Security, Spoken

A tense weekend of brinksmanship between the United States and North Korea culminated in a failed missile test from the reclusive dictatorship. And while the busted launch does highlight the country’s long-term commitment to advancing its warfare capabilities, it also shouldn’t cause undo alarm. In fact, it was something close to routine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/...

Phishing attacks can make even crusading technovangelists paranoid. One wrong click can put you out a ton of cash, or cause a corporate breach. And they evolve constantly. Case in point: A cunning new exploit makes malicious phishing websites appear to have the sameURL asknown and trusted destinations. You knowby now to check your browser while visitinga site to besure it sportsthelittle green pad...

National security experts and North Korea watchers say the reclusive countrymay test a nuclear bomb on Saturday, the ‘Day of the Sun’ holiday that marks the birthday of national father Kim Il-sung. The Hermit Kingdom’s recent saber-rattling prompted the United States to dispatch the Vinson carrier group as a show of force, and President Trump has not ruled out a pre-emptive strike. Learn more abou...

It feels like all weeks in security news are overstuffed lately, and this one's no exception. It started with a bang, or more of a blare, as all of Dallas's dozens of tornado sirens were hacked to sound off at once. And it ended with a boom, as the US dropped the Moab ('Mother of All Bombs,' colloquially), a 22,600 pound bomb, for the first time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoi...

When the US dropped a 22,600-pound bomb near suspected ISIS tunnels in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province on Thursday, the blast from the explosion would have rushed into the furthest reaches of the mountain complex about a mile away. The GBU-43, known as Moab—short for Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or, colloquially, Mother of All Bombs—is the largest non-nuclear, non-penetrating bomb in the US arsena...

It’s easy for all sides to read too much into the news tat FBI reportedly obtained a warrant to surveil former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Those convinced of Trump’s Russia ties may see validation, and proof of a grander conspiracy. Others may see this lending credence to Trump’s allegations that the Obama administration ordered illegal, politically motivated surveillance in the heat...

Windows Vista was not a popular Microsoft release. We can just say it. Launched in 2007 (after a few delays), it was the first Windows overhaul since the well-loved XP release in 2001. Six years is a long time to make people wait, no matter how great the replacement. And Vista, well, was not great. A decade later, Microsoft's finally pulling the plug on support tomorrow. Which means, if you're som...

Filing and paying taxes can be frustrating enough without the looming threat of identity theft and refund fraud. But tax scams have become so prevalent, you’ve likely received a bogus call, text message, or email in the last few years. As painful as it is to add another item on the tax to-do list this year, working to protect yourself from cons and digital attacks could really save you money and t...

Well, we sent 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles smack into a Syrian airbase this week. But other stuff happened too! The week started off with some clever hack revelations, including a backdoor that Russians have used for two decades, and an ATM hack that just takes a drill hole and $15 worth of gear. And some particularly industrious hackers took over a Brazilian bank's entire online footprint for a fe...

On Thursday night, two US Navy warships fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase after President Bashar al-Assad’s regime used chemical weapons earlier this week against civilians. For months, Donald Trump has espoused a hands-off approach to intervening in the Middle Eastern country’s six-year-long civil war, yet it took just 24 hours for the president to reverse course and launch Am...

When you lose the key to your bike lock you borrow bolt cutters. When your door is jammed you look up a locksmith. And when you need targeted surveillance of a smartphone, you call your cyberarms dealer. Naturally! For bad actors and nation states, sometimes all it takes to access someone’s private text messages, browsing history, calls, emails, calendar, location, contacts, and apps, is a big eno...

Chris Rasmussen is an evangelist, and his message is crowdsourcing. As a career analyst inside the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Rasmussen’s sermons have been limited to a closed top-secret community. But this week, he’s going public with his most radical idea to date, in the form of a smartphone app for senior US intelligence officers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastcho...

On a desert-cold, moonlit night just over two years ago, Amir Taaki stepped off the Iraqi sand into a rubber dinghy floating in the Tigris River. The boat was just wide enough to fit his compact body next to the much larger American ex-Army machine gunner sitting beside him. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As the internet continues to limp toward better security, sites have increasingly embraced HTTPS encryption. You’ve seen it around, including here on WIRED; it’s that little green padlock in the upper lefthand corner, and it keeps outside eyes from snooping on the details of your time online. Today, the biggest porn site on the planet announced that it’s joining those secured ranks. Pornhub’s lock...

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted to reverse regulations that would have stopped internet service providers from selling your web-browsing data without your explicit consent. It’s a disappointing setback for anyone who doesn’t want big telecoms profiting off of their personal data. So what to do? Try a Virtual Private Network. It won’t fix all your privacy problems, but a VPN’s a dece...

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the US criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter, or follow The Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter. In the new cop drama APB, an Elon Musk-type billionaire engineer buys a beleaguered Chicago police precinct to avenge his buddy's murder. Learn more about your ad choices....

A hacker group called Turkish Crime Family says that it can access 250 million iCloud accounts, and will do so on April 7 to reset the password, locking people out of their accounts. They’ve even threatened to wipe people’s linked iPhones if Apple doesn’t pay up. And while it’s hard to tell how legitimate the threat is, their assertions make now as good a time to lock down your iCloud as ever. Lea...

As so many of them have been lately, it was a wild week in security. Monday, FBI Director James Comey confirmed that an ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia began last July. The GOP responded minutes later by charging hard against-leaks. That really set the tone! House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes added some misplaced intrigue by suggesting Trump or his ass...

Because you care greatly about your personal security hygiene, you’ve already enlisted two-factor authentication to help protect most of your online accounts. That’s good! Instagram, though, hasn’t given you the option. That changes today. Go get it. While Instagram had made two-factor available to a select group of users previously, the extra layer of protection is now available to all, meaning y...

First, the good news: Half of all Android devices have gotten fairly recent security updates, patching the hackable flaws that leave users vulnerable to digital crime and espionage. The bad news? The other half hasn’t. In an annual report on the security of the world’s 1.4 billion Android devices that Google released today, the company touts the ever-improving state of Android security. Learn more...

Barack Obama did not wiretap Trump Tower ahead of the presidentialelection. The definitive word on this came today from two people who would know: Richard Burr and Mark Warner, who leadthe Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Of course,President Donald Trump refuses to believe this, even though it is the best news he could hope for. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/ad...

Nothing much of interest happened in the world of cybersecurity this week. Kidding! But wouldn't that be nice? If we were living in a simpler time when innocent victims weren't hit by a new, weird hack every day, and international cyberespionage wasn't undermining everything from governments to businesses to Twitter accounts? You could just argue about who won The Bachelor and move on with your li...

You know not to click on links in sketchy emails. Everybody knows that. And yet, people fall for these phishing attacks all the time. Case in point: The FBI suspects a phishing email is how the Russian hackers who were indicted this week got into Yahoo. Ditto for the breach of the Democratic National Committee, and the Sony Pictures hack. In fact, there’s currently a Gmail phishing scam going arou...

Last night, a swath of Twitter accounts with large followings—including Duke University, BBC North America, Forbes, and Amnesty International—tweeted out the same message, in Turkish, that included a swastika and hashtags that translate to “Nazi Germany, Nazi Holland.” The hacked accounts, which apparently stem from increasing vitriol between Turkey and Holland, appear to have all been restored. L...

On February 26th, WIRED's security reporter Andy Greenberg received an email from Sophia Tupolev, the head of communications at the security firm Beame.io, saying she'd found a security issue on WIRED.com. Tupolev's company had discovered sensitive data in the source code on many pages on our site, including obfuscated, "hashed" passwords and email addresses for current and former WIRED writers. W...