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Apple vs. FBI — Google Joins Tim Cook in Encryption Backdoor Battle

Apple vs. FBI — Google Joins Tim Cook in Encryption Backdoor Battle
Feb 18, 2016
In the escalating battle between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Apple over iPhone encryption, former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai just sided with Apple's refusal to unlock iPhone . Yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook refused to comply with a federal court order to help the FBI unlock an iPhone owned by one of the terrorists in the mass shootings in San Bernardino , California, in December. Here's What the FBI is Demanding: The federal officials have asked Apple to make a less secure version of its iOS that can be used by the officials to brute force the 4-6 digits passcode on the dead shooter's iPhone without getting the device's data self-destructed. Cook called the court order a "chilling" demand that "would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect." He argued that to help the FBI unlock the iPhone would basically

It Works! Google's Quantum Computer is '100 Million Times Faster' than a PC

It Works! Google's Quantum Computer is '100 Million Times Faster' than a PC
Dec 09, 2015
Announcing the results of its experiment, Google says Quantum Computer is More than 100 Million times faster than a regular PC. Two years ago, Google and NASA ( National Aeronautics and Space Administration ) bought a D-Wave 2X quantum computer , which they have been experimenting at the U.S. space agency's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California for the past two years. The goal is to create a better way to solve highly complex problems in seconds rather than years. Also Read:  Fastest Operating System for Quantum Computing Developed By Researchers Now, a Google's Quantum AI team appears to have announced the results of its latest test on D-Wave 2X quantum computer, demonstrating that quantum annealing can outperform simulated annealing by over 108 times – that is 100,000,000 times faster . What is  Quantum Computers? Quantum computers can theoretically be so much faster because they take advantage of quantum mechanics. While traditiona
Navigating the Threat Landscape: Understanding Exposure Management, Pentesting, Red Teaming and RBVM

Navigating the Threat Landscape: Understanding Exposure Management, Pentesting, Red Teaming and RBVM

Apr 29, 2024Exposure Management / Attack Surface
It comes as no surprise that today's cyber threats are orders of magnitude more complex than those of the past. And the ever-evolving tactics that attackers use demand the adoption of better, more holistic and consolidated ways to meet this non-stop challenge. Security teams constantly look for ways to reduce risk while improving security posture, but many approaches offer piecemeal solutions – zeroing in on one particular element of the evolving threat landscape challenge – missing the forest for the trees.  In the last few years, Exposure Management has become known as a comprehensive way of reigning in the chaos, giving organizations a true fighting chance to reduce risk and improve posture. In this article I'll cover what Exposure Management is, how it stacks up against some alternative approaches and why building an Exposure Management program should be on  your 2024 to-do list. What is Exposure Management?  Exposure Management is the systematic identification, evaluation,

Google's $85 Chromebit Lets You Turn Any Monitor or TV into a Computer

Google’s $85 Chromebit Lets You Turn Any Monitor or TV into a Computer
Nov 18, 2015
Google and Asus are finally ready to release their new micro Chrome OS computer called the Chromebit — that retails at a great price, just $85. That is quite cheap for what is essentially a portable computer that you can take anywhere in your pocket. Also Read:   CHIP — The World's First $9 Computer . Announced back in March, the Chromebit is a fully featured Computer-on-a-Stick that plugs into TV or any screen and turns it into what Google calls a " full-fledged Chrome OS-based computer. " All you need to do is: Plug the Chromebit into any HDMI port Hook up the power cable, a Bluetooth keyboard and a mouse Your instant computer is ready It has a smarter clinch on the business end so that you can easily plug the Chromebit into practically any HDMI port without the need for any extension cable. Also Read:   Mouse Box — An Entire Computer inside a Mouse . Despite its low price of just $85, the Chromebit offers you a complete Chrome OS experience,

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websiteAppOmniSaaS Security / Threat Detection
This guide captures the definitive criteria for choosing the right SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) vendor.

It's Official: Google Becomes ALPHABET

It's Official: Google Becomes ALPHABET
Oct 04, 2015
"Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence. In general, our model is to have a strong CEO, who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed." With this, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin combined all Google products and services under one roof - ALPHABET . Revealed in their Google Investor's Blog , the newly formed Public Holding Company ALPHABET would be taking place at the closing of business on October 2, 2015. From now on Google would be the subsidiary of Alphabet and owning all of the outstanding capital stock of Google. Moreover, by implementing a holding company reorganization the " Alphabet Merger " will close today. Until now, the ticker symbol used by Google in the stock market was " GOOG " and " GOOGL " (on NASDAQ), which are kept same even after the merger. This makes Google Class C Capital Stock and shares of Google Class A Common Stock bei

Google to Disable Weak SSLv3 and RC4 Protocols to Boost Internet Security

Google to Disable Weak SSLv3 and RC4 Protocols to Boost Internet Security
Sep 19, 2015
It is finally time to say GoodBye to the old and insecure Web security protocols. Citing the long history of weaknesses in the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 3.0 cryptographic protocol and the RC4 Cipher Suite, Google plans to disable support for both SSLv3 as well as RC4 stream cipher in its front-end servers. While announcing on its official blog , the Search Engine giant said the company is looking to put away SSLv3 and RC4 in all of its front-end servers, and eventually, in all its software including Chrome, Android, Web crawlers, and email servers. The move by Google came as no surprise, considering the fact that both RC4 and SSLv3 have been deemed unsecure by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). What are the Problems? SSLv3, which was made outdated 16 years ago, has a long history of security problems like BEAST , out of them the most recent one was POODLE ( Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption ) attacks, which lead to the recovery of plaintext communication

A New Company Called Alphabet Now Owns Google; Sundar Pichai Becomes New CEO

A New Company Called Alphabet Now Owns Google; Sundar Pichai Becomes New CEO
Aug 11, 2015
Well, this was a very unexpected move by Google. Google Co-Founder Larry Page announced a restructuring of the whole company, revealing the creation of the umbrella " Alphabet " corporation. But, don't worry… Google isn't dead! Rather, Google will become part of Alphabet. Why Google Rebrands As 'Alphabet' Over time, Google, the Mountain View company has become a lot more than just a Search Engine. Google created and acquired a large number of other popular Internet services, including Android, YouTube and Gmail, that makes too much difficult for a single company to manage all of them effectively. According to Google Founders, it's time, when different projects require different leaders, different company cultures, and different types of resources. " Our model is to have a strong CEO, who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed ," Page wrote . So the founders decided to create an all new parental brand that

Mind Blowing Radar-based Gesture Recognition Technology for Everything

Mind Blowing Radar-based Gesture Recognition Technology for Everything
Jun 25, 2015
Since it introduced at the annual Google I/O conference, Project Soli has been trending on the Internet. Project Soli is one of Google's latest cutting-edge experiments that could actually transform the way humans interact with technology. Project Soli is not a wearable watch you might think it is. So what is Project Soli? It's you. Yes, you heard it right. Google's secretive Advanced Technology and Projects group (ATAP) who is working on Project Soli, knows that our hands and fingers are the best way we have to interact with smart devices, but the fact here is — everything is not a device. So Project Soli wants to make your hands and fingers the only user interface you will ever need to interact with technology, even without the need to touch anything to control it. Before knowing how Project Soli exactly makes this happen, let's have a look at this GIF, which was pulled from Google's Project Soli demo video by Airows: And Her

How Google Is Tracking Your Movie and Event Activities

How Google Is Tracking Your Movie and Event Activities
Jun 23, 2015
No doubt, You must be aware that Google tracks you, but what you probably did not realize is how precisely and till what extent it tracks you. Well, Google knows which movies I watched where, when, at what time and with how many of my friends , and knows it so well — even my eyebrows raised slightly in surprise! Yes, you heard right. If you are using your Gmail account like I do, receiving all movie booking and tickets, Google can easily track your movie flavors and frequent hangout places without access to GPS. GOOGLE READ MY EMAILS FOR EVENT INFORMATION I was feeling bored last night, so I decided to watch a movie and moved towards Google to search newly released films. As I googled " Movies 2015 "... Holy Crap! What I saw on the monitor was unbelievable. In Google search results, I was able to see the list of all my past movie booking event activities and even my future bookings ( shown below ), and it was so, so accurate. If you have Google acc

Google Moving Its Ad Services to Fully Encrypted Platform

Google Moving Its Ad Services to Fully Encrypted Platform
Apr 20, 2015
Encryption is one of the major steps to be taken by every big technology giant in order to protect its users over the Internet, and, among those, Google has set an admirable example by gradually moving all of its online services to use strong HTTPS encryption. So far, Google encrypted email by switching its Gmail service to HTTPS, Google encrypted data communicating between its servers, Google gives priority to encrypted websites in its search results, as well as Google search also uses HTTPS . Now: To help protect privacy and security of its users, the search engine giant is moving its advertising platforms to HTTPS , as well. Google has already moved its YouTube advertisements to HTTPS as of the end of last year, but Google has a widely spread ad network that serves ads to Hundreds of Millions of users across the Globe every day. However, the content of those ads are mainly controlled by the advertisers, and we cannot predict their intention. To better comba

Google $100 ChromeBit Turns Any TV Into a Computer

Google $100 ChromeBit Turns Any TV Into a Computer
Apr 01, 2015
Imagine — reaching into your pocket — and pulling out a computer ! Google has made it possible to put your whole computer into your pocket by introducing a whole new kind of Chrome device — a tiny stick that plugs into HDMI port of any display. Dubbed ChromeBit , a fully featured computer-on-a-stick from Asus that Google promises to retail for less than $100 when it comes out this summer. You just need to plug a Chromebit right into your TV or any monitor in order to turn it into a full-fledged Chrome OS -based computer. Google Chromebit is portable with an impressive look and will be available in three attractive colors — silver, blue and orange. It has a smarter clinch on the business end so that a user can easily plug it into practically any HDMI port without the need of any extension cable. SPECIFICATIONS This tiny little Google ChromeBit stick packaged with: Rockchip RK3288 (with quad-core Mali 760 graphics) 2GB of RAM 16GB of solid state storage memory

Google Chrome 64-bit Browser Finally Released As a Stable Version

Google Chrome 64-bit Browser Finally Released As a Stable Version
Aug 27, 2014
Along with the release of Chrome 37 for Windows, Mac, and Linux , Google today also released a long-awaited 64-bit stable version of its Chrome browser for Windows systems. The company has been working on the 64-bit support for Windows 7 and Windows 8 since June. Back in June, Google first released Chrome 64-bit only in the browser's Dev and Canary channels. Then in July, the beta channel received the same update, and now, finally Chrome 64-bit is available in the stable channel. The new 64-bit version of Chrome offers three main advantages: Speed Security Stability Therefore, for those of you on a compatible 64-bit system, this new version will offer faster performance as well as security and stability enhancements in comparison to 32-bit version. But, Chrome 64-bit is still an opt-in process. So, if you want to take advantage of it, you can hit the new "Windows 64-bit" download link over at google.com/chrome . SPEED ENHANCEMENT Google claims that certain

'Google Is Worse Than the NSA' — Rupert Murdoch

'Google Is Worse Than the NSA' — Rupert Murdoch
Aug 18, 2014
The United States National Intelligence Agency ( NSA ) or the largest Internet giant Google - According to you, which one is the worse? NSA? But, according to the popular Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch ( @rupertmurdoch ), Google is worse than the NSA. Murdoch, founder of global media holding company News Corporation - the world's second-largest media conglomerate, currently lives in Australia and is once more making the sort of news he'd prefer to be remembered for. The 83-year old tweeted on Sunday, in which he labeled Google worse than the National Security Agency (NSA). The missive was as follows: " NSA privacy invasion bad, but nothing compared to Google. " NSA privacy invasion bad, but nothing compared to Google. — Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) August 17, 2014 In past, Murdoch accused Google of stealing the content of his newspapers (yet never putting in place a robots.txt file that would prevent search engines crawling it) and has always criticis

Project Zero - A Team of Star-Hackers Hired by Google to Protect the Internet

Project Zero - A Team of Star-Hackers Hired by Google to Protect the Internet
Jul 15, 2014
Today Google has publicly revealed its new initiative called " Project Zero, " a team of Star Hackers and Bug Hunters with the sole mission to improve security and protect the Internet. A team of superheroes in sci-fi movies protect the world from Alien attack or bad actors, likewise  Project Zero is a dedicated team of top security researchers, who have been hired by Google to finding the most severe security flaws in software around the world and fixing them. PROTECT ZERO vs ZERO-DAY Project Zero gets its name from the term " zero-day ," and team will make sure that zero-day vulnerabilities don't let fall into the wrong hands of Criminals, State-sponsored hackers and Intelligence Agencies. " Yet in sophisticated attacks, we see the use of "zero-day" vulnerabilities to target, for example, human rights activists or to conduct industrial espionage. " Chris Evans said , who was leading Google's Chrome security team and now will lead Pro

Released Emails Show 'Google in a Relationship With NSA'

Released Emails Show 'Google in a Relationship With NSA'
May 06, 2014
Edward Snowden 's leaks last year questioned the integrity of several big and reputed companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft that were found in relation with the NSA in its surveillance programs.  Thereafter they maintained distance with the Agency and claimed to be unaware of such government spying activities. Now, email exchanges between Google executives Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt and former NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander , obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that in real do not reveal anything ridiculously outrageous but suggest that the tech companies behind the services you use are very closely in relationship with the NSA and have worked with them over the years. The series of emails obtained by Al Jazeera clearly indicate that the relationship between Google and the National Security Agency (NSA) was far cozier than anyone thought. This revelation questions not only the reputation of the largest Internet giant, but also the privac

Google Gives Refund to Thousands of Buyers Who Bought Bogus Android AntiVirus App

Google Gives Refund to Thousands of Buyers Who Bought Bogus Android AntiVirus App
Apr 22, 2014
About a week back we reported about a popular paid Antivirus application on the Google Play Store which was actually a scam, dubbed as ' Virus Shield '. This First paid fake app managed to become one of the most popular anti-virus app in less than a week, and apparently more than 10,000 Smartphones users purchased it in $3.99 from Google Play Store and hence scammed more than $40,000. The Virus Shield Android App claimed to protect users' personal information from harmful viruses, malware and spyware, but in actual app doesn't scan anything and was removed from the store once the fraud had been uncovered. If you were one that had downloaded the Virus Shield Antivirus app , then don't worry, just check your email inbox, because Google cares about you and reaching out all those affected android users who purchased the app, in order to refund their money in full. REFUND WITH $5 BONUS CREDIT According to Android Police , Google has decided to refund $3.99 back to us

Google Admits that It Reads your Emails

Google Admits that It Reads your Emails
Apr 16, 2014
Google has updated its privacy terms and conditions on Monday to offer more transparency regarding its email-scanning practices. One of the world's biggest Web internet giant, Google, made it clear that the information its users submit and share with its systems is all analyzed. Last year, Google was accused of its illegal interception of all electronic communications sent to Gmail account holders and using the gathering data to sell and place advertisements in order to serve related ads to its users. Practically, the more information you let Google collect about you, the more accurate its adverts become. But Google has long insisted that its scanning practices are outlined in its terms of service. So, finally admitting the accusation, Google has made some changes in its terms of service res a new paragraph that explains the manner in which its software automatically scans and analyzes the content of Gmail messages when they are sent, received, and stored. " Our

Google announces $2.7 million Reward for hacking Chrome OS at Pwnium Contest

Google announces $2.7 million Reward for hacking Chrome OS at Pwnium Contest
Jan 27, 2014
Pwnium is the annual Hacking competition where Google invites coders from around the world to find security holes in Google Chrome. Google has announced its 4th Pwnium Hacking Contest hosted at the Canadian Security conference in March, offering more than $2.7 million in potential rewards for hacking Chrome OS-running ARM and Intel Chromebook. This year the security researchers have a choice in between an ARM-based Chromebook, the HP Chromebook 11 (WiFi) and the Acer C720 Chromebook (2GB WiFi) based on Intel's Haswell microarchitecture . The attack must be demonstrated against one of these devices running " then-current " stable version of Chrome OS. " Security is a core tenet of Chromium, which is why we hold regular competitions to learn from security researchers. Contests like Pwnium help us make Chromium even more secure ," Jorge Lucángeli Obes, Google Security Engineer said. Amongst the payouts are $110,000 for the browser or s

Qatar is Down ! Syrian Electronic Army hijacks major Qatar websites

Qatar is Down ! Syrian Electronic Army hijacks major Qatar websites
Oct 19, 2013
The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) is at it again. The hacktivist group, who are known to back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad , has hacked many high profile Qatar based websites, including the Google, Facebook, Aljazeera and Government - Military websites. Starting at about 4:25 am (GMT 5:30+), the Syrian Electronic Army shared this message on Twitter: Qatar is #down and  following that, they went about switching off government and private websites using the .qa extension. The domains are managed by Qatar's Ministry of Information and Communication (ictQatar). Apparently, the Syrian Electronic Army gained access to  Qatar Domain Registrar ( portal.registry.qa ) and modifies the DNS entires to redirects the targeted websites to servers controlled by hackers serving defacement page, that include a picture of Assad and the groups logo, as shown. The List of the targeted websites is posted on Twitter by hackers - these include: moi . gov .qa facebook .qa gov .qa vodafone .qa a
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