Judge: Ex-CIA Worker Can Represent Himself in Espionage Case
U.S. District Judge Paul A. Crotty said in a written order that Joshua Schulte had shown that he was sure he wanted to act as his own lawyer. Schulte, 32, faces an October trial on charges that he leaked CIA secrets to WikiLeaks, which published materials in 2017 that revealed how the CIA hacked Apple…
Vulnerabilities in Qualcomm Chips Expose Billions of Devices to Attacks
During a presentation at DEF CON last week, Check Point security researcher Slava Makkaveev revealed how vulnerabilities in the compute digital-signal processor (DSP) – a subsystem that enables the processing of data with low power consumption – could open the door for Android applications to perform malicious attacks. The proprietary subsystem is licensed for programming…
Facial recognition hardware to reach over 800 million devices by 2024
A new report from Juniper Research found that facial recognition hardware, such as Face ID on recent iPhones, will be the fastest growing form of smartphone biometric hardware. This means it will reach over 800 million in 2024, compared to an estimated 96 million in 2019. The new research, Mobile Payment Authentication: Biometrics, Regulation &…
High-risk vulnerabilities found in 1/3 of iOS apps, nearly half of Android apps
Expert testing of iOS and Android mobile applications shows that in most cases, insecure data storage is the most common security flaw in mobile apps. Positive Technologies’ yearly report, Vulnerabilities and Threats in Mobile Applications 2019, found that critical vulnerabilities are slightly more common in Android applications, compared to their iOS counterparts (43% vs. 38%)….
Securing campus networks became more challenging
The results of a global Infoblox survey on the state of network security at higher education institutions reveals that 81 percent of IT professionals believe securing campus networks has become more challenging in the last two years. The report titled “Defending Networks at Higher Learning Institutions – Heroes Needed” surveyed over 600 students, IT professionals…
Number of smartphone users relying on software-only biometric security to grow 250%
A new report from Juniper Research predicts that the biggest shift in mobile payment security will be the move towards software-based methods, which rely on standard smartphone components. The research forecasts that users of these methods will increase from an estimated 429 million in 2018 to over 1.5 billion in 2023. Juniper believes that this…
Secure Element — securing contactless payments in smartphones
Modern smartphones have successfully combined the functionality of a phone, camera, music player, public transit pass, and even a wallet for many years now. Naturally, this makes you wonder about the security of the data they store. Let’s figure out how well smartphones protect users’ most valuable information and how their main security mechanism — a…
Investors concerned about smartphone addiction; Apple responds with new webpage
Hot on the heels of an open letter from investors urging Apple to do more to protect children from smartphone addiction, the tech giant has recently dedicated a page on their website to families. The “Families” page, which can be accessed at apple.com/families, contains tools parents can use to set restrictions on devices accessible to their kids, manage…
Samsung Smartphones Get Encrypted Communications
KoolSpan this week announced a partnership with Samsung to implement secure communications on Samsung smartphones. KoolSpan, a provider of encrypted secure voice and messaging solutions for mobiles, is already offering secure communications to enterprises. With support for mainstream phones, which are normally used within organizations, the solutions bring end-to-end encryption to all internal calls and…
An analysis of 120 mobile app stores uncovers plethora of malicious apps
RiskIQ analyzed 120 mobile app stores and more than 2 billion daily scanned resources. In listing and analyzing the app stores hosting the most malicious mobile apps and the most prolific developers of malicious apps, their Q3 mobile threat landscape report documents an increase in blacklisted apps over Q2, as well as the continued issues…