The NSA’s disturbingly successful hack of the American military Excerpted from Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War by Fred Kaplan. Out now from Simon & Schuster. On Wednesday, March 9, Kaplan will discuss his book in New York; for more information and to RSVP, visit the New America website. On June 9,…
Category: Cyber-Security
Going Inside the Ukrainian Power Grid Hack
IT WAS 3:30 p.m. last December 23, and residents of the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Western Ukraine were preparing to end their workday and head home through the cold winter streets. Inside the Prykarpattyaoblenergo control center, which distributes power to the region’s residents, operators too were nearing the end of their shift. But just as one…
Technology Update: Feds Don’t Need Apple to Get Into Your iPhone
IT’S A SHOWDOWN that has the country mesmerized. In court battles brewing across the nation, the FBI is trying to force Apple to help it extract data from iPhones seized in more than a dozen cases. The government is so intent on forcing Apple’s hand that in each case the Justice Department has invoked the…
Reversing the Cyber-Crime Paradigm: The “Cyber-Robin Hood”
ID THIEF HACKS INTO FAMILY’S NETFLIX, AT&T ACCOUNTS TO PAY OFF THEIR BILLS STOLEN CREDENTIALS; USER ACCOUNTS COMPROMISED An Orange County, Fla. family says a hacker breached their phone and Netflix accounts to pay off the family’s bills. The Hennigs discovered the sorta well-meaning hack when AT&T alerted Kathy Hennig that she owed $1,300 because…
Why You Should More Afraid of Apple than the Feds
I know I suggest this book alot, but you need to read Future Crimes by Marc Goodman. It will absolutely open your eyes to how companies like Apple, Microsoft and the thousands of other Data Brokers out there COLLECT your personal, private information and then treat it as a valuable commodity to be bought and…
Surprise! Last Years IRS Hack was Way Worse Than They Let On
WHEN THE IRS first reported a hack that exposed taxpayer accounts’ vulnerable information, it pegged the number of affected people at a little over 100,000. Today, in its second upward revision, the number of affected people now stands at over 700,000. The Hack As WIRED originally reported last spring, the hack gave attackers access to…
Cyber-Security: Googles New “Neural Network” can Locate the Location of any Photo on the Web
For those of you that are “seasoned” Science Fiction fans like myself, perhaps you remember the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and the HAL Computer? Yeah this “neural network” called PLaNET kinda reminds me of that…unsettling in a way, no? -SF Here’s a tricky task. Pick a photograph from the Web at random. Now…