Items tagged with NSA
We've covered the NSA revelations and subsequent government petitions at some length, but here's a new twist to the story of the government's pervasive monitoring program -- a view of the activity from an ISP's perspective. According to Pete Ashdown, the CEO of XMission, a Utah ISP, the company received its first FISA...
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You've got to hand it to Microsoft -- the company is willing to find novel ways of promoting its products. The company is now offering anyone who buys a year of Office 365 ($99.95 annual rate) a free year of Xbox Live Gold. That's worth $60 a year -- a not-inconsiderable value relative to the cost of Office itself...
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BlackBerry has big on security, but according to the findings of German site GeekHeim, the Canadian company has a big, nasty security flaw in its own ranks. Apparently, when you set up an email account using BlackBerry 10’s email client, you’re unwittingly sharing your login credentials with BlackBerry...
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Edward Snowden's leaks have shaken something loose in the IT industry. For years, companies have been afraid to talk about the requests and data sharing procedures the NSA and FBI have forced upon them as a result of the Patriot Act. Companies that went to court to fight these demands lost, and lost in silence...
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Microsoft is smarting in the wake of the Guardian's discussion of how chummy it's gotten with the NSA over the past few years, and the company wants permission to clarify its relationship with the federal government. To that end, the company has sent a follow-up letter to the Attorney General's office, asking it to...
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Things are getting a little hairy on the wild, wild Internet. With privacy fears at an all-time high and the whole Snowden episode stirring up worries that governments can easily convince companies to hand out just about any digital information in the world, the mere notion of whimsically cruising the Internet is...
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For months, there've been questions regarding just how secure Skype's encryption was. After Microsoft bought the VOIP company it began moving to a more centralized node structure that made it easier to scale the product but at the cost of intrinsic security. Now, it seems such concerns were valid -- new leaked...
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It’s deeply disconcerting, to say the least, that the NSA has been able to extract data about U.S. citizens from Internet companies using the secret (until recently) PRISM program. Because all of those companies likely handle data a little differently, it’s hard to say how much information the government...
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I'm not sure we needed another example of just how opportunistic malware creators can be, but thanks to Android.AntiObscan, we got one. This is a piece of malware that's been floating around the Web recently that mimics Jay-Z's brand-new album app, Magna Carta Holy Grail. Weeks before its launch, this album hit the...
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It appears that the Swiss have turned a reputation for having the most secure banks in the world into a possible refuge for corporations trying to keep data from the spying eyes of the NSA. The NSA’s PRISM program used the shadowy Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and a secret court to request data on...
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Now that the NSA has apparently assented to allow companies from which it culled personal user data to post some numbers about how many requests were made, more companies are disclosing that information. Facebook and Microsoft posted some numbers this weekend, and now Yahoo! has some as well. According to a post...
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More information is coming out regarding the NSA’s PRISM program wherein the agency has been requesting/demanding data on U.S. citizens from major Internet companies. (We have further reading on the subject here, here, and here.) After adamant declarations from some companies, perhaps most notably Facebook--Mark...
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Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, personality-wise, was the yin to Steve Jobs yang, and the effervescent and jovial Woz is typically an entertaining fellow, always good for a fresh perspective on mobile devices or other technology. Not so the other day in the airport. FayerWayerTV snagged some one-on-one time with Woz as he was waiting for his...
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In the week since word of the NSA's Boundless Informant and Prism programs leaked online, there's been a great deal of concern over to what degree various companies cooperated with the NSA's requests. Some companies, like Google, have pointed to their repeated requests for greater transparency. Twitter, of course, is...
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In the wake of the Washington Post leaks, there's been a great deal of discussion over how, exactly, companies like Google share data with the government. The original report implied that the NSA has direct datacenter access and either grabs the information directly from Google or was copying and analyzing...
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Yesterday, we talked about PRISM, the NSA's tool for spying on all foreign Internet traffic routed through the United States. Today, we've got news a fresh leak and another troubling aspect of the NSA's spying capabilities. The newly revealed program, dubbed Boundless Informant, is an analysis tool that creates heat...
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There have been two major leaks this past week that we want to talk about. First, news that Verizon turns over all phone call metadata -- the numbers called, dialed, and the duration of the phone call in question -- to the NSA. Second, news that the NSA has agreements with major tech companies, including Apple...
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This sounds like the definition of a slippery slope: According to Reuters, the U.S. government is expanding its Internet traffic-scanning cybersecurity program to include more private sector workers, such as those at large banks, utility companies, and “key transportation” companies, and the NSA will use...
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Yesterday, the newly minted head of the United States' Cyber Command team and NSA head General Keith Alexander told assembled lawmakers that the US has created offensive cyberwarfare divisions designed to do far more than protect US assets from foreign attacks. This is a major change in policy from previous public...
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The National Sheriffs' Association has announced it supports mandatory logging provisions incorporated into a proposed federal law that would require ISPs to store all customer data for 18 months. The bill (HR 1981) is intended to amend title 18 of the USC and is known as the "Protecting Children From Internet...
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Using an old browser? If you're planning to use PayPal, you might consider updating.PayPal, one of the brands most spoofed in phishing attacks, is working on a plan to block its users from making transactions from Web browsers that don't provide anti-phishing protection.The eBay-owned company, which runs a Web-based payment system that...
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The Sectera Edge was developed under the NSA Secure Mobile Environment/Portable Electronic Device program (SME PED) and will eventually be supplied to the DOD and Homeland Security. It will be able to switch between the government's Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) and Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network...
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