The new Observing Democracy initiative will aggregate smartphone location data so that researchers can understand the impact of long lines and limited polling places on Election Day.
San Franciscans line up to receive in-person voting materials at the city's Civic Center polling station on Election Day. Among the proposed laws facing Californians is Prop. 24, which would increase privacy protections in many cases but loosen them in others. Photo by Seth Rosenblatt/The Parallax
As ten of millions of Americans already have cast their votes, voting-machine cybersecurity and disinformation questions haunt 2020 election campaigns up and down the ballot.
Marketing officers may have accepted ad fraud as a cost of doing business, but infosec pros take heed—fraud can be a step to more significant attacks. Here's what to know and how to take action.
After the Senate Judiciary Committee pushes the EARN IT Act closer to ratification, privacy advocates fear it and the LAED Act could gut online encryption.
The hacktivist group Anonymous recently took credit for two high-profile incidents during the Black Lives Matter protests, but the group has changed since its heyday, say experts.
As resources are diverted to fighting the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Europe's enthusiasm for protecting consumer rights under the General Data Protection Reg... Read More...
As Facebook furloughs its human content moderators, coronavirus misinformation surges on the social media platform. Experts say it could be doing more to stop it.
Experts worry that without proper planning, today's decisions about developing contact tracing apps could have unforeseen consequences in the years to come.
Besides putting people’s lives at risk, Trump’s promotion of anti-malarials for Covid-19 patients could pave the way for a coordinated disinformation campaign to take root, experts say.
What if someone threw a hacker conference, and nobody showed up?
As I boarded a United flight at SFO on March 17, the first day of San Francisco’... Read More...
Three things campaigns should learn from Mueller investigation, says Chime’s head of application and infrastructure security: Protect accounts with two-factor authentication, use “least privilege,” and beware of Mimikatz.
A newly-revealed vulnerability dubbed Kr00k affects more than one billion devices with Broadcom Wi-Fi chips. It's been patched for some but not all of them, and could let hackers steal Wi-Fi passwords and read your data.
The Crypto Wars are back: Top cryptography experts debate the history of data encryption, and how law enforcement fears are driving a demand for backdoors.
Although it hasn't been a major focus of their time so far, browser privacy is poised to be become prime territory for feature development. Here's what Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Brave have to say about themselves and their competition.
Australian motorcycle helmet maker Forcite is trying to balance utility, safety, and privacy. Here’s a look at today’s challenges in securing connected devices, from Washington to Sydney.
More than two dozen zero-day vulnerabilities revealed in bootloaders of popular devices ranging from Androids to Linksys routers to Samsung TVs strike at the core of digital insecurity.
RCS brings a feature boost to the 30-year-old texting standard. Google and networks are pushing it hard. But their implementations aren’t ready for prime time, security researchers say.
“Disney did not use any of the best practices that can protect users,” GroupSense’s CEO says. It’s largely to blame for Disney+ credentials selling on the Dark Web at a premium.
Determined to convince Tesla to add encryption to its Phone Key feature, an Austrian security researcher built an app called Tesla Radar that gamifies Model 3 tracking.
Devices hacked at the Mobile Pwn2Own contest include the Samsung S10, Amazon Echo Show 5, Sony and Samsung smart TVs, and TP-Link and Netgear routers. Total winnings: $315,000.
Facebook needs to do more to stem the spread of disinformation on its platforms, employees said in an internal letter, including vetting and labeling political ads. Experts agree.
Exploiting the vulnerabilities in the popular antivirus programs requires a hacker to have administrator privileges. This “provides the attacker the ability to run its own malicious code.”
Results from a survey of 3,419 respondents in 12 U.S. states supports the implementation of a new password security feature expected in all Google accounts next week.
As the bug bounty business matures, the bounties themselves present opportunities for hacker entrepreneurs to pocket profits while developing an important blend of business skills.
At DefCon’s Aviation Village, experts convene to explore planes’ burgeoning hacking vulnerabilities and highlight a need for proactive collaboration to protect their systems.
More than 54,000 leaked customer service calls of Colombian financial-services provider Filialcoop variably include customer names, addresses, and numbers said in confidence.
Using off-the-shelf parts and the help of a nurse enthusiast, a biohacking group designed, built, and subcutaneously implanted three networked hard drives. We inquired and watched.
LAS VEGAS—Are you too sexy for your license plate? Hacker and fashion designer Kate Rose thinks not.
Until now, most antisurveillance fashion has surrounded... Read More...
Alongside key U.S. businesses, the desktop manufacturers of unofficial conference badges explain how the president’s trade war against China has put their razor-thin margins at risk.
As a chorus of voices pursuing antitrust action against Big Tech grows louder, it’s important to note that even using regulations to protect consumer privacy is far from a simple endeavor.
A slow spread of privacy- and security-focused updates included in the upcoming version of Google’s mobile operating system will undoubtedly add to criticism of version fragmentation.
Security researcher Dale “Woody” Wooden explains how a hacker could manipulate Ford key fob radio frequency signals to unlock, manipulate, or start the engine of at least two newer Ford models.
Are the nuclear-power industry’s collective responses to the 1986 disaster enough to stave off clever nation-state cyberattacks? The Parallax visits the toxic site and takes a closer look.
From vulnerability exploits to encrypted messaging, the report outlines tech Russia and Trump associates used to interfere in U.S. elections and stymie Mueller’s investigation.
Whether spreading malware or disinformation, attackers study their targets, create artifacts, and get the artifacts in front of their targets. So why not combat fake news like malware?
Security experts worry that U.S. charges against WikiLeaks publisher Assange could scare whistleblowers—or cloud the nature of his relationships with Russia and Trump associates.
IOActive’s director of penetration testing says memsad causes software to expose passwords, keys, and tokens we use to protect our data. And the rot has spread far and wide.
Unlike its competitors, the Backstory security data platform, built on Google’s robust infrastructure, is built to retain and surface even years-old Internet traffic data by default.
App functionality or commercial demands sometimes require access to calendars, cameras, or contacts. Here, a basic, if crassly capitalistic, explanation is appropriate.
It’s no secret that few Wi-Fi routers have strong security. It might be alarming, however, to hear that many of today’s high-rated routers have fewer protections than those of 15 years ago, says the CITL research lab at ShmooCon.
When a company goes under or gets sold, its customer data is often the most valuable asset it holds—one it can usually sell or transfer to another entity, depending on the terms of its privacy policy.
A California judge’s ruling might give weight to privacy advocates’ arguments in future cases regarding forced device log-ins. But it isn’t expected to change much in the near term.
Three patterns surface from a look at expectations for the year that turned out wrong: We got lucky, we expected too much, or we were looking in the wrong direction.
Facebook might not sell user data. But it has been trading deep access to it with tech powerhouses Amazon, Netflix, Huawai, and others, according to a New York Times report.
DriveSavers isn’t divulging what its “proprietary technology” is or how it works. It is saying, however, that it won’t use its tech to help law enforcement agencies carry out search warrants.
Over four years, Marriott hackers accessed millions of guest records, including names, mailing and email addresses, passport numbers, and birth dates. Here’s what we’re learning.
High midterm voter turnout highlighted vulnerabilities in dated voting systems. But new machines aren’t the ticket to a smoother and more secure presidential election, experts say.
New exemptions to the controversial copyright law cover hacks of both software and hardware controlled by code. But they stop short of giving security researchers a free pass.
At the Context Conversations event on election security, veteran software engineer Ben Adida explains how he plans to “build open-source voting machines on commodity hardware.”
In a column for The Parallax, Gary McGraw outlines why his band wrote a song that passionately encourages every eligible voter to fill out and submit a ballot.
Despite knowing that current voting systems are highly vulnerable, lawmakers’ inaction on providing badly needed funding for updates has thus far resulted in maintaining the status quo.
Ensuring the integrity and security of a ballot submitted from overseas has long been challenging, and only 7 percent of eligible voters even attempt it. Can technology help?
At our second event, on November 5, we’ll discuss voting-machine vulnerabilities, effective social-engineering tactics, and how to secure elections while respecting democratic values.
Like last week’s Kavanaugh hearings, Facebook’s acknowledgment of a cyberattack that led to a mass account reset alarmed officials and left key questions unanswered.
Torii, named after the Japanese word for “gate,” uses Tor and its network of anonymously linked computers to both obscure Internet traffic and steal data, Avast researchers say.
Tech firms would like one privacy law to cover all U.S. communications—as long as it’s not as strict as the GDPR and also supersedes any pesky state regulations like the CCPA.
Without regulatory pressure to enforce a federal health care cybersecurity task force’s recommendations, involved experts acknowledge, industry progress will remain slow.
For implanted medical devices, where a faulty update could harm or even kill a patient, a doctor’s office visit is in order. With no billing code, hospitals have been eating the costs.
Cluttered EHRs are reducing doctors’ ability to make good decisions for their patients while decreasing patient privacy, argues Twila Brase, author of Big Brother in the Exam Room.
Default device authentication settings, insufficient patches, and internal networks that assume all participants are trusted can lead to health care operations-thwarting infections.
You can’t personally prevent a data breach, nor someone from attempting to defraud your insurance provider. But you can take steps to minimize how much a breach can affect you.
As technology has become the lifeblood of the health care industry, hospitals and patient care clinics are often ill-equipped to confront a Hydra-headed cybersecurity monstrosity.
To get a clearer picture of how pervasive ransomware attacks against hospitals and patient care clinics have become, check out the publicly acknowledged cases since 2016.
There’s no understanding trans-Atlantic privacy politics, nor policy, without recognizing Germany’s pre-1989 memories of the Stasi regime, which enforced conformity through spying.
So-called private channels and encryption aren’t necessarily enough to keep our chats private. How each messaging service sends and stores our data is confusingly inconsistent.
Medical-security researchers are having a harder time getting people to take flaws seriously than discovering serious flaws. We’ll discuss the most pressing issues at Context Conversations.
On stage at DefCon, veteran NSA leader Rob Joyce says the agency’s ability to monitor and counteract international cyberattacks relies on recruiting—and working well—with hackers.
European regulators fined Google for abusing power and demanded that it relaxes restrictions on Android vendors. What could a privacy-focused phone maker do with this new latitude?
Registration, tabulation, social media—there are other aspects of elections we need to better secure, say experts who examined eight notoriously insecure Winvote machines.
Following the massacre from the Mandalay Bay, hotel security personnel began routinely checking rooms. They’re now clashing with privacy advocates attending security conferences.
There might be no better way to reveal just how lax we still are about encryption than to highlight security professionals’ own unprotected communications.
Parisa Tabriz, head of Chrome security and leader of Project Zero, calls out Google’s leadership approach in Internet security as a combination of muscle and joint efforts.
Hackers are divided on the prospects of SBOM standards. Some say they could reduce many patching obstacles. Others worry that they could do more harm than good.
The extortion scam email looks legitimate because it contains accurate personal information. It says it has webcam evidence of online porn consumption and demands thousands of dollars in bitcoin.
As VPN services face increasing obstacles across the globe, the key to their success is in the details. And Verizon is lacking in details about its data collection practices.
Touring the British wartime relic, one might hear: Keep your team focused. Educate and motivate. Be wary of your enemies’ mutual tools. And use deception to keep them off your trail.
In updating its dominant Chrome browser to red-flag sites lacking HTTPS as insecure, Google completes a two-year project to strong-arm site owners into more safely transmitting data.
A lackluster response to speaker harassment by attendees wearing MAGA gear underscores an ongoing struggle among conference organizers to enforce codes of conduct.
At the HOPE hacker conference, a talk about turning oxycodone into its overdose antidote prompts a broader look at the expanding definition—and increasing relevance—of biohacking.
The technically detailed indictment of 12 Russian GRU officers implies a struggle to find appropriate and effective cybersecurity deterrents to geopolitical hacking, experts say.
“A CERT is like FEMA for cyber,” one expert says. Post-WannaCry, Israel is following the Netherlands, England, and Norway in creating a health care CERT.
In its 5-4 decision that police need a search warrant to obtain a target’s location data, the Supreme Court says in Carpenter vs. United States that carrying a phone is “indispensable to participation in modern society.”
A billion-plus people use WeChat to chat, pay, and shop. But while its walled-garden success puts Facebook and Apple’s messaging apps to shame, the success comes with only-in-China costs.
The VPNFilter botnet could collect information and block network traffic, the FBI said. Beyond rebooting our routers, we should be keeping their firmware up-to-date. Here’s how.
Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which hackers have used for decades to pester online organizations, are expected to plague the Internet of Things. Here’s why.
