Hackers and security researchers at the Black Hat and Defcon conferences in Las Vegas this week tackled everything from election security to misinformation campaigns to Android malware that comes preinstalled on your devices.

Meanwhile, Samsung grabbed the spotlight by unveiling its Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10 Plus phones alongside a superthin Galaxy Book S laptop.

It was also a big week for weird science news, like tardigrades on the moon, the discovery of a prehistoric dog-size parrot and Jupiter getting slammed by something massive.

He spent thousands on a data-collecting monstrosity to figure out why people considered the security conference's network dangerous.

Mehdi Yahyanejad uses an innovative technology to get past internet censorship in Iran and bring information to poor and isolated communities in Mexico.

AT may be vindicated in withholding its 5G service from consumers so far.

Russia's disinformation campaign during the 2016 US presidential election rocked social media companies like Facebook and Twitter to its core.

The goal is not to launch a new flurry of hoaxes and chaos on social media for the 2020 US presidential election.

It's to teach the next generation of voters about how easily fraud erupts social media, and break down the tools foreign actors use to spread disinformation, Nico Sell, the co-founder of r00tz, said.

"They hear a lot about fake news out there -- these are things that we want to show them, the exact mechanics of how things really work."

This is the second year that the r00tz Asylum's challenge will be focused on politics, after kid hackers at Defcon 2018 learned how to hack into websites simulating state election results.

First, the Voting Village will be teaching kids how to hack simulated campaign finance websites and alter documents.

For two years in a row, hackers at Defcon have demonstrated that voting machines currently being used in US elections had serious security issues.

Now with the 2020 US presidential election quickly approaching, lawmakers who want to fix those vulnerabilities are heading to the hacking conference in Las Vegas to see them in person.

While there's no evidence that any votes were tampered with during the 2016 election, hackers have shown plenty of proof that the voting machines being used are vulnerable to attacks.

Lawmakers like Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, have proposed legislation to improve election security to make sure these vulnerabilities wouldn't affect future voters.

"White hat hackers do an invaluable public service in this technologic age by identifying security holes and, if necessary, shaming the government or the companies responsible into fixing them," Wyden said in a statement.

This comes after former special counsel Robert Mueller warned Congress last month that Russia would continue its efforts to hack US elections, telling lawmakers, "They're doing it as we sit here."

The first time I saw Mike Spicer, I spotted him from a mile away.

Because the hardware on Spicer's back was a surveillance tool nicknamed the "Wi-Fi Cactus."

Antennas stick out like the spikes on a cactus, which is how it got half of its name.

In four days, Spicer collected 427 gigabytes of people's network traffic at a rate of about eight gigabytes an hour.

For three years, Spicer, the chief technology officer at MerchGo, an ecommerce company, has monitored traffic at security conferences with the Cactus.

He spent more than $2,700 building and upgrading the machine.

Immediate Edge  of changed all that and as the boom was beginning, people started wanting for IT folks for installment of networks and different infrastructures.

All of a sudden everyone started obtaining jobs that we have a tendency to knew.

And they were trying for jobs, they got it and then they tried convincing their bosses to pay for his or her journeys to DefCon.

DefCon was just a straight hacking convention, and not extremely something serious.

The announcements made there were not really serious, thus you show that to your boss and he is not visiting pay your manner to DefCon.

Thus everybody recommended that there should be something a lot of serious and conventional event just like the nature of DefCon.

It seems that kids all over the world rather fancy themselves as professional hackers.

Perhaps it is because kids generally have a problem with authority, because they aren't on their own yet, and they are tired of taking orders from parents, teachers, police, and government.

Hire a hacker There was a great article recently in SpaceWar Online news titled "Hackers School Next Generation at DEFCON Kids" by the Staff Writers in San Francisco from the AFP published on June 25, 2011.

"DEFCON hackers will share their skills with the next generation at a first-ever children's version of the infamous gathering of software renegades, lock pickers and social engineers at the 19th annual Las Vegas DEFCON.

"Now then, although I am not an advocate for hacking by any means, I can tell you that we will need kids who understand computer security to protect our IT networks, clouds, and data centers in the future.

And the military will definitely need a strong pool of smart and knowledgeable hackers to protect our nation and exploit our enemies.

It seems that kids all over the world rather fancy themselves as professional hackers.

Perhaps it is because kids generally have a problem with authority, because they aren't on their own yet, and they are tired of taking orders from parents, teachers, police, and government.

Hire a hacker There was a great article recently in SpaceWar Online news titled "Hackers School Next Generation at DEFCON Kids" by the Staff Writers in San Francisco from the AFP published on June 25, 2011.

"DEFCON hackers will share their skills with the next generation at a first-ever children's version of the infamous gathering of software renegades, lock pickers and social engineers at the 19th annual Las Vegas DEFCON.

"Everyone is up in arms that we are going to teach kids to be evil, but that is not the case, " stated one old timer (age 35) hacker involved.

"Now then, although I am not an advocate for hacking by any means, I can tell you that we will need kids who understand computer security to protect our IT networks, clouds, and data centers in the future.

Security research into the devices—and the potential for hackers to take them over, turn them into listening devices, or use them as jumping off points to take over corporate networks—has been going on for years.

At the DefCon security conference in Las Vegas on Thursday, researchers are presenting findings about a flaw in Avaya desk phones that was originally patched in 2009.

Experts at McAfee Advanced Threat Research say they were just doing general studies of Avaya desk phone security when they stumbled on the reincarnated bug.

An attacker could exploit it to take over the phone’s operations, extract audio from calls, and even essentially bug the phone to spy on its surroundings.

“It was kind of a holy crap moment,” says Steve Povolny, McAfee's head of advanced threat research.

The work is being presented at DefCon by Philippe Laulheret, a senior security researcher at McAfee who led the investigation.

But if voting machine security standards don't change by the 2020 presidential election, Sen. Ron Wyden warns, the consequences could be far worse than the cyberattacks in 2016.

The Democrat from Oregon, who is a member of the Senate Intelligence committee, told the Defcon hacking conference that US voting infrastructure was failing to keep elections secure from potential cyberattacks.

Wyden had proposed an election security bill requiring paper ballots in 2018.

A House bill passed ,but was blocked in the Senate by Mitch McConnell, the majority leader.

McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, called it partisan legislation.

On Friday, Wyden blasted McConnell, calling him the reason why Congress hasn't been able to fix election security issues.

Security researchers have discovered a slew of vulnerabilities affecting 4G hotspots from ZTE, and the company hasn't provided fixes for all of the affected devices.

The security flaws could allow a potential hacker to redirect traffic from the hotspot to other malicious websites, researchers said.

The vulnerabilities were disclosed on Saturday at Defcon, an annual hacking conference in Las Vegas.

A Pen Test Partners researcher who goes by the handle "Dave Null" described ZTE's security issues at length, as well as his concerns with how the Chinese phone company responded to the disclosure.

Null said that the vulnerabilities were simple to pull off -- an attacker only needed the victim to visit a malicious website using one of ZTE's hotspots.

The researcher found a model of hotspots were disclosing the device's passwords when a website's code requested it.

For all we’ve made fun of Apple‘s walled garden here, every once in a while, the company opens up just a bit.

Case in point: today the company revealed it would be producing a limited amount of iOS ‘Security Research Devices.’ These appear to basically be iPhones with far deeper access than available to everyday users, including access to ssh, root shell, and ‘advanced debug capabilities.’ A jailbroken iPhone without having to do any jailbreaking.

Apple giving out pre-jailbroken research iPhones to security researchers starting next year, and will pay up to $1M for zero click remote chain with persistence pic.twitter.com/uiJNhb8AD8

— Billy Ellis @ Blackhat/Defcon (@bellis1000) August 8, 2019

The company made the announcement at the Black Hat conference today, an update to the bug bounty program it launched three years ago.

The deeper access should make researchers’ lives a lot easier, able to access deeper iOS functions without waiting for a jailbreak to be available for every update.

For the last two years, hackers have come to the Voting Village at the DefCon security conference in Las Vegas to tear down voting machines and analyze them for vulnerabilities.

You know it better as Darpa, the government's mad science wing.

And Darpa wants you to know: its endgame goes way beyond securing the vote.

The agency hopes to use voting machines as a model system for developing a secure hardware platform—meaning that the group is designing all the chips that go into a computer from the ground up, and isn’t using proprietary components from companies like Intel or AMD.

“The goal of the program is to develop these tools to provide security against hardware vulnerabilities,” says Linton Salmon, the project’s program manager at Darpa.

To vote using the system, you go up to a touchscreen, make your picks (Which Is The Best Star Wars Movie; Are Hot Dogs Sandwiches), confirm your selections, and then send them to print out.

You know what that means: WIRED is back in Las Vegas for the annual Black Hat and Defcon security conferences, where we’re digging into the latest and greatest hacks on display.

A researcher found it’s possible to break into one just by sending a text message.

To help uncover similar vulnerabilities in the future, Apple is handing out new, hacker-friendly iPhones to its favorite security researchers, and paying up to $1.5 million in bug bounties.

Boeing’s 787 jets might not be very secure, it turns out—Andy Greenberg talked to a security researcher who found multiple serious flaws in the code for one of the plane’s components.

Lily Hay Newman also looked at two very old bugs that have continued to persist, one in desk phones and another in a ubiquitous encryption algorithm.

Lastly, check out this very cool fake hospital, where real medical devices get hacked on purpose.

Safecrackers of the past put a stethoscope to a safe's panel while turning its dial, listening for the telltale murmurs of the interlocking components inside.

It turns out that modern safecracking, despite all its electronic upgrades, isn't always so different.

But now those involuntary murmurs are electric, and the combination they betray takes the form of ones and zeros in transit between a lock's silicon chips.

At the Defcon hacker conference Friday, security researcher Mike Davis will present the results of years of research into a family of electronic safe locks all sold by Switzerland-based lock giant Dormakaba.

Over the last two and a half years, Davis has found techniques to crack three different types of the Kaba Mas high-security electronic combination locks the company has sold for securing ATM safes, pharmacy drug cabinets, and even Department of Defense facilities, representing millions of locks around the world.

Davis found that he could open many of those ATM and pharmacy locks in as little as five minutes with nothing more than an oscilloscope and a laptop.