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It is very clear that when we talk about Intelligence and Surveillance, the first name comes to our mind is the U.S National Security Agency (NSA) and, the second is Gen. Keith Alexander , the Director of NSA..GEEK behind the massive surveillance Programs. Many documents revealed by the former NSA's contractor Edward Snowden exposed the extend level of worldwide spying scandals projected by U.S Government in the supervision of Gen. Keith Alexander. The Obama Administration has confirmed that they are replacing Gen. Keith Alexander and giving the command of NSA in the hand of a military officer, rather than a civilian who is experienced in Cryptography and Electronic Eavesdropping . Michael S. Rogers , presently the U.S Navy's Cyber Security Chief, will be the new Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and head of the US military cyber command. He has been involved in cyberdefense and offense policy issues as head of the Fleet Cyber Command. Neither Ro

Again a top secret revelation from the Snowden's Desk! A new document retrieved by the whistleblower Edward Snowden shows that the Canadian spy agency is tracking airline travelers even days after they left the terminal, just by capturing their device identification from the free Wi-Fi service at a major Canadian airport. CBC News reported that the US Intelligence agency worked with its counterpart Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) in Canada, and slurped information from the free Internet hotspots to track anyone who passed through the airport terminal, and could be tracked throughout the country by cross-referencing it with the intercepted information from Wifi at cafes, libraries and other public places, although it is not clear that they were tracking only the users who logged-in to the WiFi services or not. But It is also possible that one can capture the MAC addresses of all the available devices within the range of a Wi-Fi device (using some special tools

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

Downfall in the monopoly of propriety software like Microsoft and Apple accelerated after the Snowden revelations of NSA spying, where technology giants like Microsoft, Google, Apple are sharing a bed with the NSA. The UK government is again planning to ditch Microsoft for Open Source and Free alternatives. Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude announced yesterday that they are move away from Microsoft Office, towards open source softwares like  OpenOffice & LibreOffice suites, in an effort to drive down costs and foster greater innovation. UK has spent about £200 million in the last three years for Microsoft's ubiquitous software suite, but now this migration will save large revenue of the kingdom, according to The Guardian . The cabinet Office minister said, " We know the best technology and digital ideas often come from small businesses, but too often in the past they were excluded from government work. In the civil service there was a sense that if you hired a

Now there is really great news for all the supporters of Former National Security Agency ( NSA ) contractor Edward Snowden , as he is nominated for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize by two Norwegian lawmakers. Snorre Valen and Baard Vegar Solhjell , parliamentarians from Norway's Socialist Left Party said, " He has contributed to revealing the extreme level of surveillance by nations against other nations and of citizens ," Edward Snowden revealed various widely extended NSA spying projects and responsible for handing over the material from one of the world's most secretive organizations the NSA. He faces charges of theft and espionage and is in Russia on temporary asylum. " Snowden contributed to people knowing about what has happened and spurring public debate " on trust in government, which he said was " a fundamental requirement for peace ". Snorre Valen also added that, " There's no doubt that the actions of Edward Snowden may have damaged the security interes

Are you fond of playing games on your Smartphone like Angry Birds or Subway Surfer ?? You should now stop wasting your time, because NSA is utilizing your gaming energy in the best possible way. According to the latest documents leaked by former U.S. Government contractor Edward Snowden , Some of the world's most popular Smartphone applications are telling British (GCHQ) and American intelligence agencies ( NSA ) everything about you. NSA is tapping communication across the Internet of all " leaky " apps ( Unencrypted app, without SSL connection ) to peek into the tremendous amounts of very personal data, including your age, location, sex and even sexual preferences. This is really unacceptable! The Guardian claims that the NSA and its UK counterpart GCHQ have been developing capabilities to take advantage of these 'leaky' apps, collecting most sensitive information such as sexual orientation and " even sends specific sexual preferences such a

Privacy is "workings of your mind". We share our personal moments captured in images, credit card details, thoughts that are personal or professional with a person or a certain group at different instances of time and want it to be safe and secure. We use an electronic gadget to share something trusting blindly the service provider company which may have to obey some unveiled laws of that country to which it belong and our data might be at risk. The surveillance programs can force these companies to store the information and share it with the Government and can even sniff all the data passing through the channels i.e. Wire or Air, and hence compromise our privacy. Though surveillance programs were in existence before Snowden's leaks, but after the revelation of NSA's surveillance programs, we need to think twice when it comes to our privacy. 28% of all Internet users, i.e. 415 Million people say that they use some sort of privacy tool for their Internet browsing sessio

After the exposure of various surveillance programs, including PRISM, XKeyscore, MUSCULAR, DROPOUTJEEP in recent revelation, NSA has come up as the only ' Government that Actually Listen '. Another day and here comes another revelation - According to the The Guardian , National Security Agency (NSA) has collected almost 200 million text messages per day from across the globe and is using them to extract data including location, contact networks and even credit card details. The two names that come in the limelight are,  DISHFIRE  that collects " pretty much everything it can "and PREFER  that conducted automated analysis of the untargeted communications. The program was designed to collect the text messages automatically from various service providers, to pull the details of financial transactions, roaming charges, delayed flights, missed calls and scheduled alerts, address book contacts, credit cards, bank accounts and visited locations. Now If I am not wrong the word ' Untarge

Mobile security may not be secure as you think. In September we have reported that the National Security Agency has the ability to access data on iOS, Android and even BlackBerry devices. Everyday a new revelation of NSA Surveillance Program makes Security and Privacy a major concern for all of us. Today we feel the need of highly secured Networks and Encrypted Devices to safeguard our privacy from Cyber Criminals as well as Government. Phil Zimmerman , Inventor of the email encryption tool PGP and Silent Circle's Co-founder (company specializes in mobile privacy and peer-to-peer encryption ) has announced ' BLACKPHONE ', a Smartphone that's been designed to enable secure, encrypted communications, private browsing and secure file-sharing. The company will launch BLACKPHONE in the ' Mobile World Congress ', Spain next month, offers ' PrivatOS ', an Android based operating system which will allow users to make and receive secure phone calls, exchange secure te

After the revelations from NSA internal documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the world knows the NSA as the Real Techie Gangster of this 21st Century, with the ability to brutally infiltrate every kind of electronic device, the Internet, and global communications.  " It is becoming increasingly difficult to trust the privacy properties of software and services we rely on to use the Internet. Governments, companies, groups and individuals may be surveilling us without our knowledge. " The Inventor of JavaScript & current CTO of Mozilla, Mr. Brendan Eich said in a blog post NSA is not just focused on high-tech exploits, but also specialize in inserting secret backdoor to legitimate products. Its Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit works with the CIA and FBI to intercept shipments of hardware to insert spyware into the devices. This way NSA is able to keep an eye on all levels of our digital lives, from computing centers to individual computers, and from laptops to mobi

Now that we have enough details about how the NSA's Surveillance program, running for a long time against almost each country of this planet.  Hundreds of top-secret NSA documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden already exposed that Spying projects like PRISM and MUSCULAR are tapping directly into Google and Yahoo internal networks to access our Emails. NSA's tactics are even capable to defeat the SSL encryption, so unsecured email can easily be monitored and even altered as it travels through the Internet. One major point on which all of us are worrying is about the privacy of communication among each other and If you're looking for a little personal privacy in your communications you will need to encrypt your messages. To avoid privacy breaches; rather I should say to make it more difficult for the NSA or British GCHQ surveillance program to read our communication, we should use PGP encryption (Pretty Good Privacy). Why we should Encrypt ou

Image Credit: The guardian  If I say that  NSA (National Security Agency) will never stop spying on us then it won't be wrong. After the exposure of the large number of surveillance scandals including PRISM, DROPOUTJEEP, XKeyscore and many many more which are now publicly known as well as unknown, Will NSA ever stop Privacy  breach? Obviously ' NO' . That I can predict from another Snowden leak published by the Washington Post news website recently i.e. US National Security Agency (NSA) is trying to develop a futuristic super computer called ' Quantum computer'  that could be capable of breaking almost every kind of encryption on the computer used to protect banks, medical, business including top-secret information held by government around the world. The Project is specified as " Penetrating Hard Targets " in the document and is a part of $79.7 million research program. The Washington Post says that the research is being done at the University of Maryland

I am sure that you all have been familiar with the above shown annoying Window Operating System error messages that many times pop ups on your screen while working on the system in case of process failure i.e. " The system has recovered from a serious error. A log of this error has been created. Please tell Microsoft about this problem " The message that prompts ask the user to report the problem to Microsoft followed by the options to Send an error report or Not send . Most of the time Gentle users like you and me used to submit these error reports to aware the Microsoft about the problem. But What if these crash reports can be abused to identify the vulnerabilities of your system for Spying? NSA is intercepting wide range of Internet Traffic including many Encrypted connections and naturally unencrypted also and surprisingly, by default Microsoft encrypts its reports, but the messages are transmitted unencrypted or over standard HTTP connections to watson.microsoft.com .

In the era of Smartphones, Apple's iPhone is the most popular device that exists, which itself gives the reason to target it. According to leaked documents shared by Security researcher  Jacob Appelbaum , a secret NSA program code named DROPOUTJEEP has nearly total access to the Apple's iPhones, which uses " modular mission applications to provide specific SIGINT functionality. " While giving the presentation at the Chaos Communications Congress (30C3) in Hamburg, Germany on Monday, Appelbaum revealed that NSA reportedly sniffing out every last bit of data from your iPhone. DROPOUTJEEP is a software implant for the Apple iPhone that utilizes modular mission applications to provide specific SIGINT functionality. This functionality includes the ability to remotely push/pull files from the device. SMS retrieval, contact list retrieval, voicemail, geolocation, hot mic, camera capture, cell tower location, etc. Command, control and data exfiltration can occur over SMS messaging or a GPRS

According to media reports in September, documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden have confirmed the existence of backdoor in some technologies RSA . Last Friday, The Reuters News Agency accused the Security firm RSA for taking a $10 million ' bribe ' from the National Security Agency ( NSA ) in order promote a flawed encryption by including it in its BSAFE product to facilitate NSA spying . Today In a blog post , RSA has categorically denied accusation about any secret partnership with the National Security Agency to insert backdoor. " Recent press coverage has asserted that RSA entered into a "secret contract" with the NSA to incorporate a known flawed random number generator into its BSAFE encryption libraries. We categorically deny this allegation. " " We have never entered into any contract or engaged in any project with the intention of weakening RSA's products " the company said. The company gave the following reasons for choosing and promoting

If you own a world-renowned Security Product or a Service, National Security Agency (NSA) is ready to pay you 10 Million or more bribe for keeping intentional backdoor for them. According to an exclusive report published by Reuters , there is a secret deal between the NSA and respected encryption company RSA to implement a flawed security standard as the default protocol in its products. Earlier Edward Snowden leaks had revealed that the NSA created a flawed random number generation system (Dual_EC_DRBG), Dual Elliptic Curve , which RSA used in its Bsafe security tool and now Snowden has revealed that RSA received $10 million from NSA for keeping Encryption Weak. So, anyone who knows the right numbers used in Random number generator program, can decipher the resulting cryptotext easily. Recommending bad cryptographic standard is one thing, but accepting 10 million to deliberately implement is something very shameful for a respected Security company. The new revelation is impor

If you own Apple's MacBook, you should cover up it's webcam, because there's a possibility someone could be watching you. Like most webcams, the MacBook also has a tiny green light lets you know that the webcam is active, but it's possible for malware to disable this important privacy feature on older Mac computers ( models released before 2008 ). Matthew Brocker and Stephen Checkoway , students from Johns Hopkins University created a proof-of-concept app called " iSeeYou " that confirmed that MacBook iSight webcams can spy on their users without the warning light being activated. A young man recently pleaded guilty in court to extortion after he performed a remote hack on Miss Teen USA's webcam to secretly collect nude photos. It was revealed through court papers that the FBI has the ability to do the same thing with a variety of current laptops including Apple products. To make it possible, they created a modified version of the iSight firmware and t