In one of the biggest data leaks ever (even larger than the NSA wires leak in 2013 ), Panama-based legal firm Mossack Fonseca has seen 2.6 terabytes of its private data leaked to journalists. Shared with German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung , it was then spread to a wider network of journalists globally — 370 reporters from 100 media organizations have looked into the leak for a year. The research has already unearthed that 12 national leaders, including monarchs, presidents and prime ministers, have been using offshore tax havens, including a $2 billion paper trail that leads to Russia’s Vladimir Putin . Meanwhile, FIFA’s attempts to clean itself up faces fresh criticism after the leak appears to connect executives being investigated to members of the ethics committee itself. The sheer volume of data means that files are still being pored over, although you can attempt to follow along with this Reddit thread . It sheds light on the huge, lucrative, complex world of offshore finance and special tax laws. Mossack Fonseca is the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm, meaning that the leak has plenty of new information and insight globally, from Russia’s rich to property developers in Hong Kong , Lionel Messi and politicians across the world . There’s a big focus on the UK too: more than half of the companies are either registered there or in British-administered tax havens. The company denies any accusations of wrongdoing. Source: The Guardian , Reddit
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Huge data leak reveals the hidden wealth of the rich and famous
mask.of.sanity writes: Thieves can hijack $28, 000 professional drones used widely across the law enforcement, emergency, and private sectors using $40 worth of hardware. The quadcopters can be hijacked from up to two kilometers away thanks to a lack of encryption, which is not present due to latency overheads. Attackers can commandeer radio links to the drones from up to two kilometers away, and block operators from reconnecting to the craft. With the targeted Xbee chip being very common in drones, IBM security guy Nils Rodday says it is likely many more aircraft are open to compromise. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
William Herkewitz, reports for Popular Mechanics: A newly discovered star is unlike any ever found. With an outermost layer of 99.9 percent pure oxygen, its atmosphere is the most oxygen-rich in the known universe. Heck, it makes Earth’s meager 21 percent look downright suffocating. The strange stellar oddity is a radically new type of white dwarf star, and was discovered by a team of Brazilian astronomers led by Kepler de Souza Oliveira at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. The star is unique in the known pool of 32, 000 white dwarf stars, and is the only known star of any kind with an almost pure oxygen atmosphere. The new white dwarf has a mouthful of a name — SDSSJ124043.01+671034.68 — but has been nicknamed ‘Dox’ (pronounced Dee-Awks) by Kepler’s team. The discovery was reported today in a paper in the journal Science. Read more of this story at Slashdot.