After a great event last month in San Jose, Ars is switching coasts for October and descending in force on our nation's capital. If you're on the East Coast and want to come hang out with Ars EIC Ken Fisher and me while we talk to some neat speakers …

Archive.org, one of the only entities to attempt to preserve the entire history of the World Wide Web and much of the broader Internet, was recently compromised in a hack that revealed data on roughly 31 million users. A little after 2 pm California time, social media sites …

Researchers have unearthed two sophisticated toolsets that a nation-state hacking group—possibly from Russia—used to steal sensitive data stored on air-gapped devices, meaning those that are deliberately isolated from the Internet or other networks to safeguard them from malware. One of the custom tool collections was used starting …

Dozens of neo-Nazis are fleeing Telegram and moving to a relatively unknown secret chat app that has received funding from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. In a report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue published on Friday morning, researchers found that in the wake of the arrest of Telegram founder …

Thousands of machines running Linux have been infected by a malware strain that’s notable for its stealth, the number of misconfigurations it can exploit, and the breadth of malicious activities it can perform, researchers reported Thursday. The malware has been circulating since at least 2021. It gets installed …

Attackers are actively exploiting a critical vulnerability in mail servers sold by Zimbra in an attempt to remotely execute malicious commands that install a backdoor, researchers warn. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-45519, resides in the Zimbra email and collaboration server used by medium and large organizations. When an admin …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Federal prosecutors have charged a man for an alleged “hack-to-trade” scheme that earned him millions of dollars by breaking into the Office365 accounts of executives at publicly traded companies and obtaining quarterly financial reports before they were released publicly. The action, taken by the office …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Public records systems that courts and governments rely on to manage voter registrations and legal filings have been riddled with vulnerabilities that made it possible for attackers to falsify registration databases and add, delete, or modify official documents. Over the past year, software developer turned …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Officials in Ireland have fined Meta $101 million for storing hundreds of millions of user passwords in plaintext and making them broadly available to company employees. Meta disclosed the lapse in early 2019. The company said that apps for connecting to various Meta-owned social networks …

Enlarge (credit: The Tor Project) The Tor Project, the nonprofit that maintains software for the Tor anonymity network, is joining forces with Tails, the maker of a portable operating system that uses Tor. Both organizations seek to pool resources, lower overhead, and collaborate more closely on their mission of …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the federal body that sets technology standards for governmental agencies, standards organizations, and private companies, has proposed barring some of the most vexing and nonsensical password requirements. Chief among them: mandatory resets, required or restricted use of …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) When security researcher Johann Rehberger recently reported a vulnerability in ChatGPT that allowed attackers to store false information and malicious instructions in a user’s long-term memory settings, OpenAI summarily closed the inquiry, labeling the flaw a safety issue, not, technically speaking, a security concern …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) Five years ago, researchers made a grim discovery—a legitimate Android app in the Google Play market that was surreptitiously made malicious by a library the developers used to earn advertising revenue. With that, the app was infected with code that caused 100 million infected …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Certificate authorities and browser makers are planning to end the use of WHOIS data verifying domain ownership following a report that demonstrated how threat actors could abuse the process to obtain fraudulently issued TLS certificates. TLS certificates are the cryptographic credentials that underpin HTTPS connections …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) A coalition of law-enforcement agencies said it shut down a service that facilitated the unlocking of more than 1.2 million stolen or lost mobile phones so they could be used by someone other than their rightful owner. The service was part of iServer, a …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) The FBI has dismantled a massive network of compromised devices that Chinese state-sponsored hackers have used for four years to mount attacks on government agencies, telecoms, defense contractors, and other targets in the US and Taiwan. The botnet was made up primarily of small office …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) A supply chain failure that compromises Secure Boot protections on computing devices from across the device-making industry extends to a much larger number of models than previously known, including those used in ATMs, point-of-sale terminals, and voting machines. The debacle was the result of non-production …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Researchers still don’t know the cause of a recently discovered malware infection affecting almost 1.3 million streaming devices running an open source version of Android in almost 200 countries. Security firm Doctor Web reported Thursday that malware named Android.Vo1d has backdoored the …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Microsoft has updated a key cryptographic library with two new encryption algorithms designed to withstand attacks from quantum computers. The updates were made last week to SymCrypt, a core cryptographic code library for handing cryptographic functions in Windows and Linux. The library, started in 2006 …

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images) It’s not every day that a security researcher acquires the ability to generate counterfeit HTTPS certificates, track email activity, and the position to execute code of his choice on thousands of servers—all in a single blow that cost only $20 and …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Researchers have discovered more than 280 malicious apps for Android that use optical character recognition to steal cryptocurrency wallet credentials from infected devices. The apps masquerade as official ones from banks, government services, TV streaming services, and utilities. In fact, they scour infected phones for …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Federal prosecutors on Thursday unsealed an indictment charging six Russian nationals with conspiracy to hack into the computer networks of the Ukrainian government and its allies and steal or destroy sensitive data on behalf of the Kremlin. The indictment, filed in US District Court for …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Networking hardware-maker Zyxel is warning of nearly a dozen vulnerabilities in a wide array of its products. If left unpatched, some of them could enable the complete takeover of the devices, which can be targeted as an initial point of entry into large networks. The …

Enlarge (credit: Yubico) The YubiKey 5, the most widely used hardware token for two-factor authentication based on the FIDO standard, contains a cryptographic flaw that makes the finger-size device vulnerable to cloning when an attacker gains temporary physical access to it, researchers said Tuesday. The cryptographic flaw, known as …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) A judge in Ohio has issued a temporary restraining order against a security researcher who presented evidence that a recent ransomware attack on the city of Columbus scooped up reams of sensitive personal information, contradicting claims made by city officials. The order, issued by a …