Best of the Checklist

The Checklist is taking a short break as we gear up for WWDC 2020 — but we’ll be back with all new episodes very soon. To tide you over while you wait, we’re sharing several classic Checklists which provide essential background to the week’s news.

What is Tor?

We’ll answer some common questions we’ve heard about Tor — touching on issues of functionality, safety, and privacy.

What is a DNS leak?

A security flaw known as a “DNS leak” that can reveal all of your web activity to your ISP — even if you’re using a VPN!

Checklist 188: Don’t Let Your iPhone Give You Away

This week’s Checklist is all about staying safe in an unsafe world.

Checklist 187: Talking Encryption with Patrick Wardle

This week, we sit down with a special guest to discuss the ins and outs of encryption — touching on everything from iPhone passcodes and brute-force attacks to political posturing and quantum computing!

New unc0ver jailbreak works on all modern iOS devices

Just as Apple released iOS 13.5 to the world, hackers at unc0ver announced that they had developed a jailbreak that would work on devices running iOS 11 all the way up to the brand new iOS 13.5.

In what follows, we’ll try to answer some common questions about the unc0ver jailbreak. Along the way, we’ll discuss the whys and whats of jailbreaking, and explain what it all means for average iOS users in terms of security and privacy.

What is unc0ver?

Unc0ver is a jailbreak tool for iOS devices. It can be loaded …

Checklist 186: Catching Up on Contact Tracing

This week, we’ll bring you up to speed on Big Tech’s efforts to fight Covid-19.

iOS 13.5 introduces health and safety features

Apple has just released iOS 13.5, and the update brings several significant changes. In what follows, we’ll touch on the highlights — and tell you what they mean in terms of safety, security, and privacy.

Updated: Apple has now released full security notes for the iOS 13.5 update. 

There were eight separate fixes to kernel vulnerabilities, which is significant: the kernel is the core of the operating system, and bugs there can lead to serious problems. Apple says that the kernel issues patched in this release could have led to arbitrary code …

The Senate votes for warrantless surveillance. Here’s what you can do.

The U.S. Senate recently voted to allow law enforcement and intelligence agencies to access people’s web and search history without a warrant.

In this article, we’ll unpack what that means for people living in or visiting the United States — and we’ll tell you what you can do about it.

The legal background

The vote was part of the debate over the re-extension of the Patriot Act, an Act of Congress passed shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks. 

The law grants government agencies broad surveillance powers when conducting investigations that bear on matters …

Getting back to security basics

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way we live, work, and study — and has created new digital security and privacy issues as well. 

But as they say, sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same. 

In this short piece, we’ll share three recent news stories about cybersecurity threats brought on by the coronavirus crisis. Then we’ll explain how following “the basics” of good personal security can keep you safe from these threats (and others like them).

Phishing Awareness

More people than ever are working from home — many of them …

Bridgefy: The Hong Kong protest messenger app

The Hong Kong protests have captured the world’s attention for several months now. While we’ll leave the political commentary to others, one noteworthy feature of these events is the way in which technology has played a pivotal role in helping the protesters to organize and to thwart the efforts of a much more powerful adversary.

There are numerous examples of this, but one in particular may be of interest to people who follow cybersecurity (and who are interested in digital privacy generally): Bridgefy.

What is Bridgefy, and why should I care?

Bridgefy is …

Is XProtect enough to keep you safe?

Mac malware threats are now increasing more rapidly than their Windows counterparts. With threats to macOS growing more prevalent and sophisticated, many users are starting to wonder if Apple’s native security features are enough to keep them safe.

In this article, we’ll examine one of these built-in Mac protections: XProtect. We’ll take a look at what XProtect is, how it works, and how it stacks up against third-party anti-malware solutions.

What is XProtect? 

XProtect is Apple’s basic malware detection service for macOS, part of the Gatekeeper security feature. XProtect scans downloaded files for …