Last Thursday, as Bloomberg was gingerly setting the stage, and the preemptive damage control for what was about to be a historic leak, it did everything in its power to deflect attention from the key topic, namely that prominent liberal billionaire and Hillary suppo

A banking trojan targeting Android users is spreading through malicious ads as part of an ongoing campaign.

The scenario by which the malware spreads is all too familiar to long-suffering Windows fans, but may well come as an unpleasant shock to smartphone users.

Worse yet, Android users can get infected by the Svpeng Trojan simply by visiting mainstream websites, as researchers from Kaspersky Lab explain:

By simply viewing their favourite news sites over their morning coffee users can end up downloading last-browser-update.apk, a banking Trojan detected by Kaspersky Lab solutions as Trojan-Banker.AndroidOS.Svpeng.q. There you are, minding your own business, reading the news and BOOM! – no additional clicks or following links required. And be careful – it’s still out there!

A new report from search giant Google has revealed how many times governments and courts have asked it to hand over information about users.

The annual transparency report shows that in 2014, 35,365 requests were made, and 40,677 were made in 2015.

By Brandon Turbeville

George Soros has been hacked and, according to the Western mainstream press, the Russians did it! In fact, that is the entirety of the story for most of the mainstream outlets – that the Russians hacked such an important American figure and therefore made their power play over American elections yet again. This Russian hack comes after Russians hacked the DNC, Hillary Clinton, hired Donald Trump to destroy the country and invented a time machine enabling them to go back in time and prevent the election of Barack Obama. It doesn’t matter that there is as much evidence for the latter as there is for the former, the mainstream outlets are wild with speculation and neo-McCarthyism...

a pro-democracy activ1ist.

a middle-aged former tax man and a pro-democracy activist. But four years ago, a botched operation launched by New Zealand spies meant he suddenly found himself deemed a potential terrorist — his passport was revoked, his home was raided, and he was placed on a top-secret National Security Agency surveillance list.

A new report from search giant Google has revealed how many times governments and courts have asked it to hand over information about users.

The annual transparency report shows that in 2014, 35,365 requests were made, and 40,677 were made in 2015.

With the popularity of PokemonGo, it was inevitable that a malware developer would create a ransomware that impersonates it. This is the case with a new Hidden-Tear ransomware discovered by Michael Gillespie that impersonates a PokemonGo application for Windows and targets Arabic victims.

Microsoft has received a small number of reports of Windows 10 freezing after installing the Anniversary Update on systems with the operating system stored on a solid-state drive (SSD) and apps and data stored on a separate drive. This issue does not occur when starting Windows 10 in Safe Mode.

Though Israel’s reputation as a true democracy has certainly come under fire, its advocates proudly point to its freewheeling press as an exemplar of the values of liberal Zionism. But even this last holdout of Israeli democracy israpidly receding, particularly in traditional domestic print and broadcast media and, more recently, among foreign-headquartered social media platforms.

The files of George Soros’s Open Society Institute have been hacked over a period of years, with 2,576 just published on the mysterious DCLeaks site.

Kwiatkowski got an idea… an awful idea. He got a wonderful, awful idea.

He’d already noticed that the remote control software the scammer was using allowed him to send and receive files. So he turned to his inbox, where he had several samples of Locky ransomware variants. He grabbed one, renamed it to look like a digital photo, and fired it over.

Kwiatkowski feigned vision trouble and suggested that Dileep just have a look at a picture of the credit card instead. It certainly sounds like he did, though, strangely, the picture must’ve been corrupted… because nothing came up on his screen when he double-clicked it.

That’ll soon change, though. A ransom notice ought to be appearing any time now.

The Twitter account of Guccifer 2.0, the hacker who claimed responsibility for leaking a trove of Democratic National Committee documents, was suspended less than 24 hours after dumping fresh sensitive DNC data.

“They take away the hashtag that has negative tweets for Clinton and replace it with something that doesn’t so the average person doesn’t see what was really trending... This happens every day.”

By John Vibes

This week, it was reported that drug sales on the dark web have tripled since the infamous Silk Road was shut down in 2013.

Within hours of the Silk Road takedown, there were several competitors that were already on the dark web who were ready to move in on the newly available business.

Stijn Hoorens of the RAND corporation recently published a study showing how this growth has occurred despite government intervention...

A hacker has published the personal contact information of nearly every Democratic member of the US House of Representatives on his website.

The hacker known as “Guccifer 2.0” uploaded an Excel file on Friday that contains the cell phone numbers and private e-mail addresses of the Democrats.

On 19 June, several hundred thousand US fans of the television drama Game of Thrones went online to watch an eagerly awaited episode — and triggered a partial failure in the channel's streaming service. Some 15,000 customers were left to rage at blank screens for more than an hour.

The channel, HBO, apologized and promised to avoid a repeat. But the incident was just one particularly public example of an increasingly urgent problem: with global Internet traffic growing by an estimated 22% per year, the demand for bandwidth is fast outstripping providers' best efforts to supply it.

This arms race will never end

Paywalls were supposed to help rescue newspapers from the crisis of sinking print circulation as readers shifted to getting their news online.

But with a few exceptions, they have failed to deliver much relief, prompting some news organizations to rethink their digital strategies.

Newspapers in the English-speaking world ended paywalls some 69 times through May 2015, including 41 temporary and 28 permanent drops, according to a study by University of Southern California researchers.

Paywalls "generate only a small fraction of industry revenue," with estimates ranging from one percent in the United States to 10 percent internationally, the study in July's International Journal of Communication said.

An online cabal of Social Justice Warriors (SJWs), including an “internet abuse specialist” who works for Amazon, have been implicated in a conspiracy to reveal a Twitter user’s personal information before unleashing an online “witch hunt” against them.

We know what automatic license plate readers are good for: collecting massive amounts (billions of records) of plate/location data housed by private companies and accessed by law enforcement for indefinite periods of time. What we don't know is how effective ALPRs are at fighting/investigating crime. George Joseph at Citylab has done some digging into the effectiveness of license plate readers and hasn't found much that justifies the expense, much less the constant compilation of plate info.

An online cabal of Social Justice Warriors (SJWs), including an “internet abuse specialist” who works for Amazon, have been implicated in a conspiracy to reveal a Twitter user’s personal information before unleashing an online “witch hunt” against them.

By Derrick Broze

Vancouver police have become the first Canadian police force to admit to using a controversial cellphone monitoring tool sometimes known as a Stingray.

Amidst mounting pressure from civil liberties groups, the Vancouver Police have confirmed that they have used a cell site simulator, popularly known as a “stingray,” on at least one occasion. The admission is the first of its kind by a municipal police force in Canada...

Britain’s war on drugs is failing, campaigners say, with the online narcotics market soaring in value and police finding themselves seizing 1,000 cannabis plants every day.

Researchers for think tank Rand Europe found the UK has the largest online drugs trade of any European nation, and is second only to the US.

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) implementation in all Linux systems deployed since 2012 (version 3.6 and above of the Linux kernel) poses a serious threat to Internet users, whether or not they use Linux directly.

This issue is troubling because Linux is used widely across the Internet, from web servers to Android smartphones, tablets, and smart TVs.

Researchers have uncovered a serious Internet flaw, which if exploited, could allow attackers to terminate or inject malware into unencrypted communication between any two vulnerable machines on the Internet.

The vulnerability could also be used to forcefully terminate HTTPS encrypted connections and downgrade the privacy of secure connections, as well as also threatens anonymity of Tor users by routing them to certain malicious relays.

Security researchers will demonstrate how crooks can break into cars at will using wireless signals that can unlock millions of vulnerable vehicles.

The eggheads, led by University of Birmingham computer scientist Flavio Garcia alongside colleagues from German engineering firm Kasper & Oswald, have managed to clone a VW Group remote control key fob after eavesdropping on the gizmos' radio transmissions.

The hack can be used by thieves to wirelessly unlock as many as 100 million VW cars, each at the press of a button. Almost every vehicle the Volkswagen group has sold for the past 20 years – including cars badged under the Audi and Skoda brands – is potentially vulnerable, say the researchers. The problem stems from VW’s reliance on a “few, global master keys.”

A US couple is suing an internet mapping firm for $75,000 (£58,000) after years of "digital hell".

MaxMind matches IP addresses, which are used to connect devices to the internet, to physical locations. It has said these are not meant to be precise.

James and Theresa Arnold say it registered their home as the position of more than 600 million addresses.

They say this has led many people to wrongly believe a host of crimes were committed at the property.

Closing the online black market known as the Silk Road was a success for the FBI, but a short-lived one. Three years later, it seems that it did little to deter internet-facilitated drug purchases as new reports found more markets have opened in its place.

What to do about all those darn videos showing cops murdering people?

They make it much harder for law enforcement to lie about their own actions, and just get everyone all fired up. Why not ask Apple (for starters) to build in a “feature” on a future generation of iPhones that will allow cameras to be disabled remotely?

Many of these people literally helped to build the system we all now rely upon, and now they are holding cash, gold and other assets our of fear that stocks will crash and digital instruments of wealth could be undermined:

The world’s billionaires are holding more than $1.7 trillion in cash — the highest amount since one firm began recording the measure in 2010. Because of what they perceive to be growing risks in the economy and world, the world’s 2,473 billionaires are keeping 22.2 percent of their total net worth in cash.

Read more at SHTF

A new article from the Urban Institute, a Washington-based community-engagement research organization, calls out Pokémon GO’s failure to break down barriers and reach marginalized groups.

The popular KickassTorrents 'mirror' KAT.am is back online. After a brief suspension, the registry re-released the domain name for registration, allowing scammers to pick it up. While the site still appears to be a mirror, it asks people to sign up for an account with a credit card if they want to download something.

McAfee says a software company with more than 50,000 downloads on sites such as Download.com is distributing web browser hijacking and fraud malware.

Researcher Santosh Revankar says Lavians Inc is pushing the Bing.vc browser redirect and home page hijacker which creates seeming problems that the company then attempts to fix at a cost.

The technique is straight out of the black hat fraud handbook and is used by low level and lowly web scum who take advantage of the proliferation of trash software to inject advertisements, and drop all manner of malware on user machines.

Lavians Inc has 19 uploads currently hosted on Download.com and 24 on Brothersoft.com, along with applications on its own site.

Subscribe now for more! http://bit.ly/1QHJwaK The source of the DNC e-mail leak was murdered, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange Implies. The Whistleblower organization has offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of whoever killed Seth Rich, the DNC staffer who was mysteriously murdered shortly after the #DNCLeak. Media analyst Mark Dice has the story. © 2016 by Mark Dice

By Victoria Webster, Case Western Reserve University

(Activist Post Editor’s Note: We have featured many articles over the years warning about scientific and military developments that were trending toward the merger of robotics with nature, typically in the areas of war and surveillance. Running parallel to this are developments in environmental science and health that employ nanotechnology and biorobotics which are beginning to fundamentally change how we define the natural world...

By Claire Bernish

Corporate ownership of 90 percent of media outlets in the United States has made the term ‘mainstream journalist’ quite the oxymoron, but the Washington Post’s newest project eliminates ‘journalist’ from the equation entirely — robots are now writing the outlet’s ‘news.’

Using artificial intelligence technology, the Washington Post is ‘employing’ software to ‘write’ hundreds of news briefs highlighting key information about the Olympic Games in Rio in real-time.

“‘Heliograf,’ which was developed in-house, automatically generates short, multi-sentence updates for readers,” the Post proudly announced Friday, as if the news organization couldn’t predict the collective American jaw-drop at the notion a computer could simply replace a longstanding tradition of actual journalism...

The Internet of Things That Can Be Hacked grows daily. Lightbulbs, trucks, and fridges all have computers inside them now, and all have been hacked by someone. But at least you don’t put those inside your body.

Two years ago, someone had the good idea to put a bluetooth connection inside a vibrator, and the We-Vibe 4 Plus was born. The vibrator can connect with a smartphone app that its makers say “allows couples to keep their flame ignited – together or apart”: that is, it can be controlled remotely, while, say, making a video call.

But at the Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas, two independent hackers from New Zealand, who go by the handles goldfisk and follower, revealed that the way the vibrator speaks with its controlling app isn’t really secure at all – making it possible to remotely seize control of the vibrator and activate it at will.

A startup on a shoestring budget is working to clean up the Android security mess, and has even demonstrated results where other "secure" Android phones have failed, raising questions about Google's willingness to address the widespread vulnerabilities that exist in the world's most popular mobile operating system.

"Copperhead is probably the most exciting thing happening in the world of Android security today," Chris Soghoian, principal technologist with the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, tells Ars. "But the enigma with Copperhead is why do they even exist? Why is it that a company as large as Google and with as much money as Google and with such a respected security team—why is it there's anything left for Copperhead to do?"

Vehicle manufacturers are making many of the same security mistakes as each other, creating scores of vulnerabilities in the process.

Not very reassuringly, half of the vulnerabilities discovered by security researchers at IOActive could result in "complete or partial loss of control" of a vehicle.

IOActive’s study is based on real-world security assessments with the world’s leading vehicle manufacturers, covering three years’ worth of data and active vulnerabilities. An alarming 71 per cent of the vulns uncovered during the research could be exploited without much difficulty, or are almost certain to be exploited.

These silos of your personal information don't run themselves for free, folks

Microsoft leaked the golden keys that unlock Windows-powered tablets, phones and other devices sealed by Secure Boot – and is now scrambling to undo the blunder.

These skeleton keys can be used to install non-Redmond operating systems on locked-down computers. In other words, on devices that do not allow you to disable Secure Boot even if you have administrator rights – such as ARM-based Windows RT tablets – it is now possible to sidestep this block and run, say, GNU/Linux or Android.

What's more, it is believed it will be impossible for Microsoft to fully revoke the leaked keys.

And perhaps most importantly: it is a reminder that demands by politicians and crimefighters for special keys, which can be used by investigators to unlock devices in criminal cases, will inevitably jeopardize the security of everyone.

The ransomware appears to be a test variant put together by unskilled coders, as a blog post by IT help site Bleeping Computer explains.

“It does not encrypt any files at all. Instead this malware will remove the extension for all of the files under various directories, display a lock screen, and then show a one hour countdown as shown in the lock screen below.

After that hour it will crash the victim's computer, and on reboot, delete all of the files under the [use profile] of the victim,” it adds.

German language text found within an embedded batch file associated with the malware states “Das ist ein Test” (“This is a test”).

Half of connected cars are at risk of being hijacked by hackers, according to the company that managed to hack a Jeep and steer it off the road last year.

Researchers from cyber security firm IOActive were able to take control of the Chrysler Jeep Cherokee from miles away while it was being driven by Wired reporter Andy Greenberg.

A new report from the company claims that some 51% of connected cars could be at risk of a similar takeover.

What's more, 71% of the security flaws uncovered could be "exploited without much difficulty, or are almost certain to be exploited", according to the report.

During the Green Party convention in Houston, Texas, over the weekend, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange spoke via video stream.

When the good people at Marijuana.com went through the WikiLeaks dump of the DNC emails, they found something unrelated to the trove of damning information on the criminal Hillary Clinton. Within the mountains of email texts, was a paid segment by the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA), stoking fear within Washington, encouraging politicians to be wary of marijuana legalization.

Kaspersky researchers estimate that development and operation of the Sauron malware is likely to have required several specialist teams and a budget in the millions of dollars. The researchers went on to speculate that the project was funded by a nation-state, but they stopped short of saying which one.

"The actor behind ProjectSauron is very advanced, comparable only to the top-of-the top in terms of sophistication: alongside Duqu, Flame, Equation, and Regin," the Kaspersky researchers wrote. "Whether related or unrelated to these advanced actors, the ProjectSauron attackers have definitely learned from them."

Intel Skylake drivers + Avast = kernel panic, BSOD

The virus infects program files and web files on computers running the following systems: Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT,Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows XP.

An O2 spokesman said the business had contacted all customers who received the USB and advised them to discard it.

He said: "For any customers that have already used the USB or are concerned, we have a specialist team on hand to support them and guide them through any action they may need to take. We apologise for any inconvenience."

Mr Piears launched the Dying for a Cure campaign in March following the death of his 'inspirational' wife.

The initiative aims to highlight his concerns over what he describes as the 'profit-led' approach to drug research.

He paid for a 'boosted Facebook post' on the website to promote the message and encourage users to sign a petition.

The image he used on the site shows a female cancer patient holding up a sign over her bare chest that reads: 'UK Governments: The profits on cancer drugs are killing us.'

However on July 8 he received a message from Facebook that said: 'Your advert wasn't approved because it doesn't follow our Advertising Policies by featuring an image containing excessive amounts of skin or suggestive content.

Palestine – Internet giant Google has come under fire from around the world this week, after removing the name Palestine from Google Maps and replacing it with Israel. Interestingly, international mainstream corporate media has completely blacked out any coverage of the incident or the international outrage it has sparked.

Webmaster addition: If you search for "Palestine" in Google Earth, it takes you to the Atlantic Ocean off the west coat of Africa! As a side note, many of the hack attacks on my server come from Google's IP addresses!

Americans have spent much of 2016 lamenting the addition of chips into their credit and debit cards. In exchange for the extra few moments consumers spend checking out, however, they are promised enhanced security to protect their accounts.

The world’s largest retailer is under fire for releasing a device that, according to some experts, is little more than a spying tool for government surveillance.

A previously unknown hacking group called Strider has been conducting cyber espionage against selected targets in Belgium, China, Russia and Sweden, according to Symantec.

The security firm suggested that the product of the espionage would be of interest to a nation state's intelligence services.

Strider uses malware known as Remsec that appears primarily to have been designed for espionage, rather than as ransomware or any other nefarious software.

Not falling for the spy apparatus.

Hillary Clinton used her private email server to discuss details of the Iranian nuclear scientist who has executed for giving information to the CIA.

Shahram Amiri, who was hanged on Sunday for 'revealing secrets to the enemy', was in the US and allegedly informing on Tehran's extensive nuclear program during the Democrat's controversial reign as Secretary of State.

At the time she stressed researcher had been there of his 'own free will' and was described as 'our friend' in correspondences.

...

Amiri worked for a university affiliated with Tehran's extensive nuclear program.

He is said to have had an in-depth knowledge of Iran's nuclear program and was kept at a secret location after returning to the country.

According to CBS, he told officials in interviews he was being held against his will by Saudi and U.S. spies.

But American officials said he was set to receive millions for informing.

Serious security flaws that could give attackers complete access to a phone's data have been found in software used on tens of millions of Android devices.

The bugs were uncovered by Checkpoint researchers looking at software running on chipsets made by US firm Qualcomm.

Qualcomm processors are found in about 900 million Android phones, the company said.

However, there is no evidence of the vulnerabilities currently being used in attacks by cyberthieves.

Hillary Clinton recklessly discussed, in emails hosted on her private server, an Iranian nuclear scientist who was executed by Iran for treason, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said Sunday.

Read more: http://therightscoop.com/iranian-scientist-who-provided-u-s-with-info-...

Microsoft's response: Have you tried uninstalling it and installing it again?

By Claire Bernish

A professor from Princeton University and a graduate student just proved electronic voting machines in the U.S. remain astonishingly vulnerable to hackers — and they did it in under eight minutes.

In fact, Professor Andrew Appel and grad student Alex Halderman took just seven minutes to break into the authentic Sequoia AVC Advantage electronic voting machine Appel purchased for $82 online — one of the oldest models, but still in use Louisiana, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia...

Adding insult to injury for those who "held" their BTC at the hacked exchange, Bitfinex announced it would pull a page right out of Europe's bank resolution mechanism, saying that all of its users will lose 36% of their deposits after it concluded its review the massive hack, in what is set to be the first ever "bitcoin bail-in."

Facebook introduced improvements to its news feed algorithm to minimize the number of clickbait headlines published on the network.

In an article from its official newsroom blog page, the social network stated it wants more authentic communication on its website and that it continues to work hard to give more place for stories that are considered genuine by its users.

To deal with the matter, FB is changing the News Feed by updating how the system recognizes phrases which are frequently used in clickbait headlines. Thousands upon thousands of headlines are labeled as clickbait if the following key points are found:

• If the headline consists of facts needed to understand what the content material of the article is.

Some of the highest profile hackers and cyber-security specialists have converged on Las Vegas for the Black Hat hacker conference.

"TruVote allows voters to touch their candidates' names on a computer screen and receive receipts of their vote at the end of the process. They can then go to a Web site, punch in their voter validation number and make sure their vote was recorded." (The Tennessean.com, 14 March 2004).

Forget telephoto lenses and fake mustaches: The most important tools for America’s 35,000 private investigators are database subscription services. For more than a decade, professional snoops have been able to search troves of public and nonpublic records—known addresses, DMV records, photographs of a person’s car—and condense them into comprehensive reports costing as little as $10. Now they can combine that information with the kinds of things marketers know about you, such as which politicians you donate to, what you spend on groceries, and whether it’s weird that you ate in last night, to create a portrait of your life and predict your behavior.

By Tony Cartalucci

Some could have been excused for dismissing initial qualms surrounding the GPS-based augmented reality game, Pokemon Go. The game has swept the world, but its development is surrounded by disturbing connections between its developer Niantic, its former parent company Google, and the US State Department.

But while many before could only speculate as to the reason the US State Department may have been interested in developing such a game, it appears now there is at least a partial answer...

THE USE OF DODGY AD CAMPAIGNS, otherwise known as malvertising, increased by a whopping 400 per cent during the first six months of 2016, according to security company RiskIQ.

Malvertising relates to malware-riddled adverts served usually on dodgy websites that can infect a user's machine if they visit the site. People are often tricked into visiting such sites via phishing emails or spam on social media sites.

RiskIQ logged 1.7 million malvertising-related incidents between January and June, compared with just 368,000 in the same period in 2015. The 2014 figure was 250,000, underlining the dramatic growth over the past two years.

THE WASHINGTON POST, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' own media plaything, is planning to use artificial intelligence (AI) software to generate news reports and populate Twitter feeds during the Olympics.

The software will produce real-time news reports that will automatically end up on the newspaper's website and Twitter feeds.

MORE THAN HALF of UK businesses have been hit by ransomware, according to security outfit Malwarebytes, and almost 10 per cent were left "entirely unable to operate" as a result.

Malwarebytes surveyed 540 CIOs, CISOs and IT chiefs at organisations with an average headcount of 5,400 in the UK, US, Germany and Canada. Around 40 per cent have been affected by ransomware and a third lost revenue as a result.

The majority of ransomware attacks come via a single end point, and 46 per cent begin, unsurprisingly, with a dodgy email.

What’s more, the crooks are clearly reaping the rewards of such attacks as 40 per cent of all firms pay the ransom to get the data unlocked.

"In many ways the Echo is a law enforcement dream," writes Matt Novak for Paleo Future, a division of Gizmodo. Novak filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FBI back in March to find out if the federal agency had ever wiretapped an Amazon Echo, to which the agency responded that it could "neither confirm nor deny" – essentially an admission of guilt.

"Years ago agencies like the FBI would need to wiretap a phone conversation or place bugs inside homes, practices that can be cost prohibitive and labor intensive. Today, you just need some software to tap into a device's microphone. And if that device is 'always listening' for a command, all the better for someone who wants to hear what's going on."

On July 23rd, people in the village of Duraz, Bahrain began having serious internet problems — mobile networks ground to a halt and landline connections were unusable. The outages continued for nearly three weeks, occurring from 7PM to 1AM every night, and they began just three days after residents took to the streets of Duraz in peaceful protest against the government. Bahrain's three telecoms offered no explanation for the localized blackout, saying only that they were working to fix it, but a new report suggests that it was ordered by the government, in what researchers call "a new form of information control."

The Palestinian Journalists’ Forum has denounced Google for deleting the name of Palestine from its maps and replacing it with Israel.

In a statement released yesterday, the forum said Google’s decision to remove Palestine from its maps on 25 July “is part of the Israeli scheme to establish its name as a legitimate state for generations to come and abolish Palestine once and for all.”

“The move is also designed to falsify history, geography as well as the Palestinian people’s right to their homeland, and a failed attempt to tamper with the memory of Palestinians and Arabs as well as the world.”

The forum said the move was “contrary to all international norms and conventions”, stressing that Google should back track on its actions.

Just. Don't. Click. On. Dodgy. ShortURLs. People.

150GB of patient, internal files stolen? You gotta be kidney me – no, urine for a shock

trespass and privacy violations

By Mike Maharrey

If you park your car in Newport Beach, police will likely scan your license plate with an automated license plate reader (ALPR). According to police, this automatically makes you the subject of a criminal investigation.

In an effort to find out what police do with all of the data they collect using automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), local activist Mike Glenn filed an open records request. The police refused to release the information...

A Rikers Island inmate livestreamed his life behind bars at one of America’s most notorious prisons. He showed off his cell, food and even a self-made weapon to Facebook, in a video that failed to attract management’s attention.

A 23-year-old woman, and mother of a 5-year-old child, is dead. She was killed by police officers who came to serve a warrant for failure to appear charges stemming from a March 11th traffic stop. That this ever escalated to the point where bullets started flying is incomprehensible. Then again, much of what the woman, Korryn Gaines, did was incomprehensible. Gaines apparently considered herself a "sovereign citizen," which meant she chose not to recognize whatever laws she felt weren't worth following -- like registering her vehicle, insuring it, and equipping it with valid plates. Instead, she chose to make plates of her own out of cardboard that made some sort of statement about her sovereign citizen status. The traffic stop on March 11th escalated into an altercation with officers, resulting in more charges being added to the traffic violations.

By Nicholas West

The very nature of any arms race is a study in one-upmanship that is presumed to be necessitated by that which came before. A perfect current example is the global drone arms race. But what happens when a country starts tinkering with genetics?...

Good samaritans and skinflints beware!

Plugging in that USB stick you found lying around on the street outside your office could lead to a security breach.

This is no secret, of course. We have all (hopefully) been aware of the dangers of inserting an unknown USB device into our computers for some time. Heck, the technique has even made it into the Mr Robot TV series.

But what may not be widely known is just how successful the tactic can be for allowing hackers to compromise your computer systems.

Intel has recalled every single one of its Basis Peak smartwatches – as well as urging people to stop using them – because they can become dangerously hot.

Chipzilla has told everyone who bought a Peak to send back the watch along with any and all accessories for a full refund. Keeping it is not an option: by the end of the year, Intel will switch off its Peak cloud services, which the devices synchronize to, rendering the wrist-puters useless.

America's belated move to EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) chip-equipped cards won't be the panacea some had hoped. As it turns out, the cards are just as easy to clone as their magnetic stripe predecessors.

At the Black Hat 2016 security conference in Las Vegas this week, engineers from Rapid7 demonstrated how a few small pieces of electronics could be used to stage a man-in-the-middle attack against an ATM.

The shimmer device is so named because it is inserted in the card slot like a shim, and it then takes a snapshot of the transaction data as a request for cash is processed.

Classic Shell and Audacity downloads were booby-trapped with an old-school software nasty this week that knackered victims' Windows PCs.

Hackers were able to inject some retro-malware into the popular applications' installers hosted on fosshub.com, an official home for Classic Shell and Audacity releases among other software projects.

When victims fetched the tainted downloads and ran them, rather than install the expected app, the computer's Master Boot Record (MBR) was replaced with code that, during the next reboot or power on, displayed a cheeky message and prevented the machine from starting up properly. The drive's partition table was also likely damaged.

Did you know that in some parts of the country, Internet providers such as AT&T offer a special deal on broadband prices? The plans lower your monthly payments, but there's a catch: To qualify for them, you have to agree to let the carrier track your Web history, search activity and other valuable behavioral data that can be used for advertising purposes.

Now, Comcast is telling regulators it wants the flexibility to offer these types of plans, too. In a meeting Monday with the Federal Communications Commission, officials from the cable company argued that it and other Internet providers shouldn't be prohibited from trading discounts for data.

The HTTPS cryptographic scheme protecting millions of websites is vulnerable to a newly revived attack that exposes encrypted e-mail addresses, social security numbers, and other sensitive data even when attackers don't have the ability to monitor a targeted end user's Internet connection.

The exploit is notable because it doesn't require a man-in-the-middle position. Instead, an end user need only encounter an innocuous-looking JavaScript file hidden in an Web advertisement or hosted directly on a webpage.