The Ukrainian Hacker Who Became the FBI’s Best Weapon—and Worst Nightmare
Kevin Poulsen | WIRED
“One Thursday in January 2001, Maksym Igor Popov, a 20-year-old Ukrainian man, walked nervously through the doors of the United States embassy in London. While Popov could have been mistaken for an exchange student applying for a visa, in truth he was a hacker, part of an Eastern European gang that had been raiding U.S. companies and carrying out extortion and fraud. A wave of such attacks was portending a new kind of cold war, between the U.S. and organized criminals in the former Soviet bloc, and Popov, baby-faced and pudgy, with glasses and a crew cut, was about to become the conflict’s first defector.”
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For World’s Newest Scrabble Stars, SHORT Tops SHORTER
Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson | The Wall Street Journal
“Nigeria is beating the West at its own word game, using a strategy that sounds like Scrabble sacrilege.”
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The First 50 Lashes: A Saudi Activist’s Wife Endures Her Husband’s Brutal Sentence
Ensaf Haidar | The Guardian
“The man himself could not be made out in the video. But I saw clearly that he was striking Raif with all his might. Raif’s head was bowed. In very quick succession he took the blows all over the back of his body: He was lashed from shoulders to calves, while the men around him clapped and uttered pious phrases. It was too much for me. It’s indescribable, watching something like that being done to the person you love. I felt the pain they were inflicting on Raif as if it was my own.”