Security, Spoken

The days since the midterms have been filled with developments in the probe of special counsel Robert Mueller, whose weeks of public silence leading up to the election belie a frenzy of activity, grand jury meetings, and investigative steps that his probe has pursued. The next shoes to drop seem likely clear: GOP operative Roger Stone has long suspected he'll be indicted. Stone ally Jerome Corsi suggested in a recent YouTube livestream that he may face charges as well.

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A good rule of thumb when it comes to internet-connected toys is not to buy them. Security too often sits too low on the priority list of the companies that make them. But in a new report, Mozilla, the nonprofit behind the popular Firefox browser, has a more finely tuned privacy appraisal of not just toys but dozens of popular holiday gifts—some of which may not rate much better than coal.

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In his years-long career developing software for power grids, Stan McHann had never before heard the ominous noise that rang out last Wednesday. Standing in the middle of a utility command center, he flinched as a cyberattack tripped the breakers in all seven of the grid's low voltage substations, plunging the system into darkness. "I heard all the substations trip off and it was just like bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam," McHann says. "The power’s out.

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For two hours Monday, internet traffic that was supposed to route through Google's Cloud Platform instead found itself in quite unexpected places, including Russia and China. But while the haphazard routing invoked claims of traffic hijacking—a real threat, given that nation states could use the technique to spy on web users or censor services—the incident turned out to be a simple mistake with outsized impacts.

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During a speech at the annual UNESCO Internet Governance Forum in Paris Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the “Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace,” a new initiative designed to establish international norms for the internet, including good digital hygiene and the coordinated disclosure of technical vulnerabilities.

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Did you hear? There was an election this week! Not only does that mean the 2020 campaign has officially started (help!) but also that we saw a ton of misinformation trying to affect the vote. That includes from the secretary of state of Georgia, who accused his Democratic opponent of hacking the state's voter roles, even though all evidence strongly suggests that's not the case. At least, though, law enforcement had a massive coordinated effort to protect the election from actual hacking.

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There comes a period of time in every beloved gadget's life—some more prolonged than others—when you need to think about replacing the electronic device that's given you so much loyal service, whether it's a smartphone, a laptop, a digital camera, or anything in between.

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Sue Gordon, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, wakes up every day at 3 am, jumps on a Peloton, and reads up on all the ways the world is trying to destroy the United States. By the afternoon noon, she has usually visited the Oval Office and met with the heads of the 17 intelligence agencies to get threat reports.

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In December 2016, Georgia secretary of state Brian Kemp accused the Department of Homeland Security of attempting to hack his office's systems, which include the Georgia voter registration database. Six months later, the DHS inspector general concluded that the allegations were unfounded; someone on a DHS computer had simply visited Georgia Secretary of State website.

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David Weiner counts himself lucky. Sure, he waited an hour to vote at the Brooklyn Public Library along with, he estimates, several hundred other New Yorkers Tuesday afternoon. But, hey, at least he arrived when the last ballot scanner officially broke. That meant he could just fill out his ballot and shove it in a box. The people in line in front of him, the ones who’d been waiting to use that last ballot scanner, said they'd been in line for twice as long.

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