Security, Spoken
2,086 episodes — Page 5 of 42
A Controversial Plan to Scan Private Messages for Child Abuse Meets Fresh Scandal
An EU government body is pushing a proposal to combat child sexual abuse material that has significant privacy implications. Its lead advocate is making things even messier.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Google Steps Up Its Push to Kill the Password
Google is making passkeys, the emerging passwordless login technology, the default option for users as it moves to make passwords “obsolete.”Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Citing Hamas, the US Wants to Officially Treat Crypto Anonymity Services as Suspected Money Launderers
With a new emphasis on the Hamas attacks on Israel, the US Treasury has proposed designating foreign cryptocurrency “mixer” services as money launderers and national security threats.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Insiders Say X’s Crowdsourced Anti-Disinformation Tool Is Making the Problem Worse
X is promoting Community Notes to solve its disinformation problems, but some former employees and people who currently contribute notes say it’s not fit for that purpose.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Rumors of a ‘Global Day of Jihad’ Have Unleashed a Dangerous Wave of Disinformation
The rapid spread of violent videos and photos, combined with a toxic stew of mis- and disinformation, now threatens to spill over into real-world violence.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
They Supported Air Strike Victims. Then They Were Doxed and Arrested
Myanmar’s military junta is increasing surveillance and violating basic human rights. The combination of physical and digital surveillance is reaching dangerous new levels.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Deepfake Porn Is Out of Control
New research shows the number of deepfake videos is skyrocketing—and the world's biggest search engines are funneling clicks to dozens of sites dedicated to the nonconsensual fakes.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A New Protocol Vulnerability Will Haunt the Web for Years
Dubbed “HTTP/2 Rapid Reset,” the flaw requires making patches available for virtually every web server around the world before the problem can be eradicated.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How the FTX Thieves Have Tried to Launder Their $400 Million Haul
Whoever looted FTX on the day of its bankruptcy has now moved the stolen money through a long string of intermediaries—including a service owned by FTX itself.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The UN Risks Normalizing Internet Censorship
The United Nations' top internet governance body will allegedly host its next two annual meetings in countries known for repressive internet policies and human rights abuses.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Elon Musk Is Personally Undermining X’s Efforts to Curb Disinformation on the Israel-Hamas War
X's Trust and Safety team says it's working to remove false information related to the Israel-Hamas war. Meanwhile, Elon Musk is sharing conspiracies and chatting with QAnon promoters.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
23andMe User Data Stolen in Targeted Attack on Ashkenazi Jews
At least a million data points from 23andMe accounts appear to have been exposed on BreachForums. While the scale of the campaign is unknown, 23andMe says it's working to verify the data.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Slovakia’s Election Deepfakes Show AI Is a Danger to Democracy
Fact-checkers scrambled to deal with faked audio recordings released days before a tight election, in a warning for other countries with looming votes.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Your Cheap Android TV Streaming Box May Have a Dangerous Backdoor
New research has found that some streaming devices and dozens of Android and iOS apps are secretly being used for fraud and other cybercrime.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How to Stop Google Bard From Storing Your Data and Location
Checking out this AI chatbot's new features? Make sure to keep these privacy tips in mind during your interactions.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Biggest Hack of 2023 Keeps Getting Bigger
Victims of the MOVEit breach continue to come forward. But the full scale of the attack is still unknown.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How to Tell When Your Phone Will Stop Getting Security Updates
Every smartphone has an expiration date. Here’s when yours will probably come.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Maker of ShotSpotter Is Buying the World’s Most Infamous Predictive Policing Tech
SoundThinking is purchasing parts of Geolitica, the company that created PredPol. Experts say the acquisition marks a new era of companies dictating how police operate.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
US Justice Department Urged to Investigate Gunshot Detector Purchases
A civil liberties group has asked the DOJ to investigate deployment of the ShotSpotter gunfire-detection system, which research shows is often installed in predominantly Black neighborhoods.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Extremely Online Republicans Are Provoking a US Government Shutdown
Egged on by a far-reaching conservative media ecosystem, right-wing hardliners are forcing Washington to bend to their reality as the federal government careens toward a possible shutdown.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Tricky New Way to Sneak Past Repressive Internet Censorship
With the number of internet blackouts on the rise, cybersecurity firm eQualitie figured out how to hide censored online news in satellite TV signals.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Your Boss’s Spyware Could Train AI to Replace You
Corporations are using software to monitor employees on a large scale. Some experts fear the data these tools collect could be used to automate people out of their jobs.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
US and UK Mount Aggressive Crackdown on Trickbot and Conti Ransomware Gangs
Authorities sanctioned 11 alleged members of the cybercriminal groups, while the US Justice Department unsealed three federal indictments against nine people accused of being members.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Chinese Spies Infected Dozens of Networks With Thumb Drive Malware
Security researchers found USB-based Sogu espionage malware spreading within African operations of European and US firms.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Massive MGM and Caesars Hacks Epitomize a Vicious Ransomware Cycle
Cyberattacks on casinos grab attention, but a steady stream of less publicized attacks leave vulnerable victims struggling to recover.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The US Congress Has Trust Issues. Generative AI Is Making It Worse
Senators met with Silicon Valley's elite to learn how to deal with AI. But can Congress tackle the rapidly emerging tech before working on itself?Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Top US Spies Meet With Privacy Experts Over Surveillance 'Crown Jewel'
Civil rights groups say efforts to get US intelligence agencies to adopt privacy reforms have largely failed. Without those changes, renewal of a post-911 surveillance policy may be doomed.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The International Criminal Court Will Now Prosecute Cyberwar Crimes
And the first case on the docket may well be Russia's cyberattacks against civilian critical infrastructure in Ukraine.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
China-Linked Hackers Breached a Power Grid—Again
Signs suggest the culprits worked within a notorious Chinese hacker group that may have also hacked Indian electric utilities years earlier.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Comedy of Errors That Let China-Backed Hackers Steal Microsoft’s Signing Key
After leaving many questions unanswered, a new post mortem from Microsoft explains the series of slip-ups that allowed attackers to steal and abuse a valuable cryptographic key.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How China Demands Tech Firms Reveal Hackable Flaws in Their Products
Some foreign companies may be complying—potentially offering China’s spies hints for hacking their customers.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Generative AI’s Biggest Security Flaw Is Not Easy to Fix
Chatbots like Open AI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard are vulnerable to indirect prompt injection attacks. Security researchers say the holes can be plugged—sort of.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Strange Afterlife of Wagner’s Yevgeny Prigozhin
Posts praising the Wagner Group boss following his death in a mysterious plane crash last month indicate he was still in control of his "troll farm," researchers claim.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How to Use Proton Sentinel to Keep Your Accounts Safe
If you want the highest possible level of protection, this is it.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Apple's Decision to Kill Its CSAM Photo-Scanning Tool Sparks Fresh Controversy
Child safety group Heat Initiative plans to launch a campaign pressing Apple on child sexual abuse material scanning and user reporting. The company issued a rare, detailed response on Thursday.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Nvidia Chip Shortages Leave AI Startups Scrambling for Computing Power
Trimming profits, delaying launches, begging friends. Companies are going to extreme lengths to make do with shortages of GPUs, the chips at the heart of generative AI programs.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Low-Stakes Race to Crack an Encrypted German U-Boat Message
A ramshackle team of American scientists scrambled to decode the Nazi cipher before the time ran out. Luckily, they had a secret weapon.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Weird, Big-Money World of Cybercrime Writing Contests
The competitions, which are held on Russian-language cybercrime forums, offer prize money of up to $80,000 for the winners.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Cheap Radio Hack That Disrupted Poland's Railway System
The sabotage of more than 20 trains in Poland by apparent supporters of Russia was carried out with a simple “radio-stop” command anyone could broadcast with $30 in equipment.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Last Hour of Prigozhin’s Plane
Russia tightly controls its information space—making it hard to get accurate information out of the country. But open source data provides some clues about the crash.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Chatbots Got Big—and Their Ethical Red Flags Got Bigger
Researchers have spent years warning that text-generation algorithms can spew bias and falsehoods. Tech giants are rushing them into products anyway.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Internet Is Turning Into a Data Black Box. An ‘Inspectability API’ Could Crack It Open
Unlike web browsers, mobile apps increasingly make it difficult or impossible to see what companies are really doing with your data. The answer? An inspectability API.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A New Supply Chain Attack Hit Close to 100 Victims—and Clues Point to China
The hackers, who mostly targeted victims in Hong Kong, also hijacked Microsoft’s trust model to make their malware harder to detect.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Google's New Feature Ensures Your Pixel Phone Hasn't Been Hacked. Here’s How It Works
Pixel Binary Transparency is the latest security benefit for Pixel owners.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Huge Scam Targeting Kids With Roblox and Fortnite ‘Offers’ Has Been Hiding in Plain Sight
The wide-ranging scams, often disguised as game promotions, can all be linked back to one network.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Plan to Better Protect US Hospitals From Ransomware
An innovation agency within the US Department of Health and Human Services will fund research into better defenses for the US health care system’s digital infrastructure.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Clever Honeypot Tricked Hackers Into Revealing Their Secrets
Security researchers set up a remote machine and recorded every move cybercriminals made—including their login details.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
An Apple Malware-Flagging Tool Is ‘Trivially’ Easy to Bypass
The macOS Background Task Manager tool is supposed to spot potentially malicious software on your machine. But at Defcon, a researcher says it has troubling flaws.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Teens Hacked Boston Subway Cards to Get Infinite Free Rides—and This Time, Nobody Got Sued
In 2008, Boston’s transit authority sued to stop MIT hackers from presenting at the Defcon hacker conference on how to get free subway rides. Today, four teens picked up where they left off. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Panasonic Warns That Internet-of-Things Malware Attack Cycles Are Accelerating
The legacy electronics manufacturer is creating IoT honeypots with its products to catch real-world threats and patch vulnerabilities in-house.Read this story here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices