Items tagged with security
Over the past couple of years, law enforcement at large has ramped up its efforts to try to gain access to communication mediums, which can include being able to browse unlocked smartphones. As it stands today, most jurisdictions do not give a member of law enforcement the ability to gain access to a smartphone...
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Last week, we learned about the company teaming up with others, such as Microsoft and Yahoo, to make SMTP 'Strict Transport Security' a reality, a protocol that would make it even harder for malicious users to gain access to our email. In a new blog post, the company draws our attention to SMTP STS as well as a couple...
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Apple and the FBI have locked horns with one another over an iPhone 5c model that belonged to one of the San Bernardino shooters, but what seems like a suddenly contentious relationship may have roots that go even deeper. If a new report is to be believed, Apple's distrust of the U.S. government runs so deep that it's...
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With agencies like the NSA and FBI wanting to peer into our personal communications at will, we have to be proactive about keeping ourselves safe. But what if there's a fault we can't work around and simply have to live with? Unless you're a skilled developer, you have to rely on other to come up with an improved...
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Tired of reading about the FBI and Apple trading blows over an encrypted iPhone yet? Well relief may be in sight. This evening, the FBI filed a request to delay Tuesday's court hearing on the matter, and now that request has been accepted by U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym.
Why has the FBI suddenly changed...
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Thought the Stagefright saga was all behind us? Think again. In a new paper published by Israel's NorthBit, we're shown that Stagefright can still prove to be a serious threat to older devices, with some able to be cracked in as little as 20 seconds. If you're still toting around a Nexus 5, LG G3, HTC One, or Samsung...
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Could your smartphone be listening in on your life? If you download mobile apps without much care for their permissions requests, you might not ever know. The privacy threat is so significant though, that the Federal Trade Commission has stepped in and warned us to be aware of it.
On Thursday, the FTC sent a letter...
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It's been an incredible month for Apple, the FBI, and all of us. We've been sitting back, watching the battle of these two giants, as a conclusion about whether or not the FBI should have a right to access encrypted data on someone's smartphone is reached. It seems like not a day can go by without an update to this...
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If as a child you told your parents you wanted to be a bug hunter when you grow up, they'd probably dismiss the notion before telling you to go wash your hands before supper. But had you stuck with it, you could now show your parents just how lucrative it is to hunt bugs—programming bugs, that is. In fact, you can collect a cool $100,00 for
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Fingerprint scanning is quickly becoming a standard security feature on high-end smartphones. The perceived notion is that this type of biometric safeguard provides a superior means of security due to the unique patterns of everyone's fingers, but a new study and experiment conducted by researchers at Michigan State...
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It's pretty common knowledge that using strong passwords is important, but we'd can understand it if you sometimes take shortcuts for the sake of convenience. A great example for many of us would be with our PCs. Given the fact that we login to them all of the time, it can get old typing in (or even trying to...
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We have been hearing so much about the FBI's pressure on Apple in its encryption fight in recent weeks that it might be easy to forget that it's only just begun in recent weeks. But what a few weeks it's been!
In the middle of February, a federal judge ordered Apple to break encryption on an iPhone that belonged to...
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If you're passionate about the topics of privacy, government surveillance, and security and also how they relate to the FBI and DOJ's fight to unlock that fateful San Bernardino iPhone, the whole situation likely pales in comparison to what communist countries like China force their citizens to tolerate. In an effort...
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We talk a lot about the importance of businesses beefing up security to protect from the threat of those who might want to gain access to internal networks. Last week, we were given another great example of why: an integral piece of Linux software suffered a bug that at first seemed modest but turned out to be quite...
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If you operate a Linux-based computer system, especially a server, here's something you will want to make sure you do if you haven't done so in the past week: update. Last week, researchers at Google and Red Hat jointly announced a severe vulnerability that plagues glibc, aka: GNU C Library, which virtually every...
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U.S. Department Of Homeland Security Confirms Cyber Attacks Took Down Ukraine Power Grid In December
In late December, a major power outage killed utility services for a large swathe of people in the Western Ukraine. Shortly after the incident, a number of cyber security experts pointed the finger at hackers and claimed some nefarious digital activities took down the power grid, but nothing had been officially...
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Security and related IT topics can be a little dry and tasteless at times, not to mention overly complex. There’s no question that, especially with the alarming rise of data breaches, advancing security innovation is vital to the future of technology, the enterprise and the Internet. But let’s face it, the rocket...
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If you've been skeptical of buying a connected car for fear that its technologies could be used against you, it won't help to learn that Nissan has suspended downloads of a companion app for its Leaf electric vehicle for that very reason. At issue is the woeful lack of security, and in particular the lack of...
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If you own a Nissan Leaf electric vehicle, you might want to take note of research conducted by Troy Hunt. More specifically, Hunt and fellow researcher Scott Helme were able to demonstrate that certain vehicle functions can be turned on and off remotely thanks to open and unauthenticated APIs that Nissan is using for...
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ASUS crafts some of the highest-performing and best-looking wireless routers on the market, but as far as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is concerned, it's also crafted some of the most insecure.
The FTC alleges that ASUS put "hundreds of thousands" of users at risk because they were oblivious to some serious...
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The greatest benefit wireless peripherals offer is what they help cut down on: wires. Fewer wires means that our desktops are easier to keep clean, and we're not kicking wires as often under our desk. It's a win-win overall. Or is it? As with most things convenient, wireless peripherals can suffer exploits just like...
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Updated 2/20/2016 - 9:57PM:
If there weren't such tragic events leading up to the unprecedented court case involving Apple, the FBI and DOJ, the whole San Bernardino iPhone government access affair might look like a complete comedy of errors at this point. The San Bernardino gunman's locked iPhone could indeed reveal...
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