Displaying items by tag: Encryption

DEF CON 22, Las Vegas, NV 2014 - Yesterday at DEF CON we had the chance to listen to Christopher Soghoian, Principal Technologist, American Civil Liberties Union talk about the state of the surveillance state and how we can help fight against it. Of course you might think that his talk would be about the use of spy proof technologies, but oddly enough very little of that was talked about except to make it clear that talk of spy-proof technology makes people in Washington nervous.

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In the late-90s the world was shocked when a single collection of code was able to destroy a number of computers through malicious instructions. Named Chernobyl (or CIH and Spacefilter) this virus was able to overwrite data and even the BIOS on systems. It infected around 60 million computers and cuase upwards of $1 billion in damages around the world. Although there were other viruses before this nasty bug hit the scene, CIH was the start of the anti-malware commercial machine. It was not until after CIH that we really saw companies spring from the ground offering protection from future events like CIH.

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There is a lot of information flying around the internet about security this month. Much of this is due to the looming Black Hat and DEF CON conferences that kick off in August. While many of the articles hitting the net are malware centric we are hearing about a few more that punch more than a few holes in the security of some very popular devices. We have seen Blackberry poke at Samsung and their Knox secure phone layer and vice versa. The biggest one that we have seen is the 58 page document published by security expert Jonathan Zdiarski about the iPhone.

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As we have reported on multiple occasions, Microsoft is working very hard to change the way that people see them. There are many reasons that they need to do this and it is a job that is not going to happen overnight. This has been a big part of what new CEO Satya Nadella has been doing since he took the top job at Microsoft. After changing the push for the Xbox One and Windows they are now trying to overcome the stigma dropped on them by Edward Snowden’s revelations of complicity with the NSA.

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A couple of days ago Google started pushing encryption for e-mail. No, we are not talking about the typical https connection required for Gmail. We are talking about actually encryption of email as it moves from server to server using TLS (Transport Layer Security). In simplest terms this method creates connections between servers using a secure tunnel to each other for the purposes of transmitting the message. Once the message has been passed to the destination server the tunnel closes. However, despite the length of time TLS has been around not many companies use.

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Wednesday, 21 May 2014 11:10

Are Privacy services the next cash cow?

In the post Snowden world people are concerned about privacy (rightfully so). The revelation that the companies we have trusted with our personal information and data might be working with government agencies to catalog and track what we do and say is a sobering one. It also raises concerns about how to protect our individual rights moving forward. In many ways the public reaction is similar to what happened when the first widely distributed and harmful viruses hit the streets.

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Monday, 24 March 2014 15:04

Twitter giving up on encrypted messages

Although most things related to the Twitter are public, the company has enabled its users to exchange direct messages that concern only them and whose content is not visible to others.

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Tuesday, 18 March 2014 06:58

Warren Buffett does not like Bitcoin

One of the richest men in the world, big business magnate and the most successful investor of the last century, 83 year old Warren Buffett, spoke to CNBC about the current state of the economy. The conversation touched on the Bitcoin or the great attention that this virtual currency is currently gets.

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The big news today is that Google is preparing to encrypt their search data. They are planning to automatically encrypt not only the connections, but the information sent back to the user. On the surface this would seem to be a big step towards preventing people like the NSA from finding out what we do on the internet and it would be in line with consumer demands for more protection from spying eyes. The question is, will this move actually do anything or is it all just a feel good PR event.

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Since the 18th August of 2008. when the domain bitcoin.org was purchased, and after on January 12th 2009. the first recorded transactions between Satoshi and Hal Finney took place, many have wondered who is Satoshi, since he was listed as the person who created a new virtual currency - Bitcoin.

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