Month: October 2018
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Cybersecurity Roundup
Originally published on Patreon. This week, Hackaday profiles the guy behind “Hollywood hacker” simulations, Apple seems to have killed GrayKey, Hacking Team and Silicon Valley’s shared investors, Mirai botnet and Yahoo hack punishments (finally), a scary privacy fight erupts behind Google’s “smart cities” experiment, and more. *Hacker voice* “I’m in” The wonderful, invaluable blog Hackaday… Read more…
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With Khashoggi, tech confronts its blood money
Originally published in Engadget. An ugly episode of “follow the money.” 1 / 4 Illustration by Koren Shadmi In 2015 we laughed at Hacking Team for getting hacked. Their profit-driven facilitation of human rights abuses around the world was somehow barely competent, but notorious. They sold illegal hackware and surveillance tech to brutal regimes and… Read more…
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Cybersecurity Roundup
Originally published on Patreon. This week, Bloomberg’s China-chip story is high on reanimation fluid; hackers pop, deface the Saudi investment forum website with links to Trump videos; Experian is just the worst; Ajit Pai screwed Florida hurricane victims; FBI scrambles to chase midterms hack attacks, and much more. Schrödinger’s hack It’s clearly Halloween time because… Read more…
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Uber, Google, Facebook: Your experiments have gone too far
Originally published in Engadget. Aren’t there, like, laws about testing on animals? 1 / 4 Illustration by Koren Shadmi It was 2014, around the time when Travis Kalanick referred to Uber as his chick-magnet "Boober" in a GQ article, that I'd realized congestion in San Francisco had gone insane. Before there was Uber, getting across… Read more…
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Cybersecurity Roundup
Originally published on Patreon. This week we’re wondering what’s up with the voter database sales story, the aftermath of Facebook’s really bad breach is coming out, “Donald Daters” MAGA dating site has little-to-no security, NSA officials ask for public help verifying the Bloomberg story, shady PlayStation account pwns and sales, a “computer whiz” bank account… Read more…
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Goodbye Google+, you beautiful, squandered opportunity
Originally published in Engadget. We’re all more ready for a “Facebook killer” than ever. 1 / 4 Illustration by Koren Shadmi When Google+ launched in 2011, people were already fed up with Facebook — and Google was still cool. After Plus' closed invite garnered significant consumer desire, everyone's hopeful "Facebook killer" nabbed a sweet 300… Read more…
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Cybersecurity Roundup
Originally published on Patreon. This past week, Bloomberg Business angers everyone, Google shuts down Plus over API access excess, Tesla decides to play nice with hackers, Phantom Secure goes down hard, Russians tried to hack Serena Williams so now I’m really mad, and much more. You get a facepalm, and you get a facepalm… We… Read more…
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Facebook’s two-factor ad practices give middle finger to infosec
Originally published in Engadget. Using our security information for commercial purposes ought to be illegal. 1 / 8 Illustration by Koren Shadmi We've all encountered security questions asking where we went to school, our favorite color or food, our first concert, and the ubiquitous "mother's maiden name." Imagine a world where on one screen you… Read more…
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Cybersecurity Roundup
Originally published on Patreon. While we were all trying to pay attention to everything last week, a lot of stories slipped by. In this roundup, we’ve got early analysis on Facebook’s massive breach, harrowing results from the DEF CON Voting Village report, feds used FaceID to open a suspect’s phone, Seattle has a swatting-prevention service,… Read more…