Cindy Cohn Is Leaving the EFF, but Not the Fight for Digital Rights

After 25 years at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Cindy Cohn is stepping down as executive director. In a WIRED interview, she reflects on encryption, AI, and why she’s not ready to quit the battle...

“The worst thing” for online rights: An age-restricted grey web (Lock and Code S06E16)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast … The internet is cracking apart. It’s exactly what some politicians want. In June, a Texas law that requires age verification on certain websites withstood a legal challenge brought all the way to the US Supreme Court. It could be a blueprint for how the...

Apple ordered to grant access to users’ encrypted data

Last week, an article in the Washington Post revealed the UK had secretly ordered Apple to provide blanket access to protected cloud backups around the world. Since then, privacy focused groups have uttered their objections. The UK government has demanded to be able to access encrypted data store...

TikTok faces ban in US unless it parts ways with Chinese owner ByteDance

The House of Representatives has passed a bill that would effectively ban TikTok from the US unless Chinese owner ByteDance gives up its share of the immensely popular app. TikTok is an immensely popular social media platform that allows users to create, share, and discover, short video clips. It...

Surveillance through Push Notifications

The Washington Post is reporting on the FBIs increasing use of push notification data--"push tokens"--to identify people. The police can request this data from companies like Apple and Google without a warrant. The investigative technique goes back years. Court orders that were issued in 2019 to...

Ring curtails law enforcement’s access to footage

US law enforcement will no longer be able to request footage through the Neighbors app produced by Ring video doorbells and surveillance cameras. Until now Ring’s Request for Assistance RFA function allowed law enforcement to ask for and obtain user footage, but this function will be retired. Alo...

Food delivery robots give captured video footage to police

In what sounds like a new step towards Skynet, footage from a food delivery robot has been used as part of a criminal investigation. As 404 Media reports, the food delivery robots that are deployed for Uber Eats in Los Angeles are operated by Serve Robotics, which ultimately wants to deploy up to...

Of sharks, surveillance, and spied-on emails: This is Section 702, with Matthew Guariglia

In the United States, when the police want to conduct a search on a suspected criminal, they must first obtain a search warrant. It is one of the foundational rights given to US persons under the Constitution, and a concept that has helped create the very idea of a right to privacy at home and...

How the cops buy a "God view" of your location data, with Bennett Cyphers: Lock and Code S04E09

The list of people and organizations that are hungry for your location data--collected so routinely and packaged so conveniently that it can easily reveal where you live, where you work, where you shop, pray, eat, and relax--includes many of the usual suspects. Advertisers, obviously, want to sen...

Apple announces 3 new security features

Apple has announced three new security features focused on protecting user data in the cloud: iMessage Contact Key Verification, Security Keys for Apple ID, and Advanced Data Protection for iCloud. iMessage Contact Key Verification and Security Keys for Apple ID will be available globally in 2023...

Breach Exposes Users of Microleaves Proxy Service

Microleaves, a ten-year-old proxy service that lets customers route their web traffic through millions of Microsoft Windows computers, recently fixed a vulnerability in their website that exposed their entire user database. Microleaves claims its proxy software is installed with user consent, but...

Supreme Court Limits Scope of Controversial Hacking Law

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that a police officer who received money for obtaining data from a law-enforcement database for an associate did not violate a controversial federal hacking law, marking a victory for the ethical hacking community by limiting the law’s scope. In a landmar...

Tech Giants Lend WhatsApp Support in Spyware Case Against NSO Group

Facebook subsidiary WhatsApp has received new high-caliber support in its case against Israeli intelligence company NSO Group. The court case aims to hold NSO Group accountable for distributing its Pegasus spyware on the popular WhatsApp messaging service with the intent of planting its spyware o...

Digitally Signed Bandook Malware Once Again Targets Multiple Sectors

A cyberespionage group with suspected ties to the Kazakh and Lebanese governments has unleashed a new wave of attacks against a multitude of industries with a retooled version of a 13-year-old backdoor Trojan. Check Point Research called out hackers affiliated with a group named Dark Caracal in a...

New Hacking-for-Hire Company in India

Citizen Lab has a new report on Dark Basin, a large hacking-for-hire company in India. Key Findings: Dark Basin is a hack-for-hire group that has targeted thousands of individuals and hundreds of institutions on six continents. Targets include advocacy groups and journalists, elected and senior...

Microsoft Adds DNS-Over-HTTPS Support for Windows 10 Insiders

Microsoft has announced the first testable version of DNS-Over-HTTPS DoH support, available for its Windows 10 operating system. Support for the DoH protocol, which Microsoft first announced in November, is available in the Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19628. This is accessible for members of...

Ring Doorbell App for Android Caught Sharing User Data with Facebook, Data-Miners

UPDATE Amazon’s Ring Doorbell app for Android is a nexus for data-harvesting, according to an investigation by the Electronic Frontier Foundation EFF. Privacy advocates allege Ring goes so far as to silently deliver updates on Ring customer usage to Facebook, even if the Ring owner doesn’t have a...

EFF Talks the Corporate Surveillance of Consumers

You can’t protect your privacy if you don’t know how it’s being violated. That’s the essence of a report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that shines a bright disinfecting light on how corporations are collecting data on consumers. Think Facebook-like data collection on steroids and you begi...

Venmo's Public Transactions Policy Stirs Privacy Concerns

Your simple $5 Venmo payment to a friend after splitting a pizza could easily expedite various malicious attacks, from stalking to spear-phishing, according to researcher concerns. Many have weighed in on Venmo’s privacy practices, but the latest are Mozilla Foundation and the Electronic Frontier...

Who Owns Your Wireless Service? Crooks Do.

Incessantly annoying and fraudulent robocalls. Corrupt wireless company employees taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to unlock and hijack mobile phone service. Wireless providers selling real-time customer location data, despite repeated promises to the contrary. A noticeable uptic...