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Episode 83: Who is hacking the Olympics? Octoly’s Influencer Breach and Google plays HTTPS Hardball

In this week’s Security Ledger Podcast (#83): McAfee Chief Scientist Raj Samani talks to us about that company’s research into a string of targeted attacks on the organizers of the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. Also: information on 12,000 YouTube stars, Instagram power users and other online influencers was leaked online by the French firm Octoly. We interview Chris Vickery of UpGuard, who found the data trove. And: Google says it will start playing tough with web sites that haven’t made the cutover to secure HTTP come July. Jeremy Rowley of the firm DigiCert* joins us to talk about what that will mean for web sites that haven’t kicked the HTTP habit.

EFF Seeks Right to Jailbreak Alexa, Voice Assistants

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is asking the Library of Congress to give owners of voice assistant devices like Amazon’s Echo, Google Home and other voice assistants the right to “jailbreak” the devices: freeing them from content control features designed to prevent users from running unauthorized code on those platforms. 

Smartphone Users Tracked Even with GPS, WiFi Turned Off

A team of researchers from Princeton has demonstrated that they can track the location of smartphone users even when location services like GPS and WiFi are turned off.

Consumer Reports: Flaws Make Samsung, Roku TVs Vulnerable

Consumer Reports warns that smart TVs by Samsung and other vendors are vulnerable to disorienting remote attacks. 

Researchers Find More Connected Sex Toys Face Hacking Risk

Researchers have found that Vibratissimo sex toys manufactured by a German company are vulnerable to attacks that could expose sensitive user information and allow hackers to take remote control of someone’s sex toy.