Author: Frank Bajak
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Health data breach hitting Congress ‘could be extraordinary’
WASHINGTON • House leaders say the impact of a hack of health insurance marketplace used by members of Congress “could be extraordinary,” exposing sensitive personal data of lawmakers, their employees and families. DC Health Link, which runs the exchange, said an unspecified number of customers were affected and it was notifying them and working with…
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Drone advances in Ukraine could bring dawn of killer robots
KYIV, Ukraine • Drone advances in Ukraine have accelerated a long-anticipated technology trend that could soon bring the world’s first fully autonomous fighting robots to the battlefield, inaugurating a new age of warfare. The longer the war lasts, the more likely it becomes that drones will be used to identify, select and attack targets without…
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Microsoft: Russian hacks often accompany Ukraine attacks
BOSTON • Cyberattacks by state-backed Russian hackers have destroyed data across dozens of organizations in Ukraine and produced “a chaotic information environment,” Microsoft says in a report released Wednesday. Nearly half the destructive attacks were against critical infrastructure, many times simultaneous to physical attacks, the report notes. A top Ukrainian cybersecurity official, Victor Zhora, told…
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Ukraine hit by more cyberattacks, destructive malware
BOSTON (AP) — Ukraine’s parliament and other government and banking websites were hit with another punishing wave of distributed-denial-of-service attacks Wednesday, and cybersecurity researchers said unidentified attackers had also infected hundreds of computers with destructive malware. Early Thursday local time in Ukraine, as fears of a Russian invasion heightened, the foreign ministry and council of…
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Home internet jammed up? Try these steps before upgrading
With so much of the U.S. workforce — and their families — now cooped up at home to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, it’s not a huge surprise that home internet is showing the strain. If you’ve had a business videoconference stutter while your teenagers play Call of Duty online, or found yourself…
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U.S. economic sanctions on Huawei could backfire
The Trump administration’s plan to restrict exports to Chinese telecommunications powerhouse Huawei for national security reasons doesn’t just up the ante in the China trade war. It could also hurt U.S. suppliers and accelerate Beijing’s drive toward greater technological independence. The White House issued an executive order Wednesday apparently aimed at banning Huawei’s equipment from…
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Microsoft offers software tools to secure elections
Microsoft announced an ambitious effort it says will make voting secure, verifiable and more transparent with open-source software. Two of the three top U.S elections vendors have expressed interest in potentially incorporating the software into their voting systems. The software kit is being developed with Galois, an Oregon-based company separately creating a secure voting system prototype under…
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Kemp cites voter database hacking attempt
ATLANTA • The office of Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is also the Republican gubernatorial nominee, said Sunday it is investigating the state Democratic Party in connection with an alleged attempt to hack Georgia’s online voter database, which is used to check in voters at polling places in the midterm elections. The statement offered…
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APNewsBreak: US suspects listening devices in Washington
For the first time, the U.S. government has publicly acknowledged the existence in Washington of what appear to be rogue devices that foreign spies and criminals could be using to track individual cellphones and intercept calls and messages. The use of what are known as cellphone-site simulators by foreign powers has long been a concern,…
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Federal vote-protection efforts lag ahead of first primaries
With the first primaries of the 2018 elections less than a month away, you might expect federal officials to be wrapping up efforts to safeguard the vote against expected Russian interference. You’d be wrong. Federal efforts to help states button down elections systems have crawled, hamstrung in part by wariness of federal meddling. Just 14…