Security, Spoken

There are breaches, and there are megabreaches, and there’s Equifax. But a newly revealed trove of leaked data tops them all for sheer volume: 772,904,991 million unique email addresses, over 21 million unique passwords, all recently posted to a hacking forum. The data set was first reported by security researcher Troy Hunt, who maintains Have I Been Pwned, a way to search whether your own email or password has been compromised by a breach at any point. (Trick question: It has.

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Fortnite topped 200 million registered players at the end of 2018, continuing its run of massive growth and dominance in online gaming. But huge platforms also inevitably have huge targets on their backs. Fortnite has already dealt with its share of digital security issues, particularly scams like imposter Android apps.

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If you use social media, you've probably noticed a trend across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter of people posting their then-and-now profile pictures, mostly from 10 years ago and this year. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Kate O'Neill is the founder of KO Insights and the author of Tech Humanist and Pixels and Place: Connecting Human Experience Across Physical and Digital Spaces. Instead of joining in, I posted the following semi-sarcastic tweet: https://twitter.

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When the US government shut down on December 21stthere was an overlooked victim: the Violence Against Women Act, which expired the same day. That lapse means that new funds for Department of Justice’s VAWA programs, such as hotlines, shelters, crisis centers, and legal assistance, will not be funded until the law is reauthorized. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Gianmarco Raddi is an MD/PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, UCLA, and the National Institutes of Health.

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Another week, another crypto heist. This time, Ethereum Classic was the target, when hackers stole around $1.1 million worth of coins by taking over 51-percent of the currency’s network. Another familiar blunder came this week when it was revealed that technologically challenged convicted criminal Paul Manafort had yet another problem using basic tech.

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Iranian hackers have been busy lately, ramping up an array of targeted attacks across the Middle East and abroad. And a report this week from the threat intelligence firm FireEye details a massive global data-snatching campaign, carried out over the last two years, that the firm has preliminarily linked to Iran.

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Heads up, tech companies: If your product appeals to the masses, it likely also holds allure for terrorist groups like ISIS. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Rita Katzis the Executive Director and founder of theSITE Intelligence Group, the world’s leading non-governmental counterterrorism organization specializing in tracking and analyzing the online activity of the global extremist community.

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An international group of researchers has developed an algorithmic tool that uses Twitter to automatically predict exactly where you live in a matter of minutes, with more than 90 percent accuracy. It can also predict where you work, where you pray, and other information you might rather keep private, like, say, whether you’ve frequented a certain strip club or gone to rehab.

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Location data is some of the most sensitive, and sought after, information that smartphones generate. And wireless providers are in a unique position to access it all the time. But a Tuesday report from Motherboard shows that carriers don't protect this deeply private information as carefully as consumers might think—especially considering that Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T all pledged to stop selling it months ago.

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Paul Manafort has a horrible track record when it comes to digital security. The latest reminder came this week, when his defense lawyers failed to sufficiently redact portions of a court filing submitted on Tuesday, responding to Robert Mueller’s claims that Manafort violated his plea agreement with the special counsel by lying to prosecutors.

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