First the big stories: The FBI has a secret fleet of planes spying on you, and they are not alone. United Airlines grounded all its planes on Monday because false flight plans were being uploaded to the flight decks. The US Senate finally passed some NSA surveillance reform in the form of the USA Freedom Act–the first of its kind since Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the Big Brother nightmare that is domestic counter-terrorism in the 21st century. Facebook decided that revealing your location in Messenger isn’t a bug; it’s a feature! A feature you can now, thankfully, opt out of. And our own Andy Greenberg demonstrated that the front lines of the gun control debate are moving closer to home, as it’s now incredibly easily to build your own untraceable guns.
But there was a lot of other news this week, summarized below. To read the full story linked in each post, click on the headlines. And be safe out there!
—Emily Dreyfuss
Chinese Hackers Access Four Million Federal Workers’ Data
Another month, another massive breach of a federal agency revealed. Hackers based in China accessed the records of four million federal workers when they hacked the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)1 in an attack first discovered in April. Despite the agency’s focus on payroll, it’s not clear if any data was stolen that could lead to financial fraud; no direct deposit information was accessed, according to the Washington Post. Instead, the attackers may have been seeking data useful for identifying government staffers with security clearances, potentially to target them in future “spear phishing” attacks. The Department of Homeland Security has taken credit for identifying the attack with its EINSTEIN intrusion detection system. But critics are questioning why that years-in-development system couldn’t have caught the attack earlier. The Chinese government, per usual, has denied any involvement. The OPM intrusion marks the second major federal breach revealed this year, following news that Russian hackers accessed unclassified White House networks as well as those of the State Department. — Andy Greenberg
California Senate Passes Bill Requiring Warrants To Search Electronic Devices
Another small victory for opponents of the all-pervasive morass of electronic surveillance, at least in one state: the California senate unanimously passed the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a bill requiring law enforcement to obtain a search warrant or wiretap order prior to searching smartphones, laptops, or electronic devices, or accessing information stored on remote servers. The bill will be heard by the State Assembly this summer. — Yael Grauer
Skype Bug Broke App on Android, iOS and Windows
It only took Skype 24 hours to fix the bug, but for a moment, messaging “http://:” (without the quotes) in chat not only made Skype crash in Windows, Android, and iOS, but would immediately crash it again after restarting when Skype downloaded chat history for the server, meaning that clearing the chat history didn’t resolve the issue. This bug trailed on the heels of the iOS glitch discovered last week that caused iPhones to crash when sent a string of characters, though users are far more likely to type in http://: by accident than they are to text the complicated string of Arabic and English characters required to crash iOS devices. Before the fix was in, Skype users could get around the bug by installing an older version of Skype, or having the sender delete the offending message. — Yael Grauer
Most Macs Vulnerable to Permanent Backdooring
Macs shipped prior to mid-2014 are vulnerable to an exploit that would allow an attacker to permanently control the machine, even if you reinstall OS X or reformat the drive. The vulnerability, discovered by security researcher Pedro Vilaca, allows attackers to install malicious firmware that essentially overwrites the firmware that boots up the machine right after older Macs awake from sleep. The code is installed via one of the many security vulnerabilities found in web browsers such as Safari. One way to avoid this hack is to change your computer’s default setting to deactivate sleep mode. You can also download software to detect whether an attack has taken place, though the software won’t prevent it from happening. — Yael Grauer
Twitter Just Killed Politwoops
The greatest Twitter account you’ve never heard of is now dead. Politwoops, an online archive of public statements made–and deleted–by U.S. politicians on Twitter, was an online transparency project started in 2012 by the Sunlight Foundation. It was created to provide a record of ways that elected officials sometimes quietly reverse their messaging. Originally, Sunlight had permission to use Twitter’s API for the project, which used a human curation workflow to analyze the tweets. But the social networking service has now reneged, citing the expectation of privacy for all accounts. Sunlight Foundation points out that elected officials shouldn’t share the same expectations of privacy as private citizens do, and that transparency leads to accountability. Now it has one fewer tool to use on that mission. — Yael Grauer
Now You, Too, Can Track FBI Spy Planes
As you’ve probably heard by now, the FBI is flying spy planes over American cities, and they’re registered to at least 13 fictitious companies. The specific capabilities of these planes is unclear, but they may have high-tech cameras and perhaps even cell-site simulators to scoop up massive amounts of data. Luckily, tracking the planes themselves has proven to be a bit easier than determining their capabilities. L.A.-based technologist John Wiseman used public records request for flight routes and programmed a radio receiver to intercept airplane transmissions, allowing him to identify planes flying in L.A. in real time. You can do the same, by tapping into a database of 115 spy planes that engineer Brian Abelson created by looking up registration numbers associated with planes owned by FBI front companies, as revealed by the AP. Flight information and history is available on that link, and users can analyze the data set by registering for a free account at Enigma, the data search and discovery platform where Wiseman works. — Yael Grauer
1 Correction 6/12/15: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story misidentified the government Office of Personnel Management.
