Security, Spoken

As the world watched highly skilled hackers take down power grids in Ukraine twice in two years, cybersecurity analysts reached the growing consensus that Russian hackers may be using the country as a testing ground for attacks they'll someday try on the United States. On Thursday, when news emerged that hackers have indeed been targeting American power plants—including a Kansas nuclear facility—it seemed possible that day had arrived. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

North Korea's successful test of its first intercontinental ballistic missile carries grave geopolitical implications for a vast swath of the world. Although such an achievement seemed improbable not long ago, it was all but inevitable. The Hermit Kingdom tested its first nuclear bomb in 2006 and has spent the past decade steadily improving the rockets needed to lob one at its enemies. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

“Lordy, I hope there are tapes,” said an exasperated James Comey in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8. Comey’s desire reflects a familiar one for individuals accused of lying when the stakes are high. The former FBI director wished for tapes because, in our society, audio and video recordings serve as a final arbiter of truth. He said, she said always loses to what the tape shows. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When a piece of unprecedented malicious software rampages through thousands of critical networks around the world, it tends to get our full attention. And this week's digital plague, known as Petya (or NotPetya or Nyetya) proved especially vicious. It paralyzed thousands of computers, including those of Ukrainian government agencies, transportation infrastructure, and companies, as well as international targets including Danish shipping firm Maersk and US pharmaceutical giant Merck. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The private ballot is tradition in the United States. Now, President Trump’s voter fraud commission wants to collect every American’s voting history and make it available to the public—all in the name of “election integrity. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When a ransomware outbreak exploded from Ukraine across Europe yesterday, disrupting companies, government agencies, and critical infrastructure, it at first appeared to be just another profit-focused cybercriminal scheme---albeit a particularly vicious and damaging one. But its origins in Ukraine raised deeper questions: After all, shadowy hackers have waged a cyberwar there for years, likely at Russia's bidding. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When law enforcement argues it needs a “backdoor” into encryption services, the counterargument has typically been that it would be impossible to limit such access to one person or organization. If you leave a key under the doormat, a seminal 2015 paper argues, a burglar eventually find its. And now recent events suggest an even simpler rebuttal: Why entrust a key to someone who gets robbed frequently? This aptly describe US intelligence services of late. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

How many people specifically know where you are right now? Some friends and family? Your coworkers, maybe? If you're using a Windows laptop or PC you could add another group to the list: the CIA. New documents released on Wednesday as part of WikiLeaks' series of CIA hacking revelations detail a method the agency uses to geolocate computers, and the people using them. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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It’s almost showtime in Washington, DC. On Thursday, former FBI director James Comey will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee for the first time since he was fired in the midst of an ongoing investigation into a possible connection between Trump campaign officials and Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Comey’s opening remarks, already public, set the stage for an explosive hearing. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

British Prime Minister Theresa May has found somethingto blame for Saturday night’s terror attack in London: the internet. May, responding to the attack by three young men who killed seven people and injured scores more, called for an end to the “safe spaces” that the internet provides, and for measures to “regulate cyberspace.” “We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

With a tweet Wednesday morning, President Trump announced his pick to replace James Comey as FBI director. Should the Senate confirm him, Christopher Wray will step into the job amid the controversial firing of his predecessor, and the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate that incident, as well as the larger swirling questions around Trump and Russia’s meddling with the 2016 election. It’s no small task. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Adware that infects your computer to display annoying pop-ups is an annoyance. But when it infects as many as one five networks in the world, and hides the capability to do far more serious damage to its victims, it’s an epidemic waiting to happen. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For the first time in too long, a week went by without any major international security incidents (unless you count the US withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, which you probably should). Perhaps unsurprisingly, that meant there was also time to look at defensive measures for a change. For instance! The US successfully tested its very expensive, not entirely reliable missile defense system, but that doesn't mean we'd be safe from a real-world attack. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Two telepresence robots roll into a human-computer interaction conference. Sounds like the beginning of a very nerdy joke, but it really happened (#2017). A few weeks ago in Denver, Colorado, a robot I was piloting over the internet from my computer in Idaho stood wheel-to-wheel with a similar ‘bot in a pink skirt controlled by a researcher in Germany. We huddled. We introduced ourselves by yelling at each other’s screens. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Vladimir Putin conceded on Thursday that maybe, just maybe, “patriotic” citizen-hackers from Russia could interfere in the democratic processes of other countries. Atacit acknowledgement of interference in the US election? An unsubtle mockingof the US following rescinded sanctions? Could be! Mostly, though, you can consider this just another page fromPutin’s playbook of misdirection. “Hackers are free people like artists,” Putin saidat the St. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

At the beginning of May, a phishing scam flooded the web, disguised as a typical Google Docs request. Some of the emails even appeared to come from acquaintances. If victims clicked through and granted seemingly innocuous permissions, they exposed their entire Gmail account to whoever was behind the scam. It was an explosive scheme. And Google responded in kind. “We convened what we call a war room,” says Mark Risher, Google’s director of counter-abuse technology. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The United States successfully tested its interceptor missile defense system on Tuesday, essentially shooting an incoming missile out of the sky. An impressive technological feat to be sure, one the Pentagon likens to hitting a bullet with another bullet. But as proof that such a system could defend the US against a North Korean attack, it still misses the mark. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Now that the generalized Pokémon Go craze has subsided, the more captivating effort to catch ‘em all may be game developer Niantic’s ongoing battle against cheaters. Its latest evolution: Not banning bad actors, but banishing them to poké-purgatory. As detailed by Pokémon Go enthusiast subreddit The Silph Road, a recent Pokémon Go update targets players who use bots to trawl the globe for valuable Pokémon. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

You’re using strong and unique passwords. You’re on the lookout for phishing emails. And you’ve set up two-factor authentication on every account that offers it. Basically, you’re acing Personal Cybersecurity 101. But with new threats popping up all the time, you may be looking for other proactive steps you can take to protect yourself. Here’s an easy one: Clean up your digital junk. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Over the last few months, the US and other countries have seen an uptick in border searchers—including those of smartphones and laptops. There are several precautions you can take to defend your privacy, the most recent of which is a clever new feature from password-manager 1Password. But while it could secure your digital stuff, it could also introduce new risks. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Since the WannaCry ransomware ripped through the internet late last week, infecting hundreds of thousands of machines and locking up critical systems from healthcare to transportation, cryptographers have searched for a cure. Finding a flaw in WannaCry’s encryption scheme, after all, the could decrypt all those systems without any ransom. Now one French researcher says he’s foundat least a hint of a very limited remedy. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Monday night, a suicide bomber took the lives of at least 22 people—including an 8-year-old girl—at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England. Almost instantly, images and video of the devastating attack overtook Twitter timelines and Facebook News Feeds. As natural and understandable a response to horrific events that might be, it also threatens to amplify the chaos that terrorists intend. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Over the past year, two digital disasters have rocked the internet. The botnet known as Mirai knocked a swath of major sites off the web last September, including Spotify, Reddit, and the New York Times. And over the past week, the WannaCry ransomware outbreak crippled systems ranging from healthcare to transportation in 150 countries before it an unlikely “kill-switch” in its code shut it down. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For anyone growing weary of the constant focus on Russian and President Donald Trump's campaign, good news! A fresh horror took the spotlight late last week in the form of WannaCry, a vicious ransomware whose creators appear not to have been all that smart. WannaCry, we learned, features a built-in "kill switch" that security researchers have used to, well, kill it, at least for now. Some people on XP and Windows 7 might even be able to get their files back. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, Disney CEO Bob Iger reportedly revealed to employees that a hacker had stolen the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and threatened to release it if the Mouse House doesn’t pay a hefty ransom. But Disney, which has enlisted the FBI’s help, says it won’t pay to keep its billion-dollar franchise under wraps. It’s just the latest in a string of high-profile extortion hacks that didn’t pan out. A few weeks ago, Netflix faced a similar threat. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Today, Chelsea Manning walked out of the military prison that held her for seven years, and into a world largely remade by her actions. “Whatever is ahead of me is far more important than the past. I’m figuring things out right now—which is exciting, awkward, fun, and all new for me,” she said in a statement through her ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio. Manning marked the occasion with a photo of her first steps of freedom on Instagram, an app that launched in 2010. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On October 19, 1973, Nick Akerman and his fellow Watergate investigators began hoarding whatever documents they could from the office of the special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. They knew that the next day, Cox planned to disobey President Richard Nixon and announce before a clutch of reporters at the National Press Club that he would pursue taped recordings from inside the Oval Office; they also knew that in doing so, Cox was risking his job and the fate of the investigation. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

As a vicious new strain of ransomware swept the UK’s National Health Service yesterday, shutting off services at hospitals and clinics throughout the region, experts cautioned that the best protection was to download a patch Microsoft had issued in March. The only problem? A reported 90 percent of NHS systems run Windows XP, an operating system Microsoft first introduced in 2001, and hasn’t supported since 2014. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

There are no quiet weeks in security these days, but the firing of FBI Director James Comey made this one particularly loud. President Trump's controversial dismissal won't slow down the investigation into his campaign's alleged ties with Russia, and it occurred with no apparent replacement lined up. And that's just for starters. Those worried about whether Comey's files are safe can rest easy—it's not like they were in a cardboard box. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On Friday night, security researcher Tavis Ormandy of Google’s Project Zero announced on Twitter that he had found a Windows bug. Well, not just any bug. It was “crazy bad,” Ormandy wrote. “The worst Windows remote code exec in recent memory.” By Monday night, Microsoft had released an emergency patch, along with details of what the vulnerability entailed. And yes, it was every bit as scary as advertised. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

After a hacked US election covered in Russian fingerprints, it's easy to assume that Friday's megaleak of emails from France's president-elect Emmanuel Macron was the Kremlin's work, too. Russia, after all, has the motive, the means, and a very fresh track record of meddling in Western elections to sabotage center-left candidates. But this latest breach, for now, lacks conclusive fingerprints-and what few clues there are have only added to the confusion. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Congratulations! You've gotten through the week of the Google Docs phishing ploy that rocked the world, or at least a vocal corner of the media. Speaking of speaking out, FBI Director James Comey this week gave his most thorough explanation yet of the election-rocking Clinton investigation letter he gave last fall, though it's unlikely to satisfy critics. Oh, and apps can use your phone's mic to listen for marketing beacons your ears can't hear. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A year after it was first announced, the United States-provided missile defense system meant to guard South Korea is fully operational. The device has sparked controversy and pushback from China, but it’s a powerful symbolic step that should provide some legitimate protection from an increasingly volatile North Korea. It also has some important limitations. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

FBI Director James Comey would like you to travel back in time with him for a minute. It's Friday morning, October 28. The day prior, members of his staff told Comey that they had found thousands of Hillary Clinton's private emails stored on Anthony Weiner's laptop, and needed a warrant to read them, thereby reopening the investigation into the Democratic presidential candidate's use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company will hire 3,000 people to watch for violent footage posted to the site. The decision comes after two horrific videos caught global attention in recent weeks: a man uploaded a video of himself murdering a grandfather in Cleveland, and a man in Thailand hanged his infant and then himself in a Facebook Live video the authorities saw too late. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If you get a Google Doc link in your inbox today, scrutinize it carefully before you click—even if it looks like it comes from someone you trust. A nasty phishing scam that impersonates a Google Docs request has swept the internet today, including a decent chunk of media companies. You’ve heard “think before you click” a million times, but it really could save you from a whole lot of hassle. Google has taken steps to neutralize this particular phish. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Last year, Capt. Sean Ruddy and his team of operator-soldiers from the US Cyber Brigade entered a Locked Shields, a NATO-organized cyber-defense war game that pits teams from dozens of countries against “live-fire” attacks. It was their first time. And of the 19 countries represented, the US finished dead last. This week, they got their shot at redemption. Locked Shields challenges participating countries to show off their defensive prowess, rather than offensive firepower. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It must have seemed like such a good bet, as far as extortion attempts go. Steal one of Netflix’s prized original series months before it’s slated to air, and shake the streaming company down under threat of releasing it. But as season five of Orange Is the New Black‘s recent appearance on torrenting site The Pirate Bay shows, it was a crime destined destined for failure, because it misunderstood how streaming—and the internet at large—works today. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It was a week full of revelations in the security world. A New York Times Uber story revealed that the company got in trouble with Apple over "fingerprinting" iPhones even after users deleted the app. It's a common enough practice, but Uber took it a few steps too far. And speaking of common practices, here's how to check which services have access to your Gmail and Facebook accounts-you might be surprised at how many do. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The new Amazon Echo Look seems like a logical enough extension of Alexa, the company’s AI-powered digital assistant. Previously, Alexa lived inside speakers. Now, it’s in a camera. That progression belies just how much more the Echo Look could know about you than other Alexa hardware does—especially if Amazon ever unleashes the full power of its machine learnings smarts. Amazon envisions the Echo Look as a way to get fashion advice. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Once again Uber finds itself taking heat for questionable business practices. This time the company was using software to identify iPhones even after their owners deleted the Uber app, or even wiped the phones altogether. That technique, known as fingerprinting, isn’t uncommon—and shouldn’t be interpreted as tracking your every move. But Uber’s implementation crossed a line with Apple, in particular because it tried to hide what it was doing. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

No one wants murder videos on Facebook. But no one wants Facebook to censor their baby videos, either. Technology isn’t ready to step in and tell the difference. So what are the legal options for stopping videos like the appalling killing uploaded last week from hitting Facebook? None of them will be easy for Americans to swallow. The country could regulate Facebook like it does traditional broadcasters and media by holding the company accountable for the country it distributes. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The pitch has plenty of appeal: Sign up for our service, and we’ll automatically unsubscribe you from all those pesky email lists. For free! Except, not quite; as it turns out, you end up paying in privacy. That’s just one revelation from a bombshell New York Times look at Uber, which showed how Unroll.me, the service described above, scans the email accounts of its users for information as granular as Lyft receipts to anonymize, package, and sell on the lucrative data market. Unroll. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

As end-to-end encrypted messaging apps have exploded in popularity, several well-known services have added encrypted calls as well. Why not, right? If it works for text-based chat, voice seems like a natural extension. If only it were that easy. Encrypting calls has plenty of value, keeping conversations strictly between the two parties. They can circumvent government wiretaps, or criminal snooping. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices