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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-ch...
Mar 07, 2019•7 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Mar 06, 2019•5 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Mar 06, 2019•6 min
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year, voters across the country still waited in hours-long lines to cast their ballots on their precincts’ finicky, outdated voting machines. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Mar 05, 2019•5 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Mar 04, 2019•23 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Mar 04, 2019•6 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Mar 01, 2019•10 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-...
Mar 01, 2019•7 min
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. Learn about ...
Feb 28, 2019•8 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Feb 27, 2019•7 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Feb 27, 2019•7 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Feb 26, 2019•12 min
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. Learn about your ad ch...
Feb 26, 2019•8 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Feb 25, 2019•6 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Feb 25, 2019•12 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Feb 22, 2019•6 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail...
Feb 22, 2019•15 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Feb 21, 2019•4 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Feb 20, 2019•9 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Feb 20, 2019•7 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Feb 19, 2019•5 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Feb 19, 2019•6 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/a...
Feb 18, 2019•7 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Feb 18, 2019•7 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-c...
Feb 15, 2019•7 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Feb 15, 2019•13 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.p...
Feb 14, 2019•5 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Feb 14, 2019•6 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Feb 13, 2019•6 min
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Feb 13, 2019•5 min
