Much of what passes for privacy concern strikes me as overwrought reaction to minor problems, and completely dismissive of the other side of the story. There's no better example than public security cameras and police-officer body-mounted cameras.
Security strategies generally concentrate on keeping the bad guys out, but British security outfit ClearSwift has stumbled upon another approach: if the bad guys get in, let them out with something. But scrub it clean on the way out the door.
ClearSwift is the latest home for content-screening technologies first developed in the mid-90s by Content Technologies, which made hay when organisations like law firms that were adopting email figured out it wasn't a good idea for confidential files to fly out of their buildings as attachments.
Edward Snowden–endorsed cloud storage provider SpiderOak has added an additional safeguard to ensure that its users' data doesn't fall into the hands of law enforcement without their knowledge, in the form of a "warrant canary."
The term takes its inspiration from the practice of bringing actual canaries into coal mines that could potentially be filled with invisible noxious gases. If the bird drops off its perch, you know something's wrong.
There's a general trade-off between usability and security. It's an old phenomenon, going back well before the computer age. General Benjamin W. Chidlaw, while commander in chief of the joint service Continental Air Defense Command (part of what eventually became NORAD) in 1954, put it this way:
Simply put, it is possible to have convenience if you want to tolerate insecurity, but if you want security, you must be prepared for inconvenience."
Ever find yourself on a phone call or in a meeting where you realize people are speaking, but you don’t actually know what they’re talking about?
In this case, it’s not them, it’s you.
Wired is out with a major cover story this morning featuring former NSA contractor Edward Snowden clutching a giant American flag. In it, Snowden uncovers knowledge about an NSA program known as MonsterMind, which, if true, could signal a big step in how the U.S. government traces cyberattacks back to their source.
MonsterMind can reportedly analyze incoming malware and block it, according to Wired. But the real power lies in MonsterMind's other capability: It's reportedly capable of hacking back at targets automatically:
It looks like Modzero has helped BlackBerry discover a vulnerability in the way BlackBerry 10 implements file sharing over Wi-Fi.
Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could potentially result in an attacker gaining the ability to read, write, or modify data on the device. In order to exploit this vulnerability, an attacker must connect to an affected BlackBerry smartphone’s file sharing service.
When the Blackphone team arrived at Def Con last week, they knew they were stepping into a lion’s den. In fact, that's exactly why they were there. The first generation Blackphone from SGP Technologies has been shipping for just over a month, and the company’s delegation to DefCon—including Silent Circle Chief Technology Officer Jon Callas and newly hired SGP Technologies Chief Security Officer Dan Ford—was looking to both reach a natural customer base and get help with further locking down the device.
As our connected cars move from syncing our music to driving us home, drivers, passengers, and pedestrians are starting to wonder if they should trust these high-velocity death-mobiles with their lives. It’s a good question.
Routers appear to be as insecure as ever, after hackers successfully compromised five popular wireless models during a contest at the DefCon 22 security conference, reporting 15 new vulnerabilities to affected vendors.
The SOHOpelessly Broken contest pitted hackers against 10 router models from different manufacturers: Linksys EA6500, ASUS RT-AC66U, TRENDnet TEW-812DRU, Netgear Centria WNDR4700, Netgear WNR3500U/WNR3500L, TP-Link TL-WR1043ND, D-Link DIR-865L, Belkin N900 DB and the Open Wireless Router firmware developed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
