CyberTechTips

The A.V. Club digs deep into film, TV, music, games, books and more.

Anti-surveillance activists flew a blimp above the National Security Agency’s massive, $1.5 billion data center in Bluffdale, Utah on Friday as an act of protest against the NSA’s contentious collection of vast amounts of the world’s digital data.

A small software app called Onionshare offers the most secure file sharing available. So why hasn't anyone heard of it? Well, mostly because it was

The U.S. was far and away the most popular hacking target in the world.

Hacking Team is an Italian malware company that sells exploit tools to governments. Both Kaspersky Lab and Citizen Lab have published detailed reports on its capabilities against Android, iOS, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry smart phones. They allow, for example, for covert collection of emails, text messages, call history and address books, and they can be used to log keystrokes and obtain search history data. They can take screenshots, record audio from the phones to monitor calls or ambient conversations, hijack the phone’s camera to snap pictures or piggyback on the phone’s GPS system to monitor the user’s location. The Android version can also enable the phone’s Wi-Fi function to siphon data from the phone wirelessly instead of using the cell network to transmit it. The latter would incur data charges and raise the phone owner’s suspicion...

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Coming soon to a protest near you: drones that fire pepper spray bullets. Desert Wolf’s website states that its Skunk octacopter drone is fitted with four high-capacity paintball barrels, each capable of firing up to 20 bullets per second. In addition to pepper-spray ammunition, the firm says it can also be armed with dye-marker balls and solid plastic balls. The machine can carry up to 4,000 bullets at a time as well as “blinding lasers” and on-board speakers that can communicate warnings to a crowd.

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the vast amount of data contained on modern cellphones must be protected from routine inspection.

The FBI plans to roll out the face recognition component of its massive Next Generation Identification (NGI) biometrics database this summer—but the Bureau has six years of catching up to do in explaining to Americans exactly how it plans to collect, use and protect this data.  Today we called on...

Businesses that do not encrypt their information risk losing it. Legal professionals risk private and confidential client information when they do not take steps to secure it properly. Your operating system has encryption built in, through Windows Bitlocker or Mac File Vault II. If you are one of those lawyers on an older version of […]

It's important to secure your wireless network with WPA2 encryption and a strong passphrase.

Newly uncovered components of a digital surveillance tool used by more than 60 governments worldwide provide a rare glimpse at the extensive ways law enforcement and intelligence agencies use the tool to surreptitiously record and steal data from mobile phones. The modules, made by the Italian company Hacking Team, were uncovered by researchers working independently \[…\]

VPN Guides and technical articles covering online security, how and where to use VPNs, online security guides, identity protection...

​Former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden has been awarded the Fritz Bauer Prize of the German Humanist Union, a prominent civil rights organization, for exposing the controversial surveillance practices of the NSA and its accomplices.

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When considering adding cryptography to an embedded system (or any other information system) manufacturers always ask: “Why do I need cryptography?” That is, unless they have already been burned by…

Revealed! The coolest PC tech coming in 2025

Bloomberg Businessweek helps global leaders stay ahead with insights and in-depth analysis on the people, companies, events, and trends shaping today's complex, global economy

University researchers have found that developers often store authentication keys in the Android apps on Google Play, making it possible for criminals to steal corporate or personal data.

Police in Florida have been deliberately deceiving judges and defendants about their use of a controversial surveillance tool known as a stingray at the request of the U.S. Marshal's Service, according to newly obtained emails.

Exploiting bug in Supermicro hardware is as easy as connecting to port 49152.

A simplified introduction to SFTP. What it does. Why it's better than FTP. How it transfers files securely. How to use it.

An update to the Globe and Mail Guide to Safer Computing

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has been quietly advising local police not to disclose details about surveillance technology they are using to sweep up basic cellphone data from entire …