Cory Doctorow

2025-10-27 13:42:47

Shake Shack has changed the terms of service for its app, adding a "binding arbitration" clause that bans you from suing the company or joining a class action suit against it:

shakeshack.com/terms-condition…

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2025/10/27/shi…

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Shake Shack Terms of Use

Effective Date: September 9, 2025

^{Shake Shack}

404 Media

2025-10-20 15:16:50

Hackers Say They Have Personal Data of Thousands of NSA and Other Government Officials

A hacking group that recently doxed hundreds of government officials, including from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has now built dossiers on tens of thousands of U.S. government officials, including NSA employees, a member of the group told 404 Media. The member said the group did this by digging through its caches of stolen Salesforce customer data. The person provided 404 Media with samples of this information, which 404 Media was able to corroborate.

As well as NSA officials, the person sent 404 Media personal data on officials from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), members of the Air Force, and several other agencies.

The news comes after the Telegram channel belonging to the group, called Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters, went down following the mass doxing of DHS officials and the apparent doxing of a specific NSA official. It also provides more clarity on what sort of data may have been stolen from Salesforce’s customers in a series of breaches earlier this year, and which Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters has attempted to extort Salesforce over.

💡
Do you know anything else about this breach? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.

“That’s how we’re pulling thousands of gov [government] employee records,” the member told 404 Media. “There were 2000+ more records,” they said, referring to the personal data of NSA officials. In total, they said the group has private data on more than 22,000 government officials.

Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters’ name is an amalgamation of other infamous hacking groups—Scattered Spider, LAPSUS$, and ShinyHunters. They all come from the overarching online phenomenon known as the Com. On Discord servers and Telegram channels, thousands of scammers, hackers, fraudsters, gamers, or just people hanging out congregate, hack targets big and small, and beef with one another. The Com has given birth to a number of loose-knit but prolific hacking groups, including those behind massive breaches like MGM Resorts, and normalized extreme physical violence between cybercriminals and their victims.

On Thursday, 404 Media reported Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters had posted the names and personal information of hundreds of government officials from DHS, ICE, the FBI, and Department of Justice. 404 Media verified portions of that data and found the dox sometimes included peoples’ residential addresses. The group posted the dox along with messages such as “I want my MONEY MEXICO,” a reference to DHS’s unsubstantiated claim that Mexican cartels are offering thousands of dollars for dox on agents.

Hackers Dox Hundreds of DHS, ICE, FBI, and DOJ Officials
Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters—one of the latest amalgamations of typically young, reckless, and English-speaking hackers—posted the apparent phone numbers and addresses of hundreds of government officials, including nearly 700 from DHS.
404 MediaJoseph Cox

After publication of that article, a member of Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters reached out to 404 Media. To prove their affiliation with the group, they sent a message signed with the ShinyHunters PGP key with the text “Verification for Joseph Cox” and the date. PGP keys can be used to encrypt or sign messages to prove they’re coming from a specific person, or at least someone who holds that key, which are typically kept private.

They sent 404 Media personal data related to DIA, FTC, FAA, CDC, ATF and Air Force members. They also sent personal information on officials from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Health and Human Services (HHS), and the State Department. 404 Media verified parts of the data by comparing them to previously breached data collected by cybersecurity company District 4 Labs. It showed that many parts of the private information did relate to government officials with the same name, agency, and phone number.

Except the earlier DHS and DOJ data, the hackers don’t appear to have posted this more wide ranging data publicly. Most of those agencies did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The FTC and Air Force declined to comment. DHS has not replied to multiple requests for comment sent since Thursday. Neither has Salesforce.

The member said the personal data of government officials “originates from Salesforce breaches.” This summer Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters stole a wealth of data from companies that were using Salesforce tech, with the group claiming it obtained more than a billion records. Customers included Disney/Hulu, FedEx, Toyota, UPS, and many more. The hackers did this by social engineering victims and tricking them to connect to a fraudulent version of a Salesforce app. The hackers tried to extort Salesforce, threatening to release the data on a public website, and Salesforce told clients it won’t pay the ransom, Bloomberg reported.

On Friday the member said the group was done with extorting Salesforce. But they continued to build dossiers on government officials. Before the dump of DHS, ICE, and FBI dox, the group posted the alleged dox of an NSA official to their Telegram group.

Over the weekend that channel went down and the member claimed the group’s server was taken “offline, presumably seized.”

The doxing of the officials “must’ve really triggered it, I think it’s because of the NSA dox,” the member told 404 Media.

Matthew Gault contributed reporting.

Behind the Blog: Sinkholes and Site Seizures

This week, we discuss a ransomware gang, book bans, and infrastructure.

^{Samantha Cole (404 Media)}

Cory Doctorow

2025-10-23 21:21:55

Today's threads (a thread)

Inside: Checking in on the state of Amazon's chickenized reverse-centaurs; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2025/10/23/tra…

#Pluralistic

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Pluralistic: Checking in on the state of Amazon’s chickenized reverse-centaurs (23 Oct 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

^{pluralistic.net}