A year ago our colleague David Jacoby, a researcher at GReAT, successfully attempted to hack his own home and discovered a lot of curious things. David’s experiment inspired many employees around the world. Many employees decided to carry out the same research on their own homes.

To probe smart things for bugs, we chose several popular Internet of Things devices, such as Google Chromecast, an IP camera and a smart coffee machine and a home security system – all of which could be controlled by a smartphone or mobile app. The models and devices were chosen at random and was quite vendor agnostic.

Who needs a peep hole when a wifi network will do? Researchers from MIT have developed technology that uses wireless signals to see your silhouette through a wall — and it can even tell you apart from other people, too.

The team from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab are no strangers to using wireless signals to see what’s happening on the other side of a wall. In 2013, they showed off software that could use variations in wifi signal to detect the presence of human motion from the other side of a wall. But in the last two years they’ve been busy developing the technique, and now they’ve unveiled the obvious — if slightly alarming — natural progression.

Hackers have come after your phone, your computer, and your car. Now hackers are coming after your home refrigerators, Smart TVs, and eventually KETTLES.

Yes, your kettle turns out good for more than just heating up water or making coffee for you– they are potentially a good way for hackers to breach your wireless network. A security researcher at PenTest Partners has managed to hack into an insecure iKettle and stolen a home's Wi-Fi password. Besides boiling water, the iKettle can connect to a user's home Wi-Fi network. It also comes inbuilt with an Android and iOS app that allows the user to switch on the kettle and boil the water from other location.

Aviation has always been focused on safety and had remained the most secure industry that ever existed. However, the buzz was about another aspect of security — the one quite surprising for an average passenger and quite expected for an IT specialist.

It’s not a secret that today’s aircraft are one huge computer, with the pilot being more of a PC operator rather than of an actual ‘ace’ pilot — he handles a single task of supervising smart machinery. An orientation pilot and a panel operator are no more, fully replaced by computers. As it turned out that those computers are as hackable as the rest.

The Federal Communications Commission is considering new restrictions that would make it harder for users to modify Wi-Fi routers, sparking controversy and an apparent misunderstanding over the FCC’s intentions. The FCC's stated goal is to make sure routers and other devices only operate within their licensed parameters.

Manufacturers release products that are certified to operate at particular frequencies, types of modulation, and power levels but which may actually be capable of operating outside of what they’ve been certified and tested to do. The extra capabilities can be unlocked through software updates issued by the manufacturer, or by software made by third parties.

Leaked e-mails from Hacking Team show that the company developed a piece of rugged hardware intended to attack computers and mobile devices via Wi-Fi.

The capability, marketed as part of the company's Remote Control System Galileo, was shown off to defense companies at the International Defense Exposition and Conference in Abu Dhabi, and it drew attention from a major defense contractor. But like all such collaborations, it may have gotten caught up in the companies' legal departments. Co-founder Marco Valleri outlined the roadmap for a number of Hacking Team's platforms, including its "Tactical Network Injector".

Have you ever seen any mobile application working in the background silently even after you have uninstalled it completely? I have seen Google Photos app doing the same.

Your Android smartphone continues to upload your phone photos to Google servers without your knowledge, even if you have already uninstalled the Google Photos app from your device. Nashville Business Journal editor David Arnott found that Google Photos app uploaded all his personal photographs from the device into the service even after uninstalling it.

In the beginning of 2015, there was a wave of publications on a handheld radar called RANGE-R that has been used by government services. The radar system is able to ‘see through the walls’, it registers motion inside closed spaces.

The existence of such a device was surprising for many journalists tasked with publishing the features of RANGE-R. These radars have long been in mass production for military and intelligence-service needs. Prior to that, the technology was only available for some governmental services. Today, the radar system is more widely used due to technological advancements that contributed to price decreases.

Researchers have unearthed dozens of Android apps in the official Google Play store that expose user passwords because the apps fail to properly implement HTTPS encryption during logins or don't use it at all.

The roster of faulty apps have more than 200 million collective downloads from Google Play and have remained vulnerable even after developers were alerted to the defects. The apps include the official titles from the National Basketball Association, the Match.com dating service and the PizzaHut restaurant chain. They were uncovered by AppBugs, a developer of a free Android app that spots dangerous apps installed on users' handsets.

It’s common sense for Android users to check the permission list before installing an app. If the app asks for access to SMS, your contacts list or location, you know it may disclose your privacy. What if a game app only asked for the wifi_status permission?

You might install it with ease – and unknowingly have enabled 3rd parties to track your location! The Android LocationManager was considered to be the only way to acquire the location data, and required a user’s approval. However, researchers have discovered a covert channel to locate and track a user without permission by using the latent location signal disclosed by wifi scanning.