Security, Spoken

Walking the enormous exhibition halls at the recent RSA security conference in San Francisco, you could have easily gotten the impression that digital defense was a solved problem. Amidst branded t-shirts and water bottles, each booth hawked software and hardware that promised impenetrable defenses and peace of mind. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

WIRED tackled the big questions in security this week, starting with maybe the biggest: Why do so many people use "dragon" as their password? The answer actually says a lot about the psychology of passwords, and how those popular password lists are made in the first place. And there's a whole lot more. Another surprising discovery? Why it makes at least some sense that Atlanta paid $2.6 million to recover from a ransomware attack that had demanded only $52,000. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, MSNBC host Joy Reid has found herself embroiled in a familiar controversy. Twitter user @Jamie_Maz—for the second time—surfaced a number of homophobic posts, from the early aughts, on Reid's now defunct blog, the Reid Report. In response, Reid has turned to a recognizable scapegoat: hackers. Reid isn't the first public figure to blame hackers for her alleged misdeeds online. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In February, the ACLU of Massachusetts released a damning report detailing prejudice in social media surveillance efforts by the Boston Police Department (BPD). The report revealed that between 2014 and 2016, the BPD had tracked keywords on Facebook and Twitter in an effort to identify potential terrorist threats. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If you haven't read this month's WIRED cover story about teen hackers who went too deep into Microsoft Xbox's systems, make that your first stop. In more current news, the White House sent mixed messages on cybersecurity policy this week, calling out Russian hackers for compromising popular routers and firewalls—a problematic, but unsurprising and even popular type of attack. Meanwhile, the White House is also losing its well-regarded cybersecurity coordinator Rob Joyce to the NSA. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It's important not to overstate the security risks of the Amazon Echo and other so-called smart speakers. They're useful, fun, and generally have well thought-out privacy protections. Then again, putting a mic in your home naturally invites questions over whether it can be used for eavesdropping—which is why researchers at the security firm Checkmarx started fiddling with Alexa, to see if they could turn it into a spy device. They did, with no intensive meddling required. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In 2003, Finnish security researcher Tomi Tuominen was attending a security conference in Berlin when a friend's laptop, containing sensitive data, was stolen from his hotel room. The theft was a mystery: The staff of the upscale Alexanderplatz Radisson had no clues to offer, the door showed no signs of forced entry, and the electronic log of the door's keycard lock—a common RFID card reader sold by Vingcard—had recorded no entries other than the hotel staff. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On December 2, 2015, a man named Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on employees of the Department of Public Health in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people and injuring 22 during what was supposed to be a staff meeting and holiday celebration. The shooters were tracked down and killed later in the day, and FBI agents wasted no time trying to understand the motivations of Farook and to get the fullest possible sense of his contacts and his network. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The City of Atlanta spent more than $2.6 million on emergency efforts to respond to a ransomware attack that destabilized municipal operations last month. Attackers, who infected the city's systems with the pernicious SamSam malware, asked for a ransom of roughly $50,000 worth of bitcoin. (The exact value has fluctuated due to bitcoin's volatility. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On Tuesday, about 250 people gathered in the event space of Cloudflare's San Francisco headquarters for an unusual security conference—or, perhaps more accurately, one that aimed to modernize the longstanding tradition in security of creating alternative, transgressive gatherings. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices