NOTE: I’m doing an ongoing series of stories on elder scams, a “tsunami” of crimes hitting the most vulnerable Americans, according to the FBI’s Debbie Deem. Recently, I wrote about the tragic story of a California teacher found murdered in Jamaica. I also wrote about Deem for CNBC.com recently (Click [Keep reading]
Belgian researcher Mathy Vanhoef announced some rather brilliant research on Monday which demonstrates that nearly all Wi-Fi in use today can be hacked. The tool for scrambling data as it’s transmitted wirelessly between your gadgets and routers, called WPA2, can be tricked into coughing up the secrets needed to unscramble [Keep reading]
This column is dedicated to new Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler and his “deviant thoughts”. Here’s mine for today: Not everything that is good for consumers is good. Facebook and the election? Uber kicked out of London? Google getting an entire staff at a think tank fired? Continuously-shrinking airplane seats? [Keep reading]
There’s lots of juicy details about the Equifax hack in a story published today by Bloomberg. It makes the strongest case yet that the massive heist of American SSNs was probably pulled off by a nation-state. That’s likely true about the huge theft of federal employee data back in 2015, [Keep reading]
A few Mac laptop users say they have recently been victims of a rather simple ransomware-style attack that disables their gadgets. The attack relies not on installation of ransomware, but rather turning a user’s “Find My iPhone” against them. Find My iPhone is an incredibly useful feature that has rescued [Keep reading]
If you wanted a vehicle car tag or a license in Montgomery County, Ala., this week, you were out of luck. Hackers knocked many county computers offline with a ransomware attack, local officials say. The probate office took the worst of the attack, which hit late Monday, so business licenses, [Keep reading]
Consumers are still struggling with what to do in the wake of the huge Equifax hack, and the credit reporting agencies aren’t necessarily helping much. Trans Union’s website for credit freezes is still showing an “unavailable” message (You can, however sign up for…). Meanwhile, Equifax still hasn’t provided additional details [Keep reading]
I can tell from the email I’m getting (and, honestly, from friends calling me and even stopping me at church). You still have many questions about the Equifax hack last week. So do I. Equifax is still not providing enough answers, so I can’t be as helpful as I’d like. [Keep reading]
In this story Dragonfly group apparently managed to take screen grabs of command and control machines Well-known group said to be Russian by U.S. government Employees fell for phishing It started off as a fake invitation to a New Year’s Eve party, emailed to energy section employees. It ended with [Keep reading]
For years, security researchers and consumers have been fixated on concerns around hacking cars. Maybe they should worry about ship hacking instead. Several recent collisions involving U.S. Naval vessels have sparked speculation that someone or something is interfering with the ships’ ability to steer clear of other vessels in busy [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan