A Bug in Popular Android Phones Gives Hackers Full Control

A Bug in Popular Android Phones Gives Hackers Full Control

The theme of this week is by now a familiar one: "Things keep getting worse." Starting with the security of countless so-called real time operating systems that all share some variation on the same decades-old code. That makes them all vulnerable to the set of Urgent/11 vulnerabilities we had reported on just the other week. And as is so often the case with these sort of devices and ancient code, there's really no good way to fix them. And that was just the start of the week.

As a bookend, the attorney general William Barr Friday sent a sternly worded letter to Facebook encouraging them not to go forward with its plans for cross-platform end-to-end encryption, in the process reigniting the decades-old encryption debate. But while Barr had his counterparts from the UK and Australia backing up his push, it's unclear what if any actual authority he would have to weaken encryption without laws on the books forcing it. (Also, it would be a truly terrible idea.)


In slightly brighter social media news, we looked at how adversarial examples could help protect your Facebook data from the next Cambridge Analytica. And we explained how the new Incognito Mode for Google Maps helps cover your tracks—and more importantly, all the ways in which it doesn't. Speaking of covering tracks, we took a look at how the Ukraine whistle-blower did everything meticulously by the book, and the potential dangers in the Trump ad ..

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