A researcher has discovered a critical security flaw in the world's most widely used open-source database application — one that could allow hackers to completely take over a web server.

​Users of a smartphone-controlled web-connected plug that switches power off and on to electrical devices are putting the security of their home wi-fi networks at risk because of shoddy coding, researchers said Thursday.

The Department of Homeland Security, not the NSA, should be in charge of deciding whether and when the U.S. government discloses new software vulnerabilities its researchers find, two former senior White House cybersecurity staffers Ari Schwartz and Rob Knake write in a study for Harvard's Belfer Center