Privacy

LAS VEGAS--The latest security threat to your laptop comes from an unexpected source: its battery.

A security researcher demonstrated today at the Black Hat security conference how he was able to gain complete control of the microprocessor embedded in batteries used in Apple Macintosh laptops and then remove or bypass the built-in safeguards.

"I can clearly brick the battery," said Charlie Miller, principal research consultant at security firm Accuvant Labs. "That's a cinch. I'm a pro at that."

Miller suggested it would be possible to overheat a battery and start a fire by convincing … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Forget Wi-Fi war driving. Now it's war flying.

A pair of security engineers showed up at the Black Hat security conference here to show off a prototype that can eavesdrop on Wi-Fi, phone, and Bluetooth signals: a retrofitted U.S. Army target drone, bristling with electronic gear and an array of antennas.

"Nobody's really looking at this from a threat perspective," said Mike Tassey, a security consultant who works for the U.S. government intelligence community. "There's some pretty evil stuff you can do from the sky."

The term war driving, meaning … Read more

A White House terrorism strategy released today says Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks aid in "advancing violent extremist narratives" and should be monitored by the government.

The 12-page strategy (PDF), which outlines ways to respond to violent extremism, promises that: "We will continue to closely monitor the important role the Internet and social-networking sites play in advancing violent extremist narratives."

President Obama said in a statement accompanying the report that the federal government will start "helping communities to better understand and protect themselves against violent extremist propaganda, especially online."

While much of the … Read more

Microsoft has ceased publishing the estimated locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other devices with Wi-Fi connections around the world after a CNET article on Friday highlighted privacy concerns.

The decision to rework Live.com's geolocation service comes following scrutiny of the way Microsoft made available its database assembled by both Windows Phone 7 phones and what the company calls "managed driving" by Street View-like vehicles that record Wi-Fi signals accessible from public roads. Every Wi-Fi device has a unique ID, sometimes called a MAC address, that cannot normally be changed.

Live.com's database, … Read more

A Stanford University researcher has created a Web page allowing people to query Microsoft's massive database for the locations of their--or someone else's--laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices.

The Web page, created this morning by Elie Bursztein, a postdoctoral researcher at the Stanford Security Laboratory, lets people type in the unique 12-character Wi-Fi address of any wireless device. If there's a match, the site displays a map of where Windows Phone 7 devices and Microsoft's fleet of Wi-Fi recording vehicles saw the wireless device last.

A CNET article last night provided details about Microsoft's … Read more

Microsoft has collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world and makes them available on the Web without taking the privacy precautions that competitors have, CNET has learned.

The vast database available through Live.com publishes the precise geographical location, which can point to a street address and sometimes even a corner of a building, of Android phones, Apple devices, and other Wi-Fi enabled gadgets.

Unlike Google and Skyhook Wireless, which have compiled similar lists of these unique Wi-Fi addresses, Microsoft has not taken any measures to curb access to its database. … Read more

Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers' activities for one year--in case police want to review them in the future--under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today.

The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall's elections, and the Justice Department officials who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements, a development first reported by CNET.

A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' … Read more

Google recently took steps to limit the disclosure of the locations of millions of iPhones, laptops, and other devices with Wi-Fi connections after a CNET article drew attention to privacy concerns.

Since then, the Mountain View, Calif., company has remained unusually tight-lipped--in contrast to the near-daily updates announcing improvements to its Google+ social network--about how it's limited access to its vast Web database, which was compiled over multiple years by Street View cars and Android phones.

Security researchers, however, haven't exactly been deterred. Instead, they've come to view Google's refusal to discuss the topic as both … Read more

scoop Google's Street View cars collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world, a practice that raises novel privacy concerns, CNET has confirmed.

The cars were supposed to collect the locations of Wi-Fi access points. But Google also recorded the street addresses and unique identifiers of computers and other devices using those wireless networks and then made the data publicly available through Google.com until a few weeks ago.

The French data protection authority, known as the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) recently contacted CNET … Read more