Arguably the biggest news in security this week was also the strangest; a company barely a year old announced a series of AMD vulnerabilities[1], giving the chip company only a day or so advance notice before making the results public. And despite the hype, the bugs themselves were of questionable severity. It was almost as hard to make sense of as YouTube's decision to add Wikipedia links to controversial videos[2]. Almost.
On the international scene, the White House finally imposed sanctions against Russia[3]—specifically, against the IRA troll factory for election meddling[4] and the GRU intelligence agency for unleashing NotPetya[5] malware on the world.
In other political news, the Florida Legislature voted for a bill that would bring unprecedented transparency[6] to the criminal justice system. And a series of laws that want to curb porn online[7] are picking the same fights that the government did decades ago. Meanwhile, voice chat app Zello has let ISIS accounts live[8] on its platform for years without taking much action at all to stop them.
And in sadder news, hacker Adrian Lamo died this week[9] at the age of 37. Best known now for tipping US authorities to Chelsea Manning's leaks, he had previously been a renowned hacker, as featured in this 2002 WIRED profile[10].
But, wait, there's more! As always, we’ve rounded up all the news we didn’t break or cover in depth this week. Click on the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.
Nearly 5 Million Android Phones Are Getting Enlisted In a Massive Botnet[11]
Oh, dear. Five million Android smartphones are infected with a strain