This is the online edition of The Wiretap newsletter, your weekly digest of cybersecurity, internet privacy and surveillance news. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.

Over the weekend, hackers exploited an AI security failure to take control of prominent Instagram accounts and post pro-Iranian messages. Among the victims were former the White House account for President Barack Obama and a senior official at the Pentagon’s Space Force.

According to multiple reports and posts on cyber-focused Telegram groups, all the hackers had to do was ask Meta’s new AI support bot to initiate a password reset for a target account. Then, by telling it to send the recovery email to their own address, they could change the password and take control of the account. If Meta asked for a selfie video as an additional identity check, the hackers took facial images from the target Instagram accounts and created AI-generated selfies, which also reportedly worked. Meta has now patched the issue, according to a tweet from spokesperson Andy........

© Forbes