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Millions of embedded devices, including home routers, modems, IP cameras, VoIP phones, are shareing the same hard-coded SSH (Secure Shell) cryptographic keys or HTTPS (HTTP Secure) server certificates that expose them to various types of malicious attacks. A new analysis by IT security consultancy SEC Consult shows that the lazy manufacturers of the Internet of Things (IoTs) and Home Routers are reusing the same set of hard-coded cryptographic keys, leaving devices open to Hijacking. In simple words, this means that if you are able to access one device remotely, you can possibly log into hundreds of thousands of other devices – including the devices from different manufacturers. Re-Using Same Encryption Keys In its survey of IoT devices , the company studied 4,000 embedded devices from 70 different hardware vendors, ranging from simple home routers to Internet gateway servers, and discovered that… …over 580 unique private cryptographic keys for SSH and HTTPS a

The terrorist groups are encouraging its followers to use Telegram to make their propaganda invisible from law enforcement, but some security experts believe that Telegram may not be as secure as jihadi advocates may like to believe. Telegram is an end-to-end encrypted messaging service that has been adopted by a lot more people than ISIS — as of last year, the company claimed more than 50 Million Telegram users sending 1 Billion messages per day. Terrorists love Telegram because it not only provides an encrypted Secret Chat feature that lets its users broadcast messages to unlimited subscribers but also offers self-destructing message allowing users to set their messages to self-destruct itself after a certain period. Is Telegram Really Secure? In a blog post published Wednesday, the security researcher known as " the Grugq " pointed out several issues with Telegram that might obstruct terrorists from using it.  Here's the list of issues with

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo

The terrorist groups affiliated with the Islamic State have an extensive presence not only on social media accounts but also on the popular end-to-end encrypted messaging app Telegram through which they communicate with their followers and spread terror propaganda materials. Telegram has always been terrorist's favorite, but ISIS had been using the app since October, when Telegram introduced an end-to-end encrypted Secret Chat feature that lets users broadcast messages to an unlimited number of subscribers. Moreover, Telegram also provides self-destructing message feature that allows users to set their messages to self-destruct itself after a certain period of time. But, the Good News is: The nonprofit organization that runs Telegram has blocked around 78 ISIS-affiliated channels that the terrorists used to: Communicate with their members Spread propaganda Recruit foreign supporters Plan operations Radicalize young people "We were disturbed to learn that Telegram

With 129 people killed in Paris terror attacks and dozens critically wounded, the law enforcement and intelligence officials are reviving their efforts to force companies to put some backdoors in encryption so that they can access your information. How did the Intelligence agencies fail to Intercept terrorist plans of these attacks? In the wake of the Paris terror attacks, Former CIA Director Michael Morell argued on TV that encrypted communication services may have aided the planning and plotting of the Paris attacks, blaming Edward Snowden and US companies for the attacks. Also Read:  NO, We Can't Blame Edward Snowden and Encryption for Terror Attacks With more Surveillance and Encryption backdoor, Is it possible that Friday's attacks could have been stopped before they began? Morell suggested that recalcitrant US companies should be forced to install government backdoors in their software and hand over encryption keys to the government, thinking that Encryption Backd

Terrorist groups are increasingly using high-grade, advanced end-to-end encryption technologies so that no law enforcement can catch them. The deadliest terror attacks in Paris that killed 129 people were the latest example of it. How did the Terrorists Communicate and Organize the Plot? The Paris terrorists almost certainly used difficult-to-crack encryption technologies to organize the plot – locking law enforcement out, FBI Director James B. Comey told Congress Wednesday. Also Read:   ISIS Calls Anonymous "IDIOTS" in response to their "Total war" Cyber Threat . The ISIS mastermind behind the Friday's Paris massacre is identified to be Abdelhamid Abaaoud , who is based in Syria. So to transmit his plans to the suicide bombers and gunmen, he would have made use of secure communication to keep law enforcement out. FBI's Comey believes ISIS is making use of popular social media platforms to reach out to potential recruits and smartphone messaging app

Imagine the internet that would offer you to communicate privately with anyone else without censorship, safe from the prying eyes of surveillance authorities…. … Decentralized, Encrypted, Peer-to-Peer Supported and especially a non-IP Address based Internet. Yeah, a New Private Internet that would be harder to get Hacked. This Internet is a dream of all Internet users today and, of course, Kim Dotcom – the Famous Internet entrepreneur who introduced legendary Megaupload and MEGA file sharing services to the World. Kim Dotcom announced plans to start his very own private internet at the beginning of this year and has now revealed more details about MegaNet — a decentralized, non-IP based network that would share data via " Blockchains ," the technology behind Bitcoins. On Thursday, Dotcom remotely addressed a conference in Sydney, Australia, where he explained how MegaNet will utilize the power of mobile phones and laptops to operate. How will M

Hacking Team, the infamous Italy-based spyware company that had more than 400 GB of its confidential information stolen earlier this year, has resumed its operations and started pitching new hacking tools to help US law enforcement gets around their encryption issues . Yes, Hacking Team is back with a new set of Encryption Cracking Tools for government agencies as well as other customers to break encrypted communications. The announcement came in an email pitch sent to existing and potential new customers on October 19 when Hacking Team CEO David Vincenzetti confirmed that Hacking Team is now "finalizing [its] brand new and totally unprecedented cyber investigation solutions." The e-mail is not made public, but Motherboard has been able to obtain a copy of it that states: "Most [government agencies] in the United States and abroad will become 'blind,' they will 'go dark,' they will simply be unable to fight vicious phenomena such as te

The Tor Project has officially launched the first beta version of Tor Messenger, an open source and Encrypted instant messaging client that works on top of the Tor network. Tor Messenger is designed by keeping both simplicity and privacy in mind. The team claimed that their app encrypts the content of instant messages as well as makes it very difficult for snoopers and eavesdroppers to identify the user sending them. Tor Messenger integrates the " Off-the-Record " (OTR) to encrypt messages and then routes them over Tor network in the same manner as the Tor Browser does for the web. The app is built on Mozilla's instant messaging client Instantbird and works a lot like Adium, another popular instant messaging client. Here's How to Install Tor Messenger in your PC: Tor Messenger can be run on versions of Windows, Mac, or Linux PC. To do so, you simply have to follow these simple steps: Download Tor from here Drag the app to your Application

Your Headache is not my Problem. If your computer gets hacked and infected with malware that holds your data for ransom, just pay off the criminals to see your valuable data again and do not expect the FBI to save them – it's what the FBI is advising concerning ransomware . Ransomware is a sophisticated malicious software that lets hacker encrypts all the contents of a victim's hard drive or/and server and demands ransom (typically in Bitcoins) for the decrypt key. Also Read:   Free Ransomware Decryption and Malware Removal ToolKit Federal agencies and the FBI have long urged people not to pay ransom to the criminals, as there is no guarantee that they will even receive an unlock key. The FBI – 'Better Pay up the Ransom' However, while speaking at the 2015 Cyber Security Summit on Wednesday, Assistant Special Agent Joseph Bonavolonta , who oversees the FBI's Boston office, advised the companies infected with ransomware to better pay up th

US Federal Official: Unlock that iPhone for me? Apple: Sorry, Nobody can do this! Neither we, nor you. Yes, in a similar manner, Apple told a U.S. federal judge that it is " IMPOSSIBLE " to access data stored on a locked iPhone running iOS 8 or later iOS operating system. In short, Apple has reminded everyone that the tech giant can not, and will not, break its users' encryption if the government official asks it to. Apple revealed this in a court filing late Monday in response to the U.S. federal magistrate judge, who is being requested by the Justice Department to force the company to help authorities extract data from a seized iPhone. However, Apple says that it has the " technical ability " to help federal enforcement unlock older iOS devices – and almost 10 percent of iOS devices are running older versions of the operating system. In the brief filed Monday, Apple said : "In most cases now and in the future, the government's requested order would

Yes, Google wants you to keep your bits and bytes as safe as possible through encryption. With the launch of Android 5.0 Lollipop last year, Google wanted to make full disk Encryption mandatory , but unfortunately, the idea did not go too well. However, Google thinks the idea will go right this time, and it will try again to require full-disk encryption by default for devices that release with the newest Android 6.0 Marshmallow and higher versions. Google has published the new version of the Android Compatibility Definition Document ( PDF ), mandating Android encryption with a couple of exceptions in Android 6.0 Marshmallow. The document reads: "For device implementations supporting full-disk encryption and with Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) crypto performance above 50MiB/sec, the full-disk encryption MUST be enabled by default at the time the user has completed the out-of-box setup experience." New smartphones and tablets that ship with Androi

Yes, it seems like the mystery has been solved. We are aware of the United States National Security Agency (NSA) powers to break almost unbreakable encryption used on the Internet and intercept nearly Trillions of Internet connections – thanks to the revelations made by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. However, what we are not aware of is exactly how did the NSA apparently intercept VPN connections, and decrypt SSH and HTTPS, allowing the agency to read hundreds of Millions of personal, private emails from persons around the globe. Also Read:  Top Best Password Managers . Now, computer scientists Alex Halderman and Nadia Heninger have presented a paper at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security that advances the most plausible theory as to how the NSA broke some of the most widespread encryption used on the Internet. According to the paper, the NSA has exploited common implementations of the Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm – a common

After the revelations that Whistleblower Edward Snowden made about the United States National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. citizens are in need of more transparent digital security. The Citizens of the United States have appealed to the Obama Administration through a campaign for rejecting any policy, mandate or law that stands against their security in the cyberspace and adopt strong encryption for them. The Washington Post reported that the Obama Administration has agreed partially on the encrypted communications issue. "The administration has decided not to seek a legislative remedy now, but it makes sense to continue the conversations with industry," James B. Comey , FBI Director, said at a Senate hearing Thursday of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. This decision is considered as the Status Quo. It is like a win-win situation to decrease the tension because of the Petition and regard the law enforcement agencies as well a

SHA-1 – one of the Internet's widely adopted cryptographic hash function – is Just about to Die. Yes, the cost and time required to break the SHA1 algorithm have fallen much faster than previously expected. According to a team of researchers, SHA-1 is so weak that it may be broken and compromised by hackers in the next three months. The SHA-1 algorithm was designed in 1995 by the National Security Agency (NSA) as a part of the Digital Signature Algorithm. Like other hash functions, SHA-1 converts any input message to a long string of numbers and letters that serve as a cryptographic fingerprint for that message. Like fingerprints, the resulting hashes are useful as long as they are unique. If two different message inputs generate the same hash (also known as a collision ), it can open doors for real-world hackers to break into the security of banking transactions, software downloads, or any website communication. Collision Attacks on SHA-1 Researchers

Almost every day or every second day, When I come across various announcements in Newspaper, TV News Channels, and Press releases that... ...Indian Government and related Policy-making organizations are going to set up their so-called " CyberSecurity Task Forces " or drafted a " National Cyber Security Policies ," with an aim to boost cyber security in India… The first thing that comes to my mind is: Why Doesn't my Government Understand How Encryption and Online Cyber Security Works? Yes, My Government really have no idea, How Encryption relates to users' Privacy. And… Narendra Modi's Government has done it again! With the release of the draft National Encryption Policy , the government wants access to all your messages whether sent over online email services like Gmail or messaging services like WhatsApp, Viber, or Messenger. The National Encryption Policy ( before addendum ) required: Access to your Private Data To stor