Mike Mimoso and Chris Brook recap RSA 2016, including how pervasive the FBI vs. Apple debate has been around the conference, OpenSSL two years after Heartbleed, and why hacking back is always a bad idea. Download: Threatpost_News_Wrap_March_4_2016.mp3 Music by Chris Gonsalves

SAN FRANCISCO—A laundry list of past and present iPhone experts and cryptography experts today filed an amicus brief asking the courts to vacate their order mandating Apple assist the FBI in unlocking a phone belonging to San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. Filed by Jennifer Granick and Riana Pfefferkorn of the Stanford Law School Center for...

SAN FRANCISCO—National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command director Admiral Michael S. Rogers stood before tens of thousands of RSA Conference attendees on Tuesday and asked for help. In what has almost become a speaking slot reserved for the government to use as a recruiting pitch of some sort, Rogers laid out his case for...

Mike Mimoso and Chris Brook discuss the news of the week including the ongoing FBiOS battle, a judge’s confirmation that the DoD funded research to uncloak Tor users, and news surrounding Operation Blockbuster. They also preview next week’s RSA Conference in San Francisco, Calif. Download: http://traffic.libsyn.com/digitalunderground/Threatpost_News_Wrap_February_26_2016.mp3 Music by Chris Gonsalves

Apple, like most advanced tech companies, understands threats and how to close them off. But one salient point that’s emerged from its ongoing dispute with the FBI over unlocking the San Bernardino shooter’s phone is that Apple is a threat to itself. Therefore, expect any future iPhone security updates to take into account that Apple...

A U.S. district court judge has confirmed what has probably been the worst-kept secret in security, that Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute was indeed contracted by the Department of Defense to study how to break Tor anonymity. A motion to compel discovery filed by Brian Farrell, a defendant charged with conspiracy to distribute drugs...

Apple CEO Tim Cook’s major argument in objecting to the FBI’s request to assist in unlocking San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook’s iPhone 5c is the precedent it would set in doing so. As it turns out, Cook had a leg to stand on when he defiantly objected to a federal magistrate’s order last week. Apple...

A researcher at IOActive believes the U.S. intelligence community has the capability to carry out a delicate hardware hack that could unlock the iPhone 5c at the center of the current FBiOS debate. The attack requires considerable financial resources and acumen with an intrusive attack against the device’s chip in order to extract enough data...

Mike Mimoso and Chris Brook discuss the week in news, including the iPhone encryption debacle, the glibc Linux vulnerability, and the latest ransomware headlines. Download: Threatpost_News_Wrap_February_19_2016.mp3 Music by Chris Gonsalves

After being knocked offline for nearly two weeks, officials at a California hospital that was hit with ransomware elected on Wednesday to pay attackers. The Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center (HPMC) shut down computers on its network on Feb. 5, after attackers allegedly asked for 9,000 Bitcoin, or just over $3 million USD, to unlock medical...