Google's flagship Pixel smartphone line touts security as a centerpiece feature, offering guaranteed software updates for seven years and running stock Android that's meant to be free of third-party add-ons and bloatware. On Thursday, though, researchers from the mobile device security firm iVerify are publishing findings on an Android vulnerability …
Read More »Your Gym Locker May Be Hackable
Thousands of electronic lockers found in gyms, offices, and schools could be vulnerable to attacks by criminals using cheap hacking tools to access administrator keys, according to new research. At the Defcon security conference on Sunday, security researchers Dennis Giese and “braelynn” demonstrated a proof-of-concept attack showing how digital management …
Read More »A Single Iranian Hacker Group Targeted Both Presidential Campaigns, Google Says
When Donald Trump's presidential campaign publicly stated last week that it had been successfully targeted by Iranian hackers, the news may have initially seemed like a sign that the Middle Eastern country was particularly focused on the candidate whom it perceived to take the most hawkish approach to its regime. …
Read More »Want to Win a Bike Race? Hack Your Rival’s Wireless Shifters
Professional cycling has, in its recent history, been prone to a shocking variety of cheating methods and dirty tricks. Performance-enhancing drugs. Tacks strewn on race courses. Even stealthy motors hidden inside of wheel hubs. Now, for those who fail to download a software patch for their gear shifters—yes, bike components …
Read More »Thousands of Corporate Secrets Were Left Exposed. This Guy Found Them All
If you know where to look, plenty of secrets can be found online. Since the fall of 2021, independent security researcher Bill Demirkapi has been building ways to tap into huge data sources, which are often overlooked by researchers, to find masses of security problems. This includes automatically finding developer …
Read More »How Hackers Extracted the ‘Keys to the Kingdom’ to Clone HID Keycards
HID Global's keycards—the company's radio-frequency-enabled plastic rectangles that are inside hundreds of millions of pockets and purses—serve as the front line of physical security for hundreds of companies and government agencies. They can also be spoofed, it turns out, by any hacker clever enough to read one of those cards …
Read More »Google Researchers Found Nearly a Dozen Flaws in Popular Qualcomm Software for Mobile GPUs
Demand for graphics processing units or GPUs has exploded in recent years as video rendering and artificial intelligence systems have expanded the need for processing power. And while most of the most visible shortages (and soaring stock prices) relate to top-tier PC and server chips, mobile graphics processors are the …
Read More »ATM Software Flaws Left Piles of Cash for Anyone Who Knew to Look
There is a grand tradition at the annual Defcon security conference in Las Vegas of hacking ATMs. Unlocking them with safecracking techniques, rigging them to steal users' personal data and PINs, crafting and refining ATM malware and, of course, hacking them to spit out all their cash. Many of these …
Read More »‘Sinkclose’ Flaw in Hundreds of Millions of AMD Chips Allows Deep, Virtually Unfixable Infections
Security flaws in your computer's firmware, the deep-seated code that loads first when you turn the machine on and controls even how its operating system boots up, have long been a target for hackers looking for a stealthy foothold. But only rarely does that kind of vulnerability appear not in …
Read More »Watch How a Hacker’s Infrared Laser Can Spy on Your Laptop’s Keystrokes
In a famous scene from the 1992 movie Sneakers, a hacker classic, the main characters park a surveillance van across the street from their target's office and point a telephoto lens through his window—only to find that their view of his computer keyboard is blocked by the surprise entrance of …
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