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Security flaws found in 3 state health insurance websites
Federal investigators have discovered major security vulnerabilities in the state health insurance websites for California, Kentucky and Vermont that could allow criminals to access sensitive personal...
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Turns out the U.S. military really is dropping “cyber bombs” on ISIS
There's been an awful lot of talk about “cyber pathogens” and “cyber bombs” lately from the mouths of American officials discussing terrorism, and how we will vanquish it. President Obama mentioned...
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Brazil judge orders WhatsApp blocked for 72 hours, affecting 100 million people
A state judge in the Brazilian state of Sergipe has ordered all mobile phone operators in the country to block Facebook-owned WhatsApp for 72 hours, nationwide. Those five telecom providers put the ban...
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Tales from the ransomware "support line"
An article at News From the Lab (pdf) has 30 pages of copy from the support chat of a ransomware app: desperate pleas from victims for their files back, or, failing that, discounts on the unlock fee....
View ArticleReal people don't (just) need encryption
Earlier this month, UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd idiotically insisted that "real people" don't need encrypted messaging apps; but as foolish a statement as that was, there was a kernel of truth to it....
View ArticleUsing structured encryption to search protected photos in the cloud
In a recent presentation at the Real World Crypto symposium, researchers affiliated with Brown University and a startup called Pixek presented their work developing an app that encrypts photos at the...
View ArticleAmazon doesn't like how Signal circumvents censorship
Signal is an encrypted messaging app for smartphones and desktops that I and a lot of other folks use on a daily basis to communicate with discretion and security. I like it so much that I've moved...
View ArticleAustralia may have just backdoored your mobile phone
A really bad new law in Australia gives police the right to force companies like Apple to 'backdoor', or create encryption circumvention alternatives, in all their products. The issue has been...
View ArticleMongodb's plan to limit breaches: "Field Level Encryption"
Many large-scale data-breaches involve attackers gaining access to administrators' database logins; from there, they can clone the whole database and plunder it at will; but leading nosql database...
View ArticleEFF publishes an indispensable, plain-language guide to "cell-site...
In 2012, the Wall Street Journal first reported on a mysterious cellphone surveillance tool being used by law-enforcement; years later, we learned that the origin of this report was an obsessive...
View ArticleYou have the right to remain encrypted
“You have the right to remain silent.” We’ve heard the Miranda warning countless times on TV, but what good is the right to remain silent if our own cellphones testify against us? Imagine every...
View ArticleAttorney General William Barr wants to backdoor Facebook's WhatsApp
Disgraced Trump administration Attorney General William Barr and his counterparts in the British and Australian governments plan to push Facebook for an encryption backdoor for WhatsApp and other...
View ArticleWoman discovers 'secret' coded message in John Milton poem 'Paradise Lost'
A young Massachusetts woman who recently graduated from Tufts University is convinced that she has found a 'secret' encoded message in “Paradise Lost,” the poem by John Milton. The Boston Globe reports...
View ArticleThe FBI doesn't need Apple to give it a backdoor to encryption, because it...
Once again, the FBI is putting pressure on Apple to help them break into the phone of a mass shooter. And once again, Apple has been largely resistant to the effort. Which is good, because a government...
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CIA secretly owned world's top encryption supplier, read enemy and ally...
For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret. That company was secretly run by the CIA,...
View ArticleSenate GOP introduce bill to end 'warrant-proof' encryption, end-to-end...
A group of Senate Republicans want to force technology companies to comply with “lawful access” to encrypted information, which basically means they're targeting end-to-end encryption again, and...
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The Zodiac Killer's final cryptogram solved
The Zodiac Killer, who murdered at least five people in 1968 and 1969 and claims to have killed many more, sent taunting letters to California newspapers. One of the message consisted of a series of...
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A glimpse at the messy future of Signal, the popular encrypted messaging app
In the wake of the Great Parler Ban of 2021, the popular encrypted messaging app Signal managed to double its users from 20 million to 40 million, practically overnight. This is good news for the...
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Signal's response to Homeland Security's grand jury subpoena for user data is...
Signal, the popular messaging service with end-to-end encryption, stores precious little user data — "Unix timestamps for when each account was created and the date that each account last connected to...
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Wormhole is a file sending site with end-to-end encryption
Wormhole is a file-sending site with end-to-end encryption: drop the file and off it goes, with a link you can share. It's the work of Stanford lecturer Feross Aboukhadijeh, who wanted to replace...
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The ROT8000 cipher, for when ROT13 just isn't enough letters
Rot8000 is the unicode equivalent of Rot13, a formal version of the classic Ceasar Cipher in which messages are encrypted by cycling the characters half-way through the given alphabet. By cycling them...
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Good news: FBI says Apple's end-to-end encryption is "deeply concerning"
It's good to know that Apple's announcement that it would be adding end-to-end encryption for iCloud data (such as device backups, messages, and photos) is deeply troubling to the FBI. That means it...
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This Kenny Loggins Password Generator is your off-ramp from the Danger Zone
What's the best way to create a secure password? Is it diceware? Strings of random numbers algorithmically generated by your Apple Keychain? A combination of special characters and numbers and the name...
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Security cameras with end-to-end encryption not cheap
Philips has new wired indoor/outdoor security cameras outfitted with end-to-end encryption, all part of its new Hue Secure system, with the basic model costing $200, a battery-equipped model $250, and...
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U.K. backs off plan to ban end-to-end encryption
Authorities in Britain have admitted they cannot ban end-to-end encryption without making private communications insecure [Financial Times], an outcome that implicates everything from bonking to...
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Jail time for police analyst who warned pal encrypted chat app was...
Police analyst Natalie Mottram, 25, is off to jail for 3 years and 9 months after tipping off a friend that the encrypted chat app she was using was under police surveillance. Mottram, who worked for...
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Tinker with a virtual Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic...
I wasn't expecting the Virtual Colossus to be implemented in three-dimensional space as a browser-based first-person experience. It's a little nightmarish, even, clacking rhythmically, insistently,...
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Feds can't get into New York City mayor Eric Adams' phone
New York City mayor Eric Adams is facing a wall of charges accusing him of corruption, bribery and other related crimes. But the case has a problem: he has not provided his phone's password, which he...
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Navajo Code Talker John Kinsel Sr dead at 107
Navajo Code Talker John Kinsel Sr., among the last of the famed World War II messengers, is dead at 107. Navajo Nation officials in Window Rock announced Kinsel's death on Saturday. Tribal President...
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FBI warns iPhone and Android users about text messaging security
The threat posed by international hackers, not least state-sponsored ones, has U.S. intelligence agencies finding the good in end-to-end encryption. The FBI is warning smartphone users to stick to it,...
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