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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Sep 19, 2017•9 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Sep 18, 2017•7 min
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. Learn about your ad ch...
Sep 15, 2017•4 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Sep 14, 2017•6 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Sep 13, 2017•8 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Sep 12, 2017•9 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Sep 11, 2017•5 min
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. Learn abo...
Sep 08, 2017•10 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Sep 07, 2017•10 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-cho...
Sep 06, 2017•18 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Sep 05, 2017•12 min
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. Learn about you...
Sep 04, 2017•8 min
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. Learn about your ad ch...
Sep 01, 2017•8 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Aug 31, 2017•5 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Aug 30, 2017•36 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Aug 29, 2017•5 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Aug 28, 2017•11 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Aug 25, 2017•6 min
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Aug 24, 2017•6 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Aug 23, 2017•6 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dove...
Aug 22, 2017•9 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Aug 21, 2017•10 min
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. Learn about your ad choic...
Aug 18, 2017•5 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Aug 17, 2017•7 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Aug 16, 2017•7 min
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. Learn ...
Aug 15, 2017•10 min
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. Learn about your ad choi...
Aug 14, 2017•8 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Aug 11, 2017•10 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Aug 09, 2017•5 min
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. Learn about your ad choice...
Aug 08, 2017•5 min
