tagged w/ encryption
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For the past few months, some of the world’s leading cryptographers have been keeping a closely guarded secret about a pioneering new invention. Today, they’ve decided it’s time to tell all.
Back in October, the startup tech firm Silent Circle ruffled governments’ feathers with a “surveillance-proof” smartphone app to allow people to make secure phone calls and send texts easily. Now, the company is pushing things even further—with a groundbreaking encrypted data transfer app that will enable people to send files securely from a smartphone or tablet at the touch of a button. (For now, it’s just being released for iPhones and iPads, though Android versions should come soon.) That means photographs, videos, spreadsheets, you name it—sent scrambled from one person to another in a matter of seconds.
“This has never been done before,” boasts Mike Janke, Silent Circle’s CEO. “It’s going to revolutionize the ease of privacy and security.”
True, he’s a businessman with a product to sell—but I think he is right.
The technology uses a sophisticated peer-to-peer encryption technique that allows users to send encrypted files of up to 60 megabytes through a “Silent Text” app. The sender of the file can set it on a timer so that it will automatically “burn”—deleting it from both devices after a set period of, say, seven minutes. Until now, sending encrypted documents has been frustratingly difficult for anyone who isn’t a sophisticated technology user, requiring knowledge of how to use and install various kinds of specialist software. What Silent Circle has done is to remove these hurdles, essentially democratizing encryption. It’s a game-changer that will almost certainly make life easier and safer for journalists, dissidents, diplomats, and companies trying to evade state surveillance or corporate espionage. Governments pushing for more snooping powers, however, will not be pleased.
Full Story: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/02/silent_circle_s_latest_app_democratizes_encryption_governments_won_t_be.single.htmlFor the past few months, some of the world’s leading cryptographers have been... more
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In October 2010, law enforcement agents pursuing a child pornography investigation tracked a Florida man suspected of sharing illegal images to a hotel room in California. After obtaining a search warrant, they raided the room, seizing computers and hard drives with nearly five terabytes of total storage capacity. However, they soon hit a roadblock: Portions of the hard drives had been encrypted and were unreadable without a password. The suspect refused to decrypt the drives, and a federal district court in Florida held him in contempt and ordered him incarcerated. However, late last month, a federal appeals court overturned the contempt holding, ruling that the suspect’s refusal was protected under the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
What happens when the government’s desire to access a suspect’s encrypted electronic documents runs up against the Fifth Amendment? As with so many of today’s technology-related constitutional questions, the answers are complex, evolving, and sometimes contradictory. However, across the relatively small set of court rulings that have directly addressed this issue, a few key things stand out.
Courts have consistently held that defendants cannot be forced to divulge passwords. However, and more practically with respect to the end result, a defendant can sometimes be forced to use a decryption password—without divulging it—and then to provide the files in readable form. Whether the government can compel decryption in this manner depends on a legal doctrine called “foregone conclusion” that was first articulated in a 1976 Supreme Court ruling relating to paper documents in a tax fraud case.
Full Story: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/03/encrypted_files_child_pornography_and_the_fifth_amendment_.htmlIn October 2010, law enforcement agents pursuing a child pornography investigation... more
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A software flaw in Apple Inc's iPhones and iPads may allow hackers to build apps that secretly install programs to steal data, send text messages or destroy information, according to an expert on Apple device security. Charlie Miller, a researcher with Accuvant Labs who identified the problem, built a prototype malicious program to test the flaw. He said Apple's App Store failed to identify the malicious program, which made it past the security vetting process.
link:
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/apple-security-expert-finds-appssoftware-bug/200199-11.htmlA software flaw in Apple Inc's iPhones and iPads may allow hackers to build apps... more
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sitsi
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added this
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1 year ago
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The Hackers News is an online Hacker News Organisation. We propagate news specifically related to information security threats, Hacking threads and issues from all over the world. Our research teams search and compile news from tens of thousands of sites to bring you the most relevant Cyber Hacking titles in one location. In addition to news, we host blogs and discussions, education videos, and Articles.
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hack, hacking, security breach, hacker, hackers, computer security, encryption, confidentiality, protected, breach, codebreakers, random number, PRN, transmitting sensitive data, banking records, personal information, unbreakable encryption, security of the data, code-breaking, hacking warnings, criminals, terrorists, encryption program, steganography, payload files, hidden data, quantum encryption, erasing magnetic storage, protecting sensitive data, fail-safe destruction, protect sensitive information, complete erasure, secret key, computer virus, viruses, worms, computer wormThe Hackers News is an online Hacker News Organisation. We propagate news specifically... more
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The team behind the popular torrent site The Pirate Bay has started to work on a new encryption technology that could potentially protect all Internet traffic from prying eyes. The project, which is still in its initial stages, goes by the name “Transparent end-to-end encryption for the Internets,” or IPETEE for short. It tackles encryption not on the application level, but on the network level, the aim being that all data exchanged on your PC would be encrypted, regardless of its nature — be it a web browser streaming video files or an instant messaging client. As Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij (a.k.a. Tiamo) told me, “Even applications that don’t supporting encryption will be encrypted where possible.”
Neij came up with the idea for IPETEE back when European politicians were starting to debate a Europe-wide move to DMCA-like copyright enforcement efforts, which were eventually authorized in the form of the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive in the spring of 2007. “I wanted to come up with something to make it harder for data retention,” said Neij. But he didn’t publish the initial draft proposal until early this month, when the discussion about privacy and surveillance online suddenly became urgent again. The Swedish parliament passed a new law in June that allows a local government agency to snoop on “the telephony, emails, and web traffic of millions of innocent individuals,” as the EFF’s Danny O’Brien put it. Neij promises that his new encryption scheme will be ready before the law takes effect next January.
IPETEE will likely be implemented as an add-on to operating systems like Windows and OS X. It will essentially do its work in the background, handling all incoming and outgoing IP traffic without any further interference from the user.
(M.A.L.)The team behind the popular torrent site The Pirate Bay has started to work on a new... more
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A 19-year-old has been jailed for four months after he refused to hand his computer password over to police.
Oliver Drage was arrested in May last year by officers investigating child sexual exploitation. Police couldn't gain access to his computer because it was protected by a complicated 50-character encryption password.
Drage was formally requested to tell police the password but failed to do so.
He was convicted last month of failing to disclose an encryption key, an offence covered by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, and jailed for 16 weeks in a Young Offenders Institute.
Police are still trying to crack the code on Drage's computer to find out its contents 17 months after they seized it.
Detective Sergeant Neil Fowler, of Lancashire Police, said: 'Drage was previously of good character so the immediate custodial sentence handed down by the judge in this case shows just how seriously the courts take this kind of offence.
'Computer systems are constantly advancing and the legislation used here was specifically brought in to deal with those who are using the internet to commit crime.
'It sends a robust message out to those intent on trying to mask their online criminal activities that they will be taken before the courts with the ultimate sanction, as in this case, being a custodial sentence.'
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/361693/teenager-jailed-for-refusing-to-reveal-encryption-keysA 19-year-old has been jailed for four months after he refused to hand his computer... more
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richjm
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added this
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2 years ago
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While small, independent insurance agencies are writing policies for customers, they're also seeking coverage for their own business needs. Agency Matrix, a Dallas-based software company that's the subject of the latest edition of spark360's innovative "Social Business Television" program, has come up with what it believes is a leading-edge policy for those small businesses: a 100-percent web-based office management system that's easy to use, inexpensive to deploy and designed by agents for agents.
"We all have an agency background, so we know the challenges that agents encounter on a day to day basis," said Agency Matrix chief operating officer Jeff Johnson.
To learn more about hosted insurance agency software goto http://www.agencymatrix.com.
To learn more about Social Business Television goto http://www.spark360.tv.While small, independent insurance agencies are writing policies for customers,... more
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Over a billion people visited social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter last month so it’s not surprising that hackers have these sites in their cross-hairs. In fact, according to recent research from Breach Security Labs, social networks were the most targeted category in 2009, accounting for 19% of all malicious attacks last year. By using simple data encryption and password protection tools, you can ensure that your personal information and online identities remain secure and private…
http://information-security-resources.com/2010/02/14/how-to-protect-your-social-network-identity/Over a billion people visited social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter... more
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GSM cellular networks in the US and Europe use the A5/1 stream cipher meant to ensure cellular calls cannot be listened into by unauthorized parties monitoring radio traffic. However, the guarantee of privacy is no longer ensured. New attack techniques were unveiled at the Hacking at Random conference in The Netherlends which would allow an attacker to decrypt cellular calls made over a GSM network. The attacker only needs the new software and about $500 in radio monitoring equipment.
http://information-security-resources.com/2010/01/11/cell-phone-tapping-gsm-encryption-hacked/GSM cellular networks in the US and Europe use the A5/1 stream cipher meant to ensure... more
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After the leak of Microsoft COFFEE into the wild, a tool emerges that will supposedly make life very difficult for a forensic investigator using COFFEE. The tool is titled DECAF and is freely available, although not open source. The tool does not need to be installed, and when configured in ‘LockDown Mode’ offers a set of Counter-Forensics functions upon detecting a COFFEE process running on the computer. The following options Counter-Forensics functions are available…
http://information-security-resources.com/2010/01/06/decaf-counter-forensics-coffee-tool/After the leak of Microsoft COFFEE into the wild, a tool emerges that will supposedly... more
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Security of biometric ID’s like biometric passports is a very frequent topic of discussion and we all know there are issues. But most of those issues are related to encryption, materials and generally anything that requires a lot of technical knowledge. Here is an example of the possibility to create a fake Biometric ID…
http://information-security-resources.com/2009/12/22/simplified-analysis-forging-a-biometric-id/Security of biometric ID’s like biometric passports is a very frequent topic of... more
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Are CIOs spending less time on supervising what they should be doing the most—strengthening the citadel and securing the digital assets—particularly when corporate wide cyber crimes and espionage have started to show a quantum jump even in developing economies like India? Security may be a key thing that worries CIOs, but there are other things that keep him occupied these days.
http://information-security-resources.com/2009/12/17/lest-we-forget-about-enterprise-security/Are CIOs spending less time on supervising what they should be doing the... more
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The Internet is filled with free information, from search engines, to answer portals, to e-learning portals. However, something is missing. Every person has knowledge that they possess that another person may want, and to gain this knowledge there might have to be a personal relation. GenApple seeks to create a marketplace where people can sell that knowledge and information.
http://information-security-resources.com/2009/12/06/genapple-boasts-first-information-brokerage/The Internet is filled with free information, from search engines, to answer portals,... more
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Enterprise applications choke the corporate IT networks, and the blame invariably falls on bandwidth scarcity. Jeff Barker, VP solutions and Technical Marketing at Blue Coat Systems, talks exclusively to Rahul Neel Mani about application optimization and secured delivery.Enterprise applications choke the corporate IT networks, and the blame invariably... more
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BBC News announced that more passwords to email accounts were posted: Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, Comcast, and Earthlink users appear among those impacted. Again, security experts are urging those with accounts to change their login details. These are extra steps everyone should take at least once a year, or during situations where an account may be compromised:BBC News announced that more passwords to email accounts were posted: Yahoo, Gmail,... more
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As part of their storage security strategy, enterprises must understand the value of such intellectual property in combination with the risk tolerance of the organization before they can address how to appropriately secure it and store it. Moreover, because the value of information changes over its lifetime, so should its storage.As part of their storage security strategy, enterprises must understand the value of... more
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