NSA using Browser Cookies to track Tor Users

Yesterday a new classified NSA document was leaked by Edward Snowden - titled 'Tor Stinks' in which ideas were being kicked around for identifying Tor users or degrading the user experience to dissuade people from using the Tor browser. The NSA had a very hard time while tracking down all Tor...

NSA using Browser Cookies to track Tor Users

Yesterday a new classified NSA document was leaked by Edward Snowden - titled ‘Tor Stinks’ in which ideas were being kicked around for identifying Tor users or degrading the user experience to dissuade people from using the Tor browser. The NSA had a very hard time while tracking down all Tor...

Latest Snowden Leak Explains NSA Subversion of Tor Users

The latest Snowden documents, made public today, suggest the National Security Agency is able to peel back the veil on a small fraction of Tor users at a time, but overall the integrity of the anonymity network remains intact. Tor promises its users a level of anonymity online for their Web...

NSA Director Alexander Confirms Cell Location Pilot Program

In between pleas to end the government shutdown that has upwards of 70 percent of the intelligence community furloughed until further notice, NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper spent a significant amount of time before a Senate Judiciary Committe...

NSA Crypto Questions Resemble a 'Hall of Mirrors'

There’s been no shortage of discussion and debate in recent week about the possibility that the NSA has intentionally weakened some cryptographic algorithms and cipher suites in order to give it an advantage in its intelligence-gathering operations. If you subscribe to the worst-case scenario lin...

Law Enforcement Requests Report: No Skype Data Turned Over

Microsoft’s report on compliance with law enforcement requests for data demonstrates a status quo for the software giant from the last reporting period. While the number of requests from law enforcement dropped worldwide in the first six months of 2013, Microsoft complied with 79 percent of...

Silent Circle Moving Away From NIST Ciphers in Wake of NSA Revelations

The first major domino to fall in the crypto world after the NSA leaks by Edward Snowden began was the decision by Lavabit, a secure email provider, to shut down in August rather than comply with a government order. Shortly thereafter, Silent Circle, another provider of secure email and other...

Dennis Fisher and Mike Mimoso Discuss The Week's NSA News and Icefog

Mike Mimoso and Dennis Fisher look back at the news of the last couple of weeks, including some new NSA PR efforts and the Icefog cyberespionage campaign. Download: digitalunderground127.mp3...

NSA Director Alexander Asked About Cell Location Collection

Did we hear the next shoe to drop in the NSA surveillance saga? Yesterday before a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, asked some pointed questions of NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander regarding whether the agency collects cell tower location data in addition t...

Alexander: 'FISA is the Key to Connecting the Dots'

WASHINGTON–Faced with trying to accomplish its mission in an environment that suddenly has become quite hostile and inquisitive about its methods, the National Security Agency is becoming more and more public about the challenges that lie ahead and how the agency plans to address them. One of the...

NSA's Alexander Appeals For Threat Information Sharing

WASHINGTON– While Congress and the technology community are still debating and discussing the intelligence gathering capabilities of NSA revealed in recent months, the agency’s director, Gen. Keith Alexander, is not just defending the use of these existing tools, but is pitching the idea of shari...

iPhone 5s Users Fooled By Apple, NSA and A Fake middle finger

Last week Apple releases the iPhone 5S with Touch ID, a fingerprint-scanning feature, promoted by the company as "Your fingerprint is one of the best passwords in the world". Just after the launch of iOS7, Hackers around the world come up with a series of security issues and privacy concerns. One...

iPhone 5s Users Fooled By Apple, NSA and A Fake middle finger

Last week Apple releases the iPhone 5S with Touch ID, a fingerprint-scanning feature, promoted by the company as "Your fingerprint is one of the best passwords in the world". Just after the launch of iOS7, Hackers around the world come up with a series of security issues and privacy concerns. One...

In Wake of Latest Crypto Revelations, 'Everything is Suspect'

So now that RSA Security has urged developers to back away from the table and stop using the maligned Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generation Dual EC DRBG algorithm, the question begging to be asked is why did RSA use it in the first place? Going back to 2007 and a seminal...

The Sky is Not Falling--It's Fallen

It’s no fun being a cynic, thinking that everything is bad and getting worse. It’s easy–especially in the security community–but it’s not fun. But, in light of the latest in the interminable string of revelations about the NSA’s efforts to eat away at the foundation of the security industry, the...

Experts Worry About Long-Term Implications of NSA Revelations

With all of the disturbing revelations that have come to light in the last few weeks regarding the NSA’s collection methods and its efforts to weaken cryptographic protocols and security products, experts say that perhaps the most worrisome result of all of this is that no one knows who or what...

LinkedIn Asks for Transparency on National Security Letters

LinkedIn on Tuesday joined the fray of Internet companies requesting permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to publish data on the number of National Security Letters it receives. Unlike Google, Microsoft and others that have petitioned the FISA court to lift its ban on the...

FISC: No Phone Company Ever Challenged Metadata Collection Orders

A newly declassified opinion from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court from this summer shows the court’s interpretation of the controversial Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act that’s used to justify the National Security Agency’s bulk telephone metadata collections, and reveals that none ...

Researchers Build Undetectable Dopant Hardware Trojans

Is it so outlandish anymore to consider that an attacker interested in military, political or corporate espionage would be able to infiltrate a supply chain and drop malware onto an integrated circuit? Evidence of hardware-based Trojans is anecdotal at best, and experts believe a change in...

NSA Bought Exploit Service From VUPEN, Contract Shows

The U.S. government–particularly the National Security Agency–are often regarded as having advanced offensive cybersecurity capabilities. But that doesn’t mean that they’re above bringing in a little outside help when it’s needed. A newly public contract shows that the NSA last year bought a...