Cybersecurity
After Edward Snowden exposed the NSA's PRISM program, which involved several top technology companies' cooperation, those companies began disclosing information and demanding permission from the government to be more transparent with their customers. But perhaps the newest revelation wasn't the kind of transparency they wanted.
It's not too hard to slip a bug into Apples iOS walled garden, according to researchers at Georgia Tech, who managed to slip a malicious app into the Apple App Store undetected. The research team's success now calls into question Apple's undisclosed app vetting system.
You used to just have to worry about installing anti-virus software on your computer, and then you were safe (unless you had a Mac, then you were safe from the start). But as malicious hackers have gotten more clever - and, more importantly, as the internet seeps into our daily, physical lives with the emerging "internet of everything" - cybersecurity is going to play an increasing role in our lives. The most recent example is a vulnerable "smart toilet" in Japan. I hope the IT experts are ready for the future.
If you were freaked out by recent reports that the NSA had a program to track users on the internet, you will probably not like to know this: According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, the FBI has hacking tools that can spy on suspects using their smartphone and laptop microphones, among many other tools.
This week in social media, Facebook surprised investors with great returns and growing mobile revenue, Pinterest announced you can opt out of being tracked, and hackers attacked Instagram users with smoothies. Yes, really.
One of the most ubiquitous pieces of cell phone hardware, the SIM card, is vulnerable to a hack attack that could put millions of people at risk for theft and being spied on. Hackers could carry out this attack "within two minutes on a standard computer."
As we get more wearable computing devices and an "internet of things," which all interact with each other, expect hacking to take on a new form, and significance. That's what the company that hacked Google Glass with a QR code believes.
Microsoft, on Tuesday, pressed U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to allow it to publish more information about its involvement in the NSA's PRISM program, while also denying recent assertions that it helped the NSA circumvent encryption on its online services.
More revelations about collaboration between technology and communications companies and U.S. Federal agencies came Thursday from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, this time asserting that Microsoft worked much closer with the FBI and NSA than the company seems to have previously stated.
Google says that it has released a fix to Android phone makers that will squash a big, big bug in the operating system. That huge bug left a massive hole for hackers to turn almost any official app into a Trojan Horse, and it affected nearly every Android smartphone that has been produced in the last four years.
A massive hole in the security of almost all Android systems has been exposed by a small cybersecurity research firm called Bluebox Labs. The bug, if exploited, could give hackers access to almost any Android phone, let them do almost anything with it, and could go unnoticed by the app store, the phone, and the phone's user.
Google has detected a rising number of email-based phishing attacks in the run up to the election in Iran, which are trying, according to the tech giant, "to compromise the accounts of tens of thousands of Iranian users."
CISPA, a cybersecurity bill that opponents say tramples on online privacy, seems doomed to fail after the Senate decided not to consider the bill, and the White House announced President Obama wouldn’t sign it.
An alert went out to Montana television viewers yesterday on the CW channel using the Emergency Alert System. The message told several Montana counties to be on the alert for a zombie invasion.
