Group tech houses have proliferated across the San Francisco Bay Area in the artificial intelligence boom. One of the most prominent has also racked up an extensive police record.

© Minh Connors for The New York Times

Group tech houses have proliferated across the San Francisco Bay Area in the artificial intelligence boom. One of the most prominent has also racked up an extensive police record.

© Minh Connors for The New York Times

Group tech houses have proliferated across the San Francisco Bay Area in the artificial intelligence boom. One of the most prominent has also racked up an extensive police record.

© Minh Connors for The New York Times

The conflict has opened a second front in the Middle East after the United States and Israel attacked Iran, adding to global uncertainty and turmoil in energy markets.

© AFPTV, via Agence France-Presse – Getty Images

The conflict has opened a second front in the Middle East after the United States and Israel attacked Iran, adding to global uncertainty and turmoil in energy markets.

© AFPTV, via Agence France-Presse – Getty Images

Soybeans are the notable exception, revealing Beijing’s selective approach to fulfilling trade commitments ahead of the summit between President Trump and Xi Jinping.

© KC McGinnis for The New York Times

Soybeans are the notable exception, revealing Beijing’s selective approach to fulfilling trade commitments ahead of the summit between President Trump and Xi Jinping.

© KC McGinnis for The New York Times

As Beijing presses President Trump to freeze a proposed $14 billion weapons sale to the island, Taiwan is trying to show that its security is in U.S. interests.

© Kenny Holston/The New York Times

As Beijing presses President Trump to freeze a proposed $14 billion weapons sale to the island, Taiwan is trying to show that its security is in U.S. interests.

© Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Beyond warm meetings between their leaders, the countries are engaging in tit-for-tat measures that call into question the stability of their arrangement.

© Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Beyond warm meetings between their leaders, the countries are engaging in tit-for-tat measures that call into question the stability of their arrangement.

© Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Zhang Youxia, once the People’s Liberation Army’s top uniformed commander, and another general had taken “exceptionally large” bribes, investigators said.

© Tingshu Wang/Reuters

Zhang Youxia, once the People’s Liberation Army’s top uniformed commander, and another general had taken “exceptionally large” bribes, investigators said.

© Tingshu Wang/Reuters

Artificial intelligence and more are expected to be big issues at this week’s summit between President Trump and Xi Jinping, China’s top leader.

© Vincent Alban/Reuters

Patients and workers in one of the country’s largest hospitals sweltered in a heat wave last month. Experts say the whole country must urgently adapt.

© Andrew Testa for The New York Times

In a meeting on Sunday, the U.S. Treasury secretary and China’s vice premier talked about having a shared vision on the goals of artificial intelligence and the threats it poses.

© Kena Betancur/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Plus, the best TV shows of the century.

© Kenny Holston/The New York Times

World leaders are mostly silent and President Trump is pushing fossil fuels. We’ll explore the stakes at this week’s Climate Forward event.

© Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

The president vacillated but decided on Sunday not to join Saudi Arabia, for now, in joint strikes against the Houthis in Yemen. But he also needs the kingdom’s cooperation in his war against Iran.

© Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Before two of its alleged members were arrested and charged in Australia last month, the hacker group known as TeamPCP carried out a hacking spree unlike any other in history. It tainted hundreds of open-source programs with its malware, stole developer accounts to perpetuate that software supply-chain hacking, and even released a Dune-themed self-spreading worm to automate the process, ultimately breaching more than a thousand companies.

Now Google’s threat intelligence group has revealed that during a key moment of TeamPCP’s rampage, the company’s own undercover researcher had infiltrated the group—allowing Google to monitor the hacking spree from the inside, warn breach targets, and even help disrupt the group’s attempts to exploit those victims.

In a talk at security firm SentinelOne's LABScon research conference today, Google Threat Intelligence Group researcher Austin Larsen will present details on the company’s investigation—and infiltration—of TeamPCP amidst the group’s unprecedented, chaotic supply-chain hacking campaign. According to Larsen, Google eventually followed a trail of operational security mistakes allegedly made by one of the two Australians now accused of being leading members of the hacker group and passed on key identifying details to law enforcement. The company also received intelligence from ShinyHunters, another infamous cybercriminal group that TeamPCP partnered with, but which later turned on the supply-chain hackers. And perhaps most surprisingly, Larsen says that Google’s security subsidiary Mandiant had an undercover analyst—not himself—within the group’s inner circle from almost the beginning of TeamPCP’s time in the spotlight.

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