If you’re one of those people who waits for the first update to an update before you install it… …and you’re also an OS X or an iOS user, then your number’s just been called. In a flurry of Security Advisories published this week [2015-10-21] by Apple, the following security-oriented updates were announced: OS X...

You might like US Navy pays millions to cling to Windows XP World Backup Day – is your data safe enough? Revamping an old technology to go where GPS signals cannot reach $80 million yacht hijacked by students spoofing GPS signals About the author John Zorabedian is a blogger, copywriter and editor at Sophos. He...

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the UK is a public service body set up with excellent aims. As the organisation’s website explains, its remit is: To uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals. It’s not an irony that openness and privacy go together: if...

We already know that Facebook’s facial recognition technology – called “DeepFace” – rivals humans’ ability to recognize people, regardless of lighting changes and camera angles. It doesn’t hurt that Facebook photos are higher-quality than the grainy images that cops can pull from CCTV footage and other sources. As it turns out, Australia’s law enforcement agencies are more...

In a briefing filed on Monday in a New York court, Apple said it would be “impossible” to access the data stored on the majority of locked iPhones. Responding to Judge James Orenstein – who wanted help in deciding whether to fulfil a US Justice Department request that would see the company forced to aid the authorities...

If you’ve ever wondered how device manufacturers like Samsung or LG know how to build their Android smartphones to support new versions of the OS, here’s your answer: an obscure document called the Android Compatibility Definition. The document lays out all of the specifications for hardware and software compatibility, from device configurations, memory and power usage...

On the one hand, CWA (“Crackas With Attitude”), may have been a duo of pot-smoking, pro-Palestine 13-year-olds who socially engineered Verizon and got it to reset CIA Director John Brennan’s AOL address. They might then have posted taxpayer and other personal information of more than a dozen top US intelligence officials, plus a government letter...

A former federal agent who lined his pockets with bitcoins extorted from the black market site Silk Road has been sentenced to 78 months – more than 6 years – in prison. Former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Carl Force agreed, in June, to plead guilty to squeezing what was then valued at around $50,000...

Over on the Sophos Blog, we’ve just published the first article in a new series called What is…. We thought you might like it, so we decided to tell you about it here on Naked Security. The What is… articles take a technical subject – one that’s often name-dropped as if everyone, including the writer,...

It’s Week 4 of Cybersecurity Awareness Month (CSAM), and this week’s #CyberAware theme is Your Evolving Digital Life. As the CSAM organisers put it, the idea is to highlight: The "smart world" we live in and the importance of educating all citizens on cybersecurity as more and more of the devices we use – from...