The Hacker News | #1 Trusted Cybersecurity News Site — Index Page

What is a backdoor? By definition: "Backdoor is a feature or defect of a computer system that allows surreptitious unauthorized access to data, " either the backdoor is in encryption algorithm, a server or in an implementation, and doesn't matter whether it has previously been used or not. Yesterday, we published a story based on findings reported by security researcher Tobias Boelter that suggests WhatsApp has a backdoor that "could allow" an attacker, and of course the company itself, to intercept your encrypted communication. The story involving the world's largest secure messaging platform that has over a billion users worldwide went viral in few hours, attracting reactions from security experts, WhatsApp team, and Open Whisper Systems, who partnered with Facebook to implement end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp. Note: I would request readers to read complete article before reaching out for a conclusion. And also, suggestions and opinions are

Important Update — Most Security Experts argued, " It's not a backdoor, rather it's a feature ," but none of them denied the fact that, if required, WhatsApp or a hacker can intercept your end-to-end encrypted chats. Read detailed explanation on arguments in my latest article. Most people believe that end-to-end encryption is the ultimate way to protect your secret communication from snooping, and it does, but it can be intercepted if not implemented correctly. After introducing " end-to-end encryption by default " last year, WhatsApp has become the world's largest secure messaging platform with over a billion users worldwide. But if you think your conversations are completely secure in a way that no one, not even Facebook, the company that owned WhatsApp, can intercept your messages then you are highly mistaken, just like most of us and it's not a new concept. Here's the kick: End-to-end encrypted messaging service, such as WhatsApp and Te

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

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has been appointed as a cyber security advisor for the President-elect Donald Trump, but it appears that he never actually checked the security defenses of his own company's website. Giuliani is going to head a new Cybersecurity Working group for the President-elect, and "will be sharing his expertise and insight as a trusted friend concerning private sector cyber security problems and emerging solutions developing in the private sector," the Trump's Transition Team announced Thursday. Trump administration has appointed Giuliani after citing his 16 years of experience "providing security solutions in the private sector," but the news met online criticism with many users on Twitter asking: 'What does the former New York mayor know about cyber security?' As the news broke, online users started scanning his website " www.giulianisecurity.com " and found that the site for Giuliani Sec

The company that sells digital forensics and mobile hacking tools to others has itself been hacked. Israeli firm Cellebrite , the popular company that provides digital forensics tools and software to help law enforcement access mobile phones in investigations, has had 900 GB of its data stolen by an unknown hacker. But the hacker has not yet publicly released anything from the stolen data archive, which includes its customer information, user databases, and a massive amount of technical data regarding its hacking tools and products. Instead, attackers are looking for possible opportunities to sell the access to Cellebrite system and data on a few selected IRC chat rooms, the hacker told Joseph Cox, contributor at Motherboard , who was contacted by the hacker and received a copy of the stolen data. Meanwhile, Cellebrite also admitted that it recently experienced "unauthorized access to an external web server," and said that it is "conducting an investigation

Just like most of you, I too really hate filling out web forms, especially on mobile devices. To help make this whole process faster, Google Chrome and other major browsers offer "Autofill" feature that automatically fills out web form based on data you have previously entered in similar fields. However, it turns out that an attacker can use this autofill feature against you and trick you into spilling your private information to hackers or malicious third parties. Finnish web developer and whitehat hacker Viljami Kuosmanen published a demo on GitHub that shows how an attacker could take advantage of the autofill feature provided by most browsers, plugins, and tools such as Password Managers. Although, this trick was first discovered by Ricardo Martin Rodriguez , Security Analyst at ElevenPaths, in the year 2013, but it seems Google haven't done anything to address weakness in Autofill feature. The proof-of-concept demo website consists of a simple online

Recent data breaches have taught us something very important — online users are spectacularly bad at choosing their strong passwords. Today majority of online users are vulnerable to cyber attacks, not because they are not using any best antivirus or other security measures, but because they are using weak passwords that are easy to remember and reuse same passwords on multiple accounts and reusable passwords to secure their online accounts. Ideally, your password should be at least 16 characters long and should contain a combination of digits, symbols, uppercase letters and lowercase letters. Most of us know about this good password practice, but we just ignore it because it is really painful for us to memorize complex password strings for different accounts. Here comes the need of a Password Manager OR  Password Management Software . Password Manager can significantly reduce your password memorizing problem, along with the cure for your bad habit of setting weak password