A local news story that became an unexpected viral hit is used as a way to examine the algorithm that influences what people see on Facebook, a place where many people (43% of American adults per the Pew Research Center) continue to get their news.
This one could run and run. Of all the forms of cyber warfare, hacking the hardware (i.e physical machines), is perhaps the hardest to pull off. It also has the potential to be the most damaging. The story alleges that cloud servers owned by Super Micro, a big player in the tech infrastructure industry, contained tiny processors that could enable back door access to devices, programmes or networks that used them. Super Micro clients have included Amazon, Apple and numerous other blue chips, as well as several branches of the Federal government. The organisation that is alleged to have perpetrated the hack – the People’s Liberation Army of China.
A issue with the internet’s mechanism for identifying device locations led to millions of devices being incorrectly located in an American couple’s front garden. A funny glitch surely? Perhaps, until the FBI show up.
This article is 38,000 words long and is all about code. It’s a year old. It’s also a masterpiece.
David Vincenzetti is the founder of Hacking Team, a cyber warfare outfit helping governments spy on people. A former employee describes him as “crazy and dangerous”.
A longform look at machine learning and where Google have taken it since their acquisition of the British artificial intelligence company Deep Mind.
A poacher turned gamekeeper hacker acts as a guide to the clandestine world of the dark net, a home for all sorts of illegal trade.
The author revisits the lost world of Bulletin Board Systems, and finds himself “strolling through a community frozen in time, Pompeii-style.” He finds discussions perfectly preserved, and in some cases maintained, since their heyday as an intimate precursor to the internet in the 1980s and 1990s.
A piece about warnings of an impending ÒinfocalypseÓ, as tools to falsify video footage, images and the writing of real people become ever more sophisticated, and our ability to control their proliferation remains essentially non-existent.
John Lanchester reviews three books on social media, the war for attention, and Silicon Valley giants. His conclusion? “I am scared of Facebook”.