HTTPS | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Explosive revelations of massive surveillance programs conducted by government agencies by the former contractor Edward Snowden triggered new debate about the security and privacy of each individual who is connected somehow to the Internet and after the Snowden's disclosures they think that by adopting encrypted communications, i.e. SSL enabled websites, over the Internet, they'll be secure. People do care of their privacy and many have already changed some of their online habits, like by using HTTPS instead of HTTP while they are surfing the Internet. However, HTTPS may be secured to run an online store or the eCommerce Web site, but it fails as a privacy tool. The US researchers have found a traffic analysis of ten widely used HTTPS-secured Web sites " exposing personal details, including medical conditions, financial and legal affairs and sexual orientation. " The UC Berkeley researchers Brad Miller, A. D. Joseph and J. D. Tygar and Intel Labs' researchers, Li...

Tor is one of the best and freely available privacy software that lets people communicate anonymously online through a series of nodes that is designed to provide anonymity for users and bypass Internet censorship. When you use the Tor software, your IP address remains hidden and it appears that your connection is coming from the IP address of a Tor exit relay or nodes , which can be anywhere in the world. An exit relay is the final relay that Tor traffic passes through before it reaches its destination. According to a recent report ' Spoiled Onions: Exposing Malicious Tor Exit Relays ', published by security researchers Phillip Winter and Stefan Lindskog revealed that almost 20 exit relays in the Tor anonymity network that attempted to spy on users' encrypted traffic using man-in-the-middle techniques. Both Researchers spent more than four months studying on the Tor exit nodes using their own scanning software called " exitmap " and detected su...

AI agents have rapidly evolved from experimental technology to essential business tools. The OWASP framework explicitly recognizes that Non-Human Identities play a key role in agentic AI security. Their analysis highlights how these autonomous software entities can make decisions, chain complex actions together, and operate continuously without human intervention. They're no longer just tools, but an integral and significant part of your organization's workforce. Consider this reality: Today's AI agents can analyze customer data, generate reports, manage system resources, and even deploy code, all without a human clicking a single button. This shift represents both tremendous opportunity and unprecedented risk. AI Agents are only as secure as their NHIs Here's what security leaders are not necessarily considering: AI agents don't operate in isolation . To function, they need access to data, systems, and resources. This highly privileged, often overlooked acces...

How many of you use Google Chrome for surfing the Internet and feel safe while working on it? I think many of you. Chrome is one of the most trusted Web Browsers that provide a user friendly environment and cyber security, but this we all know that every product has its negative side too, and so has Google's Chrome. Chrome has a 'Voice Recognition' feature, that use your system's microphone and allows you to speak instead of typing into any text box, to make hands-free web searches, quick conversions, and audio translator also work with them. Google's browser is also not immune to bugs and this time the new bug discovered in Chrome is capable to listen and record your whole private conversations without your knowledge, by abusing the voice recognition feature. While working on ' Annyang ', a voice to text software for websites, the web developer ' Tal Ater ' discovered a vulnerability that can be exploited and lets malicious sites to turn your Go...

After the release of NSA Secret spying over Internet communications, I am expecting from all tech companies to make surveillance significantly harder. Yahoo has HTTPS encryption support since late 2012, but users had to opt in to use the feature. Documents revealed by the Edward Snowden shows that the NSA secretly accessed data from several tech giants, including Yahoo, by intercepting unencrypted Internet traffic in a program called Muscular. As promised back in October 2013,  Yahoo  has finally enabled the HTTPS connections by default for their users, that will now automatically encrypts the connections between users and its email service. Jeff Bonforte , senior vice-president of communication products at Yahoo announced  in a blog post: It is 100% encrypted by default and protected with 2,048 bit certificates. This encryption extends to your emails, attachments, contacts, as well as Calendar and Messenger in Mail. HTTPS by default is really a good news fo...

A new hacking technique dubbed BREACH can extract login tokens, session ID numbers and other sensitive information from SSL/TLS encrypted web traffic in just 30 seconds. The technique was demonstrated at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas ( Presentation PDF  & Paper ) by Gluck along with researchers Neal Harris and Angelo Prado, which allows hackers to decodes encrypted data that online banks and e-commerce sites from an HTTPS channel. Neal, Yoel and Angelo ( From left to right) at BlackHat BREACH ( Browser Reconnaissance and Exfiltration via Adaptive Compression of Hypertext ) is very targeted and don't decrypt the entire channel. BREACH manipulates data compression to pry out doses of information from HTTPS protected data, including email addresses, security tokens, and other plain text strings. Angelo Prado told The Hacker News , " We are using a compression oracle is leveraging the building blocks from CRIME , on a diff...

For years the National Security Agency has successfully shielded its surveillance programs from any real public scrutiny. There have been a lot of news stories about NSA surveillance programs following the leaks of secret documents by Edward Snowden . We have learned that the NSA is collecting millions of Americans' phone records on a daily basis, that it operates a program called PRISM involving the surveillance of Internet communications, including Email, Facebook posts, and instant messages. The NSA is allowed to record the conversations of non-Americans without a specific warrant for each person monitored, if at least one end of the conversation is outside of the U.S. It is also allowed to record the communications of Americans if they are outside the U.S. and the NSA first gets a warrant for each case. Because Facebook is using outdated Web encryption, which cryptographers say the NSA could penetrate reasonably quickly after intercepting the communicatio...

Skype … once upon a time a VOIP application considered very secure and wiretap-proof, it was the common belief that no one could intercept such communications due a complex mechanism for the management of audio / video and text streams. One day, Microsoft decided to buy the product, according to many to catch a significant portion of users fond of Skype, but according many experts the company of Redmond wasn't interested only to acquire new market share. The architecture of the popular VOIP infrastructure was improved according Microsoft, in reality it is common thought that it was implemented the possibility to intercept every conversation, as requested by US government to major service providers. The claim is that Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are today able to access the communications exchanged by Skype users and Microsoft has still not been adequately answered to various question on the matter. The German associates to H security magazine at heise Security have be...

A Google developer helps Apple to fixed a security flaw in its application store that for years has allowed attackers to steal passwords and install unwanted or extremely expensive applications. Security loophole allowed attacker to hijack the connection, because Apple neglected to use encryption when an iPhone or other mobile device tries to connect to the App Store. Researcher Elie Bursztein revealed on his blog that he had alerted Apple of numerous security issues last July but that Apple had only turned on HTTPS for the App Store last week. An attacker only needs to be on the same network as the person who is using the App Store. From there, they can intercept the communications between the device and the App Store and insert their own commands. The malicious user could take advantage of the unsecure connection to carry out a number of different attacks i.e steal a password, force someone to purchase an app by swapping it with a different app that the buyer actually intende...