Lock and Code
Lock and Code is a cybersecurity podcast that explores the human side of technology and privacy. It covers stories like rogue robot vacuums, hacked farm tractors, and catastrophic software vulnerabilities. The show aims to make complex security topics accessible and engaging.
Episodes
A true tale of virtual kidnapping (re-air)
On Thursday, December 28, 2023, at 8:30 pm in the Utah town of Riverdale, the city police began investigating what they believed was a kidnapping.17-year-old foreign exchange student Kai Zhuang was missing, and according to Riverdale Police Chief Casey Warren, Zhuang was believed to be “forcefully taken” from his home, and “being held against his will.”The evidence leaned in police’s favor. That n
The AI plot to scan and destroy books (feat. Emanuel Maiberg)
If you want AI to tell you a story, it will. If you want that story to sound like one of your favorite authors, it can. And if you’re one of the authors that AI can imitate, you might be a little upset at what feels like theft.In 2024, the authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson sued Anthropic, the creator of Claude, alleging that the company had wrongfully digested million
Loyalty points fraud is funding hacker holidays (feat. Kim Sutherland)
Crooks are taking a holiday. They’re counting on you to fund it.For decades, cybercriminals have stolen roughly the same types of data. Biographical and personal details—like Social Security numbers, birthdates, addresses, and phone numbers—can be stolen to commit identity fraud. Credit card numbers, expiration dates, and CVC codes can be stolen to make fraudulent purchases. Usernames and password
What happens to your data when you die? (feat. Tamara Kneese)
You will die. Your data will not.The afterlife of our information is a recent phenomenon, and some of the companies with the most to sort through are still just figuring it out.As far back as 2007, Facebook was forced to reckon with mass grief when users asked the company to maintain the profile pages of the 32 victims killed by a school shooter at Virginia Tech that year. Those pages became de fa
How to fake a data trail (and maybe lower prices) (feat. Chris Parr)
It may sound entirely bizarre but the prices you once paid for hotels, educational classes, or staplers could have all been higher because you used a Mac computer, lived in a certain zip code, or lacked an Office Depot in your neighborhood.No, really.In 2012, The Wall Street Journal reported that the travel booking site Orbitz showed Mac users pricier hotel options than PC users, because the compa
What's your data worth on the dark web?
Twenty years ago, a British mathematician named Clive Humby popularized a phrase that came to describe data’s relationship with the entire global economy: “Data is the new oil.”Pithy as the phrase sounds, it is undeniably true.Data steers decisions at businesses of every size. Data created entirely new industries built around its capture. And, for a select number of companies, data has produced bi
Trusting your kids online isn't enough
There is a lot going on right now regarding the safety of kids online.In the United States, the majority of state legislatures have passed age verification laws requiring a variety of websites to more rigorously verify the age of their visitors. In the United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, Spain, and Germany, lawmakers are considering bans on social media access for anyone under the age of 16—Australia
This pay gap is programmed (feat. Veena Dubal)
Pay is personal for plenty of Americans, but a new distribution model that consumes vast quantities of worker data is turning pay into something else: personalized.For an increasing number of workers in America, the money they can expect to be paid on any given day, week, or month is unknown to them. They could work the same number of hours as they did the shift before. They could help the same nu
Deepfake porn sites are going offline (re-air) (feat. David Chiu)
If you weren’t taking deepfakes seriously before, it’s too late now to ignore them.According to new research from Malwarebytes, one in three people who use AI every day said it’s okay to generate pornography of people without their consent.Nearly 10 years ago, “deepfake” technology provided hobbyists and film editors with artificial intelligence (AI) tools to swap the face of one person onto the b
Payment apps are watching what you say (feat. Rainey Reitman)
In the United States today, you can have your bank account closed, your credit cards cancelled, and your online payments revoked for any number of crimes, like funding terrorism, engaging in money laundering, or violating sanctions.Sensible, right? Well, you can also face financial ruin for teaching poetry.That’s what seemingly happened to a Persian poetry teacher from Detroit whose accounts were
AI is distorting the Holocaust (feat. Clara Mansfeld)
In May of last year, a warning about AI came from somewhere unexpected: The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.Posting publicly on social media, the museum warned about a Facebook account using generative AI to create fake images of people who died in the Holocaust. The people in said images were sometimes real—with real names, birthplaces, and stories of deportation that the Auschwitz-Birkenau State
Cyberattacks are raising your prices (feat. Eva Velasquez)
Your prices could be going up because of a little something that one group has started calling the “cyber tax.”Not a “tax” in any regulatory sense of the word, this newly named “cyber tax” is instead a consequence of the growing number of cyberattacks on small businesses. According to the latest research from the Identity Theft Resource Center, 81% of small- and medium-sized businesses suffered a
Big Tech can stop scams. They just don’t (feat. Marti DeLiema)
A dreadful thing happens far too often whenever an older adult falls for a scam: They get blamed for it. Not the scammers who lied and cheated their victim out of money. Not law enforcement for failing to recover funds. Not even the Big Tech companies that could have the most important role in protecting people online—and which, it turns out, knowingly bring in revenue every year from fraud.I
Killer robots are here. Now what? (feat. Peter Asaro)
Big news: Lock and Code is nominated for a Webby Award! You can help us win the People’s Voice Award by voting here.---We have to talk about killer robots. No, not the Terminator, and not some Boston Dynamics robot run amok. We have to talk instead about a technological reality that is very much already here.In late February, the artificial intelligence developer Anthropic made a perhaps
This is all it takes to stop a train (feat. Rachel Swan)
Forget the runaway train thrillingly shot in Buster Keaton’s 1926 film “The General,” and never mind the charging locomotive rescued by actors Denzel Washington and Chris Pine in the 2010 film “Unstoppable,” as there’s a far more frequent (and far less heart-pounding) railcar drama happening across California’s Bay Area: The repeated breakdown of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system, all becau
Won't you see my neighbor? (feat. Matt Guariglia)
On February 8, during the Super Bowl in the United States, countless owners of one of the most popular smart products today got a bit of a wakeup call: Their Ring doorbells could be used to see a whole lot more than they knew.In a commercial that was broadcast to one of most reliably enormous audiences in the country, Amazon, which owns the company Ring, promoted a new feature for its smart doorbe
What can't you say on TikTok?
A funny thing happened on TikTok last month, and its brought allegations of censorship, manipulation, and control.It was the week of January 22, and after a long legal battle, TikTok had finally—for the first time in its company history—moved its ownership to new, American stewards. But with the American restructuring, TikTok users immediately reported that something had changed: vi
Is your phone listening to you? (feat. Lena Cohen) (re-air)
In January, Google settled a lawsuit that pricked up a few ears: It agreed to pay $68 million to a wide array of people who sued the company together, alleging that Google’s voice-activated smart assistant had secretly recorded their conversations, which were then sent to advertisers to target them with promotions.Google denied any admission of wrongdoing in the settlement agreement, but
One privacy change for 2026
When you hear the words “data privacy,” what do you first imagine?Maybe you picture going into your social media apps and setting your profile and posts to private. Maybe you think about who you’ve shared your location with and deciding to revoke some of that access. Maybe you want to remove a few apps entirely from your smartphone, maybe you want to try a new web browser, maybe you even want to s
Enshittification is ruining everything online (feat. Cory Doctorow)
There’s a bizarre thing happening online right now where everything is getting worse.Your Google results have become so bad that you’ve likely typed what you’re looking for, plus the word “Reddit,” so you can find discussion from actual humans. If you didn’t take this route, you might get served AI results from Google Gemini, which once recommended that every person should eat “at least one small
ALPRs are recording your daily drive (feat. Will Freeman)
There’s an entire surveillance network popping up across the United States that has likely already captured your information, all for the non-suspicion of driving a car.Automated License Plate Readers, or ALPRs, are AI-powered cameras that scan and store an image of every single vehicle that passes their view. They are mounted onto street lights, installed under bridges, disguised in water barrels
Pig butchering is the next “humanitarian global crisis” (feat. Erin West)
This is the story of the world’s worst scam and how it is being used to fuel entire underground economies that have the power to rival nation-states across the globe. This is the story of “pig butchering.”“Pig butchering” is a violent term that is used to describe a growing type of online investment scam that has ruined the lives of countless victims all across the world. No age group is spared, n
Air fryer app caught asking for voice data (re-air)
It’s often said online that if a product is free, you’re the product, but what if that bargain was no longer true? What if, depending on the device you paid hard-earned money for, you still became a product yourself, to be measured, anonymized, collated, shared, or sold, often away from view?In 2024, a consumer rights group out of the UK teased this new reality when it published research
Your coworker is tired of AI "workslop" (feat. Dr. Kristina Rapuano)
Everything’s easier with AI… except having to correct it.In just the three years since OpenAI released ChatGPT, not only has onlife life changed at home—it’s also changed at work. Some of the biggest software companies today, like Microsoft and Google, are forwarding a vision of an AI-powered future where people don’t write their own emails anymore, or make their own slide decks for presentations,
Would you sext ChatGPT? (feat. Deb Donig)
In the final, cold winter months of the year, ChatGPT could be heating up.On October 14, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that the “restrictions” that his company previously placed on their flagship product, ChatGPT, would be removed, allowing, perhaps, for “erotica” in the future.“We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues,” Altman wrote on the
What does Google know about me?
Google is everywhere in our lives. It’s reach into our data extends just as far.After investigating how much data Facebook had collected about him in his nearly 20 years with the platform, Lock and Code host David Ruiz had similar questions about the other Big Tech platforms in his life, and this time, he turned his attention to Google.Google dominates much of the modern web. It has a search
What's there to save about social media? (feat. Rabble)
“Connection” was the promise—and goal—of much of the early internet. No longer would people be separated from vital resources and news that was either too hard to reach or made simply inaccessible by governments. No longer would education be guarded behind walls both physical and paid. And no longer would your birthplace determine so much about the path of your life, as the internet could connect
Can you disappear online? (feat. Peter Dolanjski)
There’s more about you online than you know.The company Acxiom, for example, has probably determined whether you’re a heavy drinker, or if you’re overweight, or if you smoke (or all three). The same company has also probably estimated—to the exact dollar—the amount you spend every year on dining out, donating to charities, and traveling domestically. Another company Experian, has probably made a s
This “insidious” police tech claims to predict crime (feat. Emily Galvin-Almanza)
In the late 2010s, a group of sheriffs out of Pasco County, Florida, believed they could predict crime. The Sheriff’s Department there had piloted a program called “Intelligence-Led Policing” and the program would allegedly analyze disparate points of data to identify would-be criminals.But in reality, the program didn’t so much predict crime, as it did make criminals out of everyday people, inclu
How a scam hunter got scammed (feat. Julie-Anne Kearns)
If there’s one thing that scam hunter Julie-Anne Kearns wants everyone to know, it is that no one is immune from a scam. And she would know—she fell for one last year.For years now, Kearns has made a name for herself on TikTok as a scam awareness and education expert. Popular under the name @staysafewithmjules, Kearns makes videos about scam identification and defense. She has posted countles
“The worst thing” for online rights: An age-restricted grey web (feat. Jason Kelley)
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 internet will change very soon.The law, titled HB 1181 and passed in 2023, places new requirements on websites that portray or depict “se
How the FBI got everything it wanted (re-air, feat. Joseph Cox)
For decades, digital rights activists, technologists, and cybersecurity experts have worried about what would happen if the US government secretly broke into people’s encrypted communications.The weird thing, though, is that it's already happened—sort of.US intelligence agencies, including the FBI and NSA, have long sought what is called a “backdoor” into the secure and private messages that are t
Is AI "healthy" to use?
“Health” isn’t the first feature that most anyone thinks about when trying out a new technology, but a recent spate of news is forcing the issue when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI).In June, The New York Times reported on a group of ChatGPT users who believed the AI-powered chat tool and generative large language model held secretive, even arcane information. It told one mother
Corpse-eating selfies, and other ways to trick scammers (feat. Becky Holmes)
There’s a unique counter response to romance scammers.Her name is Becky Holmes.Holmes, an expert and author on romance scams, has spent years responding to nearly every romance scammer who lands a message in her inbox. She told one scammer pretending to be Brad Pitt that she needed immediate help hiding the body of one of her murder victims. She made one romance scammer laugh at her immediate
The data on denying social media for kids (feat. Dr. Jean Twenge) (re-air)
Complex problems often assume complex solutions, but recent observations about increased levels of anxiety and depression, increased reports of loneliness, and lower rates of in-person friendships for teens and children in America today have led some school districts across the country to take direct and simple action: Take away the access to smartphones in schools.Not everyone is convinced. When
What does Facebook know about me?
There’s an easy way to find out what Facebook knows about you—you just have to ask.In 2020, the social media giant launched an online portal that allows all users to access their historical data and to request specific types of information for download across custom time frames. Want to know how many posts you’ve made, ever? You can find that. What about every photo you’ve uploaded? You can find t
How Los Angeles banned smartphones in schools (feat. Nick Melvoin)
There’s a problem in class today, and the second largest school district in the United States is trying to solve it.After looking at the growing body of research that has associated increased smartphone and social media usage with increased levels of anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and isolation—especially amongst adolescents and teenagers—Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) implem
The AI chatbot cop squad is here (feat. Emanuel Maiberg and Jason Koebler)
“Heidi” is a 36-year-old, San Francisco-born, divorced activist who is lonely, outspoken, and active on social media. “Jason” is a shy, bilingual teenager whose parents immigrated from Ecuador who likes anime, gaming, comic books, and hiking.Neither of them is real. Both are supposed to fight crime.Heidi and Jason are examples of “AI personas” that are being pitched by the company Massive Blue for
Did DOGE "breach" Americans' data? (feat. Sydney Saubestre)
If you don’t know about the newly created US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), there’s a strong chance they already know about you.Created on January 20 by US President Donald Trump through Executive Order, DOGE’s broad mandate is “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”To fulfill its mission, though, DOGE has taken great in
Is your phone listening to you? (feat. Lena Cohen)
It has probably happened to you before.You and a friend are talking—not texting, not DMing, not FaceTiming—but talking, physically face-to-face, about, say, an upcoming vacation, a new music festival, or a job offer you just got.And then, that same week, you start noticing some eerily specific ads. There’s the Instagram ad about carry-on luggage, the TikTok ad about earplugs, and the cou
What Google Chrome knows about you, with Carey Parker
Google Chrome is, by far, the most popular web browser in the world.According to several metrics, Chrome accounts for anywhere between 52% and 66% of the current global market share for web browser use. At that higher estimate, that means that, if the 5.5 billion internet users around the world were to open up a web browser right now, 3.6 billion of them would open up Google Chrome.And because the
How ads weirdly know your screen brightness, headphone jack use, and location, with Tim Shott
Something’s not right in the world of location data.In January, a location data broker named Gravy Analytics was hacked, with the alleged cybercriminal behind the attack posting an enormous amount of data online as proof. Though relatively unknown to most of the public, Gravy Analytics is big in the world of location data collection, and, according to an enforcement action from the US Federal
Surveillance pricing is "evil and sinister," explains Justin Kloczko
Insurance pricing in America makes a lot of sense so long as you’re one of the insurance companies. Drivers are charged more for traveling long distances, having low credit, owning a two-seater instead of a four, being on the receiving end of a car crash, and—increasingly—for any number of non-determinative data points that insurance companies use to assume higher risk.It’s a pricing model that mo
A suicide reveals the lonely side of AI chatbots, with Courtney Brown
In February 2024, a 14-year-old boy from Orlando, Florida, committed suicide after confessing his love to the one figure who absorbed nearly all of his time—an AI chatbot.For months, Sewell Seltzer III had grown attached to an AI chatbot modeled after the famous “Game of Thrones” character Daenerys Targaryen. The Daenerys chatbot was not a licensed product, it had no relation to the franchise’s ac
Three privacy rules for 2025
It’s Data Privacy Week right now, and that means, for the most part, that you’re going to see a lot of well-intentioned but clumsy information online about how to protect your data privacy. You’ll see articles about iPhone settings. You’ll hear acronyms for varying state laws. And you’ll probably see ads for a variety of apps, plug-ins, and online tools that can be difficult to navigate.So much of
The new rules for AI and encrypted messaging, with Mallory Knodel
The era of artificial intelligence everything is here, and with it, come everyday surprises into exactly where the next AI tools might pop up.There are major corporations pushing customer support functions onto AI chatbots, Big Tech platforms offering AI image generation for social media posts, and even Google has defaulted to include AI-powered overviews into everyday searches.The next
Is nowhere safe from AI slop?
You can see it on X. You can see on Instagram. It’s flooding community pages on Facebook and filling up channels on YouTube. It’s called “AI slop” and it’s the fastest, laziest way to drive engagement.Like “click bait” before it (“You won’t believe what happens next,” reads the trickster headline), AI slop can be understood as the latest online tactic in getting eyeballs, clicks, shares, comments,
A day in the life of a privacy pro, with Ron de Jesus
Privacy is many things for many people.For the teenager suffering from a bad breakup, privacy is the ability to stop sharing her location and to block her ex on social media. For the political dissident advocating against an oppressive government, privacy is the protection that comes from secure, digital communications. And for the California resident who wants to know exactly how they’re being in
These cars want to know about your sex life (re-air)
Two weeks ago, the Lock and Code podcast shared three stories about home products that requested, collected, or exposed sensitive data online.There were the air fryers that asked users to record audio through their smartphones. There was the smart ring maker that, even with privacy controls put into place, published data about users’ stress levels and heart rates. And there was the smart
An air fryer, a ring, and a vacuum get brought into a home. What they take out is your data
The month, a consumer rights group out of the UK posed a question to the public that they’d likely never considered: Were their air fryers spying on them?By analyzing the associated Android apps for three separate air fryer models from three different companies, a group of researchers learned that these kitchen devices didn’t just promise to make crispier mozzarella sticks, crunchier chicken wings
Why your vote can’t be “hacked,” with Cait Conley of CISA
The US presidential election is upon the American public, and with it come fears of “election interference.”But “election interference” is a broad term. It can mean the now-regular and expected foreign disinformation campaigns that are launched to sow political discord or to erode trust in American democracy. It can include domestic campaigns to disenfranchise voters in battleground states. And it
This industry profits from knowing you have cancer, explains Cody Venzke
On the internet, you can be shown an online ad because of your age, your address, your purchase history, your politics, your religion, and even your likelihood of having cancer.This is because of the largely unchecked “data broker” industry.Data brokers are analytics and marketing companies that collect every conceivable data point that exists about you, packaging it all into profiles that other c
Exposing the Facebook funeral livestream scam
Online scammers were seen this August stooping to a new low—abusing local funerals to steal from bereaved family and friends.Cybercrime has never been a job of morals (calling it a “job” is already lending it too much credit), but, for many years, scams wavered between clever and brusque. Take the “Nigerian prince” email scam which has plagued victims for close to two decades. In it, would-be vict
San Francisco’s fight against deepfake porn, with City Attorney David Chiu
On August 15, the city of San Francisco launched an entirely new fight against the world of deepfake porn—it sued the websites that make the abusive material so easy to create.“Deepfakes,” as they’re often called, are fake images and videos that utilize artificial intelligence to swap the face of one person onto the body of another. The technology went viral in the late 2010s, as independent film
What the arrest of Telegram's CEO means, with Eva Galperin
On August 24, at an airport just outside of Paris, a man named Pavel Durov was detained for questioning by French investigators. Just days later, the same man was charged in crimes related to the distribution of child pornography and illicit transactions, such as drug trafficking and fraud.Durov is the CEO and founder of the messaging and communications app Telegram. Though Durov holds citizenship
Move over malware: Why one teen is more worried about AI (re-air)
Every age group uses the internet a little bit differently, and it turns out for at least one Gen Z teen in the Bay Area, the classic approach to cyberecurity—defending against viruses, ransomware, worms, and more—is the least of her concerns. Of far more importance is Artificial Intelligence (AI).Today, the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz revisits a prior episode from 2023 about what t
AI girlfriends want to know all about you. So might ChatGPT
Somewhere out there is a romantic AI chatbot that wants to know everything about you. But in a revealing overlap, other AI tools—which are developed and popularized by far larger companies in technology—could crave the very same thing.For AI tools of any type, our data is key.In the nearly two years since OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT to the public, the biggest names in technology have raced to compete.
SIEM is not storage, with Jess Dodson
In the world of business cybersecurity, the powerful technology known as “Security Information and Event Management” is sometimes thwarted by the most unexpected actors—the very people setting it up.Security Information and Event Management—or SIEM—is a term used to describe data-collecting products that businesses rely on to make sense of everything going on inside their network, in the hopes of
How an AI “artist” stole a woman’s face, with Ali Diamond
Full-time software engineer and part-time Twitch streamer Ali Diamond is used to seeing herself on screen, probably because she’s the one who turns the camera on.But when Diamond received a Direct Message (DM) on Twitter earlier this year, she learned that her likeness had been recreated across a sample of AI-generated images, entirely without her consent.On the AI art sharing platform C
Busted for book club? Why cops want to see what you’re reading, with Sarah Lamdan
More than 20 years ago, a law that the United States would eventually use to justify the warrantless collection of Americans’ phone call records actually started out as a warning sign against an entirely different target: Libraries.Not two months after terrorists attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, Congress responded with the passage of The USA Patriot Act. Originally championed as a
(Almost) everything you always wanted to know about cybersecurity, but were too afraid to ask, with Tjitske de Vries
🎶 Ready to know what Malwarebytes knows?Ask us your questions and get some answers.What is a passphrase and what makes it—what’s the word?Strong? 🎶Every day, countless readers, listeners, posters, and users ask us questions about some of the most commonly cited topics and terminology in cybersecurity. What are passkeys? Is it safer to use a website or an app? How can I stay safe from a r
800 arrests, 40 tons of drugs, and one backdoor, or what a phone startup gave the FBI, with Joseph Cox
This is a story about how the FBI got everything it wanted.For decades, law enforcement and intelligence agencies across the world have lamented the availability of modern technology that allows suspected criminals to hide their communications from legal scrutiny. This long-standing debate has sometimes spilled into the public view, as it did in 2016, when the FBI demanded that Apple unlock an iPh
Your vacation, reservations, and online dates, now chosen by AI
The irrigation of the internet is coming.For decades, we’ve accessed the internet much like how we, so long ago, accessed water—by traveling to it. We connected (quite literally), we logged on, and we zipped to addresses and sites to read, learn, shop, and scroll. Over the years, the internet was accessible from increasingly more devices, like smartphones, smartwatches, and even smart fridges
"No social media 'til 16," and other fixes for a teen mental health crisis, with Dr. Jean Twenge
You’ve likely felt it: The dull pull downwards of a smartphone scroll. The “five more minutes” just before bed. The sleep still there after waking. The edges of your calm slowly fraying.After more than a decade of our most recent technological experiment, in turns out that having the entirety of the internet in the palm of your hands could be … not so great. Obviously, the effects of this are comp
Picking fights and gaining rights, with Justin Brookman
Our Lock and Code host, David Ruiz, has a bit of an apology to make:“Sorry for all the depressing episodes.”When the Lock and Code podcast explored online harassment and abuse this year, our guest provided several guidelines and tips for individuals to lock down their accounts and remove their sensitive information from the internet, but larger problems remained. Content moderation is fa
Porn panic imperils privacy online, with Alec Muffett (re-air)
A digital form of protest could become the go-to response for the world’s largest porn website as it faces increased regulations: Not letting people access the site.In March, PornHub blocked access to visitors connecting to its website from Texas. It marked the second time in the past 12 months that the porn giant shut off its website to protest new requirements in online age verification.The Texa
Securing your home network is long, tiresome, and entirely worth it, with Carey Parker
Few words apply as broadly to the public—yet mean as little—as “home network security.”For many, a “home network” is an amorphous thing. It exists somewhere between a router, a modem, an outlet, and whatever cable it is that plugs into the wall. But the idea of a “home network” doesn’t need to intimidate, and securing that home network could be simpler than many folks realize.For starters, a home
Going viral shouldn't lead to bomb threats, with Leigh Honeywell
A disappointing meal at a restaurant. An ugly breakup between two partners. A popular TV show that kills off a beloved, main character.In a perfect world, these are irritations and moments of vulnerability. But online today, these same events can sometimes be the catalyst for hate. That disappointing meal can produce a frighteningly invasive Yelp review that exposes a restaurant owner’s home addre
How to make a fake ID online, with Joseph Cox
For decades, fake IDs had roughly three purposes: Buying booze before legally allowed, getting into age-restricted clubs, and, we can only assume, completing nation-state spycraft for embedded informants and double agents.In 2024, that’s changed, as the uses for fake IDs have become enmeshed with the internet.Want to sign up for a cryptocurrency exchange where you’ll use traditional funds to purch
If only you had to worry about malware, with Jason Haddix
If your IT and security teams think malware is bad, wait until they learn about everything else.In 2024, the modern cyberattack is a segmented, prolonged, and professional effort, in which specialists create strictly financial alliances to plant malware on unsuspecting employees, steal corporate credentials, slip into business networks, and, for a period of days if not weeks, simply sit and watch
Bruce Schneier predicts a future of AI-powered mass spying
If the internet helped create the era of mass surveillance, then artificial intelligence will bring about an era of mass spying.That’s the latest prediction from noted cryptographer and computer security professional Bruce Schneier, who, in December, shared a vision of the near future where artificial intelligence—AI—will be able to comb through reams of surveillance data to answer the types of qu
A true tale of virtual kidnapping
On Thursday, December 28, at 8:30 pm in the Utah town of Riverdale, the city police began investigating what they believed was a kidnapping.17-year-old foreign exchange student Kai Zhuang was missing, and according to Riverdale Police Chief Casey Warren, Zhuang was believed to be “forcefully taken” from his home, and “being held against his will.”The evidence leaned in police’s favor. That night,
DNA data deserves better, with Suzanne Bernstein
Hackers want to know everything about you: Your credit card number, your ID and passport info, and now, your DNA.On October 1 2023, on a hacking website called BreachForums, a group of cybercriminals claimed that they had stolen—and would soon sell—individual profiles for users of the genetic testing company 23andMe.23andMe offers direct-to-consumer genetic testing kits that provide customers with
Meet the entirely legal, iPhone-crashing device: the Flipper Zero
It talks, it squawks, it even blocks! The stocking-stuffer on every hobby hacker’s wish list this year is the Flipper Zero.“Talk” across low-frequency radio to surreptitiously change TV channels, emulate garage door openers, or even pop open your friend’s Tesla charging port without their knowing! “Squawk” with the Flipper Zero’s mascot and user-interface tour guide, a “cyber-dolphin” who can “rea
Why a ransomware gang tattled on its victim, with Allan Liska
Like the grade-school dweeb who reminds their teacher to assign tonight’s homework, or the power-tripping homeowner who threatens every neighbor with an HOA citation, the ransomware group ALPHV can now add itself to a shameful roster of pathetic, little tattle-tales.In November, the ransomware gang ALPHV, which also goes by the name Black Cat, notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission abo
Defeating Little Brother requires a new outlook on privacy
A worrying trend is cropping up amongst Americans, particularly within Generation Z—they're spying on each other more.Whether reading someone's DMs, rifling through a partner's text messages, or even rummaging through the bags and belongings of someone else, Americans enjoy keeping tabs on one another, especially when they're in a relationship. Acc
MGM attack is too late a wake-up call for businesses, says James Fair
In September, the Las Vegas casino and hotel operator MGM Resorts became a trending topic on social media... but for all the wrong reasons. A TikTok user posted a video taken from inside the casino floor of the MGM Grand—the company's flagship hotel complex near the southern end of the Las Vegas strip—that didn't involve the whirring of slot machines or the sirens and buzz
AI sneak attacks, location spying, and definitely not malware, or, what one teenager fears online
What are you most worried about online? And what are you doing to stay safe? Depending on who you are, those could be very different answers, but for teenagers and members of Generation Z, the internet isn't so scary because of traditional threats like malware and viruses. Instead, the internet is scary because of what it can expose. To Gen Z, a feared internet is one that is vindic
What does a car need to know about your sex life?
When you think of the modern tools that most invade your privacy, what do you picture?There's the obvious answers, like social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram. There's email and "everything" platforms like Google that can track your locations, your contacts, and, of course, your search history. There's even the modern web itself, rife with third-party cookies that track your brows
Re-air: What teenagers face growing up online
In 2022, Malwarebytes investigated the blurry, shifting idea of “identity” on the internet, and how online identities are not only shaped by the people behind them, but also inherited by the internet’s youngest users, children. Children have always inherited some of their identities from their parents—consider that two of the largest indicators for political and religious affiliation in the U
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