Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.

Police arrest LockBit ransomware members, release decryptor in global crackdown

Summary: A task force headed by the UK National Crime Agency and coordinated in Europe has announced the arrest of two Poland-based members of the LockBit ransomware gang, alongside the issuance of three international arrest warrants, five indictments, and the seizure of more than 200 of the gang’s crypto-wallets.

Context: This is the culmination of nearly two years of investigative work by the NCA, alongside Europol and Eurojust, and several months of on-the-ground efforts to compromise the group’s online platforms, including 34 servers located around the world, and lots of financial infrastructure; this group is reportedly responsible for about 21% of all ransomware attacks in 2023, and investigators apparently found data they stole from their victims, including those who had paid their ransoms, on LockBit servers, indicating that they did not delete this data as promised after those ransoms were paid; a decryptor allowing ransomware victims to decrypt their ransom-held data has been released by investigators to help victims who didn’t pay the ransom, and the group has reportedly extorted hundreds of millions of dollars from more than 2,000 victims, many of them businesses or government agencies, so this bust is a pretty big deal.

—Bleeping Computer

One Sentence News is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Guinea's military junta dissolves government and seals borders

Summary: The military junta that governs Guinea has announced that it has dissolved the country’s government, without providing an explanation for why, when a new government would be put into place, or how this might impact the elections planned for the end of 2024 when democratic rule was scheduled to be reimplemented.

Context: All of the country’s borders have been ordered sealed by security agencies, and government ministers have been ordered to surrender their passports and vehicles, their bank accounts frozen; this junta took control of the country in September of 2021, overthrowing the democratically elected president, who was himself attempting to launch a bid for a controversial third term in office.

—BBC News

US warns Israel against ground offensive into Rafah in draft UN resolution

Summary: A UN Security Council resolution being circulated by the US reportedly warns the Israeli government not to launch a major ground offensive into Rafah, indicating that such a move would be devastating for the approximately 1.5 million Gazan civilians who have been forced into the area by Israeli military activities further north, and that it would have “serious implications for regional peace and security.”

Context: The not so subtle subtext of this document, which is still being circulated on the down-low to attract support from other Security Council members, is that an invasion of Rafah, which is on the Gazan border with Egypt, would represent a red line to the US, which in turn could mean Israel would lose its most powerful and staunch ally; even if not passed, this document suggests that a bigger pivot by the US government in its unquestioning support of Israel’s government may be impending, in part because of how brutal Israel’s incursion into Gaza has been, and in part because those efforts are increasingly unpopular, both globally and amongst the American voting public.

—Financial Times

Home prices continued to rise across the US in 2023, though some fewer regions have seen moderate decreases, mostly in the single-digit percentages (though most of those areas saw huge increases earlier, so this is being seen as a tempering of earlier price-booms, not actual decreases, in most cases).

—Chartr

40%

Increase to chip-maker Nvidia’s stock price so far this year, easily earning it the accolade of top S&P 500 performer, and allowing it to elbow-out other tech (and tech-adjacent companies) like Tesla from the list of top-traded, top-valued (by market value) companies in the world.

—The Wall Street Journal

Trust Click

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit onesentencenews.substack.com