Group items tagged

"According to these internal documents, SIAM is a computer system that works behind the scenes of Iranian cellular networks, providing its operators a broad menu of remote commands to alter, disrupt, and monitor how customers use their phones. The tools can slow their data connections to a crawl, break the encryption of phone calls, track the movements of individuals or large groups, and produce detailed metadata summaries of who spoke to whom, when, and where. Such a system could help the government invisibly quash the ongoing protests - or those of tomorrow - an expert who reviewed the SIAM documents told The Intercept."

"The organisation is a pioneer of the "ransomware as a service" model, whereby it outsources the target selection and attacks to a network of semi-independent "affiliates", providing them with the tools and infrastructure and taking a commission on the ransoms in return. As well as ransomware, which typically works by encrypting data on infected machines and demanding a payment for providing the decryption key, LockBit copied stolen data and threatened to publish it if the fee was not paid, promising to delete the copies on receipt of a ransom."

""The satellite's two-year mission will be to develop 'hack-proof' quantum communications, allowing users to send messages securely and at speeds faster than light," Xinhua reported."

"Security experts who looked at the app, known as ByLock, at the request of Reuters said it appeared to be the work of amateur software developers and had left important information about its users unencrypted."

"The National Security Agency has made repeated attempts to develop attacks against people using Tor, a popular tool designed to protect online anonymity, despite the fact the software is primarily funded and promoted by the US government itself."

Yikes this is very scary - lets all jump from WEP, to WPA to WPA 2?

"If reelected, British Prime Minister David Cameron would consider banning messaging apps like Snapchat and WhatsApp, if they don't make their data available to intelligence agencies, he said Monday."

"Marlinspike's Textsecure has an impeccable reputation as a secure platform, and Whatsapp founder Jan Koum attributes his desire to add security to his users' conversations to his experiences with the surveillance state while growing up in Soviet Ukraine. However, without any independent security audit or (even better) source-code publication, we have to take the company's word that it has done the right thing and that it's done it correctly."

"When Vancouver tech retailer NCIX went bankrupt, it stopped paying its bills, including the bills for the storage where its servers were being kept; that led to the servers being auctioned off without being wiped first, containing sensitive data -- addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, passwords, etc -- for thousands of customers. Also on the servers: tax and payroll information for the company's employees."

Ahhh ITGS group - a great discussion on the evoting problem would have been perfect for your Paper 2. "Remember: all of these principles of security, anonymity and verifiability have to be achieved in an understandable way. If they can't be then you get the opportunity for losers to claim fraud, and their supporters to believe them."

"A dump called "Collection #1" has been released by parties unknown, containing email addresses and cracked passwords: in its raw form, it contains 2.7 billion records, which Troy "Have I Been Pwned" Hunt (previously) de-duplicated to come up with 773 million unique records -- of those 140,000,000 email addresses and 10,000,000 passwords have never been seen in the HaveIBeenPwned database before."

"Once it's verified, the transaction's information, plus both your digital signature and your friend's digital signature, are stored in a block alongside many other transactions like it. Once the block is full, it gets a hash, which is a unique code that sort of acts like its nametag. It also stores its position on the chain and the hash of the previous block on the chain. (Here's an example block to illustrate what kind of information is stored there.) "

"NFTs are created on Ethereum's blockchain, which is immutable, meaning it cannot be altered. No one can undo your ownership of an NFT or re-create that exact same one. They're also "permissionless," so anyone can create, buy, or sell an NFT without asking for permission. Finally, every NFT is unique, and can be viewed by anyone. "

"But unbeknown to Real G and hundreds of criminals who until this week believed that ANOM was the best way to arrange drug deals, money laundering and murders away from the eyes of authorities, the FBI was also secretly copied in on every message. Indeed, in one of the most elaborate and sprawling honeypot traps known to date, the entire communications platform was being covertly operated by the FBI, marking a first for the agency."

"Ransomware analysts offered several possible explanations for why the master key has now appeared. It is possible Kaseya, a government entity, or a collective of victims paid the ransom. The Kremlin in Russia also might have seized the key from the criminals and handed it over through intermediaries, experts said."