SHREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE–*crunch* No, I haven’t lost my mind. Rather, that’s my artist’s impression of the sound a Dutch police eagle makes when it gets medieval on a quadcopter. (Off topic, that might be the best sentence I’ve written in my short career as a writer.) Alongside hoverboards and vuvuzelas, commercial drones are one of those modern…
RIP, Reddit’s Warrant Canary
One of the most irritating innovations of the Post-911 Era is the National Security Letter. Unlike a warrant, a National Security Letter does not need to be approved by a court of law and it compels the recipient organization to hand over confidential information about its membership. Best of all, a recipient is legally barred…
The People Behind The Epic Sony Hack Are Likely Still Hacking
Say what you want about the 2014 Sony hack, it certainly presented an impeccable sense of style. For example, most successful breaches are boringly undetectable. There’s certainly nothing as melodramatic as, say, your computer screen turning blood red as a dripping pixel skull promises you that your most secret secrets are now public property. Yet…
Moore’s Law is Dead! All Hail Moore’s Law!
If you have a passing familiarity with computers, you probably know about Moore’s Law. First promulgated during the 1960s by Gordon E. Moore (co-founder of Intel), Moore’s Law was a prediction that the density of transistors on a chip would double once every twelve months. Initially, this was simply an observation and extrapolation of industry…
In Non-Terrifying Malware News, Turnabout is Fair Play
Dridex is a pretty nasty piece of malware. If you work at a banking institution in Europe, you might one day get an email with an Excel or Word attachment, indicating that it’s an invoice for services rendered. This document is a trap! More specifically, it’s a RAT–a Remote Access Trojan that allows a third…
In a Completely Surprising Turn of Events, Yet Another “Smart” Toy Turns Out to be Hackable
You’d think that toymakers would have learned their lesson from movies like “Chucky.” The more bells and whistles you give to a doll, the more likely it is to become for evil. Thus, Fisher Price’s Smart Toy® Bear. Yep, it’s got the cold, dead eyes and oversized head of 4Chan’s favorite mascot, Pedobear. But that’s…
Everybody Laugh On Cue: 2015’s Worst Password Is … ‘123456’
This year’s worst passwords are out, and oh my, you silly primates still don’t quite get this “information security” concept, do you? Anyway, here’s the backstory: every year, a company called Splashdata goes through a list of leaked passwords. These are basically hacker booty–long lists of plain-text excel spreadsheets full of personally identifying data, posted…
Okay, So Maybe Do Worry About Physical Hacking
Technological advancement tastes kind of like crow. Two weeks ago, I wrote that even though it was now possible to physically hack infrastructure, this is the kind of skill that only a nation-state would possess, and that states would probably use this ability sparingly. I am certain that somewhere, in a basement lair under a…
We Just Lost Over Six Million Records, So Let Us Run Your Home Security!
You remember VTech, right? The toy company, which through astonishing levels of negligence, managed to lose over ten million of its customer’s names, addresses, passwords, and other personally identifiable information? The one who’s missing records also included the names and addresses of over six million children? As well as (like the horrifying cherry on top)…
CESpit: Several Abominations from the International Consumer Electronics Show
Every year in January, hundreds of thousands of people gather from around the world in order to check out the coolest new shit they can buy. This year’s CES promises several flavors of awesomeness, like high-end tablets, VR headsets, and televisions barely thicker than your fingernail. I’m not here to talk about these things. Go…
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