Google Play Store’s Malware Problem, and More Security News This Week

Plus, Russia cracks down on VPNs, Microsoft cracks down on Iranian hackers, and more of the week's top security news.

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https://www.wired.com/story/google-play-store-malware-problem-security-roundup

The Huawei Threat Isn't Backdoors. It's Bugs

A British report finds that Huawei equipment, suspected of including backdoors for China's government, suffers from a lack of "basic engineering competence."

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https://www.wired.com/story/huawei-threat-isnt-backdoors-its-bugs

HTTPS Isn't Always As Secure As It Seems

A surprising number of high-traffic sites have TLS vulnerabilities that are subtle enough for the green padlock to still appear.

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https://www.wired.com/story/https-isnt-always-as-secure-as-it-seems

Want Apple Card’s Security Benefits? Just Use Apple Pay

Apple says Apple Card offers "a new level" of security, but nearly all those protections are already available if you use Apple Pay.

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https://www.wired.com/story/apple-card-security-benefits-use-apple-pay

Mastercard Wades Into Murky Waters With Its New Digital ID

The credit card company has more details about its plan for a decentralized, universal digital ID, but questions remain.

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https://www.wired.com/story/mastercard-digital-id

How Zello Became a Lifeline for Venezuelans Under Maduro

A dedicated community of Zello moderators is using the voice-chat app to help bring news and coordinate aid amid the country's political and economic crisis.

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https://www.wired.com/story/zello-channel-venezuela-maduro

How to Check Your Computer for Hacked Asus Software Update

Hackers compromised Asus’s Live Update tool to distribute malware to almost 1 million people. Here’s how to see if your computer has it.

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https://www.wired.com/story/asus-software-update-hack

Machines Shouldn’t Have to Spy On Us to Learn

We need a breakthrough that allows us to reap the benefits of AI without savaging data privacy.

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https://www.wired.com/story/machines-shouldnt-have-to-spy-on-us-to-learn

Meet LockerGoga, the Ransomware Crippling Industrial Firms

The new strain of malware represents a dangerous combination of aggressive disruption and high-stakes targets.

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https://www.wired.com/story/lockergoga-ransomware-crippling-industrial-firms

On the Trail of the Robocall King

An investigator set out to discover the source of one scammy robocall. Turns out, his target made them by the millions.

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https://www.wired.com/story/on-the-trail-of-the-robocall-king

Mueller Says No Collusion, Barr Raises a Million Questions

In a convoluted letter to Congress, Attorney General William Barr summarized Robert Mueller's report on the Russia investigation and said he won't charge President Trump with obstruction.

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https://www.wired.com/story/mueller-says-no-collusion-trump-russia-investigation

Kushner Used WhatsApp, a Very Bad Database Leak, and More Security News This Week

Jared and Ivanka used WhatsApp against the rules, and more security news this week.

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https://www.wired.com/story/jared-kushner-used-whatsapp-for-white-house-business-security-roundup

FEMA Leaked Data From 2.3 Million Disaster Survivors

The Homeland Security Department inspector general released a damning report about FEMA's inability to safeguard the personal info of the people it helped.

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https://www.wired.com/story/fema-leaked-the-data-2-million-disaster-survivors

The Mueller Report Is Here, Apple's Big Event, and More News

Catch up on the most important news today in 2 minutes or less.

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https://www.wired.com/story/mueller-report-trump-russia-apple-announcement-tech-news

The Mueller Report Is Done. Now Comes the Hard Part

Special counsel Robert Mueller finished his investigation into the 2016 presidential election Friday.

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https://www.wired.com/story/mueller-report-done-trump-russia-investigation

Utah Just Became a Leader in Digital Privacy

Opinion: Utah legislators recently voted to pass landmark legislation in support of a new privacy law. Statehouses across the country should take notes.

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https://www.wired.com/story/utah-digital-privacy-legislation

Your Facebook Password Isn’t Safe. Neither Is Your Android Phone

Catch up on the most important tech news today in two minutes or less.

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https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-password-bug-android-phone-spy-airbnb-tech-news

Facebook Stored Millions of Passwords in Plaintext—Change Yours Now

Facebook has disclosed that it stored hundreds of millions of user passwords in plaintext, where employees could search them.

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https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-passwords-plaintext-change-yours

In the Face of Danger, We’re Turning to Surveillance

From the Rose Bowl to upstate New York, people are turning to surveillance systems in the face America’s inability to meaningfully address of gun violence.

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https://www.wired.com/story/surveillance-safety

Researchers Built an "Online Lie Detector." Honestly, That Could Be a Problem

Critics point out serious flaws in a study promising an "online polygraph," with potential to create deep biases.

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https://www.wired.com/story/online-lie-detector-test-machine-learning

An Android Vulnerability Went Unfixed For Over Five Years

Older Android devices—of which there are over 100 million still in use—will remain exposed.

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https://www.wired.com/story/android-vulnerability-five-years-fragmentation

The Evidence That Could Impeach Donald Trump

Nancy Pelosi’s comments about impeachment acknowledge a political reality: Nothing the Mueller probe has revealed so far has moved the GOP substantially.

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https://www.wired.com/story/evidence-that-could-impeach-donald-trump

Here's What It's Like to Accidentally Expose the Data of 230M People

The owner of Exactis, a 10-person firm that exposed a database including nearly every American, tells the story of his company's downfall.

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https://www.wired.com/story/exactis-data-leak-fallout

Beto O'Rourke Belonged to an Infamous '90s Hacker Group

Facial recognition, DuckDuckGo on Chrome, and more security news this week.

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https://www.wired.com/story/beto-orourke-cult-of-the-dead-cow-hacking-group

Most Android Antivirus Apps Are Garbage

Fraudulent and ineffective antivirus apps persist on the Google Play Store, and it's unclear whether they'll ever totally go away.

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https://www.wired.com/story/android-antivirus-apps-bad-fake

How Hackers Pulled Off a $20 Million Mexican Bank Heist

Welcome to the world of fake accounts, phantom funds, and money mules.

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https://www.wired.com/story/mexico-bank-hack

When Facebook Goes Down, Don't Blame Hackers

Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp spent several hours offline in many parts of the world today. Just don't call it a DDoS attack.

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https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-down-dont-blame-hackers

Internal Docs Show How ICE Gets Surveillance Help From Local Cops

Documents obtained by the ACLU show how ICE uses unofficial channels to access billions of license plate location data points—including some sanctuary cities.

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https://www.wired.com/story/ice-license-plate-surveillance-vigilant-solutions

Firefox Send Is an Easy Way to Share Large Files Securely

Mozilla has made public an encrypted file-sharing service with a self-destruct twist.

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https://www.wired.com/story/firefox-send-encrypted-large-files

Why It's So Hard to Restart Venezuela's Power Grid

Approaching a full week, Venezuela's national power outage shows just how hard it is to restart a grid from scratch.

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https://www.wired.com/story/venezuela-power-outage-black-start

US Tracks Journalists, Chelsea Manning Goes to Jail, and More Security News This Week

A surprisingly common password, an NSA spy program winds down, and more security news this week.

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https://www.wired.com/story/us-tracked-journalists-reporting-migrant-caravan-security-roundup

New Film Shows How Bellingcat Cracks the Web's Toughest Cases

*Truth in a Post Truth World* takes a closer look at a team of remarkably resourceful investigative journalists.

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https://www.wired.com/story/bellingcat-documentary-south-by-southwest

Turn On Auto-Updates Everywhere You Can

Meltdowns like the Chrome zero day bug show why enabling auto-updates can be the wisest choice for many consumers.

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https://www.wired.com/story/turn-on-auto-updates-everywhere

An Email Marketing Company Left 809 Million Records Exposed Online

A exposed database belonging to Verifications.io contained both personal and business information, including 763 million unique email addresses.

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https://www.wired.com/story/email-marketing-company-809-million-records-exposed-online

9 Questions for Facebook After Zuckerberg’s Privacy Manifesto

On Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg laid out a vision for a very different Facebook—with a lot of unknowns about how to get there.

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https://www.wired.com/story/zuckerberg-privacy-manifesto-questions

Machine Learning Can Use Tweets To Automatically Spot Critical Security Flaws

Researchers built an AI engine that uses tweets to predict the severity of software vulnerabilities with 86 percent accuracy.

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https://www.wired.com/story/machine-learning-tweets-critical-security-flaws

The NSA Makes Ghidra, a Powerful Cybersecurity Tool, Open Source

No one's better at hacking than the NSA. And now one if its powerful tools is available to everyone for free.

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https://www.wired.com/story/nsa-ghidra-open-source-tool

Clever Tool Uses Apple’s Video Game Logic Engine to Protect Macs

A new Mac security service called GamePlan uses a system's own indicators, and some video game magic, to keep a lookout.

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https://www.wired.com/story/gameplan-macos-security-tool-video-game-logic-engine

States Need Way More Money to Fix Crumbling Voting Machines

“We are driving the same car in 2019 that we were driving in 2004, and the maintenance costs are mounting,” one South Carolina election official told researchers.

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https://www.wired.com/story/states-money-fix-crumbling-voting-machines

Google Reveals "BuggyCow," a Rare MacOS Zero-Day Vulnerability

Google's Project Zero researchers find a potentially powerful privilege escalation trick in how Macs manage memory.

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https://www.wired.com/story/google-project-zero-buggycow-macos-zero-day

Backstory: An Alphabet Moonshot Wants to Store the Security Industry's Data

Alphabet-owned Chronicle has announced Backstory, an effort to store network intelligence data and help trace cybersecurity incidents back to their roots.

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https://www.wired.com/story/chronicle-backstory-network-intelligence-data

House Probes Cambridge Analytica on Russia and WikiLeaks

The Democrats’ sweeping new investigation into Trump includes the now-defunct consulting firm better known for misusing the Facebook data of tens of millions of Americans.

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https://www.wired.com/story/congress-democrats-trump-inquiry-cambridge-analytica

The Overlooked Security Threat of Sign-In Kiosks

New research from IBM shows that several visitor management systems had a rash of vulnerabilities.

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https://www.wired.com/story/visitor-management-system-vulnerabilities

The Air Force Wants to Give You Its Credit Card

Will Roper, acquisition executive for the US Air Force, talks to WIRED's editor-in-chief about making the military more adaptive, the role of AI, and what he worries about every day.

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https://www.wired.com/story/will-roper-air-force-interview

Trump's North Korea Summit Inspires Spearphishing

Plus: cryptocurrency dust problems for #DeleteCoinbase, leaked financial watch lists, and more of the week's top security news.

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https://www.wired.com/story/security-news-north-korean-hackers-spearfishing