It may be the end of August, that time when a sticky malaise settles in, but hackers can wreak havoc even during summer vacation. Which is why WIRED’s security writers keep covering the news.
Like this story of how Iran set up a global propaganda campaign targeting social media. Issie Lapowski[1] lays out everything we know[2] about the country's 2018 propaganda machine, like how they used fake profile photos to catfish targets, and they had a real thing for Bernie Sanders.
Our writer Louise Matsakis[3] discovered a weird bug[4] in Facebook’s two-factor authentication that made her think she’d been hacked (she hadn’t, but something was definitely wrong).
Also, Lily Hay Newman[5] found out that using your phone number as means for account verification across the internet is a really, really bad idea. Newman reported on how a T-Mobile data breach[6] last week exposed personal information, like phone numbers, and why that matters so much.
Another major security story this week came out of California, which is trying to pass a comprehensive digital privacy law to give residents control over their data. But the tech industry is fighting back[7]—hard. Hackers are exploiting a decades-old-phone technology[8]—AT commands, invented in the 1980s, way before smartphones—to break into Android devices.
Finally, there was more movement in the 3-D gun arena. Despite a judge’s injunction against sharing 3-D gun blueprints online, Defense Distributed’s Cody Wilson is now selling the plans on flash drives[9] that he mails to whoever wants them. To actually ban 3-D-printed guns, the legislature would need to take action.
Plus, there's more. As always, we’ve rounded up all the news we didn’t break or