Researchers Claim CIA Was Behind 11-Year-Long Hacking Attacks Against China

Qihoo 360, one of the most prominent cybersecurity firms, today published a new report accusing the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency CIA to be behind an 11-year-long hacking campaign against several Chinese industries and government agencies. The targeted industry sectors include aviation...

Twitter Uses Phone Numbers, Emails to Sell Ads

Twitter has acknowledged that user phone numbers and email addresses gathered for security purposes, as part of its two-factor authentication policy, may have been used to sell ads. It calls the move an accident. The revelation is being widely criticized for its obvious breach of user privacy,...

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...

Australia Considering New Law Weakening Encryption

News from Australia: Under the law, internet companies would have the same obligations telephone companies do to help law enforcement agencies, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said. Law enforcement agencies would need warrants to access the communications. "We've got a real problem in that the la...

Yahoo Slams Email Surveillance Story: Experts Demand Details

Bombshell revelations that Yahoo conducted mass email surveillance is raising hackles among legal, civil liberties and security experts that demand Yahoo and the U.S. government come clean. Meanwhile Yahoo challenged the accuracy of Tuesday’s report by Reuters. “The article is misleading. We...

STOP Rule 41 — FBI should not get Legal Power to Hack Computers Worldwide

We have been hearing a lot about Rule 41 after the US Department of Justice has pushed an update to the rule. The change to the Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure grants the FBI much greater powers to hack legally into any computer across the country, and perhaps anywhere in the...

In the Wake of the Snowden Revelations, A Wave of Innovation

It was an absurd scene. Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA and a four-star general in the Army, stood alone on the stage, squinting through the floodlights as members of the standing-room-only crowd shouted insults and accusations. Armed men in dark suits roamed the area in front of the...

Lavabit Case May Be One of Many in Coming Years

SAN FRANCISCO–The Lavabit case, which saw the secure email provider’s owner shut the company down after being forced to hand over to the government the encryption key that protected his users’ data, may seem like an extreme reaction to a unique situation. But, experts say it’s likely that there...

Matthew Green on How NSA Breaks SSL

In order for the National Security Agency to collect the massive amounts of communication it has from email and Web traffic, it needs to elude, leapfrog or bash through the barrier that is SSL. How it’s doing so is the real question, one that noted Johns Hopkins cryptographer Matthew Green wants...

EFF Encrypt the Web Report Shows Crypto Leaders, Laggards

There’s nothing like a little peer pressure to nudge someone toward doing the right thing. That’s the philosophy behind the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Encrypt the Web Report, which examines the encryption capabilities of 18 leading Internet companies, including large carriers, social...

Questions About Crypto Security Follow Latest NSA Revelations

As security experts and cryptographers continue to debate and discuss the implications of the revelations of the NSA’s capabilities against various encryption protocols and systems, some of the larger Internet companies are taking steps to protect their users’ data against the new threat. Google,...

NSA Director Alexander Defends Surveillance at Black Hat

LAS VEGAS –NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander’s keynote today at Black Hat USA 2013 was a tense confessional, an hour-long emotional and sometimes angry ride that shed some new insight into the spy agency’s two notorious data collection programs, inspired moments of loud applause in support of the...

Pinterest Announces Support for DNT Header

Pinterest is the latest major Internet service to support Do Not Track. The social site, which allows its users to organize items of interest, made the announcement on Friday in a note that explained how it was going to suggest personalized pins based on websites the user has visited and placed a...

Suit Filed Against NSA, Obama Over Surveillance Program

A group of people, including a former federal prosecutor and the parents of a Navy SEAL sniper killed in action, have filed a class-action law suit against the National Security Agency, Verizon and President Obama over the NSA’s collection of cell phone data. The suit says the order that enabled...

NSA's PRISM spy program, mining data from nine biggest Internet companies

The National Security Agency, part of the U.S. military reportedly has a direct line into the systems of some of the world's biggest Web and tech companies, i.e Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Skype. The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, 6-year-old program which...

NSA's PRISM spy program, mining data from nine biggest Internet companies

The National Security Agency, part of the U.S. military reportedly has a direct line into the systems of some of the world’s biggest Web and tech companies, i.e Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Skype. The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, 6-year-old program which...

EFF Evaluates Internet Companies on Privacy, Transparency

Internet companies are making it a standard practice to publish transparency reports and advocate for users’ privacy concerns with law enforcement and legislators. And while some do it well, there’s plenty of room for improvement among ISPs such as AT&T and Verizon, and large companies such as...

Chinese Government taking strong step against Cyber Crime

Chinese Government taking strong step against Cyber Crime The Chinese government is working with domestic Internet search engines like Baidu Inc and Sohu.com and financial institutions to prevent phishing attacks on unsuspecting Chinese web users. The Chinese government has announced that it will...