Prison & Courtroom Security Scanners May Be Vulnerable

Security researchers say a widely-used airport security scanner can be fooled fairly simply. Although the model in question was dropped from airports last year, it’s still used in prisons and courthouses. The model in question is the Rapiscan Secure 1000, which the TSA dropped after controversy over the way it produced what effectively appeared to […]



WarKitteh & DOsDog Hit The Streets

An engineer has told a hacking conference how he turned a cat and a dog into tech weapons: the former to make a point and the latter for a prank. Gene Bransfield of Tenacity Solutions discussed his work at the DEFCON event and then followed up with an interview with the Guardian. His first project, […]

Scam Warning: Facebook Color Change

Facebook messages claiming to give you the chance to change the color of the site are, perhaps unsurprisingly, a phishing scam. Cheetah Mobile has the details: Once clicked, it leads users to a phishing website. Cheetah Mobile researchers have found this issue to be happening due to a vulnerability that lives in Facebook’s app page […]



Tor Network May Have Been Compromised

The Tor Project says an attack on the network earlier this year may have left user identities exposed for up to five months. At the moment those behind Tor say they are uncertain exactly what the consequences of the attack, which ran from January 30 to July 4, are for users. The Tor Project says […]

Google Hires Squad To Hunt Zero Day Flaws

Google is hiring full-time staff to try to hunt down zero-day vulnerabilities across all systems. It’s going to publish the results in a way it believes will be responsible but put pressure on firms to plug gaps quickly. The company’s Chris Evans says some of the company’s staff who work on securing Google services have […]

Journalist Publishes Own Twitter Password; Pays Price

A Wall Street Journal  journalist has published his Twitter password to prove the value of two-factor authentication. Christopher Mims remains unhacked, but his argument hasn’t been entirely borne out. Mims wrote a piece titled “The Password Is Finally Dying. Here’s Mine” with the subheading “Device-Based Authentication Is Making Passwords Irrelevant.” Ironically the piece is behind a […]

iPhone Killswitch Cuts Crime, NY Legal Chief Claims

Figures from the New York Attorney General show a sharp fall in iPhone thefts correlating with Apple introducing a “kill switch” feature. The news comes as both Microsoft and Google say they’ll put such a feature into their operating systems. Several manufacturers and carriers had already committed to releasing or supporting software to remotely disable […]

Google Working on Email Encryption Plugin

Google plans to release a Chrome plugin to make it easier to send and receive encrypted emails. It’s also criticized e-mail providers who don’t encrypt messages by default — one of whom has already promised to change its ways. The End-to-End plugin is still at an alpha stage but Google has released the source code. […]