Documents in Long-Running Yahoo FISC Challenge Case Published

During a long-running secret dispute between Yahoo and government officials over the constitutionality of orders from the federal government to turn over data belonging to Yahoo users, the company was facing fines of $250,000 for refusing to comply with the order. The revelation is contained in a...

Samsung To Pay $2.3 Million Fine for Deceiving the U.S. Government

The United States division of Samsung has been charged with deceiving the US government into believing that several of its products met the necessary US government policies, resulting in the US government buying unauthorised Chinese-made electronics. The South Korean electronics giant has agreed ...

Legal Line Between Security Research, Cybercrime Murky

LAS VEGAS — In his keynote address at Black Hat Wednesday, Dan Geer, the CISO of In-Q-Tel and a respected security luminary noted that the industry has never been closer to the forefront of corporate and government policy decision making. Despite this, security research remains a dangerous busine...

Hurray! Unlocking Your Cell Phone is Officially Legal Again

President Barack Obama signed a bill into law Friday that aims to make it legal for consumers to “unlock” their cell phones in order to change their cell phone service providers without paying for a new phone. The bill is known as the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, which...

Leahy Introduces Bill to End Bulk Call Record Collection

Sen. Patrick Leahy has introduced an updated, tougher version of the USA FREEDOM Act that would end the bulk collection of data under Section 215 of FISA and also would require the appointment of a panel of special legal advocates who would represent the interests of individual privacy and civil...

DHS Releases Hundreds of Documents on Wrong Project Aurora

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request for information about the Operation Aurora attack on Google and other organizations in 2009 the Department of Homeland Security released hundreds of pages of documents related not to that attack campaign, but to the Aurora project run at Idaho...

UploadImage/UploadScript 1.0 - Remote Change Admin Password Exploit

No description provided by source. ?php / \|/// \ - - // Y! Underground Group @ @ ----oOOo---oOOo--------------------------------------------------- ! Portal : UploadImage v1.0 & UploadScript v1.0 ! Download : http://www.uploadscript.net ! Type : Remote Change Admin Password Exploit ! Home :...

HP OpenView Network Node Manager snmpviewer.exe Buffer Overflow

No description provided by source. $Id: hpnnmsnmpvieweractapp.rb 12098 2011-03-23 15:47:20Z jduck $ This file is part of the Metasploit Framework and may be subject to redistribution and commercial restrictions. Please see the Metasploit Framework web site for more information on licensing and...

New Data Shows FBI Issued More Than 19k National Security Letters in 2013

The United States federal government issued more than 19,000 National Security Letters–perhaps its most powerful tool for domestic intelligence collection–in 2013, and those NSLs contained more than 38,000 individual requests for information. The new data was released by the Office of the Directo...

What you need to know from the OCR’s Report to Congress on Breaches and HIPAA Rules Compliance

Last week the HHS Office for Civil Rights OCR issued their Annual Report to Congress on Breaches of Unsecured Protected Health Information PHI for calendar years 2011 and 2012. This is their second annual report required by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health HITECH...

House Amendment Limits Funding for NSA Surveillance

The House of Representatives last night overwhelmingly passed an amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act that would cut funding for two programs that grant intelligence agencies access to the private data and communications of U.S. citizens. The amendment shows that Congress is...

Microsoft Calls for NSA Surveillance Reforms

On the anniversary of the first news reports on NSA surveillance, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith seized the opportunity to draw a line in the sand with the U.S. government. Smith challenged the government curtail surveillance because it’s hurting business and impaling privacy and civil...

Ex-NSA Director Admits 'We Kill People Based On Metadata' with Drone Strike

We All now know about the existence of the extensive metadata collection program by U.S National Security Agency NSA, which creates an intimate repository of our lives -- whom we love, whom we’re friends with, where we work, whom we call, when we you, how long we talk over the calls, and how ofte...

Judiciary Committee Approves Bill Limiting NSA Surveillance

The House Judiciary Committee met yesterday in a hearing to discuss, amend and approve the USA FREEDOM Act, which aims to rein in the National Security Agency’s surveillance powers and place new limits on authority granted under the USA PATRIOT Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act...

USA FREEDOM Act Revised to Limit NSA Surveillance

UPDATE: A prior version of this story incorrectly noted that the bill revisions included a clause that would require an earlier re-authorization to the PATRIOT Act, when in fact the revisions push that re-authorization date more than two years further into the future. The House Judiciary Committe...

White House Calls for Transparency from Data Brokers

The White House redirected attention away from the data collection efforts of the intelligence community yesterday with the release of a report that urged data brokers to be more transparent about their own data harvesting. Companies such as Facebook, Google and others make a living collecting th...

Clapper: NSA Queries Databases for Information on U.S. Persons

UPDATE–The NSA searches the data it collects incidentally on Americans, including phone calls and emails, during the course of terrorism investigations. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, confirmed the searches in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden, the first time that such actions hav...

NSA Surveillance Reform Demonstrate Need for Public Scrutiny

The Snowden leaks and the ensuing critical spotlight shone on the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs have nudged many technologists, privacy hounds and politicians away from their desks and onto the front lines calling for reforms. Two nights ago, the New York Times reported that...

White House Proposal Would End NSA Metadata Program

Privacy advocates are cautiously applauding the reports that the Obama administration will unveil a legislative proposal to end the National Security Agency’s collection of Americans’ bulk phone records, but are concerned what the fine print on that proposal might hold. “Given all the various way...

Microsoft Reads User Email without Warrant

Late last week it emerged that Microsoft had searched through the contents of a French blogger’s Hotmail account in order to track down the source of a leak of proprietary information from the Redmond, Wash., tech giant. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and transparency advocates have expressed...