Shoppers have launched into the holiday buying season and retailers are looking forward to year-end sales that make up almost 20% of their annual receipts. But as you check out at a store or click “purchase…
An ever-increasing number of our consumer electronics is internet-connected. We’re living at the dawn of the age of the Internet of Things. Appliances ranging from light switches and door locks, to cars…
The investigation of the hack that gave the world access to hundreds of nude celebrity pictures identified another massive gap in online security. Given Apple’s reputation of being among the more secure…
Jamie Shea, London School of Economics and Political Science
Late one Saturday evening in March, NATO’s Headquarters experienced a large-scale cyber-attack at the hands of a group calling itself Anonymous Bierkut from Ukraine. Non-classified networks were targeted…
Over the past few months, the Android platform developed by Google and based on the Linux operating system has been having a difficult time. Hackers, with malicious intent and those without, have been…
Several high-profile security breaches have, of late, got many people wondering about their passwords. It would be great news if I could tell you a perfect sure-fire system to manage your passwords; the…
Almost two years ago, one of my oldest friends, Bradley L Garrett, boarded a plane at Heathrow airport. As it taxied on the runway, the British Transport Police arrived and dragged him off the plane. He…
Heartbleed, the bug that has preoccupied thousands of websites and millions of users over the past week, may well have been the biggest security flaw in internet history but it is unlikely to be the last…
There is some controversy about what we mean by the word “hacker”. Historically, and as far back as the 1960s, a hacker was someone who was an expert programmer. But today, it is a word generally used…
A spate of internet hacking during the New Year period – including an attack on Skype by hacker group the Syrian Electronic Army, and another on social media photo sharing app Snapchat by website SnapchatDB…
Bitcoin enthusiasts and libertarians the world over are in a state of confusion about the slowness with which the outside world is catching on to their new way of exchanging money. But regulators and lawmakers…
Why would thousands of people flock to Las Vegas, right in the middle of summer, when temperatures easily reach the high thirties, to shut themselves up in one of Sin City’s largest hotels without spending…
There are now more mobile devices than people on our planet. The amount of personal data we share through mobile devices is also increasing. So it is not surprising that cyber-criminals want a piece of…
The largest-ever cyber attack by hacker collective Anonymous has brought down the websites of several large organisations, including the US Department of Justice and the FBI. The attacks started early…
Hackers have infiltrated popular job-search website unijobs.com.au and posted the login details and passwords of over 600 users onto the public website Pastebin. Exposing login details is dangerous because…
Two recent hacking incidents have highlighted the increasing fragility of the internet’s core infrastructure. They serve as a stark reminder that online security is somewhat illusory. The weaknesses have…
It’s a scene reminiscent of a thousand police dramas: the FBI arrived at the door of 20-year-old journalism student Mercedes Haefer, guns drawn, at 6am one morning last July. She was still in her pyjamas…