Security, Spoken

Latest Episodes:

Facial Recognition Tech Is Creepy When It Works—And Creepier When It Doesn’t May 11, 2018

Show notes

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 May 10, 2018

Show notes

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 May 08, 2018

Show notes

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 May 07, 2018

Show notes

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 May 07, 2018

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Change Your Twitter Password Right Now May 04, 2018

Show notes

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 May 04, 2018

Show notes

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 May 03, 2018

Show notes

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 May 03, 2018

Show notes

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 May 02, 2018

Show notes

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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