Israel Says Iran Is Hacking Private Security Cameras

Iran is tapping into private security cameras in Israel to gather real-time intelligence about its adversary, exposing a recurrent problem with the devices that has emerged in other global conflicts. Bloomberg's Michael Shepard reports. (Source: Bloomberg)

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Fast Company

29 minutes ago

• Fast Company

Those security codes you ask to receive via text leave your accounts vulnerable. Do this instead

Do you receive login security codes for your online accounts via text message? These are the six- or seven-digit numbers sent via SMS that you need to enter along with your password when trying to access your bank accounts, health records, online photos, and more. This type of security is known as multifactor authentication (MFA) and is designed to keep your account secure even if someone knows your password. Without the additional security code, bad actors can't gain access to your data. Or at least that's the idea. It's increasingly becoming evident that security codes sent by text message may leave our data less secure than we thought. Fortunately, there are other, more secure ways to keep your accounts safe. Here's why it's probably a good idea to stop using SMS for your security codes, and what you can use instead. An opaque security code industry You may think that the text message you receive with the code you need to log into your account is coming from Amazon, Google, Meta, or whoever provides the service you are logging into. But it's probably not—and therein lies the security risk. Bloomberg and Lighthouse Reports just released an alarming report revealing that some of the most prominent tech companies recommending that users enable multifactor authentication—including Amazon, Google, and Meta—have used third-party companies to send their security codes to users via text. Some of these third-party companies have been linked to institutions in the surveillance industry and even government spy agencies. Additionally, some of the security codes that these third-party companies were responsible for transmitting have been associated with data breaches of individuals' accounts. Worse: the intermediaries operating in this space do so with little oversight from their tech giant clients or regulators. And Bloomberg and Lighthouse Reports' piece isn't the first to warn about the vulnerability that texted security codes expose users to. In December, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a warning to the public, urging people to migrate away from receiving security codes via text. 'Do not use SMS as a second factor for authentication,' the CISA's memo warned. 'SMS messages are not encrypted—a threat actor with access to a telecommunication provider's network who intercepts these messages can read them.' But this vulnerability in texted security codes doesn't mean you should revert to using merely a password to access your accounts. Instead, you should consider a superior form of multifactor authentication—or upgrade to passwordless logins entirely. Get your security codes from an authenticator app instead Some websites and services are stuck in the past when it comes to multifactor authentication. That is, these websites do offer their users MFA, but only give the option of receiving security codes via text message—something the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency now warns against. Thankfully, plenty of websites offer a more secure way to receive security codes: via an authenticator app. Simply put, an authenticator app is an application that resides on your phone or computer, storing all the various security codes for your online accounts that have multifactor authentication enabled. The code for each account in the authenticator app is unique, and it changes every 30 seconds. When you need to log in to a site that you have set up with multifactor authentication, you'll be prompted to enter your security code, which can be found in your authenticator app. And since these authenticator app codes always reside on your device, they can never be intercepted in transit, because they are never sent to you in the first place. Regardless of whether you use Windows, Mac, iPhone, or Android, you have numerous authenticator apps to choose from. These include Apple's own Passwords app, Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, LastPass Authenticator, and more. Even better, start using passkeys While authenticator apps are vastly more secure than text messages for getting your security codes, the safest login method no longer relies on codes—or even passwords—at all. I'm referring to passkeys, the passwordless login technology spearheaded by the FIDO Alliance, a consortium of tech companies including Amazon, Apple, Dell, Google, Meta, Microsoft, NTT, Samsung, and others. Passkeys are cryptographically complex from a technology perspective, but easy to use from a consumer perspective. When you add a passkey for one of your online accounts, you get one digital key, saved to your device, and the website gets a matching key. When you log into that website, the passkeys must match; otherwise, you won't get access to the account. You verify that you are the true holder of your passkey by confirming your identity with your biometrics—a facial or fingerprint scan, right from your phone or laptop. Passkeys can't be phished or guessed. And if one of your passkeys were stolen and put on someone else's device, it wouldn't work either. That's because the thief couldn't fool the passkey into thinking they were you since they don't have your face or fingerprint. And because passkeys don't require any alphanumeric input authentication—such as security codes—there's no code you need to worry about either. Passkeys are also synced to the cloud via your device's password manager, so if you lose your device, you can quickly regain access to all your passkeys from your, for example, Apple or Google account. The only drawback to passkeys is that not all online accounts support them. Still, each month, more and more sites are offering users the option for passkey logins. However, if your accounts don't support passkeys yet, you should still enable multifactor authentication. Just remember to opt to receive your security codes via an authenticator app rather than a text message.

CNN

34 minutes ago

• CNN

‘Always a peacemaker': How Trump decided to hold off on striking Iran

By most accounts, President Donald Trump's attention for the past week has been consumed by the spiraling crisis playing out between Israel and Iran. In between meetings in Canada on Monday, he peppered aides for constant updates. He has spent more time in the basement Situation Room this week than at any point so far in his new presidency. So it was somewhat jarring Wednesday when the president emerged from the South Portico — not to provide an update on his crisis consultations, but to oversee the installation of two nearly 100-foot flagpoles. 'These are the best poles anywhere in the country, or in the world, actually. They're tapered. They have the nice top,' the president told a clutch of reporters and workmen. 'It's a very exciting project to me.' The break from his Iran meetings lasted about an hour, a moment for the president to literally touch grass on the South Lawn amid the most consequential period of decision-making of his term so far. A day later, the president decided not to decide. He dictated a statement to his press secretary Karoline Leavitt announcing he would hold off ordering a strike on Iran for up to two weeks to see if a diplomatic resolution was possible. The decision was revealed after another meeting in the Situation Room, where the president has spent much of this week reviewing attack plans and quizzing officials about the potential consequences of each. After steadily ratcheting up his martial rhetoric – including issuing an urgent warning to evacuate the 10 million residents of Iran's capital – Trump's deferment provides the president some breathing room as he continues to work through options presented by his military officials over the past several days. It also allows more time for the divergent factions of his own party to make their case directly to the president for and against a strike, as they have been urgently doing since it became clear Trump was seriously considering dropping bombs on Iran's nuclear facilities. The president has refused to pick a side in public and spent the last week alternating between militaristic threats issued on social media and private concerns that a military strike he orders could drag the US into prolonged war. Around the Situation Room table, he has relied principally on his CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine to discuss his options, according to people familiar with the matter. His foreign envoy Steve Witkoff has been corresponding with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to determine if room exists to restart the diplomacy that had been deadlocked before Israel began its campaign last week. Other officials have been publicly sidelined. Twice this week, Trump has dismissed assessments previously offered by his Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard about the state of Iran's program to develop a nuclear weapon. Gabbard testified in March that the US intelligence community had assessed Iran was not building such a weapon; Trump flatly and publicly disputed that Friday. 'Well then, my intelligence community is wrong,' Trump told reporters in New Jersey, asking the reporter who in the intelligence community had said that. Told that it was Gabbard, Trump responded, 'She's wrong.' Yet as he weighs taking action that could have consequences for years to come, Trump appears to be relying mostly on his own instincts, which this week told him to hit pause on ordering a strike that could alter global geopolitics for years to come. When top national security officials told Trump during a meeting at Camp David earlier this month that Israel was prepared to imminently strike inside Iran, it wasn't necessarily a surprise. Trump's advisers had been preparing for months for the possibility Israel could seize upon a moment of Iranian weakness — its regional proxies have been decimated over the past year — to launch a direct assault. Trump's team arrived at Camp David having already drawn up options for potential US involvement. According to people familiar with the matter, his advisers resolved differences between themselves in advance before presenting possible plans to the president. From the mountainside presidential retreat, Trump also spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who told the president he intended to begin a campaign in Iran imminently. Ten days later, with the Israeli campaign now in full swing, Trump was meeting in Canada with top American allies from the Group of 7, who hoped to decipher from him what the American plan was going forward. In closed-door meetings, leaders from Europe tried to ascertain whether Trump was inclined to order up a US strike on Fordow, the underground nuclear facility that has been the focus of attention for American war planners, western officials said. They also tried to convince a begrudging Trump to sign on to a joint statement, which urged that 'the resolution of the Iranian crisis leads to a broader de-escalation of hostilities in the Middle East.' Trump did not reveal his hand, either in private sessions with individual leaders or over dinner at the Kananaskis Country Golf Course, the western officials said. Instead, he left the summit early, leaving his counterparts in the Canadian Rockies and returning to Washington to deal with the matter himself. By midweek, with only vague signs from Iran that it was willing to restart talks, Trump's patience appeared to wearing thin for finding a diplomatic solution. And many of his allies believed he was on the verge of ordering a strike on Iran. 'It's very late, you know?' he said at Wednesday's flagpole event, the heat causing his forehead to glisten. 'It's very late to be talking.' In private meetings that day, Trump appeared convinced of the necessity of taking out the Fordow facility, according to people familiar with the conversations. And he said in public only the United States has the firepower to do it. 'We are the only ones who have the capability to do it, but that doesn't mean I am going to do it,' Trump said after coming back inside from his flag raising. 'I have been asked about it by everybody but I haven't made a decision.' He was speaking from the Oval Office, where he'd gathered players from the Italian soccer club Juventus to stand behind him. They mostly acted as a fidgeting backdrop to Trump's question-and-answer session on his Iran decision-making. At one point, Trump turned to the players amid a discussion of the B-2 stealth bomber — the only jet that could carry a bunker-busting bomb to destroy Iran's underground enrichment facility. 'You can be stealthy — you'll never lose, right?' he asked the team members, none of whom responded. 'It was a bit weird. When he started talking about the politics with Iran and everything, it's kind of, like… I just want to play football, man,' one of the players, Timothy Weah, said afterward. Amid the string of events, Trump continued to weigh the choices in front of him, and remained worried about a longer-term war. And he continued to receive messages from all sides of his political coalition, which has been divided over the wisdom of launching a strike that could embroil the US in a war for years to come. He's taken repeated calls from GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, a prominent voice in support of striking Iran who described the president as 'very focused, very calm' after a Tuesday night phone call. 'I feel like when he says no nukes for Iran, he means it,' Graham said the next day. 'He gave them a chance for diplomacy. I think they made a miscalculation when it comes to President Trump.' One of the most prominent voices opposing a strike, his onetime top strategist Steve Bannon, was at the White House midday Thursday for a lunch with the president that had been rescheduled from several weeks ago. He revealed nothing of his conversation with Trump on his 'War Room' show later Thursday. But a day earlier, he told a roundtable that getting involved in a drawn-out conflict with Iran would amount to repeating a historic mistake. 'My mantra right now: The Israelis have to finish what they started,' he said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast. 'We can't do this again. We'll tear the country apart. We can't have another Iraq.' For Trump, the swirl of options, opinions and advice is nothing new. He has faced the Iran decision much as he has most every other major choice of his presidency, by soliciting advice and trying to arrive at a solution that will please the widest swath of his supporters. The answer this time may not be as simple, nor does Trump hold all the cards in a conflict that is playing out across the world. Israel's decision to launch strikes a week ago — while not a surprise to the president — still came against his public entreaties to hold off. And in Iran, he is confronting an adversary with a long history of hardening its positions under pressure from the United States. As he was arriving Friday at his home in New Jersey, Trump said it would be hard to ask Netanyahu to ease up on strikes on Iran in order to pursue diplomacy, given Israel's success in the conflict so far. And he said the two-week window he set a day earlier was the maximum period of time he would allow for diplomacy to work, reserving the option of ordering a strike before that time is up. The president couldn't say whether the decision now in front of him is the biggest he'd face as president. But as he tries to find the balance between ending Iran's nuclear ambitions and keeping the US from war, he did offer an evaluation of what he wanted his legacy to be on the other side. 'Always a peacemaker,' he said. 'That doesn't mean — sometimes, you need some toughness to make peace. But always a peacemaker.'

New York Times

35 minutes ago

• New York Times

As Iran and Israel Battle, the Rest of the Mideast Fears What's Next

Across a swath of the Middle East, fighter jets and missiles regularly streak across the sky. The newest war in the region, this time between Israel and Iran, has once again put millions of people in the crossfire of a conflict that they want nothing to do with. The war has embroiled two well-armed, longtime enemies who are ethnic and political outliers in the region, but whose fight, many of their neighbors worry, could swiftly spill beyond their borders. 'We are constantly afraid, and the psychological toll has been heavy,' said Rawan Muhaidat, 28, a mother of two in the town of Kafr Asad in northern Jordan. The sight of Iranian missiles overhead, and the booms of air defenses shooting them down before they reach Israel, have terrified her children, who cower between her and her husband as they worry that their home could be struck. 'Every time a rocket passes and explodes, we think, 'This is the one,'' Ms. Muhaidat said. Adding to many people's fears is the possibility that President Trump will grant Israel's request that the United States intervene by dropping 30,000-pound bombs on an Iranian nuclear enrichment facility buried deep underground. Such a move, experts say, could push Iran to retaliate against American military bases or allies across the Middle East, or to activate proxy forces, like the Houthis in Yemen, to snarl trade routes or damage oil infrastructure, harming the global economy. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.