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US, Germany agree not to spy on industry or government

posted onAugust 16, 2013
by l33tdawg

In the wake of the Snowden leaks, the US has been trying to patch up its relationship with its long running ally Germany.

The German government said it was furious when it discovered US spooks were spying on its government.

Now it seems that the US has verbally committed to enter into a no-spying agreement with Germany. But this will just block government and industrial espionage, so presumably citizens are fair game. According to IT World, the verbal commitment was given in talks with the German Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND).

Don't use US websites if you don't want to be spied on, German minister says

posted onJuly 4, 2013
by l33tdawg

L33tdawg: Kind of easier said than done ...

The fallout from the recent revelations that the United States conducts large scale electronic surveillance continues, with German federal minister of the interior, Hans-Peter Friedrich, saying people who fear being spied upon should not use US websites such as Google and Facebook.

Speaking to the Die Welt, Friedrich said: "If you worry about your communications being intercepted in any way, don't use services that go through American servers."

Der Spiegel says US bugged EU offices in Washington

posted onJuly 1, 2013
by l33tdawg

Today, German magazine Der Spiegel reported that it got a look at slides detailing the systematic bugging of European Union offices in the US. The news from the paper cited top-secret documents “that Spiegel has in part seen,” which were dated from 2010 and were recently obtained by Edward Snowden. The paper did not publish any of the documents it claims to have reviewed.

Germany to field 130 agents against cyber spies, faces staff shortage

posted onMarch 26, 2013
by l33tdawg

The German Federal Intelligence Agency (BND) has formed a new unit to defend federal bodies and national industry from online espionage. But it finds it difficult to fill all 130 new positions.

BND chief Gerhard Schindler has briefed a small number of MPs about the plan last week and has received an approval, reports the magazine Der Spiegel.

Boffins receive quantum key from moving plane

posted onSeptember 17, 2012
by l33tdawg

A group of German researchers has taken a step closer to achieving quantum key distribution with satellites, receiving quantum keys transmitted by a moving airplane.

The experiment is described in this paper (PDF) presented to the QCrypt conference in Singapore last week.

Led by Sebastian Nauerth at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the researchers achieved a stable connection over 20 Km for ten minutes, and in that time achieved a key rate of 145 bits/s. While that’s far too slow for a data channel, this only refers to the rate at which the keys are transmitted.

Trojan "made in Germany" spies in Bahrain

posted onJuly 26, 2012
by l33tdawg

Citizenlab has released a detailed analysis of the activities of a trojan in which the experts conclude that the malware is most likely closely related to FinFisher, a commercial spyware tool developed by a company called Gamma International. The trojan targeted political activists in Bahrain and included sender names such as that of an Al Jazeera correspondent and subject lines like "Torture reports on Rabil Najaab".