The so-called Voynich Manuscript, a small unassuming book usually stored in a Yale University vault, is one of the most mysterious books in the world. A small publishing house in northern Spain has finally secured the right to replicate the document. Cesar Manso/AFP/Getty Images The Voynich…

When a drum containing radioactive waste blew up in an underground nuclear dump in New Mexico two years ago, the Energy Department rushed to quell concerns in the Carlsbad desert community and quickly reported progress on resuming operations. The early federal statements gave no hint that the blast…

Latest news View all This story originally appeared in October 2013. This reprint is David Axe’s final story for War Is Boring. Sprinting... China’s New Submarine Nuke Could Hit America The Chinese navy has tested a new submarine-launched ballistic missile, one that could eventually allow Chinese…

A privacy update to 1982 Defense Department rules for conducting surveillance on Americans contains a loophole that lets the National Security Agency continue eavesdropping on a wide swath of online conversations, critics say. “ DOD Manual 5240.01 : Procedures Governing the Conduct of DOD…

In the summer of 1972, state-of-the-art campaign spying consisted of amateur burglars, armed with duct tape and microphones, penetrating the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Today, amateur burglars have been replaced by cyberspies, who penetrated the DNC armed with computers and…

The Crew platform has shut down as of December 15, 2018 and is now part of Dribbble. We have several tools to help you find and hire design talent, from self-serve sourcing to our creative staffing solution Dribbble Talent . While this may be the end of an era, it’s also the start to a new one.…

November 5, 1999, was Burn All GIFs Day. Had you visited its homepage that Friday, you would have seen the movement's game plan laid out as plainly as its name: "On Burn All GIFs Day, all GIF users will gather at Unisys and burn all their GIF files." This, alongside a selection of pointedly anti-GIF…

A few months ago, I wrote a blog post about how penny auction sites make you money. As a reaction, some readers sent me links to day trading brokers that promise easy returns. These brokers allow private investors to hold stocks or currencies positions for a short time which makes it possible to…

In the novel Catch-22, the author Joseph Heller famously wrote: "Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them." He'd taken a quote by Shakespeare on greatness and turned it on its head. The implication was clear: mediocrity is a bad thing, to…

On Monday, a hacking group calling itself the “ShadowBrokers” announced an auction for what it claimed were “cyber weapons” made by the NSA. Based on never-before-published documents provided by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Intercept can confirm that the arsenal contains authentic NSA…

In the era of tightened fiscal budgets and out-of-control federal debt, the one sector of government that rarely finds itself on the chopping block is the military. But new doubts on how the Pentagon accounts for the colossal amount of taxpayer cash in its care have raised the question of whether…

A non-stop full-court press gives weak basketball teams a chance against far stronger teams. Why have so few adopted it? Credit Illustration by Zohar Lazar When Vivek Ranadivé decided to coach his daughter Anjali’s basketball team, he settled on two principles. The first was that he would never…

“Hi, Siri, I’m home.” And just like that, your lights flicker on, your TV jolts to life and your shades slowly descend to the floor. That’s just a hint of the kind of world Apple wants to build in your home when it releases its Home app alongside iOS 10 later this fall. Apple began its foray into…

Native Americans protest the Dakota Access oil pipeline on Friday near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in southern North Dakota.Photograph: James MacPherson/AP Joey Montoya, like other protesters near Cannon Ball, at the northern boundary of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota ,…

Google Street View The family of a 12-year-old Muslim boy with severe learning disabilities is suing his school on Long Island after classmates allegedly called him a "terrorist" and school authorities interrogated him and demanded that he admit to supporting the Islamic State terrorist group.…

We think of our monitors as passive entities. The computer sends them data, and they somehow—magically?—turn it into pixels which make words and pictures. But what if that wasn't the case? What if hackers could hijack our monitors and turn them against us? As it turns out, that's possible. A group…

As increasingly banal devices come online as the latest additions to the internet of things, it was inevitable that sex toys would get added into the mix. Known as teledildonics, the realm of internet connected sex toys has been heralded as the future of sex for years now, and as with all internet…

With high-profile hacks in the headlines and government officials trying to reopen a long-settled debate about encryption, information security has become a mainstream issue. But we feel that one element of digital security hasn’t received enough critical attention: the role of government in…

I have now seen a bleary eyed John McAfee pose for selfies with hacker fan boys at a strip club in Las Vegas. I have seen grown men earnestly duel with foam swords. I have learned how to pick uncrackable locks. I have seen hackers go broke at the roulette table while another hacker gave a…

WHAT are the most dysfunctional parts of the global financial system? China’s banking industry, you might say, with its great wall of bad debts and state-sponsored cronyism. Or the euro zone’s taped-together single currency, which stretches across 19 different countries, each with its own debts and…

The US has confirmed it is finally ready to cede power of the internet’s naming system, ending the almost 20-year process to hand over a crucial part of the internet's governance. The Domain Naming System, DNS, is one of the internet’s most important components. It pairs the easy-to-remember web…

By Kenton Varda - 17 Aug 2016 Lately, there has been a flurry of activity around decentralizing the web. Summits have been held. New projects – and companies – have been started. Having worked on this issue for several years now, we’re excited to see it becoming increasingly mainstream. But what,…

If there’s any subject that perfectly encapsulates the idea that science is hard to understand, it’s quantum physics. Scientists tell us that the miniature denizens of the quantum realm behave in seemingly impossible ways: they can exist in two places at once, or disappear and reappear somewhere…

T-Mobile said Thursday that it would do away with tiered data plans and offer unlimited data to new customers starting in September. However, the plan comes with some exceptions that have, once again, called into question the mobile carrier’s commitment to net neutrality . The new plan, dubbed…

Cisco has already warned customers about two exploits found in the NSA-linked data recently dumped by hackers calling themselves The Shadow Brokers. Now, researchers have uncovered another attack included in the cache, which they claim allows the extraction of VPN passwords from certain Cisco…

With gasoline and diesel powered vehicles, particularly when fuel costs are low, aerodynamic design is largely a matter of style. Electric vehicles, however, can’t recharge as easily, quickly, or conveniently as cars and trucks powered by petroleum products can fill up. Range anxiety, too, is a…

A conference attendee looks at a projection of Earth on the opening day of the COP 21 United Nations conference on climate change, in November on the outskirts of Paris. Alain Jocard/AFP/Getty Images Standing before several dozen students in a college classroom, Travis Rieder tries to convince them…

ENISA, the European Union Agency For Network And Information Security, has taken a look at “cost of cyber attack” studies and reckons they're not much good. The agency is far too polite to put it that way, but in this report , it says there's no consistent approach to trying to quantify the cost of…

by Thanks to Gabor Szapannos of SophosLabs, who did the hard work behind this article. Not all malware is ransomware , even though ransomware hogs the spotlight these days. Keyloggers are still popular in the cyberunderworld, because they help crooks to steal your passwords. Armed with your email…

Shakti Trojan: Document Thief Posted: August 15, 2016 by Last updated: August 23, 2016 While some ransomware (i.e. Chimera) give bogus threats about stealing and releasing private files, there are other malware families that in fact have made this possibility a reality. Recently, Bleeping Computer…

Mirko Zorz , Editor in Chief August 18, 2016 Sn1per: Automated pentest recon scanner Sn1per is an automated scanner that can be used during a penetration test to enumerate and scan for vulnerabilities. “I originally created Sn1per because I didn’t want to run 10 different security tools and remember…

NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nevada — International war games being fought this week in the Nevada desert suggest the U.S. military is preparing for new, large-scale warfare against powerful enemies. This year marks the 41st year of the Red Flag military exercises, which are considered among the most…

White hat hackers see companies at their worst. It is, after all, their job to expose weaknesses. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently chatted with penetration testing expert Josh Berry, Senior Technology Manager at Accudata Systems , an IT consulting and integration firm based in…

Rare implementation of RC5/RC6 in ‘ShadowBrokers’ dump connects them to Equation malware August 13, 2016 saw the beginning of a truly bizarre episode. A new identity going under the name ‘ShadowBrokers’ came onto the scene claiming to possess files belonging to the apex predator of the APT world,…

Mistakes were made No matter how elite a hacking group may be, Raiu said, mistakes are inevitable. Equation Group made several errors that allowed Kaspersky researchers to glean key insights into an operation that went unreported for at least 14 years. Kaspersky first came upon the Equation Group in…

The "Shadow Brokers" are in the spotlight. The mysterious group has seized the attention of the cybersecurity world with its claim to have stolen code from the Equation Group — a team of hackers who have been tied to the National Security Agency. On a website written in broken English , the Shadow…

Microsoft had an ambitious goal with the launch of Windows 10: a billion devices running the software by the end of 2018 . In its quest to reach that goal, the company aggressively pushed Windows 10 on its users and went so far as to offer free upgrades for a whole year. However, the company’s…