Merging Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram: a technical, reputational hurdle

Secure messaging is supposed to be just that—secure. That means no backdoors, strong encryption, private messages staying private, and, for some users, the ability to securely communicate without giving up tons of personal data. So, when news broke that scandal-ridden, online privacy pariah...

The Pitfalls of Facebook Merging Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp Chats

Facebook's effort to combine its major chat platforms could create minefields for users who rely on end-to-end encryption...

Australia Anti-Encryption Law Triggers Sweeping Backlash

A controversial Australian bill, which could give the government access to data protected by end-to-end encryption, was passed Thursday. The bill, called the Assistance and Access Act, empowers Australian police to essentially force companies that are operating in the country to help the governme...

Signal App’s New Privacy Feature Conceals Sender ID from Metadata

By Waqas Messaging apps are now becoming more and more secure to make it difficult or rather impossible for anyone to access your conversations. Switching to end-to-end encryption although offered a stronger layer of protection but still the unencrypted metadata like sender/receiver information,...

The Danger and Opportunity in 5G Connectivity and IoT

There is a lot of buzz building over fifth-generation mobile networks 5G and how they will revolutionize the fast-growing numbers of internet-connected devices — but what about security? What makes 5G so closely tied to billions of Internet of Things IoT devices is its speed 5G is expected to be ...

Telegram leaked IP addresses of its desktop app users

By Waqas The vulnerability affected Telegram’s desktop app for Windows, Mac, and Linux OS. Telegram, a popular privacy-focused instant messaging application, reportedly contained a bug that can leak the IP addresses of users. Known for providing end-to-end encryption, Telegram’s desktop app has...

All New Privacy and Security Features Coming in macOS 10.14 Mojave

At Worldwide Developer Conference 2018 on Monday, Apple announced the next version of its macOS operating system, and it's called Mojave. Besides introducing new features and improvements of macOS 10.14 Mojave—like Dark Mode, Group FaceTime, Dynamic Desktop, and Finder—at WWDC, Apple also reveale...

Another severe flaw in Signal desktop app lets hackers steal your chats in plaintext

For the second time in less than a week, users of the popular end-to-end encrypted Signal messaging app have to update their desktop applications once again to patch another severe code injection vulnerability. Discovered Monday by the same team of security researchers, the newly discovered...

CenoCipher - Easy-To-Use, End-To-End Crypto-Communication Tool

CenoCipher is a free, open-source, easy-to-use tool for exchanging secure encrypted communications over the internet. It uses strong cryptography to convert messages and files into encrypted cipher-data, which can then be sent to the recipient via regular email or any other channel available, suc...

Twitter is Testing End-to-End Encrypted Direct Messages

Twitter has been adopting new trends at a snail's pace. But it's better to be late than never. Since 2013 people were speculating that Twitter will bring end-to-end encryption to its direct messages, and finally almost 5 years after the encryption era began, the company is now testing an end-to-e...

Nextcloud: Improper protection of FileContentProvider

Some data in the FileContentProvider is protected against applications not related to NextCloud. The application checks if calling application package name contains "com.nextcloud.client" string. Every application with such substring in package name is allowed to fully access FileContentProvider...

Skype Finally Adds End-to-End Encryption for Private Conversations

Good news for Skype users who are concerned about their privacy. Microsoft is collaborating with popular encrypted communication company Signal to bring end-to-end encryption support to Skype messenger. End-to-end encryption assured its users that no one, not even the company or server that...

WhatsApp Flaw Could Allow 'Potential Attackers' to Spy On Encrypted Group Chats

A more dramatic revelation of 2018—an outsider can secretly eavesdrop on your private end-to-end encrypted group chats on WhatsApp and Signal messaging apps. Considering protection against three types of attackers—malicious user, network attacker, and malicious server—an end-to-end encryption...

Signal Testing New Private Contact Discovery Service

Open Whisper Systems, the company behind the encrypted messaging app Signal, is testing a new private contact discovery service that in theory will allow the app to determine if a user has Signal contacts in their address book but forbid its servers from accessing the users’ address book. Moxie...

iOS macOS Remote Administration Tool: EggShell

EggShell is an iOS and macOS post exploitation surveillance pentest tool written in Python. This tool creates 1 line multi stage payloads that give you a command line session with extra functionality. EggShell gives you the power and convenience of uploading/downloading files, taking pictures,...

Awesome! WhatsApp Now Lets You Send Files of Any Format

Have you ever felt like wishing of sending any type of file immediately to your friends and office colleagues on WhatsApp directly, instead of just contacts, images or documents? Well, now you can… The latest version of WhatsApp for Android and iOS now allows users to send and receive any type of...

Magic Wormhole - Get Things From One Computer To Another, Safely

This package provides a library and a command-line tool named wormhole, which makes it possible to get arbitrary-sized files and directories or short pieces of text from one computer to another. The two endpoints are identified by using identical "wormhole codes": in general, the sending machine...

Telegram Agrees to Register With Russia to Avoid Ban, But Won't Share User Data

After being threatened with a ban in Russia, end-to-end encrypted Telegram messaging app has finally agreed to register with new Russian Data Protection Laws, but its founder has assured that the company will not comply to share users' confidential data at any cost. Russia's communications watchd...

Keybase Extension Brings End-to-End Encrypted Chat To Twitter, Reddit, GitHub

A recently released Chrome extension, developed by the public key crypto database Keybase, brought end-to-end encrypted messaging to several apps this week. Keybase, a service that allows users to identify themselves with a public encryption key, introduced its end-to-end encrypted chat feature...

Senate's Use of Signal A Good First Step, Experts Say

On Tuesday the United States Senate made it official and approved the use of encrypted messaging app Signal by staffers. Encryption advocates applauded the measure, but say more needs to be done to protect “civic” infrastructure critical to democracy. “The move to secure communications...