In January 2026, British Army corporal Daniel Barton-Kennedy deployed with his unit to Tapa, Estonia, for a military exercise about 90 miles from the Russian border. Before leaving the UK, soldiers were told to remove SIM cards from personal phones, disable location settings, and use a trusted VPN; they received the instructions again after arriving. Barton-Kennedy kept using his phone. On January 19, he told his platoon commander that an unknown person had obtained nude photos from the phone and identified him through social media. The attacker demanded money. Barton-Kennedy agreed at first to pay £100, then balked when the demand rose to £250, and reported the incident.
Barton-Kennedy later pleaded guilty to disobeying a lawful command. He told the court he understood the order but asked it to consider that he wanted to contact his daughter on her birthday and his pregnant partner. He said he was shocked by the blackmail and regretted delaying his report. The court reduced his rank and sentenced him to 10 months in detention; his appeal was rejected in August 2026. The case highlights how ignoring basic device-security rules can expose both personal information and military personnel to coercion, and the Army said violations that risk personal safety or operational security would draw swift, uncompromising discipline.
Summary generated by AI from the linked article. hn.today is not affiliated with Hacker News or Y Combinator.
US officials believe Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had a romantic relationship with Alice Huang, a Megaspeed executive whom US intelligence suspects was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security. The allegations were included in a memo shared with senior officials amid scrutiny of suspected chip smuggling to China and calls for Huang to answer lawmakers’ questions. (ft.com)
Deno’s terminal-based permission prompts can be manipulated by untrusted code that controls terminal output and input. The author argues this makes Deno’s permissions misleading as a security boundary. (goldstein.lol)
AI is exposing how much of the internet and its software relies on sloppy human work, including code with security vulnerabilities. The growing ability of AI tools to spot these weaknesses is forcing companies to confront the quality and safety of systems people built. (businessinsider.com)
Iran-linked tankers and a fishing boat loitered near major undersea internet cables in the Strait of Hormuz, with some ships switching off tracking transponders. The activity raises concern Iran could target cable infrastructure if the US and Israel resume strikes, potentially disrupting communications across several countries. (arstechnica.com)
Consumer brain-wave headsets collect neural data that manufacturers can use to train AI, sometimes without clearly telling users. The practice raises privacy concerns because brain signals can reveal sensitive information about people. (science.org)
A URL-encoding flaw in Hugging Face Chat let unauthenticated requests bypass an admin check and trigger bulk exports of users’ private conversations. The exported data was sent to a configured dataset destination rather than returned directly to the requester. (twitter.com)
Today's best Hacker News stories, summarized and screenshotted, one email a day.