Security, Spoken

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How One Woman's Digital Life Was Weaponized Against Her Nov 15, 2017

Show notes

The first time the police arrived on her doorstep, in March of 2015, Courtney Allen was elated. She rushed to the door alongside her dogs, a pair of eager Norwegian elkhounds, to greet them. “Is this about our case?” she asked. The police looked at her in confusion. They didn’t know what case she was talking about. Courtney felt her hope give way to a familiar dread.

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Hackers Say They've Broken Face ID a Week After iPhone X Release Nov 14, 2017

Show notes

When Apple released the iPhone X on November 3, it touched off an immediate race among hackers around the world to be the first to fool the company's futuristic new form of authentication. A week later, hackers on the actual other side of the world claim to have successfully duplicated someone's face to unlock his iPhone X—with what looks like a simpler technique than some security researchers believed possible.

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How Journalists Fought Back Against Crippling Email Bombs Nov 13, 2017

Show notes

It was 10 am on a hot, humid Tuesday in August when I decided I could finally relax. After a frantic weekend of finishing a big story—and typing so much that my forearms tingled—I needed to decompress. I placed my phone on do not disturb, turned on my air conditioner, and blissfully spent an hour contorting myself into various poses on the yoga mat next to my bed.

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Chrome Will Stop Sketchy Sites From Bouncing You to Ads Nov 10, 2017

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You've been there: browsing on a slightly backwater website, crossing your fingers as you click what looks like a video's play button. Instead of the TV show you had queued up, a million pop-ups spew out. The page you were on morphs into a Caribbean timeshare ad. It's the sort of misdirection that Google aptly calls an "unwanted behavior." And on Wednesday, the company's Chrome browser team announced a series of fixes that attempt to block these sketchy shenanigans.

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The Devious Netflix Phish That Just Won't Die Nov 09, 2017

Show notes

The email hits your inbox with an urgent warning: Your Netflix account has been suspended, due to a problem with your billing information. It offers a link, which takes you to what looks very much like a Netflix landing page. It's not. Instead, it's a phishing scam that collects extensive personal data on victims.

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How to Keep Your Bitcoin Safe and Secure Nov 08, 2017

Show notes

Owning cryptocurrency isn't quite the Wild West experience it was at the beginning of the decade, but investors still face plenty of instability and risk. The threats aren't just abstract or theoretical; new scams crop up, and old ones resurge, all the time. Whether it's a fake wallet set up to trick users, a phishing attempt to steal private cryptographic keys, or even fake cryptocurrency schemes, there’s something to watch out for at every turn.

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Net States Rule the World; We Need to Recognize Their Power Nov 07, 2017

Show notes

“We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code.” So declared MIT professorDavid D. Clarkin 1992. Twenty-five years later, this sentiment mirrors the global zeitgeist more than ever. TheAmerican public distrusts governmentin record numbers. Other nation-states disdain the USto world-historical degrees.

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China Tests the Limits of Its US Hacking Truce Nov 06, 2017

Show notes

For the last two years, America's cybersecurity relationship with China has been held up as a triumph of digital diplomacy: Since the two countries signed an agreement not to hack each others' private sector companies for commercial gain in late 2015, that pact has come to represent one of the most effective demonstrations in history of government negotiation to curtail state-sponsored cyberspying.

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Security News This Week: Equifax Was Warned of Vulnerability Months Before Breach Nov 03, 2017

Show notes

This week, some old security threats came back to haunt the internet, a fitting horror trope this close to Halloween. Remember the Mirai botnet that took out the internet for a big chunk of the East Coast and beyond last year? It’s back, sort of. More specifically, a new botnet called Reaper is steadily growing, based on Mirai but with an added trick. It doesn’t just seek out IoT devices with poor password protections; it can actively take advantage of known vulnerabilities.

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North Korea's Plenty Scary Without an Overhyped EMP Threat Nov 02, 2017

Show notes

Angst over a potential electromagnetic pulse attack bubbles up every few months, and it’s easy to understand why. The EMP impact envisioned by people who have studied it closely would be downright apocalyptic: a decimated US power grid, and up to 90 percent of Americans dead within a year. It doesn’t help, either, that North Korea recently invoked the specter of an EMP attack, and seems increasingly like it would have the wherewithal to pull one off.

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