Mark Zuckerberg covers up his laptop’s camera with a little piece of tape. After he posted a photo of himself at a desk this summer celebrating Instagram’s growing popularity, online commenters seized on the little gray strip above his laptop screen. “You Should Consider It, Too,” read a headline on The New York Times, calling Zuckerberg’s move a “basic and cheap security safeguard.”
Researchers have devised a way to place undetectable backdoors in the cryptographic keys that protect websites, virtual private networks, and Internet servers. The feat allows hackers to passively decrypt hundreds of millions of encrypted communications as well as cryptographically impersonate key owners.
Experts said expired domains are often purchased with the intent of advertising, but researchers noted these domains and abandoned SDKs present an opportunity for threat actors to target mobile users.
An article in yesterday's USA Today by Kim Komando, How to keep hackers out of your router, claims that updating the firmware in a router will keep out hackers. This is not even close to being true and, in another context, would be considered malpractice.
I'll illustrate how flawed her premise is with an analogy. Suppose you went to a doctor seeking advice on being as healthy as possible and were told that simply taking a vitamin pill is all that's necessary to live to 100. Obviously, there's more to it.
It's all gone. All the passwords, all the user names, all the credit card numbers, the selfies, the fingerprints, the emails.
The state of tech security is so currently dire that it feels like anything you have ever stored on a computer, or a company or government has ever stored about you, has already been hacked into by somebody.
Ministers have been barred from wearing Apple Watches during Cabinet meetings amid concerns that they could be hacked by Russian spies, The Telegraph has learned.
Under David Cameron, several cabinet ministers wore the smart watches, including Michael Gove, the former Justice Secretary.
However, under Theresa May ministers have been barred from wearing them amid concerns that they could be used by hackers as listening devices.
A former NSA employee has demonstrated how malware on a Mac can tap into the computer's built-in webcam and microphone to spy on unsuspecting users.
While a green LED light usually switches on by the side of the webcam to show that it is being used and is difficult to bypass, Patrick Wardle demonstrated that malware can covertly record these, all in an essentially undetectable manner, during a call when the light is already on and the user is unaware.
You are all well aware that your computer, tablet, and smartphone can be hacked… but have you ever wondered if someone is trying to compromise your monitor?
Probably not. It’s just a dumb display, isn’t it? I mean, all it does is sit there and light up pixels wherever your computer tells it to… right? The unfortunate truth is that monitors are smarter than we generally think they are, and that makes them a perfect target for hackers.
Security researcher and former NSA staffer Patrick Wardle is this afternoon demonstrating a way for Mac malware to tap into live feeds from the built-in webcam and microphone. His presentation is being delivered at the Virus Bulletin conference in Denver later today.
The focus of Google’s big hardware event this week wasn’t the hardware at all. It was Assistant, the artificially intelligent digital helper that caters to your every whim and powers your every interaction.
Assistant is invisible, in the design-jargon sense. The omnipresent concierge works in the background, predicting your needs, processing your requests, and offering neatly parceled answers to your questions. You never see the cogs behind it, you merely type (or speak) a command and read (or hear) tailored responses served on screen or through a speaker.
