 23, Wednesday's news report said.

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The scope of Epstein's crimes remains unclear, as a new document sheds more light on his activities.

Daniil Kasatkin was reportedly arrested in a Paris airport on June 21 at the request of U.S. authorities.

The Department of Justice announced Eric Council Jr. was sentenced to 14 months in prison for the hack.

Masked men jumped out of a white-panel van in Paris this week, attempting to snatch a 34-year-old woman off the street. The woman's husband fought back and suffered a fractured skull, according to France24. The woman continued resisting long enough for a bike shop owner named Nabil to rush out swinging a fire extinguisher, which he hurled after the departing van as the attackers finally fled. The entire altercation was captured on video.

The woman was identified as the daughter of a "crypto boss," and her attempted kidnapping is part of a disquieting surge in European crypto-related abductions—two of which have already involved fingers being chopped off. The last major abduction happened in Paris only two weeks ago, and it ended with French police storming a house in the Paris suburbs and rescuing a crypto mogul's now-four-fingered father.

The attacks have spooked the industry, which has called, somewhat ironically, for enhanced protections from the government. Reuters notes that the issue has been escalated all the way to the top of the French government, where Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau announced plans this week to "meet with French crypto entrepreneurs to make them aware of the risks and to take measures to protect them."

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In what’s believed to be a world first, artificial intelligence (AI) has allowed a slain man to address his killer at the sentencing hearing. Christopher Pelkey was shot dead in a road rage incident in Chandler, Arizona, four years ago, but just recently, AI was used to recreate a digital version of the victim that […]

In echoes of Minority Report, the British government is working on a “murder prediction” tool aimed at identifying individuals who are most likely to become killers, the Guardian reported this week. The project — originally called the “homicide prediction project” but since renamed as “sharing data to improve risk assessment” — is being run by […]