Security

US lawmakers urge UK spy court to hold Apple ‘backdoor’ secret hearing in public

Security /

A group of bipartisan U.S. lawmakers are urging the head of the U.K.’s surveillance court to hold an open hearing into Apple’s anticipated challenge of an alleged secret U.K. government legal demand. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, along with four other federal lawmakers, said in a letter this week to the president of the U.K.’s Investigatory […]

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Amazon is still hosting stalkerware victims’ data weeks after breach alert

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Amazon will not say if it plans to take action against three phone surveillance apps that are storing troves of individuals’ private phone data on Amazon’s cloud servers, despite TechCrunch notifying the tech giant weeks earlier that it was hosting the stolen phone data. Amazon told TechCrunch it was “following [its] process” after our February

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Apple’s Lockdown Mode is good for security — but its notifications are baffling

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As a paranoid journalist, I am an enthusiastic user of Apple’s opt-in “extreme protection” feature, Lockdown Mode.  Apple launched Lockdown Mode in 2022, and since then the security feature is considered a must-use for dissidents in corrupt countries, human-rights defenders in oppressive regimes, and journalists speaking truth to power.  Lockdown Mode is designed to switch

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Apple’s appeal against UK’s secret iCloud backdoor order must be held in public, rights groups urge

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Privacy rights groups have called on Apple’s legal challenge to a secret U.K. government order asking it to backdoor an end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) version of its iCloud storage service to be heard in public, rather than behind closed doors. The existence of the order emerged via press reports last month. Apple went on to confirm

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North Korean government hackers snuck spyware on Android app store

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A group of hackers with links to the North Korean regime uploaded Android spyware onto the Google Play app store and were able to trick some people into downloading it, according to cybersecurity firm Lookout. In a report published on Wednesday, and exclusively shared with TechCrunch ahead of time, Lookout details an espionage campaign involving

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Apple fixes new security flaw used in ‘extremely sophisticated attack’

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Apple released patches for a bug that it says “may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals,” citing a report. The zero-day bug was found in WebKit, the browser engine powering Safari and other apps, and allowed hackers to break out of WebKit’s protective sandbox with “maliciously crafted web content,”

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DOGE axes CISA ‘red team’ staffers amid ongoing federal cuts

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Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has fired more than a hundred employees working for the U.S. government’s cybersecurity agency CISA, including “red team” staffers, two people affected by the layoffs told TechCrunch.  The people, who asked not to be named, said affected employees were axed immediately when their network access was revoked with

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FTC says Americans lost $12.5B to scams last year — social media, AI and crypto didn’t help

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You’re not the only one getting voicemails about your car’s extended warranty. According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), about 2.6 million people submitted reports on falling victim to fraud in 2024, totaling $12.5 billion in losses. That’s a big jump from $2.5 billion lost in 2023, when the FTC received roughly the same

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