SecurityLast week, someone breached the computer system of a water treatment plant in Florida. According to public officials, the hacker tampered with critical safety settings, making changes that could have released toxic chemicals into the water supply.
The Oldsmar water treatment plant hack
The incident occured in the city of Oldsmar, Florida, a small municipality (pop. 14,000) just outside of Tampa. According to a press release issued by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, an unidentified hacker accessed the City of Oldsmar’s computer system twice on February 5.
The first intrusion was brief, and …
February 10, 2021 •
4 min read
SecurityValentine’s Day 2021 is right around the corner, and the FBI is telling people to be on the lookout for romance scams. In this article, we’ll tell you what romance scams are, how they work, and how you can avoid them.
What are romance scams?
Romance scams are a kind of social engineering. In a romance scam, the scammer pretends to be romantically interested in their victim in order to gain their affection and trust. They then use the relationship to ask for money or personal information. In some romance scams, an …
February 4, 2021 •
9 min read
SecurityWe’ll look at Apple’s App Tracking Transparency push, as well as its war of words with Facebook this week.
February 4, 2021 •
4 min read
iOSA new iPhone is a ton of fun — but once you have your shiny new device up and running, you should also take a few minutes to configure it for security, privacy, and performance.
February 3, 2021 •
10 min read
AppleApple has just released macOS Big Sur 11.2 along with the related Security Update 2021-001 Catalina and Security Update 2021-001 Mojave.
February 2, 2021 •
3 min read
SecurityThis week on the Checklist, iMore’s Stephen Warwick joins us to discuss all things Zoom.
January 28, 2021 •
6 min read
SecurityApple has just released an important round of updates. The TL;DR is that the iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS updates address vulnerabilities that are under active exploitation (according to reports). If you have a device running any of these operating systems, you should update immediately.
In the following article, we’ll give you some additional information about the security content of these updates:
iOS and iPadOS
Apple has just released iOS 14.4 and iPadOS 14.4. The updates address two separate security issues.
First, the updates contain a fix for a kernel vulnerability. The “kernel” is …
January 27, 2021 •
3 min read
SecurityMacs work great right out of the box, but unfortunately, that leads some users to skip over important setup steps — steps that can make them safer.
January 25, 2021 •
7 min read
AppleWe’ll look at various states of data, what we have to worry about, and what we can do to mitigate that worry. Plus – A followup to Apple flouting the firewall.
January 21, 2021 •
7 min read
AppleWhatsApp has been in the news a lot over the past week, with critics alleging that the popular Facebook-owned messaging app has become a threat to user privacy.
January 21, 2021 •
5 min read
SecurityThe COVID-19 vaccines are here, but there have been serious issues with availability and distribution. Sadly, the bad guys are taking advantage of the situation — and of people’s anxieties — with new COVID-19 vaccine scams.
Here’s what to watch out for, and how to stay safe:
article span.backnum { font-family:”Open Sans”, sans-serif; font-size: 10rem; opacity: 0.3; line-height: 1; position:absolute; left: 1rem; top: 0;}
article ol.lg{list-style-type: none;}
article ol.lg li {padding-left: 9rem; position: relative; margin-left: 0;}
@media screen and (max-width: 39.9875em){
article ol.lg li {padding-left: 5rem;}
article span.backnum { font-family:”Open Sans”, sans-serif; font-size: 7rem; opacity: 0.3; line-height: …
January 18, 2021 •
6 min read
SecurityWith a new year just underway, we thought we’d look back at five big Mac malware stories for 2020. We’ll talk about FinSpy, GravityRAT, XCSSET, ThiefQuest, and Shlayer.
January 14, 2021 •
7 min read
