Security, Spoken

Introducing WIRED Politics Lab!

Wed, 04 Sep 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Although we paused on publishing narrated versions of WIRED articles in this feed, you will still hear the latest in tech and politics from the WIRED team.

Join host Leah Feiger and a rotation of guests as they guide you through the exciting, challenging, and sometimes entertaining vortex of internet extremism, conspiracies, and disinformation on WIRED Politics Lab.

You can find the information needed to lift the fog of disinformation we find ourselves in everyday right on this feed.

Listen to WIRED Politics Lab: https://listen.wired.com/politicslab_feeddrop

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Introducing WIRED's Gadget Lab!

Wed, 04 Sep 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Although we paused on publishing narrated versions of WIRED articles in this feed, you will still hear the latest in tech from the WIRED team.

On WIRED's Gadget Lab, you'll find hosts Lauren Goode and Michael Calore tackling the biggest questions in the world of tech with knowledgeable WIRED reporters.

You can expect the best of WIRED's breaking news and tech analysis right here in this feed.

Listen to WIRED's Gadget Lab: https://listen.wired.com/YDai_aaZ

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A Senate Bill Would Radically Improve Voting Machine Security

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

This year’s Intelligence Authorization Act would mandate penetration testing for federally certified voting machines and allow independent researchers to work on exposing vulnerabilities.

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How Infostealers Pillaged the World’s Passwords

Tue, 30 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Infostealer malware is swiping millions of passwords, cookies, and search histories. It’s a gold mine for hackers—and a disaster for anyone who becomes a target.

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New Jersey's $500 Million Bid to Become an AI Epicenter

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

The Garden State has enacted a hefty new tax credit specifically for AI businesses. But tax incentives—particularly around data centers—haven’t always created large numbers of jobs.

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A Hacker ‘Ghost’ Network Is Quietly Spreading Malware on GitHub

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Cybersecurity researchers have spotted a 3,000-account network on GitHub that is manipulating the platform and spreading ransomware and info stealers.

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Don't Fall for CrowdStrike Outage Scams

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Swindlers are spinning up bogus websites in an attempt to dupe people with “CrowdStrike support” scams following the security firm's catastrophic software update.

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How Russia-Linked Malware Cut Heat to 600 Ukrainian Buildings in Deep Winter

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

The code, the first of its kind, was used to sabotage a heating utility in Lviv at the coldest point in the year—what appears to be yet another innovation in Russia’s torment of Ukrainian civilians.

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The Pentagon Wants to Spend $141 Billion on a Doomsday Machine

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

The DOD wants to refurbish ICBM silos that give it the ability to end civilization. But these missiles are useless as weapons, and their other main purpose—attracting an enemy’s nuclear strikes—serves no end.

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From the Archives: How to Spot a Business Email Compromise Scam

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

In this common email scam, a criminal pretending to be your boss or coworker emails you asking for a favor involving money. Here's what do to when a bad actor lands in your inbox.

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Alleged ‘Maniac Murder Cult’ Leader Indicted Over Plot to Kill Jewish Children

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

US prosecutors have charged Michail Chkhikvishvili, also known as “Commander Butcher,” with a litany of crimes, including alleged attempts to poison Jewish children in NYC.

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The US Supreme Court Kneecapped US Cyber Strategy

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

After the Supreme Court limited the power of federal agencies to craft regulations, it’s likely up to Congress to keep US cybersecurity policy intact.

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Hackers Claim to Have Leaked 1.1 TB of Disney Slack Messages

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

A hacker group called “NullBulge” says it stole more than a terabyte of Disney’s internal Slack messages and files from nearly 10,000 channels in an apparent protest over AI-generated art.

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The Sweeping Danger of the AT&T Phone Records Breach

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Telecom giant AT&T says a major data breach has exposed the call and text records of “nearly all” of its customers, epitomizing the dire state of data security.

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Pressure Grows in Congress to Treat Crypto Investigator Tigran Gambaryan, Jailed in Nigeria, as a Hostage

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 14:18:13 -0000

A new resolution echoes what 16 members of Congress have already said to the White House: It must do more to free one of the most storied crypto-focused federal agents in history.

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Notorious Hacker Kingpin ‘Tank’ Is Finally Going to Prison

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

The cybercrime boss, who helped lead the prolific Zeus malware gang and was on the FBI’s “most wanted” list for years, has been sentenced to 18 years and ordered to pay more than $73 million.

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Google Is Adding Passkey Support for Its Most Vulnerable Users

Thu, 11 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Google is bringing the password-killing “passkey” tech to its Advanced Protection Program users more than a year after rolling them out broadly.

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Inside a Violent Gang's Ruthless Crypto-Stealing Home Invasion Spree

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

More than a dozen men threatened, assaulted, tortured, or kidnapped victims in likely the worst-ever crypto-focused serial extortion case of its kind in the US.

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Deepfake Creators Are Revictimizing GirlsDoPorn Sex Trafficking Survivors

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

The most notorious deepfake sexual abuse website is hosting altered videos originally published as part of the GirlsDoPorn operation. Experts say this new low is only the beginning.

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How Apple Intelligence’s Privacy Stacks Up Against Android’s ‘Hybrid AI’

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Generative AI is seeping into the core of your phone, but what does that mean for privacy? Here’s how Apple’s unique AI architecture compares to the “hybrid” approach adopted by Samsung and Google.

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Proton Is Launching Encrypted Documents to Take On Google Docs

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Proton is adding an end-to-end encrypted documents editor to its privacy tools, boosting its competition with Google’s suite of productivity apps.

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Polestar Is Bracing for the EV Tariff Wars. It May Not Emerge Unscathed

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

The carmaker says that China tariffs will impact its core product, the Polestar 2, amid growing financial pressure.

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The Problem the US TikTok Crackdown and Kaspersky Ban Have in Common

Tue, 02 Jul 2024 10:00:00 -0000

While Kaspersky and TikTok make very different kinds of software, the US has targeted both over national security concerns. But the looming bans have larger implications for internet freedom.

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Amazon Is Investigating Perplexity Over Claims of Scraping Abuse

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 13:06:58 -0000

AWS hosted a server linked to the Bezos family- and Nvidia-backed search startup that appears to have been used to scrape the sites of major outlets, prompting an inquiry into potential rules violations.

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Surprise! The Latest ‘Comprehensive’ US Privacy Bill Is Doomed

Fri, 28 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Gutted of civil rights protections by Democrats to woo pro-business Republicans, the American Privacy Rights Act was pulled from a key congressional hearing—and appears unlikely to receive a full vote.

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War Crime Prosecutions Enter a New Digital Age

Thu, 27 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

A custom platform created by SITU Research aided the International Criminal Court to prosecute a war crimes case for the first time. It could change how justice is enacted on an international scale.

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The Mystery of AI Gunshot-Detection Accuracy Is Finally Unraveling

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

How accurate are gunshot detection systems, really? For years, it's been a secret, but new reports from San Jose and NYC show these systems have operated well below their advertised accuracy rates.

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Red Tape Is Making Hospital Ransomware Attacks Worse

Tue, 25 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

With cyberattacks increasingly targeting health care providers, an arduous bureaucratic process meant to address legal risk is keeping hospitals offline longer, potentially risking lives.

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US Bans Kaspersky Software

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Using a Trump-era authority, the US Commerce Department has banned the sale of Kaspersky’s antivirus tools to new customers in the US, citing alleged threats to national security.

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How to Spot a Business Email Compromise Scam

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

In this common email scam, a criminal pretending to be your boss or coworker emails you asking for a favor involving money. Here's what do to when a bad actor lands in your inbox.

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Hackers Detail How They Allegedly Stole Ticketmaster Data From Snowflake

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

A ShinyHunters hacker tells WIRED that they gained access to Ticketmaster’s Snowflake cloud account—and others—by first breaching a third-party contractor.

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OpenAI-Backed Nonprofits Have Gone Back on Their Transparency Pledges

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Two organizations that supported unconditional cash grants told WIRED that they will no longer disclose their financial statements and internal policies. Their stance follows a similar denial by OpenAI.

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Amazon-Powered AI Cameras Used to Detect Emotions of Unwitting UK Train Passengers

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

CCTV cameras and AI are being combined to monitor crowds, detect bike thefts, and spot trespassers.

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A Guide to RCS, Why Apple’s Adopting It, and How It Makes Texting Better

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

The messaging standard promises better security and cooler features than plain old SMS. Android has had it for years, but now iPhones are getting it too.

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From the Archives: Oh Good, Hurricanes Are Now Made of Microplastics

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 21:00:00 -0000

When Hurricane Larry made landfall two years ago, it dropped over 100,000 microplastics per square meter of land per day. It’s another ominous sign of how plasticized the environment has become.

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The Fight Against AI Comes to a Foundational Data Set

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Long-running nonprofit Common Crawl has been a boon to researchers for years. But now its role in AI training data has triggered backlash from publishers.

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Medical-Targeted Ransomware Is Breaking Records After Change Healthcare’s $22M Payout

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Cybersecurity firm Recorded Future counted 44 health-care-related incidents in the month after Change Healthcare’s payment came to light—the most it’s ever seen in a single month.

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From the Archives: How NASA Is Protecting Its Precious Asteroid Bennu Sample

Wed, 12 Jun 2024 21:00:00 -0000

The OSIRIS-REx capsule containing a “treasure trove” of space rocks has now arrived at Johnson Space Center, where scientists will gingerly unpack it.

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US Leaders Dodge Questions About Israel’s Influence Campaign

Wed, 12 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries has joined US intelligence officials in ignoring repeated inquiries about Israel’s “malign” efforts to covertly influence US voters.

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Ransomware Is ‘More Brutal’ Than Ever in 2024

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

As the fight against ransomware slogs on, security experts warn of a potential escalation to “real-world violence.” But recent police crackdowns are successfully disrupting the cybercriminal ecosystem.

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Microsoft's Recall Feature Is Even More Hackable Than You Thought

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

A new discovery that the AI-enabled feature's historical data can be accessed even by hackers without administrator privileges only contributes to the growing sense that the feature is a “dumpster fire.”

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From the Archives: The Weirdest Reason the Poles Are Warming So Fast? Invisible Clouds

Sat, 08 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Clouds way up in the stratosphere act like a blanket, trapping heat in the Arctic and Antarctica. That could help explain why models keep underestimating how fast they’re warming.

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From the Archives: Cicadas Are So Loud, Fiber Optic Cables Can ‘Hear’ Them

Sat, 08 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

In 2021, scientists experimenting with fiber optics picked up a strange signal: the cacophony of cicadas. It could lead to a new way of monitoring insects.

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From the Archives: DNA Drives Help Identify Missing People. It’s a Privacy Nightmare

Fri, 07 Jun 2024 21:00:00 -0000

Police are hosting events to collect DNA samples that can help solve missing persons cases. But when people put their DNA in a commercial database, it can used for other purposes.

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Russians Love YouTube. That’s a Problem for the Kremlin

Fri, 07 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

YouTube remains the only major US-based social media platform available in Russia. It’s become “indispensable” to everyday people, making a ban tricky. Journalists and dissidents are taking advantage.

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From the Archives: The Vampire Bat Is Moving Closer to the US. That’s a Problem

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 21:00:00 -0000

We're bringing an extra episode from our show What's New.

As the climate changes, the bloodthirsty creatures are moving north from Latin America, bringing the threat of rabies with them.

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OpenAI Employees Warn of a Culture of Risk and Retaliation

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

An open letter signed by former and current employees at OpenAI and other AI giants calls for whistleblower protections as the artificial intelligence rapidly evolves.

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This Hacker Tool Extracts All the Data Collected by Windows’ New Recall AI

Wed, 05 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Windows Recall takes a screenshot every five seconds. Cybersecurity researchers say the system is simple to abuse—and one ethical hacker has already built a tool to show how easy it really is.

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How Donald Trump Could Weaponize US Surveillance in a Second Term

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Donald Trump has vowed to go after political enemies, undocumented immigrants, and others if he wins. Experts warn that he could easily turn the surveillance state against his targets.

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How Researchers Cracked an 11-Year-Old Password to a $3 Million Crypto Wallet

Mon, 03 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Thanks to a flaw in a decade-old version of the RoboForm password manager and a bit of luck, researchers were able to unearth the password to a crypto wallet containing a fortune.

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From What's New: A Billion-Dollar Plan to Fix Farm Emissions Might Make Things Worse

Sun, 02 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0000

We're bringing an extra episode from our show What's New.

Agriculture is a huge source of greenhouse gas emissions, so the US is getting serious about reform. But some scientists say current efforts are misguided.

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From Business, Spoken: How AI Could Transform Email

Fri, 31 May 2024 21:00:00 -0000

We're bringing an extra episode from our show Business, Spoken.

Artificial intelligence may streamline a form of business communication that’s already super fake.

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The Unusual Espionage Act Case Against a Drone Photographer

Fri, 31 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

In seemingly the first case of its kind, the US Justice Department has charged a Chinese national with using a drone to photograph a Virginia shipyard where the US Navy was assembling nuclear submarines.

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Maven Is a New Social Network That Eliminates Followers—and Hopefully Stress

Thu, 30 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Twitter cofounder Ev Williams is backing a new social network called Maven, which trades likes and follows for algorithms designed to foster serendipity and deep discussion.

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From Science, Spoken: High Blood Pressure Is the World’s Biggest Killer. Now There’s a Plan to Tackle It.

Wed, 29 May 2024 21:00:00 -0000

We're bringing an extra episode from our show Science, Spoken.

Once considered a disease of the affluent, hypertension now affects a third of all adults. The WHO wants nations to get organized to combat it.

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Cops Are Just Trolling Cybercriminals Now

Wed, 29 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Police are using subtle psychological operations against ransomware gangs to sow distrust in their ranks—and trick them into emerging from the shadows.

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He Trained Crypto Cops to Fight Crypto Crime—and Allegedly Ran a $100M Dark Web Drug Market

Mon, 27 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

The strange journey of Lin Rui-siang, the 23-year-old accused of running the Incognito black market, extorting his own site's users—and then refashioning himself as a legit crypto crime expert.

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A Leak of Biometric Police Data Is a Sign of Things to Come

Fri, 24 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Thousands of fingerprints and facial images linked to police in India have been exposed online. Researchers say it’s a warning of what will happen as the collection of biometric data increases.

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Teslas Can Still Be Stolen With a Cheap Radio Hack—Despite New Keyless Tech

Thu, 23 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Ultra-wideband radio has been heralded as the solution for “relay attacks” that are used to steal cars in seconds. But researchers found Teslas equipped with it are as vulnerable as ever.

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Eventbrite Promoted Illegal Opioid Sales to People Searching for Addiction Recovery Help

Wed, 22 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

A WIRED investigation found thousands of Eventbrite posts selling escort services and drugs like Xanax and oxycodone—some of which the company’s algorithm recommended alongside addiction recovery events.

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WikiLeaks' Julian Assange Can Appeal His Extradition to the US, British Court Says

Tue, 21 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Two judges in London have ruled WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange can appeal his extradition to the US on freedom of speech grounds.

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Russian Disinfo Campaign Blames Ukraine for Shooting of Slovakia’s Prime Minister

Mon, 20 May 2024 21:36:01 -0000

A seemingly coordinated campaign playing out across X, Telegram, and state-run media blames Ukraine for the attempted assassination of Robert Fico—something for which there is no evidence.

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These Dangerous Scammers Don’t Even Bother to Hide Their Crimes

Fri, 17 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

“Yahoo Boy” cybercriminals are openly running dozens of scams across Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, TikTok, YouTube, and more.

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Android 15 Theft Detection Lock Knows When Your Phone Is Stolen

Thu, 16 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Google is introducing new AI-powered safety tools in Android 15 that can lock down your phone if thieves nab it.

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Secrecy Concerns Mount Over Spy Powers Targeting US Data Centers

Wed, 15 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

A coalition of digital rights groups is demanding the US declassify records that would clarify just how expansive a major surveillance program really is.

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Internal Emails Show How a Controversial Gun-Detection System Found Its Way to NYC

Tue, 14 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

NYC mayor Eric Adams wants to test Evolv’s gun-detection tech in subway stations—despite the company saying it’s not designed for that environment. Emails obtained by WIRED show how the company still found an in.

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A Russian Influence Campaign Is Exploiting College Campus Protests

Mon, 13 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

A Kremlin-aligned network called Doppelganger has used faked versions of real news sites to push both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel disinformation.

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The Breach of a Face Recognition Firm Reveals a Hidden Danger of Biometrics

Fri, 10 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Outabox, an Australian firm that scanned faces for bars and clubs, suffered a breach that shows the problems with giving companies your biometric data.

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Top FBI Official Urges Agents to Use Warrantless Wiretaps on US Soil

Thu, 09 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

An internal email from FBI deputy director Paul Abbate, obtained by WIRED, tells employees to search for “US persons” in a controversial spy program’s database that investigators have repeatedly misused.

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The Alleged LockBit Ransomware Mastermind Has Been Identified

Wed, 08 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Law enforcement officials from the US, UK, and Australia say they’ve identified and sanctioned the person behind LockBitSupp, the administrator at the heart of LockBit’s $120 million hacking rampage.

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Apple’s iPhone Spyware Problem Is Getting Worse. Here’s What You Should Know

Tue, 07 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

The iPhone maker has detected spyware attacks against people in more than 150 countries. Knowing if your device is infected can be tricky—but there are a few steps you can take to protect yourself.

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A Vast New Dataset Could Supercharge the AI Hunt for Crypto Money Laundering

Thu, 02 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Blockchain analysis firm Elliptic, MIT, and IBM, have released a new AI detection model—and the 200-million-transaction dataset it's trained on—that aims to spot the “shape” of Bitcoin money laundering.

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The Dangerous Rise of GPS Attacks

Wed, 01 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Thousands of planes and ships are facing GPS jamming and spoofing. Experts warn these attacks could potentially impact critical infrastructure, communication networks, and more.

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Recruiters Are Going Analog to Fight the AI Application Overload

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Indeed and LinkedIn are incorporating more generative AI to improve the recruiting and job-hunting processes. Some recruiters are still unconvinced.

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The Biggest Deepfake Porn Website Is Now Blocked in the UK

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

The world's most-visited deepfake website and another large competing site are stopping people in the UK from accessing them, days after the UK government announced a crackdown.

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‘ArcaneDoor’ Cyberspies Hacked Cisco Firewalls to Access Government Networks

Fri, 26 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Sources suspect China is behind the targeted exploitation of two zero-day vulnerabilities in Cisco’s security appliances.

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North Koreans Secretly Animated Amazon and Max Shows, Researchers Say

Thu, 25 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Thousands of exposed files on a misconfigured North Korean server hint at one way the reclusive country may evade international sanctions.

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Change Healthcare Finally Admits It Paid Ransomware Hackers—and Still Faces a Patient Data Leak

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

The company belatedly conceded both that it had paid the cybercriminals extorting it and that patient data nonetheless ended up on the dark web.

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The Next US President Will Have Troubling New Surveillance Powers

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Over the weekend, president Joe Biden signed legislation not only reauthorizing a major FISA spy program but expanding it in ways that could have major implications for privacy rights in the US.

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The Trump Jury Has a Doxing Problem

Mon, 22 Apr 2024 10:21:54 -0000

One juror in former US president Donald Trump’s criminal case in New York has been excused over fears she could be identified. It could get even messier.

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Big Tech Squares Off Against US Spies

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

One of Silicon Valley's most influential lobbying arms joins privacy reformers in a fight against the Biden administration-backed expansion of a major US surveillance program.

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Change Healthcare Faces Another Ransomware Threat—and It Looks Credible

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Change Healthcare ransomware hackers already received a $22 million payment. Now a second group is demanding money, and has sent WIRED samples of what they claim is the company's stolen data.

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US Senate to Vote on a Wiretap Bill That Critics Call ‘Stasi-Like’

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

A controversial bill reauthorizing the Section 702 spy program may force whole new categories of businesses to eavesdrop on the US government's behalf, including on fellow Americans.

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House Votes to Extend—and Expand—a Major US Spy Program

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

US House of Representatives voted on Friday to extend the Section 702 spy program. It passed without an amendment that would have required the FBI to obtain a warrant to access Americans' information.

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How to Stop Your Data From Being Used to Train AI

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Some companies let you opt out of allowing your content to be used for generative AI. Here’s how to take back (at least a little) control from ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and more.

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DuckDuckGo Is Taking Its Privacy Fight to Data Brokers

Fri, 12 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Privacy-focused company DuckDuckGo is launching a tool to remove data from people-search websites, a VPN, and an identity theft restoration service.

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It’s Time to Switch to a Privacy Browser

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Ad trackers are out of control. Use a browser that reins them in.

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A Breakthrough Online Privacy Proposal Hits Congress

Wed, 10 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

While some states have made data privacy gains, the US has so far been unable implement protections at a federal level. A new bipartisan proposal called APRA could break the impasse.

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How to Protect Yourself (and Your Loved Ones) From AI Scam Calls

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

AI tools are getting better at cloning people's voices, and scammers are using these new capabilities to commit fraud. Avoid getting swindled by following these expert tips.

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A Ghost Ship’s Doomed Journey Through the Gate of Tears

Mon, 08 Apr 2024 14:09:29 -0000

Millions lost internet service after three cables in the Red Sea were damaged. Houthi rebels deny targeting the cables, but their missile attack on a cargo ship, left adrift for months, is likely to blame.

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A Vigilante Hacker Took Down North Korea’s Internet. Now He’s Taking Off His Mask

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

As “P4x,” Alejandro Caceres single-handedly disrupted the internet of an entire country. Then he tried to show the US military how it can—and should—adopt his methods.

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The Mystery of ‘Jia Tan,’ the XZ Backdoor Mastermind

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

The thwarted XZ Utils supply chain attack was years in the making. Now, clues suggest nation-state hackers were behind the persona that inserted the malicious code.

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The Incognito Mode Myth Has Fully Unraveled

Wed, 03 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

To settle a years-long lawsuit, Google has agreed to delete “billions of data records” collected from users of “Incognito mode,” illuminating the pitfalls of relying on Chrome to protect your privacy.

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The White House Puts New Guardrails on Government Use of AI

Tue, 02 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Vice President Kamala Harris says new rules for government AI deployments, including a requirement that algorithms are checked for bias, will “put the public interest first.”

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Jeffrey Epstein's Island Visitors Exposed by Data Broker

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 10:00:00 -0000

A WIRED investigation uncovered coordinates collected by a controversial data broker that reveal sensitive information about visitors to an island once owned by Epstein, the notorious sex offender.

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Hackers Found a Way to Open Any of 3 Million Hotel Keycard Locks in Seconds

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 10:00:00 -0000

The company behind the Saflok-brand door locks is offering a fix, but it may take months or years to reach some hotels.

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‘Malicious Activity’ Hits the University of Cambridge's Medical School

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Multiple university departments linked to the Clinical School Computing Service have been inaccessible for a month. The university has not yet revealed the nature of the “malicious activity.”

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Julian Assange Won’t Be Extradited to the US Yet

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 10:00:00 -0000

A high court in London says the WikiLeaks founder won’t be extradited “immediately” and the US must provide more “assurances” about any extradition.

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Chinese Hackers Charged in Decade-Long Global Spying Rampage

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 10:00:00 -0000

US and UK officials hit Chinese hacking group APT31 with sanctions and criminal charges after they targeted thousands of businesses, politicians, and critics of China.

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Apple's iMessage Encryption Puts Its Security Practices in the DOJ's Crosshairs

Mon, 25 Mar 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Privacy and security are an Apple selling point. But the DOJ's new antitrust lawsuit argues that Apple selectively embraces privacy and security features in ways that hurt competition—and users.

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Some of the Most Popular Websites Share Your Data With Over 1,500 Companies

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Cookie pop-ups now show the number of “partners” that websites may share data with. Here's how many of these third-party companies may get your data from some of the most popular sites online.

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Glassdoor Wants to Know Your Real Name

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Anonymous, candid reviews made Glassdoor a powerful place to research potential employers. A policy shift requiring users to privately verify their real names is raising privacy concerns.

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Reddit’s Sale of User Data for AI Training Draws FTC Investigation

Wed, 20 Mar 2024 10:00:00 -0000

The platform says it stands to make more than $200 million in coming years from Google and other companies that want user comments to feed AI projects. Regulators have questions.

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Sinking US Wiretap Program Offered One Last Lifeboat

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 10:00:00 -0000

For months, US lawmakers have examined every side of a historic surveillance debate. With the introduction of the SAFE Act, all that's left to do now is vote.

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The 4 Big Questions the Pentagon's New UFO Report Fails to Answer

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 13:09:07 -0000

The Pentagon says it’s not hiding aliens, but it stops notably short of saying what it is hiding. Here are the key questions that remain unanswered—some answers could be weirder than UFOs.

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The ‘Emergency Powers’ Risk of a Second Trump Presidency

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Every US president has the ability to invoke “emergency powers” that could give an authoritarian leader the ability to censor the internet, restrict travel, and more.

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How to Turn Off Facebook’s Two-Factor Authentication Change

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 10:00:00 -0000

With Meta’s updated 2FA process, the company now automatically trusts devices you often use.

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Binance’s Top Crypto Crime Investigator Is Being Detained in Nigeria

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Tigran Gambaryan, a former crypto-focused US federal agent, and a second Binance executive, Nadeem Anjarwalla, have been held in Abuja without passports for two weeks.

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Google Is Getting Thousands of Deepfake Porn Complaints

Tue, 12 Mar 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Content creators are using copyright laws to get nonconsensual deepfakes removed from the web. With the complaints covering nearly 30,000 URLs, experts say Google should do more to help.

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Hackers Behind the Change Healthcare Ransomware Attack Just Received a $22 Million Payment

Mon, 11 Mar 2024 10:00:00 -0000

The transaction, visible on Bitcoin's blockchain, suggests the victim of one of the worst ransomware attacks in years may have paid a very large ransom.

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Meta Abandons Hacking Victims, Draining Law Enforcement Resources, Officials Say

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 11:00:00 -0000

A coalition of 41 state attorneys general says Meta is failing to assist Facebook and Instagram users whose accounts have been hacked—and they want the company to take “immediate action.”

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Dictators Used Sandvine Tech to Censor the Internet. The US Finally Did Something About It

Thu, 07 Mar 2024 11:00:00 -0000

Canada-based Sandvine has long sold its web-monitoring tech to authoritarian regimes. This week, the US sanctioned the company, severely limiting its ability to do business with American firms.

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The UK’s GPS Tagging of Migrants Has Been Ruled Illegal

Wed, 06 Mar 2024 11:00:00 -0000

The UK’s privacy regulator says the government did not take into account the intrusiveness of ankle tags that continuously monitor a person’s location.

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Biden Bans Rival Nations From Buying Sensitive US Data—Good Luck

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 11:00:00 -0000

The White House issued an executive order on Wednesday that aims to prevent the sale of Americans' data to “countries of concern,” including China and Russia. Its effectiveness may vary.

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Russia Attacked Ukraine's Power Grid at Least 66 Times to ‘Freeze It Into Submission’

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 11:00:00 -0000

Several of the strikes occurred far from the front lines of the conflict, indicating possible war crimes. Researchers say the attacks likely had devastating impacts on civilians.

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The White House Warns Cars Made in China Could Unleash Chaos on US Highways

Fri, 01 Mar 2024 11:00:00 -0000

As Chinese automakers prepare to launch in the US, the White House is investigating whether cars made in China could pose a national security threat.

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Ransomware Groups Are Bouncing Back Faster From Law Enforcement Busts

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

Two months ago, the FBI “disrupted” the BlackCat ransomware group. They're already back—and their latest attack is causing delays at pharmacies across the US.

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How a Small Iowa Newspaper’s Website Became an AI-Generated Clickbait Factory

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

When two former Meta employees dug into why the website of Iowa’s Clayton County Register was spewing dubious posts about stocks, they uncovered a network of sites slinging seemingly AI-made content.

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Apple’s iMessage Is Getting Post-Quantum Encryption

Tue, 27 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

Useful quantum computers aren’t a reality—yet. But in one of the biggest deployments of post-quantum encryption so far, Apple is bringing the technology to iMessage.

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Leak Shows Alarm in Congress Over a Russian ‘Threat’ Is a Real Anomaly

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 11:41:34 -0000

The US Congress was preparing to vote on a key foreign surveillance program. Then a wild Russian threat appeared.

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100 Million People Pay Google for Extra Storage. Can It Get Them to Pay More for Smarter AI?

Fri, 23 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

Google is still mostly supported by ads but its new subscription-only chatbot, Gemini Advanced, is a major new addition to the company's burgeoning services business.

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Google’s AI Boss Says Scale Only Gets You So Far

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

In an interview with WIRED, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis says the biggest breakthroughs in AI are yet to come—and will take more than just chips.

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A Global Police Operation Just Took Down the Notorious LockBit Ransomware Gang

Wed, 21 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

LockBit’s website, infrastructure, and data have been seized by law enforcement—striking a huge blow against one of the world's most prolific ransomware groups.

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Leak of Russian Threat Part of a Bid to Kill US Surveillance Reform, Sources Say

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

A surprise disclosure of a national security threat by the House Intelligence chair was part of an effort to block legislation that aimed to limit cops and spies from buying Americans' private data.

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The Hidden Injustice of Cyberattacks

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

Cyberattacks and criminal scams can impact anyone. But communities of color and other marginalized groups are often disproportionately impacted and lack the support to better protect themselves.

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Surveillance Fight Pits the White House Opposite Reproductive Rights

Fri, 16 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

Prominent advocates for the rights of pregnant people are urging members of Congress to support legislation that would ban warrantless access to sensitive data as the White House fights against it.

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‘AI Girlfriends’ Are a Privacy Nightmare

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

Romantic chatbots collect huge amounts of data, provide vague information about how they use it, use weak password protections, and aren’t transparent, new research from Mozilla says.

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A Backroom Deal Looms Over a High-Stakes US Surveillance Fight

Wed, 14 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

Top congressional lawmakers are meeting in private to discuss the future of a widely unpopular surveillance program, worrying members devoted to reforming Section 702.

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Satellite Images Point to Indiscriminate Israeli Attacks on Gaza’s Health Care Facilities

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

New research finds that Israel’s attacks on Gaza damaged hospitals and other medical facilities at the same rate as other buildings, potentially in violation of international law.

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London Underground Is Testing Real-Time AI Surveillance Tools to Spot Crime

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

In a test at one station, Transport for London used a computer vision system to try and detect crime and weapons, people falling on the tracks, and fare dodgers, documents obtained by WIRED show.

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I Stopped Using Passwords. It’s Great—and a Total Mess

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

Passkeys are here to replace passwords. When they work, it’s a seamless vision of the future. But don’t ditch your old logins just yet.

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Ransomware Payments Hit a Record $1.1 Billion in 2023

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

After a slowdown in payments to ransomware gangs in 2022, last year saw total ransom payouts jump to their highest level yet, according to a new report from crypto-tracing firm Chainalysis.

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WhatsApp Chats Will Soon Work With Other Encrypted Messaging Apps

Wed, 07 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

New EU rules mean WhatsApp and Messenger must be interoperable with other chat apps. Here’s how that will work.

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The Trial Over Bitcoin’s True Creator Is in Session

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

A UK High Court will settle a long-running debate over whether Craig Wright really is Satoshi Nakamoto, inventor of Bitcoin. Monday’s opening arguments laid the groundwork for both sides.

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The Mystery of the $400 Million FTX Heist May Have Been Solved

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

An indictment against three Americans suggests that at least some of the culprits behind the theft of an FTX crypto fortune may be in custody.

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YouTube, Discord, and Lord of the Rings Led Police to a Teen Accused of a US Swatting Spree

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

For nearly two years, police have been tracking down the culprit behind a wave of hoax threats. A digital trail took them to the door of a 17-year-old in California.

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The Pentagon Tried to Hide That It Bought Americans' Data Without a Warrant

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0000

US spy agencies purchased Americans' phone location data and internet metadata without a warrant but only admitted it after a US senator blocked the appointment of a new NSA director.

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Robots Are Fighting Robots in Russia's War in Ukraine

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

Aerial drones have changed the war in Ukraine. Now, both Russia's and Ukraine's militaries are deploying more unmanned ground robots—and the two are colliding.

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Police have Arrested a Teen Said to Be Linked to Hundreds of Swatting Attacks

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

A California teenager who allegedly used the handle Torswats to carry out a nationwide swatting campaign is being extradited to Florida to face felony charges, WIRED has learned.

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Notorious Spyware Maker NSO Group Is Quietly Plotting a Comeback

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

NSO Group, creator of the infamous Pegasus spyware, is spending millions on lobbying in Washington while taking advantage of the Israel-Hamas war to paint itself as essential for global security.

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Ring Will Stop Giving Cops a Free Pass on Warrantless Video Requests

Fri, 26 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

The Amazon-owned home surveillance company says it is shuttering a feature in its Neighbors app that allows police to request footage from users. But it’s not shutting out the cops entirely.

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Most Top News Sites Block AI Bots. Right-Wing Media Welcomes Them

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

Nearly 90 percent of top news outlets like The New York Times now block AI data collection bots from OpenAI and others. Leading right-wing outlets like NewsMax and Breitbart mostly permit them.

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You Need to Turn on Apple’s New Stolen iPhone Tool

Wed, 24 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

Apple’s iOS 17.3 introduces Stolen Device Protection to iPhones, which could stop phone thieves from taking over your accounts. Here’s how to enable it right now.

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The Sad Truth of the FTC’s ‘Historic’ Privacy Win

Tue, 23 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

The FTC forced a data broker to stop selling “sensitive location data.” But most companies can avoid such scrutiny by doing the bare minimum, exposing the lack of protections Americans truly have.

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A Flaw in Millions of Apple, AMD, and Qualcomm GPUs Could Expose AI Data

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

Patching every device affected by the LeftoverLocals vulnerability—which includes some iPhones, iPads, and Macs—may prove difficult.

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‘Stablecoins’ Enabled $40 Billion in Crypto Crime Since 2022

Fri, 19 Jan 2024 12:00:00 -0000

A new report from Chainalysis finds that stablecoins like Tether, tied to the value of the US dollar, were used in the vast majority of crypto-based scam transactions and sanctions evasion in 2023.

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How to Stop Your X Account From Getting Hacked Like the SEC's

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

The US Securities and Exchange Commission and security firm Mandiant both had their X accounts breached, possibly due to changes to X's two-factor authentication settings. Here's how to fix yours.

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The Boeing 737 Max Crisis Reignites Arguments Over Infant Safety on Planes

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

A midair blowout on a Boeing 737 Max 9 showed seatbelts matter, but infants under two still aren’t required to have their own seats. Experts say changing the rules would make flying safer for children—but, counterintuitively, would result in more deaths.

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Bitcoin ETFs Have Arrived. Here’s Who Stands to Get Rich

Tue, 16 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

The US approval of spot bitcoin ETFs, a new way to track the price of bitcoin, could trigger a gold rush for investors. But an exclusive cast of middlemen will earn big in the background, too.

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Child Abusers Are Getting Better at Using Crypto to Cover Their Tracks

Mon, 15 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

Crypto tracing firm Chainalysis found that sellers of child sexual abuse materials are successfully using “mixers” and “privacy coins” like Monero to launder their profits and evade law enforcement.

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US School Shooter Emergency Plans Exposed in a Highly Sensitive Database Leak

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

More than 4 million school records, including safety procedures, student medical files, and court documents, were also publicly accessible online.

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Lawmakers Are Out for Blood After a Hack of the SEC’s X Account Causes Bitcoin Chaos

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is under pressure to explain itself after its X account was compromised, leading to wild swings in the bitcoin market.

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The Fight to Unite iPhone and Android Users Is Far From Over

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

Apple crushed Beeper Mini, an app that let Android users into Apple’s iMessage service. Beeper cofounder Eric Migicovsky says interoperability between Big Tech’s walled gardens is urgently needed.

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The Worst Hacks of 2023

Tue, 09 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

It was a year of devastating cyberattacks around the globe, from ransomware attacks on casinos to state-sponsored breaches of critical infrastructure.

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How to Be More Anonymous Online

Mon, 08 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

Being fully anonymous is next to impossible—but you can significantly limit what the internet knows about you by sticking to a few basic rules.

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Scammers Are Ruining Facebook Marketplace

Fri, 05 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

I tried to sell a futon on Facebook Marketplace and nearly all I got were scammers.

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What It’s Like to Use Apple’s Lockdown Mode

Thu, 04 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

If you're at high risk of being targeted by mercenary spyware, or just don't mind losing iOS features for extra security, the company's restricted mode is surprisingly usable.

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This Clever New Idea Could Fix AirTag Stalking While Maximizing Privacy

Wed, 03 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

Apple updated its location-tracking system in an attempt to cut down on AirTag abuse while still preserving privacy. Researchers think they’ve found a better balance.

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America’s Big AI Safety Plan Faces a Budget Crunch

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0000

NIST, the US agency Joe Biden tasked with curbing the risks of AI, lacks the necessary resources. Lawmakers are concerned it could be forced to rely on private companies developing the technology.

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The Best Password Managers to Secure Your Digital Life

Mon, 25 Dec 2023 11:00:00 -0000

Keep your logins locked down with password management apps for PC, Mac, Android, iPhone, and web browsers.

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The Race to Fill Crypto’s FTX-Shaped Hole

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 11:00:00 -0000

When crypto exchange FTX collapsed, it left behind a hole in the market. From Backpack to OPNX, faces new and old are vying to fill it.

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A Major Ransomware Takedown Suffers a Strange Setback

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 11:00:00 -0000

After an 18 month rampage, global law enforcement finally moved against the notorious Alphv or Blackcat ransomware group. Within hours, the operation faced obstacles.

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Tesla Is Recalling Nearly All Vehicles Sold in US to Fix an Autopilot Fault

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 11:00:00 -0000

The Tesla recall, which affects more than two million vehicles, follows a two-year government investigation into a series of crashes linked to the Autopilot system.

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Scammers Are Tricking Anti-Vaxxers Into Buying Bogus Medical Documents

Tue, 19 Dec 2023 11:00:00 -0000

On Telegram, scammers are impersonating doctors to sell fake Covid-19 vaccination certificates and other products, showing how criminals are taking advantage of conspiracy theories.

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McDonald’s Ice Cream Machine Hackers Say They Found the ‘Smoking Gun’ That Killed Their Startup

Mon, 18 Dec 2023 11:00:00 -0000

Kytch, the company that tried to fix McDonald’s broken ice cream machines, has unearthed a 3-year-old email it says proves claims of an alleged plot to undermine their business.

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Microsoft’s Digital Crime Unit Goes Deep on How It Disrupts Cybercrime

Fri, 15 Dec 2023 11:00:00 -0000

Ten years in, Microsoft’s DCU has honed its strategy of using both unique legal tactics and the company’s technical reach to disrupt global cybercrime and state-backed actors.

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Hacker Group Linked to Russian Military Claims Credit for Cyberattack on Ukrainian Telecom

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 11:00:00 -0000

A hacker group calling itself Solntsepek—previously linked to Russia's notorious Sandworm hackers—says it carried out a disruptive breach of Kyivstar, a major Ukrainian mobile and internet provider.

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Congress Clashes Over the Future of America’s Global Spy Program

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 11:00:00 -0000

Competing bills moving through the House of Representatives both reauthorize Section 702 surveillance—but they pave very different paths forward for Americans' privacy and civil liberties.

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Ukraine Is Crowdfunding Its Reconstruction

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 11:00:00 -0000

With its war against Russia raging on, Ukraine has begun raising funds to rebuild homes and structures one by one using its own crowdfunding platform.

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A New Trick Uses AI to Jailbreak AI Models—Including GPT-4

Mon, 11 Dec 2023 11:00:00 -0000

Adversarial algorithms can systematically probe large language models like OpenAI’s GPT-4 for weaknesses that can make them misbehave. Read the story here.

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Police Can Spy on Your iOS and Android Push Notifications

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 11:00:00 -0000

Governments can access records related to push notifications from mobile apps by requesting that data from Apple and Google, according to details in court records and a US senator.

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The 23andMe Data Breach Keeps Spiraling

Thu, 07 Dec 2023 11:00:00 -0000

23andMe has provided more information about the scope and scale of its recent breach, but with these details come more unanswered questions.

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How to Not Get Hacked by a QR Code

Wed, 06 Dec 2023 11:00:00 -0000

QR codes can be convenient—but they can also be exploited by malicious actors. Here’s how to protect yourself.

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When It Comes to January 6 Lawsuits, a Court Splits Donald Trump in Two

Tue, 05 Dec 2023 11:00:00 -0000

A federal court ruled on Friday that Trump, as president, may be able to avoid civil action for his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. But candidate Trump is something different.

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Elon Musk Is Giving QAnon Believers Hope Just in Time for the 2024 Elections

Mon, 04 Dec 2023 11:00:00 -0000

Musk’s recent use of the term “Q*Anon” is his most explicit endorsement of the movement to date. Conspiracists have since spent days dissecting its meaning and cheering on his apparent support.

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A Civil Rights Firestorm Erupts Around a Looming Surveillance Power Grab

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 11:00:00 -0000

Dozens of advocacy groups are pressuring the US Congress to abandon plans to ram through the renewal of a controversial surveillance program that they say poses an “alarming threat to civil rights.”

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A Controversial US Surveillance Program May Get Slipped Into a ‘Must-Pass’ Defense Bill

Thu, 30 Nov 2023 11:00:00 -0000

Congressional leaders are discussing ways to reauthorize Section 702 surveillance, including attaching it to the National Defense Authorization Act, Capitol Hill sources tell WIRED.

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Running Signal Will Soon Cost $50 Million a Year

Wed, 29 Nov 2023 11:00:00 -0000

Signal’s president reveals the cost of running the privacy-preserving platform—not just to drum up donations, but to call out the for-profit surveillance business models it competes against.

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No, You Don’t Need to Turn Off Apple’s NameDrop Feature in iOS 17

Tue, 28 Nov 2023 11:00:00 -0000

Yes, your iPhone automatically turns on NameDrop with the latest software update. But you shouldn’t really be worried about it—regardless of what the police are saying.

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How to Make Your Web Searches More Secure and Private

Mon, 27 Nov 2023 10:00:00 -0000

What you look for online is up to you—just make sure no one else is taking a peek.

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The Bin Laden Letter Is Being Weaponized by the Far-Right

Wed, 22 Nov 2023 11:00:00 -0000

Far-right influencers and right-wing lawmakers are using the spread of Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” to call for a TikTok ban and boost decades old conspiracies.

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Inside the Race to Secure Formula 1’s Las Vegas Grand Prix

Tue, 21 Nov 2023 11:00:00 -0000

Beyond the blinding speeds and sharp turns on new terrain, the teams at this weekend’s big F1 race are preparing for another kind of danger.

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US Congress Report Calls for Privacy Reforms After FBI Surveillance ‘Abuses’

Mon, 20 Nov 2023 11:00:00 -0000

A new report by an oversight committee in the US House of Representatives says the FBI has routinely violated rules governing FISA's Section 702 surveillance program and must be reined in.

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A Spy Agency Leaked People's Data Online—Then the Data Was Stolen

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 11:00:00 -0000

The National Telecommunication Monitoring Center in Bangladesh exposed a database to the open web. The types of data leaked online are extensive.

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Norway’s Privacy Battle With Meta Is Just Getting Started

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 11:00:00 -0000

The Norwegian data regulator has already fined Meta $7 million. Now it says it’s investigating the company’s new ad-free subscription services.

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US Privacy Groups Urge Senate Not to Ram Through NSA Spying Powers

Wed, 15 Nov 2023 11:00:00 -0000

An effort to reauthorize a controversial US surveillance program by attaching it to a must-pass spending bill has civil liberties advocates calling foul.

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This New Tool Aims to Keep Terrorism Content Off the Internet

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 11:00:00 -0000

Small platforms without resources to handle takedown requests have been weaponized by terrorist groups that share their content online. A free new tool is coming to help clean house.

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Here’s How Violent Extremists Are Exploiting Generative AI Tools

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 11:00:00 -0000

Experts are finding thousands of examples of AI-created content every week that could allow terrorist groups and other violent extremists to bypass automated detection systems.

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How to Get Facebook Without Ads—if It’s Available for You

Fri, 10 Nov 2023 11:00:00 -0000

Meta now offers users an ad-free option, but it’s only available in Europe for those who can afford the €10-a-month subscription.

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The US and 30 Other Nations Agree to Set Guardrails for Military AI

Thu, 09 Nov 2023 11:00:00 -0000

The tech-centric war in Ukraine and the success of ChatGPT have prompted new interest in figuring out how to prevent military AI from going awry.

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YouTube’s Ad Blocker Detection Believed to Break EU Privacy Law

Wed, 08 Nov 2023 11:00:00 -0000

A complaint filed with the EU’s independent data regulator accuses YouTube of failing to get explicit user permission for its ad blocker detection system, potentially violating the ePrivacy Directive.

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Where the Hell Is X CEO Linda Yaccarino?

Tue, 07 Nov 2023 11:00:00 -0000

Despite Linda Yaccarino having the top job at X, Elon Musk’s outsize presence may be hampering her ability to succeed.

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Microsoft Does Damage Control With Its New ‘Secure Future Initiative’

Mon, 06 Nov 2023 15:13:25 -0000

Following a string of serious security incidents, Microsoft says it has a plan to deal with escalating threats from cybercriminals and state-backed hackers. Read this story here.

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The New Era of Social Media Looks as Bad for Privacy as the Last One

Fri, 03 Nov 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The slow-motion implosion of Elon Musk’s X has given rise to a slew of competitors, where privacy invasions that ran rampant over the past decade still largely persist.

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A Jury Will Decide If Google's App Store Is an Unjust Monopoly

Thu, 02 Nov 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Fortnite developer Epic has pushed back on Google’s control of the Android app store. The courtroom showdown could force the search giant to offer users more apps, at more affordable prices.

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X Banned the Account of a Major Critic. Now He’s Taking It to Court

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Software developer Travis Brown’s X account was banned after his research alleged far-right influencers were becoming more prominent on the platform. He’s taking X to court in a bid to reverse the decision.

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Joe Biden’s Sweeping New Executive Order Aims to Drag the US Government into the Age of ChatGPT

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

President Joe Biden issued a wide-ranging executive order on artificial intelligence with measures to boost US tech talent and prevent AI being used to threaten national security.

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TikTok Streamers Are Staging ‘Israel vs. Palestine’ Live Matches to Cash In on Virtual Gifts

Mon, 30 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

TikTokkers are using a little-known livestreaming feature to falsely represent Israelis and Palestinians—and the company is taking a cut of costly in-app gifts viewers give to participants.

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Maine Mass Shooting Disinformation Floods Social Media as Suspect Remains at Large

Fri, 27 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

In the hours following the worst mass shooting in Maine's history, disinformation about the suspected gunman flooded social media with false claims that he had been arrested.

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Okta's Latest Security Breach Is Haunted by the Ghost of Incidents Past

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

A recent breach of authentication giant Okta has impacted nearly 200 of its clients. But repeated incidents and the company's delayed disclosure have security experts calling foul.

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A Controversial Plan to Scan Private Messages for Child Abuse Meets Fresh Scandal

Wed, 25 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

An EU government body is pushing a proposal to combat child sexual abuse material that has significant privacy implications. Its lead advocate is making things even messier.

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Google Steps Up Its Push to Kill the Password

Tue, 24 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Google is making passkeys, the emerging passwordless login technology, the default option for users as it moves to make passwords “obsolete.”

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Citing Hamas, the US Wants to Officially Treat Crypto Anonymity Services as Suspected Money Launderers

Mon, 23 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

With a new emphasis on the Hamas attacks on Israel, the US Treasury has proposed designating foreign cryptocurrency “mixer” services as money launderers and national security threats.

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Insiders Say X’s Crowdsourced Anti-Disinformation Tool Is Making the Problem Worse

Fri, 20 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

X is promoting Community Notes to solve its disinformation problems, but some former employees and people who currently contribute notes say it’s not fit for that purpose.

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Rumors of a ‘Global Day of Jihad’ Have Unleashed a Dangerous Wave of Disinformation

Thu, 19 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The rapid spread of violent videos and photos, combined with a toxic stew of mis- and disinformation, now threatens to spill over into real-world violence.

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They Supported Air Strike Victims. Then They Were Doxed and Arrested

Wed, 18 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Myanmar’s military junta is increasing surveillance and violating basic human rights. The combination of physical and digital surveillance is reaching dangerous new levels.

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Deepfake Porn Is Out of Control

Tue, 17 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

New research shows the number of deepfake videos is skyrocketing—and the world's biggest search engines are funneling clicks to dozens of sites dedicated to the nonconsensual fakes.

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A New Protocol Vulnerability Will Haunt the Web for Years

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 15:11:17 -0000

Dubbed “HTTP/2 Rapid Reset,” the flaw requires making patches available for virtually every web server around the world before the problem can be eradicated.

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How the FTX Thieves Have Tried to Launder Their $400 Million Haul

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Whoever looted FTX on the day of its bankruptcy has now moved the stolen money through a long string of intermediaries—including a service owned by FTX itself.

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The UN Risks Normalizing Internet Censorship

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The United Nations' top internet governance body will allegedly host its next two annual meetings in countries known for repressive internet policies and human rights abuses.

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Elon Musk Is Personally Undermining X’s Efforts to Curb Disinformation on the Israel-Hamas War

Wed, 11 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

X's Trust and Safety team says it's working to remove false information related to the Israel-Hamas war. Meanwhile, Elon Musk is sharing conspiracies and chatting with QAnon promoters.

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23andMe User Data Stolen in Targeted Attack on Ashkenazi Jews

Tue, 10 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

At least a million data points from 23andMe accounts appear to have been exposed on BreachForums. While the scale of the campaign is unknown, 23andMe says it's working to verify the data.

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Slovakia’s Election Deepfakes Show AI Is a Danger to Democracy

Mon, 09 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Fact-checkers scrambled to deal with faked audio recordings released days before a tight election, in a warning for other countries with looming votes.

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Your Cheap Android TV Streaming Box May Have a Dangerous Backdoor

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

New research has found that some streaming devices and dozens of Android and iOS apps are secretly being used for fraud and other cybercrime.

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How to Stop Google Bard From Storing Your Data and Location

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Checking out this AI chatbot's new features? Make sure to keep these privacy tips in mind during your interactions.

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The Biggest Hack of 2023 Keeps Getting Bigger

Wed, 04 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Victims of the MOVEit breach continue to come forward. But the full scale of the attack is still unknown.

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How to Tell When Your Phone Will Stop Getting Security Updates

Tue, 03 Oct 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Every smartphone has an expiration date. Here’s when yours will probably come.

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The Maker of ShotSpotter Is Buying the World’s Most Infamous Predictive Policing Tech

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 14:09:06 -0000

SoundThinking is purchasing parts of Geolitica, the company that created PredPol. Experts say the acquisition marks a new era of companies dictating how police operate.

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US Justice Department Urged to Investigate Gunshot Detector Purchases

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0000

A civil liberties group has asked the DOJ to investigate deployment of the ShotSpotter gunfire-detection system, which research shows is often installed in predominantly Black neighborhoods.

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Extremely Online Republicans Are Provoking a US Government Shutdown

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Egged on by a far-reaching conservative media ecosystem, right-wing hardliners are forcing Washington to bend to their reality as the federal government careens toward a possible shutdown.

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A Tricky New Way to Sneak Past Repressive Internet Censorship

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0000

With the number of internet blackouts on the rise, cybersecurity firm eQualitie figured out how to hide censored online news in satellite TV signals.

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Your Boss’s Spyware Could Train AI to Replace You

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Corporations are using software to monitor employees on a large scale. Some experts fear the data these tools collect could be used to automate people out of their jobs.

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US and UK Mount Aggressive Crackdown on Trickbot and Conti Ransomware Gangs

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Authorities sanctioned 11 alleged members of the cybercriminal groups, while the US Justice Department unsealed three federal indictments against nine people accused of being members.

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Chinese Spies Infected Dozens of Networks With Thumb Drive Malware

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Security researchers found USB-based Sogu espionage malware spreading within African operations of European and US firms.

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Massive MGM and Caesars Hacks Epitomize a Vicious Ransomware Cycle

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Cyberattacks on casinos grab attention, but a steady stream of less publicized attacks leave vulnerable victims struggling to recover.

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The US Congress Has Trust Issues. Generative AI Is Making It Worse

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Senators met with Silicon Valley's elite to learn how to deal with AI. But can Congress tackle the rapidly emerging tech before working on itself?

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Top US Spies Meet With Privacy Experts Over Surveillance 'Crown Jewel'

Fri, 15 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Civil rights groups say efforts to get US intelligence agencies to adopt privacy reforms have largely failed. Without those changes, renewal of a post-911 surveillance policy may be doomed.

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The International Criminal Court Will Now Prosecute Cyberwar Crimes

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0000

And the first case on the docket may well be Russia's cyberattacks against civilian critical infrastructure in Ukraine.

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China-Linked Hackers Breached a Power Grid—Again

Wed, 13 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Signs suggest the culprits worked within a notorious Chinese hacker group that may have also hacked Indian electric utilities years earlier.

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The Comedy of Errors That Let China-Backed Hackers Steal Microsoft’s Signing Key

Mon, 11 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0000

After leaving many questions unanswered, a new post mortem from Microsoft explains the series of slip-ups that allowed attackers to steal and abuse a valuable cryptographic key.

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How China Demands Tech Firms Reveal Hackable Flaws in Their Products

Fri, 08 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Some foreign companies may be complying—potentially offering China’s spies hints for hacking their customers.

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Generative AI’s Biggest Security Flaw Is Not Easy to Fix

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Chatbots like Open AI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard are vulnerable to indirect prompt injection attacks. Security researchers say the holes can be plugged—sort of.

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The Strange Afterlife of Wagner’s Yevgeny Prigozhin

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Posts praising the Wagner Group boss following his death in a mysterious plane crash last month indicate he was still in control of his "troll farm," researchers claim.

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How to Use Proton Sentinel to Keep Your Accounts Safe

Tue, 05 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0000

If you want the highest possible level of protection, this is it.

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Apple's Decision to Kill Its CSAM Photo-Scanning Tool Sparks Fresh Controversy

Mon, 04 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Child safety group Heat Initiative plans to launch a campaign pressing Apple on child sexual abuse material scanning and user reporting. The company issued a rare, detailed response on Thursday.

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Nvidia Chip Shortages Leave AI Startups Scrambling for Computing Power

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Trimming profits, delaying launches, begging friends. Companies are going to extreme lengths to make do with shortages of GPUs, the chips at the heart of generative AI programs.

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The Low-Stakes Race to Crack an Encrypted German U-Boat Message

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

A ramshackle team of American scientists scrambled to decode the Nazi cipher before the time ran out. Luckily, they had a secret weapon.

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The Weird, Big-Money World of Cybercrime Writing Contests

Wed, 30 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The competitions, which are held on Russian-language cybercrime forums, offer prize money of up to $80,000 for the winners.

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The Cheap Radio Hack That Disrupted Poland's Railway System

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The sabotage of more than 20 trains in Poland by apparent supporters of Russia was carried out with a simple “radio-stop” command anyone could broadcast with $30 in equipment.

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The Last Hour of Prigozhin’s Plane

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Russia tightly controls its information space—making it hard to get accurate information out of the country. But open source data provides some clues about the crash.

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Chatbots Got Big—and Their Ethical Red Flags Got Bigger

Fri, 25 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Researchers have spent years warning that text-generation algorithms can spew bias and falsehoods. Tech giants are rushing them into products anyway.

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The Internet Is Turning Into a Data Black Box. An ‘Inspectability API’ Could Crack It Open

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Unlike web browsers, mobile apps increasingly make it difficult or impossible to see what companies are really doing with your data. The answer? An inspectability API.

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A New Supply Chain Attack Hit Close to 100 Victims—and Clues Point to China

Wed, 23 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The hackers, who mostly targeted victims in Hong Kong, also hijacked Microsoft’s trust model to make their malware harder to detect.

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Google's New Feature Ensures Your Pixel Phone Hasn't Been Hacked. Here’s How It Works

Tue, 22 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Pixel Binary Transparency is the latest security benefit for Pixel owners.

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A Huge Scam Targeting Kids With Roblox and Fortnite ‘Offers’ Has Been Hiding in Plain Sight

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The wide-ranging scams, often disguised as game promotions, can all be linked back to one network.

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The Plan to Better Protect US Hospitals From Ransomware

Fri, 18 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

An innovation agency within the US Department of Health and Human Services will fund research into better defenses for the US health care system’s digital infrastructure.

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A Clever Honeypot Tricked Hackers Into Revealing Their Secrets

Thu, 17 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Security researchers set up a remote machine and recorded every move cybercriminals made—including their login details.

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An Apple Malware-Flagging Tool Is ‘Trivially’ Easy to Bypass

Tue, 15 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The macOS Background Task Manager tool is supposed to spot potentially malicious software on your machine. But at Defcon, a researcher says it has troubling flaws.

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Teens Hacked Boston Subway Cards to Get Infinite Free Rides—and This Time, Nobody Got Sued

Mon, 14 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

In 2008, Boston’s transit authority sued to stop MIT hackers from presenting at the Defcon hacker conference on how to get free subway rides. Today, four teens picked up where they left off.

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Panasonic Warns That Internet-of-Things Malware Attack Cycles Are Accelerating

Fri, 11 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The legacy electronics manufacturer is creating IoT honeypots with its products to catch real-world threats and patch vulnerabilities in-house.

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New ‘Downfall’ Flaw Exposes Valuable Data in Generations of Intel Chips

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The vulnerability could allow attackers to take advantage of an information leak to steal sensitive details like private messages, passwords, and encryption keys.

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Criminals Have Created Their Own ChatGPT Clones

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Cybercriminals are touting large language models that could help them with phishing or creating malware. But the AI chatbots could just be their own kind of scam.

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How to Automatically Delete Passcode Texts on Android and iOS

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Here’s one simple way to reduce your security risk while logging in.

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Hackers Could Have Scored Unlimited Airline Miles by Targeting One Platform

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Flaws in the Points.com platform, which is used to manage dozens of major travel rewards programs, exposed user data—and could have let an attacker snag some extra perks.

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Norway Took On Meta’s Surveillance Ads and Won

Fri, 04 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Meta has long fought Europe's demands that it get people's consent before using their data for targeted ads. Then a Norwegian regulator threatened fines of $100,000 per day.

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It’s Getting Harder for the Government to Secretly Flag Your Social Posts

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Social apps prioritize content moderation tips from governments and online watchdogs. A US court ruling and a new EU law could restrict the practice, but they still leave loopholes.

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A New Attack Impacts Major AI Chatbots—and No One Knows How to Stop It

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Researchers found a simple way to make ChatGPT, Bard, and other chatbots misbehave, proving that AI is hard to tame.

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It's Hot Zero-Day Summer for Apple, Google, and Microsoft Security Fixes

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Plus: Mozilla fixes two high-severity bugs in Firefox, Citrix fixes a flaw that was used to attack a US-based critical infrastructure organization, and Oracle patches over 500 vulnerabilities.

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US Spies Are Lobbying Congress to Save a Phone Surveillance 'Loophole'

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The National Security Agency has urged top lawmakers to resist demands that it obtain warrants for sensitive data sold by data brokers.

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Twitter Scammers Stole $1,000 From My Friend—So I Hunted Them Down

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 10:00:00 -0000

After scammers duped a friend with a hacked Twitter account and a “deal” on a MacBook, I enlisted the help of a fellow threat researcher to trace the criminals’ offline identities.

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Code Kept Secret for Years Reveals Its Flaw—a Backdoor

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 10:00:00 -0000

A secret encryption cipher baked into radio systems used by critical infrastructure workers, police, and others around the world is finally seeing sunlight. Researchers say it isn’t pretty.

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Satellites Are Rife With Basic Security Flaws

Tue, 25 Jul 2023 10:00:00 -0000

German researchers gained rare access to three satellites and found that they’re years behind normal cybersecurity standards.

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New Police Body Cam Data Exposes the True Scale of NYPD Violence Against Protesters

Mon, 24 Jul 2023 10:00:00 -0000

A landmark $13 million settlement with the City of New York is the latest in a string of legal wins for protesters who were helped by a video-analysis tool that smashes the “bad apple” myth.

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Rival US Lawmakers Mobilize to Stop Police From Buying Phone Data

Wed, 19 Jul 2023 10:00:00 -0000

A bill to prevent cops and spies from buying Americans' data instead of getting a warrant has a fighting chance in the US Congress as lawmakers team up against surveillance overreach.

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FBI Surveillance Fears Are Uniting a Badly Broken Congress

Mon, 17 Jul 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The FBI has collected sensitive data on millions of Americans without warrants, drawing intense scrutiny from Congress and turning the agency into a punching bag across the political divide.

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Silk Road’s Second-in-Command Gets 20 Years in Prison

Fri, 14 Jul 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Roger Thomas Clark, also known as Variety Jones, will spend much of the rest of his life in prison for his key role in building the world’s first dark web drug market.

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Ransomware Attacks Are on the Rise, Again

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Ransomware attacks tumbled in 2022, offering hope that the tide was turning against the criminal gangs behind them. Then things got a whole lot worse.

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How to Use Discord’s ‘Family Center’ Safety Settings for Your Kids

Wed, 12 Jul 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The popular messaging platform launched new parental controls for keeping tabs on teens. Here’s what the tools do (and don’t) include.

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The Quiet Rise of Real-Time Crime Centers

Tue, 11 Jul 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Cities across the US have established RTCCs that police say protect the rights of innocent people, but critics warn of creeping surveillance.

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Don't Join Threads—Make Threads Join You

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Meta’s Twitter alternative promises that it will work with decentralized platforms, giving you greater control of your data. You can hold the company to that—if you don't sign up.

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US Spies Are Buying Americans' Private Data. Congress Has a New Chance to Stop It

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The National Defense Authorization Act now includes draft language forbidding government entities from buying Americans' search histories, location data, and more.

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The US Senate Wants to Reign In AI. Good Luck With That

Tue, 04 Jul 2023 10:00:00 -0000

With a poor track record on tech regulation, do lawmakers stand a chance?

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Apple, Google, and MOVEit Just Patched Serious Security Flaws

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Plus: Microsoft fixes 78 vulnerabilities, VMWare plugs a flaw already used in attacks, and more critical updates from June.

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Pornhub Is Being Accused of Illegal Data Collection

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Complaints filed in the European Union claim the porn site fails to follow basic data-collection policies under GDPR.

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How Your Real Flight Reservation Can Be Used to Scam You

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Scammers use a booking technicality, traveler confusion, and promises of dirt-cheap tickets to offer hot deals that are anything but.

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5 Ways to Make Your Instant Messaging More Secure

Tue, 27 Jun 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Make sure your chats are kept as private as you want them to be.

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Inside the Illicit Market for Abortion Pills on Telegram

Mon, 26 Jun 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The gray market for abortifacient sales to the US is evolving alongside a shifting legal landscape.

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Docs Show FBI Pressures Cops to Keep Phone Surveillance Secrets

Fri, 23 Jun 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Newly released documents highlight the bureau's continued secrecy around cell-site simulators—spying tech that everyone already assumes exists.

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How Your New Car Tracks You

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Vehicles from Toyota, Honda, Ford, and more can collect huge volumes of data. Here’s what the companies can access.

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Humans Aren’t Mentally Ready for an AI-Saturated ‘Post-Truth World’

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The AI era promises a flood of disinformation, deepfakes, and hallucinated “facts.” Psychologists are only beginning to grapple with the implications.

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How a Shady Chinese Firm’s Encryption Chips Got Inside the US Navy, NATO, and NASA

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The US government warns encryption chipmaker Hualan has suspicious ties to China’s military. Yet US agencies still use one of its subsidiary’s chips, raising fears of a backdoor.

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The US Is Openly Stockpiling Dirt on All Its Citizens

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 10:00:00 -0000

A newly declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence reveals the federal government is buying troves of data about Americans.

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A Massive Vaccine Database Leak Exposes IDs of Millions of Indians

Tue, 13 Jun 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Personal information, including ID documents and phone numbers, have been released on Telegram.

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Inside 4chan’s Top-Secret Moderation Machine

Mon, 12 Jun 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Internal company documents reveal how the imageboard’s chaotic moderation allowed racism and violence to take over.

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The Bizarre Reality of Getting Online in North Korea

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 10:00:00 -0000

New testimony from defectors reveals pervasive surveillance and monitoring of limited internet connections. For millions of others, the internet simply doesn't exist.

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The Bold Plan to Create Cyber 311 Hotlines

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 10:00:00 -0000

UT-Austin will join a growing movement to launch cybersecurity clinics for cities and small businesses that often fall through the cracks.

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The Messy US Influence That's Helping Iranians Stay Online

Wed, 07 Jun 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Newly announced sanctions against Iran-based Avaran Cloud underscore the complexity of crafting Washington’s internet freedom efforts.

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Hacks Against Ukraine's Emergency Response Services Rise During Bombings

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Data from Cloudflare's free digital defense service, Project Galileo, illuminates new links between online and offline attacks.

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Kaspersky Says New Zero-Day Malware Hit iPhones—Including Its Own

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 10:00:00 -0000

On the same day, Russia’s FSB intelligence service launched wild claims of NSA and Apple hacking thousands of Russians.

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Millions of PC Motherboards Were Sold With a Firmware Backdoor

Thu, 01 Jun 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Hidden code in hundreds of models of Gigabyte motherboards invisibly and insecurely downloads programs—a feature ripe for abuse, researchers say.

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China Hacks US Critical Networks in Guam, Raising Cyberwar Fears

Tue, 30 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Researchers say the state-sponsored espionage operation may also lay the groundwork for disruptive cyberattacks.

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The Security Hole at the Heart of ChatGPT and Bing

Mon, 29 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Indirect prompt-injection attacks can leave people vulnerable to scams and data theft when they use the AI chatbots.

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A Popular Password Hashing Algorithm Starts Its Long Goodbye

Fri, 26 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The co-inventor of “bcrypt” is reflecting on the ubiquitous function’s 25 years and channeling cybersecurity’s core themes into electronic dance music.

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Chinese Labs Are Selling Fentanyl Ingredients for Millions in Crypto

Thu, 25 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

And it's happening in plain sight.

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There’s Finally a Way to Secure a Crucial Piece of the Cloud

Wed, 24 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

“Container registries” are ubiquitous software clearinghouses, but they've been exposed for years. Chainguard says it now has a solution.

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The Real Risks in Google’s New .Zip and .Mov Domains

Tue, 23 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

While the company’s new top-level domains could be used in phishing attacks, security researchers are divided on how big of a problem they really pose.

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A Mysterious Group Has Ties to 15 Years of Ukraine-Russia Hacks

Mon, 22 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Kaspersky researchers have uncovered clues that further illuminate the hackers’ activities, which appear to have begun far earlier than originally believed.

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Google May Delete Your Old Accounts. Here’s How to Stop It

Fri, 19 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Your inactive profiles, like Gmail or Docs, could turn into digital dust later this year. A few clicks can save them.

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ChatGPT Scams Are Infiltrating the App Store and Google Play

Thu, 18 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

An explosion of interest in OpenAI’s sophisticated chatbot means a proliferation of “fleeceware” apps that trick users with sneaky in-app subscriptions.

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A New Lawsuit Puts the Online White Supremacy Pipeline on Trial

Wed, 17 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The families of victims of a mass shooting in Buffalo are challenging the platforms they believe led the attacker to carry out a racist massacre.

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The UK’s Secretive Web Surveillance Program Is Ramping Up

Tue, 16 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

A government effort to collect people’s internet records is moving beyond its test phase, but many details remain hidden from public view.

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A Republican-Led Lawsuit Threatens Critical US Cyber Protections

Sun, 14 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Three states are suing to block security rules for water facilities. If they win, it may open the floodgates for challenges to other cyber rules. Read this story here.

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Twitter’s Encrypted DMs Are Deeply Inferior to Signal and WhatsApp

Fri, 12 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The social network's new privacy feature is technically flawed, opt-in, and limited in its functionality. All this for just $8 a month.

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A Mysterious New Hacker Group Is Lurking in Ukraine’s Cyberspace

Thu, 11 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The unidentified attackers have targeted people on both sides of Russia’s war against Ukraine, carrying out espionage operations that suggest state funding.

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How To Delete Your Data From ChatGPT

Wed, 10 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

OpenAI has new tools that give you more control over your information—although they may not go far enough.

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The Data Broker That Targeted Abortion Clinics Landed a US Military Contract

Tue, 09 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Documents obtained by WIRED show SafeGraph, which sold location data related to Planned Parenthood visits, is now pursuing contracts with the US Air Force.

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The DOJ Detected the SolarWinds Hack 6 Months Earlier Than First Disclosed

Mon, 08 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

In May 2020, the US Department of Justice stumbled upon Russian hackers in its network. But did not realize the significance of what they had found for six months. Read the story here.

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Google Is Rolling Out Password-Killing Tech to All Accounts

Fri, 05 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The tech industry’s transition to passkeys gets its first massive boost with the launch of the alternative login scheme for Google’s billions of users. Read the story here.

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Meta Is Trying to Push Attackers to the Brink

Thu, 04 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The company is adding new tools as bad actors use ChatGPT-themed lures and mask their infrastructure in an attempt to trick victims and elude defenders.

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With 288 Arrests, Feds Reveal a Widening Dragnet of Dark Web Busts

Wed, 03 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Operation SpecTor likely drew on leads from multiple dark web market busts, including the secret takedown of Monopoly Market in 2021.

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The High-Stakes Scramble to Stop Classified Leaks

Tue, 02 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

AI tools? A porn filter, but for Top Secret documents? Just classifying less stuff? US lawmakers are full of ideas but lack a silver bullet.

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A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 From Joining Social Media

Mon, 01 May 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The legislation would insert the government into online platforms' age-verification efforts—a move that makes some US lawmakers queasy.

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Brace Yourself for the 2024 Deepfake Election

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0000

No matter what happens with generative AI, its disruptive forces are already beginning to play a role in the fast-approaching US presidential race.

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A Security Team Is Turning This Malware Gang’s Tricks Against It

Thu, 27 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The cybercriminals behind the Gootloader malware have found clever ways to avoid detection. But researchers are using those same mechanisms to stop them.

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Google’s Authenticator App Just Got a Handy New 2FA Tool

Wed, 26 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0000

You can now sync sign-in codes across devices—but they aren’t end-to-end encrypted.

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Intel Let Google Cloud Hack Its New Secure Chips and Found 10 Bugs

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0000

To protect its Confidential Computing cloud infrastructure, Google leans on its relationships with chipmakers to gain unusual insight into hardware.

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The Huge 3CX Breach Was Actually 2 Linked Supply Chain Attacks

Sun, 23 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The mass compromise of the VoIP firm's customers is the first confirmed incident where one software supply chain attack enabled another, researchers say.

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Chinese Cops Ran Troll Farm and Secret NY Police Station, US Says

Fri, 21 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Three criminal cases detail China's alleged attempts to extend its security forces' influence online—and around the globe.

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How ChatGPT, and Bots Like It, Can Spread Malware

Thu, 20 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Generative AI is a tool, which means it can be used by cybercriminals, too. Here’s how to protect yourself.

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Used Routers Often Come Loaded With Corporate Secrets

Wed, 19 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0000

More than half of the enterprise routers researchers bought secondhand hadn’t been wiped, exposing sensitive info like login credentials and customer data.

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Newly Discovered LockBit Mac Ransomware Doesn't Work—Yet

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The discovery of malicious encryptors for Apple computers could herald new risks for macOS users if the malware continues to evolve.

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Leaked Pentagon Documents May Herald a New Era of Revelations

Mon, 17 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The bizarre release of sensitive US government materials soon after their creation signals a potential shift to near-real-time unauthorized disclosures.

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The Hacking of ChatGPT Is Just Getting Started

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Security researchers are jailbreaking large language models to get around safety rules. Things could get much worse.

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LinkedIn Will Finally Offer Ways to Verify Your Job

Thu, 13 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0000

To beat back fake accounts, the professional social network is rolling out new tools to prove you work where you say you do and are who you say you are.

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How to Use Apple’s New All-In-One Password Manager

Wed, 12 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Your iPhone, iPad, and Mac now have a built-in password feature, complete with two-factor authentication.

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The Open Source VPN Out-Maneuvering Russian Censorship

Mon, 10 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Amnezia, a free virtual private network, allows users to set up their own servers, making it harder for Moscow to block this portal to the outside world.

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The Dangerous Weak Link in the US Food Chain

Fri, 07 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Without an information sharing and analysis center, the country’s food and agriculture sector is uniquely vulnerable to hackers.

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ChatGPT Has a Big Privacy Problem

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Italy’s recent ban of Open AI’s generative text tool may just be the beginning of ChatGPT’s regulatory woes.

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The Massive 3CX Supply Chain Hack Targeted Cryptocurrency Firms

Wed, 05 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0000

North Korean hackers appear to have used the corrupted VoIP software to go after just a handful of crypto firms with "surgical precision."

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Tor Project’s New Privacy-Focused Browser Lets You Layer a VPN

Tue, 04 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Mullvad Browser, a collaboration between the nonprofit and Mullvad VPN, offers an anti-tracking browser designed to be used with a VPN.

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You’ll Soon Need to Show ID to Watch Porn Online

Mon, 03 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0000

An increasing number of states and countries are passing age-verification laws. It’s not clear how they’ll work.

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The US Is Sending Money to Countries Devastated by Cyberattacks

Fri, 31 Mar 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The White House is sending $25 million to Costa Rica, after providing Albania with similar aid following aggression by hackers linked to Iran.

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They Posted Porn on Twitter. German Authorities Called the Cops

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 10:00:00 -0000

Regulators are using an AI system to scan websites and messaging apps to find pornography. Creators face fines and potential prison sentences.

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North Korea Is Now Mining Crypto to Launder Its Stolen Loot

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 10:00:00 -0000

A spy group working for the Kim regime has been feeding stolen coins into crypto mining services in an effort to throw tracers off their trail.

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The Uniquely American Future of US Authoritarianism

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 10:00:00 -0000

The GOP-fueled far right differs from similar movements around the globe, thanks to the country’s politics, electoral system, and changing demographics.

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The TikTok Hearing Revealed That Congress Is the Problem

Mon, 27 Mar 2023 06:20:14 -0000

The interrogation of CEO Shou Zi Chew highlighted US lawmakers’ own failure to pass privacy legislation.

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Some Photo-Cropping Apps Are Exposing Your Secrets

Fri, 24 Mar 2023 06:20:13 -0000

Image-editing tools from Google and Microsoft contain the “aCropalypse” bug, which can reveal information users intentionally removed.

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The Scorched-Earth Tactics of Iran’s Cyber Army

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 06:20:14 -0000

Amid ongoing protests, the Iranian regime has lost control of its image, pushing it to employ increasingly drastic tactics where everyone loses.

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Online Sleuths Untangle the Mystery of the Nord Stream Sabotage

Wed, 22 Mar 2023 06:20:13 -0000

Open source intelligence researchers are verifying and debunking opaque claims about who ruptured the gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea.

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I Got Investigated by the Secret Service. Here's How to Not Be Me

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 06:20:14 -0000

Don't drink and tweet.

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A Spy Wants to Connect With You on LinkedIn

Mon, 20 Mar 2023 06:20:13 -0000

Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China have been caught using fake profiles to gather information. But the platform’s tools to weed them out only go so far.

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This Is the New Leader of Russia's Infamous Sandworm Hacking Unit

Fri, 17 Mar 2023 06:20:12 -0000

Evgenii Serebriakov now runs the most aggressive hacking team of Russia's GRU military intelligence agency. Thanks to a botched 2018 operation, he's already well-known to Western intelligence.

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AI-Generated Voice Deepfakes Aren’t Scary Good—Yet

Thu, 16 Mar 2023 06:20:14 -0000

The threat of scammers using voice deepfakes in their cons is real, but researchers say old-school voice impersonation attacks are still the more pressing concern.

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Ransomware Attacks Have Entered a ‘Heinous’ New Phase

Wed, 15 Mar 2023 06:20:12 -0000

With victims refusing to pay, cybercriminal gangs are now releasing stolen photos of cancer patients and sensitive student records.

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‘Pig Butchering’ Scams Are Now a $3 Billion Threat

Tue, 14 Mar 2023 06:20:15 -0000

The FBI's latest Internet Crime Report highlights the stunning rise of investment-themed crimes over the past 18 months.

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A US Congressman Says the FBI Unlawfully Targeted Him

Mon, 13 Mar 2023 06:20:13 -0000

Representative Darin LaHood's claim that he was the subject of so-called “backdoor” searches comes at a dicey moment for the bureau.

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The US Air Force Is Moving Fast on AI-Piloted Fighter Jets

Fri, 10 Mar 2023 06:20:14 -0000

After successful autonomous flight tests in December, the military is ramping up its plans to bring artificial intelligence to the skies.

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The FBI Just Admitted It Bought U.S. Location Data

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 06:33:00 -0000

Rather than obtaining a warrant, the bureau purchased sensitive data—a controversial practice that privacy advocates say is deeply problematic.

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The High-Stakes Blame Game in the White House Cybersecurity Plan

Wed, 08 Mar 2023 06:20:15 -0000

The Biden administration’s new strategy would shift the liability for security failures to a controversial target: the companies that caused them.

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The Sketchy Plan to Build a Russian Android Phone

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 06:20:12 -0000

Amid isolating sanctions, a Russian tech giant plans to launch new Android phones and tablets. But experts are skeptical the company can pull it off.

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This Hacker Tool Can Pinpoint a DJI Drone Operator’s Exact Location

Mon, 06 Mar 2023 11:26:38 -0000

Every DJI quadcopter broadcasts its operator’s position via radio—unencrypted. Now, a group of researchers has learned to decode those coordinates.

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Twitter's Two-Factor Authentication Change 'Doesn't Make Sense'

Fri, 03 Mar 2023 06:20:15 -0000

The company will soon require users to pay for a Twitter Blue subscription to get sign-in codes via SMS. Security experts are baffled.

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Apple Users Need to Update iOS Now to Patch Serious Flaws

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 06:20:14 -0000

Plus: Microsoft fixes several zero-day bugs, Google patches Chrome and Android, Mozilla rids Firefox of a full-screen vulnerability, and more.

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China Is Relentlessly Hacking Its Neighbors

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 06:20:15 -0000

New details reveal that Beijing-backed hackers targeted the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, adding to a string of attacks in the region.

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Ukraine Suffered More Data-Wiping Malware Last Year Than Anywhere, Ever

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 06:20:15 -0000

As Russia has accelerated its cyberattacks on its neighbor, it's barraged the country with an unprecedented volume of different data-destroying programs.

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You Can’t Trust App Developers’ Privacy Claims on Google Play

Mon, 27 Feb 2023 06:20:14 -0000

Mozilla researchers found that apps often provide inaccurate data use disclosures, giving people “a false sense of security.”

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Crypto Buyers Beware: 1 in 4 New Tokens of Any Value Is a Scam

Fri, 24 Feb 2023 06:20:13 -0000

And according to tracing firm Chainalysis, one very prolific scammer ran at least 264 of those scams in 2022 alone.

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US Border Patrol Is Finally Able to Check E-Passport Data

Thu, 23 Feb 2023 06:20:14 -0000

After 16 years, the agency has implemented the software to cryptographically verify digital passport data—and it’s already caught a dozen alleged fraudsters.

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A New Kind of Bug Spells Trouble for iOS and macOS Security

Wed, 22 Feb 2023 06:20:14 -0000

Security researchers found a class of flaws that, if exploited, would allow an attacker to access people’s messages, photos, and call history.

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How to Protect Yourself from Twitter’s 2FA Crackdown

Tue, 21 Feb 2023 06:20:13 -0000

Twitter is disabling SMS-based two-factor authentication. Switch to these alternatives to keep your account safe.

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The Political Theater Behind the Bipartisan Data Privacy Push

Mon, 20 Feb 2023 06:30:12 -0000

Biden’s speech calling for better data protections got a standing ovation from both sides of the aisle. So, where’s a federal privacy law?

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Russia’s Ransomware Gangs Are Being Named and Shamed

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 06:24:42 -0000

Members of the Trickbot and Conti cybercrime gangs have been sanctioned in an unprecedented wave of action against the country’s hackers.

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How the US Can Stop Data Brokers' Worst Practices—Right Now

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 06:25:53 -0000

Legal experts say a key law should already prevent brokers from collecting and selling data that's weaponized against vulnerable people.

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Meet the Creator of North Korean Hackers’ New Favorite Crypto Privacy Service

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 06:20:15 -0000

The world’s most prolific crypto thieves have used Sinbad.io to launder tens of millions. Its creator, “Mehdi,” answers WIRED’s questions.

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Want to Delete Your Twitter DMs? Good Luck With That

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 06:20:16 -0000

People in Europe are making GDPR requests to have their private messages erased, but Elon’s team is ignoring them.

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Spotted a UFO? There’s an App for That

Mon, 13 Feb 2023 06:20:15 -0000

Enigma Labs launches a project to crowdsource and quantify data about “unidentified aerial phenomena.”

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Inside Safe City, Moscow’s AI Surveillance Dystopia

Fri, 10 Feb 2023 06:20:14 -0000

Moscow promised residents lower crime rates through an expansive smart city project. Then Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.

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Netflix’s US Password-Sharing Crackdown Isn’t Happening—Yet

Thu, 09 Feb 2023 06:20:14 -0000

Accidental revisions to a US Help Center page sparked confusion about the streamer's next moves. But restrictions on account sharing are still coming soon.

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Congress Has a Lo-Fi Plan to Fix the Classified Documents Mess

Wed, 08 Feb 2023 06:20:14 -0000

As unsecured docs pile up, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is itching to overhaul the nation’s secret secret-sharing operation.

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Fact-Checkers Are Scrambling to Fight Disinformation With AI

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 06:20:12 -0000

Bad actors use artificial intelligence to propagate falsehoods and upset elections, but the same tools can be repurposed to defend the truth.

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Ex-Twitter Workers Puzzle Over Elon Musk’s Abandoned Laptops

Mon, 06 Feb 2023 06:20:15 -0000

The cash-strapped company recently auctioned off USB dongles but has left some corporate computers in the custody of laid off staff.

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Enter the Hunter Satellites Preparing for Space War

Fri, 03 Feb 2023 07:03:11 -0000

True Anomaly, a startup backed by US senator JD Vance’s VC firm, plans to launch prototype pursuit satellites on a SpaceX flight later this year.

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The Untold Story of a Crippling Ransomware Attack

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 06:20:15 -0000

More than two years ago, criminals crippled the systems of London’s Hackney Council. It's still fighting to recover.

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Most Criminal Cryptocurrency Funnels Through Just 5 Exchanges

Wed, 01 Feb 2023 06:20:11 -0000

The crypto money-laundering market is tighter than at any time in the past decade, and the few big players are moving a “shocking” amount of currency.

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The Flight Tracker That Powered @ElonJet Just Took a Left Turn

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 06:20:15 -0000

ADS-B Exchange, beloved for resisting censorship, was sold to a company owned by private equity—and now even its biggest fans are bailing.

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You Might Survive a Nuclear Blast—if You Have the Right Shelter

Mon, 30 Jan 2023 06:20:13 -0000

The escalating risks of Russia’s war in Ukraine have led scientists to study the unthinkable and model the aftermath of nuclear detonation.

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The Unrelenting Menace of the LockBit Ransomware Gang

Fri, 27 Jan 2023 06:20:13 -0000

The notorious Russian-speaking cybercriminals grew successful by keeping a low profile. But now they have a target on their backs.

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India’s Public Education App Exposed Millions of Students’ Data

Thu, 26 Jan 2023 06:20:13 -0000

A mandatory app exposed the personal information of students and teachers across the country for over a year.

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T-Mobile’s $150 Million Security Plan Isn’t Cutting It

Wed, 25 Jan 2023 06:20:15 -0000

The mobile operator just suffered at least its fifth data breach since 2018, despite promising to spend a fortune shoring up its systems.

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Welcome to the Era of Internet Blackouts

Tue, 24 Jan 2023 06:20:14 -0000

New research from Cloudflare shows that connectivity disruptions are a problem around the globe, pointing toward a troubling new normal.

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The Small but Mighty Danger of Echo Chamber Extremism

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 06:20:14 -0000

Research shows that relatively few people exist in perfectly sealed-off media bubbles—but they’re still having an outsize impact on US politics.

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A Sneaky Ad Scam Tore Through 11 Million Phones

Fri, 20 Jan 2023 06:20:15 -0000

Some 1,700 spoofed apps, 120 targeted publishers, 12 billion false ad requests per day—Vastflux is one of the biggest ad frauds ever discovered.

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Spy Cams Reveal the Grim Reality of Slaughterhouse Gas Chambers

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 06:20:12 -0000

Animal rights activists have captured the first hidden-camera video from inside a carbon dioxide “stunning chamber” in a US meatpacking plant.

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A Widespread Logic Controller Flaw Raises the Specter of Stuxnet

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 06:20:13 -0000

More than 120 models of Siemens' S7-1500 PLCs contain a serious vulnerability—and no fix is on the way.

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All the Data Apple Collects About You—and How to Limit It

Tue, 17 Jan 2023 06:20:14 -0000

Cupertino puts privacy first in a lot of its products. But the company still gathers a bunch of your information.

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In the Fight Against Scams, ‘Cyber Ambassadors’ Enter the Chat

Mon, 16 Jan 2023 06:20:17 -0000

Police in the Indian state of Telangana have found a novel way to help people avoid getting swindled online: grassroots education.

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What Twitter’s 200 Million-User Email Leak Actually Means

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 06:20:16 -0000

The exposure of hundreds of millions of email addresses puts pseudonymous users of the social network at risk.

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Notorious Russian Spies Piggybacked on Other Hackers’ USB Infections

Thu, 12 Jan 2023 06:20:14 -0000

The infamous, FSB-connected Turla group took over other hackers’ servers, exploiting their USB drive malware for targeted espionage.

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WhatsApp Launches Tool to Fight Internet Censorship

Wed, 11 Jan 2023 06:20:14 -0000

Amid internet shutdowns in Iran, the encrypted messaging app is introducing proxy connections that can help people get online.

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The Password Isn’t Dead Yet. You Need a Hardware Key

Tue, 10 Jan 2023 06:20:15 -0000

Any multifactor authentication adds protection, but a physical token is the best bet when it really counts.

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Cops Hacked Thousands of Phones. Was It Legal?

Mon, 09 Jan 2023 06:20:14 -0000

When police infiltrated the EncroChat phone system in 2020, they hit an intelligence gold mine. But subsequent legal challenges have spread across Europe.

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Hacker Lexicon: What Is a Pig Butchering Scam?

Fri, 06 Jan 2023 06:20:14 -0000

This type of devastating scheme ensnares victims and takes them for all they’re worth—and the threat is only growing.

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Hands On With Flipper Zero, the Hacker Tool Blowing Up on TikTok

Thu, 05 Jan 2023 06:20:13 -0000

Don’t be fooled by its fun name and Tamagotchi-like interface—this do-everything gadget is trouble waiting to happen and a whole lot more.

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Russia’s Cyberwar Foreshadowed Deadly Attacks on Civilians

Wed, 04 Jan 2023 06:20:14 -0000

The Kremlin’s aggression in Ukraine is following a dangerous playbook that began to unfold years ago.

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Hacktivism Is Back and Messier Than Ever

Fri, 30 Dec 2022 06:20:15 -0000

Throughout 2022, geopolitics has given rise to a new wave of politically motivated attacks with an undercurrent of state-sponsored meddling.

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The Most Dangerous People on the Internet in 2022

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 06:20:15 -0000

From SBF to the GRU, these were the most disruptive forces of online chaos this year.

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The Dangers of Censoring Real-Time Flight Trackers

Wed, 28 Dec 2022 06:20:15 -0000

Elon Musk claims plane-tracking data is a risky privacy violation. But the world loses a lot if this information disappears—and that’s already happening.

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Ransomware Gang Abused Microsoft Certificates to Sign Malware

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 06:20:14 -0000

The company has taken measures to mitigate the risks, but security researchers warn of a broader threat.

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Meta’s Tricky Quest to Protect Your Account

Thu, 22 Dec 2022 06:20:14 -0000

How do you keep Facebook easy to use without being trivial to exploit? The company is trying to chart a middle ground.

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Hackers Planted Files to Frame an Indian Priest Who Died in Custody

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 06:20:13 -0000

And new evidence suggests those hackers may have collaborated with the police who investigated him.

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A New Lawsuit Accuses Meta of Inflaming Civil War in Ethiopia

Tue, 20 Dec 2022 06:20:13 -0000

The suit claims the company lacks adequate moderation to prevent widespread hate speech that has led to violence and death.

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Popular HR and Payroll Company Sequoia Discloses a Data Breach

Mon, 19 Dec 2022 06:20:13 -0000

The company, which works with hundreds of startups, said it detected unauthorized access to personal data, including Social Security numbers.

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What You Should Know Before Using the Lensa AI App

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Are you thinking about uploading some selfies and buying a pack of ‘Magic Avatars’? Consider these expert tips first.

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A Year Later, That Brutal Log4j Vulnerability Is Still Lurking

Thu, 15 Dec 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Despite mitigation, one of the worst bugs in internet history is still prevalent—and being exploited.

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Elon Musk’s Twitter Files Are a Feast for Conspiracy Theorists

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 06:20:14 -0000

From QAnon influencers to @catturd, the very online right sees exactly what they want to see in the CEO’s orchestrated disclosure.

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Apple Kills Its Plan to Scan Your Photos for CSAM. Here’s What’s Next

Tue, 13 Dec 2022 06:20:16 -0000

The company plans to expand its Communication Safety features, which aim to disrupt the sharing of child sexual abuse material at the source.

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Scammers Are Scamming Other Scammers Out of Millions of Dollars

Mon, 12 Dec 2022 06:20:14 -0000

On cybercrime forums, user complaints about being duped may accidentally expose their real identities.

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Apple Expands End-to-End Encryption to iCloud Backups

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 06:20:16 -0000

The company will also soon support the use of physical authentication keys with Apple ID, and it's adding contact verification for iMessage in 2023.

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The Invasive Reach of ‘Digital-by-Default’ Immigration

Thu, 08 Dec 2022 06:20:15 -0000

The UK's use of technology to enforce its hard-line immigration policy brings the border into every facet of migrants' lives.

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Android Phone Makers' Encryption Keys Stolen and Used in Malware

Mon, 05 Dec 2022 07:29:39 -0000

Device manufacturers use “platform certificates” to verify an app's authenticity, making them particularly dangerous in the wrong hands.

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Google Moves to Block Invasive Spanish Spyware Framework

Fri, 02 Dec 2022 06:20:14 -0000

The “Heliconia” hacking tool exploited vulnerabilities in Chrome, Windows Defender, and Firefox, according to company security researchers.

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Redacted Documents Are Not as Secure as You Think

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 06:20:15 -0000

Popular redaction tools don’t always work as promised, and new attacks can reveal hidden information, researchers say.

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Autonomous Vehicles Join the List of US National Security Threats

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 06:20:15 -0000

Lawmakers are growing concerned about a flood of data-hungry cars from China taking over American streets.

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The US Has a Bomb-Sniffing Dog Shortage

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 06:29:44 -0000

Finding high-quality detection canines is hard enough—and the pandemic only dug a deeper hole.

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Here’s How Bad a Twitter Mega-Breach Would Be

Wed, 23 Nov 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Elon Musk laid off half the staff, and mass resignations seem likely. If nobody’s there to protect the fort, what’s the worst that could happen?

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Telehealth Sites Put Addiction Patient Data at Risk

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 06:20:15 -0000

New research found pervasive use of tracking tech on substance-abuse-focused health care websites, potentially endangering users in a post-Roe world.

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Twitter’s SMS Two-Factor Authentication Is Melting Down

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 06:20:15 -0000

Problems with the important security feature may be some of the first signs that Elon Musk's social network is fraying at the edges.

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China’s Digital Yuan Works Just Like Cash—With Added Surveillance

Fri, 18 Nov 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Government officials are urging citizens to adopt the official digital currency in a bid to gain more control over the economy.

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Clearview Stole My Face and the EU Can’t Do Anything About It

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 07:29:39 -0000

One man’s battle to reclaim his face shows regulators across the bloc are failing to reprimand the US face search engine.

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Russia's Sway Over Criminal Ransomware Gangs Is Coming Into Focus

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 06:20:15 -0000

Questions about the Kremlin's relationships with these groups remain. But researchers are finally getting some answers.

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Russia’s New Cyberwarfare in Ukraine Is Fast, Dirty, and Relentless

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Security researchers see updated tactics and tools—and a tempo change—in the cyberattacks Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency is inflicting on Ukraine.

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Elon Musk’s Twitter Is a Scammer’s Paradise

Mon, 14 Nov 2022 06:20:16 -0000

Anyone can get a blue tick on Twitter without proving who they are. And it’s already causing a ton of problems.

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Inside the ‘Election Integrity’ App Built to Purge US Voter Rolls

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 06:20:14 -0000

True the Vote’s IV3 app is meant to catch election cheaters. But it has a fundamental flaw.

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How to Prepare for the End of Card Payments

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Cash is safe—for now. Contactless payment methods, like Apple Pay or Google Wallet, are more of a threat to the existence of physical cards.

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IRS Seizes Another Silk Road Hacker's $3.36 Bitcoin Stash

Wed, 09 Nov 2022 06:20:14 -0000

A year after a billion-dollar seizure of the dark web market's crypto, the same agency found a giant trove hidden under a different hacker's floorboards.

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Soccer Fans, You’re Being Watched

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 06:20:16 -0000

Stadiums around the world, including at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, are subjecting spectators to invasive biometric surveillance tech.

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The 'Viral' Secure Programming Language That's Taking Over Tech

Mon, 07 Nov 2022 06:20:15 -0000

Rust makes it impossible to introduce some of the most common security vulnerabilities. And its rise can't come soon enough.

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The Most Vulnerable Place on the Internet

Fri, 04 Nov 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Underwater cables keep the internet online. When they congregate in one place, things get tricky.

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When Your Neighbor Turns You In

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 06:20:15 -0000

Authoritarian societies depend on people ratting each other out for activities that were recently legal—and it’s already happening in the US.

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If Musk Starts Firing Twitter's Security Team, Run

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 06:20:13 -0000

What's next for the social network is anyone's guess—but here's what to watch as you wade through the privacy and security morass.

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The Election That Saved the Internet From Russia and China

Tue, 01 Nov 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Open-internet advocates are breathing a sigh of relief after a recent election for the International Telecommunications Union's top leadership.

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A Bug in Apple MacOS Ventura Breaks Third-Party Security Tools

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Your anti-malware software may not work if you upgraded to the new operating system. But Apple says a fix is on the way.

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A Pro-China Disinfo Campaign Is Targeting US Elections—Badly

Fri, 28 Oct 2022 06:20:16 -0000

The suspected Chinese influence operation had limited success. But it signals a growing threat from a new disinformation adversary.

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Hot on the Trail of a Mass-School-Shooting Hoaxer

Thu, 27 Oct 2022 06:20:13 -0000

For months, an anonymous caller has terrorized communities around the US by reporting false shooting threats. We know how they did it. The question is, why?

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Ukraine Enters a Dark New Era of Drone Warfare

Wed, 26 Oct 2022 06:20:15 -0000

A series of deadly attacks using Iranian “suicide drones” shows Russia is shifting gears in the conflict.

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Your Microsoft Exchange Server Is a Security Liability

Tue, 25 Oct 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Endless vulnerabilities. Widespread hacking campaigns. Slow and technically tough patching. It's time to say goodbye to on-premise Exchange.

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This Ransomware Gang Thrives in a Crucial Blind Spot

Mon, 24 Oct 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Vice Society has a superpower that’s allowed it to quietly carry out attacks on schools and hospitals around the world: mediocrity.

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How the World Will Know If Russia Is Preparing to Launch a Nuke

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 06:20:15 -0000

While tensions over a possible nuclear attack on Ukraine remain high, experts say surveillance will likely catch Russia if it plans to do the unthinkable.

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How to Use Passkeys in Google Chrome and Android

Wed, 19 Oct 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Google wants to make your digital life—in its ecosystem, anyway—passwordless and more secure.

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The Hunt for Wikipedia's Disinformation Moles

Tue, 18 Oct 2022 06:20:15 -0000

Custodians of the crowdsourced encyclopedia are charged with protecting it from state-sponsored manipulators. A new study reveals how.

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Google’s Pixel 7 Packs a Beefed-Up Security Chip

Mon, 17 Oct 2022 06:20:14 -0000

The company says it hardened the security of its new flagship phones—and plans to release a built-in Android VPN.

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Meta Says It Has Busted More Than 400 Login-Stealing Apps This Year

Fri, 14 Oct 2022 06:20:14 -0000

The company plans to alert 1 million Facebook users that their account credentials may have been compromised by malicious software.

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Biden’s Privacy Order Slaps a Band-Aid on the EU-US Data Crisis

Thu, 13 Oct 2022 06:20:12 -0000

A new executive order tries to reassure Europeans that their data is safe on US soil, despite government surveillance.

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The Uber Data Breach Conviction Shows Security Execs What Not to Do

Wed, 12 Oct 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Former Uber security chief Joe Sullivan’s conviction is a rare criminal consequence for an executive’s handling of a hack.

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The High Cost of Living Your Life Online

Tue, 11 Oct 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Constantly posting content on social media can erode your privacy—and sense of self.

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The Challenge of Cracking Iran’s Internet Blockade

Mon, 10 Oct 2022 06:20:14 -0000

People around the world are rallying to subvert Iran's internet shutdown, but actually pulling it off is proving difficult and risky.

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Cloudflare Takes a Stab at a Captcha That Doesn’t Suck

Fri, 07 Oct 2022 06:20:15 -0000

The internet infrastructure company has an alternative tool to check whether you’re human—and it doesn’t force you to pick out buses in tiny boxes.

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Mystery Hackers Are ‘Hyperjacking’ Targets for Insidious Spying

Thu, 06 Oct 2022 06:20:14 -0000

For decades, security researchers warned about techniques for hijacking virtualization software. Now one group has put them into practice.

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The Race to Find the Nord Stream Saboteurs

Wed, 05 Oct 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Damage to the pipeline that runs between Russia and Germany is being treated as deliberate. Finding out what happened may not be straightforward.

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How to Advocate for Data Privacy and Users' Rights

Tue, 04 Oct 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Want to speak up against Big Tech, unjust data collection, and surveillance? Here's how to be an activist in your community and beyond.

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The Dire Warnings in the Lapsus$ Hacker Joyride

Mon, 03 Oct 2022 06:20:13 -0000

The fun-loving cybercriminals blamed for breaches of Uber and Rockstar are exposing weaknesses in ways others aren't.

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This Chatbot Aims to Steer People Away From Child Abuse Material

Fri, 30 Sep 2022 06:20:15 -0000

Pornhub is trialing a new automated tool that pushes CSAM-searchers to seek help for their online behavior. Will it work?

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VPN Providers Flee India as a New Data Law Takes Hold

Thu, 29 Sep 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Many companies have pulled physical servers from the country as a mandate to collect customer data goes into effect.

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This Vote Could Change the Course of Internet History

Wed, 28 Sep 2022 06:20:15 -0000

UN countries are preparing to pick a new head of the International Telecommunications Union. Who wins could shape the open web's future.

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Iran’s Internet Shutdown Sparks Fear of a Deadly Cover-Up

Tue, 27 Sep 2022 06:20:14 -0000

As protests spread, authorities have shut down mobile internet service, WhatsApp, and Instagram. The consequences could be tragic.

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Slack and Teams’ Lax App Security Raises Alarms

Mon, 26 Sep 2022 06:20:12 -0000

New research shows how third-party apps could be exploited to infiltrate these sensitive workplace tools.

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A New Linux Tool Aims to Guard Against Supply Chain Attacks

Fri, 23 Sep 2022 06:20:16 -0000

Security firm Chainguard has created a simple, open-source way for organizations to defend the cloud against some of the most insidious attacks.

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Shadowy Russian Cell Phone Companies Are Cropping Up in Ukraine

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 08:47:06 -0000

But as Ukrainians retake ground, some of the firms are erasing their online presence.

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Telegram Has a Serious Doxing Problem

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 06:20:14 -0000

The encrypted messaging app is a haven for politically motivated vitriol, but users are increasingly bringing threats to targets’ doorsteps.

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The Deep Roots of Nigeria’s Cybersecurity Problem

Wed, 21 Sep 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Despite having one of the strongest data-protection policies in Africa, the country’s enforcement and disclosure practices remain dangerously broken.

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The Uber Hack’s Devastation Is Just Starting to Reveal Itself

Tue, 20 Sep 2022 06:20:13 -0000

An alleged teen hacker claims to have gained deep access to the company's systems, but the full picture of the breach is still coming into focus.

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The Shaky Future of a Post-Roe Federal Privacy Law

Mon, 19 Sep 2022 06:20:15 -0000

The American Data Privacy and Protection Act could protect people across the country. But first, it has to get past Nancy Pelosi.

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Ukraine’s Cyberwar Chief Sounds Like He’s Winning

Fri, 16 Sep 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Yurii Shchyhol gives WIRED a rare interview about running the country’s Derzhspetszviazok and the state of the online conflict with Russia.

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How Whistleblowers Navigate a Security Minefield

Thu, 15 Sep 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Exposing wrongdoing is risky on the best of days. Whistleblower Aid cofounder John Tye explains the extensive steps needed to keep people safe.

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iOS 16 Has Two New Security Features for Worst-Case Scenarios

Tue, 13 Sep 2022 17:42:08 -0000

Safety Check and Lockdown Mode give people in vulnerable situations ways to quarantine themselves from acute risks.

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This Clever Anti-Censorship Tool Lets Russians Read Blocked News

Tue, 13 Sep 2022 06:20:16 -0000

Samizdat Online syndicates banned news sites by hosting them on uncensored domains—allowing people to access independent reporting.

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A Windows 11 Automation Tool Can Easily Be Hijacked

Mon, 12 Sep 2022 07:29:22 -0000

Hackers can use Microsoft’s Power Automate to push out ransomware and key loggers—if they get machine access first.

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Apple’s Killing the Password. Here’s Everything You Need to Know

Fri, 09 Sep 2022 06:20:15 -0000

With iOS 16 and macOS Ventura, Apple is introducing passkeys—a more convenient and secure alternative to passwords.

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It’s Time to Get Real About TikTok’s Risks

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 06:33:48 -0000

US lawmakers keep warning about the popular app. But until they can explain what makes it uniquely dangerous, it’s difficult to tailor a resolution.

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The US May Soon Learn What a ‘Kid-Friendly’ Internet Looks Like

Wed, 07 Sep 2022 06:20:15 -0000

The California Age-Appropriate Design Code would launch a huge online privacy experiment. And it won’t just affect children.

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Careless Errors in Hundreds of Apps Could Expose Troves of Data

Tue, 06 Sep 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Researchers found that mobile applications contain keys that could provide access to both user information and private files from unconnected apps.

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You’re Not Stringer Bell, but You May Still Need a Burner Phone

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Prepaid phones are looking good as privacy worries peak.

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Why the Twilio Breach Cuts So Deep

Wed, 31 Aug 2022 06:20:14 -0000

The phishing attack on the SMS giant exposes the dangers of B2B companies to the entire tech ecosystem.

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The Privacy Flaw Threatening US Democracy

Tue, 30 Aug 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Without robust federal protections, the country’s widespread mass surveillance systems could be used against citizens like never before.

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The Low Threshold for Face Recognition in New Delhi

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Police in India’s capital say they only require an 80 percent accuracy rate for matches, raising new alarm bells for civil liberty advocates.

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Spyware Hunters Are Expanding Their Toolset

Fri, 26 Aug 2022 06:20:13 -0000

This invasive malware isn't just for phones—it can target your PC, too. But a new batch of algorithms aims to weed out this threat.

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Inside the World’s Biggest Hacker Rickroll

Thu, 25 Aug 2022 06:20:12 -0000

As a graduation prank, four high school students hijacked 500 screens across six school buildings to troll their classmates and teachers.

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A Flaw in the VA's Medical Records Platform May Put Patients at Risk

Wed, 24 Aug 2022 06:20:15 -0000

The Veterans Affairs' VistA software has a vulnerability that could let an attacker "masquerade as a doctor," a security researcher warns.

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A New Jailbreak for John Deere Tractors Rides the Right-to-Repair Wave

Tue, 23 Aug 2022 06:20:15 -0000

A hacker has formulated an exploit that provides root access to two popular models of the company's farm equipment.

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Zoom’s Auto-Update Feature Came With Hidden Risks on Mac

Mon, 22 Aug 2022 06:20:14 -0000

The popular video meeting app makes it easy to keep the software up to date—but it also introduced vulnerabilities.

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Sloppy Software Patches Are a ‘Disturbing Trend’

Fri, 19 Aug 2022 06:20:14 -0000

The Zero Day Initiative has found a concerning uptick in security updates that fail to fix vulnerabilities.

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A Long-Awaited IoT Reverse Engineering Tool Is Finally Here

Thu, 18 Aug 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Ten years after it was first unveiled, the powerful firmware analysis platform Ofrak is now available to anyone.

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A Phone Carrier That Doesn't Track Your Browsing or Location

Wed, 17 Aug 2022 06:45:45 -0000

The new Pretty Good Phone Privacy service for Android hides the data linking you to your mobile device.

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This Anti-Tracking Tool Checks If You’re Being Followed

Tue, 16 Aug 2022 06:20:15 -0000

The Raspberry Pi-powered device can scan for phones around you. If it keeps spotting the same one, it’ll send you an alert.

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The Hacking of Starlink Terminals Has Begun

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 06:20:14 -0000

It cost a researcher only $25 worth of parts to create a tool that allows custom code to run on the satellite dishes.

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Big Takeaways From the FBI's Mar-a-Lago Raid

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 06:20:16 -0000

The fact that a search of Donald Trump's Florida home was even necessary tells us a lot.

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All the Data Amazon’s Ring Cameras Collect About You

Tue, 09 Aug 2022 06:20:14 -0000

The popular security devices are tracking (and sharing) more than you might think.

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An Attack on Albanian Government Suggests New Iranian Aggression

Mon, 08 Aug 2022 06:20:13 -0000

A Tehran-linked hack of a NATO member marks a significant escalation against the backdrop of US-Iran nuclear talks.

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The Microsoft Team Racing to Catch Bugs Before They Happen

Fri, 05 Aug 2022 06:20:14 -0000

What's it like to be responsible for a billion people's digital security? Just ask the company's Morse researchers.

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Bitcoin Fog Case Could Put Cryptocurrency Tracing on Trial

Thu, 04 Aug 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Roman Sterlingov, accused of laundering $336 million, is proclaiming his innocence—and challenging a key investigative tool.

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How Tor Is Fighting—and Beating—Russian Censorship

Tue, 02 Aug 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Russia has been trying to block the anonymous browser since December—with mixed results.

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How to Safely Lend Someone Else Your Phone

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 06:20:14 -0000

The next time someone wants to borrow your device to make a call or take a picture, take these steps to protect your privacy.

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Interstate Travel Post Roe Isn’t as Secure as You May Think

Fri, 29 Jul 2022 06:20:11 -0000

The DOJ vows to protect people’s ability to travel out of state for abortion care, but legal experts warn we can’t take it for granted.

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Russia Is Quietly Ramping Up Its Internet Censorship Machine

Thu, 28 Jul 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Since Vladimir Putin blocked Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in March, Russia has been pushing away from the global internet at a rapid pace.

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The 2022 US Midterm Elections' Top Security Issue: Death Threats

Wed, 27 Jul 2022 06:20:14 -0000

While cybersecurity and foreign meddling remain priorities, domestic threats against election workers have risen to the top of the list.

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The Unsolved Mystery Attack on Internet Cables in Paris

Tue, 26 Jul 2022 06:20:14 -0000

As new details about the scope of the sabotage emerge, the perpetrators—and the reason for their vandalism—remain unknown.

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Don’t Look Now, but Congress Might Pass an Actually Good Privacy Bill

Mon, 25 Jul 2022 06:20:13 -0000

A bill with bipartisan support might finally give the US a strong federal data protection law.

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Instagram Slow to Tackle Bots Targeting Iranian Women’s Groups

Fri, 22 Jul 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Despite alerting Meta months ago, Iranian women’s rights groups say tens of thousands of fake accounts continue to bombard them on Instagram.

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The Most Popular Period-Tracking Apps, Ranked by Data Privacy

Thu, 21 Jul 2022 09:00:35 -0000

Under increased scrutiny, certain period-tracking apps are seeing a surge of new users. Which are as safe as they claim to be?

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A New Attack Can Unmask Anonymous Users on Any Major Browser

Mon, 18 Jul 2022 06:39:59 -0000

Researchers have found a way to use the web’s basic functions to identify who visits a site—without the user detecting the hack.

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A Privacy Panic Flares Up in India After Police Pull Payment Data

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 06:20:15 -0000

Nonprofit donors had their information given to law enforcement without consent, highlighting limited data protections in the world’s largest democracy.

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Will These Algorithms Save You From Quantum Threats?

Thu, 14 Jul 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Quantum-proof encryption is here—decades before it can be put to the test.

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Russian ‘Hacktivists’ Are Causing Trouble Far Beyond Ukraine

Wed, 13 Jul 2022 06:20:12 -0000

The pro-Russian group Killnet is targeting countries supporting Ukraine. It has declared "war" against 10 nations.

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How to Avoid the Worst Instagram Scams

Tue, 12 Jul 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Fake sellers. Competitions. Crypto cons. There are plenty of grifts on the platform, but you don’t have to get sucked in.

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Apple’s Lockdown Mode Aims to Counter Spyware Threats

Mon, 11 Jul 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Starting with iOS 16, people who are at risk of being targeted with spyware will have some much-needed help.

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The Worst Hacks and Breaches of 2022 So Far

Fri, 08 Jul 2022 06:20:15 -0000

From cryptocurrency thefts to intrusions into telecom giants, state-backed attackers have had a field day in the year’s first half.

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End-to-End Encryption’s Central Role in Modern Self-Defense

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 06:20:14 -0000

With abortion set to be criminalized in more than half the US, encryption has never been more important for protection—and civil disobedience.

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How to Use Microsoft Defender on All Your Devices

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 06:20:13 -0000

If you use a mix of Apple, Android, and Windows gadgets, you're in luck: The security tool is now available to any Microsoft 365 subscriber.

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Google Warns of New Spyware Targeting iOS and Android Users

Wed, 29 Jun 2022 06:20:13 -0000

The malware has been used to target people in Italy, Kazakhstan, and Syria, researchers at Google and Lookout have found.

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Here’s Why You’re Still Stuck in Robocall Hell

Mon, 27 Jun 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Despite major progress fighting spam and scams, the roots of the problem go far deeper than your phone company’s defenses.

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Brave Now Lets You Customize Search Results—for Better or Worse

Fri, 24 Jun 2022 06:20:13 -0000

The privacy-focused company's new Goggles tool allows users to weed out the noise—whatever that might mean.

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The January 6 Hearing Was a Warning

Thu, 23 Jun 2022 06:20:13 -0000

The House committee's televised hearings interrogate the Capitol attack with damning new evidence. Whether it's enough to prevent another attack is uncertain.

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Shanghai’s Censors Can’t Hide Stories of the Dead

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Many people reportedly died after struggling to access medical care during a brutal lockdown. The families want to make sure these deaths are counted.

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Russia Is Taking Over Ukraine’s Internet

Tue, 21 Jun 2022 06:20:12 -0000

In occupied Ukraine, people’s internet is being routed to Russia—and subjected to its powerful censorship and surveillance machine.

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Police Linked to Hacking Campaign to Frame Indian Activists

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 06:20:15 -0000

New details connect police in India to a plot to plant evidence on victims' computers that led to their arrest.

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How a Saxophonist Tricked the KBG by Encrypting Secrets in Music

Fri, 17 Jun 2022 06:20:15 -0000

Using a custom encryption scheme based on musical notation, US musicians smuggled information into and out of the USSR.

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Conti's Attack Against Costa Rica Sparks a New Ransomware Era

Thu, 16 Jun 2022 06:20:14 -0000

A pair of ransomware attacks crippled parts of the country—and rewrote the rules of cybercrime.

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A Long-Awaited Defense Against Data Leaks May Have Just Arrived

Wed, 15 Jun 2022 06:20:13 -0000

MongoDB claims its new “Queryable Encryption” lets users search their databases while sensitive data stays encrypted. Oh, and its cryptography is open source.

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Fertility and Period Apps Can Be Weaponized in a Post-Roe World

Tue, 14 Jun 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Apps collect sensitive data that could be subpoenaed by law enforcement or sold by data brokers, putting women seeking abortions at risk.

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Disinfo and Hate Speech Flood TikTok Ahead of Kenya’s Elections

Mon, 13 Jun 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Dozens of accounts shared videos that racked up millions of views before the platform took action.

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AlphaBay Is Taking Over the Dark Web—Again

Fri, 10 Jun 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Five years after it was torn offline, the resurrected dark web marketplace is clawing its way back to the top of the online underworld.

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Actively Exploited Microsoft Zero-Day Flaw Still Doesn't Have a Patch

Thu, 09 Jun 2022 06:20:12 -0000

The company continues to downplay the severity of the Follina vulnerability, which remains present in all supported versions of Windows.

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The Fight Against Robocall Spam and Scams Heats Up in India

Wed, 08 Jun 2022 06:20:13 -0000

A new proposal by India's telecom regulator aims to make accurate caller ID mandatory, but critics say it may be fundamentally flawed.

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The Hacker Gold Rush That’s Poised to Eclipse Ransomware

Tue, 07 Jun 2022 06:20:14 -0000

As governments crack down on ransomware, cybercriminals may soon shift to business email compromise—already the world’s most profitable type of scam.

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The Race to Hide Your Voice

Fri, 03 Jun 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Voice recognition—and data collection—have boomed in recent years. Researchers are figuring out how to protect your privacy.

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Good Luck Not Accidentally Hiring a North Korean Scammer

Thu, 02 Jun 2022 06:20:13 -0000

DPRK hackers are tricking their way into jobs with Western firms. A US government alert reminds employers they're on the front lines—and potentially on the hook.

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Open Source Intelligence May Be Changing Old-School War

Tue, 31 May 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Intelligence collected from public information online could be impacting traditional warfare and altering the calculus between large and small powers.

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Proton Is Trying to Become Google—Without Your Data

Fri, 27 May 2022 06:20:14 -0000

The encrypted-email company, popular with security-conscious users, has a plan to go mainstream.

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The Surveillance State Is Primed for Criminalized Abortion

Thu, 26 May 2022 06:20:13 -0000

A new report lays out existing US policing capabilities that can easily be repurposed to monitor pregnant people.

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US Courts Are Coming After Crypto Exchanges That Skirt Sanctions

Thu, 19 May 2022 06:20:16 -0000

A newly unsealed opinion is likely the first decision from a US federal court to find that cryptocurrencies can't be used to evade sanctions.

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The Hidden Race to Protect the US Bioeconomy From Hacker Threats

Wed, 18 May 2022 06:20:14 -0000

A biotech threat intelligence group is gaining supporters as urgency mounts around an overlooked vulnerable sector.

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The EU Wants Big Tech to Scan Your Private Chats for Child Abuse

Tue, 17 May 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Europe’s proposed child protection laws could undermine end-to-end encryption for billions of people.

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The Case for War Crimes Charges Against Russia’s Sandworm Hackers

Mon, 16 May 2022 06:20:13 -0000

A group of human rights lawyers and investigators has called on the Hague to bring the first-ever “cyber war crimes” charges against Russia’s most dangerous hackers.

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AMD Gave Google Cloud Rare Access to Its Tech to Hunt Chip Flaws

Thu, 12 May 2022 06:20:14 -0000

By working together, the companies say they're better able to find security flaws in Google Cloud's Confidential Computing infrastructure.

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Apple Mail Now Blocks Email Tracking. Here’s What It Means for You

Wed, 11 May 2022 06:20:14 -0000

If you don’t like marketers (or anyone else) knowing when and where you read your email, Apple’s feature will help you reclaim some privacy.

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India’s New Super App Has a Privacy Problem

Mon, 09 May 2022 06:20:15 -0000

Tata Neu is the country’s latest do-everything app. When users signed up, their personal information was already there.

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How to Remove Your Personal Info From Google's Search Results

Fri, 06 May 2022 06:20:15 -0000

Maybe you don't want your phone number, email, home address, and other details out there for all the web to see. Here's how to make them vanish.

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Ukraine’s Digital Battle With Russia Isn’t Going as Expected

Thu, 05 May 2022 06:20:15 -0000

Even the head of the country's online offensive is surprised by the successes—although they’re not without controversy.

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Hollywood’s Fight Against VPNs Turns Ugly

Wed, 04 May 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Beyond accusations of encouraging copyright infringement, film companies have begun accusing VPNs of enabling a slew of illegal activity.

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North Koreans Are Jailbreaking Phones to Access Forbidden Media

Tue, 03 May 2022 06:20:12 -0000

A new report suggests that a small but vibrant group of smartphone hackers may be challenging the world's most digitally restrictive regime.

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Russia Is Being Hacked at an Unprecedented Scale

Mon, 02 May 2022 06:20:14 -0000

From “IT Army” DDoS attacks to custom malware, the country has become a target like never before.

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The US Saw a Spike in Child Sexual Abuse URLs in 2021

Fri, 29 Apr 2022 06:20:12 -0000

CSAM hosting in the United States rose 64 percent last year, putting the country second in the world, a new report found.

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A $3 Billion Silk Road Seizure Will Erase Ross Ulbricht’s Debt

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 06:20:12 -0000

In a twist, a massive trove of stolen bitcoins will repay the dark web market creator's $183 million restitution.

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Netflix Can Cut Off Moochers Without a Password-Sharing Crackdown

Wed, 27 Apr 2022 06:20:12 -0000

There's a simple way to limit Netflix freeloaders—give users the ability to easily boot unknown devices linked to their accounts.

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Hackers Are Getting Caught Exploiting New Bugs More Than Ever

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 06:20:14 -0000

A pair of reports from Mandiant and Google found a spike in exploited zero-day vulnerabilities in 2021. The question is, why?

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It Was a Good Month for Fighting Cybercrime. Don't Get Comfortable

Mon, 25 Apr 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Even as police and tech companies get better at shutting down illegal operations, cybercrime is worse than ever.

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WhatsApp Doubles Down With End-to-End Encrypted ‘Communities’

Fri, 22 Apr 2022 06:20:13 -0000

More than just group DMs, WhatsApp's new feature is a major expansion of its comprehensive encrypted messaging.

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Russia's Sandworm Hackers Attempted a Third Blackout in Ukraine

Thu, 21 Apr 2022 06:20:12 -0000

The foiled attack was the first in five years to use Sandworm's Industroyer malware, which is designed to automatically trigger power disruptions.

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Feds Uncover a ‘Swiss Army Knife’ for Hacking Industrial Control Systems

Wed, 20 Apr 2022 06:20:13 -0000

The malware toolkit, known as Pipedream, is perhaps the most versatile tool ever made to target critical infrastructure like power grids and oil refineries.

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How to Limit Who Can Contact You on Instagram

Tue, 19 Apr 2022 06:20:13 -0000

It’s your account—you decide who’s allowed to see your vacation photos or slide into your DMs.

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Europe Is Building a Huge International Facial Recognition System

Mon, 18 Apr 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Lawmakers advance proposals to let police forces across the EU link their photo databases—which include millions of pictures of people’s faces.

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The Senate Bill That Has Big Tech Scared

Fri, 15 Apr 2022 06:20:14 -0000

The proposal would stop the biggest platforms from giving themselves an advantage over the little guys. Who's afraid of a little competition?

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How Russia's Invasion Triggered a US Crackdown on Its Hackers

Thu, 14 Apr 2022 06:20:12 -0000

The Biden White House is using “all of the levers of national power” to counter—or preempt—cyberattacks by Russia’s most dangerous hacker groups.

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NFTs Are a Privacy and Security Nightmare

Wed, 13 Apr 2022 06:20:13 -0000

The blockchain isn’t as “anonymous” as you might think.

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Blockchains Have a ‘Bridge’ Problem, and Hackers Know It

Tue, 12 Apr 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Blockchain bridges are a crucial piece of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, which makes them prime targets for attacks.

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How Explosions Actually Kill

Mon, 11 Apr 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Wars often spark misinformation about the nature of blast trauma. Russia's unprovoked bombardment of Ukraine is no different.

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Researchers Used a Decommissioned Satellite to Broadcast Hacker TV

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 06:20:12 -0000

What happens when an old satellite is no longer in use but can still broadcast? Hacker shenanigans, that's what.

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Leaked Details of the Lapsus$ Hack Make Okta’s Slow Response Look More Bizarre

Thu, 07 Apr 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Documents shed some light on how Okta and its subprocessor Sitel reacted to a breach, but they don’t explain the apparent lack of urgency.

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A Sinister Way to Beat Multifactor Authentication Is on the Rise

Wed, 06 Apr 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Lapsus$ and the group behind the SolarWinds hack have utilized prompt bombing to defeat weaker MFA protections in recent months.

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Forcing WhatsApp and iMessage to Work Together Is Doomed to Fail

Tue, 05 Apr 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Europe’s Digital Markets Act requires interoperability between popular messaging apps. But experts warn encryption could be compromised.

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Stop Tracking Your Loved Ones

Mon, 04 Apr 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Tracking apps hijack your psyche. Here's how to regain control.

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The Future of Digital Cash Is Not on the Blockchain

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 06:20:12 -0000

If you want the privacy of paper money, you need something that leaves no paper trail.

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Feds Allege Destructive Russian Hackers Targeted US Refineries

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 06:20:13 -0000

The DOJ unsealed indictments against four alleged Russian hackers said to have targeted US energy infrastructure for nearly a decade.

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The Fragile Open Source Ecosystem Isn’t Ready for ‘Protestware’

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 06:20:14 -0000

A recent uptick in disruptions to open source software, including incidents aimed at objecting to Russia's war in Ukraine, have left the community on edge.

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The Third-Party Okta Hack Leaves Customers Scrambling

Tue, 29 Mar 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Authentication firm Okta's statements on the Lapsus$ breach fails to answer key questions.

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A Mysterious Satellite Hack Has Victims Far Beyond Ukraine

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 06:20:15 -0000

The biggest hack since Russia’s war began knocked thousands of people offline. The spillover extends deep into Europe.

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The Big, Baffling Crypto Dreams of a $180 Million Ransomware Gang

Fri, 25 Mar 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Leaked files from cybercrime group Conti show it started building a crypto payment platform, a social network—and even had plans for a casino.

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How to Limit Who Can Contact You on Twitter

Thu, 24 Mar 2022 06:20:16 -0000

Lock down your account to tweet in peace or take the guardrails off to court controversy.

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The Enduring Danger of Cluster Bombs

Wed, 23 Mar 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Russia’s reported use of cluster munitions against Ukraine could cause devastation for decades.

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Leaked Ransomware Docs Show Conti Helping Putin From the Shadows

Tue, 22 Mar 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Members of the hacker gang may act in Russia’s interest, but their links to the FSB and Cozy Bear hackers appear ad hoc.

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The Workaday Life of the World’s Most Dangerous Ransomware Gang

Mon, 21 Mar 2022 06:20:12 -0000

A Ukrainian researcher leaked 60,000 messages from inside the Conti ransomware group. Here’s what they reveal.

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A Big Bet to Kill the Password for Good

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 06:20:14 -0000

After a decade of work, the FIDO Alliance says it’s found the missing piece in the bridge to a password-free future.

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Chinese Spies Hacked a Livestock App to Breach US State Networks

Thu, 17 Mar 2022 06:20:10 -0000

Vulnerabilities in animal tracking software USAHERDS and Log4j gave the notorious APT41 group a foothold in multiple government systems.

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Critical Bugs Expose Hundreds of Thousands of Medical Devices and ATMs

Tue, 15 Mar 2022 06:20:11 -0000

The so-called Access:7 vulnerabilities are the latest high-profile IoT security fumble.

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How Police Abuse Phone Data to Persecute LGBTQ People

Mon, 14 Mar 2022 06:20:11 -0000

In many parts of the world, law enforcement uses WhatsApp chats, text messages, and photos from confiscated phones as "evidence" against persecuted groups.

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How Ukraine's Internet Can Fend Off Russian Attacks

Fri, 11 Mar 2022 06:20:11 -0000

The besieged country's complex internet infrastructure has evolved to promote resiliency.

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Hacktivists Stoke Pandemonium Amid Russia’s War in Ukraine

Thu, 10 Mar 2022 06:20:11 -0000

A wave of cyberattacks meant to make a statement and particularly buoy Ukraine could have unintended consequences.

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Ice Cream Machine Hackers Sue McDonald's for $900 Million

Wed, 09 Mar 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Kytch alleges that the Golden Arches crushed its business—and left soft serve customers out in the cold.

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Russia's Sandworm Hackers Have Built a Botnet of Firewalls

Tue, 08 Mar 2022 06:20:15 -0000

Western intelligence services are raising alarms about Cyclops Blink, the latest tool at the notorious group’s disposal.

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The Quiet Way Advertisers Are Tracking Your Browsing

Mon, 07 Mar 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Cookies are on the way out—but not enough is being done about browser fingerprinting. So what is it?

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Meanie in a Bottle: An Internet Troll Gives Nonalcoholic Spirits Startups the Spins

Fri, 04 Mar 2022 06:20:14 -0000

From false press releases to misleading domain names, one man has allegedly gone to great lengths to sabotage his competitors.

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Ukraine’s Volunteer ‘IT Army’ Is Hacking in Uncharted Territory

Thu, 03 Mar 2022 06:20:15 -0000

The country has enlisted thousands of cybersecurity professionals in the war effort against Russia.

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An ‘Unhinged’ Putin Threatens Dangerous Escalation in Ukraine War

Wed, 02 Mar 2022 06:20:12 -0000

With no off-ramp in sight, Russia’s leader has put the country’s nuclear forces on alert.

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Inside the Lab Where Intel Tries to Hack Its Own Chips

Tue, 01 Mar 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Researchers at iSTARE have to think like the bad guys, finding critical flaws before processors go to production.

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How to Use Google Chrome's Enhanced Safety Mode2/28

Mon, 28 Feb 2022 06:20:13 -0000

You get a safer, more secure browser experience, but Google gets a lot more data about you.

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An Optical Spy Trick Can Turn Any Shiny Object Into a Bug

Fri, 25 Feb 2022 06:20:11 -0000

Anything from a metallic Rubik’s cube to an aluminum trash can inside a room could give away your private conversations.

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US Agencies Say Russian Hackers Compromised Defense Contractors

Thu, 24 Feb 2022 06:20:11 -0000

Kremlin-backed cyber actors lurked in the networks for months, obtaining sensitive documents related to weapons and infrastructure development.

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Twitter Has Started Blocking Porn in Germany

Wed, 23 Feb 2022 06:20:11 -0000

A number of accounts have been vanished as Twitter bows to pressure to make it harder for children to find adult content online.

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Is Firefox Okay?

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 06:20:10 -0000

Mozilla’s privacy-heavy browser is flatlining. What it does next is crucial for the future of the web.

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Hackers Rigged Hundreds of Ecommerce Sites to Steal Payment Info

Mon, 21 Feb 2022 06:20:14 -0000

The attackers exploited a known vulnerability and installed credit card skimmers on more than 500 websites.

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Are You Being Tracked by an AirTag? Here’s How to Check

Fri, 18 Feb 2022 06:28:39 -0000

Useful advice for anyone worried that one of Apple’s trackers is following them without consent.

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Microsoft's Small Step to Disable Macros Is a Huge Win for Security

Thu, 17 Feb 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Word and Excel files you download from the internet just got a whole lot safer.

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Playing With Crypto? You’ll Need a Wallet (or Several)

Wed, 16 Feb 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Buying and selling NFTs or transferring digital currency is going to require a little leap of faith. Here’s how to get started.

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The DOJ's $3.6B Bitcoin Seizure Shows How Hard It Is to Launder Crypto

Tue, 15 Feb 2022 06:20:11 -0000

A couple allegedly used a “laundry list” of technical measures to cover their tracks. It didn't matter.

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Cryptocurrency Is Funding Ukraine's Defense—and Its Hacktivists

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 06:20:13 -0000

As Russia continues to amass troops at the border, resistance groups have seen a surge in crypto donations.

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The Alt-Right on Facebook Are Hijacking Canada’s Trucker Blockade

Fri, 11 Feb 2022 06:20:12 -0000

In Ottawa, a protest against vaccine mandates has become an international sensation. American far-right personalities are behind its online rise.

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An Insidious Mac Malware Is Growing More Sophisticated

Thu, 10 Feb 2022 06:20:12 -0000

When UpdateAgent emerged in late 2020, it utilized basic infiltration techniques. Its developers have since expanded it in dangerous ways.

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Health Sites Let Ads Track Visitors Without Telling Them

Wed, 09 Feb 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Privacy policies didn't tell the whole story about third-party tools gathering personal information from the sites of medical and genetic-testing companies.

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Out-of-Control Cybercrime Will Cause More Real-World Harm

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Ransomware and online attacks can lead to deadly real-world consequences. Governments need to raise their game in response.

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North Korea Hacked Him. So He Took Down Its Internet

Mon, 07 Feb 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Disappointed with the lack of US response to the Hermit Kingdom's attacks against US security researchers, one hacker took matters into his own hands.

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Inside Trickbot, Russia’s Notorious Ransomware Gang

Fri, 04 Feb 2022 06:20:11 -0000

Internal messages WIRED has viewed shed new light on the operators of one of the world's biggest botnets.

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Welcome to the Burner Phone Olympics

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 06:30:56 -0000

China’s Winter Games are overshadowed by human rights problems and overreaching state surveillance.

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Google Has a New Plan to Kill Cookies. People Are Still Mad

Wed, 02 Feb 2022 06:20:13 -0000

Google has scrapped FLoC, its controversial cookie replacement. Now it’s back with Topics—but rivals and privacy experts are still nervous.

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Safari Flaws Exposed Webcams, Online Accounts, and More

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 06:20:11 -0000

Apple awarded a $100,500 bug bounty to the researcher who discovered the latest major vulnerability in its browser.

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Why the Belarus Railways Hack Marks a First for Ransomware

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 06:20:17 -0000

The politicallyÂ motivated attack represents a new frontier for hacktivists—and won’t be the last of its kind.

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Now Is a Good Time to Update Your Recovery Email Addresses

Thu, 27 Jan 2022 06:20:13 -0000

You know those “emergency” email addresses you can use to get into your email and other accounts in case you're locked out? Make sure they're up-to-date.

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Europe’s Move Against Google Analytics Is Just the Beginning

Wed, 26 Jan 2022 06:20:11 -0000

Austria’s data regulator has found that the use of Google Analytics is a breach of GDPR. In the absence of a new EU-US data deal, other countries may follow.

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A Bug in iOS 15 Is Leaking User Browsing Activity in Real Time

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 06:20:14 -0000

Apple has known about the vulnerability, which also affects iPadOS 15 and Safari 15, since late November.

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Destructive Hacks Against Ukraine Echo Its Last Cyberwar

Mon, 24 Jan 2022 06:20:13 -0000

A data wiper posing as ransomware bears a discomfiting resemblance to the earlier wave of Russian cyberattacks that ended with NotPetya.

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'Zero-Click’ Zoom Vulnerabilities Could Have Exposed Calls

Fri, 21 Jan 2022 06:20:12 -0000

The flaws are now fixed, but speak to the growing concerns around interactionless attacks.

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Russia Takes Down REvil Hackers—as Ukraine Tensions Mount

Thu, 20 Jan 2022 06:20:12 -0000

Over a dozen alleged members of the notorious ransomware group have been arrested, but the Kremlin's critics are wary of the underlying motivation.

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How Apple's iCloud Private Relay Can Keep You Safe

Wed, 19 Jan 2022 06:20:11 -0000

The newest security measure is still in beta. But if you want to make use of it, here's what you need to know.

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NSO Group Spyware Targeted Dozens of Reporters in El Salvador

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 06:20:11 -0000

The newly disclosed campaign shows how little the company has done to curb abuses of its powerful surveillance tools.

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North Korean Hackers Stole Nearly $400 Million in Crypto Last Year

Mon, 17 Jan 2022 06:20:11 -0000

The regime had a “banner year,” thanks to skyrocketing cryptocurrency values and a new generation of vulnerable startups.

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Apple’s Private Relay Roils Telecoms Around the World

Fri, 14 Jan 2022 06:21:26 -0000

Security experts say there's little reason for the criticism from Europe’s mobile operators and US limitations over the VPN-like iCloud tool.

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How to Read Your iOS 15 App Privacy Report

Thu, 13 Jan 2022 06:20:11 -0000

Your iPhone now gives you lots of transparency into what your downloads are up to. Here's what to look out for.

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The FTC Wants Companies to Find Log4j Fast. It Won't Be So Easy

Wed, 12 Jan 2022 06:20:11 -0000

The critical vulnerability is buried among endless open source code, and many cyber experts are stumped.

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Signal's Cryptocurrency Feature Has Gone Worldwide

Mon, 10 Jan 2022 06:25:34 -0000

A beta “payments” feature now lets some users of the popular encrypted messaging app send MobileCoin around the globe.

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Hackers Are Exploiting a Flaw Microsoft Fixed 9 Years Ago

Fri, 07 Jan 2022 06:20:10 -0000

Unless you go out of your way to install the patch, your system could be exposed.

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The Next Wave of Log4J Attacks Will Be Brutal

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 06:20:13 -0000

So far, Log4Shell has resulted mostly in cryptomining and a little espionage. The really bad stuff is just around the corner.

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6 Ways to Delete Yourself From the Internet

Wed, 05 Jan 2022 06:20:11 -0000

You’ll never be able to get a clean slate—but you can significantly downsize your digital footprint.

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The Worst Hacks of 2021

Mon, 03 Jan 2022 06:20:13 -0000

It was a year of ransomware, surveillance, data breaches, and yes, more ransomware.

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Meta Removes 7 Surveillance-for-Hire Operations From Its Platforms

Tue, 28 Dec 2021 06:20:11 -0000

While NSO Group gets most of the attention, the takedowns underscore how insidious the industry has become.

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How to Guard Against Smishing Attacks on Your Phone

Thu, 23 Dec 2021 06:20:12 -0000

“Smishing" is an attempt to collect logins or other sensitive information with a malicious text message—and it's on the rise.

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Google Warns That NSO Hacking Is on Par Elite Nation State Spies

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 06:20:10 -0000

ForcedEntry is “one of the most technically sophisticated exploits” Project Zero security researchers have ever seen.

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The Log4J Vulnerability Will Haunt the Internet for Years

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 06:20:12 -0000

Hundreds of millions of devices are likely affected.

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The Biggest Deepfake Abuse Site Is Growing in Disturbing Ways

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 06:20:11 -0000

A referral program and partner sites have spurred the spread of invasive, AI-generated “nude” images.

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‘The Internet Is on Fire’

Fri, 17 Dec 2021 06:20:12 -0000

A vulnerability in the Log4j logging framework has security teams scrambling to put in a fix.

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Microsoft Seizes Domains Used by a Chinese Hacking Group

Thu, 16 Dec 2021 06:20:16 -0000

The move delivers a blow to the hackers behind sophisticated attacks on government agencies, think tanks, and other organizations.

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A Year After the SolarWinds Hack, Supply Chain Threats Still Loom

Wed, 15 Dec 2021 06:20:12 -0000

The Russia-led campaign was a wake-up call to the industry, but there's no one solution to the threat.

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Russia’s Internet Censorship Machine Is Going After Tor

Tue, 14 Dec 2021 06:20:10 -0000

The attempt to block the site, which helps users mask their online activity, is the latest step in the country's efforts to control the internet.

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Researchers Have a Method to Spot Reddit’s State-Backed Trolls

Mon, 13 Dec 2021 06:20:11 -0000

Academics claim they can sniff out the telltale signs of troll-like behavior. But is it really as simple as monitoring cute animal postings?

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NSO Group Spyware Hits at Least 9 US State Department Phones

Fri, 10 Dec 2021 06:20:12 -0000

The incident lays bare how hollow the surveillance company’s reassurances about the limits of its hacking tools have always been.

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Facebook Will Force More At-Risk Accounts to Use Two-Factor

Thu, 09 Dec 2021 06:20:11 -0000

The platform joins Google and others in requiring stronger protections for its most vulnerable users.

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A Bunch of Malicious Google Play Apps Stole User Banking Info

Wed, 08 Dec 2021 06:20:11 -0000

Using tricks to sidestep the app store’s restrictions, malware operators pillaged passwords, keystrokes, and other data.

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A Software Bug Let Hackers Drain $31M From a Crypto Service

Tue, 07 Dec 2021 06:20:12 -0000

An attacker exploited a vulnerability in MonoX Finance's smart contract to inflate the price of its digital token and then cash out.

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The McDonald's Ice Cream Machine Hacking Saga Has a New Twist

Mon, 06 Dec 2021 06:20:12 -0000

The cold war between a startup and a soft-serve machine manufacturer is heating up, thanks to a newly released trove of internal emails.

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Hacker Lexicon: What Is a Watering Hole Attack?

Fri, 03 Dec 2021 06:20:10 -0000

It's a technique that can hit thousands of victims—through no fault of their own.

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A Hacking Spree Against Iran Spills Out Into the Physical World

Thu, 02 Dec 2021 06:20:11 -0000

Hackers have targeted the country's trains, gas stations, and airline infrastructure, as cyber conflict with Israel continues to escalate.

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Iranian Hackers Are Going After US Critical Infrastructure

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 06:20:12 -0000

A hacking group is targeting a broad range of organizations, taking advantage of vulnerabilities that have been patched but not yet updated.

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Locked Out of ‘God Mode,’ Runners Are Hacking Their Treadmills

Tue, 30 Nov 2021 06:20:12 -0000

NordicTrack customers were watching Netflix using a simple trick—until the company blocked their access.

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How Iran Tried to Undermine the 2020 US Presidential Election

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 06:20:11 -0000

From faked emails to a hacked voter registration database, a new indictment offers fresh details on the attempted interference.

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DuckDuckGo Wants to Stop Apps From Tracking You on Android

Tue, 23 Nov 2021 06:20:11 -0000

The privacy-focused tech company's latest update promises to block invasive data collection across your whole phone.

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‘Ghostwriter’ Looked Like a Purely Russian Op—Except It's Not

Mon, 22 Nov 2021 06:20:12 -0000

Security researchers have found signs that the pervasive hacking and misinformation campaign comes not from Moscow but from Minsk.

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Another Intel Chip Flaw Puts a Slew of Gadgets at Risk

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 06:20:15 -0000

The vulnerability allows an attacker with physical access to the CPU to bypass the security measures protecting some of its most sensitive data.

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Hackers Targeted Apple Devices in Hong Kong for Widespread Attack

Thu, 18 Nov 2021 06:20:13 -0000

Visitors to pro-democracy and media sites in the region were infected with malware that could download files, steal data, and more.

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The Sneaky Way TikTok Is Connecting You to Real-Life Friends

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 06:20:13 -0000

The social network got huge by ignoring who you know. That's increasingly no longer the case.

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The Biggest Ransomware Bust Yet Might Actually Make an Impact

Mon, 15 Nov 2021 06:20:12 -0000

By arresting one alleged hacker associated with REVil and seizing millions from another, the US has made clear that ransomware comes with a cost.

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A Drone Tried to Disrupt the Power Grid. It Won't Be the Last

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 06:20:13 -0000

An attack attempt in 2020 proves the UAS threat is real—and not enough is being done to stop it.

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Ignore China’s New Data Privacy Law at Your Peril

Wed, 10 Nov 2021 06:20:13 -0000

The Personal Information Protection Law gives authorities the power to impose huge fines and blacklist companies. But the biggest impact may be felt outside the country.

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1.8TB of Police Helicopter Surveillance Footage Leaks Online

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 06:20:12 -0000

DDoSecrets published the trove Friday afternoon. Privacy advocates say it shows how pervasive law enforcement's eye has become, and how lax its data protection can be.

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How to Use iCloud+'s New Security Features

Fri, 05 Nov 2021 06:24:38 -0000

Apple's cloud storage service now comes with perks—and they're designed to improve your digital privacy and security.

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How a Squid Game Crypto Scam Got Away With Millions

Thu, 04 Nov 2021 06:20:13 -0000

On the front lines of a “rug pull” that left investors in the lurch.

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An Apparent Ransomware Hack Puts the NRA in a Bind

Wed, 03 Nov 2021 06:20:11 -0000

The group behind the reported attack is under sanctions from the US Treasury, which means a payout could come with penalties for the victim.

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Blind People Won the Right to Break Ebook DRM. In 3 Years, They'll Have to Do It Again

Tue, 02 Nov 2021 06:20:15 -0000

Advocates will once again be granted a DMCA exception to make accessible versions of texts. They argue that it's far past time to make it permanent.

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Dark Web Drug Busts Lead to 150 Arrests

Mon, 01 Nov 2021 06:20:12 -0000

Operation Dark HunTor spanned eight countries—and put the focus on sellers more than marketplaces.

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This AI Predicts How Old Children Are. Can It Keep Them Safe?

Fri, 29 Oct 2021 06:20:14 -0000

Yoti’s tech may be enticing for Big Tech companies: It works out if you’re under or over 13, the age most social media platforms require to create an account.

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11 Security Settings You Should Know About in Windows 11

Wed, 27 Oct 2021 06:30:53 -0000

Microsoft has rolled out its most secure operating system yet. Here's how to make the most of it.

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New Sex Toy Standards Let Some Sensitive Details Slide

Tue, 26 Oct 2021 06:20:16 -0000

The industry now has official guidance on design, materials, and more, but not security and privacy best practices.

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How Hackers Hijacked Thousands of High-Profile YouTube Accounts

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 06:20:29 -0000

Google has shed light on a spate of attacks that turned creator channels into cryptocurrency scam livestreams.

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Missouri Threatens to Sue a Reporter Who Flagged a Security Flaw

Wed, 20 Oct 2021 06:20:11 -0000

The governor warned that he would take legal action against a journalist who identified a vulnerability that exposed teachers' Social Security numbers.

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A Telegram Bot Told Iranian Hackers When They Got a Hit

Tue, 19 Oct 2021 06:20:14 -0000

APT35 may not be the most dangerous group out there, but they've got a new phishing trick.

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Telegram Is Becoming a Cesspool of Anti-Semitic Content

Mon, 18 Oct 2021 06:20:11 -0000

A new report shows that channels devoted to anti-Jewish conspiracy theories are growing at an alarming rate. Why won’t the platform take action?

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Cloudflare Isn't Liable for Sites That Hawk Counterfeits

Fri, 15 Oct 2021 06:20:12 -0000

A federal judge ruled that the content-delivery service doesn't "contribute" to copyright infringement.

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How to Permanently Delete Your Facebook Account

Thu, 14 Oct 2021 06:20:12 -0000

If you've finally hit your breaking point, here's how to say goodbye to Mark Zuckerberg's empire.

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How to Get Your Family to Actually Use a Password Manager

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 06:20:11 -0000

Whether it's about sharing your Netflix login or getting your affairs in order, here are tips for convincing your loved ones to organize and protect their accounts too.

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A Devastating Twitch Hack Sends Streamers Reeling

Tue, 12 Oct 2021 06:20:14 -0000

The data breach apparently includes source code, gamer payouts, and more.

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Hundreds of Scam Apps Hit Over 10 Million Android Devices

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 06:34:04 -0000

The so-called GriftHorse campaign used clever techniques to avoid detection in Google Play for nearly a year.

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A Simple Bug Is Leaving AirTag Users Vulnerable to an Attack

Fri, 08 Oct 2021 06:20:13 -0000

Apple has reportedly known about the exploit for months.

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Why James Bond Doesn’t Use an iPhone

Thu, 07 Oct 2021 06:20:11 -0000

The fictional superspy wields Nokia devices in No Time To Die. It’s an odd choice, but Apple's smartphones aren’t ideal, either.

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How a Secret Google Geofence Warrant Helped Catch the Capitol Riot Mob

Wed, 06 Oct 2021 06:20:13 -0000

A WIRED investigation has found 45 federal criminal cases that cite Google geolocation data to place suspects inside the US Capitol during the January 6 riot.

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He Escaped the Dark Web's Biggest Bust. Now He's Back

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 06:20:13 -0000

DeSnake apparently eluded the DOJ's takedown of AlphaBay. The admin talked to WIRED about his return—and the resurrection of the notorious underground marketplace.

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The iOS 15 Privacy Settings You Should Change Right Now

Tue, 28 Sep 2021 06:20:14 -0000

Apple's latest software update has a bunch of new security features. Here's how to put them to use.Â

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Apple and Google Go Further Than Ever to Appease Russia

Mon, 27 Sep 2021 06:20:12 -0000

By removing a voting app from their app stores at the Kremlin's request, the tech giants have set a troubling new precedent.

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How to Set Up a NAS to Securely Share Files

Fri, 24 Sep 2021 06:20:13 -0000

From file backups to movie streaming, network attached storage drives offer plenty of functions and features.

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A New App Helps Iranians Hide Messages in Plain Sight

Thu, 23 Sep 2021 06:20:13 -0000

Nahoft uses encryption to turn chats into a random jumble of words, and it works even when the internet doesn’t.

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Anonymous Leaked a Bunch of Data From a Right-Wing Web Host

Wed, 22 Sep 2021 06:20:13 -0000

The hacktivist collective targeted the domain registrar Epik for providing services to clients including the Texas GOP, Parler, and 8chan.

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You Can Now Ditch the Password on Your Microsoft Account

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 06:20:14 -0000

You no longer need a long string of characters to access Windows and Office 365.

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LA Police Are Collecting Detainees' Social Media Information

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 06:20:11 -0000

According to new documents, officers ask people they stop for their Facebook and Twitter account details, and then feed the data into Palantir.Â

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What Is Zero Trust? It Depends What You Want to Hear

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 06:20:11 -0000

The cybersecurity world’s favorite catchphrase isn’t any one product or system, but a holistic approach to minimizing damage.

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How to Find the Hidden Files on Your Phone or Computer

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 06:20:13 -0000

You shouldn't mess with some of them—but there are others you should be aware of.

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WhatsApp Fixes Its Biggest Encryption Loophole

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 06:20:13 -0000

The ubiquitous messaging service will add end-to-end encryption to backups, keeping your chats safe no matter whose cloud they're stored in.

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The Texas Abortion ‘Whistleblower’ Site Still Can't Find a Host

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 06:20:12 -0000

Even the most extreme internet infrastructure providers have turned their backs on the website for violating their terms of service.

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ProtonMail Amends Its Policy After Giving Up an Activist’s Data

Mon, 13 Sep 2021 06:20:13 -0000

The email service says it was unable to appeal a Swiss court’s demand to log the IP address of a French climate advocate.

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What Apple Can Do Next to Fight Child Sexual Abuse

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 06:20:13 -0000

The fallout from the company's recent proposal has created a new opportunity to fix how it roots out abusive material across its devices.

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38M Records Were Exposed Online—Including Contact-Tracing Info

Thu, 09 Sep 2021 06:29:08 -0000

Misconfigured Power Apps from Microsoft led to more than a thousand web apps accessible to anyone who found them.

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What It'll Take to Get Power Back in New Orleans After Hurricane Ida

Wed, 08 Sep 2021 06:20:11 -0000

It could take weeks to get the lights on in parts of Louisiana, but the playbook on how to do it is clear.

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6 Things You Need to Do to Prevent Getting Hacked

Tue, 07 Sep 2021 06:20:11 -0000

You are your own biggest weakness, but changing just a few of your behaviors can reduce the chances that your online accounts get breached.Â

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A Bad Solar Storm Could Cause an 'Internet Apocalypse'

Mon, 06 Sep 2021 06:20:15 -0000

The undersea cables that connect much of the world would be hit especially hard by a coronal mass ejection.

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The Stealthy iPhone Hacks That Apple Still Can't Stop

Fri, 03 Sep 2021 06:20:11 -0000

After another “zero-click” attack, security experts say it's time for more extreme measures to keep iMessage users safe.

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Hackers Could Increase Medication Doses Through Infusion Pump Flaws

Thu, 02 Sep 2021 06:20:12 -0000

It would take a determined hacker to break into the vulnerable B. Braun products, but the impact could be devastating.

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Google Docs Scams Still Pose a Threat

Wed, 01 Sep 2021 06:20:13 -0000

A 2017 worm caused havoc across the internet. One researcher is warning that despite new protections put in place, it could still happen again.Â

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China Aims Its Propaganda Firehose at the BBC

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 06:36:54 -0000

The alleged digital operation has deployed hundreds of websites and social media accounts to attack the broadcaster's reporting.

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How to Send Messages That Automatically Disappear

Mon, 30 Aug 2021 06:20:14 -0000

Need to be discreet? Here's how to set up vanishing texts, photos, or videos in most popular chat apps.Â

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A Simple Software Fix Could Limit Location Data Sharing

Fri, 27 Aug 2021 06:20:15 -0000

Carriers know where you are every time your phone re-connects to the cell network—but with Pretty Good Phone Privacy, they wouldn't have to.

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How the Far Right Exploded on Steam and Discord

Thu, 26 Aug 2021 06:20:12 -0000

New research found that several of the major gaming platforms are hosting extremist activity, from racist livestreams to open support for neo-Nazis.Â

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AI Wrote Better Phishing Emails Than Humans in a Recent Test

Wed, 25 Aug 2021 06:20:13 -0000

Researchers found that tools like OpenAI's GPT-3 helped craft devilishly effective spearphishing messages.

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The NYPD Had a Secret Fund for Surveillance Tools

Tue, 24 Aug 2021 06:20:11 -0000

Documents reveal that police bought facial-recognition software, vans equipped with x-ray machines, and “stingray” cell site simulators—with no public oversight.

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A 5G Shortcut Leaves Phones Exposed to Stingray Surveillance

Mon, 23 Aug 2021 06:20:11 -0000

You may not have the full story about what network you're on—and how well you're protected.

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What You Should Know About the Google Play Store Changes

Fri, 20 Aug 2021 06:20:11 -0000

With the first updates kicking in this month, Android apps should be more streamlined and lightweight. Google is also getting a greater level of control.

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All the Ways Spotify Tracks You—and How to Stop It

Thu, 19 Aug 2021 06:20:12 -0000

Whether you're listening to workout music or a "cooking dinner" playlist, the app can show you ads based on your mood and what you're doing right now.

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Citizen's New Service Helps Paying Users Summon the Cops

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 06:38:51 -0000

The crime-tracking app is charging $20 per month to give subscribers access to their own virtual security service.

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Messaging Apps Have an Eavesdropping Problem

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 06:37:15 -0000

Vulnerabilities in Signal, Facebook Messenger, Google Duo, and more all point to a pervasive privacy issue.

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France Cracked Down on Google’s Ad Tech. What’s Next?

Mon, 16 Aug 2021 06:20:11 -0000

The French Competition Agency has hit the company with $855 million in fines this year. The money is meaningless—but the changes could be profound.

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Hospitals Still Use Pneumatic Tubes—and They Can Be Hacked

Fri, 13 Aug 2021 06:20:11 -0000

The tech may seem antiquated, but it poses very modern cybersecurity problems.Â

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A Guide to RCS, and Why It Makes Texting So Much Better

Thu, 12 Aug 2021 06:20:11 -0000

Google is pushing the new standard for Android devices, which promises better security and cooler features than plain old SMS.

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The Privacy Battle That Apple Isn’t Fighting

Wed, 11 Aug 2021 06:20:13 -0000

California has begun enforcing a browser-level privacy setting, but you still can’t find that option in Safari or iOS.

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Phantom Warships Are Courting Chaos in Conflict Zones

Tue, 10 Aug 2021 06:20:12 -0000

The latest weapons in the global information war are fake vessels behaving badly.

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A Controversial Tool Calls Out Thousands of Hackable Websites

Mon, 09 Aug 2021 06:20:13 -0000

PunkSpider is back, and crawling hundreds of millions of sites for vulnerabilities.

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The Shapeshifting Cam Girl Rewriting the Rules of Digital Porn

Fri, 06 Aug 2021 06:20:12 -0000

Face-morphing adult content creator Coconut Kitty is ushering in the unsettling future of the medium, one where nothing is as it seems.

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The Kaseya Ransomware Nightmare Is Almost Over

Thu, 05 Aug 2021 06:20:11 -0000

A decryption tool has emerged, meaning any victims whose systems remain locked up can soon breathe easy.

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An Explosive Spyware Report Shows the Limits of iOS Security

Wed, 04 Aug 2021 06:20:14 -0000

Amnesty International sheds alarming light on an NSO Group surveillance tool—and the gaps in Apple and Google's defenses.

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Venmo Gets More Private—but It's Still Not Fully Safe

Tue, 03 Aug 2021 06:20:13 -0000

Eliminating the global feed is a good step. But until the platform offers privacy by default, it remains a liability for many of its users.

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How China's Hacking Entered a Reckless New Phase

Mon, 02 Aug 2021 06:20:24 -0000

The country's hackers have gotten far more aggressive since 2015, when the Ministry of State Security largely took over the country’s cyberespionage.

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Hackers Got Past Windows Hello by Tricking a Webcam

Fri, 30 Jul 2021 06:20:14 -0000

The security researchers used an infrared photos and third-party hardware to best Microsoft's facial recognition tech.

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Cuba’s Social Media Blackout Reflects an Alarming New Normal

Thu, 29 Jul 2021 06:20:12 -0000

In response to mass protests, the country has been blocking social media and communication platforms since Sunday—an increasingly common action worldwide.

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Facebook Catches Iranian Spies Catfishing US Military Targets

Wed, 28 Jul 2021 06:20:11 -0000

The hackers posed as recruiters, journalists, and hospitality workers to lure its victims.

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Germany Is About to Block One of the Biggest Porn Sites

Tue, 27 Jul 2021 06:20:12 -0000

Regulators are trying to force adult sites to introduce age checks for users. Now one of the largest in the world faces a total block for refusing to do so.

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WhatsApp Has a Secure Fix for One of Its Biggest Drawbacks

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 06:20:13 -0000

Starting with a beta that launches today, you'll no longer have to route all of your messages through your smartphone. Â

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Beyond Kaseya: Everyday IT Tools Can Offer ‘God Mode’ for Hackers

Fri, 23 Jul 2021 06:20:13 -0000

Attackers are increasingly attuned to the power and potential of remote management software.Â

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An Office Phone Flaw Can’t Be Fixed By Cisco Alone

Thu, 22 Jul 2021 06:20:13 -0000

The company released a patch this week but security researchers say the root of the problem is beyond its control—and symptomatic of a larger issue.

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A New System Is Helping Crack Down on Child Sex Abuse Images

Wed, 21 Jul 2021 06:20:12 -0000

There are 150 child sexual abuse laws around the world. Now, metadata is making it easier for countries to work together.

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How to Make Your Web Searches More Secure and Private

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 06:20:14 -0000

What you look for online is up to you—just make sure no one else is taking a peek.

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Europe Makes the Case to Ban Biometric Surveillance

Mon, 19 Jul 2021 06:20:13 -0000

Companies are racing to track everything about you. It could be a convenient way to reduce fraud—or seriously creepy and discriminatory.

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Echo Dots Store a Wealth of Data—Even After You Reset Them

Fri, 16 Jul 2021 06:20:12 -0000

Thinking about selling your smart speaker? Be aware that you can't completely delete personal content from the device.

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The Unfixed Flaw at the Heart of REvil’s Ransomware Spree

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 06:20:13 -0000

Security researchers warned Kaseya about its IT management software in April, but the patches didn't come fast enough to avert last week's disaster.

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How REvil Ransomware Took Out Thousands of Business at Once

Wed, 14 Jul 2021 06:20:13 -0000

More details have come to light as to how the notorious hacking group pulled off its unprecedented attack.

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A New Kind of Ransomware Tsunami Hits Hundreds of Companies

Tue, 13 Jul 2021 06:20:13 -0000

An apparent supply chain attack exploited Kaseya's IT management software to encrypt a "monumental" number of victims all at once.

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Why the Password Isn't Dead Quite Yet

Mon, 12 Jul 2021 06:20:12 -0000

Everyone hates the old ways of authentication. But while change is closer than ever, it comes with its own drawbacks.Â

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Russian Hackers Are Trying to Brute-Force Hundreds of Networks

Fri, 09 Jul 2021 06:20:11 -0000

While SolarWinds rightly drew attention earlier this year, Moscow's Fancy Bear group has been on a password-guessing spree this whole time.

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Windows 11’s Security Push Puts Microsoft on a Collision Course

Thu, 08 Jul 2021 06:20:12 -0000

The minimum hardware requirements for Microsoft’s next operating system will leave plenty of PCs stranded.

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SolarWinds Hackers Continue Assault With a New Microsoft Breach

Wed, 07 Jul 2021 06:20:12 -0000

The company says the Nobelium hacking group compromised a support agent's computer and levied brute-force attacks against some of its customers.

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What the Pentagon’s New UFO Report Reveals About Humankind

Tue, 06 Jul 2021 06:20:12 -0000

The document says less about the search for life in the universe, and more about our current cultural climate and distrust of expertise.

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The US Takedown of Iranian Media Sites Extends a Thorny Precedent

Mon, 05 Jul 2021 06:20:13 -0000

Free speech advocates raised concerns after the Justice Department seized more than 30 domains this week.

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A Well-Meaning Feature Leaves Millions of Dell PCs Vulnerable

Fri, 02 Jul 2021 06:20:14 -0000

Flaws in a firmware security tool affect as many as 30 million desktops, laptops, and tablets.

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NFC Flaws Let Researchers Hack ATMs by Waving a Phone

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 06:20:11 -0000

Flaws in card reader technology let a security firm consultant wreak havoc with point-of-sale systems and more.

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All the Ways Amazon Tracks You—and How to Stop It

Wed, 30 Jun 2021 06:20:13 -0000

The retail empire is obsessed with your data. But is the convenience worth your personal information?

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A New Tool Wants to Save Open Source From Supply Chain Attacks

Tue, 29 Jun 2021 06:20:13 -0000

Sigstore will make code signing free and easy for software developers, providing an important first line of defense.

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As Ransomware Demands Boom, Insurance Companies Keep Paying Out

Mon, 28 Jun 2021 06:20:11 -0000

While major carriers like AXA have backed away from covering ransoms, don't expect the industry at large to break the vicious cycle.

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The FBI's Anom Stunt Rattles the Encryption Debate

Fri, 25 Jun 2021 06:20:12 -0000

The agency spent years running a secure phone network for criminals. So much for “going dark.”Â

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Apple Says It's Time to Digitize Your ID, Ready or Not

Thu, 24 Jun 2021 06:20:13 -0000

Digital driver’s licenses have had a slow start in the US so far, but iOS 15 Wallet will give the nascent technology a serious push.

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What You Should Know About Voilá, the Latest Viral Selfie App

Wed, 23 Jun 2021 06:20:12 -0000

Before you use it to cartoonify your face, consider the risks to your data.

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The Safest Way to Store and Share Your Nudes

Tue, 22 Jun 2021 06:20:11 -0000

Listen, if you’re going to take them, follow these precautions so they don’t go anywhere you don’t intend them to.

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Ransomware Struck Another Pipeline Firm—and 70GB of Data Leaked

Mon, 21 Jun 2021 06:20:12 -0000

LineStar Integrity Services was hacked around the same time as Colonial Pipeline, but radical transparency activists have brought the attack to light.

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How an Obscure Company Took Down Big Chunks of the Internet

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 06:20:12 -0000

You may not have heard of Fastly, but you felt its impact when sites went offline around the world Tuesday morning.

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How to Protect Your Files From Ransomware

Thu, 17 Jun 2021 06:20:11 -0000

It's a growing threat for individual users and businesses alike—but there are ways to protect yourself.

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Microsoft’s Vote Tracking Software Clears a Major Hurdle

Wed, 16 Jun 2021 06:20:11 -0000

Hart InterCivic will be the first private vendor to partner with the company on using its open-source ElectionGuard system.

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Ransomware Hits a Food Supply Giant—and Underscores a Dire Threat

Tue, 15 Jun 2021 06:25:39 -0000

Hackers targeting JBS USA have disrupted meat processing facilities around the world, just one month after the Colonial Pipeline attack caused fuel distribution havoc.

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The SolarWinds Hackers Aren't 'Back.' They Never Went Away

Mon, 14 Jun 2021 06:20:12 -0000

A new phishing campaign from Russian spies targeted USAID among others. But it's less an escalation than a regression to the mean.

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Hacker Lexicon: What Is a Supply Chain Attack?

Fri, 11 Jun 2021 06:20:12 -0000

From NotPetya to SolarWinds, it’s a problem that’s not going away any time soon.

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Apple's M1 Chip Has a Fascinating Flaw

Thu, 10 Jun 2021 06:20:12 -0000

The covert channel bug demonstrates a fundamental fact of CPUs: even new ones have vulnerabilities.

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The Bizarro Streaming Site That Hackers Built From Scratch

Wed, 09 Jun 2021 06:20:13 -0000

BravoMovies isn't real. But it puts in a remarkable amount of effort trying to trick you into believing that it is.

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Blurry Satellite Images of Palestine and Israel Make Rebuilding Harder

Tue, 08 Jun 2021 06:20:14 -0000

Digital researchers and aid groups say free mapping tools like Google Earth are too imprecise.Â

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Goodbye Internet Explorer—and Good Riddance

Mon, 07 Jun 2021 06:20:12 -0000

Microsoft will finally put the venerated, vulnerability-ridden browser out to pasture, but it's still got a year to cause some trouble.

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How to Avoid Those Infuriating Cookie Pop-Ups

Fri, 04 Jun 2021 06:20:11 -0000

Cookie consent notices are everywhere, and opting out of tracking is a pain. It doesn’t have to be this way.

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How to Avoid App Store Scams

Thu, 03 Jun 2021 06:20:13 -0000

Apple’s and Google’s approval guidelines are notoriously lax—and they won’t keep out apps that are after your money and data. Here’s how to sniff them out.

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Ransomware's Dangerous New Trick Is Double-Encrypting Your Data

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 06:20:11 -0000

Even when you pay to get a decryption key, you may find your files are still locked up by another strain of malware.

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The Colonial Pipeline Hack Is a New Extreme for Ransomware

Tue, 01 Jun 2021 06:20:12 -0000

An attack has crippled the company's operations—and cut off a large portion of the East Coast's fuel supply—in an ominous development for critical infrastructure.

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DarkSide Ransomware Hit Colonial Pipeline—and Created an Unholy Mess

Mon, 31 May 2021 06:20:12 -0000

As the White House gets involved in the response, the group behind the malware is scrambling.

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How a Former Netflix Exec Built a Brazen Bribery Scheme

Fri, 28 May 2021 06:20:14 -0000

The company’s ex-vice president of IT faces 20 years in prison for creating a pay-to-play environment with technology vendors.

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WhatsApp’s New Privacy Policy Just Kicked In. Here’s What You Need to Know

Thu, 27 May 2021 06:20:11 -0000

Instead of a hard cutoff, the messaging app will gradually degrade and eventually cease to function if you don’t accept the changes.

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What's Google FLoC? And How Does It Affect Your Privacy?

Wed, 26 May 2021 06:20:11 -0000

There's a battle raging over how advertisers can target us on the web—or whether they should be able to target us at all.

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I’m Not a Robot! So Why Won’t Captchas Believe Me?

Tue, 25 May 2021 06:20:10 -0000

If clicking crosswalks makes your blood boil, you’re not alone. Fortunately, there are some tips that make solving those challenges way less frustrating.

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Twitter's Tip Jar Privacy Fiasco Was Entirely Avoidable

Mon, 24 May 2021 06:20:14 -0000

Sending its users to PayPal has created all sorts of problems that Twitter should have caught ahead of time.

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Google's Grand Plan to Eradicate Cookies Is Crumbling

Thu, 20 May 2021 06:20:11 -0000

Regulators in the EU and competitors have raised concerns about the company's proposals to rewrite the rules of online advertising.

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An Ambitious Plan to Tackle Ransomware Faces Long Odds

Wed, 19 May 2021 06:20:11 -0000

A task force counting Amazon, Cisco, and the FBI among its members has proposed a framework to solve one of cybersecurity's biggest problems. Good luck.

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Feds Arrest an Alleged $336M Bitcoin-Laundering Kingpin

Tue, 18 May 2021 06:20:11 -0000

The alleged administrator of Bitcoin Fog kept the dark web service running for 10 years before the IRS caught up with him.

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The New iOS Update Lets You Stop Ads From Tracking You—So Do It

Mon, 17 May 2021 06:20:14 -0000

Facebook and other advertisers fought the move, but App Tracking Transparency is finally here.

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AirDrop Is Leaking Email Addresses and Phone Numbers

Fri, 14 May 2021 06:20:28 -0000

Apple has known about the flaw since 2019 but has yet to acknowledge or fix it.

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Hackers Used ‘Mind-Blowing’ Bug to Sneak Past macOS Safeguards

Thu, 13 May 2021 06:20:27 -0000

The vulnerability was patched Monday, but hackers had already used it to spread malware.

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VPN Hacks Are a Slow-Motion Disaster

Wed, 12 May 2021 06:20:27 -0000

Recent spying attacks against Pulse Secure VPN are just the latest example of a long-simmering cybersecurity meltdown.

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Apple’s Ransomware Mess Is the Future of Online Extortion

Tue, 11 May 2021 06:20:23 -0000

This week, hackers stole confidential schematics from a third-party supplier and demanded $50 million not to release them.

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A Clubhouse Bug Let People Lurk in Rooms Invisibly

Mon, 10 May 2021 06:20:29 -0000

Â The vulnerabilities opened the door to “ghosts” hiding in and disrupting rooms, where moderators would be unable to mute them.

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Palestinian Hackers Tricked Victims Into Installing iOS Spyware

Fri, 07 May 2021 06:20:25 -0000

The groups used social engineering techniques on Facebook to direct targets to a wide range of malware, including custom tools.

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A New Facebook Bug Exposes Millions of Email Addresses

Thu, 06 May 2021 06:20:29 -0000

A recently discovered vulnerability discloses user email addresses even when they’re set to private.

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The Biggest Security Threats to the US Are the Hardest to Define

Wed, 05 May 2021 06:20:32 -0000

In a Senate briefing, the heads of the major intelligence agencies warned the public about dangers that offer no easy solutions.

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100 Million More IoT Devices Are Exposed—and They Won't Be the Last

Tue, 04 May 2021 06:20:26 -0000

The Name:Wreck flaws in TCP/IP are the latest in a series of vulnerabilities with global implications.

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US Sanctions on Russia Rewrite Cyberespionage's Rules

Mon, 03 May 2021 06:20:28 -0000

The US has sent a loud message to Moscow—though what it's saying isn’t exactly clear.

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The FBI Takes a Drastic Step to Fight China’s Hacking Spree

Fri, 30 Apr 2021 06:20:22 -0000

The agency's approach to protecting vulnerable victims of the recent Hafnium attack manages to be at once controversial and refreshingly restrained.Â

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Facebook Had Years to Fix the Flaw That Leaked 500M Users' Data

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 06:20:24 -0000

Software makers can't catch every bug every time, but Facebook had ample warning about the privacy problems with its “contact import” feature.

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Internet Shutdown Is an Act of ‘Vast Self-Harm’

Wed, 28 Apr 2021 06:20:23 -0000

On Friday the military junta shut off connectivity across the country. There’s no sign of when it will return.

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A Far-Right Extremist Allegedly Plotted to Blow Up Amazon Data Centers

Tue, 27 Apr 2021 06:20:23 -0000

The FBI arrested the suspect in Texas after he purchased explosives from an undercover agent.

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Russia May Have Found a New Way to Censor the Internet

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 06:20:22 -0000

In an attempt to silence Twitter, the Kremlin appears to have developed novel techniques to restrict online content.

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Twitch Will Act on ‘Serious’ Offenses That Happen Off-Platform

Fri, 23 Apr 2021 06:20:24 -0000

The new policy holds streamers to account for what happens on other services and in real life.

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Hackers Are Exploiting Discord and Slack Links to Serve Up Malware

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 06:20:18 -0000

Beware of links from platforms that got big during quarantine.

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Signal Adds a Payments Feature—With a Privacy-Focused Cryptocurrency

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 06:20:22 -0000

The encrypted messaging app is integrating support for MobileCoin in a bid to keep up with the features offered by its more mainstream rivals.

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The UK Is Trying to Stop Facebook's End-to-End Encryption

Mon, 19 Apr 2021 06:20:18 -0000

The government's latest attack is aimed at discouraging the company from following through with its planned rollout across platforms.Â

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The Opportunities—and Obstacles—for Women at NSA and Cyber Command

Fri, 16 Apr 2021 06:20:23 -0000

WIRED spoke with three women working in cybersecurity in the US intelligence committee about the progress of recent years and the work that remains.

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The Threat to the Water Supply Is Real—and Only Getting Worse

Thu, 15 Apr 2021 06:20:23 -0000

An ex-employee allegedly tampered with a Kansas water system. It was too easy, and it's happening too often.

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How to Keep Nearby Strangers from Sending You Files

Mon, 12 Apr 2021 06:20:25 -0000

Sharing is caring—except when it's an unwelcome photo from a rando on the subway. Here's how to lock down your phone and computer.

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The Dark Web Is Teeming With Vaccine Listings Right Now

Fri, 09 Apr 2021 06:20:23 -0000

Vendors are cashing in on people desperate to leapfrog the line—or falsely certify that they got the shot.

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Facebook Moves Against ‘Evil Eye’ Hackers Targeting Uyghurs

Thu, 08 Apr 2021 06:20:22 -0000

The company’s investigation into a Chinese espionage campaign took researchers beyond Facebook’s own platforms.

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‘Browser Isolation’ Takes On Entrenched Web Threats

Wed, 07 Apr 2021 06:20:21 -0000

Cloudflare says it’s possible to build a version of the notoriously slow and buggy tool without compromising on speed.

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The Peculiar Ransomware Piggybacking Off of China’s Big Hack

Tue, 06 Apr 2021 06:20:23 -0000

DearCry is the first attack to use the same Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities, but its lack of sophistication lessens the threat.

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A SpaceX Engineer's Dark Web Insider Trading Sparks an SEC First

Mon, 05 Apr 2021 06:20:24 -0000

“MillionaireMike” allegedly ran a stock tip scam that earned him $27,000 in bitcoin payments.

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With Spectre Still Lurking, Google Looks to Protect the Web

Fri, 02 Apr 2021 06:20:21 -0000

To show how browsers can guard against the speculative execution bug, Google security researchers have shown how an attack would work.

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Facebook's ‘Red Team X’ Hunts Bugs Beyond the Social Network's Walls

Thu, 01 Apr 2021 06:20:23 -0000

The internal hacking team has spent the last year looking for vulnerabilities in the products the company uses, which could in turn make the whole internet safer.

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Foreign Meddling Flooded the 2020 Election—but Not by Hackers

Wed, 31 Mar 2021 06:20:22 -0000

A new ODNI report shows how extensive Russian and Iranian influence operations were, but it doesn’t mention a single hack-and-leak incident.Â

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Apple Bent the Rules for Russia—and Other Countries Will Take Note

Tue, 30 Mar 2021 06:20:22 -0000

Russian iPhone buyers will soon be prompted to install software developed in that country, setting a precedent that other authoritarian governments may follow.

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The UK Is Secretly Testing a Controversial Web Snooping Tool

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 06:20:22 -0000

The country passed its Investigatory Powers Act in 2016. Now, it's building what could be the most powerful data collection system used by any democratic nation.Â

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Netflix's Password-Sharing Crackdown Has a Silver Lining

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 06:20:21 -0000

The streaming service is making account owners enter two-factor codes in a limited test. That's … actually not so bad.

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How to Export Your Passwords From LastPass

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 06:20:24 -0000

The popular security service is severely limiting its free tier starting March 16. If you’d like to move your passwords to another manager, here’s how.

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It’s Open Season for Microsoft Exchange Hacks

Tue, 23 Mar 2021 06:20:24 -0000

A patch for the vulnerabilities China exploited has been released. Now, criminal groups are going to reverse engineer it—if they haven’t already.

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Gab's CTO Introduced a Critical Vulnerability to the Site

Mon, 22 Mar 2021 06:20:24 -0000

A review of the open source code shows an account under the executive's name made a mistake that could lead to the kind of breach reported this weekend.Â

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‘Retaliation’ for Russia's SolarWinds Spying Isn't the Answer

Fri, 19 Mar 2021 06:20:24 -0000

It will be hard pointing to a specific line the Kremlin crossed that the US hasn't crossed as well.

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Chinese Hacking Spree Hit an ‘Astronomical’ Number of Victims

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 06:20:23 -0000

A single group appears to have infiltrated tens of thousands of Microsoft Exchange servers in an ongoing onslaught.

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The Accellion Breach Keeps Getting Worse—and More Expensive

Wed, 17 Mar 2021 06:20:20 -0000

What started as a few vulnerabilities in firewall equipment has snowballed into a global extortion spree.

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Privacy-First Browser Brave Is Launching a Search Engine

Mon, 15 Mar 2021 06:20:22 -0000

Unlike Google, Brave Search won’t track or profile people who use it.Â

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Thousands of Android and iOS Apps Leak Data From the Cloud

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 06:20:21 -0000

It's the digital equivalent of leaving your windows or doors open when you leave the house—and in some cases, leaving them open all the time.

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China and Russia's Spying Sprees Will Take Years to Unpack

Thu, 11 Mar 2021 06:20:23 -0000

The full extent of the Solarwinds hack and Hafnium's attack on Microsoft Exchange Server may never be known.

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Microsoft's Dream of Decentralized IDs Enters the Real World

Wed, 10 Mar 2021 06:20:26 -0000

The company will launch a public preview of its identification platform this spring—and has already tested it at the UK's National Health Service.

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Twitch's First Transparency Report Is Here—and Long Overdue

Mon, 08 Mar 2021 06:20:27 -0000

The decade-old streaming platform has for the first time detailed its efforts to safeguard its user base in one place.

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Clubhouse's Security and Privacy Lag Behind Its Explosive Growth

Fri, 05 Mar 2021 06:20:16 -0000

The platform has promised to do better after a string of incidents. But the hardest part might be managing user expectations.

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Hackers Tied to Russia's GRU Targeted the US Grid for Years, Researchers Warn

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 06:20:22 -0000

A Sandworm-adjacent group has successfully breached US critical infrastructure a handful of times, according to new findings from the security firm Dragos.

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China Hijacked an NSA Hacking Tool in 2014—and Used It for Years

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 06:20:22 -0000

The hackers used the agency’s EpMe exploit to attack Windows devices years before the Shadow Brokers leaked the agency’s zero-day arsenal online.

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Apple Offers Its Closest Look Yet at iOS and MacOS Security

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 06:20:23 -0000

In its latest Platform Security Guide, Cupertino raised the curtain on the critical features that protect against hackers.

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Malware Is Now Targeting Apple’s New M1 Processor

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 06:20:23 -0000

Two distinct strains of malware have already adjusted to the new silicon just months after its debut.

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Cyberpunk 2077 Maker Was Hit With a Ransomware Attack—and Won't Pay Up

Fri, 26 Feb 2021 06:20:23 -0000

CD Projekt Red's list of woes gets longer, as hackers claim to have stolen the source code for their most popular games.Â

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Feds Indict North Korean Hackers for Years of Heists and Scams

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 06:20:26 -0000

The three men are allegedly part of a group that tried to steal $1.3 billion in an extended—and ongoing—cybercrime spree.

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A Windows Defender Vulnerability Lurked Undetected for 12 Years

Wed, 24 Feb 2021 06:20:28 -0000

Microsoft has finally patched the bug in its antivirus program after researchers spotted it last fall.

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France Ties Russia's Sandworm to a Multiyear Hacking Spree

Tue, 23 Feb 2021 06:20:28 -0000

A French security agency warns that the destructively minded group has exploited an IT monitoring tool from Centreon.

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Parler Says It's Back

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 06:20:24 -0000

The platform was kicked off Amazon's servers. Now it says it's no longer relies on "Big Tech" for its infrastructure.

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A Barcode Scanner App With Millions of Downloads Goes Rogue

Fri, 19 Feb 2021 06:20:28 -0000

After an update in December, the app began infecting Android devices, bombarding users with ads on their default browser.

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Covid-19 Vaccine Scams Spread Under Facebook and Telegram's Watch

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 06:20:31 -0000

Don’t use an iTunes gift card to purchase doses of the vaccine online.

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A Coordinated Takedown Targets 'OGUser' Account Thieves

Wed, 17 Feb 2021 06:20:28 -0000

Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok have all taken action against the hacker community in recent days.

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Gaming Sites Are Still Letting Streamers Profit From Hate

Tue, 16 Feb 2021 06:20:26 -0000

WIRED has found dozens of far-right and white supremacist figures monetizing their livestreams through “donation management services” Streamlabs and StreamElements.

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Why ‘Inside Job’ Zoombombs Are So Hard to Stop

Mon, 15 Feb 2021 06:20:33 -0000

Researchers have found that most calls to disrupt videoconferences originate with the participants, especially in high schools and colleges.

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A Second SolarWinds Hack Deepens Third-Party Software Fears

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 06:20:30 -0000

It appears that not only Russia but also China targeted the company, a reminder of the many ways interconnectedness can go wrong.

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Facebook Ad Services Let Anyone Target US Military Personnel

Thu, 11 Feb 2021 06:20:29 -0000

Researchers warn that an advertising platform with categories like “Army” and “United States Air Force Security Sources” could be abused.

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Apple Fixes One of the iPhone's Most Pressing Security Risks

Wed, 10 Feb 2021 06:20:27 -0000

By hardening iMessage in iOS 14, the company has effectively cut off what had been an increasingly popular line of attack.

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Cops Disrupt Emotet, the Internet's ‘Most Dangerous Malware’

Tue, 09 Feb 2021 06:20:24 -0000

A global operation has taken down the notorious botnet in a blow to cybercriminals worldwide.

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This Encrypted Gun Registry Might Bridge a Partisan Divide

Mon, 08 Feb 2021 06:20:28 -0000

Researchers from Brown University have developed a system that could keep track of firearms while preserving privacy.

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Flash Is Dead—but Not Gone

Fri, 05 Feb 2021 06:20:27 -0000

Zombie versions of Adobe’s troubled software can still cause problems in systems around the world.

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Fleeing WhatsApp for Better Privacy? Don't Turn to Telegram

Thu, 04 Feb 2021 06:37:29 -0000

Because the chat app doesn't encrypt conversations by default—or at all for group chats—security professionals often warn against it.Â

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North Korea Targets—and Dupes—a Slew of Cybersecurity Pros

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 06:20:28 -0000

The sweeping campaign took advantage of the collaborative spirit among researchers, with an unknown number of victims.

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Parler Finds a Reprieve in Russia—but Not a Solution

Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:20:23 -0000

The far-right platform still hasn't found a US-based home. Where it lands could have serious consequences for its users' privacy.

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Chrome and Edge Want to Help Solve Your Password Problems

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 06:20:26 -0000

The line between browsers and password managers is blurring.

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The Truth About North Korea's Ultra-Lockdown Against Covid-19

Fri, 29 Jan 2021 06:20:22 -0000

The country has turned inward more than ever, leaving the true impact of the pandemic a mystery.

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The SolarWinds Hackers Used Tactics Other Groups Will Copy

Thu, 28 Jan 2021 06:30:31 -0000

The supply chain threat was just the beginning.

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Big Tech Can’t Ban Its Way Out of This

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 06:20:24 -0000

Platforms are scrambling to avoid being used by right-wing extremists targeting the inauguration. But the seeds of this crisis were sown long ago.Â

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This Site Published Every Face from Parler's Capitol Riot Videos

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 06:20:27 -0000

Faces of the Riot used open source software to detect, extract, and deduplicate every face from the 827 videos taken from the insurrection on January 6.

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Anti-Secrecy Activists Publish a Trove of Ransomware Victims' Data

Mon, 25 Jan 2021 06:20:26 -0000

WikiLeaks successor DDoSecrets has amassed a controversial new collection of corporate secrets and is sharing them in the name of transparency.

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How Law Enforcement Gets Around Your Smartphone's Encryption

Fri, 22 Jan 2021 06:20:27 -0000

New research has dug into the openings iOS and Android security provide for anyone with the right tools.Â

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The SolarWinds Hackers Shared Tricks With a Notorious Russian Spy Group

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 06:20:22 -0000

Security researchers have found links between the attackers and Turla, a sophisticated team suspected of operating out of Moscow's FSB intelligence agency.

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WhatsApp Has Shared Your Data With Facebook for Years, Actually

Wed, 20 Jan 2021 06:20:24 -0000

A pop-up notification has alerted the messaging app's users to a practice that's been in place sine 2016.

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Ticketmaster Pays Up for Hacking a Rival Company

Tue, 19 Jan 2021 06:29:37 -0000

Employees admitted to using stolen passwords and URL guessing to access confidential data.

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How Amazon Sidewalk Works—and Why You May Want to Turn It Off

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 06:20:29 -0000

The premise is convenient. But the e-commerce giant's privacy track record isn't exactly inspiring.

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Post-Riot, the Capitol Hill IT Staff Faces a Security Mess

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 06:20:26 -0000

Wednesday's insurrection could have exposed Congressional data and devices in ways that have yet to be appreciated.

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The UK Denies Julian Assange's Extradition, Citing Suicide Risk

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 06:20:26 -0000

The ruling is based not on whether the Wikileaks founder violated the Espionage Act, but on the implications of subjecting him to the US carceral state.

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Ransomware Is Headed Down a Dire Path

Wed, 13 Jan 2021 06:20:27 -0000

2020 was a great year for ransomware gangs. For hospitals, schools, municipal governments, and everyone else, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

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The Worst Hacks of 2020, a Surreal Pandemic Year

Tue, 12 Jan 2021 06:20:26 -0000

From ransomware schemes to supply chain attacks, this year melded classic hacks with extraordinary circumstances.

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How Your Digital Trails Wind Up in the Police’s Hands

Mon, 11 Jan 2021 06:20:32 -0000

Phone calls. Web searches. Location tracks. Smart speaker requests. They’ve become crucial tools for law enforcement, while users often are unaware.Â

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6 Privacy-Focused Alternatives to the Apps You Use Every Day

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 06:20:26 -0000

From messaging to maps, many popular apps slurp up your data to sell you ads. There’s a better way.

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Apple's App 'Privacy Labels' Are Here—and a Big Step Forward

Thu, 07 Jan 2021 06:20:25 -0000

It remains unclear how effective the warnings will be, but the attempt alone is a promising development.

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No One Knows How Deep Russia's Hacking Rampage Goes

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 06:20:26 -0000

A supply chain attack against IT company SolarWinds has exposed as many as 18,000 companies to Cozy Bear's attacks.

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The Biden Administration Will Have Its Hands Full With Russia

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 06:20:28 -0000

After four years of Trump kowtowing to Putin, the US has its work cut out for it.

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A Massive Fraud Operation Stole Millions From Online Bank Accounts

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 06:20:25 -0000

The crooks used emulators to mimic the phones of more than 16,000 customers whose mobile bank accounts had been compromised.

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2020 Shows the Danger of a Decapitated Cyber Regime

Wed, 30 Dec 2020 06:20:28 -0000

Trump's White House has long been AWOL on cybersecurity. That lack of oversight almost seemed to be working—until the SolarWinds hack.

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How to Understand the Russia Hack Fallout

Tue, 29 Dec 2020 06:20:32 -0000

Not all SolarWinds victims are created equal.Â

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The Christchurch Shooter and YouTube's Radicalization Trap

Thu, 24 Dec 2020 06:20:29 -0000

The platform has gotten better about stamping out extremist content. But researchers say its policies and algorithms are still too opaque.

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Hold Everything: Stormtroopers Have Discovered Tactics

Wed, 23 Dec 2020 06:20:28 -0000

In The Mandalorian, Imperial troops have finally figured out how to do more than charge straight ahead.

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Russia's FireEye Hack Is a Statement—but Not a Catastrophe

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 06:20:24 -0000

The fallout from the attack may not be as dire as it first sounds.

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Critical Flaws in Millions of IoT Devices May Never Get Fixed

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 06:20:24 -0000

Amnesia:33 is the latest in a long line of vulnerabilities that affect countless embedded devices.

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The NSA Warns That Russia Is Attacking Remote Work Platforms

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 06:20:22 -0000

A vulnerability in VMWare has prompted a warning that companies—and government agencies—need to patch as soon as possible.

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This ‘Magical Bug’ Exposed Any iPhone in a Hacker's Wi-Fi Range

Thu, 17 Dec 2020 06:20:23 -0000

A Google researcher found flaws in Apple's AWDL protocol that would have allowed for a complete device takeover.

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The Internet’s Most Notorious Botnet Has an Alarming New Trick

Wed, 16 Dec 2020 06:40:19 -0000

The hackers behind TrickBot have begun probing victim PCs for vulnerable firmware, which would let them persist on devices undetected.Â

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Hackers Are Targeting the Covid-19 Vaccine ‘Cold Chain’

Tue, 15 Dec 2020 06:20:27 -0000

As vaccines await US approval, a sophisticated global phishing campaign has tried to harvest credentials from companies involved in their distribution.

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A Broken Piece of Internet Backbone Might Finally Get Fixed

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 06:20:25 -0000

Efforts to secure the Border Gateway Protocol have picked up critical momentum, including a big assist from Google.

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7 Simple Ways to Make Your Android Phone More Secure

Fri, 11 Dec 2020 06:20:28 -0000

Here's how to lock down your data and stop others from snooping on your personal information.Â

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Hacker Lexicon: What Is the Signal Encryption Protocol?

Thu, 10 Dec 2020 06:20:26 -0000

As the Signal protocol becomes the industry standard, it's worth understanding what sets it apart from other forms of end-to-end encrypted messaging.

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It’s Time to Stop Sharing Your Passwords With Your Partner

Wed, 09 Dec 2020 06:20:25 -0000

Go ahead, give them the keys to your heart—but anything more could make a cybersecurity mess.

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Trump’s Election Attack Ends December 14—Whether He Knows It or Not

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 06:20:24 -0000

Despite the Trump campaign’s fight to overturn the election, the wheels of American democracy keep turning.Â

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Google Is Testing End-to-End Encryption in Android Messages

Mon, 07 Dec 2020 06:20:27 -0000

For now, the security measure will be available only to people using the beta version of the app.

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Ghostery’s New Search Engine Will Be Entirely Ad-Free

Fri, 04 Dec 2020 06:20:29 -0000

The tracker-blocking company will soon launch a privacy-friendly desktop browser as well.

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By the Way, Donald Trump Could Still Launch Nuclear Weapons at Any Time

Thu, 03 Dec 2020 06:20:23 -0000

The president's responsibility for the US nuclear arsenal is a Cold War anachronism. The Trump era shows why it needs reform.

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Telegram Still Hasn’t Removed an AI Bot That’s Abusing Women

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 06:20:23 -0000

A deepfake bot has been generating explicit, non-consensual images on the platform. The researchers who found it say their warnings have been ignored.Â

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Forget Imposters. Among Us Is a Playground for Hackers

Tue, 01 Dec 2020 06:20:28 -0000

The blockbuster game of deception has security holes that let cheaters run wild.Â

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Microsoft Is Making a Secure PC Chip—With Intel and AMD's Help

Thu, 26 Nov 2020 06:20:23 -0000

The Pluton security processor will give the software giant an even more prominent role in locking down Windows hardware.

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The iOS Covid App Ecosystem Has Become a Privacy Minefield

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 06:20:25 -0000

An analysis of nearly 500 Covid-related apps worldwide shows major differences in how much data they expect you to give up.

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7 Simple Tech Tips to Keep Your Family Safe This Holiday

Tue, 24 Nov 2020 06:20:30 -0000

Does your great-aunt Winifred ask for tech support every year? Even if you aren't traveling this year, send your loved ones this advice to show you care.

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The OS Big Sur Launch Might Have Slowed Down Macs Everywhere

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 10:54:19 -0000

The issues affected users that didn't upgrade their software, and other Apple services, too.Â

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How to Use Parental Controls in Your Google, Apple, and Microsoft Account

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 06:20:25 -0000

Each of the big three offers a wealth of options to limit screen time, find lost devices, and more.

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The FBI Says ‘Boogaloo’ Extremists Bought 3D-Printed Machine Gun Parts

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 09:57:07 -0000

A criminal complaint alleges that a West Virginia man disguised the plastic components as wall hangers and sold hundreds of them online.

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WhatsApp Using Up Your Phone Storage? Here’s How to Fix It

Wed, 18 Nov 2020 06:20:22 -0000

It's time to do something about those photos and videos automatically saving to your camera roll.

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An Engineer Gets 9 Years for Stealing $10M From Microsoft

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 06:20:21 -0000

The defendant tried—and failed—to use bitcoin to cover his tracks.

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The GOP Keeps Proving There's No Election Fraud

Mon, 16 Nov 2020 06:20:25 -0000

Through numerous legal and other challenges, the Trump campaign and its allies have consistently undermined their argument.

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Feds Seize $1 Billion in Stolen Silk Road Bitcoins

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:20:23 -0000

A hacker identified only as Individual X had been sitting on a cryptocurrency goldmine for seven years before the IRS came knocking.

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WhatsApp Is Adding Disappearing Messages—With Some Limits

Thu, 12 Nov 2020 06:20:24 -0000

The popular encrypted messaging app now lets you automatically make chats vanish after a week, but look out for a few caveats.

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Beware a New Google Drive Scam Landing in Inboxes

Wed, 11 Nov 2020 06:20:21 -0000

Scammers are luring people into Google Docs in an attempt to get them to visit potentially malicious websites.

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Zoom Finally Has End-to-End Encryption. Here's How to Use It

Tue, 10 Nov 2020 06:20:26 -0000

You can lock down your meetings like never before—even if you have to give up a few features to do so.

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The US Sanctions Russians For Potentially ‘Fatal’ Triton Malware

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 06:20:19 -0000

The message is meant to deter any similar attack against US infrastructure.

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11/6 All the Ways Slack Tracks You—and How to Stop It

Fri, 06 Nov 2020 09:13:41 -0000

From changing privacy settings to putting limits on those infuriating notifications, here’s how to take control of Slack.

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How 30 Lines of Code Blew Up a 27-Ton Generator

Thu, 05 Nov 2020 06:20:22 -0000

A secret experiment in 2007 proved that hackers could devastate power grid equipment beyond repair—with a file no bigger than a gif.

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New Research Reveals the Hidden Downsides of Link Previews

Wed, 04 Nov 2020 06:20:19 -0000

The feature is convenient, but it can also leak sensitive data, consume bandwidth, and drain batteries. And some sites are worse than others.

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The Russian Hackers Playing 'Chekov's Gun' With US Infrastructure

Tue, 03 Nov 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Berserk Bear has had plenty of opportunity to cause serious trouble. So why hasn't it yet?

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A Hacker Is Threatening to Leak Patients' Therapy Notes

Mon, 02 Nov 2020 06:20:20 -0000

An extortionist has turned a breach of Finland's Vastaamo mental health services provider into a nightmare for victims.

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How to Clean Up Your Digital History

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 06:20:23 -0000

There are plenty of reasons to declutter your online traces. Here's how to tidy up.

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How to Clean Up Your Digital History

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 06:20:23 -0000

There are plenty of reasons to declutter your online traces. Here's how to tidy up.

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Facebook Promises Privacy Reform. Critics Aren't Convinced

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 06:23:24 -0000

In an interview with WIRED, Facebook's chief privacy officers argue that the company has turned a corner. Again.

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A Deepfake Porn Bot Is Being Used to Abuse Thousands of Women

Wed, 28 Oct 2020 06:20:25 -0000

An AI tool that ‘removes’ items of clothing from photos has targeted more than 100,000 women, some of whom appear to be under the age of 18.

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US Indicts Sandworm, Russia's Most Destructive Cyberwar Unit

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 06:20:22 -0000

The Department of Justice has named and charged six men for allegedly carrying out many of the most costly cyberattacks in history.

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Twitter's 'Hacked Materials' Rule Tries to Thread an Impossible Needle

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 06:20:25 -0000

The company's flip-flopping on the policy after banning a shady New York Post story highlights the challenges facing social media in 2020.

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Internet Freedom Has Taken a Hit During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Fri, 23 Oct 2020 06:20:24 -0000

From arrests to surveillance, governments are using the novel coronavirus as cover for a crackdown on digital liberty.

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A Trickbot Assault Shows US Military Hackers' Growing Reach

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 06:20:24 -0000

Despite the operation's short-term effects, it sets new precedents for the scope of Cyber Command's mission.

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Researchers Found 55 Flaws in Apple's Corporate Network

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 06:20:19 -0000

The company has patched the vulnerabilities and paid the team of white-hat hackers $288,000.Â

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Amazon's Latest Gimmicks Are Pushing the Limits of Privacy

Tue, 20 Oct 2020 06:20:20 -0000

Privacy advocates warn that the Ring Always Home Cam and Amazon One both normalize aggressive new forms of data collection. Â

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Split-Second ‘Phantom’ Images Can Fool Tesla’s Autopilot

Mon, 19 Oct 2020 06:33:36 -0000

Researchers found they could stop a Tesla by flashing a few frames of a stop sign for less than half a second on an internet-connected billboard.

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How Google's Android Keyboard Keeps ‘Smart Replies’ Private

Fri, 16 Oct 2020 06:28:55 -0000

The latest Gboard feature needs to know as much as possible about your digital life to work—but doesn't share that data with Google.

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A Poker Pro Accused of Cheating Wants $330M in Damages

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 06:20:24 -0000

Mike Postle claims he was the victim of an elaborate online campaign to tar him as a fraud—and he’s suing a dozen defendants.

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A China-Linked Group Repurposed Hacking Team’s Stealthy Spyware

Wed, 14 Oct 2020 06:20:21 -0000

The tool attacks a device’s UEFI firmware—which makes it especially hard to detect and destroy.

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Facebook Shut Down Malware That Hijacked Accounts to Run Ads

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 06:20:20 -0000

Hackers spent $4 million of victims' money to buy ads for diet pills, fake designer handbags, and more.

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The Strangest Election Scenario Runs Through Georgia

Mon, 12 Oct 2020 07:48:47 -0000

There’s a small but real possibility that we won’t know which party controls the Senate until 2021, thanks to a special election and a unique state requirement.

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Facebook Busts Russian Disinfo Networks as US Election Looms

Fri, 09 Oct 2020 06:20:22 -0000

The campaigns primarily targeted countries outside the US. But the same mechanisms could be used in “hack and leak” operations like those that roiled the 2016 campaign.

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A Ransomware Attack Has Struck a Major US Hospital Chain

Thu, 08 Oct 2020 06:20:24 -0000

“All computers are completely shut down,” one Universal Health Services employee told WIRED.

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The Best Chrome Extensions to Prevent Creepy Web Tracking

Wed, 07 Oct 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Ad trackers follow you everywhere online—but it doesn’t have to be that way.

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A Tip From a Kid Helped Uncover a Slew of Scam Apps

Tue, 06 Oct 2020 06:20:27 -0000

After a girl reported a suspicious TikTok profile, researchers detected aggressive adware in apps that had been downloaded 2.4 million times.

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CryptoHarlem’s Founder Warns Against ‘Digital Stop and Frisk'

Mon, 05 Oct 2020 06:20:22 -0000

On Day 2 of WIRED’s virtual conference, hacker Matt Mitchell cautions that law enforcement routinely trawls social media to surveil protestors.

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The iOS 14 Privacy and Security Features You Should Know

Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:20:21 -0000

The latest update for your iPhone and iPad will make them safer than ever.Â

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179 Arrested in Massive Global Dark Web Takedown

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 06:20:23 -0000

Operation Disruptor is an unprecedented international law enforcement effort, stemming from last year’s seizure of a popular underground bazaar called Wall Street Market.

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Think Twice Before Using Facebook, Google, or Apple to Sign In Everywhere

Wed, 30 Sep 2020 06:20:23 -0000

So-called single sign-on options offer a lot of convenience. But they have downsides that a good old fashioned password manager doesn't.Â

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Gen Z Has a Plan to Save the Election—Starting With the Polls

Tue, 29 Sep 2020 06:20:26 -0000

Poll workers, who skew elderly, are in short supply during the pandemic. Meet some of the young people trying to make up the gap.

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A Patient Dies After a Ransomware Attack Hits a Hospital

Mon, 28 Sep 2020 06:20:21 -0000

The outage resulted in a significant delay in treatment. German authorities are investigating the perpetrators on suspicion of negligent manslaughter.

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CBP Seized OnePlus Buds as ‘Counterfeit’ AirPods. Now It's Doubling Down

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 06:20:23 -0000

The US government has detained thousands of wireless earbuds on suspicion of being fake Apple goods—despite crystal clear branding from an established company.

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The Safest Ways to Log In to Your Computer

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Passwords, key fobs, fingerprints—there are lots of ways to gain access to your laptop or desktop. Here are the best and most secure.

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The Best Privacy-Friendly Alternatives to Google Maps

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 06:20:19 -0000

Google Maps is arguably the easiest mapping service to use, but that doesn't mean it's the most secure.Â

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Russia's Fancy Bear Hackers Are Hitting US Campaign Targets Again

Tue, 22 Sep 2020 06:20:21 -0000

Microsoft has revealed that the GRU hacking group has attacked hundreds of organizations over the last year, many of them tied to the upcoming election.Â

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A Critical Flaw Is Affecting Thousands of WordPress Sites

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 06:20:18 -0000

Hackers have been exploiting the vulnerability, which is now patched: Users should update to File Manager version 6.9 ASAP.

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How to Boost WhatsApp’s Privacy and Better Protect Your Data

Fri, 18 Sep 2020 06:20:20 -0000

The Facebook-owned company has end-to-end encryption by default—but that doesn't mean the service’s settings are as private as they could be.

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Julian Assange Lays Out His Case Against US Extradition

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 06:20:21 -0000

The argument hinges in part on psychiatrists' testimony that Assange is a high suicide risk.

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The Trump Administration Continues to Erode Election Security

Wed, 16 Sep 2020 06:20:21 -0000

The DHS, the DOJ, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence have all had recent controversies that bode poorly for electoral integrity.

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A DHS Official Says He Was Punished for Not Pushing Trump's Agenda

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 06:20:21 -0000

Brian Murphy says he was pressured to alter reports on Russia and white supremacy—and that he was fired for refusing to budge.

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Kids' Smartwatches Are a Security Nightmare Despite Years of Warnings

Mon, 14 Sep 2020 06:20:21 -0000

Five out of six brands tested by researchers would have allowed hackers to track kids—and in some cases eavesdrop on them.

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The FBI Botched Its DNC Hack Warning in 2016—but Says It Won’t Next Time

Fri, 11 Sep 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Facing looming election threats and a ransomware epidemic, the bureau says it has revamped its process for warning hacking victims.

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Apple Accidentally Approved Malware to Run on MacOS

Thu, 10 Sep 2020 06:33:03 -0000

The ubiquitous Shlayer adware has picked up a new trick, slipping past Cupertino's “notarization” defenses for the first time.

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A Former Uber Exec's Indictment Is a Warning Shot

Wed, 09 Sep 2020 06:20:17 -0000

Prosecutors allege that former Uber security chief Joseph Sullivan covered up a major breach, in the first high-profile case of its kind.

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Porn Sites Still Won’t Take Down Nonconsensual Deepfakes

Tue, 08 Sep 2020 06:20:22 -0000

The videos are racking up millions of views. Meanwhile, for victims, the legal options aren’t keeping up with the technology

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How to Protect the Data on Your Laptop

Mon, 07 Sep 2020 06:20:24 -0000

Your laptop is a treasure trove of personal and sensitive information—make sure it's as secure as it can be.

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A New Botnet Is Covertly Targeting Millions of Servers

Fri, 04 Sep 2020 06:20:21 -0000

FritzFrog has been used to try and infiltrate government agencies, banks, telecom companies, and universities across the US and Europe.

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Ransomware Has Gone Corporate. Where Will It End?

Thu, 03 Sep 2020 06:20:26 -0000

The DarkSide operators are just the latest group to adopt a veneer of professionalism—while at the same time escalating the consequences of their attacks.

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Firefox Launched a New Android App to Lure Users From Chrome

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 06:20:21 -0000

Mozilla has rewritten the app to rely on its own infrastructure rather than Google’s. But will its privacy and UI tweaks convince people to make the switch?

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A Tesla Employee Thwarted an Alleged Ransomware Plot

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 06:20:20 -0000

Elon Musk confirmed Thursday night that a ransomware gang had approached a Gigafactory employee with alleged promises of a big payout.Â

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How WeChat Censored the Coronavirus Pandemic

Mon, 31 Aug 2020 06:20:20 -0000

In China, the messaging platform blocked thousands of keywords related to the virus, a new report reveals.

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How Four Brothers Allegedly Fleeced $19 Million From Amazon

Fri, 28 Aug 2020 06:20:19 -0000

The scheme involved 7,000 $94 toothbrushes, according to law enforcement.

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‘DiceKeys’ Creates a Master Password for Life With One Roll

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 06:20:18 -0000

A new kit leaves your cryptographic destiny up to 25 cubes in a plastic box.

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Tired of Gmail? Try a Privacy-First Email Provider

Wed, 26 Aug 2020 06:20:19 -0000

Your inbox holds plenty of sensitive information. Here are some alternatives that put your correspondence under lock and key.

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How Financial Apps Get You to Spend More and Question Less

Tue, 25 Aug 2020 06:20:23 -0000

You should never invest without fully understanding the risks, but tax prep and stock trading services often obfuscate the things you really need to know.

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Steve Bannon, a $25M Border Wall Campaign, and a GoFundMe Gone Bad

Mon, 24 Aug 2020 06:20:24 -0000

We Build the Wall raised millions. Now the DOJ says its operators—including the former Trump aide—skimmed hundreds of thousands off the top.

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ATM Hackers Have Picked Up Some Clever New Tricks

Fri, 21 Aug 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Over the last few years, so-called jackpotting attacks have gotten increasingly sophisticated—while cash machines remain largely the same.

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An Alexa Bug Could Have Exposed Your Voice History to Hackers

Thu, 20 Aug 2020 06:20:19 -0000

Amazon has patched the flaw, but its discovery underscores the importance of locking down your voice assistant interactions.

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How Facebook and Other Sites Manipulate Your Privacy Choices

Wed, 19 Aug 2020 06:20:21 -0000

Social media platforms repeatedly use so-called dark patterns to nudge you toward giving away more of your data.

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Flaws Could Have Exposed Cryptocurrency Exchanges to Hackers

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 06:20:21 -0000

Researchers found troubling bugs in open-source libraries used by financial institutions.Â

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Over a Billion Android Devices Are at Risk of Data Theft

Mon, 17 Aug 2020 06:20:21 -0000

Qualcomm has released a fix for the flaws in its Snapdragon chip, which attackers might exploit to monitor location or render the phone unresponsive.

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The Subtle Tricks Shopping Sites Use to Make You Spend More

Fri, 14 Aug 2020 06:20:25 -0000

Through deceptive designs known as “dark patterns,” online retailers try to nudge you toward purchases you wouldn’t otherwise make.

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An '80s File Format Enabled Stealthy Mac Hacking

Thu, 13 Aug 2020 06:20:21 -0000

The now-patched vulnerability would have let hackers target Microsoft Office using Symbolic Link—a file type that hasn't been in common use in over 30 years.

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Hackers Could Use IoT Botnets to Manipulate Energy Markets

Wed, 12 Aug 2020 06:20:20 -0000

With access to just 50,000 high-wattage smart devices, attackers could make a bundle off of causing minor fluctuations.

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The Quest to Liberate $300K of Bitcoin From an Old ZIP File

Tue, 11 Aug 2020 06:20:21 -0000

The story of a guy who wouldn't let a few quintillion possible decryption keys stand between him and his cryptocurrency.

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Decades-Old Email Flaws Could Let Attackers Mask Their Identities

Mon, 10 Aug 2020 06:20:21 -0000

Researchers found 18 exploits that take advantage of inconsistencies in the email plumbing most people never think about.

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How the Alleged Twitter Hackers Got Caught

Fri, 07 Aug 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Bitcoin payments and IP addresses led investigators to two of the alleged perpetrators in just over two weeks.

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How to Spot—and Avoid—Dark Patterns on the Web

Thu, 06 Aug 2020 06:20:21 -0000

You've seen them before: the UX ploys designed to trick you into spending money, or make it nearly impossible to unsubscribe. Here's what to look out for.

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Hackers Broke Into Real News Sites to Plant Fake Stories

Wed, 05 Aug 2020 06:20:23 -0000

A disinfo operation broke into the content management systems of Eastern European media outlets in a campaign to spread misinformation about NATO.

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AI Helped Uncover Chinese Boats Hiding in North Korean Waters

Tue, 04 Aug 2020 06:20:22 -0000

A combination of technologies helped scientists discover a potentially illegal fishing operation involving more than 900 vessels.Â

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Children Stream on Twitch—Where Potential Predators Find Them

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 06:20:23 -0000

A WIRED investigation found dozens of channels belong to children apparently under 13, and anonymous chat participants sending inappropriate messages their way.

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A Cyberattack on Garmin Disrupted More Than Workouts

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 06:20:23 -0000

A ransomware hit and subsequent outage caused problems in the company's aviation services, including flight planning and mapping.

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Russia's GRU Hackers Hit US Government and Energy Targets

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 06:20:25 -0000

A previously unreported Fancy Bear campaign persisted for well over a year—and indicates that the notorious group has broadened its focus.

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Apple's Hackable iPhones Are Finally Here

Wed, 29 Jul 2020 06:20:20 -0000

Last year, Apple announced a special device just for hackers. The phone—for approved researchers only—has started to ship.

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Thieves Are Emptying ATMs Using a New Form of Jackpotting

Tue, 28 Jul 2020 06:20:32 -0000

The new hardware-based attack, which has targeted machines across Europe, can yield a stream of cash for the attacker.

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Twitter Cracks Down on QAnon. Your Move, Facebook

Mon, 27 Jul 2020 06:20:23 -0000

Twitter's new policy won't make the conspiracy group disappear. But experts say it could dramatically reduce its ability to spread.

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Russia's Latest Hacking Target: Covid-19 Vaccine Projects

Fri, 24 Jul 2020 06:20:20 -0000

Officials in the three countries believe a state-linked group is trying to steal intellectual property and information about potential vaccine candidates.Â

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A New Map Shows the Inescapable Creep of Surveillance

Thu, 23 Jul 2020 06:20:23 -0000

The Atlas of Surveillance shows which tech law enforcement agencies across the country have acquired. It's a sobering look at the present-day panopticon.

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‘DDoS-For-Hire’ Is Fueling a New Wave of Attacks

Wed, 22 Jul 2020 06:20:16 -0000

Turf wars are heating up over the routers that fuel distributed denial of service attacks—and cybermercenaries are running rampant.

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Hack Brief: Microsoft Warns of a 17-Year-Old ‘Wormable’ Bug

Tue, 21 Jul 2020 06:20:21 -0000

The SigRed vulnerability exists in Windows DNS, used by practically every small and medium-sized organization in the world.

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Google Moves to Secures the Cloud From Itself

Mon, 20 Jul 2020 06:20:21 -0000

Confidential Virtual Machines allows Google Cloud Services Customers to keep data secret—even when it's being actively processed.

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Microsoft Halts a Global Fraud Campaign That Targeted CEOs

Fri, 17 Jul 2020 06:20:19 -0000

A sophisticated scheme was designed to trick businesses in more than 60 countries into wiring large sums of money to attackers.

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The Super Smash Bros. Community Reckons With Sexual Misconduct Allegations

Thu, 16 Jul 2020 06:24:15 -0000

Dozens of people have come forward over the past week, many pointing to a culture that they say enabled rampant predatory behavior.Â

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Amazon Bans Employees From Using TikTok on Their Phones

Wed, 15 Jul 2020 06:20:22 -0000

US lawmakers have repeatedly raised security concerns over the app's Chinese ownership. Are US businesses next?Â

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The Worst Hacks and Breaches of 2020 So Far

Tue, 14 Jul 2020 06:20:23 -0000

Iran, China, Russia—the gang was all here in the first half of this year. Oh, and also an unprecedented pandemic that’s been a boon for hackers.

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DoNotPay Unsubscribes You From Spam—and Tries to Get You Paid

Mon, 13 Jul 2020 06:20:22 -0000

There's finally a way to get off of email lists with your privacy intact.

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Hong Kong's Security Law Puts Big Tech at a Crossroads

Fri, 10 Jul 2020 06:20:19 -0000

As China exerts more power over the city, companies like Facebook and Google have stopped handing over data—for now.

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Looks Like Russian Hackers Are on an Email Scam Spree

Thu, 09 Jul 2020 06:20:23 -0000

A group dubbed "Cosmic Lynx" uses surprisingly sophisticated methods—and targets big game.

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Hack Brief: Hackers Are Exploiting a 5-Alarm Bug in Networking Equipment

Wed, 08 Jul 2020 06:20:21 -0000

For companies that haven't patched their BIG-IP products, it may already be too late.

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Schools Already Struggled With Cybersecurity. Then Came Covid-19

Tue, 07 Jul 2020 06:20:19 -0000

A lack of dedicated funding and resources made it hard to keep data secure—and that was before classes moved almost entirely online.

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New Mac Ransomware Is Even More Sinister Than It Appears

Mon, 06 Jul 2020 06:20:21 -0000

The malware known as ThiefQuest or EvilQuest also has spyware capabilities that allow it to grab passwords and credit card numbers.

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Google Will Delete Your Data by Default—in 18 Months

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 06:20:19 -0000

Starting today, the search giant will make a previously opt-in auto-delete feature the norm.Â

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Security News This Week: Julian Assange Faces New Conspiracy Allegations

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 06:25:14 -0000

Plus: Evil Corp hacking, an anti-encryption bill, and more of the week's top security news.

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Hacker Lexicon: What Is a Side Channel Attack?

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 06:20:19 -0000

Computers constantly give off more information than you might realize—which hackers can use to pry out their secrets.

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How Thousands of Misplaced Emails Took Over This Engineer's Inbox

Tue, 30 Jun 2020 06:20:21 -0000

Kenton Varda gets dozens of messages a day from Spanish-speakers around the world, all thanks to a Gmail address he registered 16 years ago.

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A Report Blames ‘CIA Failures’ for the Agency's Worst Hack

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 06:25:24 -0000

A series of WikiLeaks disclosures that exposed a trove of the intelligence organization's secrets could have been avoided, a task force found.

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Zoom Reverses Course and Promises End-to-End Encryption for All Users

Fri, 26 Jun 2020 06:20:19 -0000

The video conferencing platform had previously said that only paid accounts would get the feature—a move privacy advocates roundly decried.Â

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The Russian Disinfo Operation You Never Heard About

Thu, 25 Jun 2020 06:20:23 -0000

Secondary Infektion appears to be a distinct effort from the meddling of the IRA and GRU—and it went undetected for years.

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Bot Mafias Have Wreaked Havoc in World of Warcraft Classic

Wed, 24 Jun 2020 06:20:27 -0000

Blizzard has suspended or closed over 74,000 accounts in the last month, as bots have upended the game's economy.

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Body Cameras Haven't Stopped Police Brutality. Here's Why

Tue, 23 Jun 2020 06:20:23 -0000

Amid worldwide protests over racism and police violence, lawmakers are once again turning to the devices as a tool for reform.

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A Legion of Bugs Puts Hundreds of Millions of IoT Devices at Risk

Mon, 22 Jun 2020 06:32:05 -0000

The so-called Ripple20 vulnerabilities affect equipment found in data centers, power grids, and more.

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Ex-Ebay Execs Allegedly Made Life Hell for Critics

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 06:20:19 -0000

Surveillance. Harassment. A live cockroach delivery. US Attorneys have charged six former Ebay workers in association with an outrageous cyberstalking campaign.

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Coder-Turned-Kingpin Paul Le Roux Gets His Comeuppance

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 06:20:21 -0000

The programmer who became a flagrant drug lord and weapons trafficker was sentenced in New York City to 25 years in prison.

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How To Stop Instagram From Tracking Everything You Do

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 06:20:20 -0000

Though the Facebook-owned app doesn't give users complete control, there are ways to limit the data it collects and the types of ads you see.

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Spies Can Eavesdrop by Watching a Light Bulb's Vibrations

Tue, 16 Jun 2020 06:20:22 -0000

The so-called lamphone technique allows for real-time listening in on a room that's hundreds of feet away.Â

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Android 11 Will Help You Rein In Zombie App Permissions

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 06:20:22 -0000

The latest update to Google's operating system has a host of privacy and security improvements.

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Georgia’s Failure Shows How Not to Run an Election in the Pandemic

Fri, 12 Jun 2020 06:20:21 -0000

Limiting in-person polling sites makes it both harder to vote and more dangerous.

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IoT Security Is a Mess. Privacy 'Nutrition' Labels Could Help

Thu, 11 Jun 2020 06:20:18 -0000

Another key aspect of the security and privacy label project is that the information is also encoded to be machine readable. This way, even if different countries or industries develop their own assessment tools, there's still a way to compare and process all the data. The researchers point out that data from the labels could make it easier to search for products by their privacy and security features, creating the potential for these to be mainstream product considerations rather than niche points that are difficult for consumers to research. Ecommerce websites could even offer filters for privacy and security features like they already do for things like price, weight, or screen size. In this way, consumers could make intentional choices about the products they buy, with digital safety as one of the factors.
The researchers say that they've had a lot of private-sector and congressional interest in their label. But so far they've only been able to make example labels based on imaginary products or mock up labels for real products based on public data. The researchers are looking for a manufacturer to pilot the labels in a more serious way, with honest information about the products.
There is real momentum toward doing these types of tests. Finland, Singapore, and the United Kingdom are all working on national IoT label programs focused on security. And while some IoT security bills have floated around the US Congress, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration within the Department of Commerce is actively working on a similar type of project for software. The idea is to develop a software "bill of materials" that would help the industry keep track of all the different open source and third-party components that go into one single software program or platform.
"Standardization I think will help, just like the ingredients label on food educates people about how much sugar or sodium they're consuming," says Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer of the software auditing firm Veracode. "Standardizing a software bill of materials would make it more clear to a consumer what they’re getting."
The researchers are realistic that for their work to have a long-term impact there would either need to be widespread voluntary adoption of the label by manufacturers or a government mandate to do so. But they say that's why they've designed the label with room for manufacturers to explain their choices to consumers.
"There may be a really good reason that your thermostat has a microphone, but if the company doesn’t tell you, then you’re shocked," says Lorrie Cranor, director of Carnegie Mellon's usable privacy and security lab. "If they tell you about the microphone up front and explain why that is, then you might say 'Oh, OK, that makes sense.'"
Conventional wisdom says that consumers won't typically pay a premium for privacy and security features. The researchers had preliminary findings, though, that an easy-to-read label might help people better understand potential risks and make them more willing to pay more for strong guarantees. It will take more investigation to expand on that finding, and the easiest way to do extensive testing would be for companies to start adopting security and privacy labels on their IoT products. You likely won't be seeing IoT privacy labels on store shelves anytime soon. But the stakes are high enough that something certainly needs to change.

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Security News This Week: China and Iran Tried to Hack the Biden and Trump Campaigns

Wed, 10 Jun 2020 06:20:20 -0000

Plus: An iOS zero day, surveillance planes, and more of the week's top security news.

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The Police's Military Tactics Turn Peaceful Protests Violent

Tue, 09 Jun 2020 06:20:17 -0000

Research shows that calm and negotiation, not excessive force, reduces damage. So why are officers still turning to tear gas?

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Zoom's End-to-End Encryption Will Be for Paying Customers Only

Mon, 08 Jun 2020 06:20:20 -0000

The video conferencing company says it wants to be able to work with law enforcement to catch bad actors on its platform.

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The Pentagon's Hand-Me-Downs Helped Militarize Police. Here's How

Fri, 05 Jun 2020 06:34:47 -0000

Over several decades, the 1033 program has shipped over $7.4 billion of Defense Department property to more than 8,000 law enforcement agencies.

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How to Protest Safely in the Age of Surveillance

Thu, 04 Jun 2020 06:20:20 -0000

Law enforcement has more tools than ever to track your movements and access your communications. Here's how to protect your privacy if you plan to protest.

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Shadowserver, an Internet Guardian, Finds a Lifeline

Wed, 03 Jun 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Ten weeks ago, Shadowserver's main source of funding dried up. Now, it's back on level footing.Â

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Security News This Week: This $350 "Anti-5G" Device Is Apparently Just a USB Stick

Tue, 02 Jun 2020 06:56:06 -0000

Plus: A LiveJournal hack, Qatar's contact tracing privacy failure, and more of the week's top security news.Â

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State-Based Contact-Tracing Apps Could Be a Mess

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 06:20:23 -0000

With no nationwide Covid-19 notification software in sight, security and interoperability issues loom large.

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There's a Jailbreak Out for the Current Version of iOS

Fri, 29 May 2020 06:20:24 -0000

The Unc0ver tool works on all versions of iOS from 11 to 13.5, the current release.

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Don't Be Fooled by Covid-19 Contact-Tracing Scams

Thu, 28 May 2020 06:20:23 -0000

Fraudsters have found yet another way to take advantage of the pandemic.Â

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Now’s The Perfect Time to Start Using a Password Manager

Wed, 27 May 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Time has no meaning, and we’re all stuck in front of screens. You may as well secure your life while you’re always online.

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ShinyHunters Is a Hacking Group on a Data Breach Spree

Tue, 26 May 2020 06:20:23 -0000

In the first two weeks of May, they've hit the dark web, hawking 200 million stolen records from over a dozen companies.

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The Hypocrisy of Mike Pompeo

Mon, 25 May 2020 06:20:23 -0000

In the few short years since his time in Congress, the secretary of state has conveniently reversed himself on multiple fronts.Â

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The FBI Backs Down Against Apple—Again

Fri, 22 May 2020 06:20:20 -0000

The agency cracked the Pensacola iPhones, but it still views Cupertino as a problem—even though it's easier to break into iPhones than it has been in years.

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The Nigerian Fraudsters Ripping Off the Unemployment System

Thu, 21 May 2020 06:20:19 -0000

Security researchers have spotted the “Scattered Canary” group scamming vital benefits programs amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Cryptocurrency Hardware Wallets Can Get Hacked, Too

Wed, 20 May 2020 06:20:17 -0000

New research shows vulnerabilities in popular cold storage options that would have revealed their PINs.

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Security News This Week: Hackers Claim to Have ‘Dirty Laundry’ About Donald Trump

Tue, 19 May 2020 06:20:17 -0000

Plus: Warrantless surveillance, an iOS zero-day glut, and more of the week's top security news.

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The US Says Chinese Hackers Went Too Far During the Covid-19 Crisis

Mon, 18 May 2020 06:20:21 -0000

The FBI and DHS say that Beijing's hacking “jeopardizes” the delivery of much-needed Covid-19 treatment options.Â

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Defcon Is Canceled

Fri, 15 May 2020 06:20:19 -0000

For real this time. Its sister conference, Black Hat, has also been called off.

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Online Voting Has Worked So Far. That Doesn’t Mean It's Safe

Thu, 14 May 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Proponents of mobile and internet voting point to its uneventful track record. That's not good enough.

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The 5G Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory Has Taken a Dark Turn

Wed, 13 May 2020 06:20:20 -0000

Though social networks have pledged to take more concerted action against it, the theory has continued to spread, inspiring a surge of attacks.Â

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Security News This Week: Zoom Security Gets a Boost With Keybase Acquisition

Tue, 12 May 2020 06:20:21 -0000

Plus: A GoDaddy breach, a ransomware attack, and more of the week's top security news.

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How a Facebook Bug Took Down Your Favorite iOS Apps

Mon, 11 May 2020 06:20:19 -0000

Thank a tiny change to a software development kit for widespread crashes Wednesday, including the Spotify and TikTok apps.

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GitHub Takes Aim at Open Source Software Vulnerabilities

Fri, 08 May 2020 06:20:25 -0000

GitHub Advanced Security will help automatically spot potentially security problems in the world's biggest open source platform.

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LockBit Is the New Ransomware for Hire

Thu, 07 May 2020 06:20:20 -0000

A recent infection, which managed to plunder a company's network within hours, demonstrates why the malware has become so prevalent.

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Hacker Lexicon: What Is Fleeceware and How Can You Protect Yourself?

Wed, 06 May 2020 06:20:24 -0000

Sneaky developers are charging big bucks for basic apps. Here's how to spot a scam in sheep's clothing.

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The Weird Partisan Math of Vote-By-Mail

Tue, 05 May 2020 06:20:20 -0000

Research says that expanding mail-in voting doesn’t help Democrats. So why are Republicans so afraid of it? Â

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The ADL Calls Out Steam for Giving Extremists a Pass

Mon, 04 May 2020 06:20:21 -0000

The nonprofit has identified hundreds of profiles that espouse hate, with little attempt from the gaming platform to stop them.

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How Spies Snuck Malware Into the Google Play Store—Again and Again

Fri, 01 May 2020 06:20:23 -0000

Malicious Android apps from the so-called PhantomLance campaign targeted hundreds of users, and at least two slipped past Google's defenses.

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The Covid-19 Pandemic Reveals Ransomware's Long Game

Thu, 30 Apr 2020 06:20:23 -0000

Hackers laid the groundwork months ago for attacks. Now they're flipping the switch.

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Sneaky Zero-Click Attacks Are a Hidden Menace

Wed, 29 Apr 2020 06:20:24 -0000

Hacks that can play out without any user interaction may be more common than we realize, in part because they’re so difficult to detect.

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Amid Its Covid-19 Crisis, China Was Still Hacking Uighurs’ iPhones

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 06:20:16 -0000

Security researchers reveal a months-long, indiscriminate campaign targeting the iPhones of Chinese Muslims.

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Google Sees State-Sponsored Hackers Ramping Up Coronavirus Attacks

Mon, 27 Apr 2020 06:20:22 -0000

More than 12 government-backed groups are using the pandemic as cover for digital reconnaissance and espionage, according to a new report.

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A Vital Hack Could Turn Medical Devices Into Ventilators

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 06:20:20 -0000

Hundreds of thousands of lower-grade breathing devices are going unused because manufacturers say they can’t perform life-saving functions. But a new patch might change that.Â

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Security News This Week: Russian Hackers Went After San Francisco International Airport

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 06:20:17 -0000

Plus: Windows zero days, Covid-19 spam, and more of the week's top security news.

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How Apple and Google's Social Distancing Maps Work

Wed, 22 Apr 2020 06:20:18 -0000

New tools from the tech giants shows the dramatic impact of sheltering in place, using location data from phones like yours.

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You Can Now Check If Your ISP Uses Basic Security Measures

Tue, 21 Apr 2020 06:20:25 -0000

“Is BGP Safe Yet” is a new site that names and shames internet service providers who don't tend to their routing.Â

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Does Covid-19 Contact Tracing Pose a Privacy Risk? Your Questions, Answered

Mon, 20 Apr 2020 06:20:21 -0000

Apple and Google's Bluetooth-based system isn't perfect. But many of the biggest concerns have solutions.

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The Pentagon Hasn't Fixed Basic Cybersecurity Blind Spots

Fri, 17 Apr 2020 06:20:18 -0000

Five years ago, the Department of Defense set dozens of security hygiene goals. A new report finds that it has abandoned or lost track of most of them.

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How to Cover Your Tracks Every Time You Go Online

Thu, 16 Apr 2020 06:20:21 -0000

Online tracking can often feel downright invasive. From using VPNs to clearing browser histories, we've got your back.

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How Apple and Google Are Enabling Covid-19 Contact-Tracing

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 06:20:21 -0000

The tech giants have teamed up to use a Bluetooth-based framework to keep track of the spread of infections without compromising location privacy.

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Security News This Week: Signal Threatens to Leave the US If EARN IT Act Passes

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 06:29:39 -0000

Plus: WhatsApp updates, a ransomware scheme, and more of the week's top security news.

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Vote by Mail Isn't Perfect. But It's Essential in a Pandemic

Mon, 13 Apr 2020 10:23:55 -0000

Despite Donald Trump's invective, the spread of Covid-19 has made the expansion of absentee voting expansion critical.

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Clever Cryptography Could Protect Privacy in Covid-19 Contact-Tracing Apps

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 06:20:23 -0000

Researchers are racing to achieve the benefits of location-tracking without the surveillance.

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Thousands of Android Apps Are Silently Accessing Your Data

Thu, 09 Apr 2020 06:26:38 -0000

More than 4,000 Google Play apps let developers and advertisers collect a list of the user's other installed apps, no permission needed.

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A Hacker Found a Way to Take Over Any Apple Webcam

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 06:20:23 -0000

They've been patched, but the Safari vulnerabilities would have given an alarming amount of access.

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How to Keep Your Zoom Chats Private and Secure

Tue, 07 Apr 2020 06:20:21 -0000

Trolls. Prying bosses. Zoom's a great video chat platform, but a few simple steps also make it a safe one.

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Online Credit Card Skimmers Are Thriving During the Pandemic

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 06:20:24 -0000

As brick and mortars close due to the novel coronavirus, thieves have increasingly targeted digital check-out.Â

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Hack Brief: Marriott Got Hacked. Yes, Again

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 06:20:16 -0000

The hotel chain has suffered its second major breach in 16 months. Here's how to find out if you're affected.

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An Elite Spy Group Used 5 Zero-Days to Hack North Koreans

Thu, 02 Apr 2020 06:20:23 -0000

South Korea is a prime suspect for exploiting the secret software vulnerabilities in an extremely sophisticated attack.

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The Postal Service's Surprising Role in Surviving Doomsday

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 06:20:20 -0000

The little-known Postal Plan, which dates back to the Clinton era, charges mail carriers with delivering critical supplies—like vaccines—as a last resort.

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Security News This Week: Chinese Hacking Surges Amid Coronavirus Crisis

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Plus: A Windows zero day, an iOS watering hole, and more of the week's top security news.

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Google Bans Infowars Android App Over Coronavirus Claims

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Apple kicked Alex Jones out of the App Store in 2018. The Google Play Store has finally followed suit.

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The US Army Corps of Engineers Deploys Against Coronavirus

Fri, 27 Mar 2020 06:20:24 -0000

The US is desperate for hospital beds. The USACE can build thousands of them in a matter of days.

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Google Removes Adware-Laced Kids' Apps From Play Store

Thu, 26 Mar 2020 06:20:21 -0000

After over a million downloads, the Tekya-infected Android offerings are finally on ice.

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How Microsoft Dismantled the Infamous Necurs Botnet

Wed, 25 Mar 2020 06:20:20 -0000

A years-long investigation and global cooperation disrupted one of the biggest botnets ever.

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WhatsApp Is at the Center of Coronavirus Response

Tue, 24 Mar 2020 06:20:16 -0000

The World Health Organization is partnering with the messaging app to help disseminate trustworthy information.

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Coronavirus Sets the Stage for Hacking Mayhem

Mon, 23 Mar 2020 06:20:20 -0000

As more people work from home and anxiety mounts, expect cyberattacks of all sorts to take advantage.

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A Critical Internet Safeguard Is Running Out of Time

Fri, 20 Mar 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Shadowserver has helped keep the internet safe for 15 years. Unless it can raise funds fast, it's going to disappear.

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Kill Chain: HBO's Election Security Doc Stresses Urgency

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 06:49:26 -0000

A new documentary makes crystal clear how little time remains to protect the 2020 election.Â

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High-Stakes Security Set-Ups Are Making Remote Work Impossible

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 06:20:20 -0000

It's a rule of thumb in cybersecurity that the more sensitive your system, the less you want it to touch the internet. But as the US hunkers down to limit the spread of Covid-19, cybersecurity measures presents a difficult technical challenge to working remotely for employees at critical infrastructure, intelligence agencies, and anywhere else with high-security networks. In some cases, working from home isn't an option at all.

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Most Medical Imaging Devices Run Outdated Operating Systems

Tue, 17 Mar 2020 06:29:53 -0000

You'd think that mammography machines, radiology systems, and ultrasounds would maintain the strictest possible security hygiene. But new research shows that a whopping 83 percent of medical imaging devices run on operating systems that are so old they no longer receive any software updates at all. That issue is endemic to Internet of Things devices generally, many of which aren't designed to receive software improvements or offer only a complicated path to doing so.

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Russia Is Learning How to Bypass Facebook's Disinfo Defenses

Mon, 16 Mar 2020 06:20:19 -0000

Since Russia’s stunning influence operations during the 2016 United States presidential race, state and federal officials, researchers, and tech companies have been on high alert for a repeat performance. With the 2020 election now just seven months away, though, newly surfaced social media posts indicate that Russia’s Internet Research Agency is adapting its methods to circumvent those defenses.

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Hackers Can Clone Millions of Toyota, Hyundai, and Kia Keys

Fri, 13 Mar 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Over the past few years, owners of cars with keyless start systems have learned to worry about so-called relay attacks, in which hackers exploit radio-enabled keys to steal vehicles without leaving a trace. Now it turns out that many millions of other cars that use chip-enabled mechanical keys are also vulnerable to high-tech theft.

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A Simple New Tool Lets You Open Email Attachments Without Fear

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Opening email attachments from untrusted senders has long been one of the easiest ways to get hacked. But unlike other common security screw-ups—using "password" for your password, downloading pirated software from shady websites—there's no practical way for a modern human to avoid opening the occasional mystery-meat attachment. Now one technologist has produced a solution.

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Last Week's Internet Calamity That Wasn't

Wed, 11 Mar 2020 06:20:21 -0000

This is a story about something that could have gone wrong on the internet this week but instead turned out mostly OK. How often can you say that? Around nine o’clock on the East Coast on Friday, February 28, bad news arrived on the doorstep of Let’s Encrypt. An arm of the nonprofit Internet Security Research Group, Let’s Encrypt is a so-called certificate authority that lets websites implement encrypted connections at no cost.

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Security News This Week: An Unfixable Flaw Threatens 5 Years of Intel Chips

Tue, 10 Mar 2020 06:20:23 -0000

As the novel coronavirus continues to propagate, phishing scams that pose as Covid-19 advice do as well. The trend started over a month ago, but it's only going to get worse. Abide by these tips to avoid them, and also please keep washing those hands. In non-pandemic news, researchers figured out how to clone the mechanical keys of tens of millions of cars from Toyota, Hyundai, and Kia, making theft a much simpler matter.

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The EARN IT Act Is a Sneak Attack on Encryption

Mon, 09 Mar 2020 06:20:18 -0000

A bipartisan pair of US senators today introduced long-rumored legislation known as the EARN IT Act. Meant to combat child sexual exploitation online, the bill threatens to erode established protections against holding tech companies responsible for what people do and say on their platforms. It also poses the most serious threat in years to strong end-to-end encryption.

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The Long Path out of the Vulnerability Disclosure Dark Ages

Fri, 06 Mar 2020 06:20:22 -0000

In 2003, security researchers Katie Moussouris and a colleague at enterprise security firm @stake—which would later be acquired by Symantec—found a bad flaw in an encrypted flash drive from Lexar. It was trivial to uncover the password that decrypted the drive's data. But when they tried to let Lexar know? "Things went wrong," says Chris Wyspol, who was also working at @stake at the time.

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North Korea Is Recycling Mac Malware. That's Not the Worst Part

Thu, 05 Mar 2020 06:20:20 -0000

For years, North Korea's Lazarus Group hackers have plundered and pillaged the global internet, scamming and infecting digital devices around the world for espionage, profit, and sabotage. One of their weapons of choice: a so-called loader that allows them to clandestinely run a diverse array of malware on targeted Macs with hardly a trace. But Lazarus didn't create the loader on its own. The group seems to have found it laying around online, and repurposed it to elevate their attacks.

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Security News This Week: Clearview AI's Massive Client List Got Hacked

Wed, 04 Mar 2020 11:43:08 -0000

It was the RSA security conference in San Francisco this week, and the security industry descended on Moscone Center for days of handing out free stickers, demoing products, and presenting research. And the week was punctuated by fewer handshakes and more elbow bumps thanks to Covid-19. WIRED looked at research that North Korea is recycling Mac malware, and how it's indicative of booming malware reuse.

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How a Hacker's Mom Broke Into a Prison—and the Warden's Computer

Tue, 03 Mar 2020 06:20:27 -0000

John Strand breaks into things for a living. As a penetration tester, he gets hired by organizations to attack their defenses, helping reveal weaknesses before actual bad guys find them. Normally, Strand embarks on these missions himself, or deploys one of his experienced colleagues at Black Hills Information Security. But in July 2014, prepping for a pen test of a South Dakota correctional facility, he took a decidedly different tack. He sent his mom. In fairness, it was Rita Strand's idea.

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How Trump Hollowed Out US National Security

Mon, 02 Mar 2020 06:20:24 -0000

As Richard Grenell, the current US ambassador to Germany, starts his second day on the job as the nation’s acting director of national intelligence, his arrival also marks the ouster of not only his predecessor, Joseph Maguire, but reportedly also of DNI principle executive Andrew Hallman. By the end of the day, almost all of the roles created after 9/11 literally to prevent the next 9/11 will be either vacant or lack permanent appointees.

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Gmail Is Catching More Malicious Attachments With Deep Learning

Fri, 28 Feb 2020 06:39:36 -0000

Distributing malware by attaching tainted documents to emails is one of the oldest tricks in the book. It's not just a theoretical risk—real attackers use malicious documents to infect targets all the time. So on top of its anti-spam and anti-phishing efforts, Gmail expanded its malware detection capabilities at the end of last year to include more tailored document monitoring. And it's working.

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Nintendo Cracks Down After High-Profile Leaks

Thu, 27 Feb 2020 06:58:06 -0000

At 10:28 pm on November 1, an image of an unknown and classified Pokémon appeared in a Discord group. Gigantamax Machamp, the megasized version of the body-builder Pokémon, was slated to appear in the then-unreleased games Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield. Within minutes, JPEGs of it were posted to 4chan. Then, on a dedicated Pokémon Reddit. It wasn’t long until 300 URLs were hosting it.

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Security News This Week: A Tiny Piece of Tape Tricked Teslas Into Speeding Up 50 MPH

Wed, 26 Feb 2020 06:20:19 -0000

This week was filled with wide-scale calamity. Hundreds of millions of PCs have components whose firmware is vulnerable to hacking—which is to say, pretty much all of them. It's a problem that's been known about for years, but doesn't seem to get any better. Likewise, Bluetooth implementation mistakes in seven SoC—system on chips—have exposed at least 480 internet of things devices to a range of attacks.

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Russia Doesn't Want Bernie Sanders. It Wants Chaos

Tue, 25 Feb 2020 06:28:28 -0000

If there’s one line intelligence officials have stuck to about Russian interference in US elections, it’s that it never stopped. Not after the 2016 election, not after the 2018 midterms, and certainly not now, well into the 2020 primary season. Which is why it should be no great surprise that, as the Washington Post first reported Friday, US officials warned Bernie Sanders that Russia is “attempting to help” his presidential campaign.

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Bluetooth-Related Flaws Threaten Dozens of Medical Devices

Mon, 24 Feb 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Bluetooth is used in everything from speakers to implanted pacemakers, which means that Bluetooth-related vulnerabilities can affect a dizzying array of devices. In the latest instance, a newly discovered round of 12 Bluetooth bugs potentially exposes more than 480 devices to attack, including fitness trackers, smart locks, and dozens of medical tools and implants.

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YouTube Gaming's Most-Watched Videos Are Dominated by Scams and Cheats

Fri, 21 Feb 2020 06:20:20 -0000

YouTube Gaming has been clawing its way into streaming platform Twitch’s market share for months. But new data retrieved by WIRED suggests that YouTube Gaming also has a serious problem with scammers and cheat-makers—and lots and lots of bots. In January, all seven of the most-watched YouTube Gaming channels weren’t run by happy gamers livestreaming the game du jour.

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Hundreds of Millions of PC Components Still Have Hackable Firmware

Thu, 20 Feb 2020 06:20:19 -0000

That laptop on your desk or server on a data center rack isn't so much a computer as a network of them. Its interconnected devices—from hard drives to webcams to trackpads, largely sourced from third parties—have their own dedicated chips and code as well.

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Voting App Flaws Could Have Let Hackers Manipulate Results

Wed, 19 Feb 2020 06:20:16 -0000

West Virginia and Oregon have both recently deployed mobile a voting app called Voatz to facilitate absentee voting. But Voatz now turns out to have major security flaws, according to researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—including vulnerabilities that could let a hacker manipulate results. The newly unearthed bugs could allow an attacker to reveal someone's votes, block votes from being submitted, or even manipulate them.

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Conservative News Sites Track You Lots More Than Left-Leaning Ones

Tue, 18 Feb 2020 06:20:20 -0000

In an age of hyper-partisanship, Americans increasingly get their news from sites that align with their political beliefs. But more separates those right and left-leaning sides of the web than their opposite ideologies. According to a new study, the right end of the fractured online news industry also tracks its audience far more aggressively than the left does.

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Signal Is Finally Bringing Its Secure Messaging to the Masses

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 06:20:20 -0000

Last month, the cryptographer and coder known as Moxie Marlinspike was getting settled on an airplane when his seatmate, a midwestern-looking man in his 60s, asked for help. He couldn't figure out how to enable airplane mode on his aging Android phone. But when Marlinspike saw the screen, he wondered for a moment if he was being trolled: Among just a handful of apps installed on the phone was Signal.

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Google's Giving Out Security Keys to Help Protect Campaigns

Fri, 14 Feb 2020 06:20:18 -0000

Malign foreign influence operations during the 2016 United States presidential election season raised awareness about the need for tighter security within campaigns. And while the 2020 presidential campaigns have shown some improvement, many are still seriously lagging—and facing real threats—with nine months left before election day. Now Google is trying to help move the needle.

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How to Get Your Yahoo Breach Settlement Money

Thu, 13 Feb 2020 06:20:20 -0000

Well, here we are again. Even years later, it's still hard to fully grasp the degree to which Yahoo failed at protecting the data of billions of people across multiple breaches in the 2010s. But now, thanks to a class action suit against Yahoo that has reached a proposed settlement, you have until July 20 to file a claim if you were impacted. Don't miss out on your chance for a $100 apology.

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Facebook's Bug Bounty Caught a Data-Stealing Spree

Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Despite its best damage control efforts, Facebook is still dogged by its checkered past on data privacy. But at least some of the security mechanisms the company has put in place are catching problems—and helping them get fixed. Facebook said on Friday that in 2019 its bug bounty saw its largest number of accepted bugs since the program launched nine years ago, paid out its highest single reward ever, and began inviting select researchers to evaluate new features before they launched.

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Security News This Week: Pro-Trump Trolls Flooded the Iowa Caucus Phone Lines

Tue, 11 Feb 2020 06:20:19 -0000

The week kicked off with the Iowa caucuses, which went very poorly, in so many ways! We'll talk about a few of them below, but the main takeaway is that adding unvetted technology to the voting process—or anything—rarely makes things better. Other states, please take note! Actually, Nevada and New Hampshire already have. It's a start. In another unwelcome technological evolution, ransomware has started targeting industrial control systems, which bodes poorly for critical infrastructure.

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Trump Now Has the Senate GOP's Blessing to Undermine Democracy

Mon, 10 Feb 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Welcome to a dark day in America’s modern experiment with democracy. Despite becoming the first president ever to receive votes from both parties to convict and remove him from office in an impeachment trial, President Donald Trump today woke up in the White House unbound.

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An Artist Used 99 Phones to Fake a Google Maps Traffic Jam

Fri, 07 Feb 2020 06:20:18 -0000

Almost three years ago, artist Simon Weckert noticed something unusual at a May Day demonstration in Berlin: Google Maps showed there was a massive traffic jam, even though there were zero cars on the road. Soon enough, Weckert realized that it was the mass of people, or more specifically their smartphones, that had inadvertently tricked Google into seeing gridlock on an empty street. And then he decided to do it himself.

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This Identity Activist Wants to Make Facebook Obsolete

Thu, 06 Feb 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Kaliya Young doesn’t want to break up Facebook. She wants to make it obsolete. She was an Olympic-level water polo player for Canada, but in 2002 was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Freshly graduated from university and living in the San Francisco Bay Area, she went through months of radiation and chemotherapy that sapped her physical strength. In her mid-twenties, far from home, no longer an athlete, Young felt intensely alone. Wired UK This story originally appeared on WIRED UK.

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Security News This Week: Windows 7 Gets One Last Update for the Road

Wed, 05 Feb 2020 06:20:23 -0000

Have you heard about this little thing called Space Force? If so, it's probably through ridicule; the latest branch of the US military has received no shortage of it since it launched at the end of last year. Still, at least it had a better week than Intel, which had to release a patch for a patch for its patch of its ZombieLoad problem. Say that five times fast. This week we also took a look at the most common Mac malware, at least by antivirus firm Kaspersky's reckoning.

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Dashlane's Super Bowl Ad Proves Password Managers Have Arrived

Tue, 04 Feb 2020 06:20:20 -0000

This year’s crop of Super Bowl ads includes plenty of the usual suspects: expensive cars, cheap beers, big tech. But among the companies coughing up a reported $5.6 million for 30 seconds of Big Game glory is one name most people have never heard of, selling a product that many don’t know exists: Dashlane, an app that manages your passwords. It’s not that password management is entirely novel.

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Warren Pledges to Fight Disinformation, but Her Arsenal Is Limited

Mon, 03 Feb 2020 06:20:18 -0000

Elizabeth Warren has a plan for dealing with disinformation. Sort of. Yesterday, the Democratic senator and presidential candidate known for her detailed policy objectives released a proposal titled “Fighting Digital Disinformation.” The part about what she intends to do as president, however, is a bit thin by her standards. The bulk of the plan is devoted instead to what Warren wants social media platforms to do.

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Scraping the Web Is a Powerful Tool. Clearview AI Abused It

Fri, 31 Jan 2020 06:20:19 -0000

The internet was designed to make information free and easy for anyone to access. But as the amount of personal information online has grown, so too have the risks. Last weekend, a nightmare scenario for many privacy advocates arrived. The New York Times revealed Clearview AI, a secretive surveillance company, was selling a facial recognition tool to law enforcement powered by “three billion images” culled from the open web.

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One Small Fix Would Curb Stingray Surveillance

Thu, 30 Jan 2020 06:20:20 -0000

Law enforcement in the United States, international spies, and criminals have all used (and abused) the surveillance tools known as "stingrays" for more than a decade. The devices can track people's locations and even eavesdrop on their calls, all thanks to weaknesses in the cellular network. Today, researchers are detailing a way to stop them—if only telecoms would listen.

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The Sneaky Simple Malware That Hits Millions of Macs

Wed, 29 Jan 2020 06:20:21 -0000

The popular misconception that Macs don’t get viruses has become a lot less popular in recent years, as Apple devices have weathered their fair share of bugs. But it’s still surprising that the most prolific malware on macOS—by one count, affecting one in 10 devices—is so relatively crude. This week, antivirus company Kaspersky detailed the 10 most common threats its macOS users encountered in 2019.

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Free Press Advocates Decry Cybercrime Charges Against Glenn Greenwald

Tue, 28 Jan 2020 06:20:21 -0000

In a criminal complaint released Monday, the Brazilian government is charging journalist Glenn Greenwald with committing cybercrimes. The accusations are connected to leaked text messages that Greenwald reported on last year for The Intercept Brasil, which the outspoken journalist launched in 2016 as a spinoff of the US-based news site he had founded two years prior.

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Inside the World's Highest-Stakes Industrial Hacking Contest

Mon, 27 Jan 2020 06:20:18 -0000

On a small, blue-lit stage in a dim side room of the Fillmore Theater in Miami on Tuesday, three men sat behind laptops in front of a small crowd. Two of them nervously reviewed the commands on a screen in front of them.

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Everything We Know About the Jeff Bezos Phone Hack

Fri, 24 Jan 2020 06:20:18 -0000

On November 8, 2018, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos received an unexpected text message from Saudi Arabian leader Mohammed bin Salman. The two had exchanged numbers a few months prior, in April, at a small dinner in Los Angeles, but weren’t in regular contact; Bezos had previously received only a video file from the crown prince in May that reportedly extolled Saudi Arabia’s economy.

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A Handy Chrome Feature, a Sonos Update Warning, and More News

Thu, 23 Jan 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Chrome is protecting and Sonos is disconnecting, but first: a cartoon about the new big screen. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Want to receive this two-minute roundup as an email every weekday? Sign up here! Today’s News Don't ignore Chrome's new password checkup feature If you've logged in to any accounts on Google Chrome recently, you've probably noticed a new pop-up nagging you about your password security.

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An Open Source Bid to Encrypt the Internet of Things

Wed, 22 Jan 2020 06:20:18 -0000

End-to-end encryption is a staple of secure messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal. It ensures that no one—even the app developer—can access your data as it traverses the web. But what if you could bring some version of that protection to increasingly ubiquitous—and notoriously insecure—Internet of Things devices? The Swiss cryptography firm Teserakt is trying just that.

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Twitch Has Become a Haven for Live Sports Piracy

Tue, 21 Jan 2020 06:20:19 -0000

As Liverpool soccer player Roberto Firmino clutched out the only goal of the club's December 21 FIFA Club World Cup match before a live audience of over 45,000, at least twice as many fans were tuned in somewhere better suited to FIFA 20, the video game: the streaming platform Twitch. While the game roiled on, three of the top 10 livestreams listed in Twitch’s directory were simulcasts of the FIFA Club World Cup match—with 14,000, 33,000, and 53,000 viewers respectively.

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Facebook Says Encrypting Messenger by Default Will Take Years

Mon, 20 Jan 2020 06:20:22 -0000

In March of last year, Mark Zuckerberg made a dramatic pledge: Facebook would apply end-to-end encryption to user communications across all of its platforms by default. The move would grant strong new protections to well over a billion users. It's also not happening any time soon.

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A Facebook Bug Exposed Anonymous Admins of Pages

Fri, 17 Jan 2020 06:20:18 -0000

Facebook Pages give public figures, businesses, and other entities a presence on Facebook that isn't tied to an individual profile. The accounts behind those pages are anonymous unless a Page owner opts to make the admins public. You can't see, for example, the names of the people who post to Facebook on WIRED's behalf. But a bug that was live from Thursday evening until Friday morning allowed anyone to easily reveal the accounts running a Page, essentially doxxing anyone who posted to one.

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The Mandalorian Is the Only Smart Soldier in the Star Wars Galaxy

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 06:20:17 -0000

After nine Star Wars movies, two Star Wars stories, and countless TV show episodes, The Mandalorian has finally given us something utterly priceless. No, not Baby Yoda—although, yes, I would die for that damn thing. I refer to the Mandalorian himself: a protagonist who finally understands military tactics. He’s an expert at cover and concealment. He actually aims his shots. In the Mandalorian, the Star Wars universe for the first time has a character who engages in believable combat.

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Security News This Week: The FBI Wants Apple to Unlock iPhones Again

Wed, 15 Jan 2020 06:20:16 -0000

After anxious days awaiting Iran's response to the US assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the country sent missiles flying at two Iraqi military that housed US troops—who knew about it well in advance, thanks to an early warning system that dates back to the Cold War. In a rare reversal from the norm, Donald Trump followed up by using Twitter to defuse tensions rather than escalate them further. Iran's still on a path to developing nuclear capabilities, but they won't get there any time soon.

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All the Ways Facebook Tracks You—and How to Limit It

Tue, 14 Jan 2020 06:20:18 -0000

It won't come as much of a surprise that Facebook tracks you on its platform—that's why it can resurface your birthday photos from five years ago—but you might not yet realize the scope and the depth of its tracking all across the internet.

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Amazon Takes a Swipe at PayPal's $4 Billion Acquisition

Mon, 13 Jan 2020 06:20:17 -0000

Days before Christmas, at the height of the last-minute holiday shopping rush, an ominous message appeared on Amazon.com. It warned shoppers who used a popular browser extension called Honey that the service, which promises to track prices and discount codes, was “a security risk.” “Honey tracks your private shopping behavior, collects data like your order history and items saved, and can read or change any of your data on any website you visit,” the message read.

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An Alleged Spy App Puts Apple in a Bind

Fri, 10 Jan 2020 06:20:22 -0000

Last month, both Google and Apple removed a popular social messaging app called ToTok from their official app stores. The decisions came after United States intelligence officials told The New York Times that the United Arab Emirates likely uses the app for state surveillance. The report and subsequent research also asserted ties between ToTok developer Breej Holding Ltd. and the Emirati government. But by Saturday, Google had quietly reinstated ToTok in its Play Store for Android.

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Russia Takes a Big Step Toward Internet Isolation

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 06:20:18 -0000

Over the holidays, the Russian government said it had completed a multi-day test of a national, internal internet known as RuNet, a bid to show that the country's online infrastructure could survive even if disconnected from the rest of the world.

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How Iran's Hackers Might Strike Back After Soleimani's Assassination

Wed, 08 Jan 2020 06:20:22 -0000

For years, US tensions with Iran have held to a kind brinksmanship. But the drone assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, widely understood to be the second most powerful figure in Iran, has dangerously escalated tensions. The world now awaits Iran's response, which seems likely to make new use of a tool that the country has already been deploying for years: its brigades of military hackers.

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How the US Prepares Its Embassies for Potential Attacks

Tue, 07 Jan 2020 06:20:21 -0000

Tuesday’s attack by Iran-backed Shiite militia supporters on the US Embassy in Baghdad, followed by Friday’s US killing of top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, sparked fears of an intense escalation of hostilities in the region. Analysts say US embassies and consulates are prime targets in the wake of these events, and personnel could be in jeopardy. “Iran isn’t going to let this go unanswered,” notes security analyst Brett Bruen, a former US diplomat.

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TikTok's First Transparency Report Doesn't Tell the Full Story

Mon, 06 Jan 2020 06:20:23 -0000

Facing growing scrutiny over censorship and security concerns, TikTok is borrowing a few pages from a playbook now standard at many American tech giants, in an effort to earn the trust of US users and lawmakers. The Chinese-owned video app said in October it would invite outside experts to review some of its content moderation policies, just as Facebook and YouTube have in the past.

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The Most Dangerous People on the Internet This Decade

Fri, 03 Jan 2020 06:20:20 -0000

When this decade began, the ideal of the internet as a freewheeling intellectual playground remained largely intact: A medium that, after years of bubbly anticipation, had finally reached the mainstream and fulfilled its hype, bringing with it online marketplaces with infinite selection, viral videos, long-lost friends on Facebook, and even the hopes for new forms of protest and dissent against authoritarian regimes.

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The Decade Big-Money Email Scams Took Over

Tue, 31 Dec 2019 06:20:21 -0000

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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Is a Lesson in Military Opposites

Fri, 27 Dec 2019 06:20:23 -0000

For generations, millions of Star Wars fans have thought they were watching a good ol’ fashioned space opera. In fact, they’ve received a decades-long primer in geopolitics, warfare, and the tenets of leadership. This is on display again in the latest and final movie of the nine-film franchise, The Rise of Skywalker.

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The Debate Over How to Encrypt the Internet of Things

Wed, 25 Dec 2019 06:20:20 -0000

Internet-connected gadgets like lightbulbs and fitness trackers are notorious for poor security. That's partly because they’re often made cheaply and with haste, which leads to careless mistakes and outsourcing of problematic parts. But it’s also partly due to the lack of computing power in the first place; it's not so easy to encrypt all that data with limited resources. Or at least that’s how the conventional wisdom goes.

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Meet The Mad Scientist Who Wrote the Book on How to Hunt Hackers

Mon, 23 Dec 2019 06:20:20 -0000

In 1986, Cliff Stoll’s boss at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs tasked him with getting to the bottom of a 75-cent accounting discrepancy in the lab’s computer network, which was rented out to remote users by the minute. Stoll, 36, investigated the source of that minuscule anomaly, pulling on it like a loose thread until it led to a shocking culprit: a hacker in the system.

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WhatsApp Fixes Yet Another Group Chat Security Gap

Thu, 19 Dec 2019 06:20:28 -0000

One of the most popular features of Facebook-owned WhatsApp is group messaging, which turns the app's end-to-end encrypted chats into social groups that can include up to 256 participants. But recent stumbles in group chat security—including a bug that could have let a hacker crash the app entirely—have shown that WhatsApp may need to keep a closer eye on these communal hubs.

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Chrome Will Automatically Scan Your Passwords Against Data Breaches

Wed, 18 Dec 2019 06:20:24 -0000

Google's password checking feature has slowly been spreading across the Google ecosystem this past year. It started as the "Password Checkup" extension for desktop versions of Chrome, which would audit individual passwords when you entered them, and several months later it was integrated into every Google account as an on-demand audit you can run on all your saved passwords. Now, instead of a Chrome extension, Password Checkup is being integrated into the desktop and mobile versions of Chrome 79.

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Why Ring Doorbells Perfectly Exemplify the IoT Security Crisis

Tue, 17 Dec 2019 06:20:23 -0000

There's been a lot of creepy and concerning news about how Amazon's Ring smart doorbells are bringing surveillance to suburbia and sparking data-sharing relationships between Amazon and law enforcement. News reports this week are raising a different issue: hackers are breaking into users' Ring accounts, which can also be connected to indoor Ring cameras, to take over the devices and get up to all sorts of invasive shenanigans.

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So Much For the Deep State Plot Against Donald Trump

Mon, 16 Dec 2019 06:20:23 -0000

Maybe, just maybe, there’s no Deep State plot to get Donald Trump after all. For more than a year, Trump’s backers have held out hope that a long-running investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general would blow the lid off of a government-wide conspiracy.

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Toys “R” Us Is Back—Now With More Surveillance!

Fri, 13 Dec 2019 06:20:24 -0000

After filing for bankruptcy and closing more than 800 stores last year, Toys "R" Us is back. The iconic retailer has opened two new mall outposts, one in Texas and another in New Jersey, in time for the holidays. The stores are packed with some of the most kid-coveted products of the year, but have been garnering attention for another reason: the surveillance technology they’re using.

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The FCC's Push to Purge Huawei From US Networks

Thu, 12 Dec 2019 06:20:21 -0000

The trade war between China and the US has centered largely on escalating tariffs. But in many rural communities, the focus has shifted to the security of networks for which Chinese giants Huawei and ZTE have long provided equipment. As the 5G future approaches, the US is pushing small carriers to rip out and replace whatever parts of their infrastructure come from China, no matter the cost.

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Hackers Find Ways Around a Years-Old Microsoft Outlook Fix

Wed, 11 Dec 2019 06:20:24 -0000

Email has long been a major weak link for security; the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign were infamously both compromised by Russian hackers through email-related phishing attacks ahead of the 2016 US elections. And with the 2020 campaign in full swing, a patched flaw in Microsoft Outlook is still giving attackers an opening.

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Security News This Week: Why the iPhone 11 Tracks Your Location Even When You Tell It Not To

Tue, 10 Dec 2019 06:20:22 -0000

If you call your hacking conglomerate Evil Corp and steal tens of millions of dollars from banks and individuals over the course of a decade, you can probably expect an indictment at some point. For alleged Evil Corp leader Maksim Yakubets, it came this week, as US and UK authorities charged him and an associate with hacking thefts that totaled over $100 million. A separate criminal complaint also ties Yakubets to the infamous Zeus trojan.

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Blockchain Developer Gets Busted After Talk in North Korea

Mon, 09 Dec 2019 06:20:22 -0000

The prominent hacker and Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith was arrested by the US government Friday after he spoke at an April conference on blockchain technologies in North Korea. The US government considers his presentation to be a transfer of technology—and therefore a violation of US sanctions. But Griffith's defenders, including Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, describe the arrest as a massive overreaction. Griffith worked for the Ethereum Foundation, and Buterin called him a friend.

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Ewoks Are the Most Tactically Advanced Fighting Force in Star Wars

Fri, 06 Dec 2019 06:20:23 -0000

Ewoks. Just saying the name evokes myriad emotions in Star Wars fans. For some, the bear-like creatures that first appeared in 1983’s Star Wars: Return of the Jedi are part of the franchise’s rich tapestry. Others consider the Ewoks a blight and would prefer they not exist at all. (Some fan edits of Return of the Jedi excise the Ewoks entirely, for crying out loud.) They’re the most controversial inhabitants of the Star Wars universe this side of Jar Jar Binks.

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I Ditched Google for DuckDuckGo. Here's Why You Should Too

Thu, 05 Dec 2019 06:20:22 -0000

What was the last thing you searched for online? For me, it was "$120 in pounds." Before that, I wanted to know the capital of Albania (Tirana), the Twitter handle of Liberal Democrat deputy leader Ed Davey (he’s @EdwardJDavey), and dates of bank holidays in the UK for 2019 (it’s a late Easter next year, folks). Thrilling, I’m sure you’ll agree. But something makes these searches, in internet terms, a bit unusual. Shock, horror, I didn’t use Google. I used DuckDuckGo.

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Think Twice Before Giving Gifts With a Microphone or Camera

Wed, 04 Dec 2019 06:20:19 -0000

As we draw ever-closer to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and all the shopping days in between, you'll have no shortage of cheap, flashy, internet-connected gadgets to choose from for holiday gifts. But in the frenzy, don't forget that the widgets you buy will live at recipients' houses—or on their wrists—for months or years to come. With that in mind, it's worth considering security and privacy risks involved, so you know what you're getting people into before they unwrap the box.

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Hacker Lexicon: What Is a Dead Drop?

Tue, 03 Dec 2019 06:20:23 -0000

For almost three years starting in the fall of 2015, a 56-year-old Chinese-American tour guide named Xueha "Edward" Peng would periodically carry out a strange errand: Every few months, he'd book a room at a certain designated hotel—first in California and later in Georgia—and leave $10,000 or $20,000 in cash in the room, inside a dresser drawer or taped to the bottom of a desk or TV stand.

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The GOP Is Mired in Conspiracies—and It's About to Get Worse

Mon, 02 Dec 2019 06:20:19 -0000

Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said Thursday that the impeachment inquiry had “poisoned the minds of fanatics,” and he was absolutely right—but not quite in the way that he meant. His comments, aimed at Democrats, instead came across in the hearing as projection, a sad summation of the intellectual rot that has spread through his own party during the Trump age.

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Even Privacy-Focused Cryptocurrencies Can Spill Your Secrets

Fri, 29 Nov 2019 06:20:21 -0000

In the Harry Potter universe, there’s a handy spell for when you need to stop someone from spilling your secret plans or shit-talking during a duel. It’s called Mimblewimble, otherwise known as the tongue-tying curse. It’s also the name of a privacy technology designed for cryptocurrencies—because, well, somebody’s gotta keep crypto weird. The first coins to use Mimblewimble—distinct efforts called Grin and Beam—both launched in January.

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How to Avoid Black Friday Scams Online

Thu, 28 Nov 2019 06:20:22 -0000

Black Friday attracts crowds, and crowds attract scammers, and that means you need to take extra care when shopping online over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend. There'll be people out there keen to relieve you of more money than you'll save on a TV set or a gaming console. The following precautions apply whatever the time of year, but it's worth reminding yourself of them every time a serious holiday season comes around.

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1.2 Billion Records Found Exposed Online in a Single Server

Wed, 27 Nov 2019 07:39:20 -0000

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Opinion: Websites Ask for Permissions And Attack Forgiveness

Tue, 26 Nov 2019 07:37:03 -0000

Users increasingly encounter moments when a website asks for permission to gather some personal data or access to their device hardware: "Can we access your GPS position? Your microphone or camera? Your Bluetooth? Can we send you push notifications about breaking news or premium chocolate subscription offers?" Permissions, as these asks are known, give the web exciting powers.

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A Notorious Iranian Hacking Crew Is Targeting Industrial Control Systems

Mon, 25 Nov 2019 07:20:20 -0000

Iranian hackers have carried out some of the most disruptive acts of digital sabotage of the last decade, wiping entire computer networks in waves of cyberattacks across the Middle East and occasionally even the US. But now one of Iran's most active hacker groups appears to have shifted focus. Rather than just standard IT networks, they're targeting the physical control systems used in electric utilities, manufacturing, and oil refineries.

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The Likely Reason Disney+ Accounts Are Getting 'Hacked'

Fri, 22 Nov 2019 09:41:05 -0000

The reports came just a few days after Disney+ launched: Thousands of the streaming service accounts were already up for sale on various hacking forums, at bargain basement prices. As of Wednesday, new victims were still taking to Twitter and other venues to express their frustration that their accounts had been taken over. What’s happening almost certainly isn’t a hack in the way you’d normally think of it.

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What Happens When You Remove a Police-Installed GPS Tracker

Thu, 21 Nov 2019 16:29:26 -0000

Back in 2012, the US Supreme Court ruled that it's illegal for the police to attach a GPS tracking device to someone's car without a warrant. But what if you find a GPS tracking device on your car? Can you remove it? ARS TECHNICA This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars is owned by WIRED's parent company, Condé Nast.

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DuckDuckGo Will Automatically Encrypt More Sites You Visit

Wed, 20 Nov 2019 16:29:47 -0000

It's increasingly common for the data that passes between your browser and a website's server to be encrypted with HTTPS, which makes it impossible for outside snoops to read. But you don't get that protection if the URL drops that crucial "S" after HTTP. And while some mechanisms do redirect you to an encrypted version of a site, they often do so only after exposing that initial request. The makers of the privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo think there's a better way.

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146 New Android Bugs, an Audio Porn Streaming Site, and More News

Wed, 20 Nov 2019 07:20:23 -0000

Android users are groaning and websites are moaning, but first: a cartoon about what to do with a broken laptop. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Want to receive this two-minute roundup as an email every weekday? Sign up here! Today’s News 146 new vulnerabilities all come preinstalled on Android phones Security firm Kryptowire discovered 146 vulnerabilities—across 29 Android smartphone makers—that exist before the phones are even taken out of the box.

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146 New Vulnerabilities All Come Preinstalled on Android Phones

Tue, 19 Nov 2019 16:29:47 -0000

When you buy an Android smartphone, it’s rarely pure Android. Manufacturers squeeze in their own apps or give it a fresh coat of interface. Carriers do it too. The resulting stew of preinstalled software and vanilla Android sometimes turns out to be rancid, putting flaws and vulnerabilities on the phone before you even take it out of the box.

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Burglars Really Do Use Bluetooth Scanners to Find Laptops and Phones

Mon, 18 Nov 2019 16:29:31 -0000

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The Brave Browser Extends Its Payouts to iOS

Mon, 18 Nov 2019 07:20:29 -0000

In 2016 Brendan Eich, the controversial creator of the JavaScript programming language and cofounder and former CTO of Mozilla, announced the launch of a new browser called Brave. The pitch was simple but ambitious: Brave would block invasive ads and tracking scripts, but it would also show its own, privacy-friendly ads in their place. And it would cut both publishers and users in on the proceeds. Nearly four years later, that vision is finally in place.

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Google Enlists Outside Help to Clean Up Android's Malware Mess

Fri, 15 Nov 2019 16:29:49 -0000

Android has a bit of a malware problem. The open ecosystem's flexibility also makes it relatively easy for tainted apps to circulate on third-party app stores or malicious websites. Worse still, malware-ridden apps sneak into the official Play Store with disappointing frequency. After grappling with the issue for a decade, Google is calling in some reinforcements.

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As 5G Rolls Out, Troubling New Security Flaws Emerge

Fri, 15 Nov 2019 07:20:24 -0000

It's not yet prime time for 5G networks, which still face logistical and technical hurdles, but they're increasingly coming online in major cities worldwide. Which is why it's especially worrying that new 5G vulnerabilities are being discovered almost by the dozen. At the Association for Computing Machinery's Conference on Computer and Communications Security in London today researchers are presenting new findings that the 5G specification still has vulnerabilities.

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Twitter Insiders Allegedly Spied for Saudi Arabia

Thu, 14 Nov 2019 16:29:44 -0000

In charges released Wednesday, the Justice Department accused two former Twitter employees, Ahmad Abouammo and Ali Alzabarah, of abusing their internal system privileges to spy on target users and pass the information they collected to Saudi Arabia. The criminal complaint also alleges that it was trivial for them to do so—a chilling reminder of how much damage an insider can cause.

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Why Many People Got Mysterious Valentine’s Day Texts Today

Mon, 11 Nov 2019 16:29:42 -0000

Valentine’s Day is a high-pressure event dreaded by millions—precisely the type of holiday you may not want to relive, unless you sell flowers for a living. But that’s exactly what happened to many people across the United States on Thursday, when they awoke to find that their phones had suddenly sent or received text messages originally intended to be sent around February 14.

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Pixel 1, RIP: Google Ends Support After Just Three Years

Mon, 11 Nov 2019 07:20:17 -0000

Pour one out for the OG Google Pixel 1. This month's Android security patches are out, and while you'll find bulletins covering the Pixel 2, 3, and 4, the original Google Pixel didn't make the cut. Google is ending support this month. ARS TECHNICA This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars is owned by WIRED's parent company, Condé Nast.

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Scammers Are Exploiting a Firefox Bug to Freeze Your Browser

Thu, 07 Nov 2019 07:20:22 -0000

Scammers are actively exploiting a bug in Firefox that causes the browser to lock up after displaying a message warning that the computer is running a pirated version of Windows that has been hacked. The message, which appears without any any user interaction upon visiting a site, reads: Please stop and do not close the PC … The registry key of your computer is locked. Why did we block your computer? The Windows registry key is illegal. The Windows desktop is using pirated software.

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Google Is Helping Design an Open Source, Ultra-Secure Chip

Wed, 06 Nov 2019 16:29:38 -0000

With hackers deploying sophisticated attacks against operating systems, processors, and even firmware, manufacturers have increasingly turned to a tamper-resistant processor—or part of one—often called a "secure enclave" to stymie all sorts of attacks. They place in that immutable chip the "root of trust" on a device, relying on it to run cryptographic checks every time the system starts to make sure nothing has been subtly, maliciously altered.

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Google's Ultra-Secure Chip, a Facebook Face-Lift, and More

Wed, 06 Nov 2019 07:20:19 -0000

Facebook is refining while Google is designing, but first, a cartoon about when smartphones go rogue. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Want to receive this two-minute roundup as an email every weekday? Sign up here! Today’s Headlines Google is helping design an open source, ultra-secure chip Hackers seem to launch new attacks every day, but a new kind of chip could provide some protection.

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Free Tools Boost 2020 Election Security, But Not Enough

Tue, 05 Nov 2019 07:20:19 -0000

Officials around the United States have spent the last three years scrambling to harden election and voting infrastructure against the disinformation campaigns, phishing attacks, and system probing that plagued 2016. With exactly one year to go until the 2020 presidential election, local and state boards of election have made significant progress on improving digital defenses.

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The First BlueKeep Mass Hacking Is Finally Here—but Don't Panic

Mon, 04 Nov 2019 16:29:40 -0000

When Microsoft revealed last May that millions of Windows devices had a serious hackable flaw known as BlueKeep—one that could enable an automated worm to spread malware from computer to computer—it seemed only a matter of time before someone unleashed a global attack. As predicted, a BlueKeep campaign has finally struck. But so far it's fallen short of the worst case scenario.

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Opinion: Let's Ensure Tech Innovation Gets to the Military

Fri, 01 Nov 2019 16:29:44 -0000

Nothing motivates me more in acquiring weapons for the Air Force than foreign military threats. Stealth fighters, satellite-guided missiles, and silent submarines were once unique US capabilities; now our troops must face them on future battlefields. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Dr. Will Roper is the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics.

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WhatsApp's Case Against NSO Group Hinges on a Tricky Legal Argument

Wed, 30 Oct 2019 16:29:46 -0000

WhatsApp just took a hard new line against the malware industry, suing notorious Israeli surveillance contractor NSO Group for attacks on more than a thousand of its users. The case could mark a turning point in Silicon Valley's fight against private-sector espionage mercenaries. But before it can convince a court that NSO engaged in criminal hacking, WhatsApp may have to win a thorny legal argument—one that legal experts say could require some creative contortions.

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How to Keep Your Smart Assistant Voice Recordings Private

Wed, 30 Oct 2019 07:20:22 -0000

After months of revelations and apologies, all the major smart assistant makers have revamped how they handle human review of audio snippets. Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri, and Microsoft Cortana were all using third-party contractors to transcribe and vet recorded snippets, adding some human brain power to underlying machine learning algorithms. But the backlash over the lack of transparency spurred new customer controls. And with the release of Apple's iOS 13.

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Congress Still Doesn't Have an Answer for Ransomware

Tue, 29 Oct 2019 16:29:46 -0000

Ransomware has steadily become one of the most pervasive cyberattacks in the world. And while high-profile global meltdowns like 2017’s NotPetya strain garner the most attention, localized attacks have devastating consequences as well. Look no further than the cities of Atlanta and Baltimore, whose online operations ground to a halt after ransomware takeovers.

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Russian Hackers Are Still Targeting the Olympics, Three Years On

Tue, 29 Oct 2019 11:53:21 -0000

Russia's state-sponsored hackers have a few predictable fixations: NATO-country embassies. Hillary Clinton. Ukraine. But a less expected target has somehow remained in their sights for more than three years: the Olympics—and specifically anyone who would dare to accuse Russian athletes of cheating.

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TikTok, Under Scrutiny, Distances Itself From China

Mon, 28 Oct 2019 16:29:46 -0000

TikTok, the app that revolves around sharing short video clips, is in a unique position. It’s arguably the first international social media platform to have built a massive audience in the United States, where it’s been downloaded more than 110 million times since its founding in 2017. TikTok has offices in California near competitors like Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube, but it’s owned by ByteDance, a Chinese tech giant.

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Why One Secure Platform Passed on Two-Factor Authentication

Mon, 28 Oct 2019 07:20:19 -0000

When you think of online security, hopefully by now two-factor authentication springs to mind. WIRED certainly pushes the feature every chance we get. And for good reason! It's a solid protection against common web attacks like phishing and credential stuffing. But when Chris Coyne and Max Krohn, who previously cofounded OKCupid, launched their own digital identity and encrypted chat platform in 2014, they decided against using 2FA at all. Which is less radical than it sounds.

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Flock Safety Says Its License Plate Readers Reduce Crime. It’s Not That Simple

Fri, 25 Oct 2019 16:29:55 -0000

In March, police in an Atlanta suburb embarked on a surveillance experiment they hoped would reduce crime in the area. Along public roads near the local Six Flags amusement park, officers from the Cobb County Police Department installed 13 solar-powered automatic license plate readers from Flock Safety, an Atlanta-based startup on a mission to “eliminate non-violent crime.

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A Republican Raid, NASA's Venus Plans, and More News

Fri, 25 Oct 2019 07:20:22 -0000

Politicians are bickering and NASA is tinkering, but first: a cartoon tackling the problem of robot discrimination. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less.

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Total SCIF Show: The GOP's Raid Puts National Security at Risk

Thu, 24 Oct 2019 16:29:37 -0000

It should go without saying: Don’t round up a bunch of your buddies and jostle your way into a highly secured government facility uninvited. But that's exactly what a group of Republican congressmen proudly did this morning. “BREAKING,” representative Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) tweeted at 11:32 am, “I led over 30 of my colleagues into the SCIF where Adam Schiff is holding secret impeachment depositions.

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A Controversial Plan to Encrypt More of the Internet

Thu, 24 Oct 2019 07:20:18 -0000

The security community generally agrees on the importance of encrypting private data: Add a passcode to your smartphone. Use a secure messaging app like Signal. Adopt HTTPS web encryption. But a new movement to encrypt a fundamental internet mechanism, promoted by browser heavyweights like Google Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox, has sparked a heated controversy. The changes center around the Domain Name System, a decentralized directory that acts essentially as the internet's address book.

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Security News This Week: The Air Force Finally Ditches Its Nuclear Command Floppy Disks

Wed, 23 Oct 2019 21:19:15 -0000

The first thing you should read about cybersecurity this week, if you somehow haven't already, is this in-depth look at Olympic Destroyer, the malware that plagued the Pyeongchang Olympics. An excerpt from WIRED senior writer Andy Greenberg's upcoming book Sandworm, the feature from our November issue details how investigators figured out who was behind the attack—a trickier puzzle to solve than you might think.

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How to Control the Privacy of Your Social Media Posts

Wed, 23 Oct 2019 07:23:18 -0000

Posting an update to Instagram doesn't have to mean sharing your life with every single person you've befriended there. In fact, all of the major social apps give you more granular control than you might realize. If you want to set up a private, select group of people to show off photos of your baby to—or to keep your most raucous nights out a secret from—you can do so without resorting to emails or group chats.

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A Brief History of Russian Hackers' Evolving False Flags

Tue, 22 Oct 2019 18:21:10 -0000

Deception has always been part of the hacker playbook. But it's one thing for intruders to hide their tracks, and another to adopt an invented identity, or even frame another country for a cyberattack. Russia's hackers have done all of the above, and now gone one step further: In a series of espionage cases, they hijacked another country's hacking infrastructure, and used it to spy on victims and deliver malware.

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Microsoft's New Plan to Defend the Code Deep Within PCs

Tue, 22 Oct 2019 07:23:20 -0000

There are lots of ways to hack a PC. You can exploit software vulnerabilities. You can put malware on a USB drive and drop it in a parking lot for some unsuspecting office worker to pick up and plug in. Or you can turn an operating system's features against itself, strategically manipulating them to gain control. But an expanding threat now has Microsoft rethinking some of its most foundational PC defenses.

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The Ukraine Whistle-Blower Did Everything Right

Mon, 21 Oct 2019 17:45:48 -0000

On August 12, an unidentified whistle-blower filed a complaint, addressed to the chairs of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, concerning the behavior President Donald Trump. Ever since that report became public a week ago, Trump and his defenders have done their best to discredit both its contents and the author. But underneath the increasingly large pile of misinformation, misinterpretation, and outright fabrication sits one simple truth: The whistle-blower did nothing wrong.

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Trump Takes Aim at a Critical Cold War Treaty with Russia

Mon, 21 Oct 2019 07:23:28 -0000

If you looked across the tarmac at the Great Falls, Montana airport in April, you likely would have been surprised to see a fully marked Russian Air Force jet parked nearby. Its mission that week would have been even more puzzling: The unarmed Tupolev Tu-154Mspent four days flying over some of the most sensitive military bases in the United States, including the complex in the Nevada desert known as “Area 51.

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DNC Hackers Resurface, Zuckerberg Talks Free Speech, and More News

Fri, 18 Oct 2019 17:12:25 -0000

A dangerous hacker group resurfaced, Mark Zuckerberg delivered a long-winded defense of Facebook, and Volvo is going green. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Want to receive this two-minute roundup as an email every weekday? Sign up here! Today’s Headlines Stealthy Russian hacker group resurfaces with clever new tricks A band of Kremlin hackers involved in the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee has resurfaced.

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A Password-Exposing Bug Was Purged From LastPass

Thu, 19 Sep 2019 07:23:23 -0000

Google Project Zero found and reported a flaw in the widely used password manager.

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Hacker Lexicon: What Are Zero-Knowledge Proofs?

Wed, 18 Sep 2019 07:23:14 -0000

How do you make blockchain and other transactions truly private? With mathematical models known as zero-knowledge proofs.

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Red Flag Laws Are Red Herrings of Gun Control

Wed, 11 Sep 2019 00:44:40 -0000

Opinion: There’s little data on the effectiveness of mental health reporting laws, and we’re being distracted from measures we know will save lives.

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Security News This Week: An Unprecedented Cyberattack Hit US Power Utilities

Tue, 10 Sep 2019 07:23:16 -0000

Exposed Facebook phone numbers, an XKCD breach, and more of the week's top security news.

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Alleged 'Snake Oil' Crypto Firm Sues Over Boos at Black Hat

Tue, 27 Aug 2019 07:23:25 -0000

The paper being presented suggested that the two researchers had a method to quickly find large semiprime numbers and essentially break RSA-2048 and any other semiprime-based encryption.

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The Consumer Bureau's Reckless Plan for Debt Collection

Mon, 26 Aug 2019 07:23:22 -0000

Opinion: A CFPB proposal would create a quandary for consumers. Click and risk a computer virus, or don't click and miss a debt payment.

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Firefox and Chrome Fight Back Against Kazakhstan's Spying

Fri, 23 Aug 2019 07:23:23 -0000

The Central Asian country’s government has repeatedly threatened to monitor its citizens’ internet activities. Google and Mozilla aren’t having it.

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Security News This Week: Facebook's Voice Transcripts Were More Invasive Than Amazon's

Tue, 20 Aug 2019 07:23:23 -0000

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8/19 PM - A Brief History of Vanity License Plates Gone Wrong

Mon, 19 Aug 2019 07:23:20 -0000

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8/15/19 AM - DejaBlue: New BlueKeep-Style Bugs Mean You Need to Update Windows Now

Thu, 15 Aug 2019 07:23:21 -0000

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8/14 PM - Hackers Could Decrypt Your GSM Phone Calls

Wed, 14 Aug 2019 16:31:26 -0000

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8/12/19 Hidden Algorithm Flaws Expose Websites to DoS Attacks

Wed, 14 Aug 2019 07:23:23 -0000

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8/13 pm - Big Tech Needs to Use Hazardous Materials Warnings

Tue, 13 Aug 2019 16:31:29 -0000

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8/13 am - Hackers Can Turn Everyday Speakers Into Acoustic Cyberweapons

Tue, 13 Aug 2019 07:23:20 -0000

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8/12 am - How Apple Pay Buttons Can Make Websites Less Safe

Mon, 12 Aug 2019 07:23:22 -0000

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8/9/19 PM Hackers Can Break Into an iPhone Just by Sending a Text

Fri, 09 Aug 2019 16:45:40 -0000

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5G Is Here—and Still Vulnerable to Stingray Surveillance

Tue, 06 Aug 2019 16:31:20 -0000

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8/6 AM The Wrong Way to Talk About a Shooter's Manifesto

Tue, 06 Aug 2019 07:23:16 -0000

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8/5 noon - Hey, Apple! 'Opt Out' Is Useless. Let People Opt In

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 16:30:59 -0000

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8/2 AM An iPhone App That Protects Your Privacy—For Real This Time

Fri, 02 Aug 2019 07:23:15 -0000

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7/31 AM The Alleged Capital One Hacker Didn't Cover Her Tracks

Wed, 31 Jul 2019 18:41:11 -0000

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An Operating System Bug Exposes 200 Million Critical Device

Tue, 30 Jul 2019 16:31:09 -0000

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7/30 AM Equifax Might Owe You $125. Here's How to Get It

Tue, 30 Jul 2019 07:23:21 -0000

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7/26 PM Facebook's Ex-Security Chief Details His 'Observatory' for Internet Abuse

Fri, 26 Jul 2019 16:31:13 -0000

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7/26 AM The Marines’ New Drone-Killer Aces Its First Test

Fri, 26 Jul 2019 07:23:21 -0000

Last Thursday, nearly a month after Iran shot a $220 million US drone out of the sky, the US Marine Corps took down an Iranian UAV of its own. But the significance lies less in heightened tensions in the region than it does in the weapon of choice. The strike marks the first reported successful use of the Light Marine Air Defense Integrated System, an energy weapon that blasts not artillery or lasers, but radio signals.

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The App Creeping on Your IG Location, Jakarta’s Insurance Crisis, and More News

Wed, 24 Jul 2019 16:31:42 -0000

The new app that creeps on your Instagram location, Jakarta is sinking, and all things Comic Con. Fast. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Want to receive this two-minute roundup as an email every weekday? Sign up here! Today's Headlines This app lets your Instagram followers track your location Wherever you go, Instagram's there too.

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Security News This Week: Browser Extensions Scraped Data From Millions of People

Wed, 24 Jul 2019 12:11:37 -0000

Europeans had to navigate by the stars this week—well, GPS, but still—after the continent's burgeoning Galileo satellite navigation network went dark for a full seven days. The incident is a warning for everyone of how fallible the infrastructure of our modern lives really is.

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Why Microsoft’s BlueKeep Bug Hasn’t Wreaked Havoc—Yet

Mon, 22 Jul 2019 17:17:56 -0000

When news appeared in May of the security vulnerability in Windows that would come to be known as BlueKeep, security researchers almost immediately cautioned that the flaw looked like the central ingredient for a destructive worm sure to rampage through the internet. Microsoft issued a series of stark warnings to patch the flaw, which persisted in roughly a million computers. Even the NSA took the rare step of noting the bug's severity.

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7/19 Security News this Week: Palantir Manual Shows How Law Enforcement Tracks Families

Fri, 19 Jul 2019 16:31:33 -0000

On Zoom conference calls across the US this week, brows furrowed as the news broke that the video conference company had a flaw in its backend that could give hackers access to people’s webcams. Worse, Zoom seemed at first unwilling to fix the problem. Thankfully, hours after the initial reports, Zoom backtracked and issued a new fix to solve underlying vulnerability. You can go back to Zooming your brilliant brainstorms in peace, everyone.

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7/18 How To Clear Out Your Zombie Apps and Online Accounts

Thu, 18 Jul 2019 16:31:35 -0000

In these predominantly digital times, it's all too easy to build up a long trail of unused accounts that are now gathering dust: free trials that you never followed up on, streaming services you abandoned, on-demand clothing boxes that in the end weren't quite what you were looking for, and so on. In some ways these old accounts aren't doing any harm besides gathering virtual dust or sending you the occasional email nag.

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On TikTok, Teens Meme the Safety App Ruining Their Summer

Thu, 18 Jul 2019 07:23:13 -0000

Spend enough time on the social media app TikTok, and you’re bound to see a Life360 meme. That’s because Life360, a location-sharing app aimed at families, is apparently ruining the lives of teenagers all across the United States. The service allows parents to track their kids’ whereabouts in real time, among other features. As one girl with long blond hair jokes in a popular TikTok clip, it’s set her summer vacation on fire.

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The Window to Rein In Facial Recognition Is Closing

Tue, 16 Jul 2019 16:31:29 -0000

In the wake of jarring revelations about how United States law enforcement agencies have deployed facial recognition, Congress seemed, for a moment, galvanized to act. Based on a Homeland Security Committee hearing in the House Wednesday, that moment appears to be fading—as hundreds of local, state, and federal law enforcement officials continue to amass and access the controversial data every day.

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Hack Brief: A Card-Skimming Hacker Group Hit 17K Domains—and Counting

Tue, 16 Jul 2019 07:23:24 -0000

You may not recognize the name Magecart, but you’ve seen its impact. A set of sophisticated hacking groups, Magecart has been behind some of the bigger hacks of the past few years, from British Airways to Ticketmaster, all with the singular goal of stealing credit card numbers. Think of them as the ATM skimmers of the web. And thanks to poor security hygiene, they’ve managed to hit 17,000 domains in the past few months alone.

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An Amazon Phishing Scam Hits Just in Time For Prime Day

Mon, 15 Jul 2019 16:31:31 -0000

Next week, Amazon will celebrate Prime Day, a bacchanal of modestly discounted ephemera. But amid the flurry of cheap TVs and ebooks and what else, maybe Instant Pots? Watch out for this clever phishing campaign that might hit your inbox. Researchers from security company McAfee today have shared details of a so-called phishing kit, which contains the tools an aspiring hacker would need to kick off a phishing campaign, designed to target Amazon customers.

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I Opted Out of Facial Recognition at the Airport—It Wasn't Easy

Fri, 12 Jul 2019 07:23:17 -0000

The announcement came as we began to board. Last month, I was at Detroit’s Metro Airport for a connecting flight to Southeast Asia. I listened as a Delta Air Lines staff member informed passengers that the boarding process would use facial recognition instead of passport scanners. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Allie Funk is a research analyst for Freedom on the Net, Freedom House's annual country-by-country assessment of internet freedom. She focuses on developments in the US and Asia.

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How to Protect Our Kids' Data and Privacy

Wed, 10 Jul 2019 07:23:23 -0000

YouTube is currently under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission following complaints that the platform improperly collected data from young users. It’s unclear how much data this might be, but there’s reason to believe it could be a lot. For many kids, YouTube has replaced television; depending on how parents use online platforms, children could begin to amass data even before birth.

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The Biggest Cybersecurity Crises of 2019 So Far

Tue, 09 Jul 2019 07:23:18 -0000

Six months of 2019 are on the books already, and certainly there have been six months' worth of data breaches, supply chain manipulations, state-backed hacking campaigns, and harbingers of cyberwar to show for it. But the hallmark of 2019, perhaps, is feeling like the worst is yet to come. Ransomware is an ever-growing threat, corporate and US government security is still a mess, and geopolitical tensions are rising worldwide.

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Airport Facial Recognition, How Abusers Exploit Basic Apps, and More News

Fri, 05 Jul 2019 07:23:23 -0000

Stalkers have ways of tracking you even without fancy malware, airport facial recognition is becoming more common, and WIRED has some advice on how to take the very best fireworks photos. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Want to receive this two-minute roundup as an email every weekday? Sign up here! Today's Headlines Opting out of facial recognition at the airport isn't easy.

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The Simple Way Apple and Google Let Domestic Abusers Stalk Victims

Wed, 03 Jul 2019 16:31:29 -0000

One morning a couple of weeks ago, I handed my iPhone to my wife and asked her to help with with a privacy experiment. She would use my handset to track my location for the next few days, and with only the software I already had installed. Like a lot of couples, my wife and I know each other's phone PINs. So I left her with the device as I walked into our bathroom to take a shower, simulating an opportunity that I figured would present itself daily to snooping spouses.

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Ransomware Hits Georgia Courts As Municipal Attacks Spread

Wed, 03 Jul 2019 10:47:42 -0000

Ransomware has no shortage of cautionary tales and wakeup calls from the past decade. But for local governments, this past year has been a particularly brutal reminder of the threat.

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Security News This Week: Myspace Employees Used to Spy on Users

Tue, 02 Jul 2019 16:31:39 -0000

As we approach the July 4 holiday, the security world had no shortage of fireworks—starting with a hacker group, likely from China, that has spent years breaking into carriers in an effort to hoover up metadata from prime targets. Russia gets most of the attention lately, but never count out China's sophistication and verve. Also never count out Excel as a popular target for hackers.

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The Infrastructure Mess Causing Countless Internet Outages

Mon, 01 Jul 2019 16:31:19 -0000

In a weeks-long stretch in 2014, hackers stole thousands of dollars a day in cryptocurrency from owners. In 2017, internet outages cropped up around the United States for hours. Last year, Google Cloud suffered hours of disruptions. Earlier this month, a large swath of European mobile data was rerouted through the state-backed China Telecom. And on Monday, websites and services around the world—including the internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare—experienced hours of outages.

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Hackers Are Poking at a MacOS Flaw Apple Left Unfixed

Mon, 01 Jul 2019 09:00:30 -0000

On February 22, cybersecurity researcher Filippo Cavallarin told Apple that he had found a bug in macOS. Left unchecked, the vulnerability could let malware slip past the operating system’s Gatekeeper security feature ndetected. According to Cavallarin, Apple said it would fix the problem by mid-May.

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How Hackers Turn Microsoft Excel's Own Features Against It

Fri, 28 Jun 2019 16:31:22 -0000

You probably think of Microsoft's classic spreadsheet program Excel as mostly boring. Sure, it can wrangle data, but it's not exactly Apex Legends. For hackers, though, it's a lot of fun. Like the rest of the Office 365 suite, attackers often manipulate Excel to launch their digital strikes. And two recent findings demonstrate how the program's own legitimate features can be used against it.

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I Scraped Millions of Venmo Payments. Your Data Is at Risk

Thu, 27 Jun 2019 16:31:30 -0000

Like many people, I use Venmo to pay for stuff: to split the check at dinner, to send my roommate my portion of the utility bills each month, to reimburse friends for concert tickets. It's a useful app for sending and receiving money, regardless of who you bank with. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Dan Salmon is a masters graduate from Minnesota State University who specializes in information security.

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A Likely Chinese Hacker Crew Targeted 10 Phone Carriers to Steal Metadata

Thu, 27 Jun 2019 13:39:40 -0000

For anyone who's worried that their phone might be hacked to track their location, who they call and when, and other metadata that describes the intimate details of their life, one cyberespionage group has provided a reminder that hackers don't necessarily even need to reach out to your device to gain that access. It may be far easier and more efficient for sophisticated stalkers to penetrate a mobile provider, and use its data to surveil whichever customers they please.

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Under Trump, the Fight Against Cybercrime Has Waned

Wed, 26 Jun 2019 16:31:27 -0000

According to recent polling, Americans view malicious cyber activity as their top security concern—ahead of the economy, nuclear threats, and ISIL. This fear is well-justified. Within the last couple of years, there have been cyberattacks in the United States against the electoral system, the financial industry, the power grid, and hospitals.

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Iranian Hackers Launch a New US-Targeted Campaign as Tensions Mount

Wed, 26 Jun 2019 07:23:21 -0000

When two countries begin to threaten war in 2019, it's a safe bet that they've already been hacking each other's networks.

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Security News This Week: Hackers Used Two Firefox Zero Days to Hit a Crypto Exchange

Tue, 25 Jun 2019 07:23:21 -0000

The week began with a tricky Google Calendar phishing scam, and ended with Iran ramping up its cyberattacks against the US, as talk of war with that nation mounts. That, as they say, escalated quickly. Before things took a turn for the geopolitical, we walked you through a dead simple way to stop data breaches with... database encryption. We explained why Google is getting retro when it comes to ways to encrypt data sets.

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Minnesota Cop Awarded $585K After Colleagues Snooped on Her DMV Data

Mon, 24 Jun 2019 07:23:25 -0000

In 2013, Amy Krekelberg received an unsettling notice from Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources: An employee had abused his access to a government driver’s license database and snooped on thousands of people in the state, mostly women. Krekelberg learned that she was one of them.

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Google Turns to Retro Cryptography to Keep Datasets Private

Fri, 21 Jun 2019 07:23:21 -0000

Certain studies require sensitive datasets: the relationship between nutritious school lunch and student health, the effectiveness of salary equity initiatives, and so on. Valuable insights require navigating a minefield of private, personal information. Now, after years of work, cryptographers and data scientists at Google have come up with a technique to enable this "multi-party computation" without exposing information to anyone who didn't already have it.

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Cellebrite Now Says It Can Unlock Any iPhone for Cops

Thu, 20 Jun 2019 16:31:20 -0000

Not so long ago, companies that cracked personal devices on behalf of governments did so in secret, closely guarding even the descriptions of their capabilities. Now, it seems, they proudly tweet about their updated abilities to hack into new iPhones, like a video game firm offering an expansion pack.

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Tricky Scam Plants Phishing Links in Your Google Calendar

Thu, 20 Jun 2019 07:23:21 -0000

At this point, you're probably keeping an eye out for possible phishing messages in your email. You know the drill: If you have any doubts, don't click links or download attachments. That's difficult enough to adhere to in practice. Now, thanks to new findings from the threat intelligence firm Kaspersky, along with phishing texts, phishing tweets, and phishing pop-ups, you need to worry about one more thing: phishing in your calendar.

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A Plan to Stop Breaches With Dead Simple Database Encryption

Wed, 19 Jun 2019 16:32:05 -0000

Data breaches and exposures have been so rampant over the last few years that it's difficult to even keep track at this point, much less step back to mull a solution. But, perhaps out of necessity, researchers from the database giant MongoDB have spent the last two years developing a new database encryption scheme aimed squarely at reducing these damaging incidents. Their secret weapon? Radical simplicity. The idea of encrypting databases in various ways isn't new.

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Your Google Calendar Isn't Safe, an Eye-Controlled TV, and More News

Wed, 19 Jun 2019 07:23:21 -0000

There's a new scam getting after your Google Calendar, you can now control TVs with your eyes, and it's time to get your smorgasbord of cell phone photos organized. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Want to receive this two-minute roundup as an email every week day? Sign up here! Today's Headlines A tricky scam plants phishing links in your calendar You hopefully already know to avoid phishing emails ... and texts ... and popups .

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It's Time to Switch to a Privacy Browser

Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:31:32 -0000

There's a new battleground in the browser wars: user privacy. Firefox just made its Enhanced Tracking Protection a default feature, Apple continues to pile privacy-focused features into its Safari browser, and people are more aware than ever before of the sort of information they can reveal every time they set a digital footprint on the web. If you want to push back against online tracking, you've got several options to pick from when choosing a default browser.

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Security News This Week: Telegram Says China Is Behind DDoS

Tue, 18 Jun 2019 11:28:36 -0000

It’s mid June, and according to tradition, the news cycle is supposed to be lethargic, cooling off in a hammock somewhere and taking it easy. Not so much this week. It started off well enough: On Sunday we explained how to actually, finally stop all those robocalls---or at least slow them down. But then Monday hit, and the US government confirmed that hackers had stolen a border agency database full of traveler photos.

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Hackers Target US Power, Amazon Clones a Neighborhood, and More News

Mon, 17 Jun 2019 16:31:42 -0000

Amazon cloned an entire neighborhood, a dangerous hacker group takes aim at the US electrical grid, and the world remembers a running great. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less.

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Cloudflare’s Five-Year Project to Protect Nonprofits Online

Mon, 17 Jun 2019 07:23:24 -0000

In May 2018, the Middle East-focused free speech and information access group Majal suffered a major cyberattack. Someone had managed to infiltrate a Majal Amazon Web Services account, access a content repository and backups, and wipe out six months of user data and posts across the organization's various message boards and social media platforms.

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Google's Push to Close a Major Encrypted Web Loophole

Fri, 14 Jun 2019 16:31:20 -0000

The internet-wide push to encrypt more web traffic has resulted in a wave of safer, snoop-proof connections. The next challenge, though, is completing that transition from using a mixture of unencrypted HTTP and protected HTTPS to requiring that baseline protection everywhere. And over the past year, Google has been publicly offering a simple and straightforward way for websites to eliminate these subtle weak spots.

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The Next Big Privacy Hurdle? Teaching AI to Forget

Fri, 14 Jun 2019 07:23:18 -0000

When the European Union enacted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) a year ago, one of the most revolutionary aspects of the regulation was the “right to be forgotten”—an often-hyped and debated right, sometimes perceived as empowering individuals to request the erasure of their information on the internet, most commonly from search engines or social networks. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Darren Shou is vice president of research at Symantec.

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Google Says It Isn't Killing Ad Blockers. Ad Blockers Disagree

Thu, 13 Jun 2019 16:31:50 -0000

Over the past 18 months, Google has pushed to improve Chrome extension security—a welcome goal given the sketchy morass of extensions that have been out there for years. But one proposed change related to this effort threatens to hobble ad blocking extensions. And the pending transition has set up a showdown between Google, ad blocker makers, and even other browsers.

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Radiohead Gets ‘Hacked,’ a T-Mobile/Sprint Hiccup, and More News

Thu, 13 Jun 2019 07:23:21 -0000

Radiohead owned some hackers, the T-Mobile/Sprint merger runs into some hiccups, and a Swedish mining town is being picked up and moved. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less.

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Radiohead Dropped 18 Hours of Unreleased Music to Screw Pirates

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 16:31:44 -0000

On Tuesday, Radiohead guitarist and composer Jonny Greenwood made an announcement on Twitter and Facebook: The band had been "hacked," and the perpetrator attempted a $150,000 shakedown to prevent the public release of the files. In response? Radiohead dumped all of it online for free. You can stream it below for the next 18 days, or buy it on Bandcamp for about $23. All proceeds will go to a climate protest organization called Extinction Rebellion.

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Russia and Iran Plan to Fundamentally Isolate the Internet

Tue, 11 Jun 2019 16:32:12 -0000

For years, countries have spoken in vague terms about creating domestic internets that could be isolated from the world at will. Now, we’re seeing some begin to execute that vision. Last month, Iran announced its national information network, or its domestic internet, is 80 percent complete.

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Security News This Week: Cryptocurrency Company Hacks Itself Before Hackers Can Hack It

Tue, 11 Jun 2019 07:23:20 -0000

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference kicked off the week, bringing with it some interesting security enhancements for iOS and macOS users. The company will start offering its own single sign-on option, competing with Google and Facebook but with enhancements those two currently don't offer. And it rejiggered its Find My feature using some very clever cryptography.

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The Catch-22 That Broke the Internet

Mon, 10 Jun 2019 16:31:40 -0000

Five days ago, the internet had a conniption. In broad patches around the globe, YouTube sputtered. Shopify stores shut down. Snapchat blinked out. And millions of people couldn’t access their Gmail accounts. The disruptions all stemmed from Google Cloud, which suffered an prolonged outage—which also prevented Google engineers from pushing a fix.

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Election Security Is Still Hurting at Every Level

Mon, 10 Jun 2019 07:23:21 -0000

The Russian meddling that rocked the 2016 United States presidential election gave the public a full view of something election officials and advocates have warned about for years: weak voting infrastructure and election systems around the US, and a lack of political will and funding to strengthen them. Two and a half years later, real progress has been made in key areas. But with a new presidential election less than 18 months away, glaring systemic risks remain.

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A Push to Protect Political Campaigns from Hackers Hits a Snag

Fri, 07 Jun 2019 16:31:57 -0000

Campaign finance laws prohibit businesses and even many nonprofits from directly contributing to political campaigns. They can’t even send pizza. Now, the United States Federal Election Commission may apply the same laws to block a cybersecurity firm from offering free or low cost defense services to campaigns, at a time when those protections are badly needed.

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'Sign In With Apple' Protects You in Ways Google and Facebook Don't

Fri, 07 Jun 2019 13:51:18 -0000

At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, the company debuted a slew of products and services, including a new Mac Pro that's part raw computing power, part cheese grater. But one new feature, mentioned in passing, could have an outsized impact on user security and privacy for years to come. Apple now has its own single-sign-on scheme—and it's a major reimagining of how such a mechanism can work. You've seen single-sign-on before, even if you don't use it.

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The Clever Cryptography Behind Apple's 'Find My' Feature

Thu, 06 Jun 2019 16:32:00 -0000

When Apple executive Craig Federighi described a new location-tracking feature for Apple devices at the company's Worldwide Developer Conference keynote Monday, it sounded—to the sufficiently paranoid, at least—like both a physical security innovation and a potential privacy disaster.

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Apple and New York Are Changing the Privacy Game, and More News

Thu, 06 Jun 2019 07:23:22 -0000

Apple (the company) is rolling out a new sign-on feature, the Big Apple (the city) is pushing a groundbreaking privacy law, and Hot Wheels cars are being put to the test. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Today's Headlines New York is set to pass a landmark privacy law Just last week, California passed a historic privacy bill that gave people the power to know how their data was being shared, and the ability to request changes or stop sharing it all together.

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Another Mac Bug Lets Hackers Invisibly Click Security Prompts

Wed, 05 Jun 2019 16:31:54 -0000

Two hours into his keynote at Apple’s Worldwide Developer's Conference last June, senior vice president Craig Federighi revealed a new privacy feature in MacOS Mojave that forces applications to ask the user if they want to "allow" or "deny" any request to access sensitive components and data, including the camera or microphone, messages, and browsing history. The audience dutifully applauded.

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Apple Just Patched a Modem Bug That's Been in Macs Since 1999

Tue, 04 Jun 2019 16:31:36 -0000

In 1999, Apple released a slew of new features with Mac OS 9, calling it "the best internet operating system ever." The idea was to unlock the full potential of the turquoise plastic iMac G3—the Internet Mac!—released in 1998. But 12-year-old Joshua Hill didn't have an iMac. To take advantage of all the new connectivity from his parents' mid-'90s Mac Performa, he needed a modem that would plug into the computer through one of its chunky "serial" ports.

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Security News This Week: A Teen Waltzed Into Mar-a-Lago

Tue, 04 Jun 2019 07:23:20 -0000

Returning to work after a long weekend is always rough—especially if you have to deal with a looming worm attack or yet another disinformation operation on your networks! Which was the case in the security world this week. Despite dire warnings and an urgent update issued from Microsoft, customers are taking too long to patch a critical vulnerability that still remains in approximately 900,000 Windows computers.

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To Fight Deepfakes, Researchers Built a Smarter Camera

Mon, 03 Jun 2019 16:31:41 -0000

One of the most difficult things about detecting manipulated photos, or "deepfakes," is that digital photo files aren't coded to be tamper-evident. But researchers from New York University's Tandon School of Engineering are starting to develop strategies that make it easier to tell if a photo has been altered, opening up a potential new front in the war on fakery.

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With a Worm Looming, the BlueKeep Bug Isn’t Getting Patched Fast Enough

Mon, 03 Jun 2019 09:24:33 -0000

Two weeks have passed since Microsoft warned users about a critical vulnerability in a common Windows protocol that could enable a hacker to remotely take over machines without even a click from their owners, potentially allowing an infectious worm to rip through millions of PCs. That bug might be fading from the headlines, but it still lingers in at least 900,000 computers.

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Google Is Finally Making Chrome Extensions More Secure

Fri, 31 May 2019 07:23:22 -0000

After years of issues with rogue Chrome extensions, hijacks, and malware, Google announced a slew of new policies Thursday to ensure the little browser applets are secure. The improvements come as part of a wider company push to evaluate how much user data third-party applications can access. Google launched the audit, known as Project Strobe, in October alongside an announcement that Google+ had suffered data exposures and would be shuttered.

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Facebook Removes a Fresh Batch of Innovative, Iran-Linked Fake Accounts

Wed, 29 May 2019 16:31:57 -0000

Last August, researchers from the threat intelligence firm FireEye uncovered a vast social media influence campaign, conducted by a network of inauthentic news outlets and fake personas with ties to Iran. Their findings were a stark reminder that these kinds of tactics aren't limited to Russia. Now FireEye has published a sequel of sorts, documenting the evolving methods of disinformation actors are using across social media platforms and other outlets to promote Iranian interests online.

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Hack Brief: 885 Million Sensitive Financial Records Exposed Online

Wed, 29 May 2019 07:23:21 -0000

After a solid decade of nonstop corporate data breaches and exposures you'd think large organizations would have at least fixed the most basic and obviously damaging types of data mishandling. But there's clearly still a long way to go. On Friday, independent security journalist Brian Krebs revealed that the real estate and title insurance giant First American had 885 million sensitive customer financial records, going back to 2003, exposed on its website for anyone to access.

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Security News This Week: Snapchat Employees Reportedly Spied on Private Snaps

Tue, 28 May 2019 16:32:01 -0000

The Memorial Day weekend begins on a dire note for constitutional protections. On Thursday, the US government indicted Wikileaks founder Julian Assange for violating the Espionage Act. This is the first time in modern history that the US has charged the publisher of sensitive materials rather than the person who leaked it.

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The Latest Charges Against Julian Assange Are an Assault on Press Freedom

Mon, 27 May 2019 07:23:24 -0000

On Thursday, the Department of Justice unsealed new charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Unlike the previous indictment—which focused narrowly on an apparent offer to help crack a password—the 17 superseding counts focus instead on alleged violations of the Espionage Act. In doing so, the DOJ has aimed a battering ram at the freedom of the press, whether you think Assange is a journalist or not.

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The Danger in Assange’s Charges, a Memory Experiment, and More News

Fri, 24 May 2019 16:31:39 -0000

New charges against Julian Assange threaten all of the press, scientists have figured out how to alter emotional memories, and Memorial Day is coming. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Today's Headlines Julian Assange's charges put all of the press at risk New charges unveiled by the Justice Department against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange paint a troublesome picture for him---and for all journalists.

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Facial Recognition Has Already Reached Its Breaking Point

Thu, 23 May 2019 16:31:37 -0000

As facial recognition technologies have evolved from fledgling projects into powerful software platforms, researchers and civil liberties advocates have consistently warned about their potential to erode privacy. Those mounting fears came to a head Wednesday in Congress. Alarms over facial recognition had already gained urgency in recent years, as studies have shown that the systems still produce relatively high rates of false positives, and consistently contain racial and gender bias.

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Google Has Stored Some Passwords in Plaintext Since 2005

Thu, 23 May 2019 07:23:21 -0000

It happened again. Google announced today that it's the latest tech giant to have accidentally stored user passwords unprotected in plaintext. GSuite users, pay attention. Google says that the bug affected "a small percentage of GSuite users," meaning it does not impact individual consumer accounts, but does affect some business and corporate accounts, which have their own risks and sensitivities.

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Bluetooth's Complexity Has Become a Security Risk

Wed, 22 May 2019 07:23:23 -0000

Bluetooth is the invisible glue that binds devices together. Which means that when it has bugs, it affects everything from iPhones and Android devices, to scooters, and even physical authentication keys used to secure other accounts. The order of magnitude can be stunning: The BlueBorne flaw, first disclosed in September 2017, impacted five billion PCs, phones, and IoT units.

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Political Parties Still Have Cybersecurity Hygiene Problems

Tue, 21 May 2019 17:44:10 -0000

In the three years since Russian operatives breached the servers of the Democratic National Committee and threw presidential politics into a state of perpetual chaos, countries around the world have been on notice to the threat of foreign interference in elections.

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We Are Tenants on Our Own Devices

Tue, 21 May 2019 16:31:45 -0000

A decade ago, Amazon abruptly deleted copies of George Orwell's 1984 from the Kindles of its American customers. The move instantly evoked the “memory holes” in the novel's totalitarian dystopia, and it inspired about equal measures of shock, outrage, and jokes. (If a fictional Amazon in a dystopian novel had performed the same mass deletion, critics would have said it was too on the nose.

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Security News This Week: Oh Great, Google Tracks What You Buy Online With Gmail

Tue, 21 May 2019 07:23:17 -0000

The week started out with a bang, or several of them really. Remember Meltdown and Spectre, the vulnerabilities that affected basically every Intel processor from the last decade? There’s a related attack called ZombieLoad—yes, ZombieLoad—with similarly broad and bad impact. Serious stuff! But honestly not even the worst disclosure of the week. That distinction probably goes to Cisco.

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Global Takedown Shows the Anatomy of a Modern Cybercriminal Supply Chain

Mon, 20 May 2019 16:31:33 -0000

For decades, the security industry has warned that the cybercriminal economy has been developing its own highly specialized, professional supply chain. But only when law enforcement tears the lid off a well-honed hacker operation—as they did today with the global Goznym malware crew—does the full picture of every interlinked step in that globalized crime network come into focus.

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Google Recalls Titan Security Key Over a Bluetooth Flaw

Mon, 20 May 2019 07:23:25 -0000

As part of its expanded anti-phishing and account security measures, Google offers extensive support for physical authentication tokens. In a surprising setback, though, the company announced today that it has discovered a vulnerability in the Bluetooth version of its own Titan Security Key—which pairs to devices through the wireless Bluetooth Low Energy protocol, rather than through NFC or physical insertion into a port.

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How Tech Helped Unknown Staffers Change the US Way of War

Fri, 17 May 2019 16:31:42 -0000

The Tandberg video-teleconference monitor is sleeker than the average desktop computer but not much bigger. Developed by a Norwegian concern now owned by Cisco Systems, the desktop units—which look like knock-off iMacs, with a handset for dialing—support seamless and, when enabled, classified video-teleconferencing.

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The FCC's Plan to Stop Robocalls Sounds Awfully Familiar

Fri, 17 May 2019 07:23:22 -0000

Despite high-profile arrests and protocols with clever names, the robocall scourge remains indomitable. Wednesday, Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai teased a new proposal to put a serious dent in the problem. Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. On the face of it, Pai’s proposal sounds appealing. It would allow carriers to block robocalls by default, rather than on an opt-in basis.

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Microsoft’s First Windows XP Patch in Years Is a Very Bad Sign

Thu, 16 May 2019 16:31:45 -0000

This week, Microsoft issued patches for 79 flaws across its platforms and products. One of them merits particular attention: a bug so bad that Microsoft released a fix for it on Windows XP, an operating system it officially abandoned five years ago. There’s maybe no better sign of a vulnerability’s severity; the last time Microsoft bothered to make a Windows XP fix publicly available was a little over two years ago, in the months before the WannaCry ransomware attack swept the globe.

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WhatsApp Was Hacked, Your Computer Was Exposed, and More News

Thu, 16 May 2019 07:23:28 -0000

Hackers got into pretty much everything, and Amazon is paying employees to quit. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Today's Headlines A phone call broke Whatsapp The messaging platform WhatsApp is well known for its end-to-end encryption, but recent news calls its security into question. The NSO Group, an Israeli spy firm, injected malware onto targeted phones in order to steal data by simply placing a phone call.

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How Hackers Broke WhatsApp With Just a Phone Call

Wed, 15 May 2019 16:31:18 -0000

You've heard the advice a million times. Don't click links in suspicious emails or texts. Don't download shady apps. But a new Financial Times report alleges that the notorious Israeli spy firm NSO Group developed a WhatsApp exploit that could inject malware onto targeted phones—and steal data from them—simply by calling them. The targets didn't need to pick up to be infected, and the calls often left no trace on the phone's log.

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Millions of Hacked Routers, Apple's Court Troubles, and More News

Wed, 15 May 2019 12:15:55 -0000

Your Cisco routers aren't safe, the Supreme Court voted against Apple, and the nostalgic Tomagotchi has returned. Here's the tech news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Today's Headlines Hackers found a way into Cisco devices. Millions of them Everyone uses Cisco routers, including institutions that deal with hypersensitive information.

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Indictment Alleges Who Hacked Anthem, but Not Why

Tue, 14 May 2019 16:31:26 -0000

The hack of health insurance giant Anthem Inc. has loomed large in the public consciousness since it first came to light in 2015—not just as one of the biggest breaches of all time, but also as a potential example of the Chinese government's longstanding cyber espionage campaign. Hackers stole names, birth dates, addresses, Social Security numbers, and employment details from 78 million Anthem customers. And for years China was reported to be behind it.

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Security News This Week: Robert Mueller Won't Testify Wednesday After All

Tue, 14 May 2019 07:23:23 -0000

It was a week of notable firsts, although not always welcome ones. Israel responded to a Hamas cyberattack by blowing up the building that apparently housed the responsible hacking group, a new escalation in cyberwar doctrine. Google for the first time lets you limit how long it keeps your data—so go do that. And the CIA became the first intelligence agency to establish an official presence on the Tor anonymous network. For some reason.

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Artificial Intelligence May Not 'Hallucinate' After All

Mon, 13 May 2019 07:23:28 -0000

Thanks to advances in machine learning, computers have gotten really good at identifying what’s in photographs. They started beating humans at the task years ago, and can now even generate fake images that look eerily real. While the technology has come a long way, it’s still not entirely foolproof. In particular, researchers have found that image detection algorithms remain susceptible to a class of problems called adversarial examples.

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Feds Dismantled the Dark Web Drug Trade—but It's Already Rebuilding

Fri, 10 May 2019 16:31:28 -0000

On the dark web drug market Empire this week, business proceeds as usual. "Satisfied customer, will be back," writes one user on the product page of a meth dealer with the handle shardyshardface. "Excellent," reads a plaudit posted by a buyer of the opiate oxycodone. "Bravo," says another for a five-dollar sample of fentanyl, one of 18 reviews posted on the product's profile page in the last week. In all, Empire lists over 18,000-plus narcotic offerings, including hundreds for oxycodone alone.

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Hack Brief: Hackers Stole $40 Million from Binance Cryptocurrency Exchange

Thu, 09 May 2019 22:11:32 -0000

Binance is one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges. As of Tuesday, it’s now also the scene of a major cryptocurrency theft. In what the company calls a “large scale security breach,” hackers stole not only 7,000 bitcoin—equivalent to over $40 million—but also some user two-factor authentication codes and API tokens.

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The Law Being Used to Prosecute Julian Assange Is Broken

Thu, 09 May 2019 07:23:23 -0000

The First Amendment and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act collided last month when the UK arrested Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on, among other things, a US extradition request for computer crime. He has since been sentenced to 50 weeks in a British prison. For roughly seven years before his arrest, he’d been living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, but on April 11, the Ecuadorian government withdrew his asylum.

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The CIA Sets Up Shop on Tor, the Anonymous Internet

Wed, 08 May 2019 16:31:59 -0000

The anonymity service Tor has grown in popularity around the world over the last few years, but it has also long been a tool for intelligence agencies and clandestine communications—not to mention endless cat-and-mouse games between law enforcement and criminals. But now, the CIA is staking out a more public presence there.

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What Israel's Strike on Hamas Hackers Means For Cyberwar

Wed, 08 May 2019 07:23:23 -0000

This weekend, violence between Israel and Gaza escalated to a degree not seen since 2014, with 25 Palestinians and four Israelis killed in the fighting. Decades into the entrenched tensions of the region, the incident overall was tragically unsurprising. But for cybersecurity professionals, one aspect particularly stood out: The Israeli Defense Force claimed that it bombed and partially destroyed one building in Gaza because it was allegedly the base of an active Hamas hacking group.

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Security News This Week: Putin Will Put Russia Behind an Internet Curtain

Tue, 07 May 2019 16:31:38 -0000

The week began with dragon’s breath. After a major breach in its firewall, a scrappy security team in the north engaged in an epic battle to rid its system of an infected payload that kept growing bigger and bigger, spewing frozen ice flames across all critical infrastructure. Yes, I’m talking about Game of Thrones, folks, and yes, we asked an officer in the Army National Guard to do a tactical analysis of the battle of Winterfell, and yes, it’s wonderful and you should read it.

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A Hacking Spree, a Fight for Open Internet, and More News

Tue, 07 May 2019 07:23:21 -0000

Hackers are hacking, Portland is leading the charge for open internet, and Paris is pondering what to do with what's left of the Notre Dame Cathedral. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. A hacker group is on a hijacking spree Over the past three years, insidious supply chain attacks on at least six different companies have now all been tied to a single group of hackers.

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A Mysterious Hacker Group Is On a Supply Chain Hijacking Spree

Mon, 06 May 2019 07:23:18 -0000

A software supply chain attack represents one of the most insidious forms of hacking. By breaking into a developer's network and hiding malicious code within apps and software updates that users trust, supply chain hijackers can smuggle their malware onto hundreds of thousands—or millions—of computers in a single operation, without the slightest sign of foul play.

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Hacktivists Are on the Rise—but Less Effective Than Ever

Fri, 03 May 2019 16:31:34 -0000

In the United States, the public discourse has lately centered around nation state disinformation campaigns much more than hacktivism. But internationally, dramatic or destructive digital acts that call attention to particular issues continue to simmer—and boiled over in the lead-up to the ouster of longtime Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir. The #OpSudan effort did not directly lead to al-Bashir's arrest.

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Trump’s World Still Faces 16 Known Criminal Probes

Thu, 02 May 2019 07:23:24 -0000

In December, WIRED took stock of then 17 known criminal investigations swirling around Donald Trump, Russia’s role in the 2016 election, and Trump’s network of businesses and business partners—probes by not just Special Counsel Robert Mueller but by at least a half-dozen other federal, state, and local investigators.

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Security Experts Unite Over the Right to Repair

Wed, 01 May 2019 07:23:22 -0000

Two years ago, as Nebraska was considering a “right to repair” bill designed to make it easier for consumers to fix their own gadgets, an Apple lobbyist made a frightening prediction. If the state passed the legislation, it would turn into a haven for hackers, Steve Kester told then-state senator Lydia Brasch. He argued the law would inadvertently give bad actors the opportunity to break into devices like smartphones. The bill was later shelved, in part because of industry pressure.

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The Battle of Winterfell: A Tactical Analysis

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 16:31:39 -0000

By now we’re all familiar with the battle tactics in Game of Thrones: Confront your enemy head on—usually in some nicely arrayed lines—and hack at them until no one’s left alive or someone has won. It’s a tried and true method, with little in the way of actual operational depth. And as Sunday night’s Battle of Winterfell showed, it's particularly ineffective against an endless army of the undead. Spoilers ahead, obviously.

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Security News This Week: Hackers Found a Freaky New Way to Kill Your Car

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 07:23:22 -0000

The week in security news began much as you’d expect: still trying to make sense of the redacted Mueller report, which was released to congress late last week. Garrett M. Graff’s takeaways? The report makes clear that Trump was worse than a “useful idiot,” along with 14 other insights you may have missed.

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The SIM Swap Fix That the US Isn't Using

Mon, 29 Apr 2019 07:23:24 -0000

Around a year ago, André Tenreiro was called into a meeting between the chief technology officer of the phone carrier he worked for—one of the largest in Mozambique—and an executive of the country's largest bank. The latter had seen an escalating pattern of fraud based on so-called SIM swap attacks, where hackers trick or bribe a phone company employee into switching the SIM card associated with a victim's phone number.

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GoDaddy Takes Down 15,000 Spammy 'Snake Oil' Subdomains

Fri, 26 Apr 2019 16:33:15 -0000

You’ve seen the ads in your email or online: Celebrities supposedly hawking miracle weight loss cures or galaxy brain supplements. They’re at this point endemic to the web, as deeply ingrained as hashtags and puppies. But even though plenty of people fall for them, no one ever really does anything about it. Of all the security threats online, spam ranks pretty low on the priority list.

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Mueller Makes It Clear: Trump Was Worse Than a 'Useful Idiot'

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 16:31:46 -0000

Back in January, approximately 1,000 Robert Mueller news-cycles ago, I argued that given the arc of the special counsel Russia probe, it’d be embarrassing for Donald Trump if he weren’t an agent of the Russian intelligence: “We’ve reached a point in the Mueller probe where there are only two scenarios left,” I wrote at the time.

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Mueller Report Fallout Pressures Democrats to Impeach Trump

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 07:23:22 -0000

Democrats in Washington found themselves Friday confronting an unwelcome surprise conclusion following the release of the final report by special counsel Robert Mueller: Maybe we should impeach President Trump after all. Ever since taking back the House of Representatives in January, Democratic leaders have carefully modulated the demands for impeachment from their activist base.

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Don't Praise the Sri Lankan Government for Blocking Facebook

Wed, 24 Apr 2019 16:31:34 -0000

After a series of bombings killed over 300 people in Sri Lanka Easter Sunday, the country’s government blocked access to social media sites including Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and the chat app Viber, according to state media and independent organizations that monitor internet blocks.

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Hackers Can Tell What Netflix Bandersnatch Choices You Make

Wed, 24 Apr 2019 07:23:45 -0000

Netflix made a splash when it debuted Black Mirror: Bandersnatch in December, a "choose your own adventure"-style movie that put viewers in charge of their cinematic destiny. It has since invested in even more interactive programming, including a live-action show featuring survivalist Bear Grylls.

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14 Mueller Report Takeaways You Might Have Missed

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 16:31:45 -0000

Robert Mueller’s final 448-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 election—and Donald Trump’s apparent attempts to obstruct justice along the way—takes some time to read fully. On close examination, it turns out to be a deeply compelling document, full of tantalizing revelations and details. Washington Post book critic Carlos Lozada called the Mueller Report “the best book by far on the workings of the Trump presidency.

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Security Roundup: Facebook 'Unintentionally' Collected Email Contacts of 1.5 Million Users

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 07:23:41 -0000

After months of anticipation and fevered speculation by supporters and critics alike, the public finally laid eyes on the most important release of the past 25 years, its secrets guarded by a famously tight-lipped team up until the very end. That's right, Beyoncé dropped a new album this week. Scholars will analyze its influence for years to come. Robert Mueller's report also came out, at least in redacted form.

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Trump’s Homeland Security Purge Worries Cybersecurity Experts

Mon, 22 Apr 2019 16:32:45 -0000

This week kicked off a new, chaotic era at the Department of Homeland Security, where the only certainty seems to be the president’s obsession with immigration. As former Customs and Border Protection commissioner and prominent family-separation advocate Kevin McAleenan takes over as acting secretary, it’s fair to wonder what will happen to the rest of DHS’s many essential responsibilities.

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Today’s News: Read the Mueller Report; Change Your Instagram Password

Mon, 22 Apr 2019 07:23:30 -0000

Tech news you can use, in two minutes or less: The Mueller Report is much worse for Trump than Barr let on The full (but redacted) Mueller Report is finally here, in its 448 pages of glory. There are lots of takeaways, but the bottom line is the report is much more damaging to Trump than Trump-appointed attorney general William Barr initially said.

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The Mueller Report Is Out. Here's Where You Can Read It

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 16:31:41 -0000

On March 22, special counsel Robert Mueller turned in his long-anticipated report on Russian interference in the 2016 election—and the question of whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice. Now you can read the whole thing for yourself. Or at least what’s left of it, after attorney general William Barr’s redactions. Barr had initially released a brief summary of the report’s key findings in a four-page letter he sent to Congress on March 24.

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Cyberspies Hijacked the Internet Domains of Entire Countries

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 07:23:35 -0000

The discovery of a new, sophisticated team of hackers spying on dozens of government targets is never good news. But one team of cyberspies has pulled off that scale of espionage with a rare and troubling trick, exploiting a weak link in the internet's cybersecurity that experts have warned about for years: DNS hijacking, a technique that meddles with the fundamental address book of the internet.

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A Top Dark Web Drug Ring Goes Down—Thanks to ATM Withdrawals

Thu, 18 Apr 2019 16:32:14 -0000

Until a few weeks ago, sinmed was one of the largest drug vendors at Dream Market, the foremost dark web bazaar. It took in millions of dollars shipping fentanyl-laced heroin, methamphetamines, and hundreds of thousands of counterfeit Xanax tablets across the US—until the New York district attorney's office shut it down, and arrested the three men who allegedly ran it. Dark web takedowns happen all the time.

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Google's Making It Easier to Safeguard Sensitive Data Troves

Thu, 18 Apr 2019 07:23:24 -0000

When Ivan Medvedev joined Google as a privacy engineering manager in 2013, the company had rogue data anxiety. Its user base and set of services had become so massive that it seemed inevitable that sensitive data could accidentally crop up in unexpected places, like customers filing support tickets with more personal information than necessary.

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Mysterious Hackers Hid Their Swiss Army Spyware for 5 Years

Wed, 17 Apr 2019 16:33:25 -0000

It's not every day that security researchers discover a new state-sponsored hacking group. Even rarer is the emergence of one whose spyware has 80 distinct components, capable of strange and unique cyberespionage tricks—and who's kept those tricks under wraps for more than five years.

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Microsoft Email Hack Shows the Lurking Danger of Customer Support

Wed, 17 Apr 2019 07:23:31 -0000

On Friday night, Microsoft sent notification emails to an unknown number of its individual email users—across Outlook, MSN, and Hotmail—warning them about a data breach. Between January 1 and March 28 of this year, hackers used a set of stolen credentials for a Microsoft customer support platform to access account data like email addresses in messages, message subject lines, and folder names inside accounts. By Sunday, it acknowledged that the problem was actually much worse.

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William Barr Sends Troubling Signals Ahead of Mueller Report Release

Tue, 16 Apr 2019 16:33:14 -0000

The Mueller report has been sitting in the Justice Department for nearly two weeks. Attorney general William Barr told Congress Wednesday he’s hoping the public will finally get a look at the 300-plus page document sometime within the next week, ending a bizarre period of dissembling and fumbling by Barr that has left America with more questions than answers about the seriousness of what Mueller uncovered.

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Security News This Week: Julian Assange Faces Extradition to the US

Tue, 16 Apr 2019 07:23:47 -0000

It was another busy week in the security world, and perhaps the biggest story was the arrest of Julian Assange in London on Thursday. The WikiLeaks founder is facing criminal charges in the US over allegations that he conspired to help Chelsea Manning hack into Pentagon computer networks nine years ago. It’s hardly an open-and-shut case, which Andy Greenberg broke down shortly after the indictment was unsealed.

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Julian Assange Arrested, Mastering Jeopardy!, and More News

Mon, 15 Apr 2019 16:33:11 -0000

Tech news you can use, in two minutes or less: Julian Assange charged with computer hacking. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested today in London and faces hacking charges from the US government. The indictment, which was unsealed today, centers around an allegation that Assange promised to help then Army-private Chelsea Manning gain access to classified materials.

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How To Make Your Amazon Echo and Google Home as Private as Possible

Mon, 15 Apr 2019 07:23:48 -0000

If you use a smart speaker, you know all of the conveniences and delights that make it more than just a glorified paper weight. But, admit it, you've probably given it some privacy side-eye from time to time. After all, it is a microphone that just sits in your house waiting for a wake word to start recording what you say. Here's how to tighten the reins on what Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri can hear, when, and how it gets used. It's a good time to take stock.

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Breaking Down the Hacking Case Against Julian Assange

Fri, 12 Apr 2019 16:31:18 -0000

For the first time since 2012, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange no longer has the legal protections of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. He now faces the criminal charges he's always suspected and feared—although it's now clear that he's accused of criminal behavior not as a journalist, or even a spy, but a hacker. On Thursday, London's metropolitan police physically dragged Assange out of his residence at the embassy and into a police van.

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A New Breed of ATM Hackers Gets in Through a Bank’s Network

Fri, 12 Apr 2019 07:23:55 -0000

Over the past few years, scammers have increasingly siphoned cash off of digital payment networks, stealing hundreds of millions of dollars so far. Not only is the problem hard to contain; new findings show that it's evolving and maturing, with new types of ATM malware on the rise. Researchers at the Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit in Singapore are presenting findings on Wednesday about a new wave of payment system scams.

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'Exodus' Spyware Posed as a Legit iOS App

Thu, 11 Apr 2019 16:31:17 -0000

Private companies around the world have evolved a gray industry supplying digital surveillance and hacking tools to governments and local law enforcement. As the once little-known practice has grown, so too has the resulting malware. Researchers have now found that one of these spyware products, which had previously been found on the Google Play Store, also targeted iOS.

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A Peek Into the Toolkit of the Dangerous 'Triton' Hackers

Thu, 11 Apr 2019 07:23:21 -0000

When the malware known both as Triton and Trisis came to light in late 2017, it quickly gained a reputation as perhaps the world's most dangerous piece of code: the first ever designed to disable the safety systems that protect industrial facilities from potentially lethal physical accidents. But Triton hackers still have to engage in a far more common forms of hacking to plant that code, in some cases spending close to a year digging their way through IT networks before they reach their targets.

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How Android Fought an Epic Botnet—and Won

Wed, 10 Apr 2019 16:32:21 -0000

In March 2017, the Android security team was feeling pleased with itself. The group had detected, analyzed, and neutralized a sophisticated botnet built on tainted apps that all worked together to power ad and SMS fraud. Dubbed "Chamois," the malware family had already cropped up in 2016, and was being distributed both through Google Play and third-party app stores. So the Android team started aggressively flagging and helping to uninstall Chamois until they were sure it was dead.

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An IOS App That Secretly Spies on You, And More News

Wed, 10 Apr 2019 07:23:32 -0000

Tech news you can use, in two minutes or less: Hackers found their way into Apple's ecosystem, and possibly your phone Cyber criminals have been directing users to download something called Exodus, an app that was actually malware. It allowed access to photos, videos, device IDs, audio recordings, and contacts, potentially tracking a victim's location and listening to their conversations through the microphone.

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Security News This Week: Facebook Won't Stop Being Sketchy

Tue, 09 Apr 2019 16:33:54 -0000

What a week for Facebook. The news blitz began over the weekend, as the company responded to multiple recent controversies, from livestreaming to disappearing blog posts. Then on Wednesday, security researchers at UpGuard found that two different third-party apps left more than 540 million Facebook records unprotected in the cloud. On Friday, we reported that Facebook had been letting cybercrime groups operate in plain sight. It never ends.

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The Robocall Crisis Will Never Be Totally Fixed

Tue, 09 Apr 2019 07:23:42 -0000

Years into the robocalling frenzy, your phone probably still rings off the hook with "important information about your account," updates from the "Chinese embassy," and every bogus sweepstakes offer imaginable. That's despite promises from the telecom industry and the US government that solutions would be coming. Much like the firehose of spam that made email almost unusable in the late 1990s, robocalls have made people in the US wary of picking up their cell phones and landlines.

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Facebook Let Dozens of Cybercrime Groups Operate in Plain Sight

Mon, 08 Apr 2019 16:32:45 -0000

Facebook's failure to moderate bad behavior on the sprawling online world it created, from political trolls to extremist content to livestreamed acts of horrific violence, has received a torrent of criticism. But one group of researchers found that the social media giant is also failing to police a far more basic and decades-old internet problem among its users: plain old cybercrime.

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It’s Time to End the NSA’s Metadata Collection Program

Mon, 08 Apr 2019 07:23:34 -0000

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” the adage goes. But for the sunset of Patriot Act authorities later this year—including Section 215, a controversial provision that allows the National Security Agency to collect records, including those about Americans’ phone calls—the more applicable phrase may be “If it keeps breaking, throw it out.

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Mar-a-Lago's Security Problems Go Way Beyond a Thumb Drive

Fri, 05 Apr 2019 16:31:23 -0000

On Saturday afternoon, Yujing Zhang arrived at Mar-a-Lago and approached a Secret Service agent, seeking entry. She explained, according to court documents, that she was there to use the pool. What happened next illustrates just how hard it is to secure President Trump’s home away from the White House, and it joins a steadily growing number of concerning incidents.

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Facebook Exposed Data Again, but This Viral Cat Can Save Lives

Fri, 05 Apr 2019 07:23:39 -0000

Tech news you can use, in two minutes or less: Facebook exposed your personal information ... again Researchers discovered hundreds of millions of Facebook users' data was left unprotected once again, this time on Amazon's servers. The information exposed was stuff like names, passwords, comments, interests, and likes. The tl;dr: Facebook doesn't seem to have much control over what third parties do with your data, basically ever, so you might want to lock down those privacy settings.

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In Latest Facebook Data Exposure, History Repeats Itself

Thu, 04 Apr 2019 16:32:22 -0000

Researchers at the cybersecurity firm Upguard have discovered two troves of unprotected Facebook user data sitting on Amazon’s servers, exposing hundreds of millions of records about users, including their names, passwords, comments, interests, and likes. The datasets had been uploaded to Amazon’s cloud system by two different Facebook app developers.

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Mastercard Wades Into Murky Waters With Its New Digital ID

Thu, 04 Apr 2019 07:23:57 -0000

In December, Mastercard announced that it was working to develop an international digital identity scheme which could be used as a flexible verifier for financial transactions, government interactions, or online services. The idea of a secure, decentralized, universal ID has become a sort of holy grail in the age of rapid digital interactions and rampant identity fraud. Mastercard's initial announcement was met with some skepticism from privacy-minded observers.

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The Huawei Threat Isn't Backdoors. It's Bugs

Wed, 03 Apr 2019 07:23:28 -0000

A report on Thursday from a British government oversight group found that Chinese telecom-equipment maker Huawei has basic, but deeply problematic flaws in its product code that create security risks. The shortcomings, many of which Huawei had previously promised to improve, stem from issues with its software development processes, according to the report.

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Right to Repair Is Now a National Issue

Tue, 02 Apr 2019 16:32:18 -0000

"Right to repair just basically says, ‘Hey guys, you got to make the information and the parts available.’" U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, appearing on All In with Chris Hayes, Wednesday March, 27. Our work to help people fix their stuff reached a milestone last week, when Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren called for Right to Repair to support farmers struggling with growing antitrust issues in agriculture.

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Utah Just Became a Leader in Digital Privacy

Tue, 02 Apr 2019 07:23:25 -0000

With so much of our lives lived online, people have often assumed that the pictures, financial documents, and other sensitive information we store on our password-protected phones and computers are kept private. But every day, it seems there’s a new data breach, or another story about our information being passed around in ways we couldn’t imagine. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Molly Davis is a policy analyst at Libertas Institute, a policy think tank in Utah.

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A Guide to LockerGoga, the Ransomware Crippling Industrial Firms

Mon, 01 Apr 2019 07:23:43 -0000

Ransomware has long been the scourge of the cybersecurity industry. When that extortionate hacking goes beyond encrypting files to fully paralyze computers across a company, it represents not just a mere shakedown, but a crippling disruption. Now a nasty new breed of ransomware known as LockerGoga is inflicting that paralysis on industrial firms whose computers control actual physical equipment, and it's enough to deeply spook security researchers.

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HTTPS Isn't Always As Secure As It Seems

Fri, 29 Mar 2019 16:31:49 -0000

Widespread adoption of the web encryption scheme HTTPS has added a lot of green padlocks—and corresponding data protection—to the web. Almost all of the popular sites you visit every day likely offer this defense, called Transport Layer Security (TLS), which encrypts data between your browser and the web servers it communicates with to protect your travel plans, passwords, and embarrassing Google searches from prying eyes.

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Security News This Week: Jared Kushner Used WhatsApp for White House Business

Fri, 29 Mar 2019 07:23:53 -0000

Nothing much happened this week except, oh yeah, special counsel Robert Mueller filed his report on Friday night. Though attorney general William Barr now has the report in hand, the American people will still have to wait to see how much of it he decides to make public. In anticipation of the report, Mueller expert Garrett Graff laid out what information it could contain that would get Trump impeached. Beyond Mueller, it was actually already a news-packed week.

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Hack Brief: How to Check Your Computer for Asus Update Malware

Thu, 28 Mar 2019 16:33:32 -0000

Today's news that hackers put backdoors into thousands of Asus computers using the company's own software update platform is a reminder of why supply-chain compromises are one of the scariest digital attacks out there. Attackers compromised Asus’s Live Update tool to distribute malware to almost a million customers last year, according to initial findings researchers at the threat intelligence firm Kaspersky Lab disclosed Monday. The news was first reported by Motherboard.

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Want Apple Card’s Security Benefits? Just Use Apple Pay

Thu, 28 Mar 2019 07:24:11 -0000

At a typically glitzy launch event in Cupertino on Monday, Apple debuted the Apple Card, a new credit card offered in collaboration with Goldman Sachs and Mastercard. Apple claims it will resolve many consumer frustrations with current credit cards: the card will be simple to sign up for, there won't be any fees, and it will be easy to redeem rewards.

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Machines Shouldn’t Have to Spy On Us to Learn

Wed, 27 Mar 2019 16:34:54 -0000

In old spy novels, when two secret agents need to communicate with each other out in the field, one of them often leaves a document in an assigned place—tucked in the hollow of a tree trunk or between the pages of a certain library book. Once the first agent has safely vacated the scene, the second one moves in to fetch it. This maneuver—called a dead drop—may seem straightforward.

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Breaking Down Apple’s New Services, From News to Gaming

Wed, 27 Mar 2019 07:23:44 -0000

Tech news you can use, in two minutes or less: Apple announced a whole lot of new things today Today's Apple Event had all kinds of updates: A new credit card, a new news subscription, and a new streaming subscription featuring celebrities from Oprah to Steven Spielberg and more. Let's break down exactly what's new: Apple News +, Apple's news subscription service: Roughly 300 magazines (including WIRED) within the Apple News App Designed for Apple devices $9.

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The Mueller Report Is Done. Now Comes the Hard Part

Tue, 26 Mar 2019 16:32:46 -0000

Continuing a now time-honored tradition of creating explosive news late on a Friday afternoon, special counsel Robert Mueller has delivered his final report to attorney general William Barr. The Mueller probe, which began not quite two years ago, has come to its conclusion. Time for the fallout—whatever form that takes. There are certain basic procedural facts that govern what happens next.

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The Mueller Report Is Here, Apple's Big Event, and More News

Tue, 26 Mar 2019 07:23:28 -0000

Tech news you can use, in two minutes or less: The Mueller Report, Finally After nearly two years of work, special counsel Robert Mueller has turned in his final report to the nation's attorney general, William Barr. But what happens next is anyone's guess. For now the report will be for Barr's eyes only, who at some point will submit his own report to Congress with as much, or as little, information as he chooses to share. So for now, we wait. Again.

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Researchers Built an "Online Lie Detector." Honestly, That Could Be a Problem

Mon, 25 Mar 2019 16:33:51 -0000

The internet is full of lies. That maxim has become an operating assumption for any remotely skeptical person interacting anywhere online, from Facebook and Twitter to phishing-plagued inboxes to spammy comment sections to online dating and disinformation-plagued media. Now one group of researchers has suggested the first hint of a solution: an "online polygraph" that uses machine learning to detect deception from text alone.

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Your Facebook Password Isn’t Safe. Neither Is Your Android Phone

Mon, 25 Mar 2019 07:23:26 -0000

Tech news you can use, in two minutes or less: Change your Facebook password Facebook acknowledged a bug that caused hundreds of millions of user passwords (dating back to 2012) for both Facebook and Instagram to be stored as readable text internally. This basically means that thousands of Facebook employees could have searched for and found them. Facebook says they weren't accessible outside of the company, and that there's no evidence employees did in fact abuse or improperly access them.

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Change Your Facebook Password Right Now

Fri, 22 Mar 2019 16:31:30 -0000

At this point, it’s difficult to summarize all of Facebook’s privacy, misuse, and security missteps in one neat description. And it just got even harder. On Thursday, following a report by Krebs on Security, Facebook acknowledged a bug in its password management systems that caused hundreds of millions of user passwords for Facebook, Facebook Lite, and Instagram to be stored as plaintext in an internal platform.

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In the Face of Danger, We’re Turning to Surveillance

Fri, 22 Mar 2019 07:23:20 -0000

When school began in Lockport, New York, this past fall, the halls were lined not just with posters and lockers, but cameras. Over the summer, a brand new $4 million facial recognition system installed by the school district in the town’s eight schools from elementary to high school. The system scans the faces of students as they roam the halls, looking for faces that have been uploaded and flagged as dangerous.

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An Android Vulnerability Went Unfixed For Over Five Years

Thu, 21 Mar 2019 16:31:33 -0000

With more than 2 billion users, Android has a staggering number of devices to protect. But a "high-severity" bug that went undetected for more than five years—that attackers could exploit to spy on a user and gain access to their accounts—serves as a reminder that Android's impressive open source reach also creates challenges for defending a decentralized ecosystem.

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Here's What It's Like to Accidentally Expose the Data of 230M People

Wed, 20 Mar 2019 16:33:48 -0000

Steve Hardigree hadn't even gotten to the office yet, and his day was already a waking nightmare. As Googled his company's name that morning last June, Hardigree found a growing list of headlines naming the 10-person marketing firm he'd founded three years earlier, Exactis, as the source of a leak of the personal records of nearly everyone in the United States.

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The Evidence That Could Impeach Donald Trump

Wed, 20 Mar 2019 07:23:34 -0000

As all of Washington—and the country—await the conclusion of Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe, which could come at any moment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put words last week to the as-yet-unspoken consensus on Capitol Hill: Impeaching the president will be a high bar.

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Most Android Antivirus Apps Are Garbage

Tue, 19 Mar 2019 07:23:46 -0000

The world of antivirus is already fraught. You’re basically inviting all-seeing, all-knowing software onto your device, trusting that it’ll keep the bad guys out and not abuse its own access in the process. On Android, that problem is compounded by dozens of apps that aren’t just ineffective—they’re outright phony. That’s the finding of newly published research from AV-Comparatives, a European company that, as its name suggests, tests antivirus products.

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Security News This Week: Beto O'Rourke Was Part of an Infamous '90s Hacker Group

Mon, 18 Mar 2019 16:31:33 -0000

This week ended with terror, as a shooting in New Zealand took the lives of at least 49 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. A video of the attack, livestreamed by the shooter on Facebook, quickly spread across all major internet platforms, which demonstrated a general inability to stop it. Separately, we took a look at how ICE leans on cozy relationships with local law enforcement to access license plate location data it wouldn't otherwise be allowed to.

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How Hackers Pulled Off a $20 Million Mexican Bank Heist

Fri, 15 Mar 2019 16:31:45 -0000

In January 2018 a group of hackers, now thought to be working for the North Korean state-sponsored group Lazarus, attempted to steal $110 million from the Mexican commercial bank Bancomext. That effort failed. But just a few months later, a smaller yet still elaborate series of attacks allowed hackers to siphon off 300 to 400 million pesos, or roughly $15 to $20 million from Mexican banks. Here's how they did it.

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When Facebook Goes Down, Don't Blame Hackers

Thu, 14 Mar 2019 16:31:33 -0000

It happened again. Facebook went down in several pockets around the world for several hours Wednesday, as did Facebook-owned Instagram and WhatsApp. The outage inspired the usual existential jokes—and rush to news sites, to fill the void—but also gave rise to conspiracy theories that hackers were the cause. As is almost always the case, those theories are wrong.

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Internal Docs Show How ICE Gets Surveillance Help From Local Cops

Thu, 14 Mar 2019 07:23:50 -0000

Over the last decade, license plate readers have become an increasingly popular tool for law enforcement around the United States. One federal agency that has aggressively pursued this data is US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, through a $6.1 million contract with a private firm called Vigilant Solutions.

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Firefox Send Is an Easy Way to Share Large Files Securely

Wed, 13 Mar 2019 16:33:23 -0000

You’ve got no shortage of ways to send encrypted messages, and at least as many cloud services for sending large files. But the Venn diagram for the two remains surprisingly, inconveniently small. That’s the beauty of Mozilla’s Firefox Send, a free, intuitive, web-based service that lets you share large encrypted files, no strings attached. Send began in 2017 as an experiment, part of Firefox’s since-discontinued Test Pilot program.

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Why It's So Hard to Restart Venezuela's Power Grid

Wed, 13 Mar 2019 07:23:25 -0000

Venezuela's massive, nationwide power outages, which began on Thursday, have so far resulted in at least 20 deaths, looting, and loss of access to food, water, fuel, and cash for many of the country's of 31 million residents. Late Monday, the United States said its diplomats would leave the US embassy in Caracas, citing deteriorating conditions.

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Security News This Week: The US Tracked Journalists Reporting on the Migrant Caravan

Tue, 12 Mar 2019 17:16:43 -0000

This week, RSA, one of the biggest cybersecurity conferences of the year took place in San Francisco. Researchers demonstrated lots of new reasons to freak out about your data security, but they also highlighted new techniques for staying safe. There’s the clever new tool that can protect Macs using Apple’s video game logic engine. And the NSA even made an appearance, revealing an open-source version of a powerful cybersecurity tool that agency had developed in house.

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New Film Shows How Bellingcat Cracks the Web's Toughest Cases

Mon, 11 Mar 2019 16:31:58 -0000

Aric Toler’s face is illuminated only by the glow of the video playing on his laptop. It’s dashcam footage, supposedly captured by a driver in the town of Makiivka in eastern Ukraine, showing a Russian military convoy on its way to shoot down Malaysia Airlines flight 17 on July 17, 2014. At least, that’s the theory. Toler just has to prove it. To the untrained eye, the video is awfully dull.

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Machine Learning Can Use Tweets To Spot Critical Security Flaws

Mon, 11 Mar 2019 07:24:11 -0000

At the endless booths of this week's RSA security trade show in San Francisco, an overflowing industry of vendors will offer any visitor an ad nauseam array of "threat intelligence" and "vulnerability management" systems. But it turns out that there's already a decent, free feed of vulnerability information that can tell systems administrators what bugs they really need to patch, updated 24/7: Twitter.

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An Email Marketing Company Left 809 Million Records Exposed Online

Fri, 08 Mar 2019 16:35:13 -0000

By this point, you've hopefully gotten the message that your personal data can end up exposed in all sorts of unexpected internet backwaters. But increased awareness hasn't slowed the problem. In fact, it's only grown bigger—and more confounding. Last week, security researchers Bob Diachenko and Vinny Troia discovered an unprotected, publicly accessible MongoDB database containing 150 gigabytes-worth of detailed, plaintext marketing data—including 763 million unique email addresses.

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9 Questions for Facebook After Zuckerberg’s Privacy Manifesto

Fri, 08 Mar 2019 07:23:28 -0000

Yesterday afternoon, Mark Zuckerberg presented an entirely new philosophy. For 15 years, the stated goal of Facebook has been to make the world more open and connected; the unstated goal was constructing a targeted advertising system built on nearly infinite data. Yesterday, though, Zuckerberg pronounced that the company was reversing course.

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An Alphabet Moonshot Wants to Store the Security Industry's Data

Thu, 07 Mar 2019 16:33:43 -0000

It's a familiar playbook for Google and Alphabet: Offer high-quality products like Gmail or Chrome, build a massive user base, and then capitalize on that reach to paternalistically promote safer practices across the tech industry. So far, this strategy has generally proved to be extremely effective. Now Chronicle, a company born last year out of X, Alphabet's "moonshot factory," is going to try it for defending corporate networks. On Monday, Chronicle announced its first product: Backstory.

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The Overlooked Security Threat of Sign-In Kiosks

Thu, 07 Mar 2019 07:23:20 -0000

Daniel Crowley has a long list of software platforms, computers, and Internet of Things devices that he suspects he could hack. As research director of IBM’s offensive security group X-Force Red, Crawley’s job is to follow his intuition about where digital security risks and threats may be lurking, and expose them so they can be fixed. But so many types of computing devices are vulnerable in so many ways, he can’t chase down every lead himself.

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The NSA Makes Ghidra, a Powerful Cybersecurity Tool, Open Source

Wed, 06 Mar 2019 16:33:34 -0000

The National Security Agency develops advanced hacking tools in-house for both offense and defense—which you could probably guess even if some notable examples hadn't leaked in recent years. But on Tuesday at the RSA security conference in San Francisco, the agency chose for the first time demonstrated Ghidra, a refined internal tool that it has chosen to open source.

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Hack Brief: Google Reveals "BuggyCow," a Rare MacOS Zero-Day Vulnerability

Wed, 06 Mar 2019 07:23:22 -0000

When Google's team of ninja bug-hunting researchers known as Project Zero finds a hackable flaw in somebody else's code, they give the company responsible 90 days to fix it before going public with their findings—patched or not.

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States Need Way More Money to Fix Crumbling Voting Machines

Tue, 05 Mar 2019 16:33:17 -0000

The 2018 midterm elections were hardly a glowing reflection on the state of America’s voting technology. Even after Congress set aside millions of dollars for state election infrastructure last year, voters across the country still waited in hours-long lines to cast their ballots on their precincts’ finicky, outdated voting machines.

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The Air Force Wants to Give You Its Credit Card

Mon, 04 Mar 2019 16:34:47 -0000

Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, is something like Q for the Defense Department. He formerly ran the Strategic Capabilities Office, a secretive military skunkworks designed to figure out how to fight future wars. While there, he helped design swarms of tiny unmanned drones; he helped create Project Maven; and he tried to partner the Defense Department with the videogame industry.

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FTC Hits TikTok With Record $5.7 Million Fine Over Children’s Privacy

Mon, 04 Mar 2019 07:23:54 -0000

When the lip-syncing app Musical.ly first exploded in popularity nearly four years ago, it was best-known for being a teen sensation. But according to the Federal Trade Commission, the app also illegally collected information from children under the age of 13. The agency announced Wednesday that Musical.ly, now known as TikTok, has agreed to pay a $5.

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5 Key Takeaways From Michael Cohen's Testimony to Congress

Fri, 01 Mar 2019 16:34:51 -0000

The bombshells and not-so-surprising surprises, both legal and those just plain embarrassing, come on almost every page of Michael Cohen’s 20 pages of prepared testimony for the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

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Trump Can’t Make a North Korea Deal on His Own

Fri, 01 Mar 2019 07:23:21 -0000

A much-touted two-day summit between Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un failed to reach the finish line Thursday, as talks collapsed and Trump returned to Washington, DC. It’s unclear exactly what unraveled the process; Trump says Kim asked for the lifting of all economic sanctions in exchange for closing the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Complex, while North Korea reportedly says it had asked for relief on some, but not all.

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Michael Cohen's Credibility Has Never Been More Certain

Thu, 28 Feb 2019 16:33:40 -0000

Like many reporters and editors in DC or New York, I have been yelled at by Michael Cohen. It's been almost a rite of passage for anyone writing about Donald Trump over the past decade. There was no bone too small for his long-time lawyer and fixer to pick when it came to published criticisms of the real estate developer. My turn came in June 2012, when he called to yell at me over an item the magazine I then edited had written about Trump's forthcoming hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue.

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Holes in 4G and 5G Networks Could Let Hackers Track Your Location

Wed, 27 Feb 2019 16:31:24 -0000

Over the past 18 months, revelations about wireless carriers selling smartphone location data to third parties have forced telecoms to promise reform. Worryingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, these user protections have been slow to actually materialize. Even if carriers shape up, though, an attacker can still track a smartphone's location and snoop on phone calls thanks to newly discovered flaws in 4G and even 5G protocols.

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Hackers Can Slip Invisible Malware into 'Bare Metal' Cloud Computers

Wed, 27 Feb 2019 07:23:23 -0000

The security world's paranoiacs have long cautioned that if a computer falls into a stranger's hands, it shouldn't be trusted again. Now one company's researchers have demonstrated how, in some cases, that maxim applies just as strongly to a class of machine that never touches your hands in the first place: cloud servers.

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7 Scenarios for How the Mueller Probe Might 'Wrap Up'

Tue, 26 Feb 2019 16:33:53 -0000

The breaking news hit a snowy Washington on Wednesday: Newly installed attorney general William Barr appears to be preparing to announce the end of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

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NATO Group Catfished Soldiers to Prove a Point About Privacy

Tue, 26 Feb 2019 07:23:19 -0000

The phony Facebook pages looked just like the real thing. They were designed to mimic pages that service members use to connect. One appeared to be geared toward a large-scale, military exercise in Europe and was populated by a handful of accounts that appeared to be real service members. In reality, both the pages and the accounts were created and operated by researchers at NATO’s Strategic Communications Center of Excellence, a research group that's affiliated with NATO.

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Security News This Week: Google Forgot To Mention the Nest Secure's Hidden Mic

Mon, 25 Feb 2019 16:31:49 -0000

The Mueller investigation has lasted so long, it's easy to forget that it'll end at some point. In fact, according to recent reports, it may wrap up as early as next week. But what does that mean exactly? We took a look at seven distinct possibilities, from fizzle to fireworks. As though the border wall "national emergency" wasn't enough to worry about.

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The (Non-Trump) Surprise Inside Andrew McCabe's Memoir

Mon, 25 Feb 2019 07:23:27 -0000

If New Yorker writer George Packer hadn’t already taken the title, former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe’s new book might be best titled The Unwinding.

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A 'Smart Wall' Could Spark a New Kind of Border Crisis

Fri, 22 Feb 2019 16:32:48 -0000

After years of promises about a physical wall stretching along the United States-Mexico border, president Donald Trump declared a state of emergency last week in an attempt to secure wall funding in spite of Congressional opposition. But physical barriers alone have always been both ineffective and expensive.

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The Russian Sleuth Who Outs Moscow's Elite Hackers and Assassins

Fri, 22 Feb 2019 07:23:56 -0000

Ten years ago, Roman Dobrokhotov sat down in the front row of a Kremlin auditorium, surrounded by a polite audience of journalists and dignitaries attending a speech by Russia’s then-president Dmitri Medvedev. Medvedev was only a few minutes into his address on the importance of the country's constitution—which he had just amended to allow Vladimir Putin to serve as president again—when Dobrokhotov stood up, turned around, and addressed the audience himself.

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Android Users: Check This Facebook Location Privacy Setting ASAP

Thu, 21 Feb 2019 16:31:33 -0000

On Wednesday, Facebook introduced a new privacy setting for Android users. Previously, if you had Location History turned on, the app could track you in the background. In other words, even if you didn’t have the app open, it knew where you were. Now, you can stop it from doing so. And you should.

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Hacker Lexicon: What Is Credential Stuffing?

Wed, 20 Feb 2019 16:34:02 -0000

You may have noticed this happening more and more lately: Online accounts get taken over in droves, but the companies insist that their systems haven't been compromised. It's maddening, but in many cases, technically they're right. The real culprit is a hacker technique known as "credential stuffing." The strategy is pretty straightforward.

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Security News This Week: Database Leak Details China's Oppressive Tracking of Muslims

Wed, 20 Feb 2019 07:23:20 -0000

The US government averted another shutdown when Donald Trump instead opted to declare a national emergency to fund his border wall dreams—a wall which raises huge privacy and security concerns and will cause more problems than it solves. As the country digested the national emergency, cybersecurity workers were still scrambling to clean up the security nightmare wrought by the longest shutdown in history.

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Russian Hackers Go From Foothold to Full-On Breach in 19 Minutes

Tue, 19 Feb 2019 16:32:16 -0000

In the handwringing post mortem after a hacker breach, the first point of intrusion usually takes the focus: The phishing email that Clinton campaign manager John Podesta's aide accidentally flagged as legit, or the Apache Struts vulnerability that let hackers get access to an Equifax server.

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Hacks, Nudes, and Breaches: It's Been a Rough Month for Dating Apps

Tue, 19 Feb 2019 07:24:14 -0000

Dating is hard enough without the added stress of worrying about your digital safety online. But social media and dating apps are pretty inevitably involved in romance these days—which makes it a shame that so many of them have had security lapses in such a short amount of time.

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The Imperfect Truth About Finding Facts in a World of Fakes

Mon, 18 Feb 2019 16:36:00 -0000

In the summer of 2006, Fidel Castro unexpectedly announced that he was temporarily handing over power to his brother. Turns out he needed to undergo intestinal surgery. Afterward, an anchor on state-run television read a statement, said to have been written by Castro, attesting that all was well. But there were no photographs of Fidel in recovery, no nine-hour radio address from his hospital bed. Rumors flew that the longtime Cuban leader had died.

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Trump Declared an Emergency Based on Data That Doesn’t Exist

Mon, 18 Feb 2019 07:23:18 -0000

Toward the end of a White House press conference Friday morning, during which President Donald Trump declared a national emergency in order to secure up to $8 billion in funding for a border wall, White House reporter Brian Karem stood to ask the president a single question: “What do you base your facts on?” It was the most clarifying question in an hour-long display that at times felt as hard to grasp as a slinky.

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Instead of a Wall, Congress Puts Border Money Where It Counts

Fri, 15 Feb 2019 16:31:29 -0000

After weeks—years, really, but lately more urgent—of debate over the Trump administration's proposed wall at the US-Mexico border, Congress will vote on a spending bill Thursday that includes $1.375 billion for 55 miles of border fence construction. President Donald Trump has long sought $5.7 billion for a more comprehensive concrete or steel structure spanning the 2,000 mile border, but has not managed to garner much political support. Rightly.

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Don’t Get Your Valentine an Internet-Connected Sex Toy

Fri, 15 Feb 2019 07:23:40 -0000

Happy Valentine’s Day! Since it’s 2019, you and a partner could celebrate by installing an app on your phone that lets you control a vibrator your partner discreetly wears in their underwear all day.

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Cybersecurity Workers Scramble to Fix a Post-Shutdown Mess

Thu, 14 Feb 2019 16:33:10 -0000

Two weeks out from the longest government shutdown in United States history—and with the possibility of another still looming—government employees are still scrambling to mitigate impacts on federal cybersecurity defenses. And the stakes are high. Furloughed cybersecurity employees returned to expired software licenses and web encryption certificates, colleagues burned out from working on skeleton crews, and weeks-worth of unanalyzed network activity logs.

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1 in 3 Americans Suffered Severe Online Harassment in 2018

Thu, 14 Feb 2019 07:24:05 -0000

Despite concerted efforts by tech giants to cut back on abhorrent behavior on their platforms, a new survey finds that severe forms of online hate and harassment, including stalking and physical threats, may be on the rise. According to the survey, released Wednesday by the Anti-Defamation League, more than one third of Americans reported experiencing some type of severe online hate or harassment in 2018.

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What Happens If Russia Cuts Itself Off From the Internet

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 16:32:28 -0000

The world’s internet infrastructure has no central authority. To keep it working, everyone needs to rely on everyone else. As a result, the global patchwork of undersea cables, satellites, and other technologies that connect the world often ignores the national borders on a map. To stay online, many countries must rely on equipment outside their own confines and control.

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A Popular Electric Scooter Can Be Hacked to Speed Up or Stop

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 07:23:25 -0000

The fleets of electric scooters that have inundated cities are alarming enough as is. Now add cybersercurity concerns to the list: Researchers from the mobile security firm Zimperium are warning that Xiaomi’s popular M365 scooter model has a worrying bug. The flaw could allow an attacker to remotely take over any of the scooters to control crucial things like, ahem, acceleration and braking.

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Senators Grill Facebook, Google, and Apple Over Invasive Apps

Tue, 12 Feb 2019 07:23:44 -0000

Three of the Senate’s biggest privacy advocates are sending letters to Facebook, Google, and Apple executives Thursday, following a recent TechCrunch report that Facebook used an iOS and Android app to monitor the phones of users as young as 13 years old. The app, called Research and sometimes referred to as Project Atlas, gave Facebook complete visibility into users' app activity, web searches, encrypted data, and even private messages.

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Security News This Week: A Teen Won't Tell Apple How He Hacked MacOS

Mon, 11 Feb 2019 16:31:48 -0000

It's frankly hard, at the end of this long week, to devote much mental energy to any news that's not Jeff Bezos going to war with the National Enquirer, but stay with us! There's a lot going on—including some intriguing developments in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe. Before we get too far into it, though, please take a moment to update to iOS 12.1.4, which fixes that very bad FaceTime group chat bug and a few more previously undisclosed vulnerabilities as well.

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Google's Making It Easier to Encrypt Even Cheap Android Phones

Mon, 11 Feb 2019 07:23:49 -0000

One of the easiest ways to protect your privacy and security on a smartphone is set a passcode or biometric lock to enable disk encryption. That way if your phone gets lost or stolen, no one can take data off the device in a readable form. But not all smartphones—and tablets, and smartwatches, and so on—offer that protection. They don’t have the processing power to deal with resource-intensive encryption.

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Twitter Still Can't Keep Up With Its Flood of Junk Accounts, Study Finds

Fri, 08 Feb 2019 16:34:11 -0000

Since the world learned of state-sponsored campaigns to spread disinformation on social media and sway the 2016 election, Twitter has scrambled to rein in the bots and trolls polluting its platform. But when it comes to the larger problem of automated accounts on Twitter designed to spread spam and scams, inflate follower counts, and game trending topics, one study argues that the company still isn’t keeping up with the deluge of garbage and abuse.

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What It Takes to Pull Off the Country's First Online Census

Thu, 07 Feb 2019 16:31:37 -0000

On a frigid morning in Washington, DC, last week, four staffers from the United States Census Bureau stood shoulder to shoulder on a stage, smiling widely as they soaked in the whoops, whistles, and eager applause from the crowd seated before them. The Esri Federal GIS Conference, an annual event where government employees gather to talk about mapping technology, isn’t exactly what you’d call a rowdy affair.

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A New Google Chrome Extension Will Detect Your Unsafe Passwords

Wed, 06 Feb 2019 07:23:34 -0000

Data breaches that compromise people's usernames and passwords have become so common, and used in crime for so long, that millions of stolen credential pairs have actually become practically worthless to criminals, circulating online for free. And that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the more current credentials sold on the black market. All of this means that it's increasingly difficult to keep track of which of your passwords you need to change.

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Security News This Week: Facebook Takes Down Hundreds of Fake Pages From Iran

Mon, 04 Feb 2019 16:31:55 -0000

As happens infrequently—but definitely not never—Apple wrestled with an embarrassing and problematic security bug this week in its iOS FaceTime group calling feature. The flaw was bad enough that Apple took the drastic step of pulling group FaceTime functionality altogether. A full fix will come next week.

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Hackers Are Passing Around a Megaleak of 2.2 Billion Records

Fri, 01 Feb 2019 16:35:06 -0000

When hackers breached companies like Dropbox and LinkedIn in recent years—stealing 71 and 117 million passwords, respectively—they at least had the decency to exploit those stolen credentials in secret, or sell them for thousands of dollars on the dark web. Now, it seems, someone has cobbled together those breached databases and many more into a gargantuan, unprecedented collection of 2.

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Why Facebook's Banned 'Research' App Was So Invasive

Fri, 01 Feb 2019 07:23:57 -0000

For the past three years, Facebook has paid consumers as young as 13 to download a “Facebook Research” application that gives the company wide-ranging access to their mobile devices, according to a TechCrunch investigation published Tuesday. In order to allow people with iPhones to participate, Facebook sidestepped the strict privacy rules imposed by Apple in its App Store by taking advantage of a business applications program designed for internal company use.

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Facebook Hires Up Three of Its Biggest Privacy Critics

Thu, 31 Jan 2019 16:31:47 -0000

For years, critics have taken aim at Facebook's privacy missteps, from the Cambridge Analytica scandal to this week's revelation that Facebook has paid people—including minors—to let it spy on all of their online activity, potentially even including their encrypted private messages. Which makes it a potentially very big deal that over the last several weeks, the company has quietly hired three prominent privacy advocates, all outspoken critics, ostensibly to help right the ship.

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The Threat That the US Can't Ignore: Itself

Thu, 31 Jan 2019 07:23:24 -0000

At its annual worldwide threat assessment hearing on Tuesday, top national security officials gave the Senate Intelligence Committee a rundown from top intelligence officials of the dangers the United States will face in 2019 and beyond. The adversaries were familiar, with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran mentioned alongside evolving situations like Brexit and the power struggle in Venezuela.

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Google Takes Its First Steps Toward Killing the URL

Wed, 30 Jan 2019 16:32:42 -0000

In September, members of Google's Chrome security team put forth a radical proposal: Kill off URLs as we know them. The researchers aren't actually advocating a change to the web's underlying infrastructure. They do, though, want to rework how browsers convey what website you're looking at, so that you don't have to contend with increasingly long and unintelligible URLs—and the fraud that has sprung up around them.

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Apple Takes Drastic Measures to Stop a Nasty FaceTime Bug

Wed, 30 Jan 2019 07:23:50 -0000

It’s often hard to tell just how seriously to take reports of a new vulnerability. The jargon is inscrutable, and the skills needed to pull off the attacks are possessed only by highly skilled professionals. But a bug afflicting Apple’s FaceTime chat has no such ambiguity. How bad is it? Rather than risk exposing people to it, Apple pulled the plug on FaceTime group chats altogether.

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Security Isn't Enough. Silicon Valley Needs 'Abusability' Testing

Tue, 29 Jan 2019 16:32:57 -0000

Technology has never limited its effects to those its creators intended: It disrupts, reshapes, and backfires. And even as innovation's unintended consequences have accelerated in the 21st century, tech firms have often relegated the thinking about its second-order effects to science fiction and the occasional embarrassing congressional hearing, scrambling to prevent unexpected abuses only after the harm is done.

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The Pitfalls of Facebook Merging Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp Chats

Tue, 29 Jan 2019 07:23:29 -0000

In an effort led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook has plans to rearchitect WhatsApp, Instagram direct messages, and Facebook Messenger so that messages can travel across any of the platforms. The New York Times first reported the move Friday, noting also that Zuckerberg wants the initiative to "incorporate end-to-end encryption.

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Security News This Week: Privacy Wins in Six Flags Fingerprints Ruling

Mon, 28 Jan 2019 16:34:30 -0000

Close observers of Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible collusion between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia have long wondered when, exactly, Roger Stone would be indicted. The answer came Friday, when FBI agents arrested Trump’s longtime friend and advisor on seven counts, including obstruction, making false statements, and witness tampering. Garrett Graff breaks down the four key takeaways from the 24-page indictment.

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The Roger Stone Indictment: 4 Key Takeaways

Mon, 28 Jan 2019 07:23:24 -0000

Roger Stone’s pre-dawn arrest in Florida Friday, a raid executed by FBI agents working without salary during the government shutdown, had long seemed a matter of when, not if. Special counsel Robert Mueller has been deeply interested in Stone for months, and at least nine of the political operative’s associates have appeared before Mueller’s grand jury, including talk radio host Randy Credico and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi.

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One Man’s Obsessive Fight to Reclaim His Cambridge Analytica Data

Fri, 25 Jan 2019 17:40:50 -0000

It’s 8 on a Wednesday morning in January, and David Carroll’s Brooklyn apartment, a sunny, wood-beamed beauty converted from an old sandpaper factory, is buzzing. His 10-year-old daughter, dressed in polka-dot pants, dips out the front door and off to school, Jansport backpack slung over her shoulders. His 5-year-old son darts into the living room in a luchador mask he picked up on the family’s holiday trip to Mexico. (His wrestling name, he tells me, is Diablo.

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It’s Not Quite Doomsday o’Clock—But It Should Be

Fri, 25 Jan 2019 07:24:19 -0000

Each January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists greets the new year with a readout of its Doomsday Clock, an allegorical timepiece created in 1947 to illustrate our species’ proximity to the apocalypse. The announcement of the time—with human civilization in its eleventh hour—tends to arrive amid considerable fanfare, especially in these tempestuous times. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Kyle L.

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Nest Cams Hijacked in the Name of PewDiePie and North Korea Pranks

Thu, 24 Jan 2019 07:23:45 -0000

Dozens of Nest camera owners this week heard a disembodied voice insist that they subscribe to PewDiePie's YouTube channel. On Sunday, a voice emanating from a Nest security camera told a family of three that North Korean missiles were en route to Ohio, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In December, a couple was startled out of bed when they heard sexual expletives coming from their baby's room over a monitor.

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Trump's Missile Defense Plan Creates More Problems Than It Solves

Wed, 23 Jan 2019 16:31:44 -0000

The threat of a nuclear missile strike on United States soil has felt more tangible over the past few years, thanks to North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missile testing and oscillating relationships between the two countries. Against that backdrop, President Donald Trump announced plans on Thursday for the next generation of missile defense on land, sea—and in space.

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As the Government Shutdown Drags on, Security Risks Intensify

Wed, 23 Jan 2019 07:24:25 -0000

The current federal government shutdown, the longest in United States history, is in its fourth week, with no clear path to resolution. With 800,000 federal employees on full or partial leave as a result, cybersecurity experts raised an early alarm about how the shutdown would impact US cybersecurity. Those early concerns have since compounded, and evolved into a mounting crisis.

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Jargon Watch: The Rising Danger of Stochastic Terrorism

Tue, 22 Jan 2019 16:46:30 -0000

Stochastic Terrorism n. Acts of violence by random extremists, triggered by political demagoguery. When President Trump tweeted a video of himself body-slamming the CNN logo in 2017, most people took it as a stupid joke. For Cesar Sayoc, it may have been a call to arms: Last October the avowed Trump fan allegedly mailed a pipe bomb to CNN headquarters. No one told Sayoc to do it, but the fact that it happened was really no surprise.

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Security News This Week: Did Russia Take Another Shot at Hacking the DNC?

Tue, 22 Jan 2019 07:24:16 -0000

Late Thursday night, Buzzfeed published a report that President Donald Trump instructed his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. If true, it means impeachment can’t be far off. In fact, Trump’s behavior has been so broadly suspect, Garrett Graff argues, that he’s either a Russian agent or the biggest “useful idiot” in history. Or both. In other government news, we took a look at the major toll the government shutdown has taken on US cybersecurity.

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How to Find Your Netflix Freeloaders—and Kick Them Out

Mon, 21 Jan 2019 16:32:06 -0000

With Netflix's recent price hike announcement, you may be taking stock of all the streaming accounts you pay for every month. It's no secret that the easiest way to cut down without sacrificing Blue Planet is to share logins with friends, family, or your neighbor's cousin's coworker. The Greatest Generation had party lines, and millennials have communal cord-cutting. No judgment here if you're voluntarily sharing your Hulu or Netflix or Spotify account.

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If Trump Told Cohen to Lie, Impeachment Is Coming

Mon, 21 Jan 2019 07:23:26 -0000

As the government shutdown neared the one-month mark, the political landscape shifted under Washington’s feet Thursday night, dramatically and perhaps permanently altering the path of our nation’s politics. BuzzFeed’s duo of Russia probe reporters posted a blockbuster report that President Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow Project.

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Be Careful Using Bots on Telegram

Fri, 18 Jan 2019 16:35:26 -0000

The secure messaging app Telegram is significant for two very different reasons. One is that the app is a go-to encrypted communication tool for hundreds of millions of users around the world, particularly those looking to duck government surveillance and censorship in countries like Russia and Iran. The other is that many cryptography experts have cast doubt on the integrity of Telegram's encryption scheme.

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How the Feds Failed to Track Thousands of Separated Children

Fri, 18 Jan 2019 07:23:27 -0000

They kept the kids in cages. And Excel spreadsheets. And more than 60 other government files and databases that made it nearly impossible to track the thousands of children who have been separated from their parents by the Trump administration while trying to enter the United States.

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Hack Brief: An Astonishing 773 Million Records Exposed in Monster Breach

Thu, 17 Jan 2019 16:32:57 -0000

There are breaches, and there are megabreaches, and there’s Equifax. But a newly revealed trove of leaked data tops them all for sheer volume: 772,904,991 million unique email addresses, over 21 million unique passwords, all recently posted to a hacking forum. The data set was first reported by security researcher Troy Hunt, who maintains Have I Been Pwned, a way to search whether your own email or password has been compromised by a breach at any point. (Trick question: It has.

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A 'Fortnite' Vulnerability Exposed Accounts to Takeover

Thu, 17 Jan 2019 07:24:18 -0000

Fortnite topped 200 million registered players at the end of 2018, continuing its run of massive growth and dominance in online gaming. But huge platforms also inevitably have huge targets on their backs. Fortnite has already dealt with its share of digital security issues, particularly scams like imposter Android apps.

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Facebook's '10 Year Challenge' Is Just a Harmless Meme—Right?

Wed, 16 Jan 2019 16:34:58 -0000

If you use social media, you've probably noticed a trend across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter of people posting their then-and-now profile pictures, mostly from 10 years ago and this year. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Kate O'Neill is the founder of KO Insights and the author of Tech Humanist and Pixels and Place: Connecting Human Experience Across Physical and Digital Spaces. Instead of joining in, I posted the following semi-sarcastic tweet: https://twitter.

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How GPS Tracking Technology Can Curb Domestic Violence

Wed, 16 Jan 2019 07:23:34 -0000

When the US government shut down on December 21stthere was an overlooked victim: the Violence Against Women Act, which expired the same day. That lapse means that new funds for Department of Justice’s VAWA programs, such as hotlines, shelters, crisis centers, and legal assistance, will not be funded until the law is reauthorized. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Gianmarco Raddi is an MD/PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, UCLA, and the National Institutes of Health.

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Security News This Week: Employees May Have Snooped on Ring Security Camera Feeds

Mon, 14 Jan 2019 16:31:44 -0000

Another week, another crypto heist. This time, Ethereum Classic was the target, when hackers stole around $1.1 million worth of coins by taking over 51-percent of the currency’s network. Another familiar blunder came this week when it was revealed that technologically challenged convicted criminal Paul Manafort had yet another problem using basic tech.

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A Worldwide Hacking Spree Uses DNS Trickery to Nab Data

Mon, 14 Jan 2019 07:23:45 -0000

Iranian hackers have been busy lately, ramping up an array of targeted attacks across the Middle East and abroad. And a report this week from the threat intelligence firm FireEye details a massive global data-snatching campaign, carried out over the last two years, that the firm has preliminarily linked to Iran.

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A Growing Frontier for Terrorist Groups: Unsuspecting Chat Apps

Fri, 11 Jan 2019 16:33:15 -0000

Heads up, tech companies: If your product appeals to the masses, it likely also holds allure for terrorist groups like ISIS. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Rita Katzis the Executive Director and founder of theSITE Intelligence Group, the world’s leading non-governmental counterterrorism organization specializing in tracking and analyzing the online activity of the global extremist community.

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Your Old Tweets Give Away More Location Data Than You Think

Fri, 11 Jan 2019 07:24:04 -0000

An international group of researchers has developed an algorithmic tool that uses Twitter to automatically predict exactly where you live in a matter of minutes, with more than 90 percent accuracy. It can also predict where you work, where you pray, and other information you might rather keep private, like, say, whether you’ve frequented a certain strip club or gone to rehab.

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Carriers Swore They'd Stop Selling Location Data. Will They Ever?

Thu, 10 Jan 2019 16:33:48 -0000

Location data is some of the most sensitive, and sought after, information that smartphones generate. And wireless providers are in a unique position to access it all the time. But a Tuesday report from Motherboard shows that carriers don't protect this deeply private information as carefully as consumers might think—especially considering that Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T all pledged to stop selling it months ago.

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Paul Manafort Is Terrible With Technology

Thu, 10 Jan 2019 07:23:34 -0000

Paul Manafort has a horrible track record when it comes to digital security. The latest reminder came this week, when his defense lawyers failed to sufficiently redact portions of a court filing submitted on Tuesday, responding to Robert Mueller’s claims that Manafort violated his plea agreement with the special counsel by lying to prosecutors.

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A YubiKey for iOS Will Soon Free Your iPhone From Passwords

Wed, 09 Jan 2019 07:23:30 -0000

Over the last several years, Yubico has become close to ubiquitous in the field of hardware authentication. Its YubiKey token can act as a second layer of security for your online accounts, and even let you skip out on using passwords altogether. The only problem? It’s been largely unusable on the iPhone. That’s going to change soon. The upshot: Yubico has received MFi certification, meaning Apple will officially support it as a hardware partner.

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Robert Mueller’s 2019 To-Do List

Tue, 08 Jan 2019 16:31:41 -0000

Last Friday, just like Punxsutawney Phil, DC District Court judge Beryl Howell emerged from her chambers, saw her shadow, and announced six more months of Bob Mueller. Judge Howell’s extension of Mueller’s grand jury, which was set to expire over the weekend, was widely expected—the special counsel’s office has made clear in recent weeks that it has plenty of unfinished business—but the extension underscores just how much work is still left in Mueller’s probe.

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Security News This Week: The 'Twinning' Site Leaked Selfies

Mon, 07 Jan 2019 16:31:45 -0000

You know what they say, the first hacks of January set the tone for the rest of year. (Wait, no one has ever said that.) But with that in mind, we tried to bring you mostly good news this week. First up, we explained why Tor, that wondrous anonymizer, is now easier to use than ever. As the world descends further into digital authoritarianism, anonymity networks like Tor become even more important. And thanks to a slew of improvements last year, Tor has become accessible for just about everyone.

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A Major Hacking Spree Gets Personal for German Politicians

Mon, 07 Jan 2019 07:23:17 -0000

In an extensive series of tweets throughout December, hackers leaked sensitive data from hundreds of German politicians, including members of the European parliament, German parliament, and regional state parliaments. The move reflects an insidious strategy criminals and hacktivists sometimes use to expose and endanger targets by leaking deeply person details about them and their families. The leaks also impacted Chancellor Angela Merkel to a degree, as well as some journalists and performers.

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The Elite Intel Team Still Fighting Meltdown and Spectre

Fri, 04 Jan 2019 07:23:42 -0000

A year ago today, Intel coordinated with a web of academic and independent researchers to disclose a pair of security vulnerabilities with unprecedented impact. Since then, a core Intel hacking team has worked to help clean up the mess—by creating attacks of their own.

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Tor Is Easier Than Ever. Time to Give It a Try

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 16:31:25 -0000

You probably know about the digital anonymity service Tor, but for whatever reason you may not actually use it. Maybe between the nodes, traffic rerouting, and special onion URLs it seems too confusing to be worth the effort. In truth, Tor has been relatively accessible for years now, largely because of the Tor Browser, which works almost exactly like a regular browser and does all the complicated stuff for you in the background.

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The Worst Hacks of 2018

Mon, 31 Dec 2018 16:33:54 -0000

After years of targeted hacks, epic heists, and run of the mill data breaches you might think that institutions would be getting wise to the importance of strong cybersecurity. It seems 2018 was not the year. Here’s WIRED’s look back at the biggest breaches, data exposures, ransomware attacks, state-sponsored campaigns, and general hacks of the year. Stay safe in 2019.

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The Most Dangerous People on the Internet in 2018

Mon, 31 Dec 2018 07:23:41 -0000

This year thankfully avoided any world-breaking ransomware attacks like NotPetya. It even had some small victories, like GitHub beating back the biggest DDoS attack in history. Still, online threats are manifold, lurking and evolving, making the internet a more hostile place than ever. The biggest threats online continued to mirror the biggest threats in the real world, with nation states fighting proxy battles and civilians bearing the brunt of the assault.

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Get Ready for a Privacy Law Showdown in 2019

Thu, 27 Dec 2018 16:31:31 -0000

The global conversation around data privacy changed dramatically in March of 2018. That’s when Cambridge Analytica made international headlines. It was the story of a shadowy political firm misappropriating the data of tens of millions of Facebook users without their knowledge. But really, the story was how Facebook, keeper of 2 billion users' private messages, photos, and social connections, let it happen.

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The Internet Became Less Free in 2018. Can We Fight Back?

Wed, 26 Dec 2018 16:33:10 -0000

As democracies around the world struggle to hold back the rising tide of authoritarianism, a similar crisis is unfolding online. Three factors converged this year to make 2018 the eighth straight year that global internet freedom declined, according to an annual report from the nonprofit Freedom House: increasing censorship in response to disinformation, the widespread collection of personal data, and a growing group of countries emulating China’s model of digital authoritarianism.

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The Year Cryptojacking Ate the Web

Tue, 25 Dec 2018 07:23:44 -0000

Cybersecurity can feel like a chaotic free-for-all sometimes, but it's not every day that a whole new conceptual type of attack crops up. Over the last 15 months, though, cryptojacking has been exactly that. It's officially everywhere, and it's not going away. The concept of cryptojacking is pretty simple: An attacker finds a way to harness the processing power of computers she doesn't own—or pay the electric bills on—to mine cryptocurrency for herself.

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Security News This Week: Hackers Hit NASA Before the Holidays

Mon, 24 Dec 2018 16:32:48 -0000

The week started with bombshell Senate reports on the Russian campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election. We dived deep to explain how Russians used meme warfare to divide America, why Instagram was the Internet Research Agency’s go-to social media platform for spreading misinformation, and how Russians specifically targeted black Americans in an effort to exploit racial wounds.

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Inside the Pentagon’s Plan to Win Over Silicon Valley's AI Experts

Fri, 21 Dec 2018 16:31:27 -0000

The American military is desperately trying to get a leg up in the field of artificial intelligence, which top officials are convinced will deliver victory in future warfare. But internal Pentagon documents and interviews with senior officials make clear that the Defense Department is reeling from being spurned by a tech giant and struggling to develop a plan that might work in a new sort of battle—for hearts and minds in Silicon Valley. The battle began with an unexpected loss.

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How China’s Elite Spies Stole the World’s Most Valuable Secrets

Fri, 21 Dec 2018 07:23:48 -0000

Imagine you’re a burglar. You’ve decided to tackle a high-end luxury apartment, the kind of building with multiple Picassos in the penthouse. You could spend weeks casing the place, studying every resident’s schedule, analyzing the lock on every door. You could dig through trash for hints about which units have alarms, run through every permutation of what the codes might be. That’s one way to do it. You could also just steal the super’s keys.

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Hacking Diplomatic Cables Is Expected. Exposing Them Is Not

Thu, 20 Dec 2018 17:34:23 -0000

On Wednesday, the security and anti-phishing firm Area 1 published details of a breach that compromised one of the European Union's diplomatic communication channels for three years. The perpetrators also compromised systems related to the United Nations, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, and a number of international foreign affairs ministries.

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A Devious Phishing Scam Targets Apple Customers

Thu, 20 Dec 2018 07:23:36 -0000

Phishing scams often come in waves. Last year it was a phony Google Docs link and a convincing Netflix impersonator, both of which had plagued the internet sporadically for months, at least, before seeing big surges. This month, it's a bogus Apple App Store email that convinces its victims to cough up all kinds of personal information.

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The US Needs to Engage China on Tech—Or Risk Isolating Itself

Wed, 19 Dec 2018 16:34:31 -0000

The contrast could hardly be more striking. In October, Vice President Mike Pence delivered ablistering speechaccusing China of stealing prized US technology and military hardware. Barely two weeks later, one of Beijing’s most powerful bureaucrats touched down in Israel for a visit focused onbuilding tieswith its tech and innovation sectors. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Scott Moore is Director of the Penn Global China Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Amnesty Report Finds, Yes, Twitter Is Toxic for Women

Wed, 19 Dec 2018 07:23:34 -0000

For many women, especially journalists, politicians, and other public figures, Twitter is something to endure. Many have accounts out of professional necessity, but the cost of their participation in Twitter discourse is often abuse, threats, and harassment. Women learn to block, mute, report, and ignore their mentions. Some tweet directly at Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, frustrated that he seems never to take the problem of abuse against women on the site seriously. He rarely answers them directly.

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The Iran Hacks Cybersecurity Experts Feared May Be Here

Tue, 18 Dec 2018 16:36:19 -0000

In May, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the 2015 nuclear agreement, negotiated by the Obama Administration, designed to keep Iran from developing or acquiring nuclear weapons. As part of that reversal, the Trump administration reimposed economic sanctions on Iran. From the start, the US actions stoked tensions and fear of Iranian retaliation in cyberspace. Now, some see signs that the pushback has arrived.

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Russia's IRA Targeted Black Americans, Exploiting Racial Tensions

Tue, 18 Dec 2018 09:46:49 -0000

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Security News This Week: Taylor Swift's Facial Recognition Scans Crowds for Stalkers

Mon, 17 Dec 2018 16:32:32 -0000

If you thought you were going to make it out of 2018 without a couple more data slip-ups, think again! Two incidents bookended the week. Monday, Google revealed that a bug in its somehow still alive Google+ social network exposed the data of 52.5 million users. That's orders of magnitude bigger than the 500,000 users that were impacted by a previous Google+ exposure. And on Friday, Facebook announced that it had exposed photos of up to 6.8 million users for nearly two weeks in September.

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At a New York Privacy Pop-Up, Facebook Sells Itself

Mon, 17 Dec 2018 07:23:25 -0000

If you haven’t heard, 2018 was extremely bad for Facebook. The company was rocked by so many scandals that it’s become hard to list them all in one place. I won’t try here, but I will say it’s equally difficult to determine how much those missteps really matter to Facebook’s billions of users. During a one-day event in New York City on Thursday, the social network got a chance to find out.

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Nationwide Bomb Threats Look Like a New Spin on an Old Bitcoin Scam

Fri, 14 Dec 2018 16:34:12 -0000

In offices and universities all across the country Thursday, the same threat appeared in email inboxes: Pay $20,000 worth of bitcoin, or a bomb will detonate in your building. Police departments sent out alerts. Workers from Los Angeles to Raleigh, North Carolina, evacuated their cubicles in the middle of the day. All over Twitter, people posted screenshots of the emails, many different versions of which appear to have been blasted out.

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Facebook, Under Scrutiny, Pays Out Largest Bug Bounty Yet

Fri, 14 Dec 2018 07:23:28 -0000

This has not been Facebook's proudest year for privacy and security. The company faced the massive Cambridge Analytica data misuse and abuse scandal in April and beyond. It also disclosed its first data breach in October, which compromised information from 30 million accounts. But Facebook has at least one security-focused bright spot it can point to in 2018: its bug bounty. Bug bounties are programs that let security researchers submit potential flaws and vulnerabilities in a company's software.

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If China Hacked Marriott, 2014 Marked a Full-on Assault

Thu, 13 Dec 2018 07:23:49 -0000

The massive data breach that affected 500 million Marriott customers feels like a recent event, given that the company just discovered and disclosed it over the last four months. But it's important to remember that the attack began much earlier, especially as Reuters and others have reported that state-sponsored Chinese hackers were behind it. If that attribution holds up, China's broader hacking campaign against the US in 2014 will go down as a historic assault.

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The Mueller Investigation Nears the Worst Case Scenario

Tue, 11 Dec 2018 16:35:31 -0000

We are deep into the worst case scenarios. But as new sentencing memos for Trump associates Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen make all too clear, the only remaining question is how bad does the actual worst case scenario get? The potential innocent explanations for Donald Trump’s behavior over the last two years have been steadily stripped away, piece by piece.

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A New Google+ Blunder Exposed Data From 52.5 Million Users

Tue, 11 Dec 2018 07:23:25 -0000

In October, Google dramatically announced that it would shut down Google+ in August 2019, because the company had discovered through an internal audit (and a simultaneous Wall Street Journal exposé) that a bug in Google+ had exposed 500,000 users' data for about three years. Maybe it should have pulled the plug sooner. On Monday, Google announced that an additional bug in a Google+ API, part of a November 7 software update, exposed user data from 52.5 million accounts.

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Security News This Week: Did Quora Get Hacked? Top Answer: Yes

Mon, 10 Dec 2018 16:36:35 -0000

Nearly after a month after the midterm elections, details on a hack of the Republican National Congressional Committee reveals that meddling in the midterms was much worse than it seemed on election day. The hack probably should have been the biggest news of the week, but for a little distracting—and important!—thing called the Mueller probe.

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Australia's Encryption-Busting Law Could Impact the World

Mon, 10 Dec 2018 07:23:24 -0000

Australia's parliament passed controversial legislation on Thursday that will allow the country's intelligence and law enforcement agencies to demand access to end-to-end encrypted digital communications. This means that Australian authorities will be able to compel tech companies like Facebook and Apple to make backdoors in their secure messaging platforms, including WhatsApp and iMessage.

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Foreign Trolls Are Targeting Veterans on Facebook

Thu, 06 Dec 2018 07:23:57 -0000

I first came across the imposter Facebook page by accident. The page was made to look like that of my employer, Vietnam Veterans of America, complete with our organization's registered trademark and name. As an Iraq veteran and the office’s designated millennial policy guy, I was helping run VVA's social media accounts.

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Facebook Exposes Nonprofits to Donors—and Hackers

Wed, 05 Dec 2018 16:31:53 -0000

As the founder and director of a nonprofit animal shelter on the East Coast, Alana has spent most of the past decade caring for pets that might otherwise be euthanized. Her work also resonates with people online—the Facebook page for the shelter has more than 1.3 million followers. But in August, she noticed something strange: A series of unfamiliar posts began appearing on the page, and no one at the shelter could say where they were coming from.

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GOP Email Hack Shows How Bad Midterm Election Meddling Got

Wed, 05 Dec 2018 07:24:01 -0000

Though sporadic hacker intrusions and phishing campaigns targeted political entities in the lead-up to November's midterm elections, things seemed pretty quiet overall on the election-meddling front in the US. Certainly no leaks or theatrics rose to the level of Russia's actions during the 2016 presidential election. But a belatedly revealed breach of the National Republican Congressional Committee shows just how bad the attack on the 2018 election really was.

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How Would NYC's Anti-AirDrop Dick Pic Law Even Work?

Tue, 04 Dec 2018 16:31:36 -0000

It sounds good in theory. A bill introduced last week by two members of the New York City Council would punish people who send harassing, sexually explicit photos and videos with up to a year of jail time or a $1,000 fine. One unfortunately growing trend the bill hopes to thwart? "Cyber flashing," a type of digital harassment where creeps use Apple's AirDrop feature to send dick pics and other lewd images straight to the home screens of unsuspecting strangers via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

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iTunes Doesn't Encrypt Downloads—on Purpose

Tue, 04 Dec 2018 07:23:33 -0000

The push to encrypt traffic throughout the web has resulted in safer and more secure browsing across millions of sites. But not everywhere uses the so-called Transport Layer Security that keeps HTTPS-enabled sites safe from prying eyes. Including, it turns out, Apple’s iTunes and iOS App Store infrastructure, which runs its downloads over unencrypted connections. Typically you can tell when a website uses HTTPS encryption by the little green padlock on the left side of the URL bar.

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Hack Brief: Printers Were Exploited for PewDiePie Propaganda

Mon, 03 Dec 2018 16:32:14 -0000

By now, you’ve probably heard of PewDiePie, a Swedish comedian and video game commentator who has been the most followed creator on YouTube for years. But you might not be as familiar with T-Series, an almost equally popular Indian media company. For months, T-Series and PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, have been dueling over who will be the king of YouTube. In October, PewDiePie even released a diss track about T-Series, which has been viewed more than 47 million times.

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How to Protect Yourself From the Giant Marriott Hack

Mon, 03 Dec 2018 07:23:46 -0000

Early Friday morning, the hotel behemoth Marriott announced a massive hack that impacts as many as 500 million customers who made a reservation at a Starwood hotel. Marriott acquired the Starwood hospitality group in September 2016, which operates numerous hotel brands including Sheraton, Westin, Aloft, and W Hotels. But the intrusion that caused the enormous data breach predates Marriott's acquisition, beginning in 2014.

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Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein Is Still Calling for an Encryption Backdoor

Fri, 30 Nov 2018 16:36:03 -0000

Tension has existed for decades between law enforcement and privacy advocates over data encryption. The United States government has consistently lobbied for the creation of so-called backdoors in encryption schemes that would give law enforcement a way in to otherwise unreadable data. Meanwhile, cryptographers have universally decried the notion as unworkable. But at a cybercrime symposium at the Georgetown University Law School on Thursday, deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein renewed the call.

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Mueller: Cohen Lied About Trump Organization's Moscow Project

Fri, 30 Nov 2018 07:24:04 -0000

Just a little over two hours separated President Trump angrily tweeting, “Did you ever see an investigation more in search of a crime?” and special counsel Robert Mueller announcing his latest evidence of new crimes Thursday morning. Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty for lying to Congress about the status of the real estate developer’s hotel deal in Moscow.

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DOJ Indicts Hackers for Ransomware That Crippled Atlanta

Thu, 29 Nov 2018 16:31:53 -0000

The port of San Diego. The city of Atlanta. Kansas Heart Hospital. Those are just a few of the more than 200 municipalities, universities, hospitals, and other targets that have fallen victim to SamSam, a pernicious strain of ransomware that has spent the past three years rampaging throughout the US. On Wednesday, the Justice Department indicted two Iranian men allegedly behind the attacks.

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Russian Hackers Haven't Stopped Probing the US Power Grid

Thu, 29 Nov 2018 07:23:28 -0000

In recent years, hacks against the power grid have gone from a mostly theoretical risk to a real-world problem. Two large-scale blackouts in Ukraine caused by Russian cyberattacks in 2015 and 2016 showed just how feasible it is. But grid hacking comes in less dramatic forms as well—which makes Russia's continued probing of US critical infrastructure all the more alarming.

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Robert Mueller's Endgame May Be in Sight

Wed, 28 Nov 2018 07:24:16 -0000

History may show that Monday ranks among the most consequential days yet of Robert Mueller’s 18-month special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

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Hey, Turn Off Siri on Your Lock Screen

Fri, 23 Nov 2018 16:31:40 -0000

Here's an easy thing you can do right now to improve your digital security hygiene. Pull out your iPhone, open Settings, go into the Siri settings, and turn off Access When Locked. That's it! Do it on your iPad while you're at it. Go ahead and do it for your family and friends, too, at holiday functions when you need to deflect personal questions. Everybody wins! In the battle of the smart assistants, every tech giant hopes to hook you on its voice-activated helper.

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An Ingenious Data Hack Is More Dangerous Than Anyone Feared

Thu, 22 Nov 2018 07:23:35 -0000

The data theft technique called "Rowhammer" has fascinated and worried the cybersecurity community for years now, because it combines digital and physical hacking in ways that are both fascinating and unaccounted for. Since its discovery, researchers have steadily refined the attack, and expanded the array of targets it works against.

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Russia's Elite Hackers May Have New Phishing Tricks

Wed, 21 Nov 2018 16:31:50 -0000

A major question hanging over the United States midterm election season: Where was Russia? But while GRU hackers didn't directly interfere, they appear to be as active as ever. New research from two threat intelligence firms indicates that two prominent Russia-linked groups have been developing some clever phishing innovations, and are working purposefully to expand their reach.

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The Ingredients Powering the DOD's New Nonlethal Weapons

Wed, 21 Nov 2018 07:23:29 -0000

We may never know whether Cuba attacked American diplomats with microwave weapons—but we do know similar devices exist. The US Department of Defense’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, along with a host of private arms companies, has spent decades testing everything from long-range wireless Taser bullets to sonic guns that can disable a car engine from 150 feet away.

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Beware Black Friday Scams Lurking Among the Holiday Deals

Tue, 20 Nov 2018 16:31:57 -0000

Even if you're an ascetic who eschews the materialism of holiday shopping, the Black Friday and Cyber Monday juggernaut is hard to avoid. Stores hawk their deals everywhere, promotional emails flood your inbox, tweets and even texts tell you what to buy, and where, for the best price. But before you give in to the siren's song of cheap fitness trackers, keep in mind that online scams are lurking everywhere. And the threat is greater this year than ever.

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Hack Brief: Criminals With No Shame Hit Make-A-Wish Website

Tue, 20 Nov 2018 07:23:25 -0000

Over the last year or so, cryptojacking—which forces your computer to mine cryptocurrency for bad guys when you visit an infected site—has become one of the internet’s most pervasive scourges. It’s shown up everywhere, even inside critical infrastructure. But its practitioners appear to have recently hit a new low, compromising the website of Make-A-Wish, the venerable charity that offers uplifting experiences for children with serious or terminal illnesses.

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You Know What? Go Ahead and Use the Hotel Wi-Fi

Mon, 19 Nov 2018 16:41:41 -0000

As you travel this holiday season, bouncing from airport to airplane to hotel, you’ll likely find yourself facing a familiar quandary: Do I really trust this random public Wi-Fi network? As recently as a couple of years ago, the answer was almost certainly a resounding no. But in the year of our lord 2018? Friend, go for it. This advice comes with plenty of qualifiers.

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Machine Learning Can Create Fake ‘Master Key’ Fingerprints

Mon, 19 Nov 2018 07:23:56 -0000

Just like any lock can be picked, any biometric scanner can be fooled. Researchers have shown for years that the popular fingerprint sensors used to guard smartphones can be tricked sometimes, using a lifted print or a person's digitized fingerprint data. But new findings from computer scientists at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering could raise the stakes significantly.

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Surveillance Kills Freedom By Killing Experimentation

Fri, 16 Nov 2018 16:33:44 -0000

In my book Data and Goliath, I write about the value of privacy. I talk about how it is essential for political liberty and justice, and for commercial fairness and equality. I talk about how it increases personal freedom and individual autonomy, and how the lack of it makes us all less secure. But this is probably the most important argument as to why society as a whole must protect privacy: it allows society to progress. We know that surveillance has a chilling effect on freedom.

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What Matt Whitaker and the Midterms Mean For the Mueller Probe

Thu, 15 Nov 2018 16:32:06 -0000

The days since the midterms have been filled with developments in the probe of special counsel Robert Mueller, whose weeks of public silence leading up to the election belie a frenzy of activity, grand jury meetings, and investigative steps that his probe has pursued. The next shoes to drop seem likely clear: GOP operative Roger Stone has long suspected he'll be indicted. Stone ally Jerome Corsi suggested in a recent YouTube livestream that he may face charges as well.

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Mozilla Makes a Naughty List of Gifts That Aren't Secure

Thu, 15 Nov 2018 07:23:26 -0000

A good rule of thumb when it comes to internet-connected toys is not to buy them. Security too often sits too low on the priority list of the companies that make them. But in a new report, Mozilla, the nonprofit behind the popular Firefox browser, has a more finely tuned privacy appraisal of not just toys but dozens of popular holiday gifts—some of which may not rate much better than coal.

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The Hail Mary Plan to Restart a Hacked US Electric Grid

Wed, 14 Nov 2018 16:31:44 -0000

In his years-long career developing software for power grids, Stan McHann had never before heard the ominous noise that rang out last Wednesday. Standing in the middle of a utility command center, he flinched as a cyberattack tripped the breakers in all seven of the grid's low voltage substations, plunging the system into darkness. "I heard all the substations trip off and it was just like bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam," McHann says. "The power’s out.

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Google Internet Traffic Wasn't Hijacked, But It Was Out of Control

Wed, 14 Nov 2018 07:23:42 -0000

For two hours Monday, internet traffic that was supposed to route through Google's Cloud Platform instead found itself in quite unexpected places, including Russia and China. But while the haphazard routing invoked claims of traffic hijacking—a real threat, given that nation states could use the technique to spy on web users or censor services—the incident turned out to be a simple mistake with outsized impacts.

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The US Sits out an International Cybersecurity Agreement

Tue, 13 Nov 2018 16:31:48 -0000

During a speech at the annual UNESCO Internet Governance Forum in Paris Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the “Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace,” a new initiative designed to establish international norms for the internet, including good digital hygiene and the coordinated disclosure of technical vulnerabilities.

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Security News This Week: An Elon Musk Imposter Scored $180K in a Twitter Bitcoin Scam

Tue, 13 Nov 2018 07:23:24 -0000

Did you hear? There was an election this week! Not only does that mean the 2020 campaign has officially started (help!) but also that we saw a ton of misinformation trying to affect the vote. That includes from the secretary of state of Georgia, who accused his Democratic opponent of hacking the state's voter roles, even though all evidence strongly suggests that's not the case. At least, though, law enforcement had a massive coordinated effort to protect the election from actual hacking.

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How to Safely and Securely Dispose of Your Old Gadgets

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 16:31:56 -0000

There comes a period of time in every beloved gadget's life—some more prolonged than others—when you need to think about replacing the electronic device that's given you so much loyal service, whether it's a smartphone, a laptop, a digital camera, or anything in between.

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Top US Intelligence Official Sue Gordon Wants Silicon Valley on Her Side

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 07:23:34 -0000

Sue Gordon, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, wakes up every day at 3 am, jumps on a Peloton, and reads up on all the ways the world is trying to destroy the United States. By the afternoon noon, she has usually visited the Oval Office and met with the heads of the 17 intelligence agencies to get threat reports.

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With No Evidence, Brian Kemp Accuses Georgia Democrats of Hacking

Thu, 08 Nov 2018 07:23:29 -0000

In December 2016, Georgia secretary of state Brian Kemp accused the Department of Homeland Security of attempting to hack his office's systems, which include the Georgia voter registration database. Six months later, the DHS inspector general concluded that the allegations were unfounded; someone on a DHS computer had simply visited Georgia Secretary of State website.

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Voting Machine Meltdowns Are Normal—That’s the Problem

Wed, 07 Nov 2018 16:34:47 -0000

David Weiner counts himself lucky. Sure, he waited an hour to vote at the Brooklyn Public Library along with, he estimates, several hundred other New Yorkers Tuesday afternoon. But, hey, at least he arrived when the last ballot scanner officially broke. That meant he could just fill out his ballot and shove it in a box. The people in line in front of him, the ones who’d been waiting to use that last ballot scanner, said they'd been in line for twice as long.

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The Unprecedented Effort to Secure Election Day

Wed, 07 Nov 2018 07:23:18 -0000

After Russia's misinformation campaign rattled the 2016 United States election season, scrutiny over this year's midterms has been intense. And while foreign cybersecurity threats have so far been relatively muted, an unclassified government report obtained by The Boston Globe this week indicates more than 160 suspected election-related incidents since the beginning of August, ranging from suspicious login attempts to compromised municipal networks.

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Facebook Walks a Tightrope with Trump's Anti-Immigrant Ad

Tue, 06 Nov 2018 16:32:24 -0000

The day before the midterm elections, Facebook took down a virulently anti-immigrant ad paid for by President Donald Trump, which mischaracterizes refugees walking through Mexico toward the US as violent criminals. “America’s future depends on you,” the voiceover says, ending with a plea to “vote Republican.” NBC also took the ad off air on Monday after criticism from stars of NBC shows. And even Fox News stopped airing it on Monday, too.

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Hack Brief: Someone Posted Private Facebook Messages From 81,000 Accounts

Tue, 06 Nov 2018 07:23:31 -0000

It’s true: Facebook has experienced a number of security-related issues lately, including a breach disclosed in September that compromised at least 30 million accounts. But that incident doesn’t explain why tens of thousands of private Facebook messages reportedly ended up for sale on an internet forum the same month, according to the BBC Russian Service.

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How to Lock Down What Websites Can Access on Your Computer

Mon, 05 Nov 2018 16:35:18 -0000

As websites and web apps have grown in complexity, so have their demands: They want access to your webcam to make video calls, they want to know where in the world you are to serve up local information, and so on. In fact, websites now ask for almost as many permissions as the apps on your phone do, though you might not be as familiar with how to manage them. We'll show you how. We'll also explain how to restrict the cookies and other data websites can save locally on your laptop.

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Don’t Be Duped by Voting Misinformation Before the Midterms

Mon, 05 Nov 2018 07:24:00 -0000

The midterm elections are just a few days away. Though historically the president’s party takes a beating in the House and Senate, that’s far from assured this year. Will the midterms be a rebuke or an endorsement of the Trump administration? On November 6, you will decide. As 2016 emphatically demonstrated, elections are also a major battleground for information warfare. Coordinated misinformation campaigns focus not just on individual candidates but also the electoral system itself.

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The Privacy Battle to Save Google From Itself

Fri, 02 Nov 2018 07:23:26 -0000

Over two days during the summer of 2009, experts from inside and outside Google met to forge a roadmap for how the company would approach user privacy. At the time, Google was under fire for its data collection practices and user tracking. The summit was designed to codify ways that users could feel more in control.

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China's 5 Steps for Recruiting Spies

Thu, 01 Nov 2018 17:31:27 -0000

Beware of Chinese spies offering laptops, women, or educational stipends—and especially watch out for odd LinkedIn requests. On Tuesday, the Justice Department unsealed new charges against 10 Chinese intelligence officers and hackers who it says perpetrated a years-long scheme to steal trade secrets from aerospace companies. The case continues an impressive tempo from the Justice Department, as it continues to try curb China's massive, wide-ranging, and long-running espionage campaign.

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Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting Suspect's Gab Posts Are Part of a Pattern

Thu, 01 Nov 2018 07:23:32 -0000

11 people were killed and six others—including four police officers—injured Saturday when a gunman opened fire during a baby-naming ceremony at the Tree of Life Congregation, a Synagogue in Pittsburgh. The shooter, Robert Bowers, 46, surrendered to the police and was taken to the hospital, a local councilwoman told the The New York Times.

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Iran's New Facebook Trolls Are Using Russia's Playbook

Wed, 31 Oct 2018 16:31:31 -0000

On Friday, Facebook shut down another network of 82 accounts, pages, and groups that have been posing as US and UK citizens since 2016. The network, which Facebook said it discovered a week ago and originated in Iran, spread memes, articles, and other posts about political topics in the US and UK, including race relations, the upcoming midterm election in the US, and the recent confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. They also hosted seven events.

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Apple's T2 Security Chip Makes It Harder to Tap MacBook Mics

Wed, 31 Oct 2018 07:23:45 -0000

Mac malware is more common than Apple generally likes to admit. But a new protection in the company's specialized T2 security chip hints at a sophisticated type of attack that the company may be trying to preempt.

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Signal Has a Clever New Way to Shield Your Identity

Tue, 30 Oct 2018 16:31:54 -0000

A key part of what makes Signal the leading encrypted messaging app is its effort to minimize the amount of data or metadata each message leaves behind. The messages themselves are fully encrypted as they move across Signal's infrastructure, and the service doesn't store logs of information like who sends messages to each other, or when. On Monday, the nonprofit that develops Signal announced a new initiative to take those protections even further.

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How Feds Tracked Down Mail Bomb Suspect Cesar Sayoc

Tue, 30 Oct 2018 07:23:29 -0000

Police have arrested 56-year-old Cesar Sayoc in connection with 13 explosive devices sent to prominent Democrats and CNN this week. Attorney General Jeff Sessions confirmed the arrest during a press conference on Friday, while FBI director Christopher Wray detailed how law enforcement officers tracked him down so quickly. Sayoc was arrested Friday outside an AutoZone in Plantation, Florida.

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Fortnite Scams Are Even Worse Than You Thought

Mon, 29 Oct 2018 16:32:25 -0000

The most popular video game in the world is Fortnite—which makes Fortnite scams a potentially very profitable endeavor. And while that point may seem obvious, the extent of Fortnite fakes on the web, along with how convincingly they mimic their inspirations, may still surprise you. Fortnite opportunists have plagued the internet since the game’s launch; WIRED has previously looked at the scourge of fake app downloads connected to the game’s controversial Android launch.

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Russia Linked to Disruptive Industrial Control Malware

Mon, 29 Oct 2018 07:23:24 -0000

In December, researchers spotted a new family of industrial control malware that had been used in an attack on a Middle Eastern energy plant. Known as Triton, or Trisis, the suite of hacking tools is one of only a handful of known cyberweapons developed specifically to undermine or destroy industrial equipment. Now, new research from security firm FireEye suggests that at least one element of the Triton campaign originated from Russia.

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The Feds Just Hit a Notorious Swatter With 46 New Charges. He Intends to Plead Guilty

Fri, 26 Oct 2018 16:34:54 -0000

Three days after last Christmas, a 25-year-old Los Angeles man named Tyler Barriss allegedly called police in Wichita, Kansas, and pretended that he’d murdered his father and was holding hostages in a house near the city’s downtown. Barriss thought the house belonged to an avid Call of Duty gamer he wanted to harass, but he was mistaken about the address. (WIRED has published a detailed account of the case.

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Everything That Could Go Wrong With Trump's iPhones

Fri, 26 Oct 2018 07:24:19 -0000

It's no secret that President Donald Trump tweets at all hours, and calls friends and advisors late into the night. But a New York Times report indicates that, thanks in part to Trump's use of a personal iPhone, Chinese and Russian spies are listening in on his calls. That other countries would want to spy on Trump should come as no surprise. The US certainly does its share of surveillance on world leaders.

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How Mail Bombs Get Intercepted—And What Happens Next

Thu, 25 Oct 2018 16:31:49 -0000

This week, apparent explosive devices have targeted the mailboxes of former President Barack Obama, former Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, philanthropist George Soros, and cable news network CNN. Additional reports of suspicious packages have continued to emerge Wednesday, and the situation is still developing.

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Alert: This Week's Bomb Scares Are a Perfect Misinformation Storm

Thu, 25 Oct 2018 07:23:54 -0000

A cascade of explosive devices and suspicious packages targeting the homes of prominent Democrats and the New York offices of CNN were intercepted Wednesday morning, sending the internet's misinformation machine into a tailspin. Two packages were intercepted en route to the homes of President Barack Obama and former President and First Lady Bill and Hillary Clinton. Another, containing a pipe bomb and an envelope of white powder, was discovered in the CNN building mailroom.

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Alert: Don't Believe Everything You Read About the Migrant Caravan

Wed, 24 Oct 2018 16:34:21 -0000

Call it the era of misinformation. Call it a crisis of trust. If you must, call it fake news. The truth is that in 2018, hot-button news events are immediately weaponized online by interested parties, whether that’s foreign actors trying to undermine democracy, local politicians trying to rally their base, spammers trying to make a quick buck, even trolls in it for the old-fashioned lulz—or all of the above.

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Forging a Relationship With the Internet’s Most Hated Swatter

Wed, 24 Oct 2018 07:23:44 -0000

I understand that it’s easy to dismiss Tyler Barriss as a monster who should never be granted a platform to tell his own story. He took pleasure in terrorizing strangers with his hoaxes, and his alleged actions—calling authorities in Wichita, Kansas, and pretending that he was holding a family hostage—led to an innocent man being shot dead by police last December. Barriss' reaction to Andrew Finch’s death has betrayed a chilling lack of empathy.

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Paper and the Case for Going Low-Tech in the Voting Booth

Tue, 23 Oct 2018 16:31:51 -0000

In September 2017, barely two months before Virginians went to the polls to pick a new governor, the state’s board of elections convened an emergency session. The crisis at hand? Touchscreen voting machines. They’d been bought back in the early aughts, when districts across the country, desperate to avoid a repeat of the 2000 “hanging chads” fiasco, decided to go digital. But the new machines were a nightmare, prone to crashes and—worse—hacking.

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Russian Trolls Are Still Playing Both Sides—Even With the Mueller Probe

Tue, 23 Oct 2018 07:23:51 -0000

On Friday afternoon, the Justice Department announced that Russia and the world’s most interesting catering company continue to attack the United States online—and that Russian Twitter trolls had even defended the efforts of special counsel Robert Mueller earlier this year. Prosecutors unsealed a September criminal complaint against Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, a 44-year-old Russian woman from St. Petersburg.

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The Tiny Chip That Powers Up Pixel 3 Security

Mon, 22 Oct 2018 16:31:53 -0000

The Google Pixel 3 has all the betterments you would expect from a flashy flagship smartphone: great camera, zippy processor, smarter AI. It also, though, comes with an unexpected bonus, one that works so deeply in the background you’ll likely never even know it’s there. The Titan M chip may be small and discreet, but it helps make the Pixel 3 and its beefier sibling, the Pixel 3 XL, among the most secure smartphones you can buy.

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What Spammers Could Do With Your Hacked Facebook Data

Mon, 22 Oct 2018 07:23:18 -0000

When Facebook announced at the end of September that it had suffered a data breach that ultimately affected 30 million accounts, it seemed, perhaps, like the work of sophisticated nation state hackers. But a new report from The Wall Street Journal suggests spammers as the culprit instead. That shouldn't make you feel that much better, though, given just how much damage criminals can do with the kind of information stolen from Facebook. It was, after all, a lot.

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The Mysterious Return of Years-Old Chinese Malware

Thu, 18 Oct 2018 16:32:10 -0000

In 2013, cybersecurity firm Mandiant published a blockbuster report on a state-sponsored hacking team known as APT1, or Comment Crew. The Chinese group achieved instant infamy, tied to the successful hacks of more than 100 US companies and the exfiltration of hundreds of terabytes of data. They also vanished in the wake of being exposed. Now, years later, researchers from security firm McAfee say they’ve found code based on APT1–associated malware cropping up in a new set of attacks.

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This Startup Wants You to Control Your Own Data Again

Wed, 17 Oct 2018 16:33:01 -0000

One nice thing about using web-based services is that you rarely need to take charge. You just sign up for an account, and instantly access your data from anywhere on any device without having to know how the internet works, much less how to configure a server. But that lack of control over the process is also, increasingly, the problem. Companies hold your data on their servers, which means it could get used in ways you—and sometimes even they—don't realize.

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How Facebook Hackers Compromised 30 Million Accounts

Wed, 17 Oct 2018 07:23:26 -0000

After two weeks of investigation, Facebook announced additional details on Friday of how attackers carried out a massive breach of the social network that compromised accounts for tens of millions of users. The company downgraded its estimate of how many users had their access tokens stolen from an original estimate of at least 50 million to 30 million—and shed new light on exactly how an attack of this magnitude happened in the first place.

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No One Can Get Cybersecurity Disclosure Just Right—Especially Lawmakers

Tue, 16 Oct 2018 16:31:51 -0000

When you give an organization your data, and then that data gets exposed or stolen, you probably want to know about it. Seems simple enough. If a friend lost your sweater, you'd expect him to tell you. But a seemingly endless parade of massive data exposures—including, most recently, at Facebook and Google—reveal just how complicated that practice of disclosure can be.

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Robert Mueller Has Already Told You Everything You Need To Know

Tue, 16 Oct 2018 07:23:59 -0000

With the exception of President Trump’s legal team, no one has been watching the Mueller investigation more closely than Garrett Graff. Graff, a historian and journalist, wrote the book on Robert Mueller (literally), has interviewed him probably more than any other journalist, and covers the investigation for WIRED.

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Hack Brief: Fake Adobe Flash Installers Come With a Little Malware Bonus

Mon, 15 Oct 2018 16:31:55 -0000

The good news: A recent scourge of fake Adobe installers really does update you to the latest version of Flash. The bad news: It places cryptomining malware on your machine in the meantime. The Hack Researchers at Palo Alto Networks this week warned of the latest evolution in both cryptojacking and fake Flash updates, two popular forms of cyber malfeasance united in one unpleasant parcel.

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How to Check If Your Facebook Account Got Hacked—and How Badly

Mon, 15 Oct 2018 07:23:29 -0000

At the end of last month, Facebook made a bombshell disclosure: As many as 90 million of its users may have had their so-called access tokens—which keep you logged into your account, so you don't have to sign in every time—stolen by hackers. Friday, the company put the actual number at 30 million. Here's how to see if you were one of them, and if so, what the hackers got from your account.

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How Russian Spies Infiltrated Hotel Wi-Fi to Hack Victims Up Close

Thu, 11 Oct 2018 16:32:05 -0000

For years, the Kremlin's increasingly aggressive hackers have reached across the globe to hit targets with everything from simple phishing schemes to worms built from leaked NSA zero day vulnerabilities. Now, law enforcement agencies in the US and Europe have detailed another, far more hands-on tactic: Snooping on Wi-Fi from a vehicle parked a few feet away from a target office—or even from a laptop inside their hotel.

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US Weapons Systems Are Easy Cyberattack Targets, New Report Finds

Thu, 11 Oct 2018 07:23:29 -0000

The first step in solving any problem is admitting there is one. But a new report from the US Government Accountability Office finds that the Department of Defense remains in denial about cybersecurity threats to its weapons systems. Specifically, the report concludes that almost all weapons that the DoD tested between 2012 and 2017 have “mission critical” cyber vulnerabilities.

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A 'Scarily Simple' Bug Put Millions of Cox Communications Customers Accounts at Risk

Wed, 10 Oct 2018 16:34:52 -0000

Cybersecurity researchers regularly disclose the bugs they find in different applications and websites across the internet. Sometimes, these vulnerabilities are incredibly complicated to exploit, evidence more of a researcher's expertise than something the average consumer should worry about. In other scenarios, analysts find simple holes that a novice could use to steal information. This is a case of the latter.

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There's No Good Fix If the Supply Chain Gets Hacked

Wed, 10 Oct 2018 07:23:30 -0000

A major report from Bloomberg on Thursday describes an infiltration of the hardware supply chain, allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese military, that reaches an unprecedented geopolitical scope and scale—and may be a manifestation of the tech industry's worst fears. If the details are correct, it could be a nearly impossible mess to clean up. "This is a scary-big deal," says Nicholas Weaver, a security researcher at the University of California at Berkeley.

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Google's Privacy Whiplash Shows Big Tech's Inherent Contradictions

Tue, 09 Oct 2018 16:33:58 -0000

Google announced on Monday that it is shuttering its Google+ social network, following revelations in a Wall Street Journal report that the company did not disclose a recently discovered bug that had exposed data from up to 500,000 Google+ users users since 2015. In the same breath, the company introduced new tools to give users more control over the data they share with apps and services that connect to Google products.

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The Long, Strange History of the Presidential Text Alert

Tue, 09 Oct 2018 07:23:27 -0000

Donald Trump plans to text you Wednesday, whether you want him to or not. The first nationwide test of the government’s Presidential Alert system will unfold at 2:18 pm ET, when every cell phone user in the United States will receive a text message from FEMA saying, “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed.

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Don't Buy the Trump Administration's China Misdirection

Mon, 08 Oct 2018 16:32:01 -0000

Near the end of September, before the United Nations, President Donald Trump leveled an extraordinary charge: China was attempting to “meddle” and “interfere” in the upcoming US election. A senior intelligence official repeated the claim on a subsequent call with reporters.

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A Recent Startup Breach Exposed Billions of Data Points

Mon, 08 Oct 2018 07:23:30 -0000

The sales intelligence firm Apollo sent a notice to its customers last week disclosing a data breach it suffered over the summer. "On discovery, we took immediate steps to remediate our systems and confirmed the issue could not lead to any future unauthorized access," cofounder and CEO Tim Zheng wrote. "We can appreciate that this situation may cause you concern and frustration." In fact, the scale and scope of the breach has a lot of people concerned.

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Why Cops Can Force You to Unlock Your Phone With Your Face

Fri, 05 Oct 2018 16:31:49 -0000

You lock your phone so other people can't access it. But how you lock your phone is an important factor in whether law enforcement can compel you to unlock it. Apple's year-old Face ID system is no exception. On Sunday, Forbes reported the first known example of law enforcement anywhere using a suspect's face to unlock a phone during an investigation.

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The Facebook Hack Exposes an Internet-Wide Failure

Fri, 05 Oct 2018 07:23:26 -0000

Facebook has received ample blame for the historic data breach that allowed hackers to not only take over the accounts of at least 50 million users, but also access third-party websites those users logged into with Facebook. But what makes it so much worse is that fixing the issue is, in many ways, out of Facebook's hands.

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Malware Has a New Way to Hide on Your Mac

Thu, 04 Oct 2018 16:31:40 -0000

Malware on Apple's MacBook and iMac lines is more prevalent than some users realize; it can even hide in Apple's curated Mac App Store. But the relatively strong defenses of macOS make it challenging for malware authors to persist long-term on Apple computers, even if they can get an initial foothold. Additionally, the avenues available for lurking on macOS are so well known at this point that technicians and malware scanners can flag them quickly. That's why more subtle approaches are significant.

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How to ‘Turn Off’ the Presidential Text Alert Test

Thu, 04 Oct 2018 07:23:32 -0000

At 2:18 PM ET today, millions of people in America will get a text message that reads, "Presidential Alert.” The text is a test of FEMA’s Wireless Emergency Alerts System. If you click on the text, you’ll see the words: “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed.” As we reported, this test is the evolution of long-standing national effort to create the perfect doomsday alert system. Some people, however, want to opt out.

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A New App Gives Old Android Versions an Important Safety Upgrade

Wed, 03 Oct 2018 16:31:54 -0000

Thanks to a push over the last few years, led by Google and others, encrypted HTTPS connections protect more data than ever as it passes between web servers and browsers. But another fundamental component of web browsing too often remains unencrypted: the Domain Name System connections that act as the address lookups of the internet. In Android 9, also known as Android Pie, Google has added a feature called Private DNS to start encrypting DNS on mobile.

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Hackers Can Stealthily Avoid Traps Set to Defend the Cloud

Wed, 03 Oct 2018 07:23:18 -0000

Cloud services host vast quantities of valuable information, making them perpetually attractive targets for hackers. Attackers regularly develop new and clever ways to access cloud accounts—or find ones that have been left exposed—and exfiltrate data. Those in charge of protecting cloud accounts have their own methods of shoring up defenses and securing account perimeters.

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How the Kavanaugh Information War Mirrors Real Warzones

Tue, 02 Oct 2018 16:31:44 -0000

As the controversy surrounding the Supreme Court confirmation for Judge Brett Kavanaugh escalates, the online conversation around it has started to feel less like a debate and more like a war. That’s because it is one. WIRED OPINION ABOUT P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking are the authors of LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media, out Oct 2, 2018. It's been more than three decades since the alleged sexual assaults.

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Everything We Know About Facebook's Massive Security Breach

Tue, 02 Oct 2018 07:23:26 -0000

Facebook’s privacy problems severely escalated Friday when the social network disclosed that an unprecedented security issue, discovered September 25, impacted almost 50 million user accounts. Unlike the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a third-party company erroneously accessed data that a then-legitimate quiz app had siphoned up, this vulnerability allowed attackers to directly take over user accounts. The bugs that enabled the attack have since been patched, according to Facebook.

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The Facebook Security Meltdown Exposes Way More Sites Than Facebook

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 16:31:51 -0000

On Friday, Facebook revealed that it had suffered a security breach that impacted at least 50 million of its users, and possibly as many as 90 million. What it failed to mention initially, but revealed in a followup call Friday afternoon, is that the flaw affects more than just Facebook. If your account was impacted it means that a hacker could have accessed any account that you log into using Facebook. That's a lot of them.

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Voting Machines Are Still Absurdly Vulnerable to Attacks

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 07:23:25 -0000

While Russian interference operations in the 2016 US presidential elections focused on misinformation and targeted hacking, officials have scrambled ever since to shore up the nation's vulnerable election infrastructure. New research, though, shows they haven't done nearly enough, particularly when it comes to voting machines. The report details vulnerabilities in seven models of voting machines and vote counters, found during the DefCon security conference's Voting Village event.

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Russia’s Elite Hackers Have a Clever New Trick That's Very Hard to Fix

Fri, 28 Sep 2018 07:23:41 -0000

The Fancy Bear hacking group has plenty of tools at its disposal, as evidenced by its attacks against the Democratic National Committee, the Pyeongchang Olympics, and plenty more. But cybersecurity firm ESET appears to have caught the elite Russian team using a technique so advanced, it hadn’t ever been seen in the wild until now.

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Mobile Websites Can Tap Into Your Phone's Sensors Without Asking

Thu, 27 Sep 2018 07:24:07 -0000

When an app wants to access data from your smartphone's motion or light sensors, iOS and Android require them to get your permission first. That keeps a fitness app, say, from counting your steps without your knowledge. But a team of researchers has discovered that those rules don't apply to websites loaded in mobile browsers, which can often often access an array of device sensors without any notifications or permissions whatsoever.

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The 3-D Printed Gun Machine Rolls On, With or Without Cody Wilson

Wed, 26 Sep 2018 16:32:15 -0000

For over half a decade, Cody Wilson has been a unique thorn in the side of anyone who advocates even the most minimal form of gun control. More than any person else on the planet, the creator of the world's first 3-D printed gun has advanced the dangerous idea that with digital DIY tools, anyone can make a deadly weapon at home.

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Even If Rosenstein Stays, the Mueller Investigation Status Quo Won't Last

Wed, 26 Sep 2018 07:23:28 -0000

What was already setting up to be one of the biggest, most consequential weeks of Trump’s presidency—as the commander-in-chief, in New York, chaired a meeting of the United Nations and, in Washington, the city braced for a showdown over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh—saw the stakes appear to rise to historic levels by noon Monday, as news outlets raced to report the long anticipated denouement of deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein. It was not to be.

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A Seemingly Small Change to Chrome Stirs Big Controversy

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 16:32:10 -0000

Though Chrome launched in 2008 as a scrappy upstart, it has for years been the dominant web browser, with over 60 percent market share on both desktop and mobile. So when Chrome adjusts its features or policies, it impacts a huge chunk of people worldwide. And a recent change to how Chrome treats logins has shown how poorly those alterations can go over.

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The New YubiKey Will Help Kill the Password

Mon, 24 Sep 2018 16:32:02 -0000

By now it's hopefully been drilled into you to enable two-factor authentication on your online accounts, giving you more protection than a password alone. And while the most ubiquitous second factor is a numeric code sent to your smartphone via an app, physical tokens that you plug into your computer have become increasingly popular. And now they're angling to make passwords obsolete.

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Clouldflare and Google Will Help Sync the Internet's Clocks—and Make You Safer

Fri, 21 Sep 2018 16:34:57 -0000

Cryptography schemes are complicated to understand and implement. A lot of things can go wrong. But when it comes to web encryption, a surprising number errors actually stem from a straightforward and seemingly basic mechanism: timekeeping. Synced clocks in operating systems may make digital timekeeping look easy, but it takes a lot of work behind the scenes, and doesn't always solve problems online.

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How the HTC Exodus Blockchain Phone Plans to Secure Your Cryptocurrency

Thu, 20 Sep 2018 16:34:33 -0000

Blockchain phones are coming, that much is certain. The Sirin Labs Finney and the HTC Exodus are both expected by the end of the year, each with its own, sometimes vaguely defined sense of what exactly that term means. HTC’s Phil Chen, who spearheaded Exodus development, has at least started to fill in the blanks of how the Exodus will pull off its most important trick: keeping your cryptocurrency safe. The Exodus has loftier ambitions than mere storage, of course.

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John Deere Just Swindled Farmers Out of Their Right to Repair

Thu, 20 Sep 2018 07:23:33 -0000

The fight for our right to repair the stuff we own has suffered a huge setback. As anyone who repairs electronics knows, keeping a device in working order often means fixing both its hardware and software. But a big California farmers’ lobbying group just blithely signed away farmers’ right to access or modify the source code of any farm equipment software. As an organization representing 2.

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The Collateral Damage of Trump's Extreme Declassifications

Wed, 19 Sep 2018 16:35:59 -0000

On Monday evening, the White House released an order instructing the Department of Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify excerpts from an array of documents related to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference. He has every legal right to do so. But national security analysts and former intelligence officials say that such a demand isn't just largely unprecedented; it's potentially dangerous.

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The Mirai Botnet Architects Are Now Fighting Crime With the FBI

Wed, 19 Sep 2018 07:23:59 -0000

The three college-age defendants behind the creation of the Mirai botnet—an online tool that wreaked destruction across the internet in the fall of 2016 with unprecedentedly powerful distributed denial of service attacks—will stand in an Alaska courtroom Tuesday and ask for a novel ruling from a federal judge: They hope to be sentenced to work for the FBI.

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Edward Snowden on Protecting Activists Against Surveillance

Tue, 18 Sep 2018 16:31:59 -0000

WIRED ICON Edward Snowden, NSA whistle-blower NOMINATES Malkia Cyril, Founder of the Center for Media Justice, cofounder of Media Action Grassroots Network October 2018. Subscribe to WIRED.Plunkett + Kuhr DesignersPeople generally associate the word radical with extreme. But I prefer to think of the word in reference to its Latin origin:radix, the root of the issue. My friend Malkia Cyril is a radical in the truest sense of the word.

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Facebook Broadens Its Bug Bounty to Help Fix Third-Party Apps

Tue, 18 Sep 2018 07:23:25 -0000

Facebook was a relatively early proponent of so-called bug bounties, paying out more than $6 million to security researchers who have spotted vulnerabilities in its platform since its program launched in 2011. But as the social network has faced a series of high profile and impactful controversies, its bug bounty increasingly doubles as an opportunity for Facebook to demonstrate maturation. That trend continues Monday, with the company's latest expansion.

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A Decade-Old Attack Can Break the Encryption of Most PCs

Mon, 17 Sep 2018 07:23:28 -0000

If you want to secure the data on your computer, one of the most important steps you can take is encrypting its hard drive. That way, if your laptop gets lost or stolen—or someone can get to it when you're not around—everything remains protected and inaccessible. But researchers at the security firm F-Secure have uncovered an attack that uses a decade-old technique, which defenders thought they had stymied, to expose those encryption keys, allowing a hacker to decrypt your data.

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Why Big Tech and the Government Need to Work Together

Fri, 14 Sep 2018 16:31:35 -0000

The arc of innovation has reached aninflectionpoint: technological change now threatens to overwhelm us. Discovery is unstoppable, but it must be shaped for good. We ourselves—not just market forces—must manage it. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Ash Carter, former US Secretary of Defense, is the Director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and its project on Technology and Public Purpose. He is also an Innovation Fellow at MIT.

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Trump's New Executive Order Slaps a Bandaid on Election Interference Problems

Thu, 13 Sep 2018 16:31:41 -0000

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that would automatically impose sanctions against any person or group attempting to interfere in United States elections. "The proliferation of digital devices and internet-based communications has created significant vulnerabilities and magnified the scope and intensity of the threat of foreign interference [to elections]," Trump writes in the order. "I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with this threat.

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Facebook's Conservative Watchdog Will Take McCain's Senate Seat

Wed, 12 Sep 2018 07:23:20 -0000

On Tuesday, Arizona's governor appointed former Republican senator Jon Kyl to fill the US Senate seat vacated by the late John McCain. The appointment could spell even more government scrutiny for tech giants like Facebook and Google—even though Kyl has only committed to serving until the start of the next Congressional session in January, though he may stay through 2020.

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How Hackers Slipped by British Airways' Defenses

Tue, 11 Sep 2018 16:31:25 -0000

On Friday, British Airways disclosed a data breach impacting customer information from roughly 380,000 booking transactions made between August 21 and September 5 of this year. The company said that names, addresses, email addresses, and sensitive payment card details were all compromised. Now, researchers from the threat detection firm RiskIQ have shed new light on how the attackers pulled off the heist.

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One of Most Popular Mac Apps Acts Like Spyware

Tue, 11 Sep 2018 07:23:28 -0000

Apple prides itself on prioritizing user security and privacy. It counts the iOS and Mac App Stores, where customers can download an array of trusted, vetted software, as cornerstones of that initiative. But while the approach does minimize situations where users get tricked into downloading something nasty on the open web, malware inevitably slips through. In this case, that appears to include one of the most popular offerings in the Mac App Store.

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Everything You Should Do Before—And After—You Lose Your Phone

Mon, 10 Sep 2018 16:50:50 -0000

It's an unfortunate fact that the pricey pocket computers we carry around with us at all times are prime targets for thieves—as well as very easy to leave behind in subway cars or on coffee shop tables. Now that we all rely on our smartphones for so much, having one stolen or misplaced can feel like the end of the world. But it doesn't have to be, not quite. Here are the preparations you can take before the worst happens, and what to do if it does.

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Fake Beto O'Rourke Texts Expose New Playground for Trolls

Mon, 10 Sep 2018 07:23:21 -0000

A screenshot of the suspicious text message began making the rounds on social media Wednesday. "Hi, it's Patsy here w/Beto for Texas. Our records indicate that you're a supporter," the text message read, purportedly coming from a volunteer for Texas Senate hopeful Beto O'Rourke's campaign. "We are in search of volunteers to help transport undocumented immigrants to polling booths so that they will be able to vote.

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Twitter Finally Axes Alex Jones—Over a Publicity Stunt

Fri, 07 Sep 2018 16:31:57 -0000

Professional tragedy troll Alex Jones went to Washington Wednesday to claw back the attention he's lost since Facebook, Apple, YouTube, Spotify, and other tech giants booted him from their services last month.

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DoJ Charges North Korean Hacker for Sony, WannaCry, and More

Fri, 07 Sep 2018 07:23:18 -0000

On the Monday morning before the Thanksgiving holiday in 2014, employees at the Culver City headquarters of Sony Pictures Entertainment found their computer screens taken over by an image of a red skeleton, and a message: “We’ve already warned you, and this is just a beginning.

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Facebook and Twitter's Biggest Problems Follow Them to Congress

Thu, 06 Sep 2018 16:31:32 -0000

Bloviating conspiracy theorist Alex Jones whispered loudly in the front row with far-right media personality Jack Posobiec. Banned Twitter troll Chuck Johnson sat a few seats down giggling intermittently at who knows what. A man in a black shirt with the words “FBI used toddler for SEX" printed in red block print meandered in and out of the room.

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How Trump Could Trigger Armageddon With a Tweet

Thu, 06 Sep 2018 08:40:48 -0000

“Twitter could get us into a war.” That sentence, which appears in Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear, about the Trump Administration, has shocked a lot of people. Not me. Because I just wrote a novel in which precisely that same thing happens. And let me tell you: It’s not far-fetched. Of course, we knew that Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, and his predecessor, Reince Priebus, both have tried to get the President’s tweeting under control.

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How Google Chrome Spent a Decade Making the Web More Secure

Wed, 05 Sep 2018 16:31:37 -0000

A lot of people may find it hard to remember a time before Chrome. But as Google's browser hits its 10th birthday Tuesday, it's worth noting one under-appreciated source of its popularity: how it made the web more secure. Google developers didn't invent every improvement that made Chrome a more secure alternative to established competitors like Internet Explorer and Safari when it debuted.

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Google Wants to Kill the URL

Wed, 05 Sep 2018 07:59:16 -0000

Google's Chrome browser turns 10 today, and in its short life it has introduced a lot of radical changes to the web. From popularizing auto-updates to aggressively promoting HTTPS web encryption, the Chrome security team likes to grapple with big, conceptual problems. That reach and influence can be divisive, though, and as Chrome looks ahead to its next 10 years, the team is mulling its most controversial initiative yet: fundamentally rethinking URLs across the web.

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Congress' Chief Tech Watchdog Is Not Happy With Google

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 16:34:07 -0000

There are plenty of lawmakers who know next to nothing about technology. Senator Mark Warner isn't one of them. Long before the Virginia Democrat was sworn into the Senate in 2009, Warner built a career in the venture capital and telecom industries. That background has served the senator well since news broke that Facebook, Google, and Twitter all enabled foreign influence campaigns during the 2016 election.

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Security News This Week: Hackers Hit The Oatmeal, and It Wasn't Funny

Mon, 03 Sep 2018 16:31:09 -0000

It may be the end of August, that time when a sticky malaise settles in, but hackers can wreak havoc even during summer vacation. Which is why WIRED’s security writers keep covering the news. Like this story of how Iran set up a global propaganda campaign targeting social media. Issie Lapowski lays out everything we know about the country's 2018 propaganda machine, like how they used fake profile photos to catfish targets, and they had a real thing for Bernie Sanders.

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The Fight Over California's Privacy Bill Has Only Just Begun

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 16:31:20 -0000

In June, privacy advocates celebrated the passage of a historic bill in California that gave residents of that state unprecedented control over how companies use their data. Two months later, the party's over. Lobbying groups and trade associations, including several representing the tech industry, immediately started pushing for a litany of deep changes that they say would make the law easier to implement before it goes into effect in January 2020.

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3-D Printed Gun Blueprints Are Back, and Only New Laws Can Stop Them

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:59:28 -0000

Attorneys general from 20 states celebrated on Monday when a district court judge in Seattle extended an injunction against the sharing of 3-D printed gun blueprints online. But their victory lap was short-lived. On Tuesday afternoon, Cody Wilson, founder of the open-source gun-printing advocacy group Defense Distributed, announced he would begin selling the blueprints directly to people who want them.

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Exploiting Decades-Old Telephone Tech to Break Into Android Devices

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 16:31:17 -0000

It might feel like there's always a new smartphone on the market with next-generation features that make yours obsolete. But no matter how many iterations mobile devices go through, they're in many ways still based on decades-old electronics. In fact, antiquated 20th century telephone tech can be used to carry out decidedly 21st century attacks on many mainstream smartphones.

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Six Big Questions After the Cohen and Manafort Bombshells

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 07:59:20 -0000

The hour of 4 pm Tuesday, potentially one of the most consequential hours in the history of the American presidency, made clear that history books will almost certainly note Donald Trump’s surprise 2016 election win with an asterisk.

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What We Now Know About Iran's Global Propaganda Campaign

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 16:31:15 -0000

They set up phony news sites with stories ripped from other sources, backing up their state-sponsored agenda. They stole photos for their social media profiles and made up names to catfish unsuspecting victims. They formed an incestuous web of promotion across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Reddit, and other platforms. They seemed to have a thing for Bernie Sanders. And then they got caught.

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Security News This Week: You Should Delete Facebook's VPN App

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 07:59:30 -0000

The biggest news in America this week struck like two timed missiles minutes apart on Tuesday afternoon. Though they appear at first blush unrelated to Russia’s hacking of the 2016 US election, they are likely to explode right in the heart of Robert Mueller’s investigation. First.

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Phone Numbers Were Never Meant as ID. Now We’re All At Risk

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 16:31:31 -0000

On Thursday, T-Mobile confirmed that some of its customer data was breached in an attack the company discovered on Monday. It's a snappy disclosure timeframe, and the carrier said that no financial data, passwords, or Social Security numbers were compromised in the breach. A relief, right? The problem is the customer data that was potentially exposed: name, billing zip code, email address, account number, account type, and phone number. That last one's a particular concern.

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An Undiscovered Facebook Bug Made Me Think I Was Hacked

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 07:59:25 -0000

My legs were sticking to the vinyl back seat of a NYC cab when I received the email on a Thursday this July. I was running late to an afternoon dentist appointment, and sending messages on Facebook Messenger. Most of the conversations were for a story I was reporting about a Facebook group for sexual assault survivors, which had been overtaken by abusers.

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A Monitor’s Ultrasonic Sounds Can Reveal What’s on the Screen

Fri, 24 Aug 2018 16:31:40 -0000

You probably assume that someone can only see what's on your computer screen by looking at it. But a team of researchers has found that they can glean a surprising amount of information about what a monitor displays by listening to and analyzing the unintended, ultrasonic sounds it emits.

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Why the DNC Thought a Phishing Test Was a Real Attack

Fri, 24 Aug 2018 08:28:58 -0000

On Wednesday, the Democratic National Committee was alerted by Lookout, a mobile security firm, about an apparent phishing campaign. Someone had created fake site that looked just like VoteBuilder, a DNC-managed database that contains years' worth of voter information. Were an unsuspecting DNC employee to give the fake site their username and password, a malicious actor could potentially steal sensitive data. Alarmed, the DNC notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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Iran Emerges as Latest Threat to Facebook and Twitter

Thu, 23 Aug 2018 16:31:22 -0000

Following more than a year of unrelenting focus on Russian cyber attacks on Silicon Valley giants, Facebook and Twitter announced Tuesday night that they've now also thwarted a network of suspicious accounts that appear to originate in Iran. First, Facebook announced it had taken down 652 pages, groups, and accounts for "coordinated inauthentic behavior.

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Tech Giants Are Becoming Defenders of Democracy. Now What?

Thu, 23 Aug 2018 07:59:18 -0000

On Tuesday, a trifecta of tech companies announced that they had thwarted what appear to be significant cyberattacks from Russia and Iran. First, Microsoft CEO Brad Smith announced that the company had caught another round of phishing attacks on political groups in the United States, which it attributed to the Russian hacking group Fancy Bear. Then it was Facebook's turn.

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The Untold Story of NotPetya, the Most Devastating Cyberattack in History

Wed, 22 Aug 2018 16:31:21 -0000

It was a perfect sunny summer afternoon in Copenhagen when the world’s largest shipping conglomerate began to lose its mind. The headquarters of A.P. Møller-Maersk sits beside the breezy, cobblestoned esplanade of Copenhagen’s harbor. A ship’s mast carrying the Danish flag is planted by the building’s northeastern corner, and six stories of blue-tinted windows look out over the water, facing a dock where the Danish royal family parks its yacht.

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How Microsoft Tackles Russian Hackers—And Why It's Never Enough

Wed, 22 Aug 2018 07:59:29 -0000

Early Tuesday, Microsoft announced that last week it seized control of six domains owned by the Russian hacking group Fancy Bear, also known as APT28. The hackers had used the sites to mount midterm election-related phishing campaigns, similar to those Fancy Bear launched during the 2016 United States election season. It's the most prominent, publicly known effort to proactively identify and thwart Russian election hacking efforts—and Microsoft's in a unique position to pull it off.

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Inside the Research Lab Teaching Facebook About Its Trolls

Tue, 21 Aug 2018 16:31:10 -0000

In late July, a group of high-ranking Facebook executives organized an emergency conference call with reporters across the country. That morning, Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, explained, they had shut down 32 fake pages and accounts that appeared to be coordinating disinformation campaigns on Facebook and Instagram.

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Taking Away John Brennan's Clearance Threatens National Security

Tue, 21 Aug 2018 07:59:30 -0000

In a move that has shocked career national security officials, President Trump stripped former CIA Director John Brennan of his security clearance this week, and announced he was considering doing so for a host of others. The move so enraged retired Navy Admiral William McRaven—the man who oversaw the killing of Osama Bin Laden—that he wrote an op-ed telling Trump to revoke his clearance too, in solidarity with Brennan.

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How to Protect Yourself Against a SIM Swap Attack

Mon, 20 Aug 2018 16:31:48 -0000

A spate of hacked Instagram accounts. A $220 million lawsuit against AT&T. A bustling underground crime ring. They all have roots in an old problem that has lately found new urgency: SIM card swaps, a scam in which hackers steal your mobile identity—and use it to upend your life. At its most basic level, a SIM swap is when someone convinces your carrier to switch your phone number over to a SIM card they own. They’re not doing it for prank call cover, or to rack up long-distance charges.

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A Bot Panic Hits Amazon's Mechanical Turk

Mon, 20 Aug 2018 07:59:18 -0000

For the past week, psychologists all over America have been freaking out. The cause of their agita was an observation by a psychology graduate student from the University of Minnesota named Max Hui Bai. Like many researchers, Bai uses Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform, where individuals sign up to complete simple tasks, such as taking surveys for academics or marketers, and earn a low fee.

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To Identify a Hacker, Treat Them Like a Burglar

Fri, 17 Aug 2018 16:31:21 -0000

Imagine someone robs your house. The savvy culprit didn't leave behind fingerprints, shoe prints, or any other discrete, identifying details. Still, police manage to link the crime to a series of burglaries that happened the next town over, because of the criminal's behavior. Each robbery occurred in the same way, and in each case, the perpetrator stole many of the same items.

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At DefCon, the Biggest Election Threat Is Lack of Funding

Fri, 17 Aug 2018 08:00:09 -0000

Now in its second year, the Voting Machine Hacking Village at the DefCon security conference in Las Vegas features a new set of voting machines—all of which will actually be used in the 2018 midterm elections—for attendees to analyze and attack. But as eager attendees get to work familiarizing themselves with the devices and revealing their weaknesses, another call has emerged from the Village as well: Finding bugs is great. But you also need the money to fix them.

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Imposter Fortnite Android Apps Are Already Spreading Malware

Thu, 16 Aug 2018 16:30:58 -0000

Two weeks ago, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney confirmed that the Android version of Fortnite, largely seen as the most popular game in the world, would not be available through the Google Play Store. Instead, fans would have to install it from the web. The announcement drew heaps of attention—not least of which came from peddlers of malware. Fortnite only became broadly available on Android this week.

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Google Tracks You Even If Location History's Off. Here's How to Stop It

Wed, 15 Aug 2018 16:33:16 -0000

If, like most people, you thought Google stopped tracking your location once you turned off Location History in your account settings, you were wrong. According to an AP investigation published Monday, even if you disable Location History, the search giant still tracks you every time you open Google Maps, get certain automatic weather updates, or search for things in your browser. There's a way to stop it—but it takes some digging.

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Invisible Mouse Clicks Let Hackers Burrow Deep into MacOS

Wed, 15 Aug 2018 07:59:24 -0000

One way operating system developers try to protect a computers's secrets from probing hackers is with an appeal to the human at the keyboard. By giving the user a choice to “allow” or “deny” a program’s access to sensitive data or features, the operating system can create a checkpoint that halts malware while letting innocent applications through.

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Fax Machines Are Still Everywhere, and Wildly Insecure

Tue, 14 Aug 2018 16:31:01 -0000

It's tempting to think of fax machines as a relic, every bit as relevant as an eight-track tape. But fields like health care and government still rely on faxes every day. Even your all-in-one printer probably has a fax component. And new research shows that vulnerabilities in that very old tech could expose entire corporate networks to attack.

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A Clever Android Hack Takes Advantage of Sloppy Storage

Tue, 14 Aug 2018 07:59:13 -0000

An Android app has two choices for where to put its data on a device: internal storage, where it’s safe and snug, isolated by the operating system’s sandbox, and external storage, where data can move between apps but isn't as protected. Most of the time, that setup works just fine. But when developers use the latter incorrectly, they could give hackers a crucial foothold.

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Security News This Week: Surprise, the FCC Lied About That DDoS Attack

Mon, 13 Aug 2018 16:31:52 -0000

It’s Black Hat and DefCon conference time again, when the world’s top security researchers descend on the den of iniquity that is Las Vegas in August and try to scare the bejeezus out of people with new research into ominous hacks. Hooray! WIRED’s been there for a few days already. Lily Hay Newman discovered that several mobile credit card readers are rife with bugs, potentially leaving you exposed.

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Millions of Android Devices Are Vulnerable Right Out of the Box

Mon, 13 Aug 2018 07:59:27 -0000

Security meltdowns on your smartphone are often self-inflicted: You clicked the wrong link, or installed the wrong app. But for millions of Android devices, the vulnerabilities have been baked in ahead of time, deep in the firmware, just waiting to be exploited. Who put them there? Some combination of the manufacturer that made it, and the carrier that sold it to you.

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Bugs in Mobile Credit Card Readers Could Expose Buyers

Fri, 10 Aug 2018 16:31:26 -0000

The tiny, portable credit card readers you use to pay at farmer's markets, bake sales, and smoothie shops are convenient for consumers and merchants alike. But while more and more transactions are passing through them, devices from four of the leading companies in the space—Square, SumUp, iZettle, and PayPal—turn out to have a variety of concerning security flaws.

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Hacking a Brand New Mac Remotely, Right Out of the Box

Fri, 10 Aug 2018 07:59:16 -0000

Apple's supply chain is one of the most closely monitored and analyzed in the world, both because of the control the company exerts and keen interest from third parties. But there's still never a guarantee that a mass-produced product will come out of the box totally pristine. In fact, it's possible to remotely compromise a brand new Mac the first time it connects to Wi-Fi.

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The Sensors That Power Smart Cities Are a Hacker's Dream

Thu, 09 Aug 2018 16:31:31 -0000

At this point, it seems like every so-called consumer smart device—from routers and baby monitors to connected thermostats and garage door openers—has been shown to have vulnerabilities. But that same security crisis has also played out on a macro scale, exposing municipal works and public safety sensors to manipulation that could destabilize traffic lights, undermine radiation sensors, or even create a calamity like causing a dam to overflow because of tainted water level data.

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Online Stock Trading Has Serious Security Holes

Thu, 09 Aug 2018 07:59:19 -0000

It’s never been easier to trade stocks; just a few taps or clicks will do the trick. But most of the platforms that millions of market participants rely on to move their money suffer from cybersecurity shortcomings, new research warns. As if stocks weren’t risky enough already. A new report from Alejandro Hernández, a security consultant at IOActive, found that nearly all of the 40 major online trading platforms he investigated had at least some form of vulnerability.

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The Explosive-Carrying Drones in Venezuela Won’t Be the Last

Wed, 08 Aug 2018 07:59:25 -0000

On Saturday, as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro gave a speech in Caracas before a large military assemblage, drones carrying explosives approached, detonating near the stage. While Maduro was unharmed, Venezuelan information minister Jorge Rodriguez said that the attack injured seven soldiers. It's a method of assault that only a few years ago felt unthinkable, but has quickly become inevitable.

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Ankle Monitors Aren’t Humane. They’re Another Kind of Jail

Tue, 07 Aug 2018 16:31:27 -0000

Ankle monitors are trending these days: Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and former Donald Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort are under the electronic tether, and last month, in the wake of outrage over immigration officials separating families at the border, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement began monitoring migrant parents electronically rather than keeping them incarcerated in detention centers. More than 35,000 immigrants have been assigned an ankle monitor GPS unit.

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Security News This Week: Air Marshals Have Been Surveilling Civilians

Tue, 07 Aug 2018 07:59:17 -0000

You might not be shocked that this week began with big news about a coordinated misinformation campaign on Facebook. But in a twist on the usual narrative, Facebook welcomed the media reports, calling a press conference to reveal that it had removed 35 fake accounts. The rare proactive step was a clear attempt to show the media and Congress that Facebook is tackling misinformation head in the runup to the midterm elections.

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Simple Steps to Protect Yourself on Public Wi-Fi

Mon, 06 Aug 2018 16:31:26 -0000

Accessing the internet isn't normally a problem when you're inside the confines of your own home—it's secure, it's easy to connect to, and it's relatively uncongested—unless the whole family is streaming Netflix on five separate devices. When you venture out though, it's a different story.

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A New DHS Cybersecurity Center Will Combat Infrastructure Hacks

Mon, 06 Aug 2018 07:59:26 -0000

As the threat of cyberattacks on the United States launched by foreign adversaries grows, the federal government has been slow to respond. But changes announced Tuesday at the Department of Homeland Security, along with a new bipartisan bill aimed at shoring up DHS cybersecurity initiatives, could give newfound purpose to defenses against critical infrastructure hacking.

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Reddit Got Hacked Thanks to a Woefully Insecure Two-Factor Setup

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 16:31:19 -0000

Reddit said in a blog post Wednesday that a hacker broke into the company's systems in June and gained access to a variety of data, including user emails, source code and internal files, and “all Reddit data from 2007 and before.” And it likely could have been avoided if some Reddit employees were using two-factor authentication apps or physical keys instead of their phone numbers.

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The DNC Enlists Kids in Its Fight Against Hackers

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 07:59:16 -0000

Voting systems in the United States are so woefully hackable, an eight-year-old could do it. At least, that’s the conceit of a competition co-sponsored by the Democratic National Committee at next week’s Def Con hacker conference in Las Vegas. The contest will include children, ages eight to 16, who will be tasked with penetrating replicas of the websites that secretaries of state across the country use to publish election results.

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The Wild Inner Workings of a Billion-Dollar Hacking Group

Thu, 02 Aug 2018 16:33:01 -0000

The Fin7 hacking group has leeched, by at least one estimate, well over a billion dollars from companies around the world. In the United States alone, Fin7 has stolen more than 15 million credit card numbers from over 3,600 business locations. On Wednesday, the Justice Department revealed that it had arrested three alleged members of the group—and even more important, detailed how it operates.

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DIY Gun Blueprints Have Been Taken Offline—For Now

Thu, 02 Aug 2018 07:59:24 -0000

A belated legal scramble to stop public access to 3-D printed gun blueprints has succeeded, at least for now. Late Tuesday, a federal judge granted a temporary nationwide injunction against Defense Distributed from making its designs available online. Several hours after the ruling, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson has finally complied.

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The Last-Ditch Legal Fight to Stop 3-D Printed Guns

Wed, 01 Aug 2018 16:31:33 -0000

For the last half decade, 3-D printed pistols and metal-milled "ghost guns" have only rarely caught the attention of lawmakers, and have barely registered in the mainstream of America's gun control debate. But now, a controversial legal settlement may have unlocked a new era of digitally fabricated, DIY guns. It's also unleashed a political backlash unlike anything seen in the five years since the first 3-D printable firearm appeared online.

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Facebook Uncovers New Fake Accounts Ahead of Midterm Elections

Wed, 01 Aug 2018 07:59:29 -0000

Facebook has taken down 32 fake pages and accounts that it says were involved in coordinated campaigns on both Facebook and Instagram. Though the company has not yet attributed the accounts to any group, it says the campaign does bear some resemblance to the propaganda campaign run by Russia's Internet Research Agency in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Facebook is now working with law enforcement to determine where the campaign originated.

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BurnBox Makes Hidden Files Look Like You've Deleted Them

Tue, 31 Jul 2018 16:32:23 -0000

Imagine you're a human rights activist, pulling up to a border crossing. The on-duty customs agent requests that you hand over your phone and unlock it, without a warrant—an increasingly common practice for US Customs and Border Protection. Your phone holds sensitive photographs documenting abuses abroad, but the agent can't find them. At most, he might notice that you've deleted some files recently.

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How A Group of Imprisoned Hackers Introduced JPay to the World

Tue, 31 Jul 2018 07:59:39 -0000

Until yesterday, unless you had a family member or friend inside prison, you most likely had never heard of JPay. That’s because all of its services are directed towards people inside the nation’s prisons—and their family members.

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Lawmakers Can't Ignore Facial Recognition's Bias Anymore

Fri, 27 Jul 2018 16:31:38 -0000

Amazon touts its Rekognition facial recognition system as “simple and easy to use,” encouraging customers to “detect, analyze, and compare faces for a wide variety of user verification, people counting, and public safety use cases.” And yet, in a study released Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union, the technology managed to confuse photos of 28 members of Congress with publicly available mug shots.

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Twitter Continues Cleanup and Cracks Down on Malicious Apps

Thu, 26 Jul 2018 07:59:24 -0000

Several weeks ago, my friend Jeff signed up for an online Twitter application that promised to delete his old tweets. It was advertised merely as a simple way to clear your online presence, but after Jeff used it, he noticed that his account began retweeting spam. Out of an abundance of caution, he deleted his Twitter account entirely. On Tuesday, Twitter announced steps it was taking to curb this exact sort of abuse.

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Equifax's Security Overhaul, a Year After Its Epic Breach

Wed, 25 Jul 2018 16:31:33 -0000

A year ago this week, the credit bureau Equifax saw signs of a problem on its network of a problem. A really big problem. Hackers had entered the company’s network, stealing the personal and financial data of more than 147 million people in the United States, including Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses, and some driver's license numbers and credit card numbers.

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Google Chrome Now Labels HTTP Sites as 'Not Secure'

Wed, 25 Jul 2018 08:00:13 -0000

Nearly two years ago, Google made a pledge: It would name and shame websites with unencrypted connections, a strategy designed to spur web developers to embrace HTTPS encryption. On Tuesday, it finally follows through. With the launch of Chrome 68, Google will now call out sites with unencrypted connections as “Not Secure” in the URL bar. The move flips the convention of how Chrome displays the security of sites on its head.

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Why Trump Won't Stop Talking About the Carter Page Wiretap

Tue, 24 Jul 2018 16:31:56 -0000

On Saturday, in response to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by several news outlets and conservative group Judicial Watch, the Justice Department took the unprecedented step of releasing the (heavily redacted) application to wiretap former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. In a series of eight tweets fired off over the next two days, Trump reveled in the document, declaring it evidence of “an illegal scam,” and further proof of the “witch hunt” against him.

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Security News This Week: Maybe Go Ahead and Make Your Venmo Private

Tue, 24 Jul 2018 07:59:17 -0000

This week started with a controversial, widely derided meeting between President Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and ended with… an invite for round two! And yes, all manner of craziness managed to happen in between. That includes yet more denials on Trump’s part that Russia interfered—and continues to—with US democracy, a stance that has serious repercussions, however many times he walks it back.

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How to Secure Your Accounts With Better Two-Factor Authentication

Mon, 23 Jul 2018 16:31:12 -0000

Hopefully by now you’ve heeded the repeated warnings from your friends and loved ones (and friendly, beloved internet writers) to use two-factor authentication to secure your digital accounts. That’s where access to Facebook or Twitter or your online bank—anything that supports it, really—requires not just a password but also a special code. Not all two-factor is created equal, however. For better protection, you’re going to want an authenticator app.

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The Midterm Elections Are Already Under Attack

Mon, 23 Jul 2018 07:59:28 -0000

With primaries underway and less than four months to go until this year's midterm elections, early signs of attack have already arrived—just as the US intelligence community warned. And yet Congress has still not done everything in its power to defend against them.

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Why It Matters That Trump Denies Russian Interference

Fri, 20 Jul 2018 16:31:53 -0000

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump appeared to downplay Russia’s efforts to interfere with US democracy for a third time this week. The first had come during a joint press conference with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, a 45-minute exercise in kowtowing to a hostile foreign leader.

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Rubio, Warner Stress Election Security After Trump-Putin Summit

Fri, 20 Jul 2018 07:59:24 -0000

Perhaps one of the most surprising parts of Monday's jaw-dropping joint press conference between United States President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin is that it compelled a Democratic and a Republican member of Congress to admit, in front of a room full of press and international lawmakers, that they actually agree with each other.

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Amazon Tests Out Two Tools to Help Keep Its Cloud Secure

Thu, 19 Jul 2018 16:31:25 -0000

Amazon Web Services is the world's biggest cloud provider. As a result, its security directly influences that of countless websites and online services. And those concerns aren't just theoretical; dangerous lapses happen all the time. Customers store all sorts of datasets and raw information in AWS repositories, which then become part of their own infrastructure.

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The Trump-Putin Press Conference Gave Russia Everything It Wanted

Thu, 19 Jul 2018 07:59:24 -0000

Over the course of a roughly 45-minute press conference Monday, President Donald Trump stood beside Russian leader Vladimir Putin both physically and metaphorically. He repeatedly, pointedly declined to acknowledge that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, contrary to the assessment of every relevant US intelligence agency and a fistful of detailed indictments from special counsel Robert Mueller.

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Shadow Politics: Meet the Digital Sleuth Exposing Fake News

Wed, 18 Jul 2018 16:31:46 -0000

When we met in early March, Jonathan Albright was still shrugging off a sleepless weekend. It was a few weeks after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had killed 17 people, most of them teenagers, and promptly turned the internet into a cesspool of finger pointing and conspiracy slinging.

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Schools Can Now Get Facial Recognition Tech for Free. Should They?

Wed, 18 Jul 2018 07:59:24 -0000

Like many parents in the United States, Rob Glaser has been thinking a lot lately about how to keep his kids from getting shot in school. Specifically, he’s been thinking of what he can do that doesn’t involve getting into a nasty and endless battle over what he calls “the g-word.” It’s not that Glaser opposes gun control.

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Security Roundup: Ukraine Blocked a Russian Hack of Its Critical Infrastructure

Tue, 17 Jul 2018 07:59:46 -0000

After four months of relative quiet from the special counsel's office, Robert Mueller Friday indicted a dozen Russians for their role in hacking the DNC, DCCC, and the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. It's unlikely they'll ever actually get arrested, but it's safe to say we know a lot more about Russian intelligence than we did last week. And speaking of Russian intelligence, this week it also became apparent that Facebook gave Russian internet giant Mail.

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How a ‘Sentiment Meter’ Helps Cops Understand Their Precincts

Mon, 16 Jul 2018 16:33:22 -0000

Three weeks into his new job as commanding officer of Manhattan’s 20th precinct, Captain Timothy J. Malin stared at a map on his computer screen, puzzled. It showed his jurisdiction carved up by streets and parks, with the southern edge encased in an ominous shade of red. For decades, the New York Police Department has used real-time statistics to chart spikes in violence and calibrate police activity across the city.

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Indicting 12 Russian Hackers Could Be Mueller's Biggest Move Yet

Mon, 16 Jul 2018 07:59:24 -0000

In some ways, special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers for their hacking and attack on the 2016 presidential election is Mueller’s least surprising move yet—but it might also be his single most significant.

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How the US Government Secretly Sold 'Spy Phones' to Suspects

Fri, 13 Jul 2018 16:31:31 -0000

In 2010, a suspected cocaine smuggler named John Krokos bought encrypted BlackBerry devices from an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agent. That sort of federal subterfuge is par for the course. But in this case, the DEA held onto the encryption keys—meaning that when the government moved on Krokos and his alleged collaborators a few years later, they could read the emails and messages that passed to and from the phone.

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Senators Fear Meltdown and Spectre Disclosure Gave China an Edge

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 16:31:32 -0000

A Wednesday Congressional hearing on the Meltdown and Spectre chip vulnerabilities had all the technobabble and painful misunderstanding you might expect. But the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation also raised an important practical concern: No one informed the US government about the flaws until they were publicly disclosed at the beginning of January.

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Facebook Gave a Russian Internet Giant a Special Data Extension

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 07:59:52 -0000

Since March, when news broke that the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica used a Facebook app to amass data on as many as 87 million people without their consent, the social networking giant has been forced to repeatedly answer for how it has given away user data and who it's given that data to.

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Apple's China-Friendly Censorship Caused an iPhone-Crashing Bug

Wed, 11 Jul 2018 07:59:25 -0000

Last April, while security researcher Patrick Wardle was attending the RSA security conference in San Francisco, a Taiwanese friend who lived in the city asked to meet for coffee, and for his help with what she described as a serious problem: China, she said, was hacking her iPhone. Wardle, a former NSA staffer and a prominent Apple-focused hacker who founded Digita Security, had heard that request from paranoid friends and acquaintances plenty of times before, making him naturally skeptical.

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The Worst Cybersecurity Breaches of 2018 So Far

Tue, 10 Jul 2018 16:31:25 -0000

Looking back at the first six months of 2018, there haven't been as many government leaks and global ransomware attacks as there were by this time last year, but that's pretty much where the good news ends. Corporate security isn't getting better fast enough, critical infrastructure security hangs in the balance, and state-backed hackers from around the world are getting bolder and more sophisticated.

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Security News This Week: A Facebook Bug Unblocked Users for a Week

Tue, 10 Jul 2018 07:59:25 -0000

It was a holiday week for July Fourth, but there was still plenty going on in the security world. WIRED took a deep look at a budding partnership between the Army's Cyber Command and the Pentagon's Defense Digital Service group. DDS brings private-sector tech expertise to the government, and this new collaboration adds Army technologists to the mix to work on difficult development challenges for the Department of Defense.

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All the Ways iOS 12 Will Make Your iPhone More Secure

Mon, 09 Jul 2018 16:31:28 -0000

The annual iOS refresh is on the way—Apple has previewed it, beta testers have installed it, and the rest of us should get iOS 12 when iPhones arrive in September. While features such as winking 3-D emoji and screen-time limits for your apps might take much of the attention when the software arrives, iOS 12 is a major step forward in one other crucial area: smartphone security.

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How to See Everything Your Apps Are Allowed to Do

Thu, 05 Jul 2018 16:31:29 -0000

You probably spend a lot of your day inside apps: catching up on the news, playing music and movies, keeping in touch with friends, racing cartoon characters around a track, and so on. Every once in a while though, it's worth running an audit on these apps to make sure they're not overreaching and going beyond their remit—collecting more data about you and controlling more of your devices than you'd like.

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SCOTUS and Congress Leave the Right to Privacy Up for Grabs

Wed, 04 Jul 2018 16:31:46 -0000

Privacy is a squishy concept, one that constantly evolves with the times—and with changing technologies. Advances in how we store and communicate information shift expectations around what we can keep to ourselves, and what the rest of the world is able to know. The disruption of established privacy norms is nothing new: People were concerned when the postcard came out, for example, because they believed mail should be private.

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The DoD’s App Store Does This One Crucial Thing to Stay Secure

Wed, 04 Jul 2018 07:59:24 -0000

Every day, companies like Google and Apple wage a constant battle to keep malicious apps out of their marketplaces and off people's phones. And while they do catch a lot of malware before it does any damage, there are always a few nasty infiltrators that manage to sneak by and end up getting downloaded by thousands of consumers. No one wants these mistakes to happen, but when you're a crucial app store for the Department of Defense, these mistakes can't happen.

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Security News This Week: Mapping the NSA's Secret Spy Hubs

Tue, 03 Jul 2018 07:59:24 -0000

It has been, to be quite honest, a fairly bad week, as far as weeks go. But despite the sustained downbeat news, a few good things managed to happen as well. So we'll start with those. California has passed the strongest digital privacy law in the United States, for starters, which as of 2020 will give customers the right to know what data companies use, and to disallow those companies from selling it.

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The Pentagon Is Building a Dream Team of Tech-Savvy Soldiers

Mon, 02 Jul 2018 16:31:14 -0000

Nicole Camarillo was touring the Army base at Fort Meade, Maryland in early 2017 when a young captain—I’ll call him Matt, due to the sensitivity of his position—crossed her path. I’ve got to talk to that kid, Camarillo remembers thinking. Just weeks before, she’d seen Matt deliver a presentation on a tool he was developing to counter enemy drone strikes in the Middle East. The technology, he explained, was being developed on a “shoestring budget.

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The ACLU's Biggest Roadblock to Fighting Mass Surveillance

Mon, 02 Jul 2018 07:59:32 -0000

In March 2015, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a type of National Security Agency bulk monitoring known as "upstream" surveillance. More than three years after the ACLU originally filed the suit, the case is still mired in procedural and bureaucratic limbo. But on Friday, a hearing over one such roadblock in Maryland district court could bring long-awaited progress.

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California Unanimously Passes Historic Privacy Bill

Fri, 29 Jun 2018 16:31:20 -0000

California lawmakers unanimously passed a new privacy bill on Thursday that would give residents of the state more control over the information businesses collect on them and impose new penalties on businesses that don’t comply. It is the first law of its kind in the United States.

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Congress Grills Cambridge Analytica Alum on New Firm’s Data Use

Fri, 29 Jun 2018 07:59:33 -0000

Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee want Matt Oczkowski, a former employee of the now defunct consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, to answer questions about how his new company, Data Propria, uses consumer data.

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Anthony Kennedy’s Retirement May Have Huge Consequences for Privacy

Thu, 28 Jun 2018 16:33:33 -0000

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the current Supreme Court’s longest-serving member, announced his retirement Wednesday, paving the way for Trump to shape the future America’s highest court . Nominated by former President Ronald Reagan in 1987, the 81-year-old justice has served as the crucial swing vote in a number of landmark cases, including rulings that legalized same-sex marriage and preserved abortion rights.

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Marketing Firm Exactis Leaked a Personal Info Database With 340 Million Records

Thu, 28 Jun 2018 07:59:24 -0000

You've probably never heard of the marketing and data aggregation firm Exactis. But it may well have heard of you. And now there's also a good chance that whatever information the company may possess about you, it recently leaked onto the public internet, available to any hacker who simply knew where to look.

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Good News! The Privacy Wins Keep Coming

Wed, 27 Jun 2018 16:31:35 -0000

On Monday, police in Florida abandoned a pilot program that had put Amazon’s facial recognition powers at their disposal. On Wednesday, representatives from the country’s most powerful technology companies will gather in San Francisco to take a hard look at the industry’s approach to privacy. And on Thursday, the California legislature will vote on a bill that would grant internet users more power over their data than ever before in the United States.

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The Next Generation of Wi-Fi Security Will Save You From Yourself

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 16:31:34 -0000

There are more Wi-Fi devices in active use around the world—roughly 9 billion—than there are human beings. That ubiquity makes protecting Wi-Fi from hackers one of the most important tasks in cybersecurity. Which is why the arrival of next-generation wireless security protocol WPA3 deserves your attention: Not only is it going to keep Wi-Fi connections safer, but also it will help save you from your own security shortcomings.

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The Supreme Court Just Greatly Strengthened Digital Privacy

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 07:59:29 -0000

In a highly anticipated decision released Friday, the US Supreme Court updated Fourth Amendment protections for the digital era. In a 5-4 ruling, the court decided in Carpenter v. United States that the government generally needs a warrant in order to access cell site location information, which is automatically generated whenever a mobile phone connects to a cell tower and stored by wireless carriers for years.

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Security News This Week: Carriers Stop Selling Location Data in a Rare Privacy Win

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 16:31:53 -0000

What's that? A week with nearly as much good news as bad in the world of privacy and security? It's true! Especially the privacy part. On Friday, the Supreme Court issued a hotly anticipated ruling in Carpenter v. United States, establishing that the government will need to get a warrant if it wants to track your location with cell sites.

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Bill Could Give Californians Unprecedented Control Over Data

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 07:59:20 -0000

Lawmakers in California have introduced a sweeping privacy bill to the state legislature that would give Californians unprecedented control over their data and reign in the power of their Silicon Valley neighbors. Introduced by state assemblyman Ed Chau and state senator Robert Hertzberg, the bill would allow California residents to find out what information businesses and data brokers collect about them, where that information comes from, and how it's shared.

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China Escalates Hacks Against the US as Trade Tensions Rise

Fri, 22 Jun 2018 16:31:08 -0000

In 2015, the United States and China agreed to a digital truce that banned hacking private companies to steal trade secrets. And though the agreement has been touted as a success, it hasn't stopped Chinese state-sponsored hackers from pushing the envelope of acceptable behavior. Moreover, it certainly hasn't slowed types of hacking that fall outside the purview of the accord. Lately, it seems, that means defense intelligence gathering.

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The Unexpected Fallout of Iran's Telegram Ban

Fri, 22 Jun 2018 07:59:24 -0000

Seven weeks after Iran's conservative-led judiciary banned the secure communications app Telegram inside the country, Iranians are still reeling from the change. Though Telegram has critics in the security community, it has become wildly popular in Iran over the last few years as a way of communicating, sharing photos and documents, and even doing business.

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The Olympic Destroyer Hackers May Have Returned For More

Thu, 21 Jun 2018 16:31:56 -0000

This past winter, malware ripped through the Pyeongchang Olympics, disrupting Wi-Fi, shutting down the Olympics website, and causing generalized digital havoc. The so-called [Olympic Destroyer attack](https://www.wired.com/story/olympic-destroyer-malware-pyeongchang-opening-ceremony/] gained infamy, too, for using a number of false flags to muddy attribution.

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Millions of Streaming Devices Are Vulnerable to a Retro Web Attack

Thu, 21 Jun 2018 07:59:15 -0000

In March, artist and programmer Brannon Dorsey became interested in a retro web attack called DNS rebinding, teaching himself how to illicitly access controls and data by exploiting known browser weaknesses. It's a vulnerability that researchers have poked at on and off for years—which is one reason Dorsey couldn't believe what he found.

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Inspector General Criticizes FBI and Comey, But Some Want More

Wed, 20 Jun 2018 16:31:26 -0000

In a highly anticipated report released Thursday, the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General found that political bias within the Federal Bureau of Investigation didn't influence the outcome of its 2016 probe into Hillary Clinton's private email server. As part of their investigation, inspector general Michael Horowitz and his team reviewed 1.

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Senators Demand Answers From Amazon on Echo's Snooping Habits

Wed, 20 Jun 2018 07:59:13 -0000

A Portland woman recently told a local news outlet that her Amazon Echo device had gone rogue, sending a recording of a private conversation to a random person in her contact list. On Thursday, two senators tasked with investigating consumer privacy sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos demanding answers.

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By Pushing Your Location Straight to 911, iOS 12 Will Save Lives

Tue, 19 Jun 2018 16:31:10 -0000

Apple has spent much of its promotional push behind iOS 12 so far focused on features that range from silently useful, like Safari’s new privacy powers, to off-puttingly quirky, like animoji tongue-tracking. But on Monday the company detailed an upcoming iPhone upgrade with real-world consequences: It will communicate your exact location to 911 operators when you call, saving valuable time when every second matters.

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Trump Says He Gave Kim Jong Un His Direct Number. Never Do That

Tue, 19 Jun 2018 07:59:23 -0000

Days after President Donald Trump met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in Singapore, the president touted the strength of the two leaders' relationship. "I can now call him," he told reporters at the White House on Friday. "I gave him a very direct number. He can now call me if he has any difficulty. We have communication.

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Security News This Week: A Popular Spanish Soccer App Used Phone Mics to Snoop

Mon, 18 Jun 2018 16:31:23 -0000

Did you hear? There was a summit this week! A good ol’ fashioned meeting of world powers, in which North Korea promised to denuclearize for at least the seventh time in the last 30 years. In the process, President Donald Trump says he gave North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un his direct phone number, which if true was a terrible idea. Oh, and even if North Korea does actually go through with ditching its nukes this time, it’s going to be almost impossible to hold them accountable.

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The Silk Road's Alleged Right-Hand Man Will Finally Face a US Court

Mon, 18 Jun 2018 15:39:25 -0000

It's been nearly five years since the FBI surrounded Ross Ulbricht in the science fiction section of a San Francisco library, arrested him, and grabbed the laptop from which he had run the dark web drug bazaar known as the Silk Road. Ulbricht went on trial in a New York courtroom, and is currently serving a life sentence without parole.

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Encrypted Messaging Isn’t Magic

Fri, 15 Jun 2018 16:33:46 -0000

Encrypted communication used to be too complicated for mainstream use, but approachable apps like WhatsApp and Signal have become a no-brainer for digital privacy. With all of their security-minded features, like disappearing messages and identity-confirming safety numbers, secure chat apps can rightfully give you peace of mind. You should absolutely use them. As the adage goes, though, there's no such thing as perfect security. And feeling invincible could get you in trouble.

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Going To the World Cup? Leave the Laptop at Home

Fri, 15 Jun 2018 07:59:27 -0000

A Russian sports official earlier this year estimated that as many as 2 million people would flock to the country during the World Cup, the month-long celebration of soccer—or football, fine—that kicks off today in Moscow. If you’re one of them, have fun! But also maybe leave your laptop at home. Yes, traveling to and between Russia’s 11 World Cup host cities should provide marvels aplenty.

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It's Nearly Impossible to Hold North Korea to Nuclear Promises

Thu, 14 Jun 2018 07:59:25 -0000

Throughout the Trump administration, the State Department has repeatedly called for the "complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization” of North Korea. Heading into Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un's diplomatic negotiations in Singapore, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reaffirmed this ambition on Monday.

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Feds Bust Dozens of Email Scammers, but Your Inbox Still Isn’t Safe

Wed, 13 Jun 2018 16:33:41 -0000

Your email spam filter works overtime to keep sketchy investing opportunities and cheap Viagra offers out of your inbox, but you've probably seen some scams sneak through. That's because email fraud operations are a multibillion-dollar business, often run by Nigerian-based syndicates that have members—not to mention targets—around the world.

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All the Times North Korea Promised to Denuclearize

Wed, 13 Jun 2018 07:59:14 -0000

The nuclear summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has concluded, with each securing something they value. The US will suspend the joint military exercises with South Korea that rattle the Hermit Kingdom. And North Korea has promised to denuclearize. At some point. Probably. But if the past is any sort of prologue, you shouldn't hold your breath. On the face of it, the agreement signed by Trump and Kim seems promising.

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The Elite Microsoft Hacker Team That Keeps Windows PCs Safe

Tue, 12 Jun 2018 16:31:57 -0000

One of them jailbroke Nintendo handhelds in a former life. Another has more than one zero-day exploit to his name. A third signed on just prior to the devastating Shadow Brokers leak. These are a few of the members of the Windows red team, a group of hackers inside Microsoft who spend their days finding holes in the world’s most popular operating system. Without them, you’d be toast.

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How NATO Defends Against the Dark Side of the Web

Tue, 12 Jun 2018 07:59:25 -0000

"Oops, your files have been encrypted!" This was the chilling message that greeted hundreds of thousands of computer users last summer. The WannaCry ransomware attack brought production to a standstill at Renault factories across France, put lives at risk by attacking hospitals in the UK, and cost companies around the world billions of dollars in lost revenue. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Jens Stoltenberg (@jensstoltenberg) is NATO secretary general and the former prime minister of Norway.

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Security News This Week: Flash Gets in One More Security Fail Before Retirement

Mon, 11 Jun 2018 16:31:15 -0000

As hard as it is to believe at this point, the week really did start with Apple's WWDC keynote. It feels like a lifetime ago! You can get a full recap here, but the two main security takeaways are that Safari is the best mainstream privacy browser now, and that it looks like Apple's going to slow down, take a breath, and try to release some major updates without quite so many bugs.

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WannaCry Hero’s New Legal Woes Spell Trouble for White Hat Hackers

Mon, 11 Jun 2018 07:59:27 -0000

British security researcher Marcus Hutchins, who was indicted and arrested last summer for allegedly creating and conspiring to sell the Kronos banking trojan, now faces four additional charges. Hutchins, also called MalwareTech and MalwareTechBlog, is well-known in the security community for slowing the spread of WannaCry ransomware as it tore through the world's PCs in May 2017.

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Facebook Bug Made Up to 14 Million Users' Posts Public for Days

Fri, 08 Jun 2018 16:31:19 -0000

Facebook has found itself the subject of another privacy scandal, this time involving privacy settings. A glitch caused up to 14 million Facebook users to have their new posts inadvertently set to public, the company revealed Thursday. The bug, which reportedly occurred while Facebook was testing a new feature, went live on May 18.

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Encyclopædia Britannica Wants to Fix False Google Results

Fri, 08 Jun 2018 07:59:28 -0000

In January 2014, Google made a fundamental change to its search product: It started showing answers to user queries directly in so-called snippets, no further clicks required. But what started out as a time-saver has morphed into a repeated source of misleading and outright false information, thanks to Google's frequent reliance on untrusted sources.

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Former Cambridge Analytica CEO Faces His Ghosts in Parliament

Thu, 07 Jun 2018 07:59:42 -0000

During a nearly four-hour grilling before Parliament Wednesday, Alexander Nix, former CEO of the now defunct data firm Cambridge Analytica, faced the ghosts of his past.

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An Encryption Upgrade Could Upend Online Payments

Wed, 06 Jun 2018 16:31:36 -0000

At the end of June, digital credit card transactions are getting a mandatory encryption upgrade. It's good news—but not if you have an old device, or depend on a retailer that hasn't completed the transition. When data moves from one device to another, it needs to protection so it isn't intercepted and manipulated along the way. This defense is especially crucial, as you might imagine, for sensitive communications like financial transactions.

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How Will Microsoft Handle GitHub's Controversial Code?

Wed, 06 Jun 2018 07:59:42 -0000

After a weekend of rumors, Microsoft officially announced Monday that it will acquire the code repository site GitHub for $7.5 billion in stock. The platform is an important resource for some 28 million developers and home to billions of lines of open source code. It's in many ways a natural fit Microsoft, which has in recent years warmed up to open source. But the beloved developer platform may also introduce moderation headaches.

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Apple Just Made Safari the Good Privacy Browser

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 16:33:39 -0000

Apple announced a slew of new software features at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, including an augmented reality upgrade and animojis that can stick out their tongues when you do. But the company's latest desktop and mobile operating systems contain a more subtle, yet more radical, innovation.

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Crime Fighting Gets High-Tech Advances

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 07:59:14 -0000

When criminals are plotting, so are vigilant police departments. Officers are increasingly turning to software and predictive analytics to anticipate when and where misdeeds are likely to occur. But big data is just one component in a growing arsenal of high-tech policing tools. As agencies around the country push for faster, savvier law enforcement, they’re looking more and more like the precrime unit in Minority Report.

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Security News This Week: Valve Squashes Decade-Old Steam Security Bug

Mon, 04 Jun 2018 16:31:39 -0000

This week we looked inward for change; if you ever wondered what it’s like to be a national technology and culture magazine that loses $100,000 in Bitcoin, have we got a story for you. If you'd rather an even wilder tale from around the globe, please read about how Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko faked his own death, and why some of his colleagues have cried foul.

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How a Former US Spy Chief Became Trump’s Fiercest Critic

Mon, 04 Jun 2018 07:59:37 -0000

James Clapper was eating lunch in Muscat, Oman, on November 9, 2016, when at 2:31 am EST Donald Trump was declared the winner of the presidential election. Clapper was on one of his final trips abroad at the end of a 54-year-long career in the military and intelligence, working with allies to shore up US interests overseas.

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How San Quentin Inmates Built a Search Engine for Prison

Fri, 01 Jun 2018 16:31:24 -0000

Marcellino Ornelas had been in and out of juvenile hall seven times by the time he finally went to prison at the age of 19 for assault with a firearm. He'd already been kicked out of high school and was working, he says, as the "local drug dealer," with a side gig at a Ross department store. In the past, every time he got out, he'd start dealing soon after. "It was like, this is how I make money. This is who my friends are," Ornelas says. "That always brought me back to the same situation.

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The Bleak State of Federal Government Cybersecurity

Fri, 01 Jun 2018 07:59:24 -0000

It's a truism by now that the federal government struggles with cybersecurity, but a report recent report by the White House's Office of Management and Budget reinforces the dire need for change across dozens of agencies. Of the 96 federal agencies it assessed, it deemed 74 percent either "At Risk" or "High Risk," meaning that they need crucial and immediate improvements.

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Papua New Guinea Wants to Ban Facebook. It Shouldn't

Thu, 31 May 2018 07:59:36 -0000

Papua New Guinea, a small, island nation that shares a border with Indonesia, may soon turn off Facebook. The nation's communication minister suggested Tuesday that the government restrict access to the site for one month while it conducts research into issues like fake profiles, misinformation, and pornography. PNG will also reportedly explore creating its own, government-run alternative to Facebook. When the news reached Western outlets Tuesday, some people applauded.

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Security News This Week: T-Mobile Web Portal Exposed 74 Million Accounts

Wed, 30 May 2018 07:59:14 -0000

At the beginning of the year, revelations about a new type of processor vulnerability had far-reaching implications for devices all over the world, and this week researchers disclosed yet another of these so-called "speculative execution" flaws in Intel, AMD, and ARM chips.

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Former Trump Campaign Aide: My Russia Ties Are Not Nefarious!

Tue, 29 May 2018 16:31:13 -0000

Michael Caputo’s favorite novel is Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, the story of the Devil’s visit to Moscow in the 1930s and all the oddball characters who surround him.

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Puppy Brain Scans Could Help Pick the Best Bomb Sniffers

Tue, 29 May 2018 07:59:23 -0000

If you've been in a large crowded place with a fair amount of security, you've probably seen bomb-sniffing dogs at work. (You may have even petted the puppers.) Dogs have long been used for detecting contraband and explosives, but attackers have made advances in body-worn explosive technology, forcing law enforcement to evolve too. This means enlisting a new type of canine defense: Vapor Wake dogs.

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How WIRED Lost $100,000 in Bitcoin

Mon, 28 May 2018 16:31:18 -0000

Back in 2013, when you could still mine bitcoins at home, WIRED was sent a small, sleek mining device manufactured by the now-defunct Butterfly Labs. We turned on the Roku-looking machine in our San Francisco offices and allowed it to do its job. A small fortune was soon amassed, now worth around $100,000. Then, we lost the money. Forever. Here's what happened to WIRED's 13 Bitcoins—and to the millions of others that have faced the same fate.

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Don’t Freak Out About That Amazon Alexa Eavesdropping Situation

Fri, 25 May 2018 16:31:02 -0000

On Thursday, Seattle news station KIRO 7 published a disconcerting story. A Portland family discovered that a snippet of private conversation had been recorded by an Amazon Echo and sent to a random person in their contact list. The report instantly sparked concern and outrage that Amazon's Echo smart speaker is listening to and recording much more than the company claims.

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Stealthy, Destructive Malware Infects Half a Million Routers

Fri, 25 May 2018 07:59:26 -0000

Home routers have become the rats to hackers' bubonic plague: An easily infected, untreated and ubiquitous population in which dangerous digital attacks can spread. Now security researchers are warning that one group of sophisticated hackers has amassed a collection of malware-infected routers that could be used as a powerful tool to spread havoc across the internet, or simply triggered to implode networks across the world.

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‘Significant’ FBI Error Reignites Data Encryption Debate

Thu, 24 May 2018 16:31:37 -0000

Law enforcement agencies including the FBI have long criticized data encryption as a threat to their ability to fight crime. They argue that encryption allows bad actors to "go dark," impeding agents’ ability to access the data of suspects, even with court orders or warrants. After years of raising the alarm about the going dark problem, though, officials have yet to convince privacy advocates that undermining encryption protections would do more good than harm.

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Facebook Is Beefing Up Its Two-Factor Authentication

Thu, 24 May 2018 07:59:31 -0000

Good news for those looking to secure their Facebook accounts: The social network says users can now sign up for two-factor authentication using apps like Duo and Google Authenticator, which will strengthen people's security on the site. Previously, you could only sign up for the feature with a phone number, though you could also enable tools like physical security keys and Facebook's own code generator that lives within the app itself.

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Security News This Week: California Charges Owners of Mugshots.com With Extortion

Tue, 22 May 2018 07:59:22 -0000

As is often the case, it was a week of mixed messages in security, with the White House eliminating its top cybersecurity policy roles at a crucial moment in geopolitics and the evolution of cyberwar. WIRED took a deep look at Robert Mueller's military service in Vietnam and his first year as special counsel, examining the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russia.

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A Location-Sharing Disaster Shows How Exposed You Really Are

Mon, 21 May 2018 16:31:30 -0000

There are plenty of guides available on how to protect your data, how to secure yourself online, and how to stop digital snoops from tracking you across the web and then profiting from that intrusion. (Sorry, “monetization”.) You should do these things. But if a cascading series of revelations this past week has taught us anything, it's that all of those steps amount to triage. The things you can control add up to very little next to the things you can’t.

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4 Key Takeaways From Mueller’s First Year—and What’s Next

Mon, 21 May 2018 07:59:40 -0000

Today marks the one-year anniversary of Robert Mueller’s appointment as special counsel in the investigation of the Trump campaign’s contact and relationships with Russia.

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Senators Grill Whistleblower on Cambridge Analytica's Inner Workings

Fri, 18 May 2018 16:31:06 -0000

In a highly anticipated hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday, lawmakers questioned Christopher Wylie, a former research director for the shadowy political data firm Cambridge Analytica, about the company's history of privacy violations, its contacts with Russia, and its work with Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

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Gruesome Jihadi Content Still Flourishes on Facebook and Google+

Fri, 18 May 2018 07:59:22 -0000

Facebook announced this week that algorithms catch 99.5 percent of the terrorism-related content it deletes before a single user reports it. Thanks to steadily advancing AI tools, that's an improvement from last year, when that figure hovered around 97 percent.

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Inside the Takedown of a Notorious Malware Clearinghouse

Thu, 17 May 2018 16:32:08 -0000

Most antivirus scanners play a classic cat and mouse game: They work by checking software against a frequently updated list of potential threats. In response, a whole industry has built up to help occlude and conceal hacking tools. That includes services that automate the process of checking all sorts of tools, from malware to malicious URLs, against dozens of defense scanners to see if they would get blocked. The feedback helps bad actors know what to tweak further, and whats ready to use.

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Jigsaw's Project Shield Will Protect Campaigns From Online Attacks

Thu, 17 May 2018 07:59:22 -0000

With midterm elections looming and primaries already underway in many states, anxiety has been building over the possibility of cyberattacks that could impact voting. Though officials and election security researchers alike are adamant that voters can trust the United States election system, they also acknowledge shortcomings of the current security setup. Little time remains to meaningfully improve election security before the midterms.

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White House Cuts Critical Cybersecurity Role as Threats Loom

Wed, 16 May 2018 16:31:16 -0000

A little over a month ago, the White House forced out Tom Bossert, its cybersecurity czar. A week later, cybersecurity coordinator Rob Joyce said he would depart as well. And now, rather than replace either, the Trump administration will do without anyone at the helm of its cybersecurity policy. It couldn’t have picked a worse time. The news that the newly appointed national security adviser John Bolton has decided to phase out the cybersecurity coordinator role was first reported by Politico.

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Encrypted Email Has a Major, Divisive Flaw

Tue, 15 May 2018 16:32:14 -0000

The ubiquitous email encryption schemes PGP and S/MIME are vulnerable to attack, according to a group of German and Belgian researchers who posted their findings on Monday. The weakness could allow a hacker to expose plaintext versions of encrypted messages—a nightmare scenario for users who rely on encrypted email to protect their privacy, security, and safety.

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Russia-Linked Facebook Ads Targeted a Sketchy Chrome Extension at Teen Girls

Tue, 15 May 2018 07:59:26 -0000

Earlier this week, the Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee released roughly 3,500 Facebook and Instagram ads purchased by the Internet Research Agency, a notorious Russian troll farm. Among them: Ads purchased in May of 2016 that promoted a suspicious Chrome extension that gained wide access to the Facebook accounts and web browsing behavior of those who installed it.

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Security News This Week: The Hidden Commands Only Alexa Can Year

Mon, 14 May 2018 16:31:09 -0000

This week, the United States officially backed out of the Iran nuclear deal. The geopolitical reverberations should continue to play out in a variety of fields, but make sure you count cybersecurity among them. Iran targeted the US frequently—particularly financial institutions before the deal went into place. Security experts warn that with the agreement no longer in place, the barrage could begin again. So, look out for that! We also took a look at facial recognition technology.

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Facial Recognition Tech Is Creepy When It Works—And Creepier When It Doesn’t

Fri, 11 May 2018 07:59:23 -0000

For the last few years, police forces around China have invested heavily to build the world's largest video surveillance and facial recognition system, incorporating more than 170 million cameras so far. In a December test of the dragnet in Guiyang, a city of 4.3 million people in southwest China, a BBC reporter was flagged for arrest within seven minutes of police adding his headshot to a facial recognition database.

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The Iran Nuclear Deal's Unraveling Raises Fears of Cyberattacks

Thu, 10 May 2018 07:59:20 -0000

When the US last tightened its sanctions against Iran in 2012, then-president Barack Obama boasted that they were "virtually grinding the Iranian economy to a halt." Iran fired back with one of the broadest series of cyberattacks ever to target the US, bombarding practically every major American bank with months intermittent distributed denial of service attacks that pummeled their websites with junk traffic, knocking them offline.

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Security News This Week: Drone Swarms Are Messing With Hostage Situations Now

Tue, 08 May 2018 07:59:24 -0000

The week started with a figurative bang, as a list of questions Robert Mueller's team have for Trump leaked to The New York Times. They all point to one inevitable conclusion: That Mueller almost certainly already knows how all of this ends.

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How to Keep Hackers Out of Your Facebook and Twitter Accounts

Mon, 07 May 2018 16:31:18 -0000

It's important to proactively secure your social media accounts, especially since you never know when an innocuous mistake could put you at risk. But it isn't just a theoretical threat. Pranksters, vandals, and malicious attackers all look for ways to get into any legitimate account they can. So while you don't need to hide in a hole, there are some worthwhile (and easy!) steps you can take to keep your accounts from being hijacked.

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A Georgia Hacking Bill Gets Cybersecurity All Wrong

Mon, 07 May 2018 10:58:22 -0000

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Change Your Twitter Password Right Now

Fri, 04 May 2018 16:31:15 -0000

On Thursday, Twitter chief technology officer Parag Agrawal disclosed in a blog post that the company had inadvertently recorded user passwords, in plaintext, in an internal system. This is not how things are supposed to go! And while Twitter has fixed the bug, and doesn't think any of the exposed passwords were accessed in any way, you should still change your Twitter password right now to make sure your account is secure.

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A Remote Hack Hijacks Android Phones Via Electric Leaks in Their Memory

Fri, 04 May 2018 07:59:14 -0000

Nearly four years have passed since researchers began to experiment with a hacking technique known as "Rowhammer," which breaks practically every security model of a computer by manipulating the physical electric charge in memory chips to corrupt data in unexpected ways. Since that attack exploits the most fundamental properties of computer hardware, no software patch can fully fix it. And now, for the first time, hackers have found a way to use Rowhammer against Android phones over the internet.

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Nigerian Email Scammers Are More Effective Than Ever

Thu, 03 May 2018 16:31:31 -0000

You would think that after decades of analyzing and fighting email spam, there'd be a fix by now for the internet's oldest hustle—the Nigerian Prince scam. There's generally more awareness that a West African noble demanding $1,000 in order to send you millions is a scam, but the underlying logic of these “pay a little, get a lot” schemes, also known as 419 fraud, still ensnares a ton of people.

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Cambridge Analytica Shuts Down All Offices Amid Ongoing Facebook Crisis

Thu, 03 May 2018 07:59:56 -0000

Cambridge Analytica, the embattled data firm that worked on President Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, has told employees it is shutting down, along with its UK counterpart SCL Elections. The move, which impacts all offices of both companies worldwide, comes amid recent revelations that the company harvested the data of up to 87 million Facebook users without their consent, according to multiple sources close to the company.

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Robert Mueller Likely Knows How This All Ends

Wed, 02 May 2018 07:59:31 -0000

The beginning of May marks the longest period of public silence from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team since his first charges last October—more than two months without any new plea deals, fresh indictments, or publicly “flipped” witnesses.

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The House Intel Committee's Russia Report Doesn't Let Trump Off the Hook

Tue, 01 May 2018 16:31:30 -0000

The Republican majority of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released an over 250-page report Friday outlining its months-long investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The full report, the key findings of which were published in March, finds that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia.

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AI Can Help Cybersecurity—If It Can Fight Through the Hype

Tue, 01 May 2018 07:59:28 -0000

Walking the enormous exhibition halls at the recent RSA security conference in San Francisco, you could have easily gotten the impression that digital defense was a solved problem. Amidst branded t-shirts and water bottles, each booth hawked software and hardware that promised impenetrable defenses and peace of mind.

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Security News This Week: The Biggest DDoS For Hire Site Goes Down

Mon, 30 Apr 2018 16:31:23 -0000

WIRED tackled the big questions in security this week, starting with maybe the biggest: Why do so many people use "dragon" as their password? The answer actually says a lot about the psychology of passwords, and how those popular password lists are made in the first place. And there's a whole lot more. Another surprising discovery? Why it makes at least some sense that Atlanta paid $2.6 million to recover from a ransomware attack that had demanded only $52,000.

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A Short History of Blaming 'Hackers' For Pretty Much Everything

Mon, 30 Apr 2018 07:59:18 -0000

This week, MSNBC host Joy Reid has found herself embroiled in a familiar controversy. Twitter user @Jamie_Maz—for the second time—surfaced a number of homophobic posts, from the early aughts, on Reid's now defunct blog, the Reid Report. In response, Reid has turned to a recognizable scapegoat: hackers. Reid isn't the first public figure to blame hackers for her alleged misdeeds online.

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Why Police Should Monitor Social Media to Prevent Crime

Fri, 27 Apr 2018 16:31:06 -0000

In February, the ACLU of Massachusetts released a damning report detailing prejudice in social media surveillance efforts by the Boston Police Department (BPD). The report revealed that between 2014 and 2016, the BPD had tracked keywords on Facebook and Twitter in an effort to identify potential terrorist threats.

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Security News This Week: A Google Fix Breaks Anti-Censorships Tools

Fri, 27 Apr 2018 07:59:27 -0000

If you haven't read this month's WIRED cover story about teen hackers who went too deep into Microsoft Xbox's systems, make that your first stop. In more current news, the White House sent mixed messages on cybersecurity policy this week, calling out Russian hackers for compromising popular routers and firewalls—a problematic, but unsurprising and even popular type of attack. Meanwhile, the White House is also losing its well-regarded cybersecurity coordinator Rob Joyce to the NSA.

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Turning an Echo Into a Spy Device Only Took Some Clever Coding

Thu, 26 Apr 2018 16:32:29 -0000

It's important not to overstate the security risks of the Amazon Echo and other so-called smart speakers. They're useful, fun, and generally have well thought-out privacy protections. Then again, putting a mic in your home naturally invites questions over whether it can be used for eavesdropping—which is why researchers at the security firm Checkmarx started fiddling with Alexa, to see if they could turn it into a spy device. They did, with no intensive meddling required.

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A One-Minute Attack Let Hackers Spoof Hotel Master Keys

Thu, 26 Apr 2018 07:59:22 -0000

In 2003, Finnish security researcher Tomi Tuominen was attending a security conference in Berlin when a friend's laptop, containing sensitive data, was stolen from his hotel room. The theft was a mystery: The staff of the upscale Alexanderplatz Radisson had no clues to offer, the door showed no signs of forced entry, and the electronic log of the door's keycard lock—a common RFID card reader sold by Vingcard—had recorded no entries other than the hotel staff.

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Cracking the Crypto War

Wed, 25 Apr 2018 16:31:26 -0000

On December 2, 2015, a man named Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on employees of the Department of Public Health in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people and injuring 22 during what was supposed to be a staff meeting and holiday celebration. The shooters were tracked down and killed later in the day, and FBI agents wasted no time trying to understand the motivations of Farook and to get the fullest possible sense of his contacts and his network.

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Atlanta Spent $2.6M to Recover From $52,000 Ransomware Scare

Wed, 25 Apr 2018 07:59:17 -0000

The City of Atlanta spent more than $2.6 million on emergency efforts to respond to a ransomware attack that destabilized municipal operations last month. Attackers, who infected the city's systems with the pernicious SamSam malware, asked for a ransom of roughly $50,000 worth of bitcoin. (The exact value has fluctuated due to bitcoin's volatility.

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An Alternative Security Conference Calls Out Lack of Inclusion

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 16:31:27 -0000

On Tuesday, about 250 people gathered in the event space of Cloudflare's San Francisco headquarters for an unusual security conference—or, perhaps more accurately, one that aimed to modernize the longstanding tradition in security of creating alternative, transgressive gatherings.

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DNC Lawsuit Reveals Key Details About Devastating 2016 Hack

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 07:59:13 -0000

The Democratic National Committee Friday filed a lawsuit against a broad slate of people and entities allegedly responsible for the 2016 hack of its email, phone calls, and more. But while the suit claims involvement from a host of headliners—Wikileaks, Julian Assange, Donald Trump, Jr., and Russia among them—its immediate importance lies in the previously unreported timeline it lays out.

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Why So Many People Make Their Password 'Dragon'

Mon, 23 Apr 2018 16:31:35 -0000

Each year since 2011, the security firm SplashData has released a list of the most commonly used passwords, based on caches of leaked account credentials. The annual list, intended as a reminder of humanity’s poor password practices, always includes predictable entries like “abc123,” “123456,” and “letmein.” But one entry, finishing in the top 20 every year, has stood out since the beginning: "dragon.

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The Security Risks of Logging in With Facebook

Mon, 23 Apr 2018 07:59:22 -0000

Facebook profiles have become the de-facto identities of people across the internet. This is thanks, in large part, to Login With Facebook, the social network's universal login API, which allows users to carry their profile information to other apps and websites. You've probably used it to log in to services like Spotify, Airbnb, and Tinder.

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This Ex-NSA Hacker's App Protects Your Mac From 'Evil Maid' Attacks

Fri, 20 Apr 2018 16:31:12 -0000

Less than an hour into a Tinder date in a Moscow restaurant last year, Patrick Wardle began to wonder about the laptop he'd left in his hotel room. Wardle had come to the city for a security conference; as a former NSA staffer who'd worked on the elite hacking unit known as Tailored Access Operations, he was paranoid enough to bring only a "burner" PC on his trip, carefully stripped of any sensitive information.

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The White House Warns on Russian Router Hacking, But Muddles the Message

Fri, 20 Apr 2018 07:59:58 -0000

For its first year in office, the Trump administration seemed soft on Russia's hyper-aggressive hackers, reluctant even to point out they'd brazenly meddled in the US election. Then, just two months ago, the White House suddenly came out swinging, calling out Russia for its massively disruptive NotPetya malware and intrusions into the US power grid, and imposing new sanctions in response.

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Inside the Unnerving Supply Chain Attack That Corrupted CCleaner

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 16:32:59 -0000

In September, security researchers at Cisco Talos and Morphisec made a worst nightmare-type disclosure: the ubiquitous computer cleanup tool CCleaner had been compromised by hackers for more than a month. The software updates users were downloading from CCleaner owner Avast—a security company itself—had been tainted with a malware backdoor.

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'Trustjacking' Could Expose iPhones to Attack

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 07:59:14 -0000

Have you used a friend's laptop to charge your iPhone and gotten a prompt that says, "Trust This Computer?" Say yes, and the computer will be able to access your phone settings and data while they're connected. And while it doesn't feel like your answer really matters—your phone will charge either way—researchers from Symantec warn that this seemingly minor decision has much higher stakes than you'd think.

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An Elaborate Hack Shows How Much Damage IoT Bugs Can Do

Wed, 18 Apr 2018 16:32:25 -0000

The bulk of major corporate hacks follow time-tested strategies, like phishing emails that trick employees into giving up their credentials, or hackers exploiting a bug in a web portal. While effective, these strategies also open an attacker to early detection. So increasingly, hackers have taken the scenic route—through the Internet of Things.

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The World's Biggest Porn Site Now Accepts Cryptocurrency

Wed, 18 Apr 2018 07:59:18 -0000

The adult website Pornhub has of late taken pride in being something of a pioneer. A year ago, it implemented HTTPS encryption, making it safer for users to click without being snooped on. Last fall, it introduced a suite of accessibility features for its blind and visually impaired users. And Tuesday, it began accepting Verge, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency Pornhub is not by any stretch the first adult site to accept cryptocurrency.

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The White House Loses Its Cybersecurity Brain Trust

Tue, 17 Apr 2018 16:31:17 -0000

Today, the White House confirmed that cybersecurity coordinator Rob Joyce will head back to the National Security Agency, where he previously ran the nation’s top hacking team. His departure comes just a week after Tom Bossert, Trump’s cybersecurity czar and Joyce’s boss, was forced out—and leaves the administration without two trusted voices on one of the most important challenges the US faces going forward.

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How Russian Facebook Ads Divided and Targeted US Voters Before the 2016 Election

Tue, 17 Apr 2018 07:59:23 -0000

When Young Mie Kim began studying political ads on Facebook in August of 2016—while Hillary Clinton was still leading the polls— few people had ever heard of the Russian propaganda group, Internet Research Agency. Not even Facebook itself understood how the group was manipulating the platform's users to influence the election.

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Security News This Week: Russia Bans Encrypted Chat App Telegram

Mon, 16 Apr 2018 16:31:18 -0000

It was the week of Zuck. As Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg slogged through more than 10 hours of testimony in front of two different Congressional committees, privacy and security advocates were listening for anything they could glean about how Facebook manages data, implements privacy protections, and helps users make informed choices—or doesn't.

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Cloudflare's Plan to Protect the Whole Internet Comes Into Focus

Mon, 16 Apr 2018 07:50:56 -0000

The internet infrastructure company Cloudflare is adding an Internet of Things security service to its already long list of offerings. And though it that may seem unrelated to the free DDoS mitigation or expanded web browsing protections the company already provides, it's another incremental step that helps reveal a clearer picture of the company's overall approach to security.

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Cambridge Analytica Could Also Access Private Facebook Messages

Fri, 13 Apr 2018 16:31:13 -0000

The data consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which harvested as many as 87 million Facebook users' personal data, also could have accessed the private inbox messages of some of those affected. Facebook slipped this previously undisclosed detail into the notifications that began appearing at the top of News Feeds on Monday.

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The Questions Zuckerberg Should Have Answered About Russia

Fri, 13 Apr 2018 07:59:24 -0000

Over the last two days, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was questioned for more than 10 hours by two different Congressional committees. There was granular focus on privacy definitions and data collection, and quick footwork by Zuckerberg—backed by a phalanx of lawyers, consultants, and coaches—to craft a narrative that users “control” their data. (They don’t.

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How Android Phones Hide Missed Security Updates From You

Thu, 12 Apr 2018 16:32:07 -0000

Google has long struggled with how best to get dozens of Android smartphone manufacturers—and hundreds of carriers—to regularly push out security-focused software updates.

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Hackers Didn't Have to Be Experts to Make 'Despacito' Disappear

Thu, 12 Apr 2018 07:59:26 -0000

Since it’s not summer 2017 anymore, you probably haven’t watched the music video for Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s hit “Despacito” recently. And that may be just as well. The reigning most-viewed YouTube video was vandalized and then taken off the platform for a few hours on Tuesday morning after hackers infiltrated the account that hosted it.

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Mark Zuckerberg's Privacy Shell Game

Wed, 11 Apr 2018 16:31:47 -0000

Mark Zuckerberg appeared before Congress Tuesday, and for five hours, senators who appeared to have halting grasp of the company’s intricacies questioned the Facebook CEO on topics ranging from Russia to artificial intelligence. Zuckerberg for the most part gave considered answers to their questions—except when it came to the specifics of how users can control their privacy. That Zuckerberg would dodge uncomfortable questions is a disappointment, though maybe no surprise.

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A Long-Awaited IoT Crisis Is Here, and Many Devices Aren't Ready

Wed, 11 Apr 2018 07:59:23 -0000

You know by now that Internet of Things devices like your router are often vulnerable to attack, the industry-wide lack of investment in security leaving the door open to a host of abuses. Worse still, known weaknesses and flaws can hang around for years after their initial discovery. Even decades.

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Mozilla Diagnoses the Health of the Global Internet

Tue, 10 Apr 2018 16:32:24 -0000

The relationship between platforms and their users has never been more fraught. To see the evidence, look no further than Congress today, where Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify about how his company reportedly mishandled data belonging to up to 87 million people by allowing it to get into the hands of the Trump-affiliated data firm Cambridge Analytica.

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Most Links to Popular Sites on Twitter Come From Bots

Tue, 10 Apr 2018 07:59:32 -0000

Bots have become a great scourge of the internet. Recently, they've flooded government comment systems with fake activism, distorted the national discourse on guns, and launched malicious attacks against the Justice Department. And a new study suggests they're behind the majority of links shared on Twitter, too. A Pew Research report released Monday finds that a whole two-thirds of links to popular sites shared on Twitter come from automated accounts.

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Facebook Messenger's 'Unsend' Feature Is What Happens When You Scramble

Mon, 09 Apr 2018 16:32:11 -0000

Next week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify before Congress about his company's failure to prevent the data firm Cambridge Analytica from siphoning off information belonging to up to 87 million people, the majority of whom are believed to be Americans. In the lead-up to the hearings, the social network has scrambled to respond to increased scrutiny from journalists and the public over its privacy practices. Steps like overhauling its entire privacy settings menu are a clear benefit.

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DC's Stingray Mess Won't Get Cleaned Up

Mon, 09 Apr 2018 07:59:30 -0000

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed for the first time that it is aware of unauthorized cell-site simulators, the surveillance tools often called stingrays or IMSI Catchers, in various parts of Washington DC.

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Cyberinsurance Tackles the Wildly Unpredictable World of Hacks

Fri, 06 Apr 2018 16:31:19 -0000

In the aftermath of the Equifax data breach last year that exposed personal information of more than 145 million people, analysis firm Property Claim Services estimated that cyberinsurance would cover roughly $125 million of Equifax’s losses from the incident. It’s uncertain whether Equifax will actually receive that much money; insurance claims can take a long time to investigate, process, and pay out.

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A 200-Year-Old Idea Offers a New Way to Trace Stolen Bitcoins

Thu, 05 Apr 2018 16:32:25 -0000

Bitcoin's blockchain provides inalterable evidence, stored on thousands of computers, of every Bitcoin transaction that's ever taken place. Many of the transactions recorded on that distributed ledger are crimes: Billions of dollars in stolen funds, contraband deals, and paid ransoms sitting in plain sight, yet obscured by unidentifiable Bitcoin addresses and, in many cases, tangles of money laundering.

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The Billion-Dollar Hacking Group Behind a String of Big Breaches

Thu, 05 Apr 2018 07:59:19 -0000

This week, Saks Fifth Avenue, Saks Off 5th, and Lord & Taylor department stores—all owned by The Hudson’s Bay Company—acknowledged a data breach impacting more than five million credit and debit card numbers. The culprits? The same group that's spent the last few years pulling off data heists from Omni Hotels & Resorts, Trump Hotels, Jason’s Deli, Whole Foods, Chipotle: A mysterious group known as Fin7.

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Google Bans All Cryptomining Extensions From the Chrome Store

Wed, 04 Apr 2018 16:32:04 -0000

It's been about six months since cryptojacking exploded, and in that short time the approach has evolved and adapted to initiate illicit cryptocurrency mining in all different ways. Now, Google's taking a stand, announcing Monday that it would begin blocking any Chrome extension submitted to the Web Store that mines cryptocurrency. In July, it will remove existing extensions that currently contain mining functionality.

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The Next NSA Chief Is More Used to Cyberwar Than Spy Games

Wed, 04 Apr 2018 08:00:03 -0000

After sailing through two friendly Senate hearings—one so uncontroversial that only six senators tops bothered to even show up at any given point in the hour—Lieutenant General Paul Nakasone seems set to for confirmation as the next director of the National Security Agency. That means he'll soon lead not just one agency, but two: the world's most powerful spying operation, the NSA, and the world's most powerful military hacker force, US Cyber Command.

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The Under Armour Hack Was Even Worse Than It Had To Be

Tue, 03 Apr 2018 16:31:22 -0000

When Under Armour announced that its nutrition app MyFitnessPal had suffered a data breach impacting the information of roughly 150 million users, things actually didn't seem so bad. Of course, it's never good when personal data ends up online, much less that of so many people, but it seemed like Under Armour had at least taken reasonable precautions. But it turns out Under Armour only sort of got things right.

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New Encryption Service Adds Privacy Protection for Web Browsing

Tue, 03 Apr 2018 07:59:24 -0000

Most of the traffic on the web is encrypted. And more websites are adopting basic encryption measures every day. That means that, in theory, eavesdroppers have a hard time seeing whom you're writing to on Gmail or what you're looking up on Wikipedia. But there's a catch. Big sites like Google and Facebook can see what links you click from their services, and use tracking cookies to follow you around the web.

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Security News This Week: Julian Assange Has Lost His Internet Privileges

Mon, 02 Apr 2018 16:31:45 -0000

After weeks of unrelenting chaos, the cybersecurity world took a little bit of a breather. Well, relatively, anyway. There was still one of the bigger data breaches in recent memory, compliments of UnderArmour. The sportswear company's MyFitnessPal apps suffered a breach of 150 million users' data, including names and passwords.

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The Ransomware That Hobbled Atlanta Will Strike Again

Mon, 02 Apr 2018 07:59:23 -0000

For over a week, the City of Atlanta has battled a ransomware attack that has caused serious digital disruptions in five of the city's 13 local government departments. The attack has had far-reaching impacts—crippling the court system, keeping residents from paying their water bills, limiting vital communications like sewer infrastructure requests, and pushing the Atlanta Police Department to file paper reports for days.

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Facebook's Election Safeguards Are Still a Work in Progress

Fri, 30 Mar 2018 16:31:20 -0000

Nearly three years after a Russian propaganda group infiltrated Facebook and other tech platforms in hopes of seeding chaos in the 2016 US election, Facebook has more fully detailed its plan to protect elections around the world. In a call with reporters Thursday, Facebook executives elaborated on their use of human moderators, third-party fact checkers, and automation to catch fake accounts, foreign interference, fake news, and to increase transparency in political ads.

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Mysterious 'MuslimCrypt' App Helps Jihadists Send Covert Messages

Thu, 29 Mar 2018 16:31:09 -0000

ISIS has long taken full advantage of secure communication tools, and utilized mainstream communication platforms in unexpected ways. Extremist groups even develop their own software at times to tailor things like encrypted messaging to their specific needs. One such project is the clandestine, unfortunately named communication tool MuslimCrypt, which uses an encryption technique called steganography to spread secret messages.

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DOJ Indicts 9 Iranians For Brazen Cyberattacks Against 144 US Universities

Thu, 29 Mar 2018 07:59:25 -0000

In its latest drumbeat against the cyber activities of Iran, the US government Friday charged nine Iranian hackers with a massive three-year campaign to penetrate and steal more than 31 terabytes of information—totaling more than $3 billion in intellectual property—from more than 300 American and foreign universities.

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The Dark Web’s Favorite Currency Is Less Untraceable Than It Seems

Wed, 28 Mar 2018 16:30:58 -0000

As discerning dark web drug dealers and pseudonymous hackers have figured that Bitcoin is not magically private money, many have turned to Monero, a digital coin that promises a far higher degree of anonymity and untraceability baked into its design. But one group of researchers has found that Monero's privacy protections, while better than Bitcoin's, still aren’t the cloak of invisibility they might seem.

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The Facebook Privacy Setting That Doesn’t Do Anything at All

Wed, 28 Mar 2018 07:59:24 -0000

Wrangling your Facebook privacy settings—fine-tuning what data friends, advertisers, and apps can access—is a slog. The menus are labyrinthine, the wording obtuse. And it turns out that one of them is completely pointless. In fact, it hasn’t worked in years. To be clear: This is not a case of Facebook sneaking one past you, at least not the way you might think.

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Tumblr Finally Breaks Its Silence on Russian Propaganda

Tue, 27 Mar 2018 16:31:19 -0000

After months of silence, Tumblr Friday released a list of 84 usernames and their aliases that it says were connected to "state-sponsored disinformation and propaganda campaigns." It's the first time the company has publicly acknowledged what journalists and researchers have known now for months: Russian trolls also used Tumblr to spread their divisive memes and gifs, reportedly to the tune of hundreds of thousands of interactions.

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Yes, Even Elite Hackers Make Dumb Mistakes

Tue, 27 Mar 2018 07:59:22 -0000

On Thursday, a report from the Daily Beast alleged that the Guccifer 2.0 hacking persona—famous for leaking data stolen from the Democratic National Committee in 2016—has been linked to a GRU Russian intelligence agent. What appears to have given Guccifer away: The hacker once failed activate a VPN before logging into a social media account. This slip eventually allowed US investigators to link the persona to a Moscow IP address. In fact, they traced it directly to GRU headquarters.

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Security News This Week: Reddit Bans Its Home for Dark Web Discussions

Mon, 26 Mar 2018 16:31:16 -0000

Hard as it is to believe, it was only a week ago that reports first broke—in The Guardian and The Observer, along with The New York Times—that Trump-affiliated data company Cambridge Analytica harvested the data of 50 million unwitting Facebook users to create so-called psychographic political ads.

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Cambridge Analytica Took 50M Facebook Users' Data—And Both Companies Owe Answers

Mon, 26 Mar 2018 07:59:36 -0000

Cambridge Analytica, a data analysis firm that worked on President Trump's 2016 campaign, and its related company, Strategic Communications Laboratories, pilfered data on 50 million Facebook users and secretly kept it, according to two reports in The New York Times and The Guardian. The apparent misuse of Facebook data—and the social media giant's failure to police it—leave both companies with plenty still to answer for.

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Don't Ask Wikipedia to Cure the Internet

Fri, 23 Mar 2018 14:38:06 -0000

For the average internet user, Wikipedia operates in the background, its 44 million entries serving as a priceless resource, rarely thought of until you need to know the capital of Azerbaijan. This week, however Wikipedia's volunteer editors and the nonprofit that makes its work possible, the Wikimedia Foundation, suddenly found themselves in the news, tasked once again with providing a ground-level truth for a platform unwilling to provide one of its own.

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Meltdown, Spectre, and the Costs of Unchecked Innovation

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 16:31:29 -0000

When the blockbuster twin security exploits known as Meltdown and Spectre appeared in early 2018, Mozilla was among the first to respond, retroactively changing several behaviors of Firefox to help prevent them. Both attacks rely on using high-speed timing measurements to detect sensitive information, so somewhat counterintuitively, the patches had to decrease the speed of seemingly mundane computations.

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The Complete Guide to Facebook Privacy

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 07:59:36 -0000

Facebook has never been particularly good at prioritizing your privacy. Your powers its business, after all. But recent revelations that a firm called Cambridge Analytica harvested the personal information of 50 million unwitting Facebook users in 2015 has created new sense of urgency for those hoping for some modicum of control over their online life. If you ever needed a wake-up call, this is it. Facebook offers a fairly robust set of tools to control who knows what about you.

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Alphabet's 'Outline' Software Lets Anyone Run a Homebrew VPN

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 15:11:28 -0000

A virtual private network, that core privacy tool that encrypts your internet traffic and bounces it through a faraway server, has always presented a paradox: Sure, it helps you hide from some forms of surveillance, like your internet service provider's snooping and eavesdroppers on your local network. But it leaves you vulnerable to a different, equally powerful spy: Whoever controls the VPN server you're routing all your traffic through.

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Facebook Owes You More Than This

Tue, 20 Mar 2018 17:33:44 -0000

Signing up for a Facebook account, or any free online service, comes with an implicit bargain: Use it as much as you want—check your News Feed, like a status, poke a friend—and in return, the company will collect your data, and use it to serve you ads both on Facebook and around the web. But what appears to be a simple exchange has become anything but. This is not a screed about deleting your Facebook account—although if you want to, here's how.

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Security News This Week: A Smartphone Botnet Army Keeps Growing Stronger

Tue, 20 Mar 2018 07:59:34 -0000

Arguably the biggest news in security this week was also the strangest; a company barely a year old announced a series of AMD vulnerabilities, giving the chip company only a day or so advance notice before making the results public. And despite the hype, the bugs themselves were of questionable severity. It was almost as hard to make sense of as YouTube's decision to add Wikipedia links to controversial videos. Almost.

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Hacker Adrian Lamo Has Died at 37

Mon, 19 Mar 2018 16:31:18 -0000

Hacker Adrian Lamo died at the age of 37, according a Facebook post from his father. “With great sadness and a broken heart I have to let know all of Adrian’s friends and acquaintances that he is dead. A bright mind and compassionate soul is gone, he was my beloved son,” Mario Lamo wrote in a post to the 2600: The Hacker Quarterly Facebook Group. The cause of death is not yet known, but a coroner in Sedgwick County, Kansas confirmed the news to ZDNet.

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Voice Chat App Zello Turned a Blind Eye to Jihadis for Years

Mon, 19 Mar 2018 07:59:22 -0000

In the early morning of September 9, 2016, Bill Moore, CEO of the Austin-based walkie-talkie app company Zello, contacted the Middle East Media Research Institute. He was seeking a copy of a report MEMRI had recently published describing how ISIS members and supporters were using Zello, which allows people to send voice messages to each other in private and also public channels. Moore had learned about the findings through a Google Alert.

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New White House Sanctions Finally Take Russia's Online Chaos Seriously

Fri, 16 Mar 2018 07:59:34 -0000

In its first 14 months, the Trump administration has earned a reputation for being soft on the Kremlin, even as the extent of the chaos Russia's hackers and trolls have inflicted online becomes increasingly clear. But more recently, the White House's rhetoric towards Russia has begun to shift. And now the executive branch has not only called out the Kremlin for a broad collection of rogue actions online, but finally meted out a concrete financial punishment.

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Today's Debate Over Online Porn Started Decades Ago

Thu, 15 Mar 2018 16:32:21 -0000

In 1995, a bipartisan pair of senators wrote a bill to address growing concerns over minors accessing pornography on the internet. President Bill Clinton would eventually sign the Communications Decency Act in 1996, criminalizing the online transmission of “obscene or indecent” materials to anyone known to be under the age of 18.

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YouTube Will Link Directly to Wikipedia to Fight Conspiracy Theories

Thu, 15 Mar 2018 07:59:42 -0000

After the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, in February, the top trending video on YouTube wasn’t a news clip about the tragedy but a conspiracy theory video suggesting survivor David Hogg was an actor. The video garnered 200,000 views before YouTube removed it from its platform. Until now, the company hasn’t said much about how it plans to handle the spread of that sort of misinformation moving forward. On Tuesday, however, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki detailed a potential solution.

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Florida Could Start a Criminal-Justice Data Revolution

Wed, 14 Mar 2018 16:31:06 -0000

There’s no such thing as the US criminal justice system. There are, instead, thousands of counties across the country, each with their own systems, made up of a diffuse network of sheriffs, court clerks, prosecutors, public defenders, and jail officials who all enforce the rules around who does and doesn’t end up behind bars.

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Researchers Point to an AMD Backdoor—And Face Their Own Backlash

Wed, 14 Mar 2018 07:59:22 -0000

When the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities were revealed in millions of processors earlier this year, those deep-seated vulnerabilities rattled practically the entire computer industry. Now a group of Israeli researchers is outlining a new set of chip-focused vulnerabilities that, if confirmed, would represent another collection of flaws at the core of computer hardware, this time in a processor architecture designed by AMD.

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How Creative DDOS Attacks Still Slip Past Defenses

Tue, 13 Mar 2018 07:59:26 -0000

Distributed denial of service attacks, in which hackers use a targeted hose of junk traffic to overwhelm a service or take a server offline, have been a digital menace for decades. But in just the last 18 months, the public picture of DDoS defense has evolved rapidly. In fall 2016, a rash of then-unprecedented attacks caused internet outages and other service disruptions at a series of internet infrastructure and telecom companies around the world.

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Router-Hacking 'Slingshot' Spy Operation Compromised More Than 100 Targets

Mon, 12 Mar 2018 17:32:56 -0000

Routers, both the big corporate kind and the small one gathering dust in the corner of your home, have long made an attractive target for hackers. They're always on and connected, often full of unpatched security vulnerabilities, and offer a convenient chokepoint for eavesdropping on all the data you pipe out to the internet.

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Russian Propaganda Remains on Reddit

Mon, 12 Mar 2018 07:59:23 -0000

Of all of the tech platforms that Russian trolls infiltrated during the run-up to the 2016 election in the United States, Reddit has been among the least forthcoming.

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Ad-Blocker Ghostery Just Went Open Source—And Has a New Business Model

Fri, 09 Mar 2018 16:31:16 -0000

In privacy-focused, anti-establishment corners of the internet, going open source can earn you a certain amount of street cred. It signals that you not only have nothing to hide, but also welcome the rest of the world to help make your project better. For Ghostery though, the company that makes Edward Snowden’s recommended ad blocker, publishing all its code on GitHub Thursday also means clearing up some confusion about its past.

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Operation Bayonet: Inside the Sting That Hijacked an Entire Dark Web Drug Market

Fri, 09 Mar 2018 07:59:22 -0000

For anyone who has watched the last few years of cat-and-mouse games on the dark web's black markets, the pattern is familiar: A contraband bazaar like the Silk Road attracts thousands of drug dealers and their customers, along with intense scrutiny from police and three-letter agencies. Authorities hunt down its administrators, and tear the site offline in a dramatic takedown—only to find that its buyers and sellers have simply migrated to the next dark-web market on their list.

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The Leaked NSA Spy Tool That Hacked the World

Thu, 08 Mar 2018 07:59:12 -0000

An elite Russian hacking team, a historic ransomware attack, an espionage group in the Middle East, and countless small time cryptojackers all have one thing in common. Though their methods and objectives vary, they all lean on leaked NSA hacking tool EternalBlue to infiltrate target computers and spread malware across networks. Leaked to the public not quite a year ago, EternalBlue has joined a long line of reliable hacker favorites.

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Spy v. Spy: An NSA Leak Reveals the Agency's List of Enemy Hackers

Wed, 07 Mar 2018 16:31:38 -0000

When the still-unidentified group calling itself the Shadow Brokers spilled a collection of NSA tools onto the internet in a series of leaks starting in 2016, they offered a rare glimpse into the internal operations of the the world's most advanced and stealthy hackers. But those leaks haven't just let the outside world see into the NSA's secret capabilities. They might also let us see the rest of the world's hackers through the NSA's eyes.

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In US v. Microsoft, a Decades-Old Law Leaves Few Good Options

Wed, 07 Mar 2018 09:29:02 -0000

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in United States v. Microsoft, a case that many observers believe could have significant ramifications for how cloud computing and other technology companies interact with the US government. If it were up to the justices themselves, however, those implications would end up being short-lived.

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Uber 'Surprised' by Totally Unsurprising Pennsylvania Data Breach Lawsuit

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 16:33:24 -0000

Uber faces more potential legal consequences for waiting to make public a major hack until a over a year after it happened. The Pennsylvania Attorney General filed a lawsuit against Uber Monday for violating the state's data breach notification law, which says hacks should be disclosed within a "reasonable" time frame. Uber didn't merely keep quiet about the massive breach; it reportedly paid a $100,000 ransom to the perpetrators in exchange for their silence.

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Security News This Week: Equifax Found 2.4 Million More People Affected by Its 2017 Breach

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 07:59:21 -0000

It was a wild west week in security, as GitHub succeeded in surviving the biggest DDoS attack ever (1.35 terabits per second!) and analysts scrutinized the "false flag" techniques Russian hackers have used in their attacks to shift blame and throw off investigators. Researchers found an unexpected method for executing phishing attacks against some "unphishable" Yubikey two-factor authentication tokens. (Not the one included in WIRED's subscription package.

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Facebook Doesn't Know How Many People Followed Russians on Instagram

Mon, 05 Mar 2018 16:31:28 -0000

For more than a year, Jonathan Albright has served as something of a one-man General Accounting Office for the tech industry. The researcher at Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism has dug into the details on how political Twitter trolls manipulate the media, and unearthed an intricate web of conspiracy theory videos on YouTube. Last weekend, while digging through Facebook’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee from last fall, something else caught his eye.

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Covert 'Replay Sessions' Have Been Harvesting Passwords by Mistake

Mon, 05 Mar 2018 07:59:19 -0000

Yes, websites track your behavior online. But some go much further than what you'd reasonably expect, using so-called session replays to create a detailed log of everything you do and type on a site. And new research shows that in some cases these movie-like recordings are even storing your passwords. Bulk data collection is always a privacy red flag.

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Chrome Lets Hackers Phish Even 'Unphishable' Yubikey Users

Fri, 02 Mar 2018 17:05:07 -0000

There's no better way to protect yourself from the universal scourge of phishing attacks than with a hardware token like a Yubikey, which stymies attackers even if you accidentally hand them your username and password. But while Yubikey manufacturer Yubico describes its product as "unphishable," a pair of researchers has proven the company wrong, with a technique that allows clever phishers to sidestep even Yubico's last bastion of login protection.

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GitHub Survived the Biggest DDoS Attack Ever Recorded

Fri, 02 Mar 2018 07:59:53 -0000

On Wednesday, at about 12:15pm ET, 1.35 terabits per second of traffic hit the developer platform GitHub all at once. It was the most powerful distributed denial of service attack recorded to date—and it used an increasingly popular DDoS method, no botnet required. GitHub briefly struggled with intermittent outages as a digital system assessed the situation. Within 10 minutes it had automatically called for help from its DDoS mitigation service, Akamai Prolexic.

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How to Turn Off Facebook's Face Recognition Features

Thu, 01 Mar 2018 16:34:11 -0000

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Microsoft's Supreme Court Case Has Big Implications For Data

Thu, 01 Mar 2018 10:19:19 -0000

Five years ago, US law enforcement served Microsoft a search warrant for emails as part of a US drug trafficking investigation. In response, Microsoft handed over data stored on American servers, like the person’s address book. But it didn’t give the government the actual content of the individual’s emails, because they were stored at a Microsoft data center in Dublin, Ireland, where the subject said he lived when he signed up for his Outlook account.

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5 Key Takeaways From the Democratic Rebuttal Memo

Wed, 28 Feb 2018 18:30:00 -0000

Three weeks ago, House Republicans publicly released a much-hyped memo written by representative Devin Nunes of California. It alleged, through a series of allusions, tangential facts, and seeming misdirections, that law enforcement officials had abused their power in obtaining a surveillance warrant against former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. Now, in a 10-page memo of their own, House Democrats are attempting to set the record straight.

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Facebook's Mandatory Malware Scan Is an Intrusive Mess

Wed, 28 Feb 2018 07:59:11 -0000

When an Oregon science fiction writer named Charity tried to log onto Facebook on February 11, she found herself completely locked out of her account. A message appeared saying she needed to download Facebook’s malware scanner if she wanted to get back in. Charity couldn’t use Facebook until she completed the scan, but the file the company provided was for a Windows device—Charity uses a Mac.

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What Rick Gates' Guilty Plea Means For Mueller’s Probe

Tue, 27 Feb 2018 16:31:17 -0000

Today’s guilty plea by Rick Gates might be one of the least surprising developments in the Mueller investigation: It had been clear that the former Trump campaign aide would likely seek a deal almost since the day Gates and his business partner and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort were indicted in October, and we’ve seen reports for weeks that negotiations between Mueller and Gates have been underway.

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Security News This Week: Apple Repair Center Barrages Sacramento's 911 Operators

Tue, 27 Feb 2018 07:59:12 -0000

Robert Mueller's indictment of Russia's Internet Research Agency—also known as the "troll factory"—feels like years ago at this point. It's only been a week! And we took a deep dive into what it really says about Russia's propaganda efforts during the 2016 presidential campaign and beyond. Trump campaign advisor Rick Gates has also copped a plea deal with Mueller's team—which could have big implications for the investigation going forward.

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The Problem with Cryptojacking

Mon, 26 Feb 2018 16:31:36 -0000

v. Swiping computer processing power through a web browser to illicitly mint cryptocurrency. People who streamed the TV drama Billions last fall may have been hit by some real-life financial chicanery. While they watched, a rogue script on the Showtime website directed their PCs to engage in “mining” operations for a bitcoin-like digital currency. Doing currency mining on your own machine is perfectly legit.

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Beware This Incredibly Silly—But Still Effective—Tax Scam

Mon, 26 Feb 2018 07:59:10 -0000

It's almost Tax Day, which also means it's peak tax fraud season. The Internal Revenue Service has played some epic games of cat-and-mouse with phone and online scammers over the past 10 years, but the latest scamming trend for 2018 has a particularly devious twist. Here's how it works: Attackers use a taxpayer's stolen identity information to fraudulently file their returns for a refund. They allow that refund to direct deposit into the victim's actual bank account. Then the real fun starts.

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US Border Patrol Hasn’t Validated E-Passport Data For Years

Fri, 23 Feb 2018 16:31:04 -0000

Passports, like any physical ID, can be altered and forged. That's partly why for the last 11 years the United States has put RFID chips in the back panel of its passports, creating so-called e-Passports. The chip stores your passport information—like name, date of birth, passport number, your photo, and even a biometric identifier—for quick, machine-readable border checks.

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Inside the Mueller Indictment: A Russian Novel of Intrigue

Thu, 22 Feb 2018 16:30:59 -0000

It was the day of the biker rally, the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend 2016, when thousands of motorcyclists descend in a cacophonous blitz on Washington, DC, for the annual Rolling Thunder rally. Soon-to-be Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, wearing a blazer sans tie but with a red MAGA hat firmly ensconced on his head, worked the crowd around the Lincoln Memorial. “Look at all these bikers,” he said. “Do we love the bikers? Yes. We love the bikers.

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WhatsApp Co-Founder Puts $50M Into Signal To Supercharge Encrypted Messaging

Thu, 22 Feb 2018 12:15:35 -0000

In the four or so years since it launched, end-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal has become the security community's gold standard for surveillance-resistant communications. Its creators have built an encryption protocol that companies from WhatsApp to Facebook Messenger to Skype have all added to their own products to offer truly private conversations to billions of people.

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The White House Blames Russia for NotPetya, the 'Most Costly Cyberattack In History'

Wed, 21 Feb 2018 16:31:36 -0000

It's been nearly eight months since the malware known as NotPetya tore through the internet, rippling out from Ukraine to paralyze companies and government agencies around the world. On Thursday, the White House finally acknowledged that attack. And in a reversal of its often seemingly willful blindness to the threat of Russian hacking, it has called out the Kremlin as NotPetya's creator.

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For Russia, Unraveling US Democracy Was Just Another Day Job

Wed, 21 Feb 2018 07:59:22 -0000

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment against Russia’s Internet Research Agency contains a number of striking moments, from the inflammatory ads bought by the so-called “troll factory” to the rampant identity theft against US citizens. But what stands out most may be the reminder that for Russia, subverting the foundations of US democracy was just another 9 to 5.

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Inside the Toolset of an Elite North Korean Hacker Group On the Rise

Tue, 20 Feb 2018 16:31:28 -0000

North Korea's most prolific hacking group, broadly known within the security community under the name Lazarus, has over the last half-decade proven itself one of the world's most internationally aggressive teams of intruders. It has pulled off audacious attacks around the globe, from leaking and destroying Sony Pictures' data to siphoning of tens of millions of dollars from banks in Poland and Bangladesh.

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Pro-Gun Russian Bots Flood Twitter After Parkland Shooting

Tue, 20 Feb 2018 07:59:15 -0000

Each new breaking news situation is an opportunity for trolls to grab attention, provoke emotions, and spread propaganda. The Russian government knows this. Fake-news manufacturing teenagers in Macedonia know this. Twitter bot creators know this. And thanks to data-gathering operations from groups like the Alliance for Securing Democracy and RoBhat Labs, the world knows this.

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Did Russia Affect the 2016 Election? It’s Now Undeniable

Mon, 19 Feb 2018 16:31:12 -0000

For some time, there has been a conflation of issues—the hacking and leaking of illegally obtained information versus propaganda and disinformation; cyber-security issues and the hacking of elections systems versus information operations and information warfare; paid advertising versus coercive messaging or psychological operations—when discussing “Russian meddling” in the 2016 US elections.

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Facebook Notification Spam Has Crossed the Line

Mon, 19 Feb 2018 07:59:18 -0000

Facebook has always nudged truant users back to its platform though emails and notifications. But recently, those prods have evolved beyond comments related to activity on your own profile. Now Facebook will nag you when an acquaintance comments on someone else’s photo, or when a distant family member updates their status. The spamming has even extended to those who sign up for two-factor authentication—which is a great way to turn people off to that extra layer of security.

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North Korea's Olympic Diplomacy Hasn't Stopped Its Hacking

Fri, 16 Feb 2018 16:31:14 -0000

For anyone getting their geopolitical news from the Olympics alone, North Korea might seem practically charismatic. Its combined hockey team with South Korea has become a global symbol of dictator Kim Jong Un's call for improved relations with the South. Kim's sister has led a Pyeongchang charm offensive. And its Stepford cheerleaders—well, some people seem to not be entirely creeped out by them.

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Don't Trust the VPN Facebook Wants You to Use

Fri, 16 Feb 2018 07:59:13 -0000

This week, reports have percolated that Facebook is testing a new menu item, called "Protect," in its iOS app. The feature sports a blue shield icon, and tapping it redirects you to the App Store listing for Facebook-owned VPN app Onavo Protect. But while Onavo does claim to offer some tools that make the web safer, in practice it falls far short of the privacy protections that VPN users reasonably expect.

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Artificial Intelligence Is Now Fighting Fake Porn

Thu, 15 Feb 2018 16:31:03 -0000

Facial recognition and machine learning programs have officially been democratized, and of course the internet is using the tech to make porn. As first reported by Motherboard, people are now creating AI-assisted face-swap porn, often featuring a celebrity's face mapped onto a porn star's body, like Gal Gadot's likeness in a clip where she's supposedly sleeping with her stepbrother.

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Now Cryptojacking Threatens Critical Infrastructure, Too

Thu, 15 Feb 2018 07:59:16 -0000

The rise of cryptojacking—which co-opts your PC or mobile device to illicitly mine cryptocurrency when you visit an infected site—has fueled mining's increasing appeal. But as attackers have expanded their tools to slyly outsource the number of devices, processing power, and electricity powering their mining operations, they've moved beyond the browser in potentially dangerous ways.

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Worldwide Threats Briefing: 5 Takeaways, From Russia to China

Wed, 14 Feb 2018 16:31:50 -0000

On Tuesday, the heads of the NSA, CIA, FBI, and ODNI—America's intelligence community brain trust—gathered before members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to discuss various worldwide threats. And while most of the topics were familiar, the hearing also included a few revelatory moments, insights into fears that were either detailed or confirmed.

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'Olympic Destroyer' Malware Hit Pyeongchang Ahead of Opening Ceremony

Wed, 14 Feb 2018 07:59:15 -0000

Russian hackers, with hardly a shred of deniability, have targeted the Pyeongchang Olympics for months in retaliation for the country's doping ban, stealing and leaking documents from Olympics-related organizations. Now a more insidious attack has surfaced, one designed not to merely embarrass, but disrupt the opening ceremonies themselves.

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Amino Apps Makes the Case for Anonymity Online

Tue, 13 Feb 2018 16:31:21 -0000

Over the last several years, a number of social media and dating platforms have begun emphasizing users’ real names. Facebook started requiring people sign up with their “authentic” names in 2014. Twitter invited anyone to apply to be “verified”—meaning Twitter certified they were who they claimed—in 2016. In December, OkCupid said it would no longer allow prospective daters to use names like “sexgirl_420.

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Security News This Week: An Apple Employee Leaked a Major Chunk of iOS Source Code

Tue, 13 Feb 2018 07:59:18 -0000

This week may have been, perhaps, the closest thing the cybersecurity world can experience to a lull in the digital mayhem. With the exception of one very significant Apple leak—and we'll get to that—hackers kept their breaches, disruptions, and scams close to the baseline. At least, that we know of. One of the most significant news stories of the week was, in fact, a massive law enforcement takedown.

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Snap Map Will Now Live Outside Snapchat

Mon, 12 Feb 2018 16:30:59 -0000

When Hurricane Harvey wreaked destruction in Houston last August, the country turned not just to cable television, but also to Snapchat. Two months before the storm, the social media app had debuted Snap Map, a crowdsourced, interactive feature that displays what’s happening on Snapchat around the world. At launch, Snap Map seemed mostly like a fun toy, albeit one with potential privacy implications; Snap Map can broadcast your location to your friends if you opt in.

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Time's Just About Up to Secure the 2018 Midterm Elections

Mon, 12 Feb 2018 07:59:19 -0000

It's been roughly two years since the first signs that Russia had launched an interference campaign aimed at the 2016 presidential race, and now the United States is hurtling toward a set of pivotal midterm elections in November. But while some states have made an earnest effort to secure the vote, the overall landscape looks troubling—and in some cases, it's too late to fix it this year.

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This AI Reads Privacy Policies So You Don't Have To

Fri, 09 Feb 2018 16:31:35 -0000

You don't read privacy policies. And of course, that's because they're not actually written for you, or any of the other billions of people who click to agree to their inscrutable legalese. Instead, like bad poetry and teenagers' diaries, those millions upon millions of words are produced for the benefit of their authors, not readers—the lawyers who wrote those get-out clauses to protect their Silicon Valley employers.

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Feds Take Down a Half-Billion Dollar Cybercrime Forum After 7 Years Online

Fri, 09 Feb 2018 07:59:13 -0000

With the rise and fall of dark web black markets like Alphabay and the Silk Road, law enforcement officials have repeatedly warned that even anonymity tools like Tor and cryptocurrencies won't hide criminals from the law's long reach.

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Scammers Are Stealing Bitcoin on Twitter With a Classic Scheme

Thu, 08 Feb 2018 07:59:16 -0000

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Bob Mueller’s Investigation Is Larger—and Further Along—Than You Think

Tue, 06 Feb 2018 16:31:16 -0000

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Security News This Week: 'AutoSploit' Tool Makes Unskilled Hacking Easier Than Ever

Tue, 06 Feb 2018 07:59:18 -0000

Another week, another death by a thousand leaks, from the operational security failure of fitness app Strava exposing the locations of military bases around the world to Russian hacker group Fancy Bear dropping the latest round of stolen documents from Olympics-related organizations. And then there was that other, congressionally orchestrated release of a certain classified memo, a highly politicized move whose importance security experts are still debating.

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Reading Between the Lines of the Devin Nunes Memo

Mon, 05 Feb 2018 16:31:48 -0000

After weeks of Twitter users demanding Congress #ReleaseTheMemo, the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by Republican Devin Nunes, disclosed the contentious four-page report to the public Friday, after President Donald Trump signed off on its release. And while, as expected, the document alleges that federal law enforcement officials abused their surveillance powers in investigating the Trump campaign's ties to Russia, national security experts see something very different.

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Here’s What Happens If ‘Magnificent Bastard’ Mueller Gets Fired

Fri, 02 Feb 2018 16:31:09 -0000

Bob Mueller is famously nonchalant amid life’s toughest moments. Much of that public calm stems from the fact that he’s a Magnificent Bastard and, specifically, the lessons of December 11, 1968.

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Hackers Have Already Targeted the Winter Olympics—And May Not Be Done

Fri, 02 Feb 2018 07:59:23 -0000

The Olympics have always been a geopolitical microcosm: beyond the athletic match-ups, they provide a vehicle for diplomacy and propaganda, and even, occasionally, a proxy for war. It stands to reason, then, that in 2018 they've also become a nexus of hacker skullduggery. The Olympics unfolding next week in Pyeongchang may already be the most thoroughly hacked in the games' history—with potentially more surprises to come.

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A Devastating ATM Hack Swept the World—And Finally Hit the US

Thu, 01 Feb 2018 16:30:50 -0000

In July 2016, ATM hackers in Taiwan raked in more than $2 million using a new type of malware attack that manipulated machines into spitting out tons of cash. The method, dubbed "jackpotting," quickly spread across parts of Asia, Europe, and Central America, resulting in tens of millions of dollars of stolen cash. By November 2016, the FBI issued a warning that "well-resourced and organized malicious cyber actors have intentions to target the US financial sector” using this approach.

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Cryptocurrency Scams Are Just Straight-Up Trolling at This Point

Wed, 31 Jan 2018 16:31:19 -0000

Facebook announced in a blog post Tuesday that it would ban cryptocurrency advertising from the platform entirely. The company said that many ads for cryptocurrency investment opportunities, like initial coin offerings, were “not currently operating in good faith.” Facebook has a point. Take Prodeum for example, a Lithuanian cryptocurrency startup that appeared online Thursday. By Monday, it was gone.

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The Strava Heat Map and the End of Secrets

Wed, 31 Jan 2018 07:59:17 -0000

A modern equivalent of the World War II era warning that “loose lips sink ships” may be “FFS don’t share your Fitbit data on duty.” Over the weekend, researchers and journalists raised the alarm about how anyone can identify secretive military bases and patrol routes based on public data shared by a “social network for athletes” called Strava.

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Look Out: Chrome Extension Malware Has Evolved

Tue, 30 Jan 2018 16:31:21 -0000

You already know to be wary of third-party Android apps, and even to watch your back in the Google Play Store. A flashlight app with only 12 reviews might be hiding some malware as well. But your hyper-vigilant download habits should extend beyond your smartphone. You need to keep an eye on your desktop Chrome extensions as well. These handy little applets give you seamless access to services like Evernote or password managers, or put your Bitmoji just a click away.

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Security News This Week: Dutch Spies Snooped on Russia's Elite Hackers

Mon, 29 Jan 2018 16:31:01 -0000

This week’s security news featured a healthy blend of politics, hacks, and the looming threat of apocalypse. What more could one hope for! The Doomsday Clock, which the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists uses to measure how close humanity sits to its own destruction, ticked 30 seconds closer to midnight this week. We’re now at two minutes to doom, the closest we’ve been in decades.

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Mueller's Team Has Interviewed Facebook Staff as Part of Russia Probe

Mon, 29 Jan 2018 07:59:18 -0000

The Department of Justice's special counsel Robert Mueller and his office have interviewed at least one member of Facebook's team that was associated with President Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, according to a person familiar with the matter. The interview was part of Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and what role, if any, the Trump campaign played in that interference.

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Your Sloppy Bitcoin Drug Deals Will Haunt You For Years

Fri, 26 Jan 2018 16:31:01 -0000

Perhaps you bought some illegal narcotics on the Silk Road half a decade ago, back when that digital black market for every contraband imaginable was still online and bustling. You might already regret that decision, for any number of reasons. After all, the four bitcoins you spent on that bag of hallucinogenic mushrooms would now be worth about as much as an Alfa Romeo.

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The DNC’s New Chief Security Officer Knows All About Crisis

Fri, 26 Jan 2018 07:59:18 -0000

The Democratic National Committee has hired Bob Lord, most recently Yahoo's head of information security, to be its chief security officer—a brand new position, created in the aftermath of the historic hack by Russian operatives of the DNC's servers during the 2016 presidential campaign. This is Lord's first foray into the world of politics, having spent his career in Silicon Valley working at companies like Twitter, AOL, and Netscape.

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Closer to Midnight: The Doomsday Clock and the Threat of Nuclear War

Thu, 25 Jan 2018 16:31:29 -0000

The accidental missile alert in Hawaii earlier this month made real for 38 terrifying minutes the vague, low-level dread that permeates American life today: Nuclear war seems closer and more real than it has in a generation. Even the pope—not exactly a fear-monger—said last week that the world now stood at “the very limit.

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The Cynical Misdirection Behind #ReleaseTheMemo

Thu, 25 Jan 2018 07:59:21 -0000

“EXCLUSIVE: Infowars has obtained and is now releasing the secret FISA memo,” conspiracy theorist Alex Jones blared on Twitter Tuesday. Jones thought he had a mysterious four-page document authored by Republican Congressman Devin Nunes, who leads the House Intelligence Committee. The memo purportedly proves that intelligence officials abused surveillance powers authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in investigating Trump’s campaign ties to Russia.

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Meltdown and Spectre Patching Has Been a Total Train Wreck

Wed, 24 Jan 2018 07:59:14 -0000

The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, first revealed at the beginning of the year, affect pretty much anything with a chip in it. That ubiquity has made the process of releasing patches understandably arduous. Every type of impacted hardware and software requires its own specially tailored solution, and even a fix that works as intended may slow down system processes as a side effect.

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Tinder's Lack of Encryption Lets Strangers Spy on Your Swipes

Tue, 23 Jan 2018 16:31:34 -0000

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Pixek App Encrypts Your Photos From Camera to Cloud

Tue, 23 Jan 2018 07:59:24 -0000

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Android Users: To Avoid Malware, Ditch Google’s App Store

Mon, 22 Jan 2018 16:31:00 -0000

In the early days of Android, co-founder Andy Rubin set the stage for the fledgling mobile operating system. Android’s mission was to create smarter mobile devices, ones that were more aware of their owner’s behavior and location.“If people are smart,” Rubin told Business Week in 2003, “that information starts getting aggregated into consumer products.

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Security News This Week: Hacking Group's Mobile Malware Spies on Thousands Worldwide

Mon, 22 Jan 2018 07:59:17 -0000

This week, Hawaii reeled after an emergency text alert about an impending nuclear missile attack triggered panic—and then turned out to be a false alarm. Researchers provided more details about the sophisticated Triton malware that targets industrial control systems and impacted a real-world plant last year. The anti-fascist far-left movement known as Antifa gets some of its intelligence from a computer scientist named Megan Squire, who disseminates valuable and controversial information.

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Menacing Malware Shows the Dangers of Industrial System Sabotage

Fri, 19 Jan 2018 16:31:31 -0000

A recent digital attack on the control systems of an industrial plant has renewed concerns about the threat hacking poses to critical infrastructure. And while security researchers offered some analysis last month of the malware used in the attack, called Triton or Trisis, newly revealed details of how it works expose just how vulnerable industrial plants—and their failsafe mechanisms—could be to manipulation.

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A New Way to Track Down Bugs Could Help Save IoT

Fri, 19 Jan 2018 07:59:19 -0000

On a clear day this summer, security researcher Ang Cui boarded a boat headed to a government biosafety facility off the northeastern tip of Long Island. Cui's security company, Red Balloon, will spend the next year studying how its Internet of Things threat-scanning tool performs on the building control systems of Plum Island Animal Disease Center.

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Crime-Predicting Algorithms May Not Fare Much Better Than Untrained Humans

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 07:59:13 -0000

The American criminal justice system couldn’t get much less fair. Across the country, some 1.5 million people are locked up in state and federal prisons. More than 600,000 people, the vast majority of whom have yet to be convicted of a crime, sit behind bars in local jails. Black people make up 40 percent of those incarcerated, despite accounting for just 13 percent of the US population.

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Tech Companies Are Complicit in Censoring Iran Protests

Wed, 17 Jan 2018 16:31:58 -0000

The world is witnessing the biggest protest movement in Iran since the 2009 Green Movement uprising. Over the last two weeks, there has been unrest in nearly every major Iranian city and dozens of smaller towns. Corruption, economic mismanagement, and neglect are the protesters’ primary grievances, though the chants quickly turned political. Predictably, the government has cracked down: More than 32 people have been killed and at least 3,700 have been detained since the protests began.

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Congress Renews Warrantless Surveillance—And Makes It Even Worse

Wed, 17 Jan 2018 07:59:17 -0000

In 2013, Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency was legally collecting millions of Americans’ phone calls and electronic communications—including emails, Facebook messages, and browsing histories—without a warrant. Congress has now decided not only to reauthorize these programs, but also to expand some of their most invasive techniques.

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The Astrophysicist Who Wants to Help Solve Baltimore's Urban Blight

Tue, 16 Jan 2018 16:30:42 -0000

Vacant buildings have their own sort of gravitational pull. When a home gets boarded up on one block, you can almost bet another will follow nearby. Often, they pull whole neighborhoods into their orbit, driving down the local housing market in ever-expanding clusters. Which at least begins to explain why Baltimore has tapped Tamás Budavári, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University, to study their patterns.

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Security News This Week: Google Pulls 60 Malicious Apps With Millions of Downloads from Play Store

Tue, 16 Jan 2018 07:59:18 -0000

The fallout of the widespread Meltdown and Spectre processor vulnerabilities continued this week. WIRED took an in-depth look at the parallel sagas that caused four research teams to independently discover the bugs within months of each other.

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How Hawaii Could Have Sent a False Nuclear Alarm

Mon, 15 Jan 2018 16:30:34 -0000

As the citizens of Hawaii came out of hiding in their bathtubs and basements Saturday morning, after learning that the emergency alert they had received, warning of an imminent nuclear missile attack, was a false alarm, their fear and panic transformed into rage. "I'm extremely angry right now. People should lose their jobs if this was an error," Hawaii State Representative Matt Lopresti told CNN.

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The Hidden Toll of Fixing Meltdown and Spectre

Mon, 15 Jan 2018 07:59:15 -0000

In the early days of 2018, the engineering team at the mobile services company Branch noticed slowdowns and errors with its Amazon Web Services cloud servers. An unexpected round of AWS server reboots in December had already struck Ian Chan, Branch's director of engineering, as odd. But the server slowdowns a few weeks later presented a more pressing concern.

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A Clever Radio Trick Can Tell If a Drone Is Watching You

Fri, 12 Jan 2018 16:30:50 -0000

As flying, camera-wielding machines get ever cheaper and more ubiquitous, inventors of anti-drone technologies are marketing every possible idea for protection from hovering eyes in the sky: Drone-spotting radar. Drone-snagging shotgun shells. Anti-drone lasers, falcons, even drone-downing drones.

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Skype's Rolling Out End-to-End Encryption For Hundreds of Millions of People

Fri, 12 Jan 2018 07:59:20 -0000

Skype has more than 300 million monthly users, making it one of the most popular chat platforms in the world. Now, they'll all be able to benefit from a crucial privacy protection: Microsoft announced Thursday that Skype will offer end-to-end encryption for audio calls, text, and multimedia messages through a feature called Private Conversations.

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Hack Brief: Russian Hackers Release Apparent IOC Emails in Wake of Olympics Ban

Thu, 11 Jan 2018 16:31:41 -0000

On Wednesday, in the wake of Russia's December ban from the 2018 Winter Olympics, a Russia-linked group calling itself "Fancy Bears" published a set of apparently stolen emails. They purportedly belong to officials from the International Olympic Committee, the United States Olympic Committee, and third-party groups associated with the organizations. It's not the first time Russia has lashed out at the IOC and the anti-doping agencies in the last few years.

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WhatsApp Security Flaws Could Allow Snoops to Slide Into Group Chats

Thu, 11 Jan 2018 07:59:20 -0000

When WhatsApp added end-to-end encryption to every conversation for its billion users two years ago, the mobile messaging giant significantly raised the bar for the privacy of digital communications worldwide. But one of the tricky elements of encryption—and even trickier in a group chat setting—has always been ensuring that a secure conversation reaches only the intended audience, rather than some impostor or infiltrator.

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How the Government Hides Secret Surveillance Programs

Wed, 10 Jan 2018 16:31:54 -0000

In 2013, 18-year-old Tadrae McKenzie robbed a marijuana dealer for $130 worth of pot at a local Taco Bell in Tallahassee, Florida. He and two friends had used BB guns to carry out the crime, which under Florida law constituted robbery with a deadly weapon. McKenzie braced himself to serve the minimum four years in prison.

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Meltdown and Spectre Fixes Arrive—But Don't Solve Everything

Wed, 10 Jan 2018 07:59:18 -0000

This week, a pair of vulnerabilities broke basic security for practically all computers. That's not an overstatement. Revelations about Meltdown and Spectre have wreaked digital havoc and left a critical mass of confusion in their wake. Not only are they terrifically complex vulnerabilities, the fixes that do exist have come in patchwork fashion. With most computing devices made in the last two decades at risk, it's worth taking stock of how the clean-up efforts are going.

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Pop-Up Mobile Ads Surge as Sites Scramble to Stop Them

Tue, 09 Jan 2018 16:32:09 -0000

Ads that automatically redirect you from your daily browsing to a flashy sweepstakes have long been an incredibly annoying facet of the internet. But the versions that have evolved on the mobile web are particularly vexing, because they can trap you with a pop-up "notification" and nowhere to go. And a recent surge in these mobile pop-ups, even on reputable sites, has left people more frustrated than ever.

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Triple Meltdown: How So Many Researchers Found a 20-Year-Old Chip Flaw At the Same Time

Tue, 09 Jan 2018 07:59:12 -0000

On a cold Sunday early last month in the small Austrian city of Graz, three young researchers sat down in front of the computers in their homes, and tried to break their most fundamental security protections.

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Security Roundup: White House Staffers Can't Use Personal Smartphones Anymore

Mon, 08 Jan 2018 16:31:33 -0000

It’s not every week that you have a once-in-a-generation security disaster. You know, definitionally. So let’s lead off with Meltdown and Spectre, a pair of attacks that impacts the processors inside most computers today. It’s quite a mess! While technically complicated, Meltdown and Spectre are best understood in terms of scale. Every Intel processor since 1995 is impacted, along with AMD and ARM-based chips.

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Pro-Russia Twitter Trolls Take Aim at Special Counsel Robert Mueller

Mon, 08 Jan 2018 07:59:16 -0000

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What Would Really Happen If Russia Attacked Undersea Internet Cables

Fri, 05 Jan 2018 16:30:50 -0000

It might seem like nightmare scenario. A terrorist organization or nefarious nation state decides to derail the global internet by faulting the undersea fiber optic cables that connect the world. These cables, which run along the ocean floor, carry almost all transoceanic digital communication, allowing you to send a Facebook message to a friend in Dubai, or receive an email from your cousin in Australia.

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A Dead-Simple Algorithm Reveals the True Toll of Voter ID Laws

Fri, 05 Jan 2018 07:59:18 -0000

Ever since the Supreme Court struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, laws requiring voters to show identification when they vote have speckled the nation, popping up in states from Rhode Island to Arizona. Almost as quickly, voting rights advocates have taken states like Texas and Alabama to court, arguing that these laws intentionally discriminate against minority voters.

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Get a Password Manager. No More Excuses

Thu, 04 Jan 2018 16:31:02 -0000

You're sick of hearing this. The exhortations didn't work in 2013 and they're not going to work now. Sure. But the truth is that you need a password manager, and it's worth it to take the time to set one up. At this point, even their shortcomings prove how vital they are.

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A Critical Intel Flaw Breaks Basic Security for Most Computers

Thu, 04 Jan 2018 07:59:17 -0000

One of the most basic premises of computer security is isolation: If you run somebody else's sketchy code as an untrusted process on your machine, you should restrict it to its own tightly sealed playpen. Otherwise, it might peer into other processes, or snoop around the computer as a whole.

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Hacker Lexicon: What Is Sinkholing?

Tue, 02 Jan 2018 16:31:04 -0000

When you have tons of leftovers you put them in Tupperware. When you have an excess of phone calls, you send them to voicemail. And when you have a deluge of junk from a botnet attacking your network, you put all that malicious traffic into a sinkhole. Sinkholing is a technique for manipulating data flow in a network; you redirect traffic from its intended destination to the server of your choosing.

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The Worst Hacks of 2017

Tue, 02 Jan 2018 07:59:15 -0000

2017 was bananas in lots of ways, and cybersecurity was no exception. Whether critical infrastructure attacks or insecure databases, hacks, breaches, and leaks of unprecedented scale impacted institutions around the world—along with the billions of people who trust them with their data. This list includes incidents disclosed in 2017, but note that some took place earlier.

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2017 Was a Terrible Year for Internet Freedom

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 16:31:13 -0000

Think of a country that stifles internet freedom. You might first jump to the oppressive regimes of North Korea, China, or Cuba, where internet access is either forbidden or radically restricted. But in fact, according to a recent study by the non-profit Freedom House, the principles of internet freedom are under attack worldwide—including in the United States. And it's only getting worse. Overt government restrictions, after all, aren't the only way to impede internet freedom.

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The Most-read WIRED Security Stories of 2017

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 07:59:19 -0000

Back in July, WIRED security writer Lily Hay Newman assessed the year in hacks and breaches and found, "the first six months of 2017 have seen an inordinate number of cybersecurity meltdowns. And they weren't just your standard corporate breaches. It's only July, and already there's been viral, state-sponsored ransomware, leaks of spy tools from US intelligence agencies, and full-on campaign hacking.

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Cryptojacking Has Gotten Out of Control

Fri, 29 Dec 2017 16:31:00 -0000

Cryptojacking, which exploded in popularity this fall, has an ostensibly worthy goal: Use an untapped resource to create an alternative revenue stream for games or media sites, and reduce reliance on ads. It works by embedding a JavaScript component in a website that can leverage a visiting device's processing power to mine a cryptocurrency (usually Monero). Each visitor might only do a tiny bit of mining while they're there, every user lending some hash power over time can generate real money.

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The Most Dangerous People on the Internet in 2017

Thu, 28 Dec 2017 16:31:45 -0000

Not so long ago, the internet often felt like a fully detached realm of ephemeral fun. Today, we wake up to tweets from a president that seem intended to goad a rogue state into nuclear war. Hackers launch ransomware worms that tear across the globe in a matter of hours, paralyzing massive multinational infrastructure companies.

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Hackers Can Rickroll Thousands of Sonos and Bose Speakers Over the Internet

Wed, 27 Dec 2017 16:31:12 -0000

Perhaps you've been hearing strange sounds in your home—ghostly creaks and moans, random Rick Astley tunes, Alexa commands issued in someone else's voice. If so, you haven't necessarily lost your mind. Instead, if you own one of a few models of internet-connected speaker and you've been careless with your network settings, you might be one of thousands of people whose Sonos or Bose devices have been left wide open to audio hijacking by hackers around the world.

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Congress Is Debating Warrantless Surveillance in the Dark

Tue, 26 Dec 2017 16:31:02 -0000

In 2013, former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden famously brought to light a series of classified US government spying programs. For the first time, the American people learned that the NSA was collecting millions of their phone calls and electronic communications—emails, Facebook messages, texts, browsing histories—all without a warrant. Several of the programs Snowden revealed are authorized under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act.

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Hold North Korea Accountable for WannaCry—And the NSA, Too

Tue, 26 Dec 2017 07:59:12 -0000

Seven months after the WannaCry ransomware ripped across the internet in one of the most damaging hacking operations of all time, the US government has pinned that digital epidemic on North Korea. And while cybersecurity researchers have suspected North Korea's involvement from the start, the Trump administration intends the official charges to carry new diplomatic weight, showing the world that no one can launch reckless cyberattacks with impunity.

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Security News This Week: France Goes After WhatsApp For Sharing Data With Facebook

Mon, 25 Dec 2017 16:31:14 -0000

Happy holidays from your security news friends! As a special gift, we got you this analysis of the Resistance’s tactical shortcomings in The Last Jedi. And so much more! The US this week officially pinned this year’s devastating WannaCry ransomware attack on North Korea, after the security community had largely come to that same conclusion months ago.

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The Creator of Signal Has a Plan to Fix Cryptocurrency

Mon, 25 Dec 2017 07:59:12 -0000

In the early bitcoin years, proponents promised that you would soon be able to pay for anything and everything with cryptocurrency. Order pizza! Buy Etsy trinkets! Use a bitcoin ATM! While PayPal had existed for more than a decade, frictionless, social payment platforms like Venmo were just first taking off, and cryptocurrency seemed like a legitimate way for digital transactions to evolve. It didn't happen.

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Snowden's New App Turns Your Phone Into a Home Security System

Fri, 22 Dec 2017 16:31:10 -0000

Your digital security, any sufficiently paranoid person will remind you, is only as good as your physical security. The world's most sensitive users of technology, like dissidents, activists, or journalists in repressive regimes, have to fear not just hacking and online surveillance, but the reality that police, intelligence agents, or other intruders can simply break into your home, office, or hotel room.

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Tech Alone Can't Solve the Opioid Crisis

Fri, 22 Dec 2017 07:59:20 -0000

As a fourth year medical student at Yale, Matthew Erlendson says he had to think long and hard about whether to participate in a recent hackathon at the Department of Health and Human services. The two-day event seemed like an innovative way to confront the opioid crisis, which kills more than 90 people in the US every day.

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Researchers Fooled a Google AI Into Thinking a Rifle Was a Helicopter

Thu, 21 Dec 2017 16:30:47 -0000

Tech giants love to tout how good their computers are at identifying what’s depicted in a photograph. In 2015, deep learning algorithms designed by Google, Microsoft, and China’s Baidu superseded humans at the task, at least initially. This week, Facebook announced that its facial-recognition technology is now smart enough to identify a photo of you, even if you’re not tagged in it.

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Don't Get Your Kid an Internet-Connected Toy

Thu, 21 Dec 2017 07:59:16 -0000

For last-minute shoppers, tech toys hold a special appeal. They’re crowdpleasers, and generally available with two-day shipping—or faster—from any number of online retailers. Stapling on internet connectivity also might make these flashy kids gadgets sound all the more appealing; it’s not just a teddy bear, it’s a machine learning teddy bear. On the other hand: don't.

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Security News This Week: Facebook Squashes 19-Year-Old Bug That Still Plagues the Web

Wed, 20 Dec 2017 16:30:56 -0000

The biggest story in tech this week—and maybe this year—was net neutrality, which the FCC effectively abolished by rolling back Obama-era rules that prevented the creation of internet “fast lanes.” They did so despite overwhelming evidence that the mandatory public comment period was overrun with bots, form letters, and over maladies. How bad was it? We tracked down all 39 Nicholas Thompsons who commented, and could only confirm that three were humans.

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Why the International Space Station Is the Single Best Thing We Did

Wed, 20 Dec 2017 07:59:14 -0000

The International Space Station is one of the few nonstellar things up there that we can see from down here without instruments. It’s a prefab home the size of a football field, 462 tons and more than $100 billion worth of pressurized roomlike modules and gleaming solar arrays, orbiting 250 miles above the surface of the Earth. Its flight path is available online, and you can find out when it will make a nighttime pass over your backyard.

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In The Last Jedi, the Resistance Keeps Making the Same Tactical Mistake

Tue, 19 Dec 2017 16:31:14 -0000

Over the course of the Star Wars franchise, we’ve been treated to some epic battles: dogfights between X-Wings and TIE fighters at Yavin-4, AT-ATs on the frozen wastes of Hoth, jungle warfare on Endor, and Rogue One’s epic battles on the beaches of Scarif. The Last Jedi offers no shortage of skirmishes, either. Except this time, the Resistance’s consistently bad military tactics finally catch up with it.

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Making Sense of Apple's Recent Security Stumbles

Tue, 19 Dec 2017 07:59:14 -0000

All software has flaws, no matter how carefully you vet it. So the question isn't how to write perfect code, but how to respond to mistakes as you find them. And while Apple has earned a strong reputation for security, a string of significant vulnerabilities in macOS and iOS have strained Apple's safety net—and led some security researchers and developers to question whether the issues are systemic. Take the release of Apple's macOS High Sierra operating system at the end of September.

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It's Super Hard to Find Humans in the FCC’s Net Neutrality Comments

Mon, 18 Dec 2017 16:31:37 -0000

The Federal Communications Commissions' public comment period on its plans to repeal net neutrality protections was bombarded with bots, memes, and input from people who don't actually exist. The situation's gotten so bad that FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, as well as several members of Congress, including one Republican, have called for the FCC to postpone its December 14 net neutrality vote so that an investigation can take place. The FCC seems unlikely to comply.

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The Most Secure Account of All—If You Can Stand It

Mon, 18 Dec 2017 07:59:16 -0000

There was a time when high-status people signaled their worth with an ostentatious key fob for an expensive car. Today the keyring of an important person—or at least a paranoid one—might be distinguished by a less obvious marker: a pair of inconspicuous plastic dongles that protect an inbox full of secrets worth keeping.

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Smartphone Security 101: The Steps That Matter Most

Fri, 15 Dec 2017 16:31:08 -0000

Hackers can threaten your smartphone in lots of ways, and if you want (or need) to lock it down completely, ironclad protection gets a little complicated. Fortunately, you can take some quick and easy steps to make big improvements to your mobile security. They don’t eliminate all risk, but they’re a solid baseline for any smartphone owner.

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How to Rip the Mics Out of Your MacBook and iPhone

Fri, 15 Dec 2017 07:59:14 -0000

Any self-respecting paranoiac long ago taped over the webcam on their laptop—and for good measure, the cameras on their smartphone too. But for those truly concerned that their computers have been hacked and turned into spy tools, the microphones on those devices represent just as much of a security threat as the cameras. They would allow a hacked gadget to bug an entire room.

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Extreme Security Measures for the Extra Paranoid

Thu, 14 Dec 2017 16:31:10 -0000

You've covered the basics. You've checked off the more-than-basics. But you still can't fight a nagging feeling that it's not quite enough. At a certain point, if a nation-state wants to compromise your devices or your privacy badly enough, it's going to find a way. You can at least make it harder for them. Here are a few measures designed to do just that. The Air Gap Up There The best way not to get your computer hacked? Don't connect it to any other computer, a practice known as air-gapping.

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How to Sweep For Bugs and Hidden Cameras

Thu, 14 Dec 2017 07:59:14 -0000

If you're facing targeted security threats, your problems run deeper than spyware on your devices. You need to check your physical spaces as well—your home, hotel room, office, and so on—for hidden cameras, mics, and other eavesdropping tools that someone may have planted. That means performing regular "technical surveillance counter measures" inspections. In other words? Checking for bugs.

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Physical Measures to Amp Up Your Digital Security

Wed, 13 Dec 2017 16:31:18 -0000

When you think about online security, you think digital solutions. Install a reputable antivirus program; use end-to-end encryption. But protection can be physical as well. To up your security game, think outside the code with these IRL reinforcements. Tape Over Your Webcam Mark Zuckerberg does it. So does James Comey. And you, too, should also take this high-reward, low-tech security step.

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What to Do if You’re Being Doxed

Wed, 13 Dec 2017 07:59:26 -0000

There are few more toxic practices online than doxing, the distribution of someone's personal information across the internet against their will. It’s all too common, though, deployed regularly and devastatingly as a means to harass and intimidate. The practice is not limited to public—or briefly internet famous—figures either. Anyone can be a victim, at any time.

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Resist Phishing Attacks with Three Golden Rules

Tue, 12 Dec 2017 16:30:50 -0000

Like any classic hustle, phishing has staying power. The fake emails and texts that lure you into a digital con—Free cruise! Act now!—may not comprise a very technical hack, but the attackers behind them still put a lot of resources and expertise into giving their cons as much authenticity as possible. That’s what makes it so difficult to protect yourself against phishing. You know not to click links in shady emails. You know to think twice before clicking any link in any email.

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The A-B-C’s of Keeping Your Kids Safe Online

Tue, 12 Dec 2017 07:59:15 -0000

If the web were an amusement park attraction, you’d have to be 10 feet tall to ride—it's terrifying enough for adults and a funhouse of horrors for kids, from inappropriate content to unkind comment sections to outright predators. And yet! The internet also affords opportunities to learn, to socialize, to create. Besides, at this point trying to keep your kids off of it entirely would be like keeping them away from electricity or indoor plumbing. They’re going to get online.

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Take These 7 Steps Now to Reach Password Perfection

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 16:31:08 -0000

Your passwords are a first line of defense against many internet ills, but few people actually treat them that way: Whether it’s leaning on lazy Star Wars references or repeating across all of your accounts—or both—everyone is guilty of multiple password sins. But while they’re an imperfect security solution to begin with, putting in your best effort will provide an immediate security boost. Don’t think of the following tips as suggestions.

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Evidence That Ethiopia Is Spying on Journalists Shows Commercial Spyware Is Out of Control

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 07:59:17 -0000

Throughout 2016 and 2017, individuals in Canada, United States, Germany, Norway, United Kingdom, and numerous other countries began to receive suspicious emails. It wasn’t just common spam. These people were chosen. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Ronald Deibert (@rondeibert) is professor of political science and director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. The emails were specifically designed to entice each individual to click a malicious link.

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North Korea's Latest Missile Test Was Even Scarier Than It Seemed

Fri, 08 Dec 2017 16:31:15 -0000

When North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile on Tuesday, analysts quickly determined that the weapon would be able to reach any target in the continental United States. Further photo and video analysis since, though, indicate that the missile test represents an even greater advance in capabilities than analysts first thought.

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A Tiny New Chip Could Secure the Next Generation of IoT

Thu, 07 Dec 2017 16:31:19 -0000

The Internet of Things security crisis persists, as billions of inadequately secured webcams, refrigerators, and more flood homes around the world. But IoT security researchers at Microsoft Research have their eye on an even larger problem: the billions of gadgets that already run on simple microcontrollers—small, low-power computers on a single chip—that will gradually gain connectivity over the years, exponentially expanding the internet of things population.

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‘Mailsploit’ Lets Hackers Forge Perfect Email Spoofs

Thu, 07 Dec 2017 07:59:19 -0000

Pretending to be someone you're not in an email has never been quite hard enough—hence phishing, that eternal scourge of internet security. But now one researcher has dug up a new collection of bugs in email programs that in many cases strip away even the existing, imperfect protections against email impersonation, allowing anyone to undetectably spoof a message with no hint at all to the recipient.

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Ghostery Deploys AI in the Fight Against Ad Trackers

Wed, 06 Dec 2017 16:30:49 -0000

Most ad blockers—and there are so, so many of them now—operate roughly the same way, comparing the scripts they encounter on a given site to their whitelist and block list letting the former run and stopping the others. This means they largely share the same drawback, as well; they can’t block what they’ve never seen before. With its latest release, popular ad blocker Ghostery attempts to solve that common dilemma, with a fashionable solution: artificial intelligence.

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Phishing Schemes Are Using Encrypted Sites to Seem Legit

Wed, 06 Dec 2017 07:59:16 -0000

A massive effort to encrypt web traffic over the last few years has made green padlocks and "https" addresses increasingly common; more than half the web now uses internet encryption protocols to keep data protected from prying eyes as it travels back and forth between sites and browsers. But as with any sweeping reform, the progress also comes with some new opportunities for fraud. And phishers are loving HTTPS.

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Here's the NSA Agent Who Inexplicably Exposed Critical Secrets

Tue, 05 Dec 2017 16:31:21 -0000

A series of leaks has rocked the National Security Agency over the past few years, resulting in digital spy tools strewn across the web that have caused real damage both inside and outside the agency. Many of the breaches have been relatively simple to carry out, often by contractors like the whistleblower Edward Snowden, who employed just a USB drive and some chutzpah.

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Security News This Week: A New Bill Wants Jail Time for Execs Who Hide Data Breaches

Tue, 05 Dec 2017 07:59:09 -0000

It's been a rough week for a lot of people, but particularly for Apple. On Tuesday, a security researcher tweeted information about a dire bug in the company's macOS High Sierra operating system that allowed anyone being prompted for system user credentials to bypass the authentication by simply typing "root" as the username and leaving the password blank. Apple rushed to push out a necessary update on Wednesday, but botched it a bit; if you hadn't yet updated to macOS 10.13.

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MacOS Update Accidentally Undoes Apple's "Root" Bug Patch

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 16:31:09 -0000

When a company like Apple rushes out a software patch for a critical security bug, it deserves praise for protecting its customers quickly. Except, perhaps, when that patch is so rushed that it's nearly as buggy as the code it was designed to fix.

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Michael Flynn's Guilty Plea Shows That Robert Mueller Is Closing In

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 07:59:15 -0000

Just 17 months after leading chants of “Lock her up” at the Republican National Convention, protesting FBI Director James Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn himself faced the inside of a Washington courtroom Friday morning.

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Supreme Court Must Understand: Cell Phones Aren’t Optional

Fri, 01 Dec 2017 16:31:14 -0000

You may not realize it, but the cell phone in your pocket creates a time-stamped map of everywhere you go: where you shop, where you receive medical care, and how often you frequent a church, school, or gun range. That's because cell phones automatically connect to the nearest cell phone tower, and by doing so, constantly determine and record the user's location. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Andrew D.

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It's Not Always AI That Sifts Through Your Sensitive Info

Fri, 01 Dec 2017 07:59:13 -0000

It's increasingly unremarkable for consumers to use artificial intelligence tools in their daily lives. Machine learning algorithms power your smart assistants, organize your vacation photos, and even analyze your health data. But human beings pick up the slack for those automated technologies more often than you might realize. And that means that real people can sometimes access user data that customers thought would only be seen by machines.

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The Quantum Spy Author David Ignatius on the Future of High-Tech Espionage

Thu, 30 Nov 2017 07:59:16 -0000

The intersection of quantum computing and espionage may feel like a faraway future. But in his latest novel, David Ignatius, Washington’s own John le Carré, tackles just that. The Quantum Spy, out now, revolves around a central theme of spy literature: the race for a new technology, to discover something new that, even if only for a moment, will provide a geopolitical advantage.

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Anyone Can Hack MacOS High Sierra Just by Typing "Root"

Wed, 29 Nov 2017 16:30:50 -0000

There are hackable security flaws in software. And then there are those that don't even require hacking at all—just a knock on the door, and asking to be let in. Apple's macOS High Sierra has the second kind. On Tuesday, security researchers disclosed a bug that allows anyone a blindingly easy method of breaking that operating system's security protections.

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How Bots Broke the FCC's Public Comment System During the Net Neutrality Debate

Tue, 28 Nov 2017 16:30:45 -0000

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Security News This Week: Android Tracks Your Location Even When You Ask It Not To

Tue, 28 Nov 2017 07:59:19 -0000

As you emerge from your turkey-induced coma, take a moment to reflect on the past week in security, which despite the holiday was chock-full of wonderments. From Uber shadiness to Android location-tracking, it was quite the whirlwind. Uber made headlines midweek when it came out that the company had not only been breached a year ago—coughing up the personal info of 57 million users—but paid the hackers $100,000 to keep it quiet.

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AI Can Help Hunt Down Missile Sites in China

Mon, 27 Nov 2017 07:59:10 -0000

Intelligence agencies have a limited number of trained human analysts looking for undeclared nuclear facilities, or secret military sites, hidden among terabytes of satellite images. But the same sort of deep learning artificial intelligence that enables Google and Facebook to automatically filter images of human faces and cats could also prove invaluable in the world of spy versus spy.

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The State Department's Fumbled Fight Against Russian Propaganda

Fri, 24 Nov 2017 16:30:53 -0000

When Ahmed Younis first took a job at the State Department in September of 2016, the cross-country commute between his office in Washington, DC and his home in Los Angeles, where his wife and daughter live, seemed worth it.

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Intel Chip Flaws Leave Millions of Devices Exposed

Fri, 24 Nov 2017 07:59:15 -0000

Security researchers have raised the alarm for years about the Intel remote administration feature known as the Management Engine. The platform has a lot of useful features for IT managers, but it requires deep system access that offers a tempting target for attackers; compromising the Management Engine could lead to full control of a given computer. Now, after several research groups have uncovered ME bugs, Intel has confirmed that those worst-case fears may be possible.

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The Robocall Nightmare Is Only Getting Worse—But Help Is Here

Thu, 23 Nov 2017 16:30:33 -0000

You probably get robocalls all the time. Some pretend to be from the IRS, others come from a phone number very similar to yours. And then there's the rash of free airline tickets/problem with your credit card/complete this short survey intrusions. If it feels like they're cropping up more than ever, you're right. The blocking service YouMail estimates that 2.49 billion robocalls were placed to US consumers last month, marking a 4.1 percent increase over September. This translates to 80.

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The ‘Vapor Wake’ Dogs That Protect the Thanksgiving Day Parade

Thu, 23 Nov 2017 07:59:08 -0000

As many as a million spectators turn out for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Another 200,000 show up the night before to watch the enormous balloons inflate. Keeping New York City safe on an ordinary day is challenging enough; locking down a massive parade route is all the more so. But the New York Police Department has recently deployed a new secret weapon to counter body-worn bombs: A team of Labrador retrievers who have graduated from patent-pending "Vapor Wake" security training.

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Hack Brief: Uber Paid Off Hackers to Hide a 57-Million User Data Breach

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 16:31:02 -0000

By now, the name Uber has become practically synonymous with scandal. But this time the company has outdone itself, building a Jenga-style tower of scandals on top of scandals that has only now come crashing down. Not only did the ridesharing service lose control of 57 million people's private information, it also hid that massive breach for more than a year, a cover-up that potentially defied data breach disclosure laws.

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Security News This Week: The Pentagon Left Data Exposed in the Cloud

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 10:15:03 -0000

Well, it’s been a wild and wooly week for security, especially for Face ID, which a group of hackers at a Vietnamese security firm convincingly claim to have broken just a week after the iPhone X release. They’re joined by a 10-year-old boy, who managed to break into his mother’s iPhone X thanks to a little trick known as genetics.

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Feds Indict Iranian for HBO Hack—But Good Luck Arresting Him

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 07:59:11 -0000

Four months ago, HBO faced a punishing series of leaks of unreleased episodes, scripts, and even celebrities' contact information. On Tuesday, the Department of Justice named the alleged culprit behind that extortion campaign: An Iranian hacker named Behzad Mesri. By indicting Mesri, prosecutors have sent a message that even anonymous cybercriminals in countries as distant as Iran can be tracked down and unmasked.

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Everything Attorney General Jeff Sessions Has Forgotten Under Oath

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 07:59:14 -0000

We get it. Presidential campaigns are a blur. One day you're kissing babies in an Iowa cornfield, the next you're working the spin room at a Las Vegas debate. Who among us can remember every hand shaken, every appointment kept, every 30-year-old underling plotting a backroom conversation with Vladimir Putin to acquire dirt on a political opponent? Certainly not Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

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WikiLeaks Hitting Up Donald Trump Jr. Shouldn't Surprise You

Mon, 20 Nov 2017 07:59:16 -0000

WikiLeaks has been sliding into Donald Trump Jr.’s DMs. The mostly one-sided conversation, surfaced by The Atlantic, lasted at least from September 2016 to July 2017. Throughout that stretch, WikiLeaks sent Donald Trump Jr. direct messages through Twitter, asking him for his father's tax returns, suggesting Trump Senior reject election results if Hillary Clinton won, and even oh-so-casually floating the idea that Julian Assange might make a good Australian ambassador. Trump Jr.

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He Perfected a Password-Hacking Tool—Then the Russians Came Calling

Fri, 17 Nov 2017 07:59:15 -0000

Five years ago, Benjamin Delpy walked into his room at the President Hotel in Moscow, and found a man dressed in a dark suit with his hands on Delpy's laptop. Just a few minutes earlier, the then 25-year-old French programmer had made a quick trip to the front desk to complain about the room's internet connection. He had arrived two days ahead of a talk he was scheduled to give at a nearby security conference and found that there was no Wi-Fi, and the ethernet jack wasn't working.

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The Pentagon Opened Up to Hackers—And Fixed Thousands of Bugs

Thu, 16 Nov 2017 07:59:11 -0000

The United States government doesn't get along with hackers. That's just how it is. Hacking protected systems, even to reveal their weaknesses, is illegal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the Department of Justice has repeatedly made it clear that it will enforce the law. In the last 18 months, though, a new Department of Defense project called "Hack the Pentagon" has offered real glimmers of hope that these prejudices could change.

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How One Woman's Digital Life Was Weaponized Against Her

Wed, 15 Nov 2017 07:59:12 -0000

The first time the police arrived on her doorstep, in March of 2015, Courtney Allen was elated. She rushed to the door alongside her dogs, a pair of eager Norwegian elkhounds, to greet them. “Is this about our case?” she asked. The police looked at her in confusion. They didn’t know what case she was talking about. Courtney felt her hope give way to a familiar dread.

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Hackers Say They've Broken Face ID a Week After iPhone X Release

Tue, 14 Nov 2017 07:59:11 -0000

When Apple released the iPhone X on November 3, it touched off an immediate race among hackers around the world to be the first to fool the company's futuristic new form of authentication. A week later, hackers on the actual other side of the world claim to have successfully duplicated someone's face to unlock his iPhone X—with what looks like a simpler technique than some security researchers believed possible.

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How Journalists Fought Back Against Crippling Email Bombs

Mon, 13 Nov 2017 07:59:16 -0000

It was 10 am on a hot, humid Tuesday in August when I decided I could finally relax. After a frantic weekend of finishing a big story—and typing so much that my forearms tingled—I needed to decompress. I placed my phone on do not disturb, turned on my air conditioner, and blissfully spent an hour contorting myself into various poses on the yoga mat next to my bed.

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Chrome Will Stop Sketchy Sites From Bouncing You to Ads

Fri, 10 Nov 2017 10:18:09 -0000

You've been there: browsing on a slightly backwater website, crossing your fingers as you click what looks like a video's play button. Instead of the TV show you had queued up, a million pop-ups spew out. The page you were on morphs into a Caribbean timeshare ad. It's the sort of misdirection that Google aptly calls an "unwanted behavior." And on Wednesday, the company's Chrome browser team announced a series of fixes that attempt to block these sketchy shenanigans.

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The Devious Netflix Phish That Just Won't Die

Thu, 09 Nov 2017 07:59:13 -0000

The email hits your inbox with an urgent warning: Your Netflix account has been suspended, due to a problem with your billing information. It offers a link, which takes you to what looks very much like a Netflix landing page. It's not. Instead, it's a phishing scam that collects extensive personal data on victims.

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How to Keep Your Bitcoin Safe and Secure

Wed, 08 Nov 2017 07:59:15 -0000

Owning cryptocurrency isn't quite the Wild West experience it was at the beginning of the decade, but investors still face plenty of instability and risk. The threats aren't just abstract or theoretical; new scams crop up, and old ones resurge, all the time. Whether it's a fake wallet set up to trick users, a phishing attempt to steal private cryptographic keys, or even fake cryptocurrency schemes, there’s something to watch out for at every turn.

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Net States Rule the World; We Need to Recognize Their Power

Tue, 07 Nov 2017 07:59:12 -0000

“We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code.” So declared MIT professorDavid D. Clarkin 1992. Twenty-five years later, this sentiment mirrors the global zeitgeist more than ever. TheAmerican public distrusts governmentin record numbers. Other nation-states disdain the USto world-historical degrees.

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China Tests the Limits of Its US Hacking Truce

Mon, 06 Nov 2017 07:59:15 -0000

For the last two years, America's cybersecurity relationship with China has been held up as a triumph of digital diplomacy: Since the two countries signed an agreement not to hack each others' private sector companies for commercial gain in late 2015, that pact has come to represent one of the most effective demonstrations in history of government negotiation to curtail state-sponsored cyberspying.

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Security News This Week: Equifax Was Warned of Vulnerability Months Before Breach

Fri, 03 Nov 2017 08:59:16 -0000

This week, some old security threats came back to haunt the internet, a fitting horror trope this close to Halloween. Remember the Mirai botnet that took out the internet for a big chunk of the East Coast and beyond last year? It’s back, sort of. More specifically, a new botnet called Reaper is steadily growing, based on Mirai but with an added trick. It doesn’t just seek out IoT devices with poor password protections; it can actively take advantage of known vulnerabilities.

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North Korea's Plenty Scary Without an Overhyped EMP Threat

Thu, 02 Nov 2017 08:59:13 -0000

Angst over a potential electromagnetic pulse attack bubbles up every few months, and it’s easy to understand why. The EMP impact envisioned by people who have studied it closely would be downright apocalyptic: a decimated US power grid, and up to 90 percent of Americans dead within a year. It doesn’t help, either, that North Korea recently invoked the specter of an EMP attack, and seems increasingly like it would have the wherewithal to pull one off.

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What the Papadopoulos Plea Says About Mueller's Next Moves

Wed, 01 Nov 2017 08:59:15 -0000

Monday morning, just hours after pundits had settled into dissecting what everyone assumed to be the day’s big revelation—the indictment of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and his former business associate Rick Gates, on a slew of charges related to an alleged money laundering scheme—came an even bigger revelation: George Papadopoulos, foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign, had struck a plea agreement with Robert Mueller’s special counsel office.

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‘I Forgot My PIN’: An Epic Tale of Losing $30,000 in Bitcoin

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 08:59:16 -0000

The Trezor: January 4, 2016: 7.4 BTC = $3,000 In January 2016, I spent $3,000 to buy 7.4 bitcoins. At the time, it seemed an entirely worthwhile thing to do. I had recently started working as a research director at the Institute for the Future’s Blockchain Futures Lab, and I wanted firsthand experience with bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that uses a blockchain to record transactions on its network.

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The Little Black Box That Took Over Piracy

Mon, 30 Oct 2017 08:59:11 -0000

The Kodi box pitch is hard to resist. A little black plastic square, in look not much different from a Roku or Apple TV, and similar in function as well. This streamer, though, offers something those others never will: Free access to practically any show or movie you can dream of. No rental fees. No subscriptions. Just type in the name of a blockbuster, and start watching a high-definition stream in seconds.

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Apple's Machine Learning Engine Could Surface Your iPhone's Secrets

Fri, 27 Oct 2017 08:59:17 -0000

Of the many new features in Apple’s iOS 11—which hit your iPhone a few weeks ago—a tool called Core ML stands out. It gives developers an easy way to implement pre-trained machine learning algorithms, so apps can instantly tailor their offerings to a specific person’s preferences.

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The Reaper IoT Botnet Has Already Infected a Million Networks

Thu, 26 Oct 2017 08:59:12 -0000

The Mirai botnet, a collection of hijacked gadgets whose cyberattack made much of the internet inaccessible in parts of the US and beyond a year ago, previewed a dreary future of zombie connected-device armies run amuck. But in some ways, Mirai was relatively simple—especially compared to a new botnet that's brewing. While Mirai caused widespread outages, it impacted IP cameras and internet routers by simply exploiting their weak or default passwords.

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Security News This Week: Russian Spies Rush to Exploit the Latest Flash Zero Day

Wed, 25 Oct 2017 08:59:15 -0000

There's nothing like a hefty security freakout to start the week, and the Key Reinstallation AttackWi-Fi vulnerability—you know it as Krack—announced on Monday fit the bill. The bug is in the ubiquitous WPA2 Wi-Fi protocol, so while it fortunately doesn't impact every single device that exists, it does affect a significant portion of them.

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It Takes Just $1000 to Track Someone's Location With Mobile Ads

Tue, 24 Oct 2017 08:59:10 -0000

When you consider the nagging privacy risks of online advertising, you may find comfort in the thought of a vast, abstract company like Pepsi or Nike viewing you as just one data point among millions. What, after all, do you have to hide from Pepsi? And why should that corporate megalith care about your secrets out of countless potential Pepsi-drinkers? But an upcoming study has dissipated that delusion.

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Your Browser Could Be Mining Cryptocurrency For a Stranger

Mon, 23 Oct 2017 08:59:26 -0000

There’s something new to add to your fun mental list of invisible internet dangers. Joining classic favorites like adware and spyware comes a new, tricky threat called “cryptojacking,” which secretly uses your laptop or mobile device to mine cryptocurrency when you visit an infected site. Malicious miners aren’t new in themselves, but cryptojacking has exploded in popularity over the past few weeks, because it offers a clever twist.

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Google's 'Advanced Protection' Locks Down Accounts Like Never Before

Fri, 20 Oct 2017 08:59:22 -0000

When it comes to the eternal tradeoff between digital security and convenience, most tech firms focus their efforts on the vast majority of people who choose a painless user experience over a paranoid one. But Google is adding a set of features specifically targeted at those who prefer the latter. You can now lock down your account to a degree that no other major tech firm has ever offered directly to users, convenience be damned.

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Why the Krack Wi-Fi Mess Will Take Decades to Clean Up

Thu, 19 Oct 2017 08:59:25 -0000

A vulnerability in Wi-Fi encryption has sent the entire tech industry scrambling; the so-called Krack attack affects nearly every wireless device to some extent, leaving them subject to hijacked internet connections. In terms of scope, it doesn’t get much worse—especially for the Internet of Things. The extent of the Krack fallout remains to be seen.

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The "Secure" Wi-Fi Standard Has a Huge, Dangerous Flaw

Wed, 18 Oct 2017 08:59:12 -0000

When you set up a new Wi-Fi network, you're probably conditioned by now to check the "WPA2" box. You may not specifically know when or why someone advised you to do this, but it was solid advice. Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 is the current industry standard that encrypts traffic on Wi-Fi networks to thwart eavesdroppers. And since it's been the secure option since 2004, WPA2 networks are absolutely everywhere. They're also, it turns out, vulnerable to cryptographic attack.

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Security News This Week: Be Careful Where You Enter Your Apple ID Password

Tue, 17 Oct 2017 08:59:13 -0000

This week was one of revelations in the security world, most of them centered around nation-states pulling off ambitious hacks. In the wake of reports that Russia had used Kaspersky Lab software to steal NSA secrets, we took a look at the antivirus paradox that applies to every company selling it. And given reports that North Korea had attempted to hack a US energy utility, we looked at when exactly grid-attacks should freak you out.

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'Crypto Anchors' Might Stop the Next Equifax-Style Megabreach

Mon, 16 Oct 2017 08:59:15 -0000

Firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and even encryption haven't kept hackers out of hoards of data like the ones stolen in the catastrophic breaches of Equifax or Yahoo. But now, some Silicon Valley firms are trying a deeper approach, building security into the basic design of how data moves between a company's servers. The method aims not to seal intruders out of sensitive systems, but to tighten the rim of the cookie jar around their wrist, trapping their grabby hands inside.

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The Worst-Case Scenario for John Kelly’s Hacked Phone

Fri, 13 Oct 2017 08:59:12 -0000

When evidence suggested President Trump was still using his personal Android phone in the White House earlier this year, security experts expressed both alarm and dismay at what might happen if hackers broke into that device. Now, POLITICO reports that former Department of Homeland Security head and current chief of staff John Kelly used a personal smartphone, possibly for months, that was compromised. That is bad. Don't do that.

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The Worst-Case Scenario for John Kelly’s Hacked Phone

Thu, 12 Oct 2017 08:59:13 -0000

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Security News This Week: Go Update Your Mac ASAP To Fix Some Serious Vulnerabilities

Wed, 11 Oct 2017 08:59:17 -0000

This week saw a tragic start, when late Sunday night a man named Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and wounded hundreds more in Las Vegas. Hoaxes and conspiracy theories flooded the internet in the immediate aftermath, as did questions—since answered—around how Paddock was able to fire at automatic speeds. We also took a look at gun-control tech—but didn't find much that's promising.

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How To Tell When Someone Else Tweets From @realDonaldTrump

Tue, 10 Oct 2017 08:59:20 -0000

Like so many other Fox News devotees in search of new voids to shout into, Donald Trump loves to tweet. He also, though, happily shares his account with at least one staffer. So how do we know when the most-mad-online president in human history is actually tapping out his own material? Fortunately for us, Trump is a creature of habit, and he's got some tells. In the early days, all it took to figure out whether a tweet came from Trump himself was to peek at the source device.

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Gun Control Tech Exists. But It Won't Stop Mass Shootings

Mon, 09 Oct 2017 08:59:11 -0000

In the aftermath of mass shootings in the United States, like Sunday evening's Las Vegas tragedy that killed at least 58 people and wounded over 500, a debate often emerges about how to prevent such incidents from occurring again. Part of that heated and longstanding gun-control battle is the question of whether technology can make guns safer. And they can—but not in a way that can prevent many of the country's most high profile attacks.

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The Disturbing Rise of Cyberattacks Against Abortion Clinics

Fri, 06 Oct 2017 08:59:15 -0000

Fatimah Gifford was nervous the day she was scheduled to testify in front of Texas’ Health and Human Services committee. Gifford is the VP of Communications for Whole Woman’s Health, which operates five reproductive healthcare clinics across Texas. This wasn’t her first time testifying before the state legislature, but it was her first time testifying about abortion.

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6 Fresh Horrors From the Equifax CEO's Congressional Hearing

Thu, 05 Oct 2017 08:59:14 -0000

The initial drama over Equifax's September data breach has mostly subsided, but the actual damage will play out for years. And indeed, there turns out to be plenty of spectacle and public controversy left. It was all on display at a Tuesday Congressional hearing, in which lawmakers questioned Equifax's former CEO Richard Smith in an attempt to make sense of how things went so wrong.

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This "Ghost Gun" Machine Now Makes Untraceable Metal Handguns

Wed, 04 Oct 2017 08:59:15 -0000

For the past five years, Cody Wilson has applied every possible advance in digital manufacturing technology to the mission of undermining government attempts at gun control. First he created the world's first 3-D printed gun, a deadly plastic weapon anyone could print at home with a download and a few clicks.

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Inmates Need Social Media. Take It From a Former Prisoner

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 08:59:14 -0000

The country’s most famous inmate is free. O.J. Simpson's release highlights the challenges of leaving prison, saddled with multiple felony convictions.I would know. It’s hard to re-enter society, but it might be easier for those returning citizens, like Simpson, whose NFL pension and luxury homes, along with the prospect of the new iPhone, await him, compared with the likely transition for those who will return to poverty.

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Signal Has a Fix for Apps' Contact-Leaking Problem

Mon, 02 Oct 2017 08:59:12 -0000

The encrypted-communication app Signal has a sterling reputation within the security and crypto community, but its critics point to a nagging flaw: The app asks for access to your phone's contact list when you install it. Signal's creators, like the developers of so many other social apps, consider that contact-sharing request a necessary evil, designed to make the app as easy to use as your normal calling and texting features.

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Jared Kushner Voted As a Woman, According to His Registration

Fri, 29 Sep 2017 08:59:11 -0000

Since moving into the White House months ago, Jared Kushner—senior advisor and son-in-law to the President, savior of the Middle East, and possible person of interest in a federal investigation—has amassed a rather extensive project portfolio. The issues under Kushner's purview include negotiating peace between Israel and Palestine, fixing the opioid crisis, updating technology across the entire federal government, and spearheading criminal justice reform, to name just a few.

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How One Syrian Fought to the Death for a Free Internet

Thu, 28 Sep 2017 08:59:14 -0000

In 2003, when Jon Phillips was 24, he met someone who changed everything about how he perceived the world. At the time, Phillips was a graduate student in computer science and visual art at the University of California, San Diego. Rather than work for a big tech company, as most of his friends were doing, he wanted to use his computing skills to “build society and community.

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An Ambitious Plan to Stop DDoS for Good Has Its Limits

Wed, 27 Sep 2017 08:59:13 -0000

The digital assaults known as distributed denial of service attacks occur constantly, whether you notice them or not. Corporations, internet infrastructure companies, and other large targets like universities and government agencies experience them frequently, or in some cases constantly. The only reason more of the internet doesn't exist in a constant state of DDoS-caused collapse? Third-party companies that offer protection services.

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Security News This Week: Hackers Broke Into the SEC... A Year Ago

Tue, 26 Sep 2017 08:59:16 -0000

The week kicked off with news that CCleaner, a popular security software tool, had itself been compromised, distributing a backdoor to hundreds of thousands of users and highlighting software's serious supply-chain security issue. Just a few days later, it turned out that the CCleaner was designed instead to target nearly two dozen specific tech firms. That's... not good.

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How Malware Keeps Sneaking Past Google Play’s Defenses

Mon, 25 Sep 2017 08:59:09 -0000

The standard advice for Android users to avoid downloading malicious apps is simple: Only get apps from the official Google Play Store. Unlike third-party app stores that are generally difficult to vet and validate, Google Play has built-in mechanisms to screen every app for malware, ransomware, and assorted sketchiness.

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New Group of Iranian Hackers Linked to Destructive Malware

Fri, 22 Sep 2017 08:59:11 -0000

For more than five years, Iran has maintained a reputation as one of the most aggressive nations in the global arena of state-sponsored hacking, stealing data from corporate and government networks around the world, bombarding US banks with cyberattacks, and most brazen of all, unleashing multiple waves of computer-crippling malware that hit tens of thousands of PCs across the Middle East.

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Donald Trump’s Dangerous North Korea Gambit

Thu, 21 Sep 2017 08:59:10 -0000

On Tuesday morning, Donald Trump gave a bombastic speech to the assembled delegates of the United Nations. Pay special attention to how he addressed North Korea and its looming nuclear threat. Unlike most of what Trump said otherwise, its implications are as wide-ranging as they are grim. “The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” said Trump.

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Why Many Deaf Prisoners Can’t Phone Home

Wed, 20 Sep 2017 08:59:11 -0000

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the US criminal justice system. Sign up for its newsletter, or follow The Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter. Calling home from prison is cumbersome and expensive. For deaf people behind bars, it’s even tougher, sometimes impossible.

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Security News This Week: Feds Give Kaspersky Security Products the Boot

Tue, 19 Sep 2017 08:59:15 -0000

Apple finally announced the iPhone X this week, complete with a facial recognition system that Apple calls FaceID. Preliminary impressions are that FaceID will be difficult to trick, and should be secure for the average user, but researchers are eager to test its robustness. Consumer facial recognition has been around, but not yet at this scale, inviting questions about what its implications will be, particularly for privacy.

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Hey, Turn Bluetooth Off When You're Not Using It

Mon, 18 Sep 2017 08:59:09 -0000

You intuitively know why you should bolt your doors when you leave the house, and add some sort of authentication for your smartphone. But there are lots of digital entrances that you leave open all the time, like Wi-Fi and your cell connection. It's a calculated risk, and the benefits generally make it worthwhile. That calculus changes with Bluetooth. Whenever you don't absolutely need it, you should go ahead and turn it off.

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Hope Hicks' Twitter Account Didn't Get Suspended

Fri, 15 Sep 2017 08:59:12 -0000

Wednesday morning, conservative corners of the internet were furious to discover that @HopeHicks45, the Twitter account belonging to Donald Trump's newly official Communications Director, had been suspended. The only problem? That’s not Hope Hicks. @HopeHicks45 was nothing more than an imposter. The ordeal kicked off when journalist Jules Suzdaltsev noted that what appeared to be Hicks' account was not verified by the service, surprising for such a prominent public figure.

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How to Stop the Next Unstoppable Mega-Breach—Or Slow It Down

Thu, 14 Sep 2017 08:59:19 -0000

The recent, massive Equifax data breach, which put 143 million US consumers' personal data at risk—including names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and some drivers license and credit card numbers—drove home the dangers facing any organization that stores a valuable trove of data.

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The Equifax Breach Exposes America's Identity Crisis

Wed, 13 Sep 2017 08:59:12 -0000

One of the most shocking things about Thursday's announcement of the Equifax data breach is the sheer scale of the numbers involved. Particularly the Social Security numbers.

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Why It’s So Easy to Hack Cryptocurrency Startup Fundraisers

Tue, 12 Sep 2017 08:59:11 -0000

This summer was punctuated by scams and hacks of "initial coin offerings," startup fundraisers that issue coins, tokens, or cryptocurrency to anyone who wants to invest in fledgling blockchain-related companies. In mid-July, a startup called CoinDash lost $7 million dollars during its ICO after a hacker altered the address investors were sending funds to so the money went to a malicious digital wallet instead of CoinDash.

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Facebook May Have More Russian Troll Farms to Worry About

Mon, 11 Sep 2017 08:59:21 -0000

When it comes to Russian propaganda, things are seldom what they seem. Consider the case of the Internet Research Agency. The shadowy St. Petersburg-based online-influence operation came under fresh scrutiny this week after Facebook disclosed that entities linked to Russia had placed some 5,000 phony political ads on its platform during the 2016 election cycle.

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The DNC’s Technology Chief is Phishing His Staff. Good.

Fri, 08 Sep 2017 08:59:11 -0000

If you are among the millions of Americans concerned about cybersecurity at the Democratic National Committee---and how could you not be?---then the home of the party’s tech braintrust might not give you much hope. The tiny, charmless office, with "DNC Tech" scribbled in dry-erase marker on the door, contains one desk and two computer monitors. Nearby, an overturned couch pokes out from an elevator shaft, a leftover from the widespread departures that followed Hillary Clinton's defeat.

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North Korea's Nuke Test Reveals Terrifying Capabilities

Thu, 07 Sep 2017 08:59:12 -0000

North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test on Sunday, claiming that it had detonated a hydrogen bomb that was small and light enough to be mounted on an intercontinental ballistic missile. Pyongyang has made such claims before without proof that it actually possesses those advanced capabilities.

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One State's Bail Reform Exposes the Promise and Pitfalls of Tech-Driven Justice

Wed, 06 Sep 2017 08:59:14 -0000

Jaquan Lugo stood stone-faced and somber inside a circular, wood-paneled courtroom on a Thursday afternoon in Paterson, New Jersey, as Superior Court Judge Donna Gallucio considered her options. Just four days prior, the 22-year-old and two other men were arrested in Paterson, accused of six counts of attempted murder and various gun charges after a pre-dawn drive-by shooting left a 17-year-old girl with a life-threatening wound near her lung.

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Inside Android Oreo's Quest to Protect Your Phone

Tue, 05 Sep 2017 08:59:15 -0000

Android's recently released Oreo update packs in plenty of features, including a battery life boost and a notifications rethink. But Oreo's most important improvements will happen behind the scenes, with a host of security updates designed to evolve with ever-expanding digital threats. From halting ransomware to blocking malicious apps and easing Android's longstanding fragmentation woes, Oreo tackles some big problems.

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Hacking Retail Gift Cards Remains Scarily Easy

Mon, 04 Sep 2017 08:59:13 -0000

In November of 2015, Will Caput worked for a security firm assigned to a penetration test of a major Mexican restaurant chain, scouring its websites for hackable vulnerabilities. So when 40-year-old Caput took a lunch break, he had beans and guacamole on his mind. He decided to drive to the local branch of the restaurant in Chico, California. While there, still in the mindset of testing the restaurant’s security, he noticed a tray of unactivated gift cards sitting on the counter.

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Here Are a Bunch of Trump Inner Circle Amazon Wish Lists

Fri, 01 Sep 2017 08:59:14 -0000

In the ongoing drama that is the Trump presidency, secondary characters constantly float in and out as new storylines and Special Counsel inquiries come to light. It’s easy to lose track. So to help, let’s get to know some of Trump’s satellites, both new and old, a little better. Let’s take a look at their Amazon.com Wish Lists. In case you're unfamiliar with the feature, when you shop for an item on Amazon, an unobtrusive little button sits under the "Add to Cart" option.

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Even Artificial Neural Networks Can Have Exploitable 'Backdoors'

Thu, 31 Aug 2017 08:59:15 -0000

Early in August, NYU professor Siddharth Garg checked for traffic, and put a yellow Post-it onto a stop sign outside the Brooklyn building in which he works. When he and two colleagues showed a photo of the scene to their road-sign detector software, it was 95 percent sure the stop sign in fact displayed a speed limit. The stunt demonstrated a potential security headache for engineers working with machine learning software.

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The Hotel Room Hacker

Wed, 30 Aug 2017 08:59:16 -0000

Almost exactly five years after seeing the first demonstration of Cody Brocious’ Onity hacking tool, I meet Aaron Cashatt face to face in the fluorescent-lit, cafeteria-style visiting room of the Cibola Unit of the Yuma State Prison Complex. Under his orange jumpsuit he’s bulked up from prison-yard weightlifting and seems clear-eyed and sharp.

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Security News This Week: When Facebook’s Friend Suggestions Get Creepy

Tue, 29 Aug 2017 08:59:14 -0000

In a refreshing change of pace, this week’s security news included little to no escalation of nuclear rhetoric. Let’s count that as a win! Among quite a few losses. Digital financial services provider Enigma, for instance, lost its supporters almost $500,000 in cryptocurrency thanks to bad password habits. Domestic helper robots lost security cred by being hacked into tiny robotic Chucky dolls.

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Microsoft's Bid to Save PowerShell From Hackers Starts To Pay Off

Mon, 28 Aug 2017 08:59:06 -0000

The Trickbot malware that targets bank customers. Password harvesters like Mimikatz. "Fileless malware" attacks. All three are popular hacking tools and techniques, but they're unconnected except for one trait: They all rely in part on manipulating a Windows management tool known as PowerShell to carry out their attacks. Long a point of interest for security researchers, PowerShell techniques increasingly pop up in real-world attacks.

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All the Ways US Government Cybersecurity Falls Flat

Fri, 25 Aug 2017 08:59:06 -0000

Data breaches and hacks of US government networks, once novel and shocking, have become a problematic fact of life over the last few years. So it makes sense that a cybersecurity analysis released today placed the government at 16 out of 18 in a ranking of industries, ahead of only telecommunications and educations. Healthcare, transportation, financial services, retail, and pretty much everything else ranked above it.

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Verizon Takes Fourth Amendment Stand in Carpenter V. United States

Thu, 24 Aug 2017 08:59:06 -0000

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A Very Dumb Mistake Costs Cryptocurrency Investors Big Time

Wed, 23 Aug 2017 08:59:07 -0000

The digital financial services developer Enigma prides itself on ultra-secure products. The company's Catalyst platform protects financial info with a cutting-edge combination of blockchain-inspired privacy technology and cryptography. So it comes as no small surprise that on Monday, scammers took over the company's website, mailing lists, and Slack accounts by exploiting some extremely basic security mistakes Enigma had made.

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Breaking Down HBO’s Brutal Month of Hacks

Tue, 22 Aug 2017 08:59:08 -0000

They say April is the cruelest month, but HBO may beg to differ. The company kicked off August with an apparently massive breach of its servers, in which hackers pilfered everything from full episodes of unreleased shows to sensitive internal documents. Not long after, in separate and distinct incidents, two episodes of Game of Thrones leaked out early. And Thursday, hacker group OurMine hijacked HBO’s main Twitter account, along with those of several HBO shows.

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Tech Has the Tools To Fight Hate. It Just Needs to Use Them

Mon, 21 Aug 2017 08:59:07 -0000

Say you're a white supremacist who happens to hate Jewish people—or black people, Muslim people, Latino people, take your pick. Today, you can communicate those views online any number of ways without setting off many tech companies' anti–hate speech alarm bells. And that's a problem.

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The Daily Stormer’s Last Defender in Tech Just Dropped It

Fri, 18 Aug 2017 08:59:06 -0000

The white supremacist site The Daily Stormer has taken a nomadic journey around the web this week, searching for a permanent home after being booted by the hosting and domain registry company GoDaddy. Throughout its bizarre odyssey, though, the infrastructure and web services company Cloudflare has defended the site against cyber attacks, particularly DDoS attacks. Wednesday, Cloudflare finally pulled the plug. Without its protection, The Daily Stormer promptly crashed.

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Trump Cribbed His Charlottesville Press Conference Straight From Fox News

Thu, 17 Aug 2017 08:59:06 -0000

The schedule for Donald Trump's his first full day back in New York since the start of his presidency entailed walking into the Trump Tower lobby, talking about infrastructure for a few minutes, and immediately re-boarding his golden elevator without taking any questions. Much to Chief of Staff John Kelly's apparent chagrin, that did not happened. Instead, Trump opted to take a few questions after his prepared remarks.

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North Korea Just Took the Nuclear Step Experts Have Dreaded

Wed, 16 Aug 2017 08:59:07 -0000

North Korea's nuclear and ballistic ambitions have existed for decades; the country conducted its first significant missile test launches in the 1980s, and conducted its first nuclear test in 2006. Now, thanks to a recent surge of development, the intertwined endeavors have both advanced to the point that experts have warned about for years. The worst-case North Korea hypotheticals, in other words, have suddenly become all too real.

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Spies Could Outsmart Free Stingray-Detector Apps

Tue, 15 Aug 2017 08:59:06 -0000

As smartphone users have become more aware that fake cell phone towers, known as IMSI catchers or stingrays, can spy on them, developers have rushed to offer apps that detect when your phone connects to one. Unfortunately, it seems, those tools aren't as effective as they claim. Watching the watchers turns out to be a complicated business. Researchers from Oxford University and the Technical University of Berlin today plan to present the results of a study of five stingray-detection apps.

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The Attack on Global Privacy Leaves Few Places To Turn

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 08:59:05 -0000

Digital privacy has had a very bad summer. As China and Russia move to block virtual private network services, well over a billion people face losing their best chance at circumventing censorship laws. First, China asked telecom companies to start blocking user access to VPNs that didn't pass government muster by next February. More recently, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a law to ban VPNs and other anonymous browsing tools that undermine government censorship.

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You Can't Just Riff About Nukes

Fri, 11 Aug 2017 08:59:06 -0000

President Trump regularly demonstrates a great capacity for playing fast and loose with the truth. By one calculation, he publicly lied or exaggerated at least once daily during the 40 days following his inauguration. Politicians routinely bend reality or, in some cases, break with it entirely. But there is no precedent for applying such casual disregard to nuclear weapons, as Trump did this week. For good reason.

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HBO Hackers Release Ransom Note and New Trove of Stolen Data

Wed, 09 Aug 2017 08:59:05 -0000

One week after hackers spilled multiple episodes of unreleased HBO shows and scripts online, the same group has dropped its second trove of purported internal data from the premium network. And this time it's not just nihilistic Game of Thrones spoilers—there's a ransom note, too. The latest leak includes another half-gigabyte sample of the group's stolen digital goods; it claims to have 1.5 terabytes in all.

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Security News This Week: A Whole New Way to Confuse Self-Driving Cars

Tue, 08 Aug 2017 08:59:06 -0000

August is supposed to be a slow news month. People plan summer beach vacations on this presumption. Hackers, though, apparently hate sun and sand because this past week has been incredibly active on the security news front. WIRED broke the scoop of leaked audio from Jared Kushner’s welcome conversation with west wing interns, which revealed he has a less than nuanced grasp of the details of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict--a global problem he’s been taxed with fixing.

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Hacker Who Stopped WannaCry Charged With Writing Banking Malware

Mon, 07 Aug 2017 08:59:07 -0000

Just three short months ago, security researcher Marcus Hutchins entered the pantheon of hacker heroes for stopping the WannaCry ransomware attack that ripped through the internet and paralyzed hundreds of thousands of computers. Now he's been arrested and charged with involvement in another mass hacking scheme—this time on the wrong side.

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Apple Caved to China, Just Like Almost Every Other Tech Giant

Fri, 04 Aug 2017 08:59:07 -0000

Apple recently removed some of the virtual private networks from the App Store in China, making it harder for users there to get around internet censorship. Amazon has capitulated to China's censors as well; The New York Times reported this week that the company's China cloud service instructed local customers to stop using software to circumvent that country's censorship apparatus.

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The $10 Hardware Hack That Wrecks IoT Security

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 08:59:07 -0000

Most consumer tech manufacturers figure that once a hacker can physically access a device, there's not much left that can be done to defend it. But a group of researchers known as the Exploitee.rs say that giving up too soon leaves devices susceptible to hardware attacks that can lead to bigger problems. Hardware hack techniques, like a flash memory attack they developed, can facilitate the discovery of software bugs that not only expose the one hacked device, but every other unit of that model.

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Hack Brief: HBO Shows and a Game of Thrones Script Land Online

Wed, 02 Aug 2017 08:59:10 -0000

This weekend, the same email landed in the inboxes of an untold number of entertainment journalists. “1.5 TB of HBO data just leaked!!!” screamed the subject header, while the email itself, addressed "to all mankind," promised “the greatest leak of space era,” and a link to a site that hosts unreleased an Game of Thrones script, not-yet-aired episodes of Ballers and Insecure, Room 104, and Barry. According the hackers, there’s plenty more where that came from.

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The Known Unknowns Swirling Around the Trump-Russia Scandal

Tue, 01 Aug 2017 08:59:08 -0000

The near-daily barrage of news and revelations, big and small, about the Trump campaign and its metastasizing ties to Russia can be hard to keep track of, even for people following the scandal closely. Story lines and players appear and disappear, sometimes for weeks or even months at a time.

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Privacy Isn't Dead. It's More Popular Than Ever

Mon, 31 Jul 2017 08:59:07 -0000

One out of every seven people on the planet uses the messaging app WhatsApp every day, according a recent blog post from the company. A billion people a day send messages to their friends and family on a service that's end-to-end encrypted by default, up from a billion per month last year. That surge in growth stands in sharp contrast to Twitter, which added approximately no new monthly uses last quarter, and had in fact lost two million in the US.

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We Found Rep. Blake Farenthold’s Early '90s Internet Message Board Posts

Fri, 28 Jul 2017 08:59:08 -0000

Last week, representative Blake Farenthold of Texas lamented on the radio that some "female senators from the Northeast" stood in the way of repealing the Affordable Care Act. "If it was a guy from south Texas," he said, "I might ask him to step outside and settle this Aaron Burr-style," suggesting he'd love to duel, say, Susan Collins of Maine.

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Inside Cuba's D.I.Y. Internet Revolution

Thu, 27 Jul 2017 08:59:06 -0000

Before my visit earlier this year, I’d never been to Cuba, though Cuba had certainly been to me. The Miami of my ’80s childhood was a suburban reboot of prerevolutionary Cuba, filled with people who still toasted El año próximo en La Habana (“next year in Havana”) at important occasions. Everything from family letters to fresh-off-the-raft waiters kept us apprised of the increasingly desperate conditions.

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Global Police Spring a Trap on Thousands of Dark Web Users

Wed, 26 Jul 2017 08:59:07 -0000

When AlphaBay, the world’s largest dark web bazaar, went offline two weeks ago, it threw the darknet into chaos as its buyers and sellers scrambled to find new venues. What those dark web users didn't—and couldn't—know: That chaos was planned. Dutch authorities had already seized Hansa, another another major dark web market, the previous month.

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Security News This Week: Two Huge Cryptocurrency Heists Cost Investors Millions

Tue, 25 Jul 2017 08:59:06 -0000

It was the week that sent dark web markets scrambling. On Thursday, the feds confirmed earlier reports that they had taken down Alphabay, a dark web bazaar substantially larger than Silk Road ever was. They tacked on a surprising revelation though: Dutch police had a month earlier quietly seized control of the third-largest dark web market, Hansa, setting a trap for displaced Alphabay buyers and sellers. What a world! While darknet drama dominated the headlines, plenty more transpired.

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Security News This Week: White House Exposes the Info of Privacy-Concerned Voters

Mon, 24 Jul 2017 08:59:15 -0000

The ever-changing Russian hacking scandal—which doesn’t yet have a catchy name like Treasongate but clearly needs one—took a sharp U-Turn back to email territory, when Donald Trump Jr. revealed the email chain in which he set up a meeting with a Russian government lawyer. We profiled the British publicist who organized the get-together, a guy who has had a long and colorful relationship with the Trump family, much of which helpfully lives on social media.

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The Biggest Dark Web Takedown Yet Sends Black Markets Reeling

Fri, 21 Jul 2017 08:59:12 -0000

Not since the days of the now-legendary Silk Road has a single site dominated the dark web's black market as completely, and for as long, as the online bazaar known as AlphaBay. And with the news that the site has been torn down by a law enforcement raid---and one of its leaders found dead in a Thai prison---the dark web drug trade has fallen into a temporary state of chaos. About a week ago AlphaBay, the dark web's largest contraband marketplace, went mysteriously offline.

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Twitter's Never Going to Ban Donald Trump

Thu, 20 Jul 2017 08:59:11 -0000

Minnesota representative and Deputy Chair of the DNC Keith Ellison recently called on Twitter to ban Donald Trump once and for all, joining countless publications who have made the same demand. And currently, nearly 72,000 people have signed an online petition asking for the same. Unfortunately for all those dreaming of a Trump-free Twitter, it is almost certainly never going to happen.

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Hack Brief: A Myspace Security Flaw Let Anyone Take Over Any Account, No Biggie

Wed, 19 Jul 2017 08:59:12 -0000

Remember when Myspace suffered one of the largest user data breaches ever? Around 360 million accounts were compromised in June 2013, but Myspace said in 2016 when it disclosed the incident that it was taking action to shore up its security. Which would be great, except that it turns out anyone could have taken over any Myspace account if they had the account owner’s listed name, username, and birthday.

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An Amazon Echo Can't Call the Police—But Maybe It Should

Tue, 18 Jul 2017 08:59:10 -0000

Despite what you may have heard, an Amazon Echo did not call the police earlier this week, when it heard a husband threatening his wife with a gun in New Mexico. On Monday, news reports took Bernalillo County authorities' version of those events credulously, heralding the home assistant as a hero.

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Let’s Talk About Trump, Border Walls, and Flying Heroin

Mon, 17 Jul 2017 08:59:13 -0000

On Thursday, President Donald Trump stressed the importance of a particular feature of his proposed border wall: transparency. His reason? Without it, a 60-pound bag of heroin might fly over, and hit an unassuming passerby on the head, striking them dead. The vivid image invites flashbacks to Chuck Jones cartoons, and more than a few questions. But to take it on its merits: Yes, drugs do fly over the wall. But … not like that.

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In Donald Trump Jr.'s Emails, Intent Matters More Than Intel

Fri, 14 Jul 2017 08:59:14 -0000

On Tuesday, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted out a lengthy email chain from June, 2016. The tweet was an effort to get out ahead of a New York Times investigation into the meeting the emails discussed. They show Trump Jr. eagerly arranging to meet with a Russian lawyer, explicitly described as being government-affiliated, for the stated purpose of getting dirt on Hillary Clinton to help elect Donald Trump. Immediately, conservative leaders leapt to the first son’s defense.

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Rob Goldstone's Relationship With the Trumps: A Timeline

Thu, 13 Jul 2017 08:59:14 -0000

Rob Goldstone, a British-born former tabloid reporter and current publicist, has found himself in the middle of one of the biggest scandals of Trump's presidency thus far. When Donald Trump Jr. sat down with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with reported ties to the Kremlin (ties which Veselnitskaya denies), it was Goldstone who had brokered the encounter. After The New York Times first reported that the meeting took place, Trump Jr.

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The Petya Plague Exposes the Threat of Evil Software Updates

Wed, 12 Jul 2017 08:59:14 -0000

On the list of computer security advice standbys, "update your software" ranks just below with "don't use the password 'password.'" But as the cybersecurity research community gets to the bottom of the malware outbreak that exploded out of Ukraine to paralyze thousands of networks around the world last week—shutting down banks, companies, transportation and electric utilities—it's become clear that software updates themselves were the carrier of that pathogen.

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Security News This Week: Russian Security Giant Kaspersky Lets the Feds Review Its Code

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 08:59:13 -0000

After last month's Petya/NotPetya ransomware outbreak you may be feeling like the next global attack could come at any moment. It hasn't struck yet, but if the ransomware fear doesn't get you, the phishing paranoia might. And don't forget angst about power grid hacks. Reports this week revealed that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security are scrambling to defend multiple US energy companies and manufacturing plants from hackers—including a nuclear power plant in Kansas.

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Hack Brief: Hackers Targeted a US Nuclear Plant (But Don't Panic Yet)

Mon, 10 Jul 2017 08:59:11 -0000

As the world watched highly skilled hackers take down power grids in Ukraine twice in two years, cybersecurity analysts reached the growing consensus that Russian hackers may be using the country as a testing ground for attacks they'll someday try on the United States. On Thursday, when news emerged that hackers have indeed been targeting American power plants—including a Kansas nuclear facility—it seemed possible that day had arrived.

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North Korea's Latest Missile Launch Hastens the Inevitable

Fri, 07 Jul 2017 08:59:10 -0000

North Korea's successful test of its first intercontinental ballistic missile carries grave geopolitical implications for a vast swath of the world. Although such an achievement seemed improbable not long ago, it was all but inevitable. The Hermit Kingdom tested its first nuclear bomb in 2006 and has spent the past decade steadily improving the rockets needed to lob one at its enemies.

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AI Will Make Forging Anything Entirely Too Easy

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 08:59:13 -0000

“Lordy, I hope there are tapes,” said an exasperated James Comey in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8. Comey’s desire reflects a familiar one for individuals accused of lying when the stakes are high. The former FBI director wished for tapes because, in our society, audio and video recordings serve as a final arbiter of truth. He said, she said always loses to what the tape shows.

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Security News This Week: How Shipping Giant Maersk Dealt With a Malware Meltdown

Wed, 05 Jul 2017 08:59:16 -0000

When a piece of unprecedented malicious software rampages through thousands of critical networks around the world, it tends to get our full attention. And this week's digital plague, known as Petya (or NotPetya or Nyetya) proved especially vicious. It paralyzed thousands of computers, including those of Ukrainian government agencies, transportation infrastructure, and companies, as well as international targets including Danish shipping firm Maersk and US pharmaceutical giant Merck.

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Trump Wants All Your Voter Data. What Could Go Wrong?

Tue, 04 Jul 2017 08:59:11 -0000

The private ballot is tradition in the United States. Now, President Trump’s voter fraud commission wants to collect every American’s voting history and make it available to the public—all in the name of “election integrity.

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Ukrainians Say Petya Ransomware Hides State-Sponsored Attacks

Mon, 03 Jul 2017 08:59:15 -0000

When a ransomware outbreak exploded from Ukraine across Europe yesterday, disrupting companies, government agencies, and critical infrastructure, it at first appeared to be just another profit-focused cybercriminal scheme---albeit a particularly vicious and damaging one. But its origins in Ukraine raised deeper questions: After all, shadowy hackers have waged a cyberwar there for years, likely at Russia's bidding.

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The Encryption Debate Should End Right Now

Fri, 30 Jun 2017 13:43:15 -0000

When law enforcement argues it needs a “backdoor” into encryption services, the counterargument has typically been that it would be impossible to limit such access to one person or organization. If you leave a key under the doormat, a seminal 2015 paper argues, a burglar eventually find its. And now recent events suggest an even simpler rebuttal: Why entrust a key to someone who gets robbed frequently? This aptly describe US intelligence services of late.

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WikiLeaks Dump Reveals a Creepy CIA Location-Tracking Trick

Thu, 29 Jun 2017 16:53:24 -0000

How many people specifically know where you are right now? Some friends and family? Your coworkers, maybe? If you're using a Windows laptop or PC you could add another group to the list: the CIA. New documents released on Wednesday as part of WikiLeaks' series of CIA hacking revelations detail a method the agency uses to geolocate computers, and the people using them.

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Petya Ransomware Outbreak Sweeps Europe

Wed, 28 Jun 2017 08:59:13 -0000

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A Diabolical Way of Hacking a Chip With a Wave of Your Hand

Mon, 26 Jun 2017 08:59:10 -0000

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How Russia Hacks Elections in the US and Around the World

Wed, 21 Jun 2017 08:59:17 -0000

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Robert Mueller Chooses His Investigatory Dream Team

Tue, 20 Jun 2017 08:59:18 -0000

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The Next Device in Your House to Get Hacked May Be Your Vibrator

Fri, 16 Jun 2017 08:59:17 -0000

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Crash Override Malware Took Down Ukraine's Power Grid Last December

Thu, 15 Jun 2017 08:59:09 -0000

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Everything You Need to Know About James Comey’s Senate Hearing

Tue, 13 Jun 2017 08:59:07 -0000

It’s almost showtime in Washington, DC. On Thursday, former FBI director James Comey will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee for the first time since he was fired in the midst of an ongoing investigation into a possible connection between Trump campaign officials and Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Comey’s opening remarks, already public, set the stage for an explosive hearing.

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Blaming the Internet For Terrorism Misses The Point

Mon, 12 Jun 2017 08:59:13 -0000

British Prime Minister Theresa May has found somethingto blame for Saturday night’s terror attack in London: the internet. May, responding to the attack by three young men who killed seven people and injured scores more, called for an end to the “safe spaces” that the internet provides, and for measures to “regulate cyberspace.” “We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed.

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What Christopher Wray Learned From the Last Two FBI Directors

Fri, 09 Jun 2017 08:59:15 -0000

With a tweet Wednesday morning, President Trump announced his pick to replace James Comey as FBI director. Should the Senate confirm him, Christopher Wray will step into the job amid the controversial firing of his predecessor, and the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate that incident, as well as the larger swirling questions around Trump and Russia’s meddling with the 2016 election. It’s no small task.

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Hack Brief: Dangerous ‘Fireball’ Adware Infects a Quarter Billion PCs

Thu, 08 Jun 2017 08:59:15 -0000

Adware that infects your computer to display annoying pop-ups is an annoyance. But when it infects as many as one five networks in the world, and hides the capability to do far more serious damage to its victims, it’s an epidemic waiting to happen.

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Security News This Week: OneLogin Had One Very Bad Breach

Wed, 07 Jun 2017 08:59:08 -0000

For the first time in too long, a week went by without any major international security incidents (unless you count the US withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, which you probably should). Perhaps unsurprisingly, that meant there was also time to look at defensive measures for a change. For instance! The US successfully tested its very expensive, not entirely reliable missile defense system, but that doesn't mean we'd be safe from a real-world attack.

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Banned From the US? There’s a Robot for That

Tue, 06 Jun 2017 08:59:09 -0000

Two telepresence robots roll into a human-computer interaction conference. Sounds like the beginning of a very nerdy joke, but it really happened (#2017). A few weeks ago in Denver, Colorado, a robot I was piloting over the internet from my computer in Idaho stood wheel-to-wheel with a similar ‘bot in a pink skirt controlled by a researcher in Germany. We huddled. We introduced ourselves by yelling at each other’s screens.

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Don’t Buy Into Putin’s Latest Misdirection on Election Hacking

Mon, 05 Jun 2017 08:59:10 -0000

Vladimir Putin conceded on Thursday that maybe, just maybe, “patriotic” citizen-hackers from Russia could interfere in the democratic processes of other countries. Atacit acknowledgement of interference in the US election? An unsubtle mockingof the US following rescinded sanctions? Could be! Mostly, though, you can consider this just another page fromPutin’s playbook of misdirection. “Hackers are free people like artists,” Putin saidat the St.

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Inside Google’s Global Campaign to Shut Down Phishing

Fri, 02 Jun 2017 08:59:21 -0000

At the beginning of May, a phishing scam flooded the web, disguised as a typical Google Docs request. Some of the emails even appeared to come from acquaintances. If victims clicked through and granted seemingly innocuous permissions, they exposed their entire Gmail account to whoever was behind the scam. It was an explosive scheme. And Google responded in kind. “We convened what we call a war room,” says Mark Risher, Google’s director of counter-abuse technology.

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Don’t Read Too Much Into That Successful Missile Defense Test

Thu, 01 Jun 2017 08:59:17 -0000

The United States successfully tested its interceptor missile defense system on Tuesday, essentially shooting an incoming missile out of the sky. An impressive technological feat to be sure, one the Pentagon likens to hitting a bullet with another bullet. But as proof that such a system could defend the US against a North Korean attack, it still misses the mark.

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Instead of Banning Cheaters, Pokémon Go Trolls Them Hard

Wed, 31 May 2017 08:59:09 -0000

Now that the generalized Pokémon Go craze has subsided, the more captivating effort to catch ‘em all may be game developer Niantic’s ongoing battle against cheaters. Its latest evolution: Not banning bad actors, but banishing them to poké-purgatory. As detailed by Pokémon Go enthusiast subreddit The Silph Road, a recent Pokémon Go update targets players who use bots to trawl the globe for valuable Pokémon.

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How to Spring Clean Your Digital Clutter to Protect Yourself

Tue, 30 May 2017 08:59:11 -0000

You’re using strong and unique passwords. You’re on the lookout for phishing emails. And you’ve set up two-factor authentication on every account that offers it. Basically, you’re acing Personal Cybersecurity 101. But with new threats popping up all the time, you may be looking for other proactive steps you can take to protect yourself. Here’s an easy one: Clean up your digital junk.

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A Clever New Way to Protect Your Data at the Border Could Also Add Risk

Mon, 29 May 2017 08:59:08 -0000

Over the last few months, the US and other countries have seen an uptick in border searchers—including those of smartphones and laptops. There are several precautions you can take to defend your privacy, the most recent of which is a clever new feature from password-manager 1Password. But while it could secure your digital stuff, it could also introduce new risks.

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A WannaCry Flaw Could Help Some Windows XP Victims Get Files Back

Fri, 26 May 2017 08:59:12 -0000

Since the WannaCry ransomware ripped through the internet late last week, infecting hundreds of thousands of machines and locking up critical systems from healthcare to transportation, cryptographers have searched for a cure. Finding a flaw in WannaCry’s encryption scheme, after all, the could decrypt all those systems without any ransom. Now one French researcher says he’s foundat least a hint of a very limited remedy.

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Think Before You Tweet In the Wake of an Attack

Thu, 25 May 2017 08:59:12 -0000

Monday night, a suicide bomber took the lives of at least 22 people—including an 8-year-old girl—at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England. Almost instantly, images and video of the devastating attack overtook Twitter timelines and Facebook News Feeds. As natural and understandable a response to horrific events that might be, it also threatens to amplify the chaos that terrorists intend.

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Hackers Are Trying to Reignite WannaCry With Non-Stop Botnet Attacks

Wed, 24 May 2017 08:59:09 -0000

Over the past year, two digital disasters have rocked the internet. The botnet known as Mirai knocked a swath of major sites off the web last September, including Spotify, Reddit, and the New York Times. And over the past week, the WannaCry ransomware outbreak crippled systems ranging from healthcare to transportation in 150 countries before it an unlikely “kill-switch” in its code shut it down.

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Security News This Week: Hoo-Boy, Mar-a-Lago’s Internet Is Insecure

Tue, 23 May 2017 08:59:08 -0000

For anyone growing weary of the constant focus on Russian and President Donald Trump's campaign, good news! A fresh horror took the spotlight late last week in the form of WannaCry, a vicious ransomware whose creators appear not to have been all that smart. WannaCry, we learned, features a built-in "kill switch" that security researchers have used to, well, kill it, at least for now. Some people on XP and Windows 7 might even be able to get their files back.

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High-Profile Extortion Hacks Aren’t Paying Off

Mon, 22 May 2017 08:59:26 -0000

This week, Disney CEO Bob Iger reportedly revealed to employees that a hacker had stolen the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and threatened to release it if the Mouse House doesn’t pay a hefty ransom. But Disney, which has enlisted the FBI’s help, says it won’t pay to keep its billion-dollar franchise under wraps. It’s just the latest in a string of high-profile extortion hacks that didn’t pan out. A few weeks ago, Netflix faced a similar threat.

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Chelsea Manning Walks Back Into a World She Helped Transform

Fri, 19 May 2017 08:59:09 -0000

Today, Chelsea Manning walked out of the military prison that held her for seven years, and into a world largely remade by her actions. “Whatever is ahead of me is far more important than the past. I’m figuring things out right now—which is exciting, awkward, fun, and all new for me,” she said in a statement through her ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio. Manning marked the occasion with a photo of her first steps of freedom on Instagram, an app that launched in 2010.

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Stop Thinking James Comey Keeps All His Files in a Cardboard Box

Thu, 18 May 2017 08:59:15 -0000

On October 19, 1973, Nick Akerman and his fellow Watergate investigators began hoarding whatever documents they could from the office of the special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. They knew that the next day, Cox planned to disobey President Richard Nixon and announce before a clutch of reporters at the National Press Club that he would pursue taped recordings from inside the Oval Office; they also knew that in doing so, Cox was risking his job and the fate of the investigation.

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If You Still Use Windows XP, Prepare For the Worst

Wed, 17 May 2017 08:59:17 -0000

As a vicious new strain of ransomware swept the UK’s National Health Service yesterday, shutting off services at hospitals and clinics throughout the region, experts cautioned that the best protection was to download a patch Microsoft had issued in March. The only problem? A reported 90 percent of NHS systems run Windows XP, an operating system Microsoft first introduced in 2001, and hasn’t supported since 2014.

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Security News This Week: Trump’s Cybersecurity Executive Order Looks … Pretty Good!

Tue, 16 May 2017 08:59:11 -0000

There are no quiet weeks in security these days, but the firing of FBI Director James Comey made this one particularly loud. President Trump's controversial dismissal won't slow down the investigation into his campaign's alleged ties with Russia, and it occurred with no apparent replacement lined up. And that's just for starters. Those worried about whether Comey's files are safe can rest easy—it's not like they were in a cardboard box.

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A Vicious Microsoft Bug Left a Billion PCs Exposed

Mon, 15 May 2017 08:59:08 -0000

On Friday night, security researcher Tavis Ormandy of Google’s Project Zero announced on Twitter that he had found a Windows bug. Well, not just any bug. It was “crazy bad,” Ormandy wrote. “The worst Windows remote code exec in recent memory.” By Monday night, Microsoft had released an emergency patch, along with details of what the vulnerability entailed. And yes, it was every bit as scary as advertised.

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Don’t Pin the Macron Email Hack on Russia Just Yet

Fri, 12 May 2017 08:59:12 -0000

After a hacked US election covered in Russian fingerprints, it's easy to assume that Friday's megaleak of emails from France's president-elect Emmanuel Macron was the Kremlin's work, too. Russia, after all, has the motive, the means, and a very fresh track record of meddling in Western elections to sabotage center-left candidates. But this latest breach, for now, lacks conclusive fingerprints-and what few clues there are have only added to the confusion.

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Security News This Week: Oh Good, Hackers Beat Two-Factor to Rob Bank Accounts

Thu, 11 May 2017 08:59:16 -0000

Congratulations! You've gotten through the week of the Google Docs phishing ploy that rocked the world, or at least a vocal corner of the media. Speaking of speaking out, FBI Director James Comey this week gave his most thorough explanation yet of the election-rocking Clinton investigation letter he gave last fall, though it's unlikely to satisfy critics. Oh, and apps can use your phone's mic to listen for marketing beacons your ears can't hear.

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South Korea’s New Missile Defense Tech Isn’t a Cure-All For North Korea

Wed, 10 May 2017 08:59:11 -0000

A year after it was first announced, the United States-provided missile defense system meant to guard South Korea is fully operational. The device has sparked controversy and pushback from China, but it’s a powerful symbolic step that should provide some legitimate protection from an increasingly volatile North Korea. It also has some important limitations.

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FBI Boss Comey Finally Explains His Infamous Clinton Letter

Tue, 09 May 2017 08:59:17 -0000

FBI Director James Comey would like you to travel back in time with him for a minute. It's Friday morning, October 28. The day prior, members of his staff told Comey that they had found thousands of Hillary Clinton's private emails stored on Anthony Weiner's laptop, and needed a warrant to read them, thereby reopening the investigation into the Democratic presidential candidate's use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State.

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The One Hire Facebook Really Needs to Make to Curb Violence

Mon, 08 May 2017 08:59:14 -0000

Today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company will hire 3,000 people to watch for violent footage posted to the site. The decision comes after two horrific videos caught global attention in recent weeks: a man uploaded a video of himself murdering a grandfather in Cleveland, and a man in Thailand hanged his infant and then himself in a Facebook Live video the authorities saw too late.

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Don’t Open That Google Doc Unless You’re Positive It’s Legit

Fri, 05 May 2017 08:59:12 -0000

If you get a Google Doc link in your inbox today, scrutinize it carefully before you click—even if it looks like it comes from someone you trust. A nasty phishing scam that impersonates a Google Docs request has swept the internet today, including a decent chunk of media companies. You’ve heard “think before you click” a million times, but it really could save you from a whole lot of hassle. Google has taken steps to neutralize this particular phish.

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The US Takes On the World in NATO’s Cyber War Games

Thu, 04 May 2017 08:59:10 -0000

Last year, Capt. Sean Ruddy and his team of operator-soldiers from the US Cyber Brigade entered a Locked Shields, a NATO-organized cyber-defense war game that pits teams from dozens of countries against “live-fire” attacks. It was their first time. And of the 19 countries represented, the US finished dead last. This week, they got their shot at redemption. Locked Shields challenges participating countries to show off their defensive prowess, rather than offensive firepower.

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That Orange Is the New Black Leak Was Never Going to Pay Off

Wed, 03 May 2017 08:59:12 -0000

It must have seemed like such a good bet, as far as extortion attempts go. Steal one of Netflix’s prized original series months before it’s slated to air, and shake the streaming company down under threat of releasing it. But as season five of Orange Is the New Black‘s recent appearance on torrenting site The Pirate Bay shows, it was a crime destined destined for failure, because it misunderstood how streaming—and the internet at large—works today.

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Security News This Week: Yeah, About That Carrier Steaming Toward North Korea

Tue, 02 May 2017 08:59:10 -0000

It was a week full of revelations in the security world. A New York Times Uber story revealed that the company got in trouble with Apple over "fingerprinting" iPhones even after users deleted the app. It's a common enough practice, but Uber took it a few steps too far. And speaking of common practices, here's how to check which services have access to your Gmail and Facebook accounts-you might be surprised at how many do.

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Amazon’s ‘Echo Look’ Could Snoop a Lot More Than Just Your Clothes

Mon, 01 May 2017 08:59:13 -0000

The new Amazon Echo Look seems like a logical enough extension of Alexa, the company’s AI-powered digital assistant. Previously, Alexa lived inside speakers. Now, it’s in a camera. That progression belies just how much more the Echo Look could know about you than other Alexa hardware does—especially if Amazon ever unleashes the full power of its machine learnings smarts. Amazon envisions the Echo Look as a way to get fashion advice.

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Uber Didn’t Track Users Who Deleted the App, But It Still Broke the Rules

Fri, 28 Apr 2017 08:59:08 -0000

Once again Uber finds itself taking heat for questionable business practices. This time the company was using software to identify iPhones even after their owners deleted the Uber app, or even wiped the phones altogether. That technique, known as fingerprinting, isn’t uncommon—and shouldn’t be interpreted as tracking your every move. But Uber’s implementation crossed a line with Apple, in particular because it tried to hide what it was doing.

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Want to Stop Facebook Violence? You Won’t Like the Choices

Thu, 27 Apr 2017 08:59:07 -0000

No one wants murder videos on Facebook. But no one wants Facebook to censor their baby videos, either. Technology isn’t ready to step in and tell the difference. So what are the legal options for stopping videos like the appalling killing uploaded last week from hitting Facebook? None of them will be easy for Americans to swallow. The country could regulate Facebook like it does traditional broadcasters and media by holding the company accountable for the country it distributes.

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How to Stop Services Like Unroll.me From Snooping on Your Gmail

Wed, 26 Apr 2017 08:59:15 -0000

The pitch has plenty of appeal: Sign up for our service, and we’ll automatically unsubscribe you from all those pesky email lists. For free! Except, not quite; as it turns out, you end up paying in privacy. That’s just one revelation from a bombshell New York Times look at Uber, which showed how Unroll.me, the service described above, scans the email accounts of its users for information as granular as Lyft receipts to anonymize, package, and sell on the lucrative data market. Unroll.

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Encrypted Chat Took Over. Let’s Encrypt Calls, Too

Mon, 24 Apr 2017 08:59:13 -0000

As end-to-end encrypted messaging apps have exploded in popularity, several well-known services have added encrypted calls as well. Why not, right? If it works for text-based chat, voice seems like a natural extension. If only it were that easy. Encrypting calls has plenty of value, keeping conversations strictly between the two parties. They can circumvent government wiretaps, or criminal snooping.

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North Korea’s Failed Rocket Test Eases Experts’ Worst-Case Scenario Fears

Fri, 21 Apr 2017 08:59:13 -0000

A tense weekend of brinksmanship between the United States and North Korea culminated in a failed missile test from the reclusive dictatorship. And while the busted launch does highlight the country’s long-term commitment to advancing its warfare capabilities, it also shouldn’t cause undo alarm. In fact, it was something close to routine.

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Sneaky Exploit Allows Phishing Attacks From Sites That Look Secure

Thu, 20 Apr 2017 08:59:15 -0000

Phishing attacks can make even crusading technovangelists paranoid. One wrong click can put you out a ton of cash, or cause a corporate breach. And they evolve constantly. Case in point: A cunning new exploit makes malicious phishing websites appear to have the sameURL asknown and trusted destinations. You knowby now to check your browser while visitinga site to besure it sportsthelittle green padlock indicatingTLS encryption.

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North Korea Probably Can’t Strike the US Yet—But It’s Still Plenty Scary

Wed, 19 Apr 2017 08:59:09 -0000

National security experts and North Korea watchers say the reclusive countrymay test a nuclear bomb on Saturday, the ‘Day of the Sun’ holiday that marks the birthday of national father Kim Il-sung. The Hermit Kingdom’s recent saber-rattling prompted the United States to dispatch the Vinson carrier group as a show of force, and President Trump has not ruled out a pre-emptive strike.

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Security News This Week: Nasty Microsoft Word ‘Booby Trap’ Loaded PCs With Malware

Tue, 18 Apr 2017 08:59:08 -0000

It feels like all weeks in security news are overstuffed lately, and this one's no exception. It started with a bang, or more of a blare, as all of Dallas's dozens of tornado sirens were hacked to sound off at once. And it ended with a boom, as the US dropped the Moab ('Mother of All Bombs,' colloquially), a 22,600 pound bomb, for the first time.

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That ‘Mother of All Bombs’ Was Just Waiting For the Right Target

Mon, 17 Apr 2017 08:59:14 -0000

When the US dropped a 22,600-pound bomb near suspected ISIS tunnels in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province on Thursday, the blast from the explosion would have rushed into the furthest reaches of the mountain complex about a mile away. The GBU-43, known as Moab—short for Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or, colloquially, Mother of All Bombs—is the largest non-nuclear, non-penetrating bomb in the US arsenal. And until now, this mother had never been used outside of a testing facility.

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The Carter Page Surveillance Doesn’t Prove Anyone’s Conspiracy Theory

Fri, 14 Apr 2017 08:59:10 -0000

It’s easy for all sides to read too much into the news tat FBI reportedly obtained a warrant to surveil former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Those convinced of Trump’s Russia ties may see validation, and proof of a grander conspiracy. Others may see this lending credence to Trump’s allegations that the Obama administration ordered illegal, politically motivated surveillance in the heat of last years’s presidential campaign. In truth, it does neither.

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If You’re Somehow Still on Windows Vista, Upgrade Right Now

Thu, 13 Apr 2017 08:59:08 -0000

Windows Vista was not a popular Microsoft release. We can just say it. Launched in 2007 (after a few delays), it was the first Windows overhaul since the well-loved XP release in 2001. Six years is a long time to make people wait, no matter how great the replacement. And Vista, well, was not great. A decade later, Microsoft's finally pulling the plug on support tomorrow. Which means, if you're somehow stuck with Microsoft's least popular operating system, it's time to move on. Like, now.

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Tax Scams Are Absurdly Common. Here’s How to Protect Yourself

Wed, 12 Apr 2017 08:59:09 -0000

Filing and paying taxes can be frustrating enough without the looming threat of identity theft and refund fraud. But tax scams have become so prevalent, you’ve likely received a bogus call, text message, or email in the last few years. As painful as it is to add another item on the tax to-do list this year, working to protect yourself from cons and digital attacks could really save you money and time. The scams work a few ways.

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This Week’s Security News: Taser Bets Big on the Surveillance State

Tue, 11 Apr 2017 08:59:14 -0000

Well, we sent 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles smack into a Syrian airbase this week. But other stuff happened too! The week started off with some clever hack revelations, including a backdoor that Russians have used for two decades, and an ATM hack that just takes a drill hole and $15 worth of gear. And some particularly industrious hackers took over a Brazilian bank's entire online footprint for a few hours. Spies got their own cool new app that you can't play with.

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The US Strike on Syria Underscores Trump’s Media-Fueled Worldview

Mon, 10 Apr 2017 08:59:13 -0000

On Thursday night, two US Navy warships fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase after President Bashar al-Assad’s regime used chemical weapons earlier this week against civilians. For months, Donald Trump has espoused a hands-off approach to intervening in the Middle Eastern country’s six-year-long civil war, yet it took just 24 hours for the president to reverse course and launch America’s first military action against the Syrian government.

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Total-Takeover iPhone Spyware Lurks on Android, Too

Fri, 07 Apr 2017 08:59:12 -0000

When you lose the key to your bike lock you borrow bolt cutters. When your door is jammed you look up a locksmith. And when you need targeted surveillance of a smartphone, you call your cyberarms dealer. Naturally! For bad actors and nation states, sometimes all it takes to access someone’s private text messages, browsing history, calls, emails, calendar, location, contacts, and apps, is a big enough check. Although maybe not as big as you’d think.

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American Spies Now Have Their Very Own Smartphone App

Thu, 06 Apr 2017 08:59:08 -0000

Chris Rasmussen is an evangelist, and his message is crowdsourcing. As a career analyst inside the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Rasmussen’s sermons have been limited to a closed top-secret community. But this week, he’s going public with his most radical idea to date, in the form of a smartphone app for senior US intelligence officers.

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How an Anarchist Bitcoin Coder Found Himself Fighting ISIS in Syria

Tue, 04 Apr 2017 08:59:10 -0000

On a desert-cold, moonlit night just over two years ago, Amir Taaki stepped off the Iraqi sand into a rubber dinghy floating in the Tigris River. The boat was just wide enough to fit his compact body next to the much larger American ex-Army machine gunner sitting beside him.

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The World’s Biggest Porn Site Goes All-In on Encryption

Mon, 03 Apr 2017 08:59:09 -0000

As the internet continues to limp toward better security, sites have increasingly embraced HTTPS encryption. You’ve seen it around, including here on WIRED; it’s that little green padlock in the upper lefthand corner, and it keeps outside eyes from snooping on the details of your time online. Today, the biggest porn site on the planet announced that it’s joining those secured ranks. Pornhub’s locking it down, and that’s a bigger deal than you’d think.

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If You Want a VPN to Protect Your Privacy, Start Here

Fri, 31 Mar 2017 08:59:09 -0000

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted to reverse regulations that would have stopped internet service providers from selling your web-browsing data without your explicit consent. It’s a disappointing setback for anyone who doesn’t want big telecoms profiting off of their personal data. So what to do? Try a Virtual Private Network. It won’t fix all your privacy problems, but a VPN’s a decent start.

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The Eternal Search for a Gun That Doesn’t Kill

Thu, 30 Mar 2017 08:59:15 -0000

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the US criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter, or follow The Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter. In the new cop drama APB, an Elon Musk-type billionaire engineer buys a beleaguered Chicago police precinct to avenge his buddy's murder.

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How to Protect Your iCloud Account, Juuust in Case Those Hackers Aren’t Joking

Wed, 29 Mar 2017 08:59:10 -0000

A hacker group called Turkish Crime Family says that it can access 250 million iCloud accounts, and will do so on April 7 to reset the password, locking people out of their accounts. They’ve even threatened to wipe people’s linked iPhones if Apple doesn’t pay up. And while it’s hard to tell how legitimate the threat is, their assertions make now as good a time to lock down your iCloud as ever.

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Security News This Week: FedEx Offered Customers Five Bucks to Re-Install Flash

Tue, 28 Mar 2017 08:59:12 -0000

As so many of them have been lately, it was a wild week in security. Monday, FBI Director James Comey confirmed that an ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia began last July. The GOP responded minutes later by charging hard against-leaks. That really set the tone! House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes added some misplaced intrigue by suggesting Trump or his associates had been caught up in surveillance, which isn't what it sounds like.

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Instagram Has Two-Factor Authentication Now, So Turn It On

Mon, 27 Mar 2017 08:59:14 -0000

Because you care greatly about your personal security hygiene, you’ve already enlisted two-factor authentication to help protect most of your online accounts. That’s good! Instagram, though, hasn’t given you the option. That changes today. Go get it. While Instagram had made two-factor available to a select group of users previously, the extra layer of protection is now available to all, meaning you, meaning it’s time to fiddle with some settings.

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Good News: Android’s Huge Security Problem Is Getting Less Huge

Fri, 24 Mar 2017 08:59:09 -0000

First, the good news: Half of all Android devices have gotten fairly recent security updates, patching the hackable flaws that leave users vulnerable to digital crime and espionage. The bad news? The other half hasn’t. In an annual report on the security of the world’s 1.4 billion Android devices that Google released today, the company touts the ever-improving state of Android security.

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Trump Can’t Quit His Wiretap Claims. That Won’t End Well

Thu, 23 Mar 2017 08:59:12 -0000

Barack Obama did not wiretap Trump Tower ahead of the presidentialelection. The definitive word on this came today from two people who would know: Richard Burr and Mark Warner, who leadthe Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Of course,President Donald Trump refuses to believe this, even though it is the best news he could hope for.

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Security News This Week: A Funny Thing Happens When the US Accuses the UK of Spying

Wed, 22 Mar 2017 08:59:09 -0000

Nothing much of interest happened in the world of cybersecurity this week. Kidding! But wouldn't that be nice? If we were living in a simpler time when innocent victims weren't hit by a new, weird hack every day, and international cyberespionage wasn't undermining everything from governments to businesses to Twitter accounts? You could just argue about who won The Bachelor and move on with your life. Unfortunately, this is 2017, so naturally this week's hacks were actually completely ridiculous.

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Phishing Scams Even Fool Tech Nerds—Here’s How to Avoid Them

Tue, 21 Mar 2017 08:59:12 -0000

You know not to click on links in sketchy emails. Everybody knows that. And yet, people fall for these phishing attacks all the time. Case in point: The FBI suspects a phishing email is how the Russian hackers who were indicted this week got into Yahoo. Ditto for the breach of the Democratic National Committee, and the Sony Pictures hack. In fact, there’s currently a Gmail phishing scam going around that even super savvy techies are falling for.

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Hack Brief: High-Profile Twitter Accounts Overrun With Swastikas

Mon, 20 Mar 2017 08:59:08 -0000

Last night, a swath of Twitter accounts with large followings—including Duke University, BBC North America, Forbes, and Amnesty International—tweeted out the same message, in Turkish, that included a swastika and hashtags that translate to “Nazi Germany, Nazi Holland.” The hacked accounts, which apparently stem from increasing vitriol between Turkey and Holland, appear to have all been restored.

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WIRED Had a Potential Infosecurity Problem. Here’s What We Did About It

Fri, 17 Mar 2017 08:59:12 -0000

On February 26th, WIRED's security reporter Andy Greenberg received an email from Sophia Tupolev, the head of communications at the security firm Beame.io, saying she'd found a security issue on WIRED.com. Tupolev's company had discovered sensitive data in the source code on many pages on our site, including obfuscated, "hashed" passwords and email addresses for current and former WIRED writers. We corrected the problem right away.

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Hacker Lexicon: What Is an Attack Surface?

Thu, 16 Mar 2017 08:59:14 -0000

Amid so many recent high-profile hacks and data breaches, security experts are fond of pointing out that there’s no such thing as perfect security. It’s true! But it also invites the question: Why doesn’t literally everything get hacked all the time? The answer has to do with the relative incentives and the costs of infiltrating a given network. And one of the concepts underlying that calculus is the idea of an “attack surface.” Here’s an example.

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No, Microwave Ovens Cannot Spy on You—for Lots of Reasons

Wed, 15 Mar 2017 08:59:14 -0000

If you’ve been feeling a little paranoid lately—like even your standing mixer may be spying on you—rest assured that Trump senior counselor Kellyanne Conway shares your struggle. On Sunday, apparently reacting to last week’s CIA WikiLeaks data dump, Conway told the Bergen Record that at this point, US citizens should consider all appliances compromised. Even their microwaves.

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The Easiest Way To Protect Your Devices From Hacks? Keep Them Updated

Tue, 14 Mar 2017 08:59:14 -0000

This week's WikiLeaks revelations, which showed that the CIA can compromise a huge range of devices, shouldn't send you into paroxysms of fear over your smartphone. It should, though, be a solid reminder that one of the best ways to keep yourself safe from hackers is also one of the simplest: Update your gear. What allows hackers access to your devices, after all, are breakdowns and vulnerabilities in the firmware (read: operating system) that runs them.

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Don’t Let WikiLeaks Scare You Off of Signal and Other Encrypted Chat Apps

Mon, 13 Mar 2017 09:53:41 -0000

Of all the revelations to come out of the 9,000-page data dump of CIA hacking tools, one of the most explosive is the possibility that the spy agency can compromise Signal, WhatsApp, and other encrypted chat apps. If you use those apps, let's be perfectly clear: Nothing in the WikiLeaks docs says the CIA can do that. A close reading of the descriptions of mobile hacking outlined in the documents released by WikiLeaks shows that the CIA has not yet cracked those invaluable encryption tools.

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Mass Spying Isn’t Just Intrusive—It’s Ineffective

Fri, 10 Mar 2017 08:59:12 -0000

US intelligence agencies face a difficult task. They are supposed to provide meaningful analysis that enables officials to manage serious national security problems such as terrorism, weapons proliferation, network attacks on government infrastructure, and counterintelligence efforts. Today these are diffuse and complex threats. There are newly powerful political actors on the international stage. Organizations that are not governments and have no physical territory can inflict great harm.

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If the Feds Did Wiretap Trump Tower, It’s Not Obama Who Should Worry

Thu, 09 Mar 2017 08:59:09 -0000

It started, like so many eruptions these days, with a tweet. Early Saturday morning, President Trump fired off a series of tweets accusing, without evidence, former PresidentBarack Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower in the month before the election. Trump compared the alleged snooping to “Nixon/Watergate,” and intimated legal action. What makes the broader allegation so extraordinary isn’t that it is new. Quite the contrary.

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Security News This Week: An IoT Teddy Bear Leaked Millions of Parent and Child Voice Recordings

Wed, 08 Mar 2017 08:59:14 -0000

It was a week of could have beens and still coulds in security. We took a long look at a plan to stop rogue drones that might work great, if it’s ever legal. We looked at how Trump should spend that extra $54 billion on defense, if he insists. And we looked at Google’s end-to-end encryption hopes for Gmail, which appear to have faded over the last three years. Oh, also, some rogue stuffed bears made a great case against the Internet of Toys.

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The Golden Age of Email Hacks Is Only Getting Started

Tue, 07 Mar 2017 08:59:09 -0000

As governor of Indiana, Mike Pence conducted state business usinghis personal email account. An AOL account. Soof course someone hacked it. Witha phishing scam. This story offers no end of rolling punchlines, the kicker being thevitriol the vice president showed during the campaigntoward Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

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How Trump Should Spend That Extra $54 Billion on Defense

Mon, 06 Mar 2017 08:59:12 -0000

In his address to Congress, President Donald Trump said he’s preparing “a budget that rebuilds the military, eliminates the Defense sequester, and calls for one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.” The day before the speech, White House officials said the administration planned to propose a “historic” $54 billion increase in the defense budget.

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Get Ready for the Next Security Nightmare: Medical Devices

Fri, 03 Mar 2017 08:59:10 -0000

Hacked medical devices have made scary headlines for years now. Dick Cheney ordered changes to his pacemaker to better protect it from hackers. Johnson & Johnson warned customers about a security bug in one of its insulin pumps last fall. And St. Jude has spent months dealing with the fallout of vulnerabilities in some of the company’s defibrillators, pacemakers, and other medical electronics. You’d think by now medical device companies would have learned something about security reform.

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The Curse of the Bahia Emerald, a Giant Green Rock That Ruins Lives

Thu, 02 Mar 2017 19:44:47 -0000

Right now, in a vault controlled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, there sits a 752-pound emerald with no rightful owner. This gem is the size of a minifridge. It weighs as much as two sumo wrestlers. Estimates of its worth range from a hundred bucks to $925 million. Eight years ago the emerald was logged into evidence by detectives Scott Miller and Mark Gayman of the Sheriff’s Major Crimes Bureau. The two men are longtime veterans: 30 years for Miller, 28 for Gayman.

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