Oct 24, 2008 6:43 AM

Five for Fighting 10/24/08

* Royal Navy sunk? * Woman arrested after killing virtual ex-husband * $5 M more for laser weapon components * CIA vet: agency is anti-semitic * Blimps vs. pirates

* Royal Navy sunk?
** Woman arrested after killing virtual ex-husband *
* $5 M more for laser weapon components
* CIA vet: agency is anti-semitic
* Blimps vs. pirates

Noah Shachtman is a contributing editor at WIRED and a contributing writer for The New York Times’ opinion section. Shachtman previously served as editor in chief of Rolling Stone, where he led the storied outlet to a Polk Award and its first-ever Emmy nomination. Before that, he was the editor in ... Read More

Contributing Editor

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WIRED Ghost Stories

Five hauntings from the other side of technology.

The PHP Meltdown Shows How AI Makes Bugs More Exploitable

Security researchers used AI tools to help uncover years-old vulnerabilities in the PHP web scripting language. Then the AI-assisted attacks began.

Lily Hay Newman

The Pentagon Hopes to Speed Up ‘Kill Chain’ AI Buys With 5-Minute Videos

The US government’s Tradewinds initiative has made it easier to throw millions of dollars at “nontraditional” defense contractors, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.

Maddy Varner

‘This Is Not a Drill’: Critical PHP Vulnerabilities Are Setting the Internet on Fire

The PHP Foundation has revealed two serious vulnerabilities that could impact millions of websites. Security experts warn that failure to quickly patch the flaws could have dire consequences.

Matt Burgess

Polymarket Halted International Trading After Hackers Drained Accounts

The company says an unnamed third-party provider was compromised. Trading has resumed, and Polymarket says affected traders will be made whole.

Kate Knibbs

Mistral Says Its AI Model ‘Le Chonk’ Has Leapfrogged China in the Open-Weight Race

The French AI lab claims its latest release matches or outperforms even the best models from DeepSeek and Z.ai in coding and cybersecurity.

Joel Khalili

Hackers Exploited the PHP Vulnerabilities Days Before They Were Patched

Amazon Web Services logged attempts to leverage the internet-melting PHP2Shell bugs four days ago. They’re now being “broadly exploited” across the internet.

Lily Hay Newman

Bluesky Is Blocking Links to a Major Leak of DHS Employee Records

Bluesky tells WIRED it blocked links to a leaked archive of information on 41,000 ICE, CBP, and other DHS workers because it contains people’s contact information, shared without their authorization.

Dhruv Mehrotra

How a Contractor’s Claude Agent Got Into the Pentagon

This week on Uncanny Valley, we also discuss Anthropic’s IPO filing and the volunteers gearing up to counter ICE at the midterms.

Brian Barrett

The Atlantic’s Near-Record Hurricane Drought Is About to End

Tropical Storm Isaias is set to become the basin’s first hurricane of the season, bringing life-threatening rain and storm surge to the Gulf Coast.

Brian Kahn

Oil Spills Wreak Havoc on the Bottom of the Ocean, Even a Decade Later

While oil is known to float, new research finds that over time it can permeate even extremely deep marine habitats, with animal populations declining by as much as 80 percent.

Bob Berwyn

Cool, Cool, Cool, Palmer Luckey and Ben Lamm Made a Genetically Modified Military Dog Startup

Warhound came out of stealth on Wednesday with $200 million in funding and a mission to create “elite working dogs” equipped with "advanced body armor."

Kate Knibbs