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We are pleased to inform you that the sugya d’kallah of this year’s Agudas Yisroel Yerushalayim Yarchei Kallah is “אם כסף תלוה :מצות הלוואה – Im Kesef Talveh: Mitzvas Halva’ah.”

The Yarchei Kallah is set to take place be’ezras Hashem in Yerushalayim Ir HaKodesh during President’s Week, from Sunday, כ”ח שבט תשפ”ו / February 15, 2026, through Thursday, ב’ אדר תשפ”ו / February 19, 2026.

This year’s limud will explore the many dimensions of this vital mitzvah, including the obligation to lend money, the borrower’s responsibility to repay, the halachic framework of loan collection, the role of the ערב (guarantor), and numerous practical scenarios. Topics will range from gemachim and bankruptcy to halachic discharge, as well as many other timely and challenging issues.

Below are two documents:

1. A memorandum authored by the head of our program, Rav Shlomo Gottesman, which outlines in greater detail the subtopics and methodology of this year’s limud.
2. A tentative schedule of hachanah shiurim, to be delivered by Rav Gottesman along with distinguished dayanim and rabbonim, both live and via Zoom. The schedule is still in formation, but we hope to begin shortly so that participants can be as well-prepared as possible. A preliminary list of mareh mekomos is also attached.

Please note that all Zoom shiurim will include scanned source materials for convenient limud. Everyone is invited to participate in these shiurim, even if one is unsure about attending the Yarchei Kallah in Yerushalayim, as the hachanah program itself provides a valuable Torah experience.

We also plan to establish a dedicated chat/text group to facilitate communication among the maggidei shiur, participants, and organizers.

If you have not yet registered for the Yarchei Kallah, we encourage you to do so by clicking HERE. Please note that the early bird registration special of $774, instead of $899, expires shortly.

If you would like assistance with purchasing a plane ticket, we can connect you with our recommended travel agent.

Looking forward to providing you with additional updates in the weeks ahead, be’ezras Hashem.

Sugya D’Kallah Overview

One of the defining features of the AIA Yarchei Kallah is its structured program of hachanah. Over the past two decades, we have consistently seen that the more yegiah that participants invest in preparing the sugyos beforehand, the more meaningful and enduring their limud becomes.

Despite the many Torah responsibilities that our participants already carry, a remarkable number devote significant time to advance study, an investment that yields extraordinary dividends. Coming prepared to a shiur from Rav Dovid Cohen, Rav Issamar Garbuz or Rav Nissan Kaplan transforms the entire experience. The geshmak in learning and the clarity achieved through prior preparation are immeasurable.

With the help of Zoom, lomdim have been able to engage in pre-program learning and discussion, building lasting relationships with maggidei shiur and fellow participants. Our goal is to maintain, and further expand, what has effectively become a four-month pre-Yarchei Kallah yeshiva. To date, this initiative has produced thousands of hours of limud b’iyun, and we look forward to continuing this avodas hakodesh in the months ahead.

Overview of the Sugyos

This year’s sugya, “אם כסף תלוה :מצות הלוואה”—the mitzvah of lending—encompasses many complex subtopics. While we will not be able to cover every detail, we have identified several core areas that will provide participants with a deep understanding of both the yesodos and the pratim of the halachos.

1. The Mitzvah to Lend Money

We will explore the yesod of this mitzvah and its sources in Chazal, both Shas and Medrashei halacha. The major shitos of the Rishonim, including the Rambam, Sefer HaChinuch, Sefer Mitzvos Gadol, and Rabbeinu Yonah, will be examined, along with the poskim—the Tur, Shulchan Aruch, and their commentaries.

The Acharonim have written extensively on this subject, particularly the Chofetz Chaim in Sefer Ahavas Chesed, which will serve as a central reference. Among the questions to be studied:

• To whom does the obligation to lend apply (including lending to the wealthy)?
• The relationship between lending and tzedakah and which takes precedence.
• The duty to lend even when it may entail financial loss (chayecha kodmim considerations).
• The heter iska and its place within this mitzvah.
• Related issues such as store credit, non-monetary loans, and gemachim.

While ribbis will not be the main focus, its intersection with halva’ah will be noted.

1. Loans and Collections

We will delve into the issur of “Lo sihyeh lo k’nosheh,” which governs the lender’s behavior toward the borrower, including taking a mashkon, entering the borrower’s home, and avoiding coercive collection tactics.

Additional discussions will include:

• The permissibility of requesting repayment when uncertain of the borrower’s means.
• Whether a lender may require the borrower to work to repay.
• The concept of mesadrin l’baal chov (arranging payment terms).
• The modern definition of assets in halachic terms.
• How these principles interact with priyas baal chov mitzvah.

1. The Role of the ערב (Guarantor)

This section will explore the lomdus behind the concept of ערבות, focusing on sugyos in Kiddushin and Bava Basra. We will analyze:

• Whether a kinyan is required and why ערבות is not considered an asmachta.
• Various classifications of ערב and their obligations.
• The shitos of Rishonim and Acharonim regarding acceptance of liability.
• The implications if the lender did not rely on the ערב.
• Potential issues of mazik and shlichus in assuming responsibility.
• Practical applications in modern finance, such as title insurance, corporate guarantees, and mortgage arrangements.

1. Forgiveness and Bankruptcy

We will study the halachic frameworks that dissolve debt, including shemittas kesafim, yei’ush, and mechilah. Each has distinct implications for both lender and borrower.

The modern issue of bankruptcy in halacha will be analyzed through the lens of contemporary poskim, considering how secular financial systems align—or conflict—with Torah law.

While the scope of this sugya is vast, we will, as always, strive to present it in an accessible, organized, and engaging manner, ensuring that every participant gains clarity, lomdus, and simchas haTorah at their own level.

Appendix B — Hachanah Shiur Schedule (Tentative) and Maareh Mekomos

Our goal is to accommodate the widest possible audience. This schedule will be updated as the program develops.

Segment 1: The Mitzvah of Lending Money

Opening Session:
Tuesday, November 18 — 8:00–9:00 PM

Subsequent Sessions:
Thursday, November 20 — 8:00–8:40 PM
Tuesday, November 25 — 8:00–9:00 PM
Thursday, November 27 — Thanksgiving Schedule

Special Live Shiur:
Bais Medrash Chayei Yisroel, Lakewood
Thursday, November 27 — 11:00 AM–12:00 PM
Maggid Shiur: To Be Announced

Continued Schedule:
Thursday, November 27 — 8:00–8:40 PM
Tuesday, December 2 — 8:00–9:00 PM
Thursday, December 4 — 8:00–8:40 PM

The weekly schedule will continue similarly, with additional special live shiurim announced as applicable.

מראי מקומות לימוד מצות הלואה

א. שמות כב, כד – כז, דברים ט”ו, ז-י”א וברש”י.

ב.מכילתא  פ’ משפטים פ’ יט

ג. ב”מ ע”א. “ותני רב יוסף”

ד. ספר המצות להרמב”ם מצוה קצ”ז

ה. ס’ החינוך מצוה ס”ז

ו. סמ”ג מ”ע קס”ב

ז. שערי תשובה (ח”ג אות ס”ז)

רמב”ם ה’ מלוה ולווה פ”א

שו”ע חו”מ ס’ צ”ז סע’ א.

חפץ חיים ספר אהבת חסד – מצות הלואה

{Matzav.com}

Ayman Abu Khalil, who was released in the Shalit deal, is now serving as Hamas’s terror architect in Yehudah and Shomron, Kan News reported. Abu Khalil, originally a resident of the Beit Hanina neighborhood in east Jerusalem, was deported to Turkey after his release in the Shalit deal and currently uses Turkish soil as his […]

A team of Australian scientists has delivered a stark warning to academics leaning on AI to speed up their work: ChatGPT’s newest model, GPT-4o, still produces an alarming number of fake or flawed citations. The Deakin University researchers found that more than half of the references the system generated for mental-health literature reviews were either fabricated outright or riddled with inaccuracies.

In their experiment, the researchers asked GPT-4o to craft six literature reviews across three psychiatric conditions. The chatbot produced 176 citations. Of those, 19.9 percent were entirely made up. And even among the 141 references that actually existed, nearly half—45.4 percent—contained mistakes ranging from incorrect publication years to bogus page numbers and broken digital object identifiers.

Just 77 citations, or 43.8 percent, were both real and correct. The rest—56.2 percent—were unusable for scientific purposes, a finding the authors say should trouble any academic who relies on generative AI to support scholarship. The study, published in JMIR Mental Health, also examined when and why the model was especially prone to errors.

The fake citations frequently appeared legitimate at first glance. GPT-4o provided DOIs for 33 of the 35 fabricated entries, and 64 percent of those links sent users to actual published papers that had nothing to do with the AI-generated claims. Another 36 percent were pure fiction—non-functioning or invalid DOIs that went nowhere. In either case, the references were completely disconnected from the content ChatGPT had written.

Lead researcher Jake Linardon and his team tested how the accuracy shifted depending on topic familiarity and specificity. They chose major depressive disorder, binge eating disorder, and body dysmorphic disorder—conditions with dramatically different public profiles and research volume. Depression is widely studied, with hundreds of clinical trials on digital therapies. Body dysmorphic disorder, by contrast, has far fewer digital-treatment publications.

The differences were striking. When GPT-4o wrote about major depressive disorder, only 6 percent of the citations were fabricated. But when it covered binge eating disorder and body dysmorphic disorder, those numbers shot up to 28 percent and 29 percent. Even among the citations that were real, accuracy varied wildly: 64 percent for depression, 60 percent for binge eating disorder, and a mere 29 percent for body dysmorphic disorder.

The researchers then compared general summaries with narrowly focused reviews. For binge eating disorder, the specificity mattered enormously—fabrication jumped to 46 percent for specialized requests, compared to 17 percent when the AI wrote general overviews. This pattern did not hold uniformly across all disorders, but it demonstrated that precision prompts can dramatically increase the hallucination rate in some areas.

These findings come at a time when AI use in scientific work is exploding. Nearly 70 percent of mental-health researchers report using ChatGPT for tasks like literature summarization and early manuscript writing. Many praise the efficiency boost, but the risk of misleading content remains a serious concern.

The authors warn that citation errors aren’t minor inconveniences—they damage scientific integrity. Citations are the scaffolding of academic discourse, guiding readers to supporting evidence and linking new work to existing knowledge. When references point to unrelated or nonexistent material, the entire chain of scholarship falters.

The study highlighted that DOIs were the most error-prone element of AI-generated references, with a 36.2 percent failure rate. Problems with author lists were least common at 14.9 percent, but publication dates, journals, volume numbers, and page ranges all showed significant error levels.

Linardon’s team stresses that every AI-generated reference requires verification against original sources. They encourage academic journals to adopt more stringent safeguards—such as using plagiarism-detection software to flag citations that don’t match any known database entry. Universities, they add, should create clear rules around AI use in scholarly writing, including training researchers to spot fabricated references and requiring transparency about AI involvement.

Importantly, the study found no sign that more advanced AI models have solved the hallucination problem. While direct comparisons across versions are difficult, citation fabrication remained prevalent across every test condition, despite expectations that GPT-4o would perform more reliably.

The authors argue that topic maturity and public familiarity heavily shape citation reliability. AI may be safer for well-established subjects but becomes increasingly unreliable when handling niche or newly emerging research fields. Accuracy, in other words, is not random—it is tightly linked to the strength of the underlying training data.

For now, the researchers say ChatGPT should function only as a starting tool, one that can help outline ideas or generate draft material, but never as a source of dependable citations. Human oversight remains essential, and verification cannot be outsourced.

The study also raises broader questions about how generative AI systems should be designed for academic use. If topic-based predictability can indicate when hallucinations are more likely, AI platforms might incorporate built-in alerts or verification prompts for specialized or sparse research areas.

As journals and funding agencies increasingly require explicit AI-use disclosures, the findings underscore why these policies matter. Without strong editorial safeguards, fabricated references could pass through peer review, seep into published work, distort future research, and create long-term damage across scientific disciplines.

The researchers caution that the challenge isn’t merely individual—it’s systemic. Once false citations enter the academic ecosystem, they can spread through citation networks like contaminants. Preventing that outcome requires institutional policies, editorial vigilance, and a clear understanding that while AI can accelerate research tasks, it cannot yet be trusted to anchor the scientific record.

The IDF continues evacuating villages in southern Lebanon, issuing evacuation warnings to two additional villages.

Lebanese media posted footage showing an Israeli airstrike hitting a building in the southern town of Shehour shortly after the IDF issued an evacuation warning.

NEW: The August trade deficit dropped to $59.6 billion — the lowest level this year. This Data release was heavily delayed due to the Democrat-led shutdown.

HaRav Eliezer Kahaneman, the Nasi of Ponavezh Yeshiva, shortly after the major decision was handed down in his favor.

Mount Semeru erupts in Indonesia, sending a 54,000-foot ash plume into the sky and prompting evacuations and flight warnings.

Israel’s Defense Ministry says the 1,000th cargo plane since the start of the war has arrived, delivering military equipment. In total, more than 120,000 tons of gear, weapons, combat supplies, and protective equipment have been shipped to Israel via 1,000 planes and about 150 ships.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch has agreed to stay on as top cop when he takes office, — a bridge-building move that comes despite their profound political differences.

VIRGINIA SCHOOL TO PAY $100,000 IN ANTISEMITISM CASE: A Northern Virginia private school will pay $100,000 to a Jewish family after their children were expelled following complaints of severe antisemitic harassment. As part of the settlement, the Nysmith School will adopt the IHRA definition, appoint an antisemitism compliance monitor, and institute mandatory training and reporting […]

Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest for international travel, has seen 70.1 million passengers already pass through its terminals this year, officials announced Wednesday. The rapid growth of passengers at the airport underscores Dubai as a key hub for East-West travel in global aviation and the need for its $35 billion project to build a […]

US envoy Steve Witkoff’s scheduled meeting with Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya in Istanbul has been called off, American sources told Yisrael Hayom on Wednesday. According to the report, Washington is furious with Hamas for its attempt to garner Arab support to oppose Trump’s peace plan before it was brought to a vote in the UN […]

The Education Department said Tuesday that it will move several of its offices to other federal departments, a unilateral effort aimed at dismantling an agency created by Congress to ensure equal access to educational opportunity but long derided by conservatives as ineffective.

The department has signed interagency agreements to outsource six offices to other agencies, including those that administer $28 billion in grants to K-12 schools and $3.1 billion for programs that help students finish college.

There was considerable speculation that the $15 billion program to support students with disabilities would be included in the announcement, but it was not. Other major functions of the Education Department, including its Office for Civil Rights and the federal student aid program, also were not affected by Tuesday’s changes, but a senior department official told reporters that officials are still exploring options for moving those programs elsewhere in the government.

President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to shut down the agency, created in 1979, and in March, he signed an executive order seeking its elimination. He asked Education Secretary Linda McMahon to work with Congress to do so, but lawmakers have not acted or seriously considered Trump’s request.

That is at least in part because to clear the Senate, any legislation would require Democratic support, which appears highly unlikely.

McMahon and her backers advocate a shake-up of the federal education role, saying that falling test scores show the agency is not delivering and arguing that Americans are tired of government bureaucracy.

Supporters of the Education Department counter that administering education programs under one roof helps coordinate policy and better serves schools and students. The agency, they say, helps ensure that priorities important to students, parents and schools are high on the federal agenda. And they say it is illegal for the Trump administration to break up the department without congressional approval.

McMahon has acknowledged that only Congress can eliminate the department, but she has vowed to work to dismantle it from within. She has said the agency’s functions can easily be carried out elsewhere in the government, perhaps more effectively. This fall, she took a first step and moved career and technical education programs, including adult education and family literacy initiatives, to the Labor Department.

“The Trump Administration is taking bold action to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” McMahon said in a statement Tuesday. “Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission.”

Shifting offices to other parts of the government will not by itself remove red tape or alter the power that Washington exerts over states and school districts. States and school boards already control most education decisions, but the Education Department enforces rules that are embedded in federal programs, such as requirements for grant funding.

Asked how moving offices to other departments will return education to the states, the senior official said states will have to work with fewer federal agencies. She argued that education’s purpose is to prepare students for the workforce.

“Nowhere is that better housed than the Department of Labor,” she said.

But most K-12 schools do not typically work with the Labor Department now. The K-12 grant programs that Labor stands to take on address a plethora of subjects not directly related to the workforce, such as support for children in poverty, after-school programs and aid for rural education. Critics noted that under this arrangement, states and school districts will be required to engage with more – not fewer – federal agencies.

“It is difficult to see how transferring cornerstone programs … out of the department will result in streamlined operations, especially for the nation’s small, rural and low-capacity districts,” said David R. Schuler, executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington) noted that federal law requires an act of Congress to close the department. She said in a statement that the administration is pretending that the constitutional separation of powers is “a mere suggestion.”

“This is an outright illegal effort to continue dismantling the Department of Education,” Murray said. “And it is students and families who will suffer the consequences as key programs that help students learn to read or that strengthen ties between schools and families are spun off to agencies with little to no relevant expertise.”

Under the new agreements, the Labor Department will inherit the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, including 27 K-12 grant programs, and the Office of Postsecondary Education, which administers 14 programs to help students enroll in and complete college. The Education Department will move the Indian education program to the Interior Department; child care access and foreign medical education to the Department of Health and Human Services; and foreign-language education to the State Department.

Some of these are lower-profile offices without large constituencies that might vocally oppose the moves. By contrast, there was an outpouring of concern among disability advocates amid rumors that special-education programs would be moved.

The senior department official said Tuesday that the interagency agreements will ensure that experts from the Education Department still manage the day-to-day operations of the programs.

Federal law requires that many of the programs be housed in the Education Department. The interagency agreements amount to a work-around under which policy decisions will remain with the Education Department but the programs will be administered elsewhere. Staffers who work on the programs are expected to move to the new agencies.

The senior official said these types of arrangements have been used many times before. But in this case, officials are hoping that the transfers will lay the groundwork for eventually closing the agency altogether.

The announcement was welcomed by House Education Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R-Michigan), who has noted that there is not enough support in the Senate to pass legislation to eliminate the department.

On Tuesday, he praised the actions as a much-needed break from the status quo at the Education Department, where, he contended, bureaucracy and liberal ideology have wasted taxpayer dollars and failed students.

“The Trump administration is making good on its promise to fix the nation’s broken system by right-sizing the Department of Education to improve student outcomes,” he said. “It’s time to get our nation’s students back on track.”

But public education advocates were furious.

“This administration is taking every chance it can to hack away at the very protections and services our students need,” Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, said in a statement.

McMahon has made the case for eliminating the Education Department in appearances across the country. Last month, department spokeswoman Madi Biedermann said the agency was exploring the move of special-education services to another agency.

“Secretary McMahon has been very clear that her goal is to put herself out of a job by shutting down the Department of Education and returning education to the states,” Biedermann said in October.

The Trump administration laid the groundwork for this change earlier this year when it signed an agreement to move career, technical and adult education grants out of the Education Department to the Labor Department. Under the arrangement, Education retains oversight and leadership while managing the programs alongside Labor, a way of sidestepping the federal statute.

“We believe that other department functions would benefit from similar collaborations,” McMahon wrote in an op-ed essay published Sunday in USA Today.

More broadly, McMahon argued that the recently ended government shutdown showed how unnecessary her agency is.

“Students kept going to class. Teachers continued to get paid. There were no disruptions in sports seasons or bus routes,” she wrote. “The shutdown proved an argument that conservatives have been making for 45 years: The U.S. Department of Education is mostly a pass-through for funds that are best managed by the states.”

The agency has taken other steps to shrink itself, including reducing its staff, which stood at 4,133 at the start of Trump’s term. That number was cut by about half earlier this year through layoffs and incentives to resign or retire.

The administration also tried to lay off an additional 465 people during the shutdown, a move that was blocked by a court and then reversed in the legislation signed to reopen the government.

After the government reopened, the Education Department mocked itself as irrelevant.

On social media, it posted a fake out-of-office message that it jokingly suggested its workers use: “We might be away from our desks … creating more red tape, and doing nothing to improve student outcomes.” It was signed, “Bureaucratically Yours.” In another post, the agency asked, “Let’s be honest: did you really miss us at all?”

(c) 2025 , The Washington Post · Laura Meckler, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel 

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, dismissed the idea of U.S. military action on Mexican soil after Donald Trump suggested he might authorize strikes against drug traffickers south of the border. Speaking at a press conference, she brushed aside the proposal entirely. “It’s not going to happen,” she said, responding directly to Trump’s vow to do “whatever we have to do,” including potential operations inside Mexico.

Trump had raised the possibility during remarks in the Oval Office, insisting fentanyl trafficking warranted extreme measures. “Would I launch strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? It’s OK with me. Whatever we have to do to stop drugs,” he said. He then added, “I didn’t say I’m doing it, but I’d be proud to do it. Because we’re going to save millions of lives by doing it.”

His comments came as Washington continues a sweeping show of force in the Caribbean. Since September, the U.S. military has deployed the largest regional presence since the Cold War and carried out dozens of lethal air attacks on boats it claims were transporting narcotics. At least 83 individuals have been killed in those strikes, though U.S. officials have not released evidence proving the targets were involved in drug smuggling.

The escalating posture isn’t limited to maritime operations. Trump also signaled he would not eliminate the possibility of sending troops into Venezuela. Pressed on whether a ground invasion was off the table, he responded, “No, I don’t rule out that, I don’t rule out anything.” He also said, “At a certain period of time, I’ll be talking to [Maduro],” while arguing that the Venezuelan ruler “has not been good to the United States.” Emphasizing the scale of migration from Venezuela, Trump said, “We just have to take care of Venezuela. They dumped hundreds of thousands of people into our country from prisons.”

Shortly afterward, Nicolas Maduro responded on his weekly broadcast, announcing his willingness to engage directly with Washington. He said he was prepared to meet “face to face” with anyone in the United States “who wants to talk to Venezuela.”

Meanwhile, a U.S. Marine contingent is training in Trinidad and Tobago—the second round of joint drills there in under a month. The island nation, less than ten miles from Venezuela at its closest point, has emphasized that it will not be used for offensive military operations. Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, a close ally of Trump, rejected any speculation that her country might serve as a staging ground. “The US has NEVER requested use of our territory to launch any attacks against the people of Venezuela,” she said. She added that “Trinidad and Tobago will not participate in any act that could harm the Venezuelan people,” and insisted disputes between Washington and Caracas must be resolved through dialogue.

Venezuela’s government, for its part, accuses the U.S. of trying to topple Maduro by amassing warships, stealth aircraft, and other assets near its shores. Washington counters by alleging that Maduro presides over a “terrorist” drug-trafficking operation—an accusation the Venezuelan leader firmly denies.

{Matzav.com}

New York City’s incoming mayor, Zohran Mamdani, hasn’t taken office yet. But he’s already the new avatar of evil for conservative media figures. He’s been called “downright sinister” and “incompatible with America.” His labels include commie, Marxist, jihadist sympathizer and “seething leftist.” Fox News’ Laura Ingraham warned her viewers not to be fooled by “smiling socialists who […]

WhatsApp’s effortless contact discovery—the feature that lets anyone plug in a phone number and instantly see if it belongs to a user—has long been touted as part of its appeal. But, Wired.com reports, the same mechanism that makes onboarding simple also created an enormous privacy gap: cycling through every possible number worldwide allowed researchers to gather the phone numbers of nearly every WhatsApp user on the planet, along with profile photos and public text for many of them.

A team from Austria demonstrated that by repeatedly querying WhatsApp’s contact system through the web interface, they were able to retrieve 3.5 billion phone numbers tied to WhatsApp accounts. For 57 percent of those numbers, the researchers could also view profile photos; for 29 percent, they could read public “about” text. They accomplished this because Meta had imposed no practical limit on how many lookups they could perform, allowing them to sweep through roughly 100 million numbers per hour.

The scale of the exposure stunned the researchers, who wrote that the trove of information would have constituted “the largest data leak in history, had it not been collated as part of a responsibly conducted research study.” One of the authors, Aljosha Judmayer, noted, “To the best of our knowledge, this marks the most extensive exposure of phone numbers and related user data ever documented.”

Meta was notified in April, and the researchers deleted all 3.5 billion numbers they had collected. By October, WhatsApp had implemented new rate limits to prevent such mass scraping from recurring. But until the fix was put in place, the researchers warn, anyone else could have performed the same type of data sweep. As Max Günther put it, “If this could be retrieved by us super easily, others could have also done the same.”

In a statement to WIRED, Meta thanked the researchers and emphasized that users who had set their privacy options to restrict their profiles remained protected. “We had already been working on industry-leading anti-scraping systems, and this study was instrumental in stress-testing and confirming the immediate efficacy of these new defenses,” wrote WhatsApp engineering vice president Nitin Gupta. He added, “We have found no evidence of malicious actors abusing this vector. As a reminder, user messages remained private and secure thanks to WhatsApp’s default end-to-end encryption, and no non-public data was accessible to the researchers.”

The researchers, however, say that they never encountered the “defenses” Meta referenced—pointing out that this isn’t the first time WhatsApp has been warned. In 2017, Dutch researcher Loran Kloeze demonstrated that the same enumeration technique could reveal numbers, profile pictures, and online status. At the time, Meta (then Facebook) argued the platform was functioning as designed and told him he did not qualify for a bug bounty.

Asked by WIRED what protections were implemented in the years that followed, Meta asserted that evolving measures—including rate-limiting and machine-learning systems to detect scrapers—had been deployed. Yet the University of Vienna researchers not only reproduced Kloeze’s discovery, they expanded it dramatically by enumerating all 3.5 billion global accounts. They also analyzed how many users publicly exposed personal information, with 44 percent of the 137 million identifiable American numbers showing profile photos and 33 percent including visible “about” text.

In countries where WhatsApp permeates daily life, even higher percentages left profile photos open. The researchers collected nearly 750 million Indian numbers, 62 percent with photos visible, and 206 million Brazilian numbers, 61 percent displaying profile images publicly.

Their discovery came accidentally last year when they were studying other aspects of WhatsApp’s metadata. They noticed the absence of rate limits and tried enumerating US phone numbers. Within 30 minutes, they had gathered 30 million. “So we were kind of surprised. And then we just kept going,” recalls researcher Gabriel Gegenhuber.

Such a dataset would be invaluable to spammers, scammers, and criminal operations. But the implications extend beyond nuisance calls. The researchers identified millions of WhatsApp accounts registered in countries where the platform is banned—2.3 million numbers in China and 1.6 million in Myanmar. Governments hostile to WhatsApp could have used the same enumeration technique to identify and potentially target citizens using the app illegally. Reports have suggested that in China, some Muslims have been detained simply for having WhatsApp installed.

The Vienna team also examined the cryptographic keys associated with each account—keys used in WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption. They found an unexpected problem: many accounts shared identical keys. In some cases, hundreds of users were tied to the same key, and 20 US numbers even had an all-zero encryption key. The researchers suspect that these anomalies point to unauthorized or modified WhatsApp clients, possibly used by scam networks whose tools break standard encryption behavior.

At the heart of the issue, the researchers argue, is the flawed assumption that phone numbers make suitable identity tokens for a platform used by billions. Phone numbers simply do not contain enough randomness to serve as secure, secret identifiers—especially when the entire number space can be scanned. If WhatsApp insists on linking accounts to phone numbers for effortless discovery, they say, then no anti-scraping solution will ever feel airtight. WhatsApp is now testing usernames in beta, which could offer a more privacy-preserving alternative.

“Phone numbers were not designed to be used as secret identifiers for accounts, but that’s how they’re used in practice,” Judmayer says. “If you have a big service that’s used by more than a third of the world population, and this is the discovery mechanism, that’s a problem.”

{Matzav.com}

After decades of conflict in the Ponovezh Yeshivah, retired judge Dovid Cheshin, who was appointed as arbitrator between the parties four years ago, published a final ruling on Wednesday at noon that determined that the “Mechablim” must vacate the yeshivah by the summer of 2025. The conflict in Ponovezh has been ongoing for decades, since […]

A sweeping federal review has uncovered a massive breakdown in how Commercial Driver’s Licenses are being granted nationwide. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a Fox Business interview that roughly 200,000 foreign nationals have been granted CDLs, and investigators believe that about 194,000 of those licenses may have been issued unlawfully under federal rules.

Duffy stressed that the issue goes beyond paperwork errors, noting that individuals are receiving CDLs despite failing to meet the English-language proficiency required by the Department of Transportation. “People can’t understand the English language, they can’t read signs, and they don’t know the rules of our road. That’s a problem,” Duffy said. “Americans aren’t safe.”

He warned that the problem has been compounded by the rise of “CDL mills,” operations that fast-track foreign applicants through the licensing process with minimal training. According to Duffy, these outfits are pushing through drivers who have barely any grasp of American road regulations.

“We also see that there are CDL mills … people aren’t being properly trained, they’re being pushed through and getting licenses and driving across the country,” Duffy said. He added that the economic fallout has been substantial as well. “It’s driving American truckers out of business. And American trucking companies, driving the wages down,” he continued. “That’s not why we’re taking this action, but that’s a real consequence of having all of those foreigners come in. What we’re going to see is those wages rise.”

The emerging details show just how widespread the problem has become. DOT officials recently disclosed that California’s Department of Motor Vehicles acknowledged improperly granting 17,000 CDLs to foreign truck drivers.

The safety concerns deepened further this week when ICE agents arrested an illegal alien in Kansas — an individual accused of terrorism ties in Uzbekistan — who had been issued a Pennsylvania CDL after being released into the country by the Biden administration.

{Matzav.com}

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