Security, Spoken

It’s never been easier to trade stocks; just a few taps or clicks will do the trick. But most of the platforms that millions of market participants rely on to move their money suffer from cybersecurity shortcomings, new research warns. As if stocks weren’t risky enough already. A new report from Alejandro Hernández, a security consultant at IOActive, found that nearly all of the 40 major online tr...

On Saturday, as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro gave a speech in Caracas before a large military assemblage, drones carrying explosives approached, detonating near the stage. While Maduro was unharmed, Venezuelan information minister Jorge Rodriguez said that the attack injured seven soldiers. It's a method of assault that only a few years ago felt unthinkable, but has quickly become inevitabl...

Ankle monitors are trending these days: Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and former Donald Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort are under the electronic tether, and last month, in the wake of outrage over immigration officials separating families at the border, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement began monitoring migrant parents electronically rather than keeping them incarcerated in detention center...

You might not be shocked that this week began with big news about a coordinated misinformation campaign on Facebook. But in a twist on the usual narrative, Facebook welcomed the media reports, calling a press conference to reveal that it had removed 35 fake accounts. The rare proactive step was a clear attempt to show the media and Congress that Facebook is tackling misinformation head in the runu...

Accessing the internet isn't normally a problem when you're inside the confines of your own home—it's secure, it's easy to connect to, and it's relatively uncongested—unless the whole family is streaming Netflix on five separate devices. When you venture out though, it's a different story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As the threat of cyberattacks on the United States launched by foreign adversaries grows, the federal government has been slow to respond. But changes announced Tuesday at the Department of Homeland Security, along with a new bipartisan bill aimed at shoring up DHS cybersecurity initiatives, could give newfound purpose to defenses against critical infrastructure hacking. Learn more about your ad c...

Reddit said in a blog post Wednesday that a hacker broke into the company's systems in June and gained access to a variety of data, including user emails, source code and internal files, and “all Reddit data from 2007 and before.” And it likely could have been avoided if some Reddit employees were using two-factor authentication apps or physical keys instead of their phone numbers. Learn more abou...

Voting systems in the United States are so woefully hackable, an eight-year-old could do it. At least, that’s the conceit of a competition co-sponsored by the Democratic National Committee at next week’s Def Con hacker conference in Las Vegas. The contest will include children, ages eight to 16, who will be tasked with penetrating replicas of the websites that secretaries of state across the count...

The Fin7 hacking group has leeched, by at least one estimate, well over a billion dollars from companies around the world. In the United States alone, Fin7 has stolen more than 15 million credit card numbers from over 3,600 business locations. On Wednesday, the Justice Department revealed that it had arrested three alleged members of the group—and even more important, detailed how it operates. Lea...

A belated legal scramble to stop public access to 3-D printed gun blueprints has succeeded, at least for now. Late Tuesday, a federal judge granted a temporary nationwide injunction against Defense Distributed from making its designs available online. Several hours after the ruling, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson has finally complied. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices...

For the last half decade, 3-D printed pistols and metal-milled "ghost guns" have only rarely caught the attention of lawmakers, and have barely registered in the mainstream of America's gun control debate. But now, a controversial legal settlement may have unlocked a new era of digitally fabricated, DIY guns. It's also unleashed a political backlash unlike anything seen in the five years since the...

Facebook has taken down 32 fake pages and accounts that it says were involved in coordinated campaigns on both Facebook and Instagram. Though the company has not yet attributed the accounts to any group, it says the campaign does bear some resemblance to the propaganda campaign run by Russia's Internet Research Agency in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Facebook is now working with la...

Imagine you're a human rights activist, pulling up to a border crossing. The on-duty customs agent requests that you hand over your phone and unlock it, without a warrant—an increasingly common practice for US Customs and Border Protection. Your phone holds sensitive photographs documenting abuses abroad, but the agent can't find them. At most, he might notice that you've deleted some files recent...

Until yesterday, unless you had a family member or friend inside prison, you most likely had never heard of JPay. That’s because all of its services are directed towards people inside the nation’s prisons—and their family members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon touts its Rekognition facial recognition system as “simple and easy to use,” encouraging customers to “detect, analyze, and compare faces for a wide variety of user verification, people counting, and public safety use cases.” And yet, in a study released Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union, the technology managed to confuse photos of 28 members of Congress with publicly available...

Several weeks ago, my friend Jeff signed up for an online Twitter application that promised to delete his old tweets. It was advertised merely as a simple way to clear your online presence, but after Jeff used it, he noticed that his account began retweeting spam. Out of an abundance of caution, he deleted his Twitter account entirely. On Tuesday, Twitter announced steps it was taking to curb this...

A year ago this week, the credit bureau Equifax saw signs of a problem on its network of a problem. A really big problem. Hackers had entered the company’s network, stealing the personal and financial data of more than 147 million people in the United States, including Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses, and some driver's license numbers and credit card numbers. Learn more abo...

Nearly two years ago, Google made a pledge: It would name and shame websites with unencrypted connections, a strategy designed to spur web developers to embrace HTTPS encryption. On Tuesday, it finally follows through. With the launch of Chrome 68, Google will now call out sites with unencrypted connections as “Not Secure” in the URL bar. The move flips the convention of how Chrome displays the se...

On Saturday, in response to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by several news outlets and conservative group Judicial Watch, the Justice Department took the unprecedented step of releasing the (heavily redacted) application to wiretap former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. In a series of eight tweets fired off over the next two days, Trump reveled in the document, declaring it evidence...

This week started with a controversial, widely derided meeting between President Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and ended with… an invite for round two! And yes, all manner of craziness managed to happen in between. That includes yet more denials on Trump’s part that Russia interfered—and continues to—with US democracy, a stance that has serious repercussions, however many times he walks...

Hopefully by now you’ve heeded the repeated warnings from your friends and loved ones (and friendly, beloved internet writers) to use two-factor authentication to secure your digital accounts. That’s where access to Facebook or Twitter or your online bank—anything that supports it, really—requires not just a password but also a special code. Not all two-factor is created equal, however. For better...

With primaries underway and less than four months to go until this year's midterm elections, early signs of attack have already arrived—just as the US intelligence community warned. And yet Congress has still not done everything in its power to defend against them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump appeared to downplay Russia’s efforts to interfere with US democracy for a third time this week. The first had come during a joint press conference with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, a 45-minute exercise in kowtowing to a hostile foreign leader. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Perhaps one of the most surprising parts of Monday's jaw-dropping joint press conference between United States President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin is that it compelled a Democratic and a Republican member of Congress to admit, in front of a room full of press and international lawmakers, that they actually agree with each other. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podca...

Amazon Web Services is the world's biggest cloud provider. As a result, its security directly influences that of countless websites and online services. And those concerns aren't just theoretical; dangerous lapses happen all the time. Customers store all sorts of datasets and raw information in AWS repositories, which then become part of their own infrastructure. Learn more about your ad choices....