“Encryption Backdoors and the Fourth Amendment”

Law journal article that looks at the DualECPRNG backdoor from a US constitutional perspective: Abstract : The National Security Agency NSA reportedly paid and pressured technology companies to trick their customers into using vulnerable encryption products. This Article examines whether any of...

Countries and companies are fighting at the expense of our data privacy

Data privacy issues are a hot topic in a world where we apparently don’t know who to trust anymore. A few weeks ago, we reported how the UK had secretly ordered Apple to provide blanket access to protected cloud backups around the world. This week, Apple decided to pull the plug on Advanced Data...

Signal Threatens to Exit Sweden Over Government’s Backdoor Proposal

Sweden’s proposal to mandate encryption backdoors faces backlash from Signal, cybersecurity experts, and even its military over privacy and security risks...

How the FBI quietly added itself to criminals’ instant message conversations

Motherboard has disclosed some information about Operation Trojan Shield, in which the FBI intercepted messages from thousands of encrypted phones around the world. These messages are now used in courts across the world as corroborating evidence. Operation Trojan Shield The US Federal Bureau of...

The NSA Swears It Has ‘No Backdoors’ in Next-Gen Encryption

Plus: New details of ICE’s dragnet surveillance in the US, Clearview AI agrees to limit sales of its faceprint database, and more...

Backdoors are a security vulnerability

Last month, US Attorney General William Barr resurrected a government appeal to technology companies: Provide law enforcement with an infallible, “secure” method to access, unscramble, and read encrypted data stored on devices and sent across secure messaging services. Barr asked, in more accurat...

G7 Comes Out in Favor of Encryption Backdoors

From a G7 meeting of interior ministers in Paris this month, an "outcome document": Encourage Internet companies to establish lawful access solutions for their products and services, including data that is encrypted, for law enforcement and competent authorities to access digital evidence, when i...

Security Risks of Government Hacking

Some of us -- myself included -- have proposed lawful government hacking as an alternative to backdoors. A new report from the Center of Internet and Society looks at the security risks of allowing government hacking. They include: Disincentive for vulnerability disclosure Cultivation of a market...

China Passes Cybersecurity Law to Tighten its Control over the Internet

China has long been known for its strict censorship policies, which has already made it difficult for foreign companies to do business in the world's most populous country of more than 1.35 Billion people. Now, the Chinese government has approved a broad new controversial cybersecurity regulation...

Export-Grade Crypto Patching Improves

LAS VEGAS – The FREAK, LOGJAM and DROWN attacks of the last 17 months weren’t just the work of academics and security researchers who found a cool way to unmask encrypted traffic. They were ugly reminders of the Crypto Wars of the 1990s and why export-grade cryptography and intentional encryption...

Apple Can Still Read Your End-to-End Encrypted iMessages

If you are backing up your data using iCloud Backup, then you need you watch your steps NOW! In government fight against encryption, Apple has positioned itself as a staunch defender of its user privacy by refusing the federal officials to provide encryption backdoors into its products. When it...

President Urged to Reject Mandatory Backdoors

One-off opposition to calls on Congress from FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers to draft a legal framework that would enable law enforcement to access encrypted communication has been scattered at best. Experts have taken to their own forums to voice opposition to the...