An Elon Musk Imposter, Foreign Malware Samples, and More Security News This Week

Compromised crypto, flawed SSDs, and more of the week's top security news...

Sue Gordon: Silicon Valley Should Work With the Government

In an expansive on-the-record interview with WIRED, the principal deputy director of national intelligence made her pitch for public-private partnerships...

A DJI Bug Exposed Drone Photos and User Data

Researchers found that they could compromise DJI's single sign-on tokens, similar to the issue behind Facebook's massive breach this September...

Midterm Elections 2018: All the Hoaxes and Viral Misinformation

WIRED is looking out for the biggest stories, the most common hoaxes, and the likeliest sources of confusion as they emerge throughout the day...

Midterm Elections 2018: Voting Machine Meltdowns Are Normal—That’s the Problem

Americans watched their voting technology break down right in front of their eyes—or on social media—Tuesday, but it's too soon to tell if the problems reached historic proportions...

Midterms 2018: The Unprecedented Effort to Secure Election Day

Ninety-four district election officers. Thirteen hundred electoral jurisdictions. Multiple law enforcement agencies. The fight to keep the midterms safe has an unimaginable scope...

Trump’s ‘Racist’ Midterms Ad Backs Facebook Into a Corner

Facebook took down Donald Trump’s ad for violating its policies, but you can still watch the video on his profile...

Don’t Be Duped by Voting Misinformation Before the Midterms

How to find accurate voting information for the midterm elections...

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp Accuses Georgia Democrats of Hacking

Georgia's secretary of state is also its GOP gubernatorial candidate. And he just claimed that Democrats committed "cyber crimes."...

How to Control What Websites Can Do on Your Computer

If you're not careful, websites can grab all kinds of permissions you don't realize or intend. Take back control in your browser...

A New Privacy Bill, Safer White Hat Hacking, and More Security News This Week

A CIA debacle, a new side channel attack, and more security news this week...

Hack Brief: Someone Posted Private Facebook Messages From 81,000 Accounts

The data appears to have been stolen with malicious browser extensions, and not by exploiting an issue with Facebook’s platform...

The Privacy Battle to Save Google From Itself

Interviews with over a dozen current and former Google employees highlight a commitment to privacy—and the inherent tensions that creates...

China's Five Steps for Recruiting Spies in the US

A series of high-profile cases involving alleged Chinese recruits shows how the country identifies and develops potential spies stateside...

Apple's T2 Security Chip Makes It Harder to Tap MacBook Mics

By cutting off the microphone at the hardware level, recent MacBook devices minimize the chance that someone can eavesdrop...

Signal's "Sealed Sender" Is a Clever New Way to Shield Your Identity

"Sealed sender" gives the leading encrypted messaging app an important boost, hiding metadata around who sent a given message...

'Fortnite' Scams Are Even Worse Than You Thought

YouTube videos with millions of views. Nearly 5,000 bogus websites. V-Bucks scammers have gotten out of control...

Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting Suspect's Gab Posts Are Part of a Pattern

It may never be clear why Robert Bowers chose to carry out a violent attack. But his social media activity mirrors an increase in anti-Semitism on the internet...

How Feds Tracked Down Mail Bomb Suspect Cesar Sayoc

At a press conference Friday, officials detailed how they identified and found Cesar Sayoc, who has been arrested in connection with a series of mail bombs targeting prominent liberals and CNN...

Iran's New Facebook Trolls Are Using Russia's Playbook

Facebook took down another Iranian-based network of phony accounts Friday. This new campaign focused on American politics—and it was successful...

The Feds Just Hit Notorious Swatter Tyler Barriss With 46 New Charges. He Intends to Plead Guilty

Prosecutors in California have filed 46 new counts against Tyler Barriss for bomb threats, fraud, and swatting incidents nationwide. He’s angling to get the case transferred to Kansas and intends to plead guilty...

Trump's Personal iPhone Would Be a National Security Risk

By using a personal iPhone instead of secured lines, President Trump makes it entirely too easy for China and Russia to spy...

I Bought Used Voting Machines on eBay for $100 Apiece. What I Found Was Alarming

Opinion: The fact that voter information is left on devices, unencrypted, that are then sold on the open market is malpractice...

Democrat Mail Bomb Scares Are a Perfect Misinformation Storm

News of apparent mail bombs targeting prominent Democrats and CNN give way to a deluge of false reports, partisan finger-pointing, and bad-faith conspiracy theories online...

How Mail Bombs Get Intercepted—And What Happens Next

Devices that might be explosives targeting Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, CNN, and more all are caught before reaching their final destinations. Here's how...

Don't Believe Everything You See About the Migrant Caravan

A migrant caravan traveling through Mexico is the latest news event to be weaponized online...

Russia Linked to Triton Industrial Control Malware

Like so many other internet misdeeds, the notorious Triton malware appears to have originated in Moscow...

Paper and the Case for Going Low-Tech in the Voting Booth

When considered as a form of tech, paper has a killer feature set: It’s intuitive, it doesn’t crash, and it doesn’t need a power source...

It Started as an Online Gaming Prank. Then It Turned Deadly

A $1.50 wager on a "Call of Duty" match led to a fake 911 call reporting a violent hostage situation in Wichita. Here’s how it all went horribly awry...

Forging a Relationship With Tyler Barriss, the Internet’s Most Hated Swatter

Journalist Brendan Koerner strikes up a jail-cell correspondence with a man charged with instigating a fatal shooting. “Only by peering into the abyss of human malice can we divine how we can muster the strength to forgive the truly lost," he writes...

The Titan M Chip Powers Up Pixel 3 Security

Google's latest flagship smartphone includes the Titan M, a security-focused chip that keeps users safe against sophisticated attacks...

Apple Data Downloads, A Dating App for Trump Fans, and More Security News This Week

North Korean bitcoin theft, Fake FCC complaints, and more security news this week...

To Curb Terrorist Propaganda Online, Look to YouTube. No, Really.

Opinion: Despite YouTube’s crackdown, extremist groups are still exploiting other Google platforms...

Russian Trolls Are Still Playing Both Sides—Even With the Mueller Probe

The latest indictment against Russian trolls shows how they sowed division in the US on wedge issues, including the investigation into their activity...

A Trove of Facebook Data Is a Spammer's Dream and Your Nightmare

A new report suggests that spammers, not nation states, may have been behind the Facebook hack. That could be even worse news...

The Mysterious Return of Years-Old APT1 Malware

Security researchers have discovered a new instance code associated with APT1, a notorious Chinese hacking group that disappeared in 2013...

Helm Wants You to Control Your Own Data Again

Helm hopes to make running your own private, encrypted server easy for everyone...

Robert Mueller Has Already Told You Everything You Need To Know

With the exception of President Trump’s legal team, no one has been watching the Mueller investigation more closely than Garrett Graff...

Kanye's Password, a WhatsApp Bug, and More Security News This Week

A grey hat hacking hero, bad boat news, and more security news this week...

Fake Adobe Flash Installers Come With a Little Malware Bonus

A clever new cryptomining scheme downloads the latest version of Adobe for you, but adds malware to the bargain...

How Facebook Hackers Compromised 30 Million Accounts

Facebook has revealed more details about the unprecedented breach of its platform—including how hackers got away with the access tokens of 30 million users...

How to Check If Your Facebook Account Got Hacked—And How Badly

Facebook Friday offered more details about its recent breach. Here's how to see if you were affected...

No One Can Get Cybersecurity Disclosure Just Right

If Facebook and Google's recent security debacles proved anything, it's that disclosure is tricky business...

How the US Halted China’s Cybertheft—Using a Chinese Spy

For years, China has systematically looted American trade secrets. Here's the messy inside story of how DC got Beijing to clean up its act for a while...

Pentagon Weapons Systems Are Easy Cyberattack Targets, New Report Finds

A new report says the Department of Defense "likely has an entire generation of systems that were designed and built without adequately considering cybersecurity."...

Google+ Shuts Down Over Breach as Google Offers New Privacy Features

Google got caught hiding a privacy issue affecting 500,000 users on the same day it rolled out privacy protections...

A Good Password Law, Hardware Hacks, and More Security News This Week

Hardware hacks, the government gets two-factor, and more security news this week...

Don't Buy the Trump Administration's China Misdirection

The White House keeps accusing China of election interference—but it's nothing like Russia in 2016...

A 'Scarily Simple' Bug Put Millions of Cox Communications Customers at Risk

The most straightforward insecurities can sometimes be the riskiest...

The Apollo Breach Included Billions of Data Points

Sales intelligence firm Apollo left a "staggering amount" of exposed online, including 125 million email addresses and nine billion data points...