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The FBI Made a Crypto Coin Just to Catch Fraudsters

Plus: New details emerge in the National Public Data breach, Discord gets blocked in Russia and Turkey over alleged illegal activity on the platform, and more.

On top of multiple extinction-threatening lawsuits against the organization that created and maintains the Wayback Machine, hackers this week breached the Internet Archive, stole 31 million user account details, and defaced its website—all while archive.org struggled to stay online thanks to a barrage of distributed denial-of-service attacks. While the investigation ultimately resulted in charges against 18 people and other entities for alleged fraud and crypto market manipulation, the blast radius of the scheme also impacted some regular retail investors who are not accused of any crimes, although US officials did not provide details about those investments. Russia’s internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, said in a statement the block “is necessary to prevent the use of the messenger for terrorist and extremist purposes, the recruitment of citizens for their commission, the sale of drugs, in connection with the placement of illegal information.” Turkish authorities, meanwhile, banned the messaging app after a court decision involving child abuse material that was allegedly hosted on Discord servers.

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