Security, Spoken

When Apple released the iPhone X on November 3, it touched off an immediate race among hackers around the world to be the first to fool the company's futuristic new form of authentication. A week later, hackers on the actual other side of the world claim to have successfully duplicated someone's face to unlock his iPhone X—with what looks like a simpler technique than some security researchers believed possible. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It was 10 am on a hot, humid Tuesday in August when I decided I could finally relax. After a frantic weekend of finishing a big story—and typing so much that my forearms tingled—I needed to decompress. I placed my phone on do not disturb, turned on my air conditioner, and blissfully spent an hour contorting myself into various poses on the yoga mat next to my bed. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

You've been there: browsing on a slightly backwater website, crossing your fingers as you click what looks like a video's play button. Instead of the TV show you had queued up, a million pop-ups spew out. The page you were on morphs into a Caribbean timeshare ad. It's the sort of misdirection that Google aptly calls an "unwanted behavior." And on Wednesday, the company's Chrome browser team announced a series of fixes that attempt to block these sketchy shenanigans. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The email hits your inbox with an urgent warning: Your Netflix account has been suspended, due to a problem with your billing information. It offers a link, which takes you to what looks very much like a Netflix landing page. It's not. Instead, it's a phishing scam that collects extensive personal data on victims. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Owning cryptocurrency isn't quite the Wild West experience it was at the beginning of the decade, but investors still face plenty of instability and risk. The threats aren't just abstract or theoretical; new scams crop up, and old ones resurge, all the time. Whether it's a fake wallet set up to trick users, a phishing attempt to steal private cryptographic keys, or even fake cryptocurrency schemes, there’s something to watch out for at every turn. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

“We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code.” So declared MIT professorDavid D. Clarkin 1992. Twenty-five years later, this sentiment mirrors the global zeitgeist more than ever. TheAmerican public distrusts governmentin record numbers. Other nation-states disdain the USto world-historical degrees. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For the last two years, America's cybersecurity relationship with China has been held up as a triumph of digital diplomacy: Since the two countries signed an agreement not to hack each others' private sector companies for commercial gain in late 2015, that pact has come to represent one of the most effective demonstrations in history of government negotiation to curtail state-sponsored cyberspying. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, some old security threats came back to haunt the internet, a fitting horror trope this close to Halloween. Remember the Mirai botnet that took out the internet for a big chunk of the East Coast and beyond last year? It’s back, sort of. More specifically, a new botnet called Reaper is steadily growing, based on Mirai but with an added trick. It doesn’t just seek out IoT devices with poor password protections; it can actively take advantage of known vulnerabilities. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Angst over a potential electromagnetic pulse attack bubbles up every few months, and it’s easy to understand why. The EMP impact envisioned by people who have studied it closely would be downright apocalyptic: a decimated US power grid, and up to 90 percent of Americans dead within a year. It doesn’t help, either, that North Korea recently invoked the specter of an EMP attack, and seems increasingly like it would have the wherewithal to pull one off. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Monday morning, just hours after pundits had settled into dissecting what everyone assumed to be the day’s big revelation—the indictment of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and his former business associate Rick Gates, on a slew of charges related to an alleged money laundering scheme—came an even bigger revelation: George Papadopoulos, foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign, had struck a plea agreement with Robert Mueller’s special counsel office. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices