Items tagged with Encryption
Here we go again, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is exerting pressure on Apple to help unlock an older iPhone model as part of a crime investigation, and just like before, there's another layer to the story. On the surface, it might seem reasonable to pressure a device maker to thwart its own...
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In a recent post to Twitter, President Donald Trump offered up harsh criticism on Apple's policy of refusing to "unlock phones used by killers, drug dealers, and other violent criminals," which boils down to a fundamental argument over privacy and encryption, and the iPhone maker's resistance to building a backdoor...
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Apple created a bit of ill-will for itself after it leveraged the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to compel Twitter to take down a tweet of an encryption key for its iPhone handsets. Around the same time, several DMCA take down requests were also sent to Reddit for posts on r/jailbreak, though it has not been...
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Microsoft is having a "Do'h!" moment, though not in the bumbling, Homer Simpson sense. Quite the opposite, actually. In a blog post, Microsoft announced its Windows Core Networking team is working on improving user privacy by implementing DNS over HTTPS, or DoH for short, into a future build of Windows 10.
From...
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Google has launched another (Go edition) version of Android for entry-level smartphones, built on top of Android 10. It's the second release of a (Go edition) build, and is "faster and more secure" than the previous release that was built on top of Android 9 Pie, Google claims. Part of that claim is tied to a new...
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WhatsApp bills itself as a free and secure messaging application with end-to-end encryption and cross platform support, all of which have made it a popular option. However, it may not be as secure as advertised. Vulnerabilities that were disclosed last year have still not been addressed, and if abused, could allow an...
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Several technology firms have written an open letter to the GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), a UK intelligence and security organization, in response to the agency's proposed eavesdropping measure. If implemented, law enforcement would be able to spy on encrypted messages, such as those that are sent...
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Firefox Send, a file transfer service that Mozilla first introduced in beta form back in 2017, is now fully available for the public to try out. Mozilla has repositioned Firefox as an alternative browser with a heavy focus and security and privacy, and Firefox Send is an extension of this philosophy.
With Firefox...
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Is your data secure? Researchers recently discovered a new variation of the Bleichenbacher oracle attack that could threaten TLS 1.3 encryption. Seven researchers discovered that OpenSSL, Amazon s2n, MbedTLS, Apple CoreTLS, Mozilla NSS, WolfSSL, and GnuTLS utilized TLS protocols vulnerable to attacks. Google's new...
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Encryption certainly isn't the sexiest of topics for most people; we want our data to be secure from nefarious sorts and then move on. The challenge with encryption is that depending on the algorithm and type of encryption used, it can consume lots of system resources. This isn't such a big deal on high-end...
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Go home, Australian government, you're drunk. That's the general sentiment among technology firms and privacy advocates around the world, in response to a controversial encryption bill Australia's parliament passed this week. The new legislation forces companies to crack their own encryption when and if it's requested...
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Researchers from Radboud University in the Netherlands have announced a flaw that affects some SSDs that feature hardware-based security; the flaw could allow an attacker to completely bypass disk encryption. Bypassing the encryption would give the hackers full access to the local data without having to know the...
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One aspect of smartphones that largely gets overlooked is security. For many consumers, the technical details surrounding stronger encryption just isn't as interesting as advancements in camera technology and other prominent features. For those who do care to know more, however, Google wrote a blog post describing its...
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Apple has a history of butting heads with government officials over the topic of encryption, and specifically whether the Cupertino outfit should be forced to install a backdoor into its iOS devices primarily for law enforcement to use. It's not just the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that Apple disagrees...
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A pair of macOS security experts have discovered a bug in the latest version of macOS that exposes the contents of files, including ones that are encrypted and are supposed to be safe from prying eyes. The security flaw exists within Apple's 'Quick Look' feature, which caches thumbnails and names of files, even when...
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Apple has confirmed plans to bolt shut a security hole in iPhone devices that law enforcement agencies have been using to gain entrance into locked handsets after seizing them from suspected criminals. As can be imagined, those same agencies are none too pleased with Apple's decision. As far as Apple is concerned...
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The FBI has quoted statistics to the public and Congress that claimed investigators had been locked out of encrypted devices like smartphones nearly 7,800 times. It is now being reported that the actual number is much smaller in the area of between 1,000 and 2,000 incidents. The report claims that over a time frame of...
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Security researchers are warning anyone who uses PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) or S/MIME for email encryption to disable the scheme in their email clients right away, and to uninstall tools that automatically decrypt PGP-encrypted email, due to a security flaw. They've discovered a critical vulnerability dubbed EFAIL that...
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation butted heads with Apple in 2016 and 2017 when the Cupertino company refused to build a backdoor into its iPhone handsets, which would allow law enforcement agencies to access locked devices at the expense of security for millions of iOS users. Fast forward to today and there's a...
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Skype has announced something that some users have wanted for a long time: end-to-end encryption for conversations. Skype Insiders can preview the new encryption feature right now, and it's called Private Conversations. With these conversations, end-to-end encryption for audio calls, text messages, images, audio...
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Here we go again. In 2016, authorities tried to legally compel Apple to unlock an iPhone model that belonged to one of the terrorists in the San Bernardino shooting that left more than a dozen people dead. Apple resisted, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation dropped its lawsuit before the legal matter had a chance...
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Most people have probably never been to Cloudflare's San Francisco office, but those who have been there would have noticed a large wall of lava lamps in the lobby. It is hard to miss—after all, it is not everyday that you come across dozens of lava lamps arranged on a set of shelves, not even in Spencer's where these...
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