Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
WD My Cloud NAS Devices Have Hard-Wired Backdoor
January 8th, 2018Via: Register: If you have a Western Digital My Cloud network attached storage device, it’s time to learn how to update its OS because researcher James Bercegay has discovered a dozen models possess a hard-coded backdoor. The backdoor, detailed here, lets anyone log in as user mydlinkBRionyg with the password abc12345cba. WD mostly markets the […]
The More I Read About Meltdown And Spectre…
January 7th, 2018The more I wonder: Are these bugs, or features?
U.S. Government Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Computers Up Sharply
January 6th, 2018Via: cnet: US Customs and Border Patrol searched more phones and laptops at the border in 2017 — 30,200 devices total. The agency released those numbers Friday along with updated guidelines on how to conduct the searches, which have become a hot button issue under the administration of President Donald Trump. A lawsuit from the […]
Security Flaws Put Virtually All Phones, Computers at Risk
January 3rd, 2018Update: Security Flaws Put Virtually All Phones, Computers at Risk Update: All Macs, iPhones and iPads Affected Via: The Verge: Apple confirmed on Thursday that all Mac and iOS devices are affected by the Meltdown and Spectre CPU flaws that have roiled the computing industry for the past 24 hours, resulting in a race to […]
China: Mass Disappearances
December 17th, 2017Via: USA Today: Nobody knows what happened to the Uighur student after he returned to China from Egypt and was taken away by police. Not his village neighbors in China’s far west, who haven’t seen him in months. Not his former classmates, who fear Chinese authorities beat him to death. Not his mother, who lives […]
Quantum Computing Is the Next Big Security Risk
December 9th, 2017Disclosure: I have invested in technology related to quantum computing. — Via: Wired: The consequences of mastering quantum computing, while not as visual or visceral as a mushroom cloud, are no less significant than those faced by the scientists who lit up the New Mexico sky with the detonation at the Trinity test site 72 […]
Lincoln Partners with CLEAR for Biometric Security Service
December 8th, 2017Via: The News Wheel: Lincoln announced a new collaboration with CLEAR, provider of a means to bypass long lines for airport security by way of biometric information. The partnership will see Lincoln customers on the receiving end of complimentary CLEAR membership, which will enable them to skip the line at more than 30 airports and […]
Facial Recognition Is Tracking Customers as They Shop in Stores
November 24th, 2017Via: CNBC: Retailers are using facial recognition to collect data about customers as they shop in stores, according to an IT company with insight into the space. “One of the big things brick-and-mortar retailers are getting into now is knowing their customers … tracking who’s entering their mall and how they’re behaving,” said Mark Lunt, […]
Google Collects Android Users’ Locations Even When Location Services Are Disabled
November 21st, 2017Shocker. Via: Quartz: Many people realize that smartphones track their locations. But what if you actively turn off location services, haven’t used any apps, and haven’t even inserted a carrier SIM card? Even if you take all of those precautions, phones running Android software gather data about your location and send it back to Google […]
Massive U.S. Military Social Media Spying Archive Left Wide Open in AWS S3 Buckets
November 18th, 2017Via: The Register: Three misconfigured AWS S3 buckets have been discovered wide open on the public internet containing “dozens of terabytes” of social media posts and similar pages – all scraped from around the world by the US military to identify and profile persons of interest. The archives were found by UpGuard’s veteran security-breach hunter […]
