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The Doctor on a Quest to Save Our Medical Devices From Hackers   The Internet of Things has introduced security issues to hundreds of devices that previously were off-limits to hackers, turning innocuous appliances like refrigerators and toasters into gateways for data theft and spying. But most alarmingly, the Internet of Things has created a whole new set of security vulnerabilities with life-threatening risks. We’re talking about the cars and, particularly, medical devices that are now in the sights of hackers—including drug infusion pumps, pacemakers, and other critical hospital equipment. Now a California medical doctor is teaming up with technologists and patients to develop a new technical standard to secure insulin pumps used by diabetics. The standard, expected to be completed by July, could become a model to help secure other medical equipment in the future—especially because, in an unconventional move, the doctor is collaborating with patients who tin...

Security Manual Reveals the OPSEC Advice ISIS Gives Recruits   In the wake of the Paris attacks, US government officials have been vocal in their condemnation of encryption , suggesting that US companies like Apple and Google have blood on their hands for refusing to give intelligence and law enforcement agencies backdoors to unlock customer phones and decrypt protected communications. But news reports of the Paris attacks have revealed that at least some of the time, the terrorists behind the attacks didn’t bother to use encryption while communicating, allowing authorities to intercept and read their messages. Reports in France say that investigators were able to locate some of the suspects’ hideout this week using data from a cellphone apparently abandoned by one of the attackers in a trashcan outside the Bataclan concert hall where Friday’s attack occurred, according to Le Monde . Authorities tracked the phone’s movements prior to the attack, which led them to...

Security Manual Reveals the OPSEC Advice ISIS Gives Recruits   In the wake of the Paris attacks, US government officials have been vocal in their condemnation of encryption , suggesting that US companies like Apple and Google have blood on their hands for refusing to give intelligence and law enforcement agencies backdoors to unlock customer phones and decrypt protected communications. But news reports of the Paris attacks have revealed that at least some of the time, the terrorists behind the attacks didn’t bother to use encryption while communicating, allowing authorities to intercept and read their messages. Reports in France say that investigators were able to locate some of the suspects’ hideout this week using data from a cellphone apparently abandoned by one of the attackers in a trashcan outside the Bataclan concert hall where Friday’s attack occurred, according to Le Monde . Authorities tracked the phone’s movements prior to the attack, which led them to...

The Drone Racing League Will Be a Spectator Sport Like No Other   When you think of spectator sports, you think of big crowds. Hot-dog stands. Beer vendors. Foam No. 1 fingers. Although some sports may actually be better on TV, at least there’s the option of watching the event live and in person. The Drone Racing League won’t be like that, at least not at the beginning. Instead, the league will rely on immersive footage shot from drone-mounted cameras, a professional video production team, and emerging viewing technologies in order to draw fans in. It’ll still be a spectator sport, just an entirely new kind. You’ll watch races as if you’re sitting in a drone’s cockpit, and you’ll probably watch them after the fact. Online, on TV, or on a VR headset. “We’re not really focused on live events,” says Drone Racing League CEO Nick Horbaczewski, who says that may change if the races become popular. The league has six races planned for 2016 across the United States...

The Paris Climate Talks Will Emit 300,000 Tons of CO 2 , by Our Math. Hope It’s Worth It   The 2015 Paris talks (formally known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties and the eleventh session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol—but let’s just call it the Paris talks) are going to draw about 22,000 official attendees. Official means negotiators, delegates, diplomats, and aides from 195 countries. That does not include the NGOs, businesses, activists, high school students, and many, many journalists (including me) who will be there to influence, capitalize on, or catalog the two week event. Playing it conservative, total attendance will land around 50,000 people. Those 50,000 people will come from as far as Auckland, New Zealand and as near as Paris itself. If you add up all the Bangkoks, Bermudas, Cape Towns, Sydneys, Santiagos, Sa...

Dell Promised Security … Then Delivered a Huge Security Hole As part of the promotion of its flagship XPS 15, Dell touts the laptop’s security. “Worried about Superfish ?” the product page asks, invoking a now-infamous Lenovo lapse from earlier this year. “Each application we pre-load undergoes security, privacy and usability testing to ensure that our customers experience … reduced privacy and security concerns.” That messaging remains, even after Dell has experienced a security lapse of its own—one remarkably similar to Superfish. It might as well stay up, if only as a reminder that security is far easier to promise than it is to achieve. Certifiable If you own a Dell, go here (PDF) before you read any further. That’s where you’ll find detailed instructions on how to fix your PC’s vulnerability. You have three options: download a patch, fix it manually, or wait for a software update that Dell pushed out today to fix it for you. Dell tells WIRED that the latte...

 A $10 Tool Can Guess (And Steal) Your Next Credit Card Number When Samy Kamkar lost his American Express card last August and received its replacement in the mail, something about the final digits on the new card set off an alert in the hacker lobe of his brain. He compared the numbers with those of his previous three American Express cards—as a universally curious security researcher and serial troublemaker , he’d naturally recorded them all—and a pattern emerged. So Kamkar sent out a message to his friends on Facebook, asking them to send him the final digits of all of their current and most recently canceled AmEx cards. Ten friends responded, and the same disturbing pattern applied to every number he checked: With any given card, Kamkar found he could apply his trick and predict the full number of the next card they’d received. Kamkar immediately saw the potential for a nasty fraud technique: Any hacker who’d compromised a card number could predict the card’s r...

Americans care more about Cecil the lion than Syrian refugees As of Nov. 20, 2015, a petition to decisively punish the American dentist who killed an African lion named Cecil during a trophy hunting expedition had reached  1,354,294 signatures .  As of the same date, a petition to merely appoint an independent prosecutor for the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by Cleveland police (not to adjudicate the case one way or the other) had  99,676 signatures . The writer Roxanne Gay painfully and insightfully  quipped  on Twitter: “I'm personally going to start wearing a lion costume when I leave my house so if I get shot, people will care.” As Julia Craven and Kim Bellware  wrote  in the Huffington Post, “Social media response from white Americans has never been this intense for #BlackLivesMatter.” [pullquote]Research suggests that we’re twice as likely to give money to save a dog than to save a dying child.[/pullquote]More recently, ...

Convicted Israel spy Jonathan Pollard released after 30 years Jonathan Jay Pollard  (born August 7, 1954) is a former  intelligence  analyst for the  United States  government. In 1987, as part of a  plea agreement , Pollard pleaded guilty to  spying  for and providing top-secret  classified information  to  Israel , and was later sentenced to life in prison for violations of the  Espionage Act . Pollard is the only American ever to receive a life sentence for passing classified information to an ally of the U.S.    In defense of his actions, Pollard declared that he committed espionage only because "the American intelligence establishment collectively endangered Israel’s security by withholding crucial information."   Israeli officials, American-Israeli activist groups, and some American politicians who saw his punishment as unfair lobbied continuously for reduction or commutation of his sentence....

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve warned Thursday that the European Union must "wake up" to the threat posed by terrorists in the wake of the attacks in Paris last Friday. Cazeneuve stated: "It is urgent that Europe wakes up, organises itself and defends itself against the terrorist threat." Cazeneuve underscored that Paris had received no warning from other European Union members that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected organiser of the attacks that left 129 people dead, was even in the bloc. EU ministers are set to hold emergency talks Friday on tightening border checks after the deadly attacks in the French capital raised troubling questions about the bloc's security. As he arrived for the meeting with his EU counterparts in Brussels on Friday, Cazeneuve urged the EU to move quickly on the counter-terrorism issue. EU has "wasted time" "We hope that Europe, which has wasted too much time on a number of urgent issues, to...

MALI UNDER TERRORIST ATTACK AT Radisson Blu Hotel ,   Mali attack: Special forces storm hotel to free hostages  (CNN) LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: • [7 a.m. ET] At least 80 of roughly 170 hostages have been freed from the Radisson Blu Hotel in Mali's capital, Bamako, the country's state broadcaster, ORTM, said Friday. • [6:45 a.m. ET] Two to three attackers with AK-47s arrived at the hotel in a vehicle or vehicles with diplomatic plates around 7 a.m., said Olivier Saldago, a spokesman for the United Nations mission in Mali. • [6:45 a.m. ET] Once there, the gunmen entered the hotel and began shooting at people, Saldago said. Two Malian nationals and a French national have died, a U.N. official said without elaborating. • [6:45 a.m. ET] Mali President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has cut short his trip to Chad for a summit to return to Bamako, according to a message Friday on his official Twitter account. He expected to arrive in Mali sometime Friday after...

After Paris Attacks, Here’s What the CIA Director Gets Wrong About Encryption   It’s not surprising that in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks last Friday, US government officials would renew their assault on encryption and revive their efforts to force companies to install backdoors in secure products and encryption software. Just last month, the government seemed to concede that forced decryption wasn’t the way to go for now, primarily because the public wasn’t convinced yet that encryption is a problem. But US officials had also noted that something could happen to suddenly sway the public in their favor. Robert S. Litt, general counsel in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, predicted as much in an email sent to colleagues three months ago. In that missive obtained by the Washington Post , Litt argued that although “the legislative environment [for passing a law that forces decryption and backdoors] is very hostile today, it could tur...