When Google launched the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro in October 2021, key features included its custom Tensor system-on-a-chip processor and the security benefits of its onboard Titan M2 security chip. But with so much new equipment launching at once, the company needed to be extra careful that nothing was overlooked or went wrong. At… Continue reading Google’s Android Red Team Had a Full Pixel 6 Pwn Before Launch
Author: Wired Magazine
Facebook’s Message Encryption Was Built to Fail
The details are chilling. Police raiding a home, a teenager and her mother arrested, fetal remains exhumed from a rural burial plot. When police dragged off a 17-year-old Nebraska girl and charged her and her mother with self-administering a miscarriage, they were armed with damning documents they could only access through the incompetence and cooperation… Continue reading Facebook’s Message Encryption Was Built to Fail
How the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Raid Could Expose Trump’s Secrets
The exclamation point is perhaps the most tantalizing part of Donald Trump’s post-raid-on-Mar-a-Lago statement: “They even broke into my safe!” It’s been a bad week for a man who believes that a safe—an obvious investigative target—is beyond the pale. Not only did FBI agents enter Trump’s Palm Beach home on Monday as part of a… Continue reading How the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Raid Could Expose Trump’s Secrets
A Long-Awaited IoT Reverse Engineering Tool Is Finally Here
At the 2012 DefCon security conference in Las Vegas, Ang Cui, an embedded device security researcher, previewed a tool for analyzing firmware, the foundational software that underpins any computer and coordinates between hardware and software. The tool was specifically designed to elucidate internet-of-things (IoT) device firmware and the compiled “binaries” running on anything from a… Continue reading A Long-Awaited IoT Reverse Engineering Tool Is Finally Here
Nobody Is Playing Netflix’s Games
It’s been nearly two years since Netflix began its big push into gaming, and the streaming giant’s presence as a household name isn’t quite translating. According to recent findings from analytics company Apptopia, 99 percent of the service’s users have never touched a single video game on the platform. If you’ve played any of their… Continue reading Nobody Is Playing Netflix’s Games
One of 5G’s Biggest Features Is a Security Minefield
True 5G wireless data, with its ultrafast speeds and enhanced security protections, has been slow to roll out around the world. As the mobile technology proliferates—combining expanded speed and bandwidth with low-latency connections—one of its most touted features is starting to come in to focus. But the upgrade comes with its own raft of potential… Continue reading One of 5G’s Biggest Features Is a Security Minefield
Big Takeaways From the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Raid
Very few people ever find themselves on the receiving end of an FBI search warrant—even fewer end up escaping criminal charges. The fact that Donald Trump now ranks among the former provides the strongest indication yet that he may soon face the latter. Monday’s search of the former president’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida was surely… Continue reading Big Takeaways From the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Raid
Will Europe Force a Facebook Blackout?
“My guess is that Meta is going to have to look at some form of geo-siloing if they want to continue to operate in the EU,” says Calli Schroeder, global privacy counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit digital rights research organization. Schroeder, who previously worked with companies on international data transfers, says… Continue reading Will Europe Force a Facebook Blackout?
Humanity’s Biggest Problems Require a Whole New Media Mode
Our media systems are at their limits. From climate change to Covid, the most pressing phenomena of our times cannot be captured by the flat media paradigm we’ve built up. The “slow violence” of climate change, as Rob Nixon warns us, is cunningly hard to see, playing out at such a temporal and spatial scale… Continue reading Humanity’s Biggest Problems Require a Whole New Media Mode
Github Moves to Guard Open Source Against Supply Chain Attacks
Following the 2020 SolarWinds cyberespionage campaign, in which Russian hackers slipped tainted updates into a widely used IT management platform, a series of further software supply chain attacks continues to highlight the urgent need to lock down software chains of custody. And the issue is particularly pressing in open source, where projects are inherently decentralized… Continue reading Github Moves to Guard Open Source Against Supply Chain Attacks