Security

A judge in Georgia says she is "gravely concerned" that electronic voting machines could be hacked. But she says it's too late to scrap them for this year's elections. Amy Totenberg was ruling on a lawsuit originally filed May 2017 against Georgia's ... Secretary of State. It called for the use of the Direct Recording Voting machines to be banned for the elections. Among the arguments in the lawsuit were that the system doesn't create a paper trail for verifying any discrepancies; that the software on the machine could be altered or replaced without detection; and that the system makes it ... (view more)

The makers of the hit video game "Fortnite" have called Google irresponsible for revealing a security flaw. The controversy follows Epic Games choosing not to use the Google Play store to distribute the game. Although it's free to download and play, ... Fortnite has proved hugely lucrative thanks to in-game purchases. Although 'buying' character costumes and animations doesn't affect gameplay, gamers - many of them children - have now spent more than a billion dollars. With so much money at stake, it appears Epic Games didn't want to go through Google Play for the Android version. Had ... (view more)

Skype has added a new "private conversations" feature. Calls made this way will be encrypted so that it's impossible for anyone to usefully intercept or listen in. The data for such calls will use end-to-end encryption. That means the data is ... encrypted on one user's device and kept that way throughout its journey over the Internet until it reaches the other user's device. If the data is intercepted, it won't be of any use. The system will work on a "conversation" basis rather than a call-by-call basis. One user must select the feature, which will then send ... (view more)

An 11-year-old boy hacked a replica of a Florida election website in just 10 minutes. Officials have downplayed the incident saying it's not an accurate recreation of how such hacking could work. The hack took place at DefCon, an annual conference ... for people interested in computer security. It often has competitions and demonstrations of security vulnerability - and certainly isn't a place you would want to connect your wireless device to unknown WiFi networks. One of the events at the conference was the DefCon Voting Machine Hacking Village. Participants, including many children, attempted ... (view more)

The US Department of Defense (DoD) has banned military staff from using geolocation tools such as GPS-enabled fitness trackers in "operational areas." The move follows fears such data could be unintentionally public and threaten security. Earlier ... this year fitness tracker company Strava published a worldwide map showing the most popular routes for its users to run and carry out other exercise activity. The map showed routes in increasing levels of brightness depending on their popularity. Middle East Bases Unintentionally Mapped Several users then spotted several routes in countries such as ... (view more)

Staff of a local government in Alaska have switched to typewriters after a ransomware attack crippled their computer network. Officials are currently rebuilding the system from scratch. The attack hit Matanuska-Susitna Borough, which covers the ... region just north of Anchorage. The problems began on July 24, though officials believe the malware may have been on the system for several weeks before activating. IT staff spotted the ransomware attack thanks to antivirus software , but had to start manually removing some of the more sophisticated elements. They also reset all passwords as a security ... (view more)

Google is to ban several categories of apps from its app store. They include so-called "cryptomining" apps that can suck up a resources from a device for somebody else's financial benefits. The changes come in the latest update of the Play Store ... Developer Policy. The relevant apps will no longer be available through the official Play Store, meaning that although users can still install them, they'll get much less prominence and exposure. The ban is specifically on apps that use a device's processor for mining cryptocurrencies. In very simple terms, mining involves computers racing to solve a ... (view more)

If you use Google's Chrome browser, you may have started seeing warnings that a website is not secure. Here's what it means and what's changed. What's the change? Google has changed the way it displays information about websites in the space on the ... left of the address bar at the top of the Chrome display. Originally this space was only used to indicate when a website was secure via a padlock symbol. Later on Google gave this more emphasis, adding the word "Secure" and marking both in green to stand out. Until now, the fact that a website isn't secure hasn't been explicitly stated: it's just ... (view more)

Google says it's suffered zero phishing attacks since it started making staff use a physical key to log in to work accounts. Of course, it's possible it's been hit with attacks it doesn't know about. The measures were taken to prevent against ... phishing attacks in which scammers try to trick victims into following a link and opening a bogus website that appears to be from a legitimate organization. The idea is that they then type in login details which the scammers can use to access their account on the real website. This can be particularly problematic with business accounts that may house ... (view more)

Microsoft says hackers have targeted at least three candidates for Congress. Security experts say the group behind the attacks has been linked to Russia's intelligence services. The revelation came at the Aspen Security Forum in a speech from Tom ... Burt, Microsoft's head of Customer Security ... (view more)