Get in-depth coverage of current and future trends in technology, and how they are shaping business, entertainment, communications, science, politics, and society.
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
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. Learn about your ad choices:...
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail...
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. Learn about your a...
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
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. Learn about...
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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. Learn about your ad choices: ...
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
“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. Learn about your ad choices...
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
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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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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. Learn ...
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
