Security, Spoken

When the US last tightened its sanctions against Iran in 2012, then-president Barack Obama boasted that they were "virtually grinding the Iranian economy to a halt." Iran fired back with one of the broadest series of cyberattacks ever to target the US, bombarding practically every major American bank with months intermittent distributed denial of service attacks that pummeled their websites with junk traffic, knocking them offline. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The week started with a figurative bang, as a list of questions Robert Mueller's team have for Trump leaked to The New York Times. They all point to one inevitable conclusion: That Mueller almost certainly already knows how all of this ends. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It's important to proactively secure your social media accounts, especially since you never know when an innocuous mistake could put you at risk. But it isn't just a theoretical threat. Pranksters, vandals, and malicious attackers all look for ways to get into any legitimate account they can. So while you don't need to hide in a hole, there are some worthwhile (and easy!) steps you can take to keep your accounts from being hijacked. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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On Thursday, Twitter chief technology officer Parag Agrawal disclosed in a blog post that the company had inadvertently recorded user passwords, in plaintext, in an internal system. This is not how things are supposed to go! And while Twitter has fixed the bug, and doesn't think any of the exposed passwords were accessed in any way, you should still change your Twitter password right now to make sure your account is secure. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nearly four years have passed since researchers began to experiment with a hacking technique known as "Rowhammer," which breaks practically every security model of a computer by manipulating the physical electric charge in memory chips to corrupt data in unexpected ways. Since that attack exploits the most fundamental properties of computer hardware, no software patch can fully fix it. And now, for the first time, hackers have found a way to use Rowhammer against Android phones over the internet. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

You would think that after decades of analyzing and fighting email spam, there'd be a fix by now for the internet's oldest hustle—the Nigerian Prince scam. There's generally more awareness that a West African noble demanding $1,000 in order to send you millions is a scam, but the underlying logic of these “pay a little, get a lot” schemes, also known as 419 fraud, still ensnares a ton of people. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Cambridge Analytica, the embattled data firm that worked on President Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, has told employees it is shutting down, along with its UK counterpart SCL Elections. The move, which impacts all offices of both companies worldwide, comes amid recent revelations that the company harvested the data of up to 87 million Facebook users without their consent, according to multiple sources close to the company. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The beginning of May marks the longest period of public silence from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team since his first charges last October—more than two months without any new plea deals, fresh indictments, or publicly “flipped” witnesses. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Republican majority of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released an over 250-page report Friday outlining its months-long investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The full report, the key findings of which were published in March, finds that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices