Security, Spoken

Facebook is refining while Google is designing, but first, a cartoon about when smartphones go rogue. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Want to receive this two-minute roundup as an email every weekday? Sign up here! Today’s Headlines Google is helping design an open source, ultra-secure chip Hackers seem to launch new attacks every day, but a new kind of chip could provide some protection. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Officials around the United States have spent the last three years scrambling to harden election and voting infrastructure against the disinformation campaigns, phishing attacks, and system probing that plagued 2016. With exactly one year to go until the 2020 presidential election, local and state boards of election have made significant progress on improving digital defenses. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When Microsoft revealed last May that millions of Windows devices had a serious hackable flaw known as BlueKeep—one that could enable an automated worm to spread malware from computer to computer—it seemed only a matter of time before someone unleashed a global attack. As predicted, a BlueKeep campaign has finally struck. But so far it's fallen short of the worst case scenario. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nothing motivates me more in acquiring weapons for the Air Force than foreign military threats. Stealth fighters, satellite-guided missiles, and silent submarines were once unique US capabilities; now our troops must face them on future battlefields. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Dr. Will Roper is the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

WhatsApp just took a hard new line against the malware industry, suing notorious Israeli surveillance contractor NSO Group for attacks on more than a thousand of its users. The case could mark a turning point in Silicon Valley's fight against private-sector espionage mercenaries. But before it can convince a court that NSO engaged in criminal hacking, WhatsApp may have to win a thorny legal argument—one that legal experts say could require some creative contortions. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

After months of revelations and apologies, all the major smart assistant makers have revamped how they handle human review of audio snippets. Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri, and Microsoft Cortana were all using third-party contractors to transcribe and vet recorded snippets, adding some human brain power to underlying machine learning algorithms. But the backlash over the lack of transparency spurred new customer controls. And with the release of Apple's iOS 13. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Ransomware has steadily become one of the most pervasive cyberattacks in the world. And while high-profile global meltdowns like 2017’s NotPetya strain garner the most attention, localized attacks have devastating consequences as well. Look no further than the cities of Atlanta and Baltimore, whose online operations ground to a halt after ransomware takeovers. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Russia's state-sponsored hackers have a few predictable fixations: NATO-country embassies. Hillary Clinton. Ukraine. But a less expected target has somehow remained in their sights for more than three years: the Olympics—and specifically anyone who would dare to accuse Russian athletes of cheating. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

TikTok, the app that revolves around sharing short video clips, is in a unique position. It’s arguably the first international social media platform to have built a massive audience in the United States, where it’s been downloaded more than 110 million times since its founding in 2017. TikTok has offices in California near competitors like Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube, but it’s owned by ByteDance, a Chinese tech giant. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When you think of online security, hopefully by now two-factor authentication springs to mind. WIRED certainly pushes the feature every chance we get. And for good reason! It's a solid protection against common web attacks like phishing and credential stuffing. But when Chris Coyne and Max Krohn, who previously cofounded OKCupid, launched their own digital identity and encrypted chat platform in 2014, they decided against using 2FA at all. Which is less radical than it sounds. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In March, police in an Atlanta suburb embarked on a surveillance experiment they hoped would reduce crime in the area. Along public roads near the local Six Flags amusement park, officers from the Cobb County Police Department installed 13 solar-powered automatic license plate readers from Flock Safety, an Atlanta-based startup on a mission to “eliminate non-violent crime. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Politicians are bickering and NASA is tinkering, but first: a cartoon tackling the problem of robot discrimination. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It should go without saying: Don’t round up a bunch of your buddies and jostle your way into a highly secured government facility uninvited. But that's exactly what a group of Republican congressmen proudly did this morning. “BREAKING,” representative Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) tweeted at 11:32 am, “I led over 30 of my colleagues into the SCIF where Adam Schiff is holding secret impeachment depositions. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The security community generally agrees on the importance of encrypting private data: Add a passcode to your smartphone. Use a secure messaging app like Signal. Adopt HTTPS web encryption. But a new movement to encrypt a fundamental internet mechanism, promoted by browser heavyweights like Google Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox, has sparked a heated controversy. The changes center around the Domain Name System, a decentralized directory that acts essentially as the internet's address book. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The first thing you should read about cybersecurity this week, if you somehow haven't already, is this in-depth look at Olympic Destroyer, the malware that plagued the Pyeongchang Olympics. An excerpt from WIRED senior writer Andy Greenberg's upcoming book Sandworm, the feature from our November issue details how investigators figured out who was behind the attack—a trickier puzzle to solve than you might think. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Posting an update to Instagram doesn't have to mean sharing your life with every single person you've befriended there. In fact, all of the major social apps give you more granular control than you might realize. If you want to set up a private, select group of people to show off photos of your baby to—or to keep your most raucous nights out a secret from—you can do so without resorting to emails or group chats. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Deception has always been part of the hacker playbook. But it's one thing for intruders to hide their tracks, and another to adopt an invented identity, or even frame another country for a cyberattack. Russia's hackers have done all of the above, and now gone one step further: In a series of espionage cases, they hijacked another country's hacking infrastructure, and used it to spy on victims and deliver malware. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

There are lots of ways to hack a PC. You can exploit software vulnerabilities. You can put malware on a USB drive and drop it in a parking lot for some unsuspecting office worker to pick up and plug in. Or you can turn an operating system's features against itself, strategically manipulating them to gain control. But an expanding threat now has Microsoft rethinking some of its most foundational PC defenses. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On August 12, an unidentified whistle-blower filed a complaint, addressed to the chairs of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, concerning the behavior President Donald Trump. Ever since that report became public a week ago, Trump and his defenders have done their best to discredit both its contents and the author. But underneath the increasingly large pile of misinformation, misinterpretation, and outright fabrication sits one simple truth: The whistle-blower did nothing wrong. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If you looked across the tarmac at the Great Falls, Montana airport in April, you likely would have been surprised to see a fully marked Russian Air Force jet parked nearby. Its mission that week would have been even more puzzling: The unarmed Tupolev Tu-154Mspent four days flying over some of the most sensitive military bases in the United States, including the complex in the Nevada desert known as “Area 51. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A dangerous hacker group resurfaced, Mark Zuckerberg delivered a long-winded defense of Facebook, and Volvo is going green. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Want to receive this two-minute roundup as an email every weekday? Sign up here! Today’s Headlines Stealthy Russian hacker group resurfaces with clever new tricks A band of Kremlin hackers involved in the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee has resurfaced. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Google Project Zero found and reported a flaw in the widely used password manager. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

How do you make blockchain and other transactions truly private? With mathematical models known as zero-knowledge proofs. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Opinion: There’s little data on the effectiveness of mental health reporting laws, and we’re being distracted from measures we know will save lives. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Exposed Facebook phone numbers, an XKCD breach, and more of the week's top security news. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The paper being presented suggested that the two researchers had a method to quickly find large semiprime numbers and essentially break RSA-2048 and any other semiprime-based encryption. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Opinion: A CFPB proposal would create a quandary for consumers. Click and risk a computer virus, or don't click and miss a debt payment. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Central Asian country’s government has repeatedly threatened to monitor its citizens’ internet activities. Google and Mozilla aren’t having it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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Last Thursday, nearly a month after Iran shot a $220 million US drone out of the sky, the US Marine Corps took down an Iranian UAV of its own. But the significance lies less in heightened tensions in the region than it does in the weapon of choice. The strike marks the first reported successful use of the Light Marine Air Defense Integrated System, an energy weapon that blasts not artillery or lasers, but radio signals. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The new app that creeps on your Instagram location, Jakarta is sinking, and all things Comic Con. Fast. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Want to receive this two-minute roundup as an email every weekday? Sign up here! Today's Headlines This app lets your Instagram followers track your location Wherever you go, Instagram's there too. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Europeans had to navigate by the stars this week—well, GPS, but still—after the continent's burgeoning Galileo satellite navigation network went dark for a full seven days. The incident is a warning for everyone of how fallible the infrastructure of our modern lives really is. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When news appeared in May of the security vulnerability in Windows that would come to be known as BlueKeep, security researchers almost immediately cautioned that the flaw looked like the central ingredient for a destructive worm sure to rampage through the internet. Microsoft issued a series of stark warnings to patch the flaw, which persisted in roughly a million computers. Even the NSA took the rare step of noting the bug's severity. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On Zoom conference calls across the US this week, brows furrowed as the news broke that the video conference company had a flaw in its backend that could give hackers access to people’s webcams. Worse, Zoom seemed at first unwilling to fix the problem. Thankfully, hours after the initial reports, Zoom backtracked and issued a new fix to solve underlying vulnerability. You can go back to Zooming your brilliant brainstorms in peace, everyone. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices