**Jeffrey Epstein Had a "Personal Hacker," Informant Claims**

As the investigation into the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein continues to unfold, a stunning revelation has emerged. According to a document released by the Department of Justice on Friday, an informant told the FBI in 2017 that Epstein had a "personal hacker." The document, first reported by TechCrunch, was released as part of a large trove of material the DOJ is legally required to release related to the investigation.

The alleged hacker, whose identity has not been disclosed, is described as being born in Italy's southern region of Calabria. Their hacking focus was reportedly on discovering vulnerabilities in Apple's iOS mobile operating system, BlackBerry devices, and the Firefox browser. The informant claimed that the hacker "was very good at finding vulnerabilities" and developed offensive hacking tools, including exploits for unknown and/or unpatched vulnerabilities.

The alleged hacker allegedly sold these exploits to several countries, including an unnamed central African government, the UK, and the US. Furthermore, the informant reported that the hacker sold an exploit to Hezbollah and received "a trunk of cash" in payment. It is unclear whether the informant's account is accurate or whether the FBI verified the report.

**Viral AI Agent OpenClaw Makes Security Experts Sweat**

Meanwhile, a viral AI assistant called OpenClaw has taken Silicon Valley by storm this week. The agent, which was previously known as Clawdbot and Moltbot, has gained popularity among technologists who have been letting it control their digital lives, connecting it to online accounts and completing tasks for them.

OpenClaw's creators claim that more than 2 million people have visited the project over the last week. However, its agentic abilities come with potential security and privacy trade-offs, including the need to provide access to online accounts and login credentials. This could lead to a breakdown of traditional security measures, as OpenClaw requires access to sensitive data and systems.

Security researchers have identified "hundreds" of instances where users have exposed their systems to the web, with several examples involving no authentication and full access to the users' system. While these misconfigurations have been fixed, various other security concerns exist, demonstrating how increasingly autonomous AI systems can become a security nightmare.

**China Executes 11 Scam Compound Bosses**

Scam compounds across Southeast Asia have stolen billions from people around the world, using forced-labor workforces and funneling profits back to Chinese organized crime groups. This week, Chinese authorities executed 11 members of the Ming crime family who were found guilty of running scam compounds in Myanmar.

The family was sentenced for a range of crimes, including fraud and homicide, with the BBC reporting that they made $1.4 billion from their illegal scam and gambling operations between 2015 and 2023. Five members of another Chinese mafia group, the Bai family, have also been sentenced to death over their role in running scamming operations.

**Federal Contractor's Son Accused of Stealing $40 Million in Seized Crypto**

Cryptocurrency has provided numerous opportunities for young people to disappoint their parents, and one recent story is likely to lead to a particularly awkward father-son talk. A young hacker online began flaunting $23 million in crypto holdings, which independent crypto investigator ZachXBT traced to a collection of $90 million in thefts from the US government and other victims in 2024 and 2025.

According to ZachXBT, $40 million of those crypto holdings were taken from wallets storing funds seized by the government and held by a contractor called CMDSS. He alleges that the culprit behind the theft was none other than John Daghita, the son of CMDSS's president Dean Daghita. The US Marshal's Service is now investigating ZachXBT's claims.

**Poland Attributes Cyberattack on Its Grid to Russia's Berserk Bear Group**

Five years ago, WIRED described a group of Russian hackers known as Dragonfly or Berserk Bear with an analogy to "Chekhov's gun," the metaphorical rifle hanging over the fireplace in act one that has to go off sometime before the play is over. The Russian hacker group had repeatedly gained access to power grids and other critical infrastructure systems around the world – but never actually pulled the trigger to cause a blackout.

More than half a decade later, Chekhov's gun may have finally gone off. The Polish government this week released a technical report about a series of cyberattacks targeting its energy systems, including one combined heat and power plant and multiple solar and wind farms. The attackers used "wiper" malware designed to delete data on the target networks and also attempted to reach into industrial control systems to disrupt the facilities' operations.

Despite cybersecurity firms ESET and Dragos blaming Russia's Sandworm hacker group for these attacks, the Polish government instead pinned the attacks on Berserk Bear, which is believed to work on behalf of Russia's FSB domestic intelligence and security agency. If this attribution is correct, it may signal a new era where the restraint of FSB's grid hackers has come to an end.