The Hacker News - Cybersecurity News and Analysis: Internet Surveillance

Last year, Iran blocked Telegram and many other social networks after their founders refused to help Iranian authorities to spy on their citizens. Now it looks like Iranian government wants tighter controls on all foreign messaging and social media apps operating in the country that will give the authorities a wider ability to monitor and censor its people. All foreign messaging and social media apps operating in Iran have one year to move 'data and activity' associated with Iranian citizens onto servers in Iran, Reuters reported . In order to comply with the new regulations, the companies would need to set up data centers in Iran within one year, but apps may lose a larger number of users by moving data onto Iranian servers. However, transferring data to Iran servers might not be enough, as some of the most popular messaging services like WhatsApp , Apple iMessage , and Telegram are offering end-to-end encrypted communication i.e. nobody in between, not even Whats

The NSA and GCHQ have tracked and monitored the activities of independent and nation-state hackers, along with some of the foremost security researchers in order to gather information on targets and pilfer the stolen data from hackers' archives, top secret Snowden documents reveal. State-sponsored, individual Blackhat hackers and hacking groups target some or other organizations on an ongoing basis. So, by monitoring the work of 'freelance' and rival state hackers, the NSA and its allies get the stolen information, such as email accounts or chats owned by target of their interest, without doing much of hard work. HACKERS STOLE FROM TARGETS & AGENCIES STOLE FROM HACKERS According to the latest revealed documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden , the hacks and sophisticated breaches on the targets were carried out by the state-sponsored and freelance hackers, but the stolen data, referred to as 'take', was then pilfered by the agencies for

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 31-year-old global surveillance whistleblower and former U.S. intelligence contractor, who has received a three- year residence permit from Russia, his lawyer announced on Today. " On the first of August he received a three-year residence permit, " lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told RT . He had not asked for political asylum, his lawyer added. The former NSA contractor has not apply for Russian citizenship for now, as he will be able to apply for the Russian citizenship in five years. " A foreign citizen, who got a residence permit, will certainly be able to apply for citizenship, " Kucherena said. " He will be able to travel freely within the country and go abroad. He'll be able to stay abroad for not longer than three months ," Kucherena said. Snowden is responsible for handing over material from one of the world's most secretive organisations the NSA. The

Think twice before using some words like ' Bomb ', ' Attack ', ' Blast ' or ' kill ' in your Facebook status update, tweets or emails, because this may flag you as a potential terrorist under a surveillance project of Indian Security agencies. This Indian Internet surveillance project named as NETRA ( Network Traffic Analysis) ,   capable of detecting and capture any dubious voice traffic passing through software such as Skype or Google Talk, according to  the Economic Times . In Hindi, NETRA means " eye " and this project is an Indian version of PRISM i.e. A spying project by US National Security Agency (NSA), that also allows the government to monitor the Internet and telephone records of citizens. Reportedly, NETRA is under testing right now by the Indian Intelligence Bureau and Cabinet Secretariat and after on success will be deployed by all Indian National security agencies. Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), a lab under Defence Research and D

If you have followed the startling revelations about the scope of the US government's surveillance efforts, you may have thought you were reading about the end of privacy, and about the Enemies of the Internet. " My computer was arrested before I was ." a perceptive comment by an internet activist who had been arrested by means of online surveillance.  Online surveillance is a growing danger for journalists, bloggers, citizen-journalists and human rights defenders. Over the last few years, law enforcement agencies have been pushing for unprecedented powers of surveillance and access to your private online communications. This week the PRISM surveillance scandal has consumed the Internet as the implications of massive scale U.S. Government spying begin to sink in. The US National Security Organization (NSA) is almost certainly one of (if not the) most technologically sophisticated, well-funded and secretive organizations in the world. The Prism initiative was launched by Na