New Facebook Internet Defense Prize Pays Out $50,000 Award

Large technology companies may already have bug bounty programs in place that reward researchers who attack and find holes in software or web platforms. Slowly, some are also starting to institute programs that pay for defensive measures. Facebook is the latest to do so with the implementation of...

Phone Hack Could Block Messages, Calls on GSM Networks

By tweaking the firmware on certain kinds of phones, a hacker could make it so other phones in the area are unable to receive incoming calls or SMS messages, according to research presented at the USENIX Security Symposium earlier this month. The hack involves modifying the baseband processor on...

Frankenstein Malware turning legitimate software into invisible malware

Many malware and viruses can be identified by detection software because of known bits of malicious code. But what if there was a virus compiled from little bits of programs you already had installed? That's just what two security researchers are looking into. Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheu...

$30 Child Toy is enough to hack FBI Radios

$30 Child Toy is enough to hack FBI Radios The portable radios used by many federal law enforcement agents have major security flaws that allowed researchers to intercept hundreds of hours of sensitive traffic sent without encryption over the past two years, according to a new study being release...

Video: Researchers Knock Out a $3K First Responder's Radio With a $30 Children's Toy

During the Reagan Administration, the ‘government waste’ meme was all about $600 toilet seats and $300 hammers. Those looking for a more contemporary example of how government procurement gets it wrong might point, instead, to Project 25 P25, a decade old effort to provide first responders and...

Security Metrics Go Prime Time at Metricon 6

The metrics movement that has been slowly but surely infiltrating the security community in the last few years has had its own annual gathering–Metricon–for some time now. It’s been a small, quasi-academic conference since its inception, but now Metricon’s organizers are branching out a bit,...

Old phishing sites still sending spam, attracting victims

The cooperative effort of ISPs, security vendors, volunteer groups and other interested parties has helped develop a quick and efficient method for taking down phishing sites, usually within hours or days of their appearance. However, many phishing sites that have been up for a week or more still...