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Hacker Breaks Into French Government's New Secure Messaging App

Hacker Breaks Into French Government's New Secure Messaging App
Apr 19, 2019
A white-hat hacker found a way to get into the French government's newly launched, secure encrypted messaging app that otherwise can only be accessed by officials and politicians with email accounts associated with the government identities. Dubbed " Tchap ," the end-to-end encrypted, open source messaging app has been created by the French government with an aim to keep their officials, parliamentarians and ministers data on servers inside the country over concerns that foreign agencies could use other services to spy on their communications. The Tchap app is built using the Riot client, an open source instant messaging software that implements self-hostable Matrix protocol for end-to-end encrypted communication. Yes, it's the same " Riot and Matrix " that was in the news earlier this week after an unknown hacker breaks into its servers and successfully stole unencrypted private messages, password hashes, access tokens, and GPG keys the project ma

France could Fine Apple $1 Million for each iPhone it Refuses to Unlock

France could Fine Apple $1 Million for each iPhone it Refuses to Unlock
Mar 02, 2016
The United States is not the only one where Apple is battling with the federal authorities over iPhone encryption. Apple could face $1 Million in Fine each time the company refused to unlock an iPhone in France. Despite its victory in a New York court yesterday, Apple may not be so successful elsewhere in fighting against federal authorities over iPhone encryption battle. Yann Galut, a member of France's Socialist Party, has submitted an amendment to a bill aimed at strengthening the French government's ability to fight against terrorism — by arguing that… Apple should pay a Million Euro ( $1.08 Million ) fine for every iPhone Apple refuses to unlock when asked to by law enforcement, The Local reported . The same €1 Million penalty could apply to Google as well under similar conditions, forcing the tech companies to help its investigators extract data from a suspect's smartphone in terrorism cases. The French police seized eight smartphones last year in terror investiga

Code Keepers: Mastering Non-Human Identity Management

Code Keepers: Mastering Non-Human Identity Management
Apr 12, 2024DevSecOps / Identity Management
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

France May Offer Asylum to Edward Snowden and Julian Assange

France May Offer Asylum to Edward Snowden and Julian Assange
Jun 26, 2015
In wake of the latest revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA) global spying on country's leaders, France may decide to offer political asylum to whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Julian Assange , as a " symbolic gesture ." Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden , who is facing criminal espionage charges in the U.S., has remained in Russia for almost two years after exposing the United States government's worldwide surveillance programs and he awaits responses from two dozen countries where he'd like to live. WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange has remained in the Ecuadorian embassy for three years in London to avoid extradition to Sweden, where Assange is facing sex crime allegations. French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira told French news channel BFMTV on Thursday that if France decides to offer both of them asylum, she would "absolutely not be surprised." Recent WikiLeaks report claimed that the United States had been spying on

WATCH: The SaaS Security Challenge in 90 Seconds

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websiteAdaptive ShieldSaaS Security / Cyber Threat
Discover how you can overcome the SaaS security challenge by securing your entire SaaS stack with SSPM.

French intelligence agency gets complete access to Orange Telecom Data

French intelligence agency gets complete access to Orange Telecom Data
Mar 21, 2014
Another leak from  Edward Snowden files, but this time not about the NSA, rather the documents revealed that France's central intelligence agency, the DGSE has complete and unconditional  access to all of  telecom giant  Orange's data, not just metadata . Yes! It is the same  Orange company who threatened to sue the NSA for hacking into the underwater cable that it jointly owns with 15 other companies. According to the French paper Le Monde -- Orange, the leading telecom company in France with more than 26 million customers worldwide cooperated allegedly illegally for years with France's main intelligence agency. DGSE and Agents with military clearance have been working with Orange for at least 30 years. France has a PRISM like surveillance  program to target phone communications, emails and data from tech companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo. Furthermore, DGSE is also sharing this data with foreign allies like GCHQ.  The revelations c

Google shamed and forced by France to Display 'Privacy Violation Fine' Notice on its homepage

Google shamed and forced by France to Display 'Privacy Violation Fine' Notice on its homepage
Feb 10, 2014
Last Saturday millions of France Internet users saw a strange message on Google's Homepage, rather than any GOOGLE DOODLE, as shown above. Despite Paying €150,000 ($228,147)  Fine to France Government, Google has been forced to post a ' Privacy Fine Notice ' on its French Search Engine homepage for violating Data-Processing and Freedoms Laws. The French Data-protection authority - ' The Commission Nationale de l'information et des Liberties ' (CNIL) said on Friday that Google's appeal to suspend the order of January decision has been denied by the Conseil d'Etat i.e. The Administrative Court and the company is ordered to post a notice for 48 hours on its Google.fr page within eight days as of the notification of the decision. In 2012, Google's new privacy policy that combined several separate policies under one umbrella and allowed Google to take advantage of user data from multiple different services at once, was in violation of " fun

Flame Malware against French Government

Flame Malware against French Government
Nov 22, 2012
The news is sensational, according the French magazine L'Express the offices of France's former president Sarkozy were victim of a cyber attack, but what is even more remarkable is that for the offensive was used the famous malware Flame. On the origin of the malware still persist a mystery, many security experts attribute it to joint work of Israel and US development team. Let's remind that according the analysis on Flame source code conducted by Kaspersky the malware is linked to Stuxnet, a version of the famous virus shared a module with the spy toolkit. Frame is considered one of the most complex spy tool produced by a state sponsored project and its use in the attacks against French government suggests the existence of a cyber espionage campaign to collect sensible information. An official declaration coming from spokesmen of the Elysee Palace and reported by the magazine states: "Hackers have not only managed to get to the heart of French political power,&
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