 THE RANSOMWARE PROBLEM isn't getting any better. In fact, it's poised to get even worse, as cybercriminals have begun experimenting with double-encryption ransomware attacks. That works pretty much exactly how it sounds; victims pay a ransom to decrypt their files, only to find that they've been encrypted by another strain of malware simultaneously. It's a dirty trick, but if recent weeks have shown anything, it's that there's no low to which these groups won't stop. In more upbeat news, Google held its annual IO developer's conference this week. Amid the holograms and Wear OS overhauls the company detailed some important changes to how Android treats your privacy. The upcoming Android 12 release will include a host of security and privacy features, including a dashboard that lets you track which apps are checking your camera, microphone, and location data and when they did. Google's still an advertising company at heart, but progress is progress. Microsoft this week finally announced an end-of-life plan for Internet Explorer, which, yes, is still kicking. We took a look at the security problems the once-ubiquitous browser has caused through the years and why it will continue to for some time. And have Captchas got you down? We took a look at why they've gotten harder in recent years and how you can better navigate those dastardly blurry blocks. Likewise, we've got you covered on getting rid of those annoying cookie pop-ups that hound you across the web. Lastly, make sure you set aside some time to read our in-depth feature on the 2011 RSA hack, a seminal moment in cybersecurity. The central participants—well, other than the Chinese spies behind the attack—are finally free of their nondisclosure agreements, and told their stories in full for the first time. And there's more! Each week we round up all the news WIRED didn’t cover in-depth. Click on the headlines to read the full stories, and stay safe out there. The Apple-Epic lawsuit has seen no shortage of fireworks this week, especially during Tim Cook's testimony Friday. But Apple senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi—he's the one with the great hair—also caused a stir when asked why the iOS App Store couldn't simply embrace the more open distribution model found on macOS. "Today, we have a level of malware on the Mac that we don’t find acceptable," Federighi said, adding that 130 types of malware had been found targeting Macs in the past year, some of them quite successful. The question of security has been central to Apple's argument that it can't open up iOS to third-party app stores. But the answer is more complicated than it might seem. Apple does have an App Store review process, but outside security experts have said it alone is insufficient to comprehensively thwart both sophisticated malware and entry-level scams. Court documents showed that one Apple executive said App Store security was like "bringing a plastic butter knife to a gunfight." Apple's best protections come from the iPhone itself, which is architected to minimize the damage malware can do if it manages to sneak in. Remember those new lows in ransomware we were just talking about? Here's one. A little over a week ago, the Conti ransomware gang hit Ireland's national health service, known as the HSE. The result has been chaos, with hospitals disrupted across the country and patient data dangled as extortion bait. This week, Conti said it would hand over the decryption key so that health care providers could get back to business—but still demanded a nearly $20 million ransom, threatening to sell or release that patient data if HSE didn't pay up. Read this in full on OUR FORUM.  Whether you’re on the hunt for PS5 restock, Xbox Series X restock, or an Nvidia RTX 3080, you’ve probably had a pretty miserable time of it. Game consoles come and go within minutes, from retailers large and small. GPUs from Nvidia and AMD seem even scarcer, with enthusiasts camping out in front of stores, or simply paying exorbitant prices for third-party gear. On the one hand, we expect newly released electronics to be scarce. Eager early adopters almost always snatch up all available stock on a hot new gadget. But then, over time, the demand levels off, and the supply increases, and you can walk into any store and walk out with a smartphone, or a game console, or a computer part. And yet, gadget-hunting in 2021 feels different so far. More than six months later, finding a PS5 or Xbox Series X requires setting aside hours of your day to constantly refresh a page, and hoping against hope that scalper bots don’t steal a console right out of your shopping cart. GPUs like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 and the AMD RX 6800 are even rarer, thanks to shady cryptocurrency miners. After all, who’s got time to play fun games when you can strike it rich with Dogecoin? Unfortunately, as 2021 continues, it’s beginning to look more and more like game consoles and GPUs won’t be widely available anytime soon, largely due to the worldwide semiconductor shortage. For the moment, high-end gaming systems are, essentially, rare luxury goods, instead of everyday consumer items. And the sooner we start viewing them as such, the happier we’ll all be. The reason why no one can find a PS5, Xbox Series X, or GPU is almost disappointingly prosaic. It’s because manufacturers can’t supply enough parts to get them built. Everything boils down to a type of computer component known as a semiconductor. To simplify things considerably, semiconductors help bridge the gap between metallic conductors and nonreactive insulators. They’re the reason why our electronics don’t short out from too much current or fail to function from a lack of current. In products that rely on sensitive computerized equipment — game consoles and GPUs, yes, but also cars, washing machines, and cameras — semiconductors are arguably as integral as the microchips themselves. At present, the whole world is living through a severe semiconductor shortage. If you guessed that it’s largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, you guessed correctly. Many factories either shut down or didn’t run at full capacity, for quite some time last year. To exacerbate matters further, consumers didn’t buy much when the pandemic began, leading manufacturers to cut their semiconductor orders. Not only has demand outstripped supply; the supply itself is smaller than it really should have been. There are other reasons for the shortage, too, from then-president Donald Trump’s restrictions on the Chinese semiconductor trade to a fire at a Japanese manufacturing plant, to reduced global shipping causing bottlenecks. In other words, the semiconductor shortage is a perfect storm of public health, international relations, logistics, and bad luck. If you’ve been glued to Twitter, hoping against hope for the next PS5 restock, or perusing your local Best Buy every morning in hopes of an RTX 3080 resupply, you’re very well aware that the odds are against you. The demand for new gaming gear is huge; the supply of new gaming gear is extremely limited. The demand should decrease slightly as more and more people actually find the hardware they’re looking for. But with each new restock still selling out within minutes, it doesn’t seem like the situation is improving quickly enough to make a difference for most prospective buyers. At the risk of being the resident Tom’s Guide doomsayer, I don’t see the situation for PS5, Xbox Series X, or high-end GPUs improving much within the next few months. Readers have two options for dealing with this bad news. They can redouble their efforts, making our friend Matt Swider’s Twitter profile (which tracks console restocks day and night) into their homepage, setting up accounts at every major retailer in advance, keeping multiple machines glued to the Best Buy home page all day, and fighting off the thousands of other people in exactly the same position, every single day until something clicks. And, to be honest, if you treat finding a new console like a second job, you can probably secure one. It’s not hard; it’s just very tedious. More details are posted on OUR FORUM.  It’s the messaging app that connects a quarter of the world’s population, but many Americans still have haven’t heard of WhatsApp. That’s because most phone plans in the United States provide a standard flat rate for texting that allows people to communicate freely within the country. But throughout much of the world, including many of the world’s poorest countries, people are charged for every single message they send and receive. That is why, since its launch in 2009, WhatsApp has become a vital resource for billions of people – and they are prepared to defend it. When the Lebanese government tried to bring in a “WhatsApp tax”, charging $0.20 daily for calls made on the app, it helped trigger the mass protests that swept the country in 2019. One thing that does connect Americans to WhatsApp users, however, is Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and his flagrant disregard for data privacy. Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014 in a move to consolidate control over global communications. Now Zuckerberg is moving ahead with a change to WhatsApp’s privacy policy that aims to commercialize our communications in order to feed Facebook’s insatiable greed. At the time of WhatsApp’s purchase in 2014, the app did not collect phone numbers, metadata, or other contact information. Facebook promised to keep it this way. “We are absolutely not going to change plans around WhatsApp and the way it uses user data,” Zuckerberg claimed. “WhatsApp is going to operate completely autonomously.” Yet on 15 May, when Zuckerberg implements a new privacy update, this will be just one more in a series of his broken promises on data privacy. In 2016, WhatsApp implemented an update to its terms and conditions that allowed data like a user’s phone number to be shared with Facebook. Users were technically given 30 days’ notice to opt out. However, many were unaware of the possible opt-out and missed the small window in which they could do so, while the approximately one billion users who joined since were given no choice at all. WhatsApp announced its latest privacy update in January, with changes initially meant to take effect on 8 February. However, a popular outcry pushed the date back to 15 May, with Facebook no doubt hoping that public outrage would fade, paving the way for a quiet implementation. But public outrage has not faded. And so Facebook has opted for a familiar tactic: sow confusion and force through its new policy change anyway. The company is pestering WhatsApp users to accept the policy change by 15 May or, under a new opaque timeframe, a few additional weeks. Those who ignore or refuse the decision will lose access to basic WhatsApp functioning. Time is now running for Zuckerberg to reverse course in this latest assault on global communications – and protect the privacy of all WhatsApp users at this critical hour for democracy and dissent around the world. Facebook, for its part, has spent the months since the announcement downplaying the significance of these privacy updates by arguing that its latest changes will only affect communication with business accounts (WhatsApp Business was launched in January 2018). In truth, the changes will allow Facebook to collect payment and transaction data from WhatsApp users, meaning Facebook will be able to gather even more data and target users with ever more personalized ads. WhatsApp has also removed a passage in its privacy policy about opting out of sharing data with Facebook. Facebook argues that this simply reflects what’s been in place since 2016. That is exactly the problem.Today’s WhatsApp shares a great deal of information with Facebook it promised it wouldn’t, including account information, phone numbers, how often and how long people use WhatsApp, information about how they interact with other users, IP addresses, browser details, language, time zone, etc. This latest incursion has highlighted just how much data sharing has been going on for years without most users’ knowledge. Learn more when you visit OUR Forum. |
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