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Security News This Week: Zoom Upgrades Encryption Keys to What It Promised All Along

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It was another week of social distancing or quarantine for most of the world, but Google published findings that it has seen 12 government-backed hacking groups undeterred by the pandemic and, in fact, trying to take advantage of those conditions for intelligence-gathering. Another report found that China, for one, has been busy during the pandemic hacking Uighurs’ iPhones in a recent months-long campaign. We broke down how Apple and Google are using aggregate smartphone location data to visualize social distancing trends. And in an exclusive interview with WIRED, Federal Bureau…

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Security News This Week: A Notorious Spyware Vendor Wants to Track Coronavirus Spread

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Everybody's worried about Zoom this week. As the video conferencing software rocketed to 200 million users amid widespread shelter-in-place orders, security and privacy pros have catalogued a litany of issues. It's probably perfectly fine for most people! But especially if you need true end-to-end encrypted meetings, maybe give Zoom a minute to get its act together. Zoom's not the only one benefiting from novel coronavirus quarantines. Online credit card skimmers have stepped up their activity now that everyone's shopping from home, according to data from security company RiskIQ. The most…

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Security News This Week: Chinese Hacking Surges Amid Coronavirus Crisis

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As the world continues to adjust to the reality of the new coronavirus, scammers are increasingly taking advantage as well. But one Twitch streamer has been calling them out before a live audience of thousands. And as health care systems become increasingly overwhelmed, the Army Corps of Engineers has drawn up plans to convert hotels, dorms, and even convention centers into makeshift hospitals. In non-Covid-19 news, Google security researchers spotted sophisticated hackers using new fewer than five so-called zero days in attacks against North Korea. (That's a lot.) Researchers at…

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Security News This Week: Ransomware Groups Promise Not to Hit Hospitals Amid Pandemic

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The news at large this week has understandably focused on the new coronavirus that continues to spread throughout the world. It's slowly seeping into the world of cybersecurity as well, as hackers and scammers take advantage of confusion, anxiety, and lax work from home set-ups to stir up trouble. The need for information has spurred partnerships between encrypted messaging app WhatsApp and several governments; on Friday, the World Health Organization announced that it, too, would use the ubiquitous Facebook subsidiary to provide reliable, up-to-date information. The White House, meanwhile, has…

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Security News This Week: An Unfixable Flaw Threatens 5 Years of Intel Chips

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As the novel coronavirus continues to propagate, phishing scams that pose as Covid-19 advice do as well. The trend started over a month ago, but it's only going to get worse. Abide by these tips to avoid them, and also please keep washing those hands. In non-pandemic news, researchers figured out how to clone the mechanical keys of tens of millions of cars from Toyota, Hyundai, and Kia, making theft a much simpler matter. Some recently released Russian disinformation shows how the Kremlin's professional trolls are adapting to Facebook's defenses.…

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Security News This Week: A Tiny Piece of Tape Tricked Teslas Into Speeding Up 50 MPH

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This week was filled with wide-scale calamity. Hundreds of millions of PCs have components whose firmware is vulnerable to hacking—which is to say, pretty much all of them. It's a problem that's been known about for years, but doesn't seem to get any better. Likewise, Bluetooth implementation mistakes in seven SoC—system on chips—have exposed at least 480 internet of things devices to a range of attacks. IoT manufacturers will often outsource components, so a mistake in one SoC can impact a wide range of connected doodads. The most troubling part,…

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