The Year in NSA

It’s that most wonderful time of the year, the time when everyone with access to an email machine puts together a list of the best or worst of whatever happened in the last 12 months. In the computer security world, there is no doubt that such a list would find NSA stories in places one through...

NSA Bulk Telephony Metadata Collection Program Legal

A federal court today shot down a challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union ACLU to the National Security Agency’s bulk phone metadata collection program, determining that the spy agency’s actions are legal. The ruling by U.S. District Court judge William Pauley contradicts a Dec. 16 D.C...

RSA Denies NSA Backdoor Payment Allegations, But Questions Linger

The accumulation of hundreds of leaked documents and formerly secret operational methods used by the NSA in the last six months has led to a bit of a numbing effect, with some new leaks being met with a shrug of indifference. But the latest and most explosive entry in that ledger–the report that...

AT&T, Verizon Announce Transparency Reports in 2014

One by one, the telecommunications giants at the heart of the NSA surveillance scandal are relenting to shareholder pressure and public demands for them to publish reports on government requests for user data. On Friday Verizon and AT&T announced their intent to begin producing transparency repor...

RSA denied accusations of inserting secret backdoor for the NSA

None...

NSA paid $10 Million bribe to RSA Security for Keeping Encryption Weak

If you own a world-renowned Security Product or a Service, National Security Agency NSA is ready to pay you 10 Million or more bribe for keeping intentional backdoor for them. According to an exclusive report published by Reuters, there is a secret deal between the NSA and respected encryption...

Brian Donohue on the NSA Panel Report

Dennis Fisher talks with Brian Donohue, Threatpost’s Washington, D.C. writer, about the new report from the NSA reform panel and whether any of the recommended changes will ever be implemented...

NSA Must Reform Practices, Organization

A presidentially appointed, five member panel issued a more than 300-page report yesterday calling for nearly 50 recommendations for changes in the way that the National Security Agency conducts its increasingly public and controversial sweeping surveillance programs. The entire report hinges on...

UN Adopts Resolution Protecting Privacy Online

On the same day that a panel of experts delivered a report to the United States president recommending sweeping changes to the way that the National Security Agency collects, handles and stores intelligence, the United Nations unanimously adopted a resolution calling for the protection of users’...

Dennis Fisher and Mike Mimoso Discuss the NSA, Blackhole Exploit Kit

Dennis Fisher and Mike Mimoso discuss the happenings in the security world of late, including the latest NSA revelations, the odd DGA Changer malware and the response of attackers to the death of Blackhole...

Judge Ruled - NSA Telephone Metadata Collection violates the Fourth Amendment

Big and Good news for all of us. A federal court judge 'Richard J. Leon' said that he believes, US National Security Agency’s NSA controversial practice of routinely collecting the telephone records of millions of Americans likely violates the 4th Amendment and is unconstitutional, even though th...

U.S. District Court Judge Rules NSA Metadata Collection Likely Violates Fourth Amendment

A United States District Court judge has ruled that the bulk metadata collection program maintained by the National Security Agency for years now likely is unconstitutional. The judge, ruling on a pair of law suits that claimed the NSA’s methods violated users’ privacy and civil rights, said that...

NSA Officials Say Snowden Used Legitimate Access to Steal Data

It’s taken more than six months, but top officials at the National Security Agency are finally discussing some of the details of how former agency contractor Edward Snowden got access to all of the documents he stole and what kind of damage they believe the publication of the information they...

BIOS Malware that can remotely destroy any computer, NSA claimed

None...

NSA Director to Retain Cyber Command Role

Since its inception in 2009, the U.S. Cyber Command has been run by the director of the National Security Agency. The two organizations are intertwined and even share the same space in Maryland. The continuous leaks of NSA documents this year has led some politicians and critics to argue that the...

New IETF Group to Tackle TLS Implementation in Applications

The NSA surveillance scandal has created ripples all across the Internet, and the latest one is a new effort from the IETF to change the way that encryption is used in a variety of critical application protocols, including HTTP and SMTP. The new TLS application working group was formed to help...

FreeBSD Bans Intel, Via Chips

FreeBSD, the open-source operating system, announced that it will no longer support Intel’s RdRand and Via Technology’s Padlock on-chip random number generators RNGs moving forward in new versions of the UNIX-like operating system. The move apparently follows reports from earlier this year that t...

France Government used Rogue Google SSL Digital Certificates to Spy on users

Google has found that the French government agency using unauthorized digital certificates for some of its own domains to perform man-in-the-middle attacks on a private network. Google security engineer Adam Langley described the incident as a "Serious Security breach", which was discovered in...

64-Bit Zeus Banking Trojan Communicates Over Tor Network

The infamous Zeus banking Trojan has gone 64-bit. But why? Researchers at Kaspersky Lab’s Global Research and Analysis Team spotted a new version of the malware that behaves much like its 32-bit contemporaries: it too uses Web injects to steal banking credentials to drain online accounts, steal...

AT&T Refuses to Issue Transparency Report, Cites Privacy

Telecommunications giant AT&T has come under fire from privacy advocates after it acknowledged that it will not publicly disclose any of its dealings with the National Security Agency. The company claimed that protecting customer privacy is at the crux of its decision not to share government...