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Received — 12 March 2026 ⏭ Security

Ring doorbells: Won’t you see my neighbor? (Lock and Code S07E05)

✇Malwarebytes
8 March 2026 at 23:55

This week on the Lock and Code podcast…

On February 8, during the Super Bowl in the United States, countless owners of one of the most popular smart products today got a bit of a wakeup call: Their Ring doorbells could be used to see a whole lot more than they knew.

In a commercial that was broadcast to one of most reliably enormous audiences in the country, Amazon, which owns the company Ring, promoted a new feature for its smart doorbells called “Search Party.” By scouring the footage of individual Ring cameras across a specific region, “Search Party” can implement AI-powered image recognition technology to find, as the commercial portrayed it, a lost dog. But immediately after the commercial aired, people began wondering what else their Ring cameras could be used to find.

As US Senator Ed Markey wrote on social media:

“Ring’s Super Bowl ad exposed a scary truth: the technology in its doorbell cameras could be used to hunt down a lost pet…or a person. Amazon must discontinue its dystopian monitoring features.”

These “dystopian monitoring features” aren’t entirely new, but that’s not to say that most Ring owners knew what they were allowing when they originally bought their devices.

Bought by Amazon in 2018, Ring is the most popular manufacturer of a product that, as of 15 years ago, didn’t really exist. And while other “smart” innovations failed, smart doorbells have become a fixture of American neighborhoods, providing a mixture of convenience and security. For instance, a Ring owner away from home can verify and buzz in their mailman dropping off a package behind a gated entrance. Or, a Ring owner can see on their phone that the person knocking at their door is a salesman and choose to avoid talking to them. Or, a Ring owner can help police who are investigating a crime in their area by handing over relevant footage. Even the presence of a Ring doorbell, and its variety of motion-detecting alerts, could possibly serve as a deterrent to crime.

What has seemingly upset so many of those same owners, then, is learning exactly how their personal devices might be used for a company’s gains.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Matthew Guariglia, senior policy analyst at Electronic Frontier Foundation, about Ring’s long history of partnering with—and sometimes even speaking directly for—police, who can access Ring doorbell footage both inside the company and outside it, and what people really open themselves up to when purchasing a Ring device.

 ”There’s this impression, a myth practically, that ‘I buy a ring doorbell to put on my house, I control the footage… But there is [an] entire secondary use of this device, which is by police that you don’t really get a lot of say in.”

Tune in today to listen to the full conversation.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn’t just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium Security for Lock and Code listeners.

Received — 17 February 2026 ⏭ Security
Received — 19 January 2026 ⏭ Security
Received — 16 January 2026 ⏭ Security

Cyber Insights 2026: Social Engineering

✇SecurityWeek
By: Kevin Townsend
16 January 2026 at 13:30

We've known that social engineering would get AI wings. Now, at the beginning of 2026, we are learning just how high those wings can soar.

The post Cyber Insights 2026: Social Engineering appeared first on SecurityWeek.

Received — 11 January 2026 ⏭ Security

Fighting Renewed Attempts to Make ISPs Copyright Cops: 2025 in Review

✇Deeplinks
By: Corynne McSherry
30 December 2025 at 18:39

You might not know it, given the many headlines focused on new questions about copyright and Generative AI, but the year’s biggest copyright case concerned an old-for-the-internet question: do ISPs have to be copyright cops? After years of litigation, that question is now squarely before the Supreme Court. And if the Supreme Court doesn’t reverse a lower court’s ruling, ISPs could be forced to terminate people’s internet access based on nothing more than mere accusations of copyright infringement. This would threaten innocent users who rely on broadband for essential aspects of daily life.

The Stakes: Turning ISPs into Copyright Police

This issue turns on what courts call “secondary liability,” which is the legal idea that someone can be held responsible not for what they did directly, but for what someone else did using their product or service. The case began when music companies sued Cox Communications, arguing that the ISP should be held liable for copyright infringement committed by some of its subscribers. The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit agreed, adopting a “material contribution” standard for contributory copyright liability (a rule for when service providers can be held liable for the actions of users). Under that standard, providing a service that could be used for infringement is enough to create liability when a customer infringes.

The Fourth Circuit’s rule would have devastating consequences for the public. Given copyright law’s draconian penalties, ISP would be under enormous pressure to terminate accounts whenever they get an infringement notice, whether or not the actual accountholder has infringed anything: entire households, schools, libraries, or businesses that share an internet connection. These would include:

  • Public libraries, which provide internet access to millions of Americans who lack it at home, could lose essential service.
  • Universities, hospitals, and local governments could see internet access for whole communities disrupted.
  • Households—especially in low-income and communities of color, which disproportionately share broadband connections with other people—would face collective punishment for the alleged actions of a single user.

And with more than a third of Americans having only one or no broadband provider, many users would have no way to reconnect.

EFF—along with the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and Re:Create—filed an amicus brief urging the Court to reverse the Fourth Circuit’s decision, taking guidance from patent law. In the Patent Act, where Congress has explicitly defined secondary liability, there’s a different test: contributory infringement exists only where a product is incapable of substantial non-infringing use. Internet access, of course, is overwhelmingly used for lawful purposes, making it the very definition of a “staple article of commerce” that can’t be liable under the patent framework.

The Supreme Court held a hearing in the case on December 1, and a majority of the justices seemed troubled by the implications of the Fourth Circuit’s ruling. One exchange was particularly telling: asked what should happen when the notices of infringement target a university account upon which thousands of people rely, Sony’s counsel suggested the university could resolve the issue by essentially slowing internet speeds so infringement might be less appealing. It’s hard to imagine the university community would agree that research, teaching, artmaking, library services, and the myriad other activities that rely on internet access should be throttled because of the actions of a few students. Hopefully the Supreme Court won’t either.

We expect a ruling in the case in the next few months. Fingers crossed that the Court rejects the Fourth Circuit’s draconian rule.

This article is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2025.

A Beginner’s Guide to the CVE Database

✇Sucuri Blog
By: Kyle Knight
20 November 2025 at 02:47
A Beginner’s Guide to the CVE Database

Keeping websites and applications secure starts with knowing which vulnerabilities exist, how severe they are, and whether they affect your stack. That’s exactly where the CVE program shines. Below, we’ll cover some CVE fundamentals, including what they are, how to search and understand the data, and how to translate this information into actionable steps.

Introduction to the CVE database
So, what is CVE?

CVE stands for Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures, a community-driven program that assigns unique identifiers to publicly known vulnerabilities.

Continue reading A Beginner’s Guide to the CVE Database at Sucuri Blog.

Malware Analysis, Threat Intelligence and Reverse Engineering: workshop slides

✇Blaze's Security Blog
By: Bart
8 February 2018 at 21:31

Last month I gave a workshop for a group of 20-25 enthusiastic women, all either starting in infosec, or with an interest to start in this field.

For that purpose, I had created a full workshop: slides or a presentation introducing the concepts of Malware Analysis, Threat Intelligence and Reverse Engineering.

The idea was to convey these topics in a clear and approachable manner, both theory and in practice; for the latter, I had set up a custom VM, with Labs, including my own created applications, some with simple obfuscation.

All participants were very enthusiastic, and I hope to have sparkled most, if not some of them to pursue a career in this field. For this exact same reason, I am now releasing the presentation to the public - the VM and recordings however will not be published, as I created these solely for CWF.

You may however download the LAB material from Github below:
https://github.com/bartblaze/MaTiRe

Without any further ado, you may find the slides below, on SlideShare:


Any feedback is always appreciated.

I would also like to thank Nathalie for putting me in touch with Rosanna, the organiser of the CyberWayFinder program. And of course, my gratitude to all the attendees for making it!

Mind the disclaimer for the slides. License: CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
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