Privacy

Email, perhaps still the most widely used Internet application, has about the same level of security as a postcard. But unlike postcards, it's widely depended on by businesses.

It wasn't designed with security in mind. It was just designed to work. But following disclosures of large-scale spying by the U.S. as well as other nations over the last several years, a variety of companies, including Wickr and Silent Circle, see commercial opportunities in making encrypted messaging products that are easier to use.

Professor Jean-Jacques Quisquater, a Belgian cryptographer whose work is said to have informed card payment systems worldwide, has reportedly become the victim of a spear-phishing attack by the NSA and/or GCHQ.

Belgium's De Standaaard reports that Professor Quisquater clicked on a fake LinkedIn invitation that infected his computer with something even nastier than the endless claims of industry leadership spouted by those most active on that network. The malware is said to have allowed tracking of the Professor's work, including consultancy for various firms.

A team of researchers has developed an Android app to help people better understand when their location is being accessed, something that happens more often than people think.

"All apps that access location need to request permission from the Android platform," Janne Lindqvist [cq], who led the research project, said via email. "The problem is that people don't pay attention to these default disclosures."

A top secret document retrieved by U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden and obtained by CBC News shows that Canada's electronic spy agency used information from the free internet service at a major Canadian airport to track the wireless devices of thousands of ordinary airline passengers for days after they left the terminal.

After reviewing the document, one of Canada's foremost authorities on cyber-security says the clandestine operation by the Communications Security Establishment Canada ( CSEC) was almost certainly illegal.

The National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program received a highly charged constitutional challenge on Wednesday. This first-of-its-kind challenge comes via a motion filed by attorneys for Jamshid Muhtorov, an Uzbek refugee, Colorado resident, and accused terrorist, whose e-mail and possibly other communications were secretly gathered by the US government.

Muhtorov's motion not only sets up a likely court test of the constitutionality of government eavesdropping, but it could also be a signal of many more cases to come.

Critics of the U.S. National Security Agency’s U.S. telephone records program are missing the point when they say the agency can’t point to one case where the collection was critical to preventing terrorism, two people formerly involved with the program said.

The phone records collection program may not be the only tool that stops terrorist plots, but it’s an important tool that helps lead investigators to terrorists, said Steven Bradbury, who was head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice under former U.S. President George W. Bush.

Coca-Cola has apologised for compromising thousands of people by allowing unencrypted company laptops to be stolen from its headquarters in Atlanta.

The company confirmed in a statement sent to The INQUIRER that the theft might have compromised the personal information of around 74,000 individuals.

It appears as if the New York Times, in its latest publication of leaked NSA documents, failed to properly redact the PDF it uploaded, exposing the name of the NSA agent who composed the presentation as well as the name of a targeted network.

We're all in this together. The authorities are peeking in on our progress thought life, and we accept it as part of our security.

But they don't want us to feel left out. So now they're wondering whether they might be able to use our security for, you know, everyone's. An imaginative proposal emerging from San Jose, Calif., City Councilman San Liccardo asks for citizens to donate their own home security systems for the greater good.

Do you use the free email client Thunderbird? Do you also use Tor? If so, then there's been a security flaw awaiting a fix from Mozilla for over two years; now the bug has been publicly disclosed.Thunderbird security bug Mike Cardwell, a developer, IT consultant, sysadmin and security researcher in the UK, informed the Tor-talk mailing list about a security issue in the Thunderbird app.