Security

A Tinder security flaw has been exposing users’ exact locations for several months. Fixed now, though!

Kickstarter CEO Says Site Hacked, No Credit Card Info Stolen (Updated)

Uh oh, Kickstarter’s CEO Yancey Strickler says that the company has been hacked. No credit card info was stolen (whew!), but the company says users’ personal info has been compromised. Better go change your password. A blog post released today says Kickstarter was first made aware of the hack on Wednesday, and that upon learning…

The History of Surveillance and the Black Community

February is Black History Month and that history is intimately linked with surveillance by the federal government in the name of “national security.” Indeed, the history of surveillance in the African-American community plays an important role in the debate around spying today and in the calls for a congressional investigation into that surveillance. Days after…

A Key You Can Photograph Is A Key That Can Be Copied

If you take a picture of a car or house key, could you use that picture to get a copy made? Yes—quite trivially, actually. I have a folder on my laptop that is filled with photos people have taken of their keys and put onto the internet. Every few weeks, I take some idle time…

Woody Doll’s Tiny Toy Gun Confiscated by Airport Security

The noble men and women of TSA aren’t the only ones doing their part to keep the toy chests of the world free from terrorism. Just a few days ago, Heathrow Airport security successfully disarmed a one Mr. Woody of Toy Story fame, confiscating his inch-long, vaguely pistol-shaped piece of plastic and ensuring a safer…

What Are “Smart” Credit Cards, and Why Are They Coming to America?

It only took the theft of 40 million Target customer credit card details to spur Congress into finally joining the rest of the world in abandoning the highly insecure credit cards you’re used to. Starting late next year, every credit card in the United States will adopt a more secure system. Here’s what it is,…

Crazy-Advanced Malware Has Been Infecting Governments Since 2007

Kaspersky security researchers just revealed their discovery of a cyberespionage threat they say could be the most advanced in the world. Immensely powerful and hard to detect, it’s been active since at least 2007, targeting governments, embassies, and energy companies. And nobody knows where it came from. Dubbed “Careto,” after the Spanish slang for “mask”…

Your Body Odor Could Help Make Airport Security a Breeze

Forget retina scans and fingerprints. Turns out, body odor is a shockingly accurate biometric identifier. And according to new research from a team of Spanish scientists, it could change the way security checkpoints work. A team from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid just announced initial findings of a new study that tested the accuracy of…

Last Month’s Massive Target Hack Was the Heating Guy’s Fault

Authorities may have finally pinpointed the source of the massive Target security breach that allowed hackers to swipe the credit and debit card information of up to 40 million customers. So who’s the culprit? One extremely unfortunate HVAC maintenance man. According to security blogger Brian Krebs, that “third party vendor” who Target had been piling…

In Sochi, Every Single Phone and Laptop Is Definitely Getting Hacked

Say you’re going to Sochi for the Winter Olympics. You’ve magically found a hotel that’s actually complete and not full of trash and construction equipment. Crisis averted, right? Not quite—because as NBC Nightly News’ experiment shows, your computer or smartphone could be hacked in seconds in Sochi. Hackers will be going after your computer or…

British Spies Have Attacked Anonymous With DDoS

New documents leaked by Edward Snowden and obtained by NBC News suggest that the UK’s spy agency, GCHQ, launched a DDoS attack on the hacker collectives Anonymous and LulzSec. A presentation allegedly from a 2012 NSA conference points out that GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) launched a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack…

This TSA Redesign Could Change the Way You Think About Airport Security

The TSA needs help—bad. The agency and its blue-shirted officers have never been the most popular kids on the block, but things got worse last week when a former employee told all in a Politico article. But don’t worry, TSA. The designers are here to save you. A few students from the School of Visual…

Nude Bodies, Free Booze, Endless Radiation: An Ex-TSA Agent Tells All

Nobody likes the TSA. They slow you down at the airport. They pat you down. They take away your Christmas presents. Their tactics are questionably effective at making everyone resent them. It’s easy to forget that the TSA is made up of real human beings like you and me being told what to do in…

An Interactive Map of What America’s Spies Are Worried About

With eight months of freaking out over the fact that that the NSA is spying on everyone all the time, you can’t help but wonder: Why exactly are we spying again? What are we really worried about? https://gizmodo.com/watch-the-guardian-destroy-the-computers-containing-sno-1513092326 Well, Defense One just made it easy for you with this interactive map of what America’s spies…

Senior U.S. spies warn of future security threats

A senior American spy chief has released his assessment of the most troubling threats facing the US — a list that includes terrorism, hackers, WMD proliferation, pandemics, extreme weather events — and the militarization of space. The report, titled “Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community,” was presented by James Clapper on Wednesday to…

Yahoo Confirms Hackers Swiped Yahoo Mail Users’ Passwords

Yahoo certainly had some fun kicking Gmail while it was down last week—a particularly bold move considering its own recent share of missteps. But in a bit of an uncomfortable karmic twist (at least from Yahoo’s point of view), the company has taken to Tumblr to acknowledge a recent mass of security attacks with the…

Sneaky “Honey Encryption” Stops Hackers By Drowning Them in Phony Data

It seems like no matter how much companies may try to up their defenses, there will always be some industrious young hacker who manages to evade every roadblock in his way. One team of researchers, though, think they may have finally found a way to turn their defense into an attack on the hackers themselves—by…

Should We Really Be Tracking Our Children Like Wildlife?

Many New Yorkers are still mourning the news that the body of Avonte Oquendo, a non-verbal autistic boy, was found on the banks of the East River. To meet—and partially assuage—the grief, Senator Charles Schumer has an idea: let’s put tracking chips on autistic children. “Tracking chips” is just a loose term for describing the…

How Well 100 Top Online Retail Sites Look After Your Password

Ever wondered if the site that you’re typing your credit card details in can really be trusted? Well, a new report reveals how well 1o0 top retail sites look after your details. The research, carried out by Dashlane, used 24 criteria to assess how seriously the sites took security—from acceptance of weak password to emailing…

All the Crazy Stuff People Tried to Bring on Airplanes Last Year

TSA screened 638,705,790 passengers in 2013, and as we learned last year, if you look deeply within the possessions of that many people, you’re gonna find some weird stuff. Tons of weird stuff. Here’s a rundown of the craziest objects TSA found in 2013. https://gizmodo.com/here-are-the-crazy-things-the-tsa-has-found-in-2012-ga-5934847 1,813 firearms (1,477 loaded) Various containers holding “black powder” A…