Iain Thomson

NASA has confirmed its Europa Clipper spacecraft will head off to the Jovian moon in search of signs of life and a landing zone for future exploration. Europa has fascinated astroboffins since it was discovered that the moon has an ocean albeit one under a thick layer of ice. The water, it turns out, is heated, and kept liquid …

DEF CONDespite some progress, the US is still massively underprepared for a serious cyber attack and the current administration isn't helping matters, according to politicians visiting the DEF CON hacking conference. In an opening keynote, representatives Ted Lieu (D-CA) and James Langevin (D-IL) were joined by hackers Cris Thomas, …

DEF CONFor the first time, Vegas's annual DEF CON hacking conference has an "aviation hacking village", and the US military is scouting around there for a few good hackers to find bugs that its own hackers have missed. "We've got some great hackers on our team and we're proud of them," Dr Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air …

Black HatDeepfakes, the AI-generated talking heads that can say whatever their creator wants them to, are getting harder to detect. But boffins have enlisted an unlikely ally in the quest for truth – mice. In a presentation at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, data scientists examined various ways to identify deepfake …

Black HatWhen Europe introduced the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) it was supposed to be a major step forward in data safety, but sloppy implementation and a little social engineering can make it heaven for identity thieves. In a presentation at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas James Pavur, a PhD student at …

Black HatWhile various high-tech solutions to secure electronic voting systems are being touted this week to election officials across the United States, according to infosec guru Bruce Schneier there is only one tried-and-tested approach that should be considered: pen and paper. It's the only way to be sure hackers and spies haven't …

Black HatA Black Hat presentation on how to potentially hijack a 787 – by exploiting bugs found in internal code left lying around on a public-facing server – was last night slammed as "irresponsible and misleading" by Boeing. At the hacking conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Ruben Santamarta, principal security consultant at pen- …

Black HatAmerica's crime-fighters, desperate to recruit white-hat hackers to collar spies and cyber-crooks, are quietly and slightly relaxing the ban on hiring anyone who has used illegal drugs. Generally speaking, dabbling in any kind of substance abuse will rule you out of the running for a job at the NSA, Homeland Security, the FBI …

Black HatBlack Hat founder Jeff Moss opened this year's shindig in Las Vegas with tales of quite how odd the hacking culture in China is. You see, Moss also founded the DEF CON conference series, and has started running DEF CON events for nerds in China – which makes sense given the sizable reservoir of infosec and computer science …

Black HatIBM's X-Force hacking team have come up with an interesting variation on wardriving – you know, when you cruise a neighborhood scouting for Wi-Fi networks. Well, why not try using the postal service instead, and called it "warshipping," Big Blue's eggheads suggested earlier today. To demonstrate this approach, the X-Force team …

Bsides LVA satellite-killing debris field encircling the Earth isn't coming any time soon, but hackers working from Earth could help severely damage the planet's orbital traffic. Satellite systems specialist Elizabeth Wilson presented research to the Bsides hacking conference in Las Vegas showing that our machinery in orbit – and the …

BSides LVIn one of the most disturbing talks in all 10 years of Bsides Las Vegas, neuroscientists have warned that not only is hacking the brain possible right now, but it's also a lot easier than you may think. Two boffins from Laboratory for Autonomy-Brain Exchange (LabX) have been working on brain/machine interfaces. The technology …

BSides LVLife’s tough as a malware developer. If the cops or Feds don't collar you, your fellow scumbags will screw you over – or perhaps both will happen. In a presentation at the Bsides Las Vegas hacking conference today, Winnona DeSombre, an analyst at threat-intelligence biz Recorded Future, detailed a year-long probe into dark and …

After last week's revelations that a hacker stole the personal details of 106 million Capital One credit card applicants from its Amazon-hosted cloud storage, a US Senator has demanded Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos explain what exactly what went wrong. The sensitive information was siphoned from Capital One's Amazon Web Services S3 …

An FBI contractor has pleaded not guilty to charges that he installed a camera under a coworker's desk to satisfy his "voyeur" fetish. Joshua Green was working as a contractor in the J Edgar Hoover building – aka the FBI headquarters in Washington DC – last month. On July 26, one of his colleagues, who had just returned to …

Black HatIt's that time of year again and the world's white, grey and the occasional black-hat hackers descends into the fetid hell that is Las Vegas in August for a week of conferences, community conflabs and catching up with old friends. What started as a bunch of friends hanging out in a cheap hotel has grown into the largest …

Black HatIf you're heading off the Black Hat and DEF CON security conferences in Las Vegas, USA, this week, be prepared to have your hotel room searched if - for any reason - you shoo maid service away and stop staff from cleaning your room. Most hotels in the city enforce mandatory checks within their rooms following the October 1, …

Pics and videoA British firm thinks it has found the answer to an age-old problem – how to decide which boozed-up revellers should get served at the bar first. It works like this. A webcam constantly scans the crowd of eager punters wanting to get a drink and sorts them out in the order in which it first spotted them. They are assigned a …

An ongoing age-discrimination lawsuit against IBM by one of its former star cloud salesmen has this week blown the lid off Big Blue's inner struggle to reinvent itself as a hip'n'cool place for millennials. Buried in court paperwork filed by lawyers acting on behalf of ex-IBMer Jonathan Langley, is, among other explosive …

Marcus Hutchins is on his way home to England after a judge spared him a stretch behind bars in America for developing the Kronos banking trojan. Hutchins, the British malware reverse-engineer who shot to fame in May 2017 for thwarting a global Wannacry epidemic by discovering and activating its kill switch, was facing up to …

FBI head honcho Christopher Wray is rather peeved that you all think the US government is trying to weaken cryptography, privacy, and online security, by demanding backdoors in encryption software. During a session at the International Conference on Cyber Security at Fordham University, New York, Wray backed a proposal mooted …

AnalysisIf the cops and Feds can't read people's encrypted messages, you will install backdoors for us, regardless of the security hit, US Attorney General William Barr has told the technology world. While speaking today in New York, Barr demanded eavesdropping mechanisms be added to consumer-level software and devices, mechanisms …

Apple and Intel are apparently in “advanced talks” over buying up the remains of Chipzilla’s defunct 5G modem business. Sources close to the deal told the Wall Street Journal on Monday that Cook & Co were offering the x86 processor goliath a billion dollars for the intellectual property and staff behind its cellular modem …

Facebook will be asked to fork out $5bn in a settlement with America's trade watchdog, the FTC, following last year's Cambridge Analytica fiasco, it was reported Friday. The proposed deal will end an FTC probe into whether the antisocial network broke a 2012-era pledge to better protect its addicts' privacy. In 2018, Facebook …

The US has declared that it is investigating French plans to impose a 3 per cent tax on tech firms' top line, not the bottom. "The United States is very concerned that the digital services tax which is expected to pass the French Senate tomorrow unfairly targets American companies," said US trade representative Robert …