Hackers

Georgia Attorney General Won’t Defend Election Officials in Lawsuit Over Wiped Electoral Server

Worried about whether U.S. elections are vulnerable to outside interference? On Wednesday, tech giants Facebook, Twitter and Google testified that their platforms were used to spread Russian misinformation and propaganda to millions of potential voters in 2016. But here’s a case that illustrates how the struggling technical systems that run elections on a local level…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay Nov 2

Symantec Concludes Just Eight Google Play ‘Minecraft’ Apps May Have Added Millions to Botnets

In a blog post on Wednesday, Symantec security researchers wrote they had discovered at least eight Google Play Store apps that functioned as fronts for a “new and highly prevalent type of Android malware” called Android.Sockbot. The apps in question presented themselves as skins for player characters in popular app Minecraft: Pocket Edition and boasted…

Tech News Tom McKay Oct 18

Equifax’s Website Redirected People to Malware Thanks to a Compromised, Years-Old Plugin

Credit-reporting agency Equifax, which has been embroiled in a richly-deserved sea of anger after losing the sensitive personal and financial info of at least 145 million people to hackers, found itself in yet another hole this week after its website began redirecting users to malware. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported the latest problems…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay Oct 14

Court Rules FBI Can Keep Names of, Payments Made to iPhone 5C Hackers Secret

The FBI does not have to disclose the name of or how much it paid a private firm to crack Apple’s iPhone security, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled on Saturday. Per Politico, USA Today, the Associated Press and Vice Media were all suing the FBI to force it to reveal more details about…

Tech News Tom McKay Oct 1

Equifax, Which Said Executives Did Not Know of Hack Before Trades, Has Launched a ‘Thorough Review’

Equifax Inc. has insisted that three executives who sold off over a million dollars in shares just days after news of a massive hack of 143 million Americans’ financial data spread internally were not aware of the breach when they made the sales. But internally, amid federal investigations of both the company’s handling of the…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay Sep 30

The NSA Warned Jared Kushner Not to Do the Dumb Email Thing That He Then Did

Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and a number of other senior White House officials who used their personal emails for work purposes were expressly warned by the National Security Agency not to do so, Politico reported on Friday. Per Politico, Kushner and other staffers (including former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus) all continued to use…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay Sep 30

Adobe’s Product Security Team Accidentally Posted Its Private PGP Encryption Key to Its Blog

The past few weeks have been a nightmare for data breaches, so good news: Here’s another easily preventable security problem. Adobe’s Product Security Incident Response Team accidentally posted the private PGP encryption key—necessary to decrypt encoded messages transmitted to them using their public PGP key—associated with their [email protected] email account this week, Ars Technica reported.…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay Sep 23

The CCleaner Attack Was Worse Than We Knew

When Avast announced that 2.27 million people had downloaded a malware-riddled copy of its performance optimization software CCleaner, it was initially believed that a second payload—that can control a system—was never delivered to victims. It’s now clear that wasn’t the case, and it appears the attackers may have been targeting tech firms for the purposes…

Privacy & Security Rhett Jones Sep 21

SEC Gets Hacked, Refuses to Release Details About Just How Fucked Everything Might Be

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has disclosed that hackers accessed sensitive information from its systems about publicly traded companies. And while the SEC has so far been tight-lipped about what kind of fallout the hack will have, the agency acknowledges that the hackers have probably conducted trades using the information. The revelation from the…

Privacy & Security Matt Novak Sep 21

Equifax’s Troubles Grow With News of Prior Breach, DOJ Investigation Into Stock Trades

Equifax, the credit reporting agency which recently lost said credit information on up to 143 million people to hackers, experienced another security breach months before it has already disclosed—and this news broke on the same day it was reported senior Equifax executives are being investigated for selling off stock after the attack. Per Bloomberg, three…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay Sep 18

Your Copy of Avast’s ‘PC Cleaner’ CCleaner Could Be Full of Malware, Update Now

According to its parent company Avast, more than 130 million people use the performance optimization software CCleaner. And today all of those people need to be sure they’ve installed the latest update because some nasty malware has managed to make it into one of the builds. https://gizmodo.com/5-things-to-check-before-you-get-rid-of-your-old-gadget-1690247324 Piriform’s CCleaner was purchased by the popular anti-virus…

Tech News Rhett Jones Sep 18

Equifax’s Chief Information Officer and Head of Security Are ‘Retiring’

Two Equifax executives—Chief Information Officer David Webb and Chief Security Officer Susan Mauldin—are “retiring” in the wake of a security breach that allowed hackers to run off with financial and other private information for an estimated 143 million Americans. In a post on Equifax’s investor website, the company said the “personnel changes are effective immediately.”…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay Sep 16

Oh Man, You’re Gonna Hate What Equifax Just Admitted About That Security Breach

Equifax, the major credit reporting agency which collected extensive financial data on hundreds of millions of Americans before losing said data on 143 million of those people to hackers, has finally explained what went wrong. You are so not going to like it. In a post on a website designed to spread information on how…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay Sep 14

Hackers Have Already Started to Weaponize Artificial Intelligence

Last year, two data scientists from security firm ZeroFOX conducted an experiment to see who was better at getting Twitter users to click on malicious links, humans or an artificial intelligence. The researchers taught an AI to study the behavior of social network users, and then design and implement its own phishing bait. In tests,…

Privacy & Security George Dvorsky Sep 11

Hackers Have Reportedly Gained ‘Operational Access’ to US Power Grids, But Don’t Freak Yet

Hacking the power grid is one of the holy grails of hacker prowess. The first real power outage caused by hackers occurred near Kiev in 2015. Now researchers say that a malicious group has gained unprecedented operational access to American power company systems, and experts worry that the ability to cause a blackout at will…

Privacy & Security Rhett Jones Sep 6

Instagram Done Got Hacked

Instagram, Facebook’s hotter, snootier subsidiary, may have a massive data breach on its hands. This week, a security flaw within Instagram allowed hackers to assemble a database of what appeared to be verified users’ contact information—some of those affected purportedly being celebrities and politicians. According to the Verge, Instagram now says the known scope of the…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay Sep 2

Reports of Russia’s Election Hack Keep Getting Scarier

A New York Times investigation offered some unnerving news on Friday. Not only was the hacking of electoral systems during last year’s election “more extensive than previously disclosed,” the paper reports, multiple sources say that nobody’s really examining the the attacks on a state or local level. The reasons why are as complex as they…

Privacy & Security Adam Clark Estes Sep 1

Helpless HBO Gets Wrecked by Hackers Yet Again

Cable giant HBO’s very embarrassing 2017 has continued to get more embarrassing. On Wednesday night, hacker squad OurMine Security Group compromised Game of Thrones’ Twitter account, posting a message to its 6 million plus followers saying “Hi, OurMine are here, we are just testing your security.” “HBO team please contact us to upgrade the security –…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay Aug 17

HBO Is Sick of This Shit

Bored hackers who aren’t getting paid tend to get restless. And so, on Sunday, the cyber thieves behind the recent HBO breach leaked several unreleased episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which was scheduled to return in October after six years off the air. HBO, understandably, seems annoyed. We’re now in week three of the standoff…

Privacy & Security Adam Clark Estes Aug 14

What the Heck Is Going on With the HBO Game of Thrones Hack?

Episode 5 of the penultimate season of Game of Thrones will air on Sunday. As with episode 4, an outline of the script has been circulating online in what seems to be the latest leak from the huge HBO hack. And suddenly, it seems like the “cyber incident” that some people—including this blogger—thought would be…

Privacy & Security Adam Clark Estes Aug 12

Georgia Attorney General Won’t Defend Election Officials in Lawsuit Over Wiped Electoral Server

Symantec Concludes Just Eight Google Play ‘Minecraft’ Apps May Have Added Millions to Botnets

Equifax’s Website Redirected People to Malware Thanks to a Compromised, Years-Old Plugin

Court Rules FBI Can Keep Names of, Payments Made to iPhone 5C Hackers Secret

Equifax, Which Said Executives Did Not Know of Hack Before Trades, Has Launched a ‘Thorough Review’

The NSA Warned Jared Kushner Not to Do the Dumb Email Thing That He Then Did

Adobe’s Product Security Team Accidentally Posted Its Private PGP Encryption Key to Its Blog

The CCleaner Attack Was Worse Than We Knew

SEC Gets Hacked, Refuses to Release Details About Just How Fucked Everything Might Be

Equifax’s Troubles Grow With News of Prior Breach, DOJ Investigation Into Stock Trades

Your Copy of Avast’s ‘PC Cleaner’ CCleaner Could Be Full of Malware, Update Now

Equifax’s Chief Information Officer and Head of Security Are ‘Retiring’

Oh Man, You’re Gonna Hate What Equifax Just Admitted About That Security Breach

Hackers Have Already Started to Weaponize Artificial Intelligence

Hackers Have Reportedly Gained ‘Operational Access’ to US Power Grids, But Don’t Freak Yet

Instagram Done Got Hacked

Reports of Russia’s Election Hack Keep Getting Scarier

Helpless HBO Gets Wrecked by Hackers Yet Again

HBO Is Sick of This Shit

What the Heck Is Going on With the HBO Game of Thrones Hack?

‘Good Omens’ Season 3 Is Still Just One Episode, Despite Being Called That

Steam Gaming Has Arrived on Apple Vision Pro, and It’s Unexpectedly Glorious

RFK Jr. Will Take on Joe Rogan for Podcaster Supremacy

The Spymaster’s Guide to the Secret Agencies of ‘Star Trek’

Uber Is Testing Driverless Volkswagen ID. Buzz Vans in Los Angeles

Cast Adrift, Meta Employees Have No Idea Who the ‘Token Legend’ Is Anymore

Microsoft Office 2024 and Windows 11 Pro Bundle Hits 76% Off, a Complete PC Setup for Less

You Can Add ‘Lamp That Folds Your Laundry’ to the List of Doomed Startups

Asus Zenbook A16 Review: Start Considering Snapdragon on PC, for Real

Aqara Thermostat Hub W200 Review: Almost Better than My Ecobee

HP Omen Max 45L Review: 4K60 Gaming Has Never Been So Easy

Ecovacs Winbot W3 Omni Review: Window Cleaning Robots Have a Long Way to Go

AirPods Max 2 vs. Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen): Which ANC Headphones Win?

The Best Gadgets of March 2026

AirPods Max 2 Review: Still Ridiculously Expensive and Ridiculously Nice

DJI Osmo 360 Review: The Best 360 Camera for the DJI-Pilled

Let us help find what you are looking for...