Security, Spoken

Latest Episodes:

Security News This Week: Hackers Hit NASA Before the Holidays Dec 24, 2018

Show notes

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 Dec 21, 2018

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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 Dec 21, 2018

Show notes

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 Dec 20, 2018

Show notes

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 Dec 20, 2018

Show notes

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 Dec 19, 2018

Show notes

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 Dec 19, 2018

Show notes

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 Dec 18, 2018

Show notes

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 Dec 18, 2018

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Security News This Week: Taylor Swift's Facial Recognition Scans Crowds for Stalkers Dec 17, 2018

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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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