The latest security vulnerability to make the rounds, aptly dubbed FREAK, shines a spotlight on why it's maybe not such a great idea to weaken the technology behind the security that we all rely on. Turns out that we're still paying for the mistakes of the 1990s--and I don't mean acid-washed jeans.
There's a new malware king on the block. Security researchers at Moscow-based Kaspersky Labs have uncovered a sophisticated suite of software packages that stem from what it calls the "Equation" group, a single cluster of unidentified hackers dating back to 2001.
The National Security Agency spying program known as PRISM is a huge deal. Accessing private information from nine major internet companies, PRISM gives intelligence agencies a veritable sea of information to sort through in their attempts to discover the next threat. Meanwhile, the NSA collected phone records for millions of Verizon customers following the Boston Marathon bombing, assembling a vast pool of data to mine in the hopes of uncovering accomplices of the bombers.
Palantir Technologies has denied, sort of, that it is involved in the massive PRISM scandal, in which the National Security Agency was found to have gotten access to massive amounts of user data from companies like Microsoft, Google, Verizon, and Apple. Some reporters believe this denial. I do not.
