The much anticipated official government review into GCHQ bulk data collection has found that such activity is fine, and should not be considered mass surveillance. It also acknowledged that some legislative change is needed.
From April 1, Telstra customers will be able to access metadata that the telco is keeping on them for a fee that is expected to begin at AU$25.
"We believe that if the police can ask for information relating to you, you should be able to as well," Telstra said in its announcement.
By using private email, Hillary Clinton put her data at risk every time she clicked on a link or downloaded an attachment as secretary of state. But the American public, and even Clinton herself, will probably never know if hackers were able to monitor her communication from 2009 to 2013, the four years she served as the most powerful U.S. diplomat.
Customs are seeking the power to require people to disclose passwords to their electronic devices when entering New Zealand.
It said the power would be useful in helping detect objectionable material and evidence of other offending, such as drugs offences, as well as to verify people's travel plans.
Last week, a storm erupted on the net after it became widely known that Superfish – software that was being pre-installed on Lenovo PCs – could compromise users’ security and privacy.
The problem with Superfish was not just that it injected money-making ads into websites, but that it used a self-signed root certificate to intercept encrypted HTTPS traffic for every website users visited – replacing legitimate site certificates with its own.
One of the most shocking parts of the recently discovered spying network Equation Group is its mysterious module designed to reprogram or reflash a computer’s firmware with malicious code. The Kaspersky researchers who uncovered this said its ability to subvert hard drive firmware—the guts of any computer—“surpasses anything else” they had ever seen.
L33tdawg: On a somewhat related note, Markus Vervier will be talking about an attack that enables active cloning of mobile identities at #HITB2015AMS at the end of May...
At the Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection held at Stanford University, President Obama pushed for more public-private collaboration and information sharing to allegedly prevent hacks such as the breaches suffered by Home Depot, Target and Anthem. While that doesn’t sound bad, actions such as outlawing encryption – as if only terrorist or pedophiles use it – and providing law enforcement with backdoors into software sounds terrible. Any backdoors left open will also be exploited by cyber bad guys. An unnamed technology executive called it “a stupid approach.”
App-based taxi firm Uber is once again attracting the wrong type of headlines after exposing internal data on user accounts and phone numbers through its lost and found database.
According to Motherboard, the internal database was accessible online for around 5 hours on Monday before being replaced with a 404 error message.
Pro tip for any would-be online drug kingpins: Don’t post vacation pictures on Facebook.
Ross Ulbricht was convicted in a Manhattan federal court last week for his role operating the Silk Road online marketplace. He could serve 30 years or more behind bars.
