Security, Spoken

History may show that Monday ranks among the most consequential days yet of Robert Mueller’s 18-month special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

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Here's an easy thing you can do right now to improve your digital security hygiene. Pull out your iPhone, open Settings, go into the Siri settings, and turn off Access When Locked. That's it! Do it on your iPad while you're at it. Go ahead and do it for your family and friends, too, at holiday functions when you need to deflect personal questions. Everybody wins! In the battle of the smart assistants, every tech giant hopes to hook you on its voice-activated helper.

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The data theft technique called "Rowhammer" has fascinated and worried the cybersecurity community for years now, because it combines digital and physical hacking in ways that are both fascinating and unaccounted for. Since its discovery, researchers have steadily refined the attack, and expanded the array of targets it works against.

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A major question hanging over the United States midterm election season: Where was Russia? But while GRU hackers didn't directly interfere, they appear to be as active as ever. New research from two threat intelligence firms indicates that two prominent Russia-linked groups have been developing some clever phishing innovations, and are working purposefully to expand their reach.

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We may never know whether Cuba attacked American diplomats with microwave weapons—but we do know similar devices exist. The US Department of Defense’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, along with a host of private arms companies, has spent decades testing everything from long-range wireless Taser bullets to sonic guns that can disable a car engine from 150 feet away.

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Even if you're an ascetic who eschews the materialism of holiday shopping, the Black Friday and Cyber Monday juggernaut is hard to avoid. Stores hawk their deals everywhere, promotional emails flood your inbox, tweets and even texts tell you what to buy, and where, for the best price. But before you give in to the siren's song of cheap fitness trackers, keep in mind that online scams are lurking everywhere. And the threat is greater this year than ever.

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Over the last year or so, cryptojacking—which forces your computer to mine cryptocurrency for bad guys when you visit an infected site—has become one of the internet’s most pervasive scourges. It’s shown up everywhere, even inside critical infrastructure. But its practitioners appear to have recently hit a new low, compromising the website of Make-A-Wish, the venerable charity that offers uplifting experiences for children with serious or terminal illnesses.

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As you travel this holiday season, bouncing from airport to airplane to hotel, you’ll likely find yourself facing a familiar quandary: Do I really trust this random public Wi-Fi network? As recently as a couple of years ago, the answer was almost certainly a resounding no. But in the year of our lord 2018? Friend, go for it. This advice comes with plenty of qualifiers.

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Just like any lock can be picked, any biometric scanner can be fooled. Researchers have shown for years that the popular fingerprint sensors used to guard smartphones can be tricked sometimes, using a lifted print or a person's digitized fingerprint data. But new findings from computer scientists at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering could raise the stakes significantly.

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In my book Data and Goliath, I write about the value of privacy. I talk about how it is essential for political liberty and justice, and for commercial fairness and equality. I talk about how it increases personal freedom and individual autonomy, and how the lack of it makes us all less secure. But this is probably the most important argument as to why society as a whole must protect privacy: it allows society to progress. We know that surveillance has a chilling effect on freedom.

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